I concur with this question. I would like to know.

EDIT: And who cares about fast travel. As long as quests are solvable in practical ways without the compass and fast travel, then you can just ignore it. If you use the tired "zomg long distances I can't control my patience so i give in to fast travel" excuse, then they probably added alternate forms of transportation and there should be no reason to complain, once again.

In general, I like it. I don't mind the fewer skills that much, though it depends on what skills are gone. If fewer skills means all skills will be useful as a major to focus on, and there's no lame skill like athletics, I think it's an improvement.

Seconded, there was nothing.

Although something that's annoying me - on the one showing skills like destruction, there's one on the far right which starts SMI... and maybe with a T.

Smithing? Why would they change the name of armorer? Unless...

You can craft weapons!

/realisation of what a dumb leap of logic that is.

Seriously, though, there were at least 7 magic skills, and 18 altogether. the old system was based on Stealth, Combat and Magic - I'm guessing that there'll be a couple less in stealth, and a lot more in Combat (than Oblivion).

Edit: And, reading the post above, removal of Acro+Athletics seems likely. Don't worry, you'll still get your jump spell...

Edit 2: I found something on the menu system, and yes, fast travel is real. But I don't see that as such a bad thing, I now can avoid Fast-Travelling in Oblivion

My instinct says 18 skills is bad.

But, my mind says with each skill increase going towards a level, it might not be.

I wont know for sure if Im dissapointed until I know if I can levitate and mark/recall or not.

I was a bit disappointed about there only being 18 skills for a few minutes but I'm already over it lol. Mainly because the way skills work sound like they are alot better.

But I do hope that they got rid of loot scaling, I will be incredibly bummed out if its still there. Enemy scaling I am indifferent about. The rest of the information I have read so far sounds great to me. Have to say I'm really excited for this game and for even more info still.

Wait, there is info? :confused:

Only solid, positive info I can gain are that hands, arms and faces look good.

Had the write up begun with a description, or at least an overview of skills, attributes etc I would feel more confident about the game's roll playing credentials. As it is, the write up jumps directly into a detailed overview of combat. I do not feel this is a good sign, game focus = combat. Indeed, mention is made of limiting certain progressions to 'avoid exploits' which, from Ob, roughly translates to 'protecting the combat experience' where I would prefer making the best of the game from the choices I make wrt character progression. This is back to the old argument of give the player enough flexibility and many will spoil their game through power playing and then come to the forums and complain the game is 'too easy'. Do we really need to be protected from ourselves? Just how much nannying will the game contain?




This is worrying on three counts:
1) Is it an indication that the player will never encounter instant death experiences a'la Ob? Reading too much into it perhaps.
2) 'automatically set the mission in a place you've never visited'. As an obsessive explorer I must ask what happens when I explore the entire region?
3) At worst this could bring back the feeling of the entire world revolving around the player. I hated that last time.

No mention of sneak, lock-pick etc.

No mention of factions.

No mention of clothing slots or levitation or so many other things

Dual wielding has me more worried about the combat centric nature of the game. I hope 2 swords = -30% agility, -50% block to add some level of 'reality'.


On the positive I see no annoying pop-ups lurking to break immersion and no wild enthusiasm for mini-games. Alchemy remains and Enchantment is once more a skill I believe, I wait with interest to see what they have done with them this time around.

Voted: I don't like the Information, very little in the write up appeals to me.

Overall enthusiasm is down.

Overall my reaction so far is positive.

There are a few elements I'm iffy on, namely attributes being gone and the random quest system but I'm willing to wait until I know more about those things to make any serious judgments on them.

I'm not quite sure how I feel, I do like some of the additions, however I mourn for the loss of three more skills.

First Post!

From what I have read, I think it sounds all positive at this stage. T. Howard is justifying the use of Level scaling well, I do not think it is a bad idea, in the example he uses he seems to make it clear it doesn't happen all the time just in some occurences to make sure the player doesn't get dominated by overpowered enemies, which is fine by me.

Also it says that the spells in the Mysticism category have moved around, so they still be in there.

The graphics look fantastic and the story sounds great aswell.

I'm extremely disappointed. Many things seem to be dumbed down and clearly created with casual players in mind. Dragons will be common, not mystical. We will have to slay them repeatedly in 1vs1 battles (sh*t...) and even gain "dragon shouts" for doing so (wow, it's almost like the achievements system! GREAT JOB, BETHESDA!). Number of skills will be reduced - again. Conan inspiration does not bode well for uniqueness and the graphic style (bare-chested barbarians charging at dragons with giant swords in two hands) is very non-TES like. Even the graphics itself is not THAT impressive - first screen-shots from TESIII and TESIV made a better impression IMO. I cannot comment on the AI system - we were promised a great system once and it didn't work at all.

While I like some of the announced improvements (better faces, no zoom in dialogues, monsters that fit the province etc.), ATM it looks like some sort of mix between Gothic, D&D and Diablo, not another game from TES series. After a very atmospheric intro (the trailer, the encrypted message and the classic box art) I expected sth deeper and more interesting. I hoped that they would follow the trend of Shivering Isles, but the game may be even worse than Oblivion. I don't want to sound dramatic, but we may soon witness the destruction of the true, unique character of the series. Maybe it will be a good action game in itself, but that preview was a bit of turn-off for me.

You and me both. Im excited (im here arnt i) but im also worried. Mostly excited.... but worried.

Greatly satisfied with most of it, ambivalent about a little of it.

I have higher hopes for this than Oblivion, but I'm still skeptical about quite a bit. A gameplay video is needed, I think. I've become a lot more picky about what games I buy and a lot more poor, so I'll probably wait and just pick it up after the nudie mods come out.

I'm cautiously optimistic. There is stuff that gives me a lot of hope (Alduin), stuff that doesn't (more action oriented gameplay), and stuff that makes me shake my head and wonder if Bethesda would have been better off ignoring the fans. Over all, I'm underwhelmed.

wait wait wait wait wait...

BULLET TIME? WTF?

That and I'm worried character leveling will not be as customizable. 18 skills is fine as long as the leveling is very customizable.

Based on the same, I'm no longer worried.

My expectations, based on the old saw "When in doubt, predict the current trend will continue," have simply been confirmed. :shrug:

Same here. Well, there's also generated quests which gives me hope but overall I think it will be highly be a question of trying it to see how it ends up being played, some things are hard to truly get a grip of just by a small description. Though I really, really hope there is an hardcoe mode with a travel system since the Oblivion fast travel is back.

Well I don't know, to me IF they merged speechcraft with mercantile and acrobatics with athletics, as well as getting rid of mysticism (but putting the spells in different categories) to get to 18 skills what would be wrong with that? Seems like a logical progression from Oblivion since they were all basically the same thing anyways (or should have been)...

I'm optimistic. I really hope the article lives up to the AI. I also really want to see what they're doing with the races, mostly Khajiits and Argonians. I do miss my claws.

And stealth. Wasn't too big of a fan of who thievery was handled in Oblivion, but here's hoping for improvement. :celebration:

Sounds like this game in someways more "doubed down"
......in other words the more I hear the worse it sounds.

When I heard it will only have 18 skills, level scaling like Oblivion and no class selection, I was in shock. Really Bethesda? Guys, I'm out.

I'm just going to start off with saying you're way too cynical. Your comment about it looking like a mix between Gothic, D&D and Diablo instead of TES is hilarious. Furthermore, series evolve over time to improve themselves and keep the series fresh. Having 40-odd skills and dicerolls was nice 20 years ago, but worthless nowadays. The series was always going to have more action, and it's not weird that the less useful skills such as mysticism disappear.

Also, if there wasn't any thought given to casuals, the game wouldn't sell nearly as much. Which would mean AI probably would have the same level as morrowinds (read: pretty much none), graphics would lag behind to modern games, and physics would be poor.

Very impressed.

1) It is just weeding out unneeded skills 2) It is not a replica of Oblivion's, it is a new kind and 3) It will basically be like making a custom class, but this time you are not picking from a list.