When I played Morrowind and Oblivion, I very much enjoyed having great freedom in how I could define my character via skills. I didn't have to limit my warrior to martial weaponry--I could have him deal with enemies by employing destruction magic too. This is just one of many examples. However, a disadvantage I noticed from this system is that 'class purity' is highly discouraged. A warrior foregoing magic entirely is at a great disadvantage in comparison to a warrior utilizing some magic. The former suffers a substantial net loss, as his only gain is marginal in comparison to what he could have gained putting the skill points into certain magic skills.

My idea for fixing this lack of balance is providing some incentives for going the pure class route. Now, it could be argued that taking a pure class route should be more difficult, and that it is a good test of self-discipline, and that providing incentives for it would negate those entirely. Oblivion's enemy scaling system, in my opinion, made it excessively cumbersome to take a pure class route once a sufficiently high level had been reached, which I think breaks those arguments, but then again, it has been recently announced that http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1156332-is-level-scaling-backnoooooooooooo/page__st__40__p__16933097#entry16933097. Even if it isn't as difficult to take a pure class route in Skyrim, I think it would still be beneficial to the game to add significant incentives for it. Those who prefer generalization (the large majority) don't lose out at all, as this playstyle is not disincentivized at all (other than losing out on the incentives for playing 'purely').

Here's a summary of my arguments.

1. In Morrowind and Oblivion, class purity was heavily disincentivized, while class generalization was highly incentivized. I'm presuming that the system in Skyrim will be similar enough to make this statement true for it as well.

2. To solve this, compelling incentives (e.g. special perks) should be provided for going the pure class route, so that there is some sort of reward for it. There is no need for a penalty to be inflicted upon generalization playstyles, though.

So what do you think? I've made a poll for this purpose, but I'm also hoping that people will introduce new arguments, information, etc. in replies.

No, why should there?

Strength Through Purity, Purity Through Faith... Where was I? Oh, I'll bring up GCD again. It has "soft caps" for skills and attributes, i.e., the costs for raising a skill increase (sort of) exponentially, but there's no hard cap at 100. That makes "pure" classes less frustrating to play. The likely removal of attributes might be yet another disappointment for purists, though.

I don't think it would add anything to my experience playing because I like to switch things up at times depending on the quest or the situation.

Yes, in some sense there definitely should be. It shouldn't force you, but there definitely needs to be incentives. But each "class type" should be expansive so there's a lot to do with your particular skillset.

You should obviously be able to specialize in a couple of skills from different class types (such as longsword for a mage character), but ultimately your character should always be defined to "magic, stealth, or warrior" You shouldn't be able to do all of them. The game just gets boring if you can be good at everything. I like to see warriors fighting with melee weapons, mages utilizing magic, and stealthy characters shooting arrows and skulking around. You can be a jack of all trades if you want but there should be stark downsides to doing so.

Every class type should have a unique way to accomplish a quest objective with their given skillset, you shouldn't have to constantly change between stealth, fighting, and magic as each type should have it's own way of accomplishing things.

Role playing a straight warrior will always be behind a warrior who happens to dabble in restoration.

It's more to do with the challenges quest will throw at you. A properly balanced quest will have multiple solutions be it through combat, magic, stealth, negotiations or whatever. Just imagine if magic is your main skill and you're facing a mandatory boss with various magical defenses and immunities.

Edit: Oh and hopefully Beth will go the New Vegas route of having multiple means to finish a quest and this Radiant Story sounds promising.

its not as bad as u make it sound. i had a pure mage character. if he used a sword and sheild at best he wuld be able to fight well enough to borrow time to find an escape route or hopefully regenerate a little magic. But if he used my strongest spell he culd do 600 damage within 6 seconds on touch. thats enough to take out pretty much anyone except or an ogre i found out. but anything else...and maybe not a bear...but for pretty much anything else its one hit ur down. on the other hand myw arrior could not do that much damage at all. but he culd keep in a fight for a long time. so i gave up some to gain some either way.

I think there should be incentives to specialize. And perks/perk trees with appropriate skill requirements (like meleeskill of choice, block and armorer all at certain level would grant perk X, for example) could work as one of them. Other than those, the specific quilds could (and should) require guildspesific skillsets at differing levels to raise in ranks which should offer a benefit to the player accordingly to the rank - should there be guilds or ranks at all, that is. The tradeoff and reward with specialist and generalist would be something like generalist being able to be a lowranked member in all guilds and reaping the lower level benefits of all those ranks, while a specialist could be a higher rank member in one and thus getting only one, but quite significant, benefit from it. For one example.

The problem comes with "no level cap". But if I haven't misunderstood anything, there should be a "soft" cap at level 50 (which shouldn't be reashed too soon as, IIRC, the general pace of leveling is slowed down from what Oblivion had) after which everything just slows further down. I think the specialist (or purist) characterbuild could be supported at least up until that point.

My point wasn't really if it's possible or not to defeat that boss. It's more to do with being pigeon holed into a specific type of gaming (multi-classing) as opposed to playing the way you want to.

There already is an incentive to go a pure class route, high skill levels in the pure class route, and higher associated attributes because you dont break your time into part here and part there. Nothing more should be added incentive wise

Why not? In the end everybodys able to do everything anyway, so the "incentives" would only work for quicker acquirance of the given benefits. It would only add to the gameplay for those who do not intend to go for insane levels, and take nothing from those who do.

In Skyrim there are incentives for going a pure route. The incentives are that you level faster, get better perks and you become more powerful in those set skills.



According to Todd Howard, they removed the Major/Minor skills but most people will not be able to max out every skill. Since when you hit lvl 50, all your skills become extremely hard to level. Meaning that your either better off rolling a new character after you have finished all the content in the game and have reached that level or if you really want to max out all your skills, your on a long, difficult journey to doing that. It won't be like you can just finish all the skills in the game by just questing.

I thought ths was about playing the knight in shining armor character.


Nah you have incentive enough to be pure thief/mage/warrior.

I had the exact opposite experience with Oblivion. I tried to create a jack of all trades and I ended up with a thief who wasn't bad at magic, but was forced to fight in sneaky ways, because I was unable to efficiently raise weapon skills (for some reason OB's leveling system made it extremely easy to top my sneak skill compared to weapon skill even though I still used that weapon while killing in sneak mode). So I don't think there's any need for more purity incentives. I'm gonna go pure anyway, since it was so frustrating at the end of the game where it was so hard to sneak and I would get killed very easily in normal combat. :brokencomputer:

I know. And I'd guess you can not even reach the "soft cap" by just questing. But I don't see that as a counterargument to the basic idea (if it was even intended to be one).

god no- ninja beserkers that hurl fireballs are how its done


but i think ranged weapons were crap, they should be done better

Yes, there absolutely should be strong incentives for going pure! Because else I won't resist to become the Jack of all trades again and I don't want that because it almost feels like cheating (my willpower is weak, thus I don't want fast travel either).

You do have a choice when you make your character at the beginning.

Level scaling isn't the same as leveling.

Take this info from GameInformer




They will be equals. I think Both Hybrids and Pures will be taken into account and have incentives. I'm guessing Perks will help do this.

My incentive? I like a challenge and I like to roleplay. Created a character in New Vegas who specializes in meds, science, speech, and is good with explosives and repair, while everything else is horrid. In essence, I created a character who cannot fight to save her sorry ass, but is awesome at non-combative roles. And let me say this, things got very dicey for me at times, and would have been completely blown away if I didn't have ED-E and another partner. Not to mention it required me to look for other avenues in order to survive, like hacking a computer in order to make the turrets shoot the robots.

What's nice about TES is that it is a single player game, so one is not forced into specializing in a certain way, or get your butt blown half-way across the map by another player. Sure, skills should be balanced, so that people will have fun with that skill, but real fun comes from conflict and roleplaying.

Do remember that Elder Scrolls isn't Dungeons and Dragons. In Elder Scrolls, Battlemage (mage backing up their magic with heavy armour and heavy weapons, or heavy fighter using magic) is one of the classic combat types, enshrined in the lore. Mixing and matching skills is part of the game-world, part of the history and backstory.

I very much agree that how that is done is important. There were very serious problems with Oblivion's levelling up - for instance my conjurer/alchemist character levelled up like crazy and was being torn apart by high level beasts with no hope of defending himself; though perhaps if I'd learned how to actually use potions effectively I'd have done better .

But to straight-jacket players into conforming to the archetypes of an entirely different rule-set just seems wrong.

Good feedback, peeps. I'd like to clarify that the 'significant incentives' for keeping a character pure in terms of his class are not intended to be forced on anyone. As I had already stated, most players prefer generalization, and that's great, but there should be a decent incentive, a fitting benefit, for layplayers to specialize if they so choose.

Should there be incentives for "purity"? That is a good question but it cannot be answered without asking what specifically is a "pure class"?

It seems that the general consensus is there are three "pure" classes. The warrior who uses only "combat" skills, The mage who only uses "Magic" skills and the thief who only uses "stealth" skills.
This view of pure classes is flawed in my opinion.

Combat skills include , Axe, Blade, medium armor,block, Heavy armor and armorer. To be a pure, a warrior is limited to this pool of skills. But a warrior can only wear one type of armor and use one type of weapon at a time, thusly it is highly redundant to be skilled in both heavy armor and medium armor or both,Axe and blade. The mage nor the thief suffers from this redundant in their skill set. All of their skills are varied and unique in respect to each. Destruction magic and Bow can easily be argued to be a "combat" skill, thus making their placement in the "Mage" and "thief" field respectively rather arbitrary.

Realistically individuals have a general pool of skills acquired through time and experience that they use to get through life, that may or may not be related to each other. The Elder Scrolls is not a traditional RPG that has traditional classes. Characters aren't defined by their "class" but by the skills they use. Which allows for a sort of unique characters like who swordsmen relies on Destruction spells for ranged attacks and alteration for defense, or a heavily armored tank who combines illusion with destruction to meet his ends.

Unless these "pure" roles are muliplied and expanded upon more or the specifics of specialization are redefined or the leveling system is drastically changed, I do not believe "purity" should be given incentives.