It was far too easy to become good at everything in Oblivion.
However, that doesn't mean the system is bad.
It's just that Oblivion didn't had enough variety in skills and that it's too easy to advance them, resulting in all your builds ending up the same.

It would be better if they forced you to rest before you could "level up" your skillpoints, so you can't simply enter one dungeon with destruction 30 and leave with 37. You'll be 31 or 32 at most.

And again; 21 skills is too little.
It would be nice if has at least 30, at least forcing you again to make a decision in what kind of weapons you want to train etc...

It should implement a feature that makes all weapons more effective if you have multiple weapon skills with high values and same for magic, all magic skills should get a benefit. People who mindless grind skill for days could do everything and that would be fine with me.

To summarize a bit because it seems to others that i m very judgemental on a negative way to the franchise which is not the case, i had some good time with oblivion and i believe it could be done better but after all these years if the series wont be able to be what it should be from the start and come up only with some dragons and some spectacular graphics, then i wont go for it, many games have all these already

The average gamer isn't going to spend time to max everything. The average gamer would spend anough time to learn the skills he needs to survive - just like in RL. See, if you're a diplomat stuck in a combat situation you will try to learn some gunfighting, not ignore it because it isn't part of your class. D&D sytem is anything but realistic. It's as abstract as quantum physics. I'm not sure what's so great about a gaming system that has basically no roots in reality.

And if someone actually wants to max EVERYTHING, well, let them have their fun. If they want to spend 400 hours grinding that's their business, not mine.

But I do agree that some abilities are too easy to max. Others are too hard. It could be more balanced.

Ok i get your point, let me clarify, if the developers decide to give much more attention and work to Magic, Fight and Stealth then you wont need to be everything, because it woult take you sooo long to master your mage or whatever, but for this to be done they must develope a lot more these three aspects, like they are three different but parallel universes

There is a saying "Jack of all trades, master of none". That's how it should be. If you want to be a jack of all trades you should never be able to master anything and that means never become the guild leader of any guilds.

Since that will never happen, I'll say if you want to be jack of all trades then fine. However, you can only be the head of one guild at a time. There has to be a reason to replay the game and being able to master everything and do everything in one character doesn't allow for replayability.

TES is a special subgenre. Unlike other RPG's that exist to tell you the story, TES is a sandbox that allow player everything he wants. It exists to allow you to create a character you want and use him in a game.
If you do not have any imagination and don't want to limit yourself, then you are playing a wrong franchise. Sandbox RPG's like TES are supposed to be played differently from hardcoe RPG's like DA.

With that said I never play a Jack of all Trades. Why? Because I don't want such a character.
I am also not member of all guilds. Why? Because my character would not want to join them.
But I like the ability being there because it allows me to create a character I want (to the last detail), not a character from a gallery given to me by the Developers. Limits in TES are a NO! If you are unable to limit yourself it is your problem. Go play some other RPG, there are a biunch of them and Bioware releases awesome Standard RPG's every now and then (this year they are releasing 2 of 'em). Don't play Sandboxes.

Atlast someone who gets the point

Thanks for the suggestions, i have my reasons to believe this for TES, because they ve done a very good work on the graphic and the enviroment department, so why not on the gameplay, its about the realism of the game

I would prefer a flexibility but specialization should be encouraged. There could be a few ways of doing this like making skill progress slower depending on the sum of all your skills or basing advancement rate on the points earned not on your real skill level. Also not all PnP RPGs are as rigid as DnD. GURPS is much closer to the way Bethesda usually handles things.

I voted for the first option. If I can be good at everything, then that really reduces my incentive to play the game again, since. In other words, it reduces replayability because the gameplay will end up being the same regardless of my starting class, race, and skills. Classes won't feel like they play differently from each other.

I like how skills were handled in Morrowind (I haven't played Daggerfall yet), with Major, Minor, and Misc. You could master everything, but it would be very hard to raise those misc. skills. In TESIV, it was pretty easy to raise the Misc. (minor) skills, so that my Assassin became adept in the various schools of magic and other non-major skills. I was a mage, a warrior, and a thief. Why would I want to play the game again after joining all guilds and mastering all skills?

Yea, thats it, you nailed it

If you're prepared to put in the time, I don't see why you shouldn't be allowed to improve all your skills. It certainly gives you something interesting to do at the higher levels when you've completed most of the quests.

For instance, when I become master of the blade I like to build up all my minor weapon skills so that all the more powerful weapons that become available are useful to me.

For me, part of the beauty of RPGs (particularly single player games) is that you start off as a fairly puny character who, through the skills gained by leveling up, is able to achieve in-game greatness. Being able to master every skill is a logical manifestation of this. :toughninja:

Well, I agree. I'm all for deepening magic, fight and stealth. Learning curve shouldn't be too steep, though.

I like the current system, it is realistic and feels right to me, I mean in live we can have formal education in law and than go and start our own business in sewing dresses for example Right now you get the starting bonus for your class skills, but you can learn whatever you want to learn, and you character advancement largely depends on how much time and effort you are willing to spend on training you characters - you don't really get to the jack of all triads point unless you have 100+ hours on you save game... Having an option to develop a skill that woun't add to your level doesn't help you much at the start of the game, and after your char is 100+ hours old limits would only be annoying anyway.

I hope I cant master EVERYTHING with one character. Let me master a skill or two and get good with a few others but being practicly a demi god at the end because I maxed everything out doesent sound all that appealing.

I didnt get exactly what your saying, but anyway, i ll say it again, if they develope magic, fighting, and stealth to the extreme, then you wouldnt care to be everything, you would be absorbed by developing your attribute

5x slower leveling mod comes handy then. Again.

It's not a problem for me that it IS possible to become master of everything in TES4. The problem is that you WILL become one, even if you don't train or practise much. And we're talking about a time period of few weeks.

Morrowind was better, slower. Daggerfall was best since you could choose exactly how slow or fast your leveling was.

I want to be the master of as much as I choose but I will play the game either way. If I can master everything It should be hard to master any minor skills without paying for training and training should be expensive at higher levels

This is the same debate as most things when it comes to Elder Scrolls. You have ultimate freedom! If you "want" to just be a warrior, then do that. Don't touch the magic or stealth skills. But that doesn't mean we all should suffer because some people feel it takes away replay value.
Tell me what is the difference between me playing 300 hours on one character in Elder Scrolls to collect and max out everything. As opposed to creating three characters in a game like Dragon Age* but only playing for around 80 hours a piece? I'm still experiencing the same amount of content and spending roughly the same amount of time in the games.

Not many games let you have the freedom Elder Scrolls does. And that's something I really appreciate.

*note I loved Dragon Age, I was just using it as a example of a game with a restricting class system.

I have to agree with you completely. And if one likes mods, as I do, than it comes in even more handy - I know for sure that to get through all of the content I have in my current installation of Morrowind you have to play for 400 - 450 hours - the game, 2 expansions and several enormous quest mods make for a very looong game - there is no way I would be able to replay it all with several classes Limiting the skill development would only cut the content for the players like me. And hopefully Skyrim will be as exciting and as moddable, so limiting the skills there would be quite a disadvantage.

Maybe because different character has different gameplay and different combos? something which until now never happened on the series

Neither of the poll options is preferable. You should be able to become master in the skills you select at the beggining of the game. That can be a mix of warrior, mage and stealth, but only those certain skills you chose.

EDIT: Actually, this sounds better:

I don't think I quite understand what you mean? As far as gameplay like I said you can have all of them in Elder Scrolls. I can go "hey, I'm feeling stealthy today" and instead of having to create a entirely new character I can just level up the stealth related skills on my current character. I'm still experiencing all the "gameplay" as if I were to create a different character.

Combos? Again I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean how warriors could use shield bash while rogues and mages could not? (For instance)
If they wanted to implement that they could very easily do it with their current system without restricting "classes." Just add shield bash as a option for when you have a shield It could be tied to your block skill. Done. Any possible thing they could add as far as special stuff only certain classes can do in other games can be done using their skills instead of classes.