So with no set skills... Mid way through a game you could ditch that two handed axe and dwell into destruction magic. Since you can "do more" with one character do you think this will limit how many times you create new characters?

Can't say for sure, but I think there might be something to it.

Not really. I'd rather say that the addition of perks will actually give more of a reason to do multiple play throughs. In Morrowind and Oblivion I usually eventually ended up with a char with pretty much all skills maxed out that swapped back and forth between stealth, magic and melee combat, whereas now with the perks I won't be able to be a jack of all trades but actually have to specialize ^^

By the contrary, I think this leveling and perks will help me customize better my char and I'll definitely want to try more builds.

Skill trees are built the higher you ascend in levels. They've implemented a "you are what you play" philosophy and no character will be able to obtain every perk. If you want to be a dedicated mage and learn everything there is to know about say, destruction, you will have to sacrifice perks that are possible to gain from other skills such as blade or speechcraft. It's like an advanced Fallout leveling system. Basic perks branch out to more advanced ones and so on. I have the utmost confidence that there will be plenty of replay value.

No,if you spend half the game doing one thing, it'll take you forever to level up with the skills you haven't specialised in.

Not to mention that perks are limited so you can only get a certain number per playthrough, which only encourages trying again with different perks.

Not at all, fully intend to do a mage, warrior and thief playthrough, with different perk sets, rather than ending up a master of everything with every character. Just hope there are mutually exclusive guilds.

You're still encouraged to specialize, and you'll only have access to a bit more than 1/6ths of the game's perks (50 of 280), per character. That kind of specialization will, hopefully, encourage multiple playthroughs. The classes in previous games never really encouraged specialization, because a mage could train to be just as good with a claymore as a warrior, so you actually had more opportunities before to see everything in one game. Also with Skyrim's more dynamic quest system, it seems to be encouraging multiple playthroughs more than the previous games.

Solid points, it's true with all the perks to be had you would have to be quite dedicated to a few skills to obtain the "best" ones.

Well the great thing about it is, you can't be a master at everything. Perk-wise atleast. And I imagine most of your abilities are in the perks.

In oblivion you could master everything, even if it's a secondary skill it could still hit 100. If you planned your character right, you could get 100 in every attribute (including luck), yet many people replayed oblivion because there is more to the game then just stats. There are other ways to create replay value, given there is 10 playable races (with all probably having male and female), then I'd say there is also character to consider too. But overall I am just hoping the story and quests make you want to replay it rather then something over stats.

Can't say until I've played the game. Ask me in 8 months! :thumbsup:

In OB, I would start off with the best intentions, but the weird 5/5/5 leveling would mean ending up as a healer spellsword sneak conjurer, with a touch of Bruce Lee and Alan Sugar on the side. This time, the need for efficient leveling being removed, I can happily enjoy playing a character with a limited skill set, It will be good to be weak in some areas.

250+ perks, we can only have 50 per character, sounds like lots of play-throughs for me

No, I don't think the removal of the class system will reduce my desire to create multiple characters. Just because there's no classes doesn't mean every character will be the same, it just means what you're character becomes in the end is determined by how you play rather than the choices you make at the start. And the addition of perks could certainly add some replay value, as could Radiant Story, if it works out how we've been lead to believe it will, because it would allow each playthrough to be different. Besides, in past games, you could still master everything with each character, there was nothing stopping you're thief from training heavy armor and blunt weapons. You couldn't level up by doing so, of course, but you could still do it, and eventually you could create characters who were all pretty much the same, the class system didn't change this. In many RPGs that use classes, they serve to limit what players can do. A warrior wouldn't be able to use magic, and only a rogue could pick locks, in Morrowind and Oblivion, though, there were no such limitations, and honestly, it seems to me like the class system was more an artifact of the series' roots in pen and paper games than anything, and its removal seemed like the next logical step from what we had before.

With the removal of the class system I see very little need to play through Skyrim more than maybe 3 times. One melee, one spellcaster and one rogue. Even with Radiant Story, it won't make it drastically different.

Yes, to some extent, and I don't mind. I rarely play more than one character anyway.

To echo what has already been said above...

I think the philosophy of Skyrim is that you can be a jack of all trades but a master of none, if you so choose. In other words, you might do reasonably well in a large number of skills, if that's what you wanted, but you would never become great in a few skills. The fewer skills you specialize in, the more masterful you can become in those skills.

Since I've never really been interested in "jack of all trades" characters, I think the Skyrim system will actually encourage me to play again as different characters (which I would probably do anyway, and did in Oblivion, even though--as R3sistance said--it wasn't all about the stats for me).

I voted no.

In every TES game to date I've had dozens of characters, every race, every class, ect. I understand Skyrim won't have 'classes' in the traditional sense, but that doesn't bother me atall. I quite like the thought of not being restricted to seven major skills to level up, especially later on in the game when you may perhaps feel you made the wrong class choice at the beginning and don't want to go through the hassle of restarting. :thumbsup:

Classes didn't force you to use those skills anyway you could always get your destruction to 100 whether you where a mage or not, and you didn't need a single magic skill to become Archmage in Oblivion so the removal of the class system won't impact replayablility much. Since you might not be able to change perks you will be forced more into the role you choose than the class system ever did.

I personally dislike the removal of the class system, even though it didn't really matter, it added some character customization. It won't change how I will play Skyrim however, I really dislike Grand Champion Master Archmage of the Thieves Guild kind of characters so I will make multiple characters and do quests and join factions that fit them even if I'm technically able to do everything with a single character.

I don't think I'll have 100 in more than like 4 or 5 skills so I think I'll have enough variation in skills to do another character.
What makes me less inclined to do multiple play throughs is if dialogue is like Oblivion or if quests only have one outcome and if I can join every guild/faction with one character.
But I don't think that the skills will make me go "Nah, now I'm done".

Not really the amount of skills matter to me. The fact that there is better leveling system alone will keep me playing for several characters more

As long as they provide tons of ways to go where you can't have it all, where guilds are mutually exclusive, where you have to sacrifice some perks to have others, and where some dungeons can only be done with some of those arcs, then that will leave enough replayability intact in the game for multiple-playthrough scenarios being quite viable.

In previous Elderscrolls games, you could pretty much max out everything and do everything, so what was the point ... except for going through it again with all of the new community Mods enabled?

Mods provide tons of replayability where the gaming system did not. But it sounds like in Skyrim things are going to be quite different this time around. I think they've learned a few lessons in these regards from previous failures and achievements of their development team. I'm looking forward to replayability being a real possibility built in from day one.

My characters in the previous games tended to be "hybrids" between two classes, but not "jack-of-all-trades" types with all three. As long as the system doesn't railroad you into either specializing in just one, or being gimped in all of them, I don't have a problem. I'll probably still need several playthroughs to try the various Combat/Stealth, Magic/Stealth, and Stealth/Combat combinations.

In MW and OB, it was hard not to end up as "master of everything", even if you didn't want to be. The awkward "multiplier" approach to levelling made it all but necessary in OB to raise skills you had no interest in, and never acually "used", just to avoid "gimping" the character when you found yourself falling behind the world around you by not playing the "multiplier mini-game". The same problem existed in MW, but the game wasn't as reliant on scaled loot and adversaries, which just created "different" issues instead.

To me, the substitution of perks for attributes by itself is a lateral move, not an improvement or a degradation. The way that it's activated and handled is more important, and THAT was where MW, and OB even more-so, suffered the most. Unfortunately, that's also the part we have the least info about.

More than likely there will quest breaking bugs so I will do multiple playthroughs regardless of there being no classes. Also I may go on a drunken rampage and kill many non essential quest npcs and save the game, so yes I will do more than one playthrough. Playing as other races is a another reason I will do another playthrough.