Less skills and Roleplaying

Post » Wed Aug 11, 2010 4:25 pm

Personally, I always loved TES' system of leveling exactly because it didn't lock you onto some specific "path".

Then I don't know which games you have been playing. It surely couldn't have been the same I played, where you were limited very similarly through the major/minor skill system.
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Scott Clemmons
 
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Post » Wed Aug 11, 2010 11:52 pm

Ok, then, how should i imagine a single thing about my character if he is just a list of predetermined perks? Also, perks don't make sense. For example, i put all my starting points on strength (if attributes are still in, that is) and then at lvl 40 or so i think "Well, i choose that perk that lets me carry 50 more weight", so all 39 levels before i can only carry 100 weight-units, and suddenly, without my character changing, just because he puts a label on himself (like "Pack Rat") he can suddenly carry more?

He isn't a list of predetermined perks. The perks your character gets can be different from someone else's, and there's hopefully plenty to go around. Also, if attributes are still in, I don't expect things like encumbrance to remain static.

But we don't know everything of how the perk system is going to work, nor do we even know what all the skills will be. What we do know is that there are perk levels, so you'll have to level up a perk to make it more effective. It's kind of like extra skills, except less granular levelling and tied to a base skill (unlike previous games where each skill was a completely separate 1-to-100 scale). We can also hope that you can only pick perks related to skills that you levelled to achieve your current levelup. In that way, encumbrance could work similar.. your encumbrance limit in Oblivion/Morrowind only went up because you decided to stack more points on strength, not because of anything your character actually did. Encumbrance-enhancer perks can be tied to strength-related skills and be selected the same way.. just without the exploiting to get x5 strength modifiers all the time.
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Hilm Music
 
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Post » Wed Aug 11, 2010 2:14 pm

I finally realized a great way to express why people are disappointed about having less skills. Or at least a way to express part of it.

I thought it was people were just sad becuase Morrowind only lasted 1 game
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BEl J
 
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Post » Wed Aug 11, 2010 10:24 pm

Kind of a bad example with Athletics and Acrobatics. If you spend a bunch of time swimming, your legs get stronger and it doesn't take a lot of jumping practice to get good at jumping. Sneak and Security would be a better example, since walking around in shadow when people can't see you is not going to help you pick a lock any better. So, yeah, makes sense, but the two go hand-in-hand anyway. Not a whole lot to do while you're sneaking around if you don't intend to get into places that others don't want you to be.

I think the thing is, from a roleplaying perspective, skills don't really matter that much. They matter from a gameplay perspective and combining things like that make it more efficient.


I'm not really sure I agree with the sneaking. What if you are trying to play an honest hunter. He needs to be able to sneak up on prey, or away from the predator he doesn't want to fight, but he has no need to pick locks because he feels if he is supposed to open that lock, he should be able to get the key in an honest manner? Also, Speechcraft and Mercantile share some simular traits (interacting with others) as well as Athletics and Acrobatics (which are both forms of physical fitness) which would easily allow perks to do some fine tuning.
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Toby Green
 
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Post » Thu Aug 12, 2010 12:56 am

And you don't see perks fulfilling the same function? Not trolling, genuine question.

Exactly, there is more choice now than Oblivion, axe/daggers/blunt/swords all have sperate perks instead of combine into to 2 skills like OB, there is now 2 handed stuff, even more weapon diffrentaion than OP, and not to mention over double the number of perks and you can choose them unlike OP, more stuff not less.
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Trista Jim
 
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Post » Wed Aug 11, 2010 11:23 pm

I guess its okay to blend acrobat with athletic, but I wish that they would stop cutting down skills. a problem with oblivion was that it was so balanced that it wasn't balanced at all. what I mean is that you could choose to do nothing but increase any attribute but endurance but it just about garanteed that when you got highier up in level you would be so low in max hp that things like brown bears and cougars would kill you in one or two hits giving you no chance to fight them off.

where having more skills plays into this is that the more skills you have, the more major skills you have (although I guess that wont be apart of skyrim) the better are your chances of being able to increase your endurance as well as your other attributes.

what worries me more though is the fact that since the absence of major skills and minor skills will allow people the freedom from having to increase skills they don't typically use, but if I for example; only used skills that weren't under endurance I would (assumingly since we don't know EXACTLY how this system will work until its out) rise to higher levels with lower health. The only solution I can think of that would prevent this would be a system of enemies who are not only linked to your level but your health, and if thats how it is... well, I can only say that during oblivion I didn't think leveled enemies could get worse.
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Big mike
 
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Post » Wed Aug 11, 2010 11:03 am

I'm sure I'll be happy with Skyrim. Idk if I'll be happy with the skill reduction.
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Dragonz Dancer
 
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Post » Wed Aug 11, 2010 10:45 pm

I have played true roleplaying games without stats or skills...

True

I have played ones that had dozens of stats and over a hundred skills.

Guessing true, have never seen dozens of stats personally though. Which game?

stats and skills dont make roleplay they make rollplay.

Depends on the implementation. FO3 had stats and skills while being fully capable of preventing rollplay. Role Master (dice RPG) had tonnes and tonnes of skills and a pretty solid attribute/stat list. But what skill sets you got depended on what profession you took (important aspect of that system) rolling up your character. It did allow grinding, but a good GM would find means to prevent it - *that* cannot happen in a computer game.

So what if we don't get to be expert in everything? If the game scales well, it should be able to figure out decent level settings for "jack of all trades, master of none" as well as for the highly focused character. The game is our GM, and it should act like a GM by adjusting on the fly (naturally with exceptions). Life doesn't allow anyone to become "master of all trades" - there simply isn't enough time.
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Lucky Girl
 
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Post » Wed Aug 11, 2010 6:25 pm

I disagree you'll have even more to Roleplay with. The only problem is the perks but hey it's a small price to pay in order to not have something like Oblivion's leveling system which I like in theory but it's flawed because of the Points into Attributes that you do every level.
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alicia hillier
 
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Post » Wed Aug 11, 2010 4:14 pm

You can still use your axe and raise your skill with it. You just don't get perks as easily because you need more skill points raised to level up. That's just another form of XP scaling, keeping with the common RPG theme of not being able to teach an old dog many new tricks.

Agreed. Plus, I find specialized characters to be more fun, much more fun than jack-of-all-trades sorts. Also, whoever said that TES has never locked you out of a path..really? Daggerfall and Morrowind sure as hell locked you into a path, especially in Morrowind. If you svcked at something, you REALLY svcked at something. Skills never became useful till it hit, at the very least, 40, while everything was at a skill level of 5 (practically worthless). To a lesser extent, Oblivion did too, but it was more of a damage, damage mitigation, and durability thing, along with a few missing perks in skills one wasn't talented in.
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Emmanuel Morales
 
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Post » Thu Aug 12, 2010 2:09 am

Perks will increase the possibilities of the skills, so that 1 skill can do many things. For example, perks for using daggers better, short swords better and long swords better all fall into the skill blade, if there is a skill for blade. so swinging a dagger and increasing your blade skill will not make you better at the use of long swords, unles you choose that path when selecting perks. I think this is a much better system than the previous games.

Don't worry, be happy. :icecream:
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Sheila Esmailka
 
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Post » Wed Aug 11, 2010 4:24 pm

Less skills.

Roleplaying aspect really depends on your imagination.

Hmm I came here to say this too, role play is in the mind everything else is just an aid. Less skills means more focus, ppl need to understand things arnt left out due to laziness or forgetfulness ect the devs have a plan and it's there game don't compare it to fable ect games that where never on par with tes.
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Tammie Flint
 
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