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.

TES is supposed to be a Roleplaying game. Skills are part of this, you get better with "Long Blades" and you swing a sword better. It's a skill. These sorts of things connect in our minds easily. But Todd seems to have forgot this a bit, we all assume that Acrobatics and Athletics has been merged. But what happens when the guy who does nothing but swim suddenly finds himself much better at jumping? "Huh, how did that happen?" average joe player will ask himself. Maybe if he looks it up he'll think "well that's kind of dumb, whatever". The hardcoe roleplayer will of course go "aaaaargh wtf is this crap"!

A game system isn't simply about numbers, but what those numbers represent to people, what their imaginations conjure from those numbers. Part of the reason, I suspect, that skills were reduced to 18 was because attributes are back, but are reduced to 6. "Can't have one attribute govern more skills than another." Said someone to themselves. But you can! Ignore the "numbers" and you'll see that as far back as Morrowind certain attributes have been better than others regardless of the skills they govern.

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.

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

I agree it's rather the way OUR mind works than the way the game mechanics underneath work according to the devs. Good post! A good game dev sees this discrepancy between the gamer's thinking, his own thinking and how they can find the common ground in the game that works for everyone. In fact the way this game is going to work is so rationally conceived it may very well conflict with the diverse concepts we have in our mind.

Less skills.

Roleplaying aspect really depends on your imagination.

And that's why Morrowind was so horribly unbalanced, because some choices were just better than others.

And by your logic about swimming and jumping, you could also argue the same for other skills. Being good at fighting with a one handed sword doesn't guarentee you can fight well with a two handed claymore, for example. Sure, both are bladed weapons, but both weapons are used differently, and when it comes to skills, what really matters is how the weapon is used, if you want to be entirely logical, not by what its edge looks like, in this respect, the approach Skyrim seems to be going for actually seems to make more sense as weapons are divided based on whether they're one handed or two handed, not whether they have blunt edges or bladed edges, and perks are used to allow further specialization, this way, using a claymore actually DOES require a different set of skills from using a one handed weapon that happens to also be a blade, but no one seems to care about that, probably because it's always been that way, whereas reducing the amount of skills is a change. In other words, what bothers players is not that the new design is bad, but that it's different, that's certainly the impression reading these forums can sometimes give.

In the end, no RPG setting can have a skill for every single individual thing you could reasonably expect to perform that might realistically require its own set of skills, for one thing, the more individual skills you have, the harder it becomes to ensure they're balanced and each one has its own merits, and when you start trying to make skills for everything, you get skills that are entirely pointless because what they do is so trivial that there's really no point in raising them. Sometimes, it works better to have things that might realistically require different skills, but for the purposes of gameplay, are connected enough to justify them being in the same skill.

In the end, I judge an RPG system by how well it actually plays, not how many skills it has. What's important is how much room it gives players for creating the character they want, and in that respect, the addition of perks could help a lot as it allows players to specialize their characters in ways that the basic skills don't allow. But some players don't seem to be able to see that, or choose not to, all they see is that there's less skills and act like it's the end of the world all of a sudden. Yet would they have complained if the series only had 18 skills from the start?

Now, I'm not saying reducing the amount of skills was a good idea, all that I'm saying is that less skills doesn't necessarily mean less role-playing, especially when perks are added in to the mix, as those are a factor past Elder Scrolls games never had. For better or worse, the presence of perks will change the gameplay experience.

Less skills is not yet alarming for me, 18 from 21 is not that bad. I'll panic when (now I'm quoting somebody I don't remember who) the only 3 skills will be: warrior, mage, thief

Perks are a better system simply because they make the leveling up experience far more rewarding. Also, they put emphasis on specialising your character wich not only is realistic (as opposed to Oblivion and Morrowind where the best mage could also be the best warrior etc etc), but also adds so much to the replayability of the game.

Not to mention, there will most likely be roleplay specific perks as well.

I don't.The reason is that you get perks once per level,meaning the ability to change your profession anytime is over.I won't be able to practice Axe after I beat the game.Or fall in love with bows and decide longblades are not for me...

You can still practice axe. Why wouldn't you be able to? You just wouldn't be able to easily get the super cool perks that go along with axe. There isn't a level cap.

You lost me here.

Skills are part of character development in games where you're intended to gain in power over time playing it. While it's common in RPGs, it's not exclusive to, or inherent in, them.

They could take out skills, they could take out levels, they could take out attributes, etc. and still have a great RPG game.

I like character development and customization, but having a few less skills isn't going to affect your game play that much especially when they're just combining and removing a few skills with some overlap/redundancy.

Of course. Because neither making decisions nor living with them are in any way an aspect of roleplay.

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.

I don't think you'll get very far if you plan on swimming round Skyrim.

thats what perks are for. for all we know, there might be a swimming perk and a jumping perk. who knows? :shrug:

I think that's exactly the criticism.
Personally, I always loved TES' system of leveling exactly because it didn't lock you onto some specific "path".
It just said : 'Look, here's all these things that you could be good or bad at, and now you can go and train them and whatever, have fun.'

And the cool thing about that was that you didn't end up following the same tired cliché classes that D&D and other have. If you wanted to be the most skilled Axe-figher in the universe, who also was really good at conjuring scamps and jumping onto the roofs of medium-height buildings, then you did that. Eventually, if you played long enough you did it all, and you reached an unbalanced power-level, but that's how it was.

I liked it because it made no assumptions, just gave you freedom. Much like the sandbox-world and all the ridiculous topics of conversation, and the ability to pick up everything. That's what TES is about for me. The ability to roam freely through a HUGE FRICKIN WORLD OF MAGIC. So when they take their hints from traditional RPG's and try to reward specialized classes, and build a strong narrative and visceral combat at the expense of letting me levitate with a backpack full of spears and crossbows, I get sad. I'm an unhappy fan.

Just my 2 cents about perks and fewer skills.

Well said Selbeth. You brought out the points I was going to already

Yea I am a big RPer and the best parts about it are what you come up with, not with what the game provides you with.

The perfect game would have just enough skills/perks/classes/attributes to allow you to do anything reasonable, and anything over that could be construed as complexity for the sake of number crunching. It seems to me that the proposed system will reward you for specialising, but allow you to branch out if you choose. Well and good. I think the perks system sounds, in theory at least, a wonderful idea. I don't understand the viewpoint that it restricts you. You can still for example, get to be a master of a weapon without any perks in it, in RP terms being a solid by the book swordsman, as opposed to someone of lower skill with specialised perks, who is not so practised vis. the basics but flashier with more spectacular moves.

From that logic of thinking it would be better if there was only 1 skill in the whole game that encompassed everything.

No, instead it made classes meaningless because you still could eventually maxed out all skills.

The three archetypes (warrior, thief, mage), are a staple in fantasy. Even as far back as Tolkien/LotR, you had them. It's not a tired cliche any more than elves, goblins, trolls, or magic are.

Additionally, Skyrim will not lock you into a specific path. You can do whatever you want.. train exclusively in magic, train in magic and stealth, or melee and magic, or melee, magic, and stealth, or whatever. It's designed to encourage (not enforce) the archetypes, yes.. so being a mage will actually mean something besides "a character that chooses not to use melee and stealth". You can still be a battlemage, or a nightblade, an arcane archer, a paladin, or a jack-of-all-trades. You just won't be as good as if you had specialized in something more specific. This is good because your choices will actually have meaning, instead of all paths leading to the same Master-of-Everything result.

Yes some skills are gone or placed within others (which to me is generally fine) and the fact that perks are introduced along with their own leveling system for those perks gives another layer to the game and role playing in this sense of what we know is going to be better then ever. But also to me improved upon because as some people have stated in this thread it is all about your imagination and as well as they are creating a more immersive experience so this will go hand in hand with the RP aspect of the game.

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

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

stats and skills dont make roleplay they make rollplay.

Problem with perks is, they only give you a pseudo-customization.

You said "Skills are not important, but your imagination is". 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? Or another example, i choose that Mace-perk, so i suddenly do more damage, even if i never faught with a mace, but i can choose this perk because there are only "1-hand" and "2-hand" weapons? That's not ES-like "learning by doing" as far as my understanding goes.

With your issues concerning encumbrance, it's not hard to imagine if there are levels within the perks (as stated in the GI article). +10 for every level of encumbrance (or whatever switch the numbers around), there's you're gradual progression.

Concerning the mace, it's more of an issue with the weapon skills being consolidated into two groups isn't it? IF the mace skill were to be housed under it's own discipline then I don't think the perks complimenting maces wouldn't be a problem for you.