There's nothing wrong with Fallout gaming mechanics, the point is they are FALLOUT gaming mechanics and shouldn't be included in an Elder Scrolls game.
I'm not saying it can't have (dark) humour and stuff like that, but things like xp based levelling and perks (including Oblivion style perks) just shouldn't be in a TES game.
Killing X amount of people means you level up, so you can choose to become a better doctor and you have the choice between suddenly being healed when eating human flesh, knowing the exact location of any place in the world or having people dying in a more bloody way.
Leveling through experience makes no sense, especially if leveling is the way to increase skills. Killing 100 goblins with your swords shouldn't give you the option to suddenly become better at restoration and axe fighting.
And perks which gives you special power out of nowhere make even less sense. The Fallout perks where over the top, which fits with Fallout but not with TES.
Oblivions perks weren't really over the top but they still makes no sense. There isn't a magical moment between skill level 24-25 where you suddenly learn something which is impossible a second before.
For example: when your marksman skill reaches 25 it suddenly stops costing your energy to draw your bow. I understand that it's a game and it doesn't have to be 100% realistic, so a good marksman having no fatigue costs is fine, but why does it have to be a magic moment when it appears.
If marksman 25 means no fatigue cost, than around 12 you should have half the cost, let every skill point reduce the cost a little until you have reached the point where it doesn't cost you fatigue at all.
Armor breaks down quicker (150%) below 25 and only at a 50% rate at skill 50, isn't it better to replace the perks and have skill 49 mean your armor breaks down at 51% of it's normal rate and a skill of 24 mean it breaks down at a 101% rate.
In Fallout your lockpick skill has 96 useless points since only 25, 50, 75 and 100 make a difference, this is not the case with TES skills but the Oblivion perks system does move in that direction. Having every single skill point make (a little) difference instead of 4 perks with a big difference fits far more with The Elder Scrolls in my opinion.
What you dont seem to understand is that while the TES style of leveling system makes perfect sense from a realism point of view, it does not make any sense from a gaming point of view.
Reaching a few artificial milestones though the unrealistic and artificial method of XP gaining to
evolve your character in a way you want to play is MUCH more convenient and fun than, than doing extremely tedious, repetitive and boring
WORK (work |= play/fun). Because thats what the TES leveling system is. Casting a billion useless low level spells just so you could finally use a spell that is actually fun to use. Let yourself get hit by a mudcrap 1000 times in heavy armor just so you can enjoy fighting in heavy armor without getting owned too hard in a real fight.
That sort of tedious tasks and repetition belongs to the mmorpg zombies.
Also gaining levels is completely pointless with the tes system. You simply do no get any more powerful by gaining a level, in fact with level scaling its the opposite, because enemies get stronger relative to their level while you only grow as much stronger as much as you skills have improved, and thats not a lot per level.
So relatively you get weaker by gaining levels, unless you exploit the system and specifically choose skills for major skills that you never use and so you can grow in power while your enemies dont get stronger... like how it should be in an rpg.
I'm replaying oblivion now, and its obvious to me that, that style of leveling system does not work without major improvements & refinements. It'd be much easier to just use xp system. Still better than a broken system, if they cannot overhaul the current system in a major way.
I cant believe anyone with recent experience can honestly defend the TES style leveling. I love TES games, but that aspect simply never worked well. The fallout leveling system is very simple, very artificial and ancient old, but it works, and you can spend more time on fun and the way you want to play and less on work. ("Perks" have no place in TES though, I'm not arguing with that, but keeping something that svcks and is completely broken, just because "its tradition" would be dumb.)
» Wed Dec 30, 2009 9:01 am 
