» Wed Sep 01, 2010 1:37 pm
I can't vote for any of those choices.
To me, it's much more complex than any of those choices allows. I think that skills (and attributes) should not only slow down at some point in the game, but that at least some of them should regress, and potentially that any of them should if not regularly used.
For instance - if I play a character who wears heavy armor and runs around just bashing skulls in with a warhammer, I expect him to develop high skills with those items and high strength and endurance. If, after some time, the same character sets aside his armor and his weapons and dons a robe and spends all his time honing magic skills, his armor and weapon skills and the associated attributes should, in my opinion, actually decrease.
I'd also like to see fairly rigid, race-specific caps. One of the things I've never cared for about Oblivion is that the only real differences between the races (aside from aesthetics) are only temporary advantages. Sure, a male Nord starts out with more strength than a female Bosmer, but by late in the game, the male Nord tops off at 100 and the female Bosmer tops off at... 100. So early in the game the male Nord is stronger, but late in the game, they're exactly the same. Entertaining though it might be in a sense, I just don't think it's realistic that Mindi is exactly as strong as Hale (two of my characters - see my sig).
There's also an issue of age. As a middle-aged guy, I can attest to the fact that I have less strength, less endurance, less speed and less agility than I had 20 years ago. In part, that's certainly because I'm less active than I was (see my fighter turned mage example above), but in part that's just a consequence of age. Over time, the body wears out.
And those are just a few quick points - this whole aspect of things is immensely complex, really. And I simply hope that Beth does a better job of addressing it than they have. We'll see....