Yes we do. They already said they were rolling anything from Mysticism elsewhere. They will do the same thing with the other 2 dropped skills because they won't just drop TES gameplay staples. I always thought Athletics was absolutely pointless so I won't be surprised if it is merged with Acrobatics or something like that.

Maybe, but I still always felt underwhelmed by what Oblivion had to offer. Each guilds are finished before you know it, and if you stick to one guild, you feel like missing out. There were far more guilds and of different specializations in Morrowind, so you could be in more than one quest in a way that makes sense, unlike Oblivion. Plus, you could ignore the obvious Fighter's, Mages or thieves guild and got for others, and still be offered a decent amount of work to do. Some things were deeper in Oblivion yes, but it still made customization shallower. Those skill tiers did make those skills deeper, but it didn't cover the fact that some skills were cut. Where are the spears? How the hell using a claymore is identical to using a knife? etc...

The biggest problem is that they ADDED tasks but without an appropriate increase in skills, what skills determine mining? smithing? woodcutting? axe... err double hand? Sadly the game is turning the supposed fun additions into basically extra income/animations. Perks will not fixthis.

The biggest problem is that they ADDED tasks but without an appropriate increase in skills, what skills determine mining? smithing? woodcutting? axe... err double hand? Sadly the game is turning the supposed fun additions into basically extra income/animations. Perks will not fixthis.

I was talking about Intelligence affecting things like magical ability at higher values, enchanting, alchemy, etc.

It's just one example anyway. Why did Bethesda put the Attributes in so that they would guide the skills?

LOL, no we don't. We don't have the game, we don't know if its going to be more in depth. If they combined acrobatics and athletics I would be super pissed.

Fair enough, but it's a "quality vs quantity" situation more than anything. It basically comes down to a matter of preference. On my end, I prefer fewer and more complex skills (because, again, I feel that it fits better with the kind of game Bethesda makes, even if some of the specific consolidations they've made make no sense whatsoever like the whole "two-handed sword is the same as a dagger" thing) and I prefer... well, a combination in terms of the actual quests (I like what they seem to be offering with Skyrim: a deeper main quest and deeper faction-specific quests, but with shallower randomized quests to offer the kind of quantity that those deeper non-random quests couldn't possibly allow for).

The point I'm trying to make isn't so much that one approach is better than the other as that neither approach offers less than the other in as blunt a way as people tend to present them as offering. It's less a matter of "this is dumbed down and they're giving us less and it's worse" and more a matter of "this is different and they're changing how they approach developing content and I don't like it". I've got no problem with people who don't like the approach that they're taking, only with people who misrepresent that approach.

People are crying 'oh woe is me, 18 skills!', but fail to see what the devs are truly doing with the system.

I'd like to use New Vegas as a partial example. In New Vegas, there were many perks. Some had to do with different weapons UNDER THE SAME SKILL. I took commando. I took shotgun surgeon. I took all sorts of things related to using rifles or rifle-like weapons. My brother took all the perks related to one handed weapons. Eventually, I got to the point where if I tried to use a pistol, I would get totally creamed in combat. But why was this? My small arms skill was 100! Ah, but that's where the perks came in. I was so specialized that I pretty much HAD to use what I was specialized in if I wanted to be competitive. Sure, I could attempt to use one handed firearms, and could do so with some measure of effectiveness, but I was still going to have a very difficult time with some of the stronger enemies in the game.

That is what they are doing with the skills in skyrim. So what if they have only 2 weapon skills (one handed and two handed)? By having a multitude of perks that support and empower certain weapons (such as the mention "mace attacks ignore armor" perk in the magazine), they effectively create a skill for each of those weapons.

As for the loss of Mycsticism, that is okay as well ("GASP, Orzorn, the magic using ranter, is okay with the loss of a magic skill?!"). Why? Because even though we lost the skill, the spell effects remain and live on in the other skills. Hell, it wouldn't matter if we last all but one magic skill, as long as the spell effects lived on through that skill (of course, that would be madly excessive).

Another issue is one of depth. It seems many of the removed skills were ones that were "passive". By that, I mean the player did not actively have to attempt to use them. An example would be athletics. Its kind of ridiculous that running, something that every adventurer worth his or her salt, would be a skill. It is obvious that it would raise regardless. Same goes of any of the armor skills. "But if they remove armor skills, anyone can wear anything!" I say so what? Can we not already do that in real life? Besides, a thief would not want to wear heavy armors, as heavy armors would make noises and, well, be heavy (limiting their carrying capacity). A mage would not use any armor at all, because of the restrictions to their spell casting (unless they got perks for it, of course). A warrior would naturally use what gives them the most armor, so heavy would be an obvious choice, regardless of armor skills being in the game or not. In addition, perks skill provide for specialization. A warrior may end up with multiple heavy armor related perks, so attempting to use light (or no) armor would be almost suicidal, if not just uncomfortable.

18 skills is okay, so long as each skill feels unique, had depth, and gives us several actions to use and play around with.

Yeah I mostly agree. Generated quests is something I wished hard for, hopefully factions will offer them on top of their more complex quests. I don't think it's much of a matter of "quantity vs quality" with skills though. I'm no programmer, but my guess is that it's not that complex to program, tiers may be more complicated though, but I'd be surprised taking out 3 skills made that much of a difference in terms of saving time. Well, we'd have to see how skills and perks actually work. Hopefully perks are some kind of "sub-skills", something that could be seen as skills in Daggerfall for example, even if most players of any class might ignore them.

Bethesda didn't really put the attributes in so much as keep those attributes from Arena, where they were ripped directly from Dungeons & Dragons (which was basically how RPGs were done at the time - if you were making an RPG on PC, you were probably ripping off D&D to do it). Arena had absolutely nothing except attributes, so they necessarily determined everything (skills weren't a factor because skills didn't exist).


The article goes on quite a bit about them doing exactly what he said they were doing and their last two games (Oblivion and Fallout 3) were both headed in that direction, so we have absolutely no reason to assume that they aren't handling it that way.

Some of this nonsense you guys are spewing is making no sense at all, come on guys in the case of CIV V and ME:2 simplification(dumbing down, streamlining, what ever you want to call it) was better!

Handling it in what way? Dumbing it down?

Civ 5 is almost universally reviled by anyone that enjoyed previous Civ's now.

If they combined acrobatics and athletics I would be super pissed.

Civ 5 is almost universally reviled by anyone that enjoyed previous Civ's now. I hated ME2. I get that most people look at a game like Hearts of Iron and their brain curls up to die. I'm the type that wonders why there's not yet more options. And I'd appreciate at the very least a handful of games/series sticking with neat, complex ideas rather then constantly trying to grab the same crowd that's paid $60 ever year for almost the exact same Call of Duty game they got last year.

Are you suggesting that characters will be able to achieve much higher levels (compared to Oblivion) and therefore accumulate large numbers of perks?

EDIT:
You're literally the first Civ fan I've seen who doesn't like it, so that's a pretty definite overstatement.

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Why? Does the knowledge that running and swimming vs jumping affects different skills increase world immersion by a large degree for you? I fail to see how this matters, past people just being enamored with large amount of skills, since CLEARLY, more skills=more complexity, regardless of how skills are implemented!

Seriously, I love having lots of options and lots of interesting gameplay possibilities. But you can't confuse those things with feature bloat. Proper game design is elegant. It achieves diverse gameplay with a minimum of mechanics.

They are different skills. If I'm a world class runner, it doesn't mean I'm a world class jumper.

They are different skills. If I'm a world class runner, it doesn't mean I'm a world class jumper.

They are different skills. If I'm a world class runner, it doesn't mean I'm a world class jumper.

Because I'm a role-player dammit, I don't want to jump high if its not who my build is. There was nothing wrong with Morrowinds skill set. Also we are assuming that Acro and Ath has been combined, which we obviously donut know. I want more, more is better.

Because I'm a role-player dammit, I don't want to jump high if its not who my build is. There was nothing wrong with Morrowinds skill set. Also we are assuming that Acro and Ath has been combined, which we obviously donut know.

I want more, more is better.

Because I'm a role-player dammit, I don't want to jump high if its not who my build is. There was nothing wrong with Morrowinds skill set. Also we are assuming that Acro and Ath has been combined, which we obviously donut know. I want more, more is better. I'm not thinking about realism, just my characters skill sets