I would like to discuss one of my biggest problems with the new direction of elderscrolls and fallout.The mastering of skills and abilities shouldn't be about mastering everything.In my opinion oblivion did this better because while you could in theory still master everything you were forced to choice a particular class,skill,etc and in this way was far more relistic.The skill trees need to go deeper into whatever the player chooses and should take far longer to acquire all perks etc in that branch.also if a player chooses to become a Mage he shouldn't be able to become a master warrior aswell because being master of all feels cheap and unrealistic aswell as ultimately unrewarding in my opinion.How do you guys think the skill tree could be improved in elderscrolls?

Yeah, but in Skyrim you have to work really long at it to be master of all. I had gotten to the mid 50s, which is the soft level cap. Yeah, you can get higher and get all the skill perks but you have to take a good while to get it.


What I'm trying to say is that becoming master of all is not as easy as your post makes it out to be. I think the system is fine as it is.

I disagree entirely. Oblivion was one of the worst for the notion of 'Mastering Everything' because the Skill Abilities were linear and automatic. Classes did nothing to restrict your ability to master any particular skill, they only directed your leveling progression.

The ability to master everything isn't a problem. It's never been a problem. It's been part of the series since Morrowind, meaning it's been there for more than half the lifespan of TES. The issue is the ease with which you can master everything, and in that regard Skyrim is the least problematic, because the use of Perks require far more effort (through leveling) than similar mastery in either Morrowind or Oblivion.

I do think Skill Trees in general need to be improved, or somewhat changed, but not to restrict people into arbitrary A or B options. A Master Mage should very much be able to become a Master Warrior, all it takes is effort. How much effort is the relevant question.

I don't see any problem with becoming a master of everything, and doing so certainly isn't easy -- unless you're using some kind of a boosting bypass (like soul trapping dead bodies in Skyrim for quick Conjuration leveling), it takes quite a while to master the skills. Forcing people into little categories that they must stick to is a bit archaic for modern gaming. The idea comes from old D&D style board games where you simply couldn't have flexibility. It is a fun system that I have thoroughly enjoyed, but I think this new system is better for the media we have available.

I agree with part of your philosophy. As a player, you should make decisions that significantly affect how you play the game. However, while you are arguing that stats-based decisions made at the beginning of a play through are of paramount importance, I think that decisions made during your gameplay experience are more interesting and rewarding. Some of these involve the way you play the game, and others involve story writing.

Just as the flexibility in your play style should greatly affect how your experience goes, so should your flexibility in quest decisions. For example, Skyrim failed in delivering real consequences for choosing sides in the civil war.

But to your initial point, I am also very worried about how casual games are becoming today. The problem is hand-holding and marketing to people with the intention spans of goldfish, not flexible skill trees. Quest markers that turn your RPG into a game of "follow that floating dot!", linear dungeon designs where you can never get lost (I want a labyrinth, not a train track), simplistic puzzles that a 5 year old wearing a blindfold could figure out, making every 3rd NPC immortal, becoming the "chosen one" for every faction you join after doing 2 or 3 fetch quests... the list goes on. These are the kinds of issues that really bother me.

Well, those and the fact that TES really, really, really needs to create a good combat and gear system to tie it all together.

I disagree with the "its not realistic"..


people change careers and life styles all the time.. what we decide to do with our lives at age 19 does not define how the rest of our lives progress and our lives are not eternally limited by that choice, if we so will it we are able to change careers or life styles..



the whole "class system" goes against that core philosophy of society, the class system is a remnant from early co-op RPGs (think DnD) where ones skills and abilities were meant to cover the weaknesses of your party members.. the idea of a class system, at least in how it was originally envisioned, was never meant for "solo RPGs" like TES, it was designed for party based RPGs (think the old Might & Magic games)

I don't have a problem with the possibility that a player can get to be a master of everything if they want to play the game that way. I choose not to.

um...maybe expand upon perks that were introduced in skyrim? Also unless you really try for it you're not going to max skills. The highest i got in skyrim was 60s and that was just because i wanted to exploit the crafting system to make the starter gear hit the armor cap. I do think that organically growing your class out of the skills you use is much better than having to pick seven skill, or ten, and stick with them for the next 50 hours. I think a good way to improve the starter stats to have a more classic feel would have been to pick a "history" that set some stats lower and higher than others (race should be mostly cosmetic i think, not every high elf is a mage, not every nord a warrior).

As for the combat, i'm not sure how much better a first person sword fighting game will get. Hopefully make it more about exploiting weakness, dodging and blocking...although skyrim did add shield bashes, improved power attacks, improved archery (although it would be cool if they would have had throwing axes for the viking feel), and magic that actually feels like your doing something. All of these could (and probably will) be improved for the next es game i'm sure.

And as for quest markers, i like them. Don't get me wrong i liked it in morrowind when i had to check the journal to reread the directions to navigate the world, but it doesn't always work as well as inteded. Remember the dwarven puzzle cube, the ashlander burial cave, or the shrine of the incarnate? Granted i think it adds a little charm, but its annoying if the directions are wrong or vague.

I'd also like to see quirks, or whatever daggerfall named them come back. Its a neat character building thing that makes your character a little more unique (although there would probably be just a couple that are good, and a bunch that are terrible lol)

Yeah. If you decide to try and master everything, by the time you do, there isn't much left in the game for you to actually do. Morrowind and Oblivion allowed you do the exact same thing. But, that's not to say this isn't a problem.

The real issue is that there are Skills that you can use and level with no investment into them, or have them either be essentially useless in actual gameplay. Skill trees could, if properly utilized, alleviate this, if you can use them to make a lite version of a Class system without its inherent flaws. You could still probably max out every Skill stat, but without hefty investment within the Tree itself, that 100 Security skill will be nowhere near as effective in anything you do, as opposed to you investing in the theoretical Lockpicking or Trap Disarmament. Increasing the cost of Techniques within a tree, forcing you to either try and spend multiple points in one great technique, or spread them out in other Skills for multiple, but much more basic abilities is a decent way to try and nudge players to looking into actual builds without feeling like you're stifling them and forcing them along a certain, metagame path.

just started my 3rd game fo4, and, just as it was in each of my skyrim games, fact is i don't really have any choice but specialize.

skills and perks are to be earned hard early in the game.

and when i say "early in the game", i mean up to levels where most casual or goal oriented players would've quit by long - it's not much before about level 50 where it gets really easy in that.

i actually tend to think that's some type of inverse psychology (that worked on you although you're apparently among those players it rather should not -

everything being seemingly available right away evoking an impression of unlimited options, when they're not

depends on what skills these are.

well or your definition of what an "investment" is

i mean, take "acrobatics" or "agility" (which were their own skills in morrowind, resp. are in fo), of course they grow without "investment", you're hopping around the place all the time after all

same for weapon skills and other types of stuff you'll do all the time anyway. it's just natural.

except if just doing those things was that "investment" you meant already of course, but then i wouldn't know any (skyrim) skill at least this wouldn't apply to

Using Oblivion as a metric in the first place is wildly flawed. By the time I wrapped that game my master mage was also a highly compotent assassin.


The problem isn't skill aquisition, it is the fact the games have removed the barriers that once gated content. When my nominal level one can jump around the map and become a bard, Companion, assassin, thief, and pick a side in the civil war with no skill check required that's where the feeling of a casualization occurs. Especially since the College has an entry exam, though admittedly not that big a road block.

Is it realistic? Maybe, maybe not, but you're ignoring the time and effort required to master everything.


By the time did, you basically either exhausted all game content a while back, or likely spent days IRL just grinding. At that point, you've long since put in more effort than what a "casual" player.


And this is perfectly fine. If the player wants to be a godlike character, then they can be rewarded so long as they put the effort into it, and that's how it's always been.


FO3 and FONV, I should mention, only have the "godlike character by default" due to how the games were balanced. Neither were properly balanced for levels beyond their original respective level caps, and it was a challenge to get all your character's skills maxxed out. Then the entire system was thrown off-balance by the DLCs that raised the level caps. Hell, in FO3, getting 100 in all skills went from "difficult to do" to "almost guaranteed" just by adding in 10 levels and the "almost perfect" perk.


Besides, player characters are generally supposed to be exceptional individuals, especially in fantasy games. You're the hero generally because nobody else can do what you can do.

you can master everything in daggerfall too if inclined, likely easier to do since the character generation was easy to exploit. only Arena had hard class limits.

my only problem is that the people that master everything then complain that the game is too easy, so the devs begin to balance it around that instead of normal play.

I believe the problem with TES is it shoving "master of all" down the players throat. Before anyone grabs pitchforks and torches to chase me out of this thread due to me being a perceived threat to their dreams for TES 6 let me clarify one big thing. See, I think you SHOULD be able to choose a Master Of All, rather I think it should be a very simple choice at the start of the game.

Some time at the start a textbox should pop up and ask "Select your path", "Adventurer" or "Specialized Classes". If you choose Adventurer it is EXACTLY like Skyrim, you start out a blank slate who is a jack of all trades. If you select a Specialized Class for example Warrior you have permanently higher health, higher carry weight, higher melee damage with non-daggers, and speed, but permanent penalties to magic and sneaking.

Or a Battlemage has higher carry weight, melee bonuses- and the sneaking penalty/charisma penalty, and magic bonuses but no health or speed bonuses, with a pure Mage having lower carry weight, having melee penalties with non daggers and a health penalty but even stronger magic bonuses than a Battlemage and no sneaking penalty since TES Mages tend to be more agile/mobile than Battlemages. And those just being a few examples. My new mod OldSchoolStatsClassesAndClimbing is based very closely on how I think Skyrim as well as TES 6 should be. Yes you can still be a Jack Of All Trades/Master of all trades just like vanilla Skyrim by selecting "Adventurer" but if you want to play it more like an old fashioned RPG you can opt into it that way, (And a feather spell too of course to make it more like old school TES).

TLDR: I think Skyrim's Adventurer blank slate jack of all trades is GREAT as an option just as an OPTION and not something forced. I do not advocate scraping Skyrim's design simply allowing an option to play it more like a modern RPG aka vanilla Adventurer, or more like an old fashioned traditional RPG aka choosing a specialist instead.

And before anyone says "Just KEEP your perks unspent if it bothers you so much", I CREATED that mod specifically so I could play Skyrim like an old fashioned RPG where I make the game itself put limitations of my choice upon me, because "Just roleplaying in my head" without being able to customize my stats from the start doesn't work for me. You can call me unimaginative or old fashioned or uncreative because of that, it just doesn't.

The trend of "casualization" started back with Morrowind. Daggerfall was the most complex. Now are some things too streamlined in Skyrim? In my opinion, yes, but to act like streamlining all of a sudden happened later on the series is inaccurate.

I agree with several of the others that Oblivion is absolutely not the benchmark the next Elder Scrolls should strive for. The level-scaling was very problematic in that game, which may have contributed to why you think you couldn't master everything (although you could anyways). Daggerfall was really the only one that you couldn't be the master of everything, or at least not without a huge struggle.

As for realism...well, there is a lot about TES that isn't realistic. I know what you mean by realistic, but I don't necessarily agree. It wouldn't be realistic to completely restrict your character from having growth in skills that he/she wasn't predisposed to be better at. People change professions, careers, hobbies, etc. all the time, and I don't think they could do that if they weren't able to learn new skills and sharpen those. Also, whenever there is a skill that you don't use for a while, realistically it would regress. It is also a video game, so I think even if it weren't realistic like you said, there are some liberties that can be taken.

If somebody chooses to become a master of everything, why not let them? It's a video game, and if it is more fun for them to do that instead of strictly roleplay, why not let them? You don't have to choose the level up those skills that don't fit your character. Why not try to accommodate as many types of players as possible in that regard? It also really isn't that easy to become master of everything in Skyrim.

As for skill trees, there was a fairly large discussion about them in the last Beyond Skyrim thread, I think. I think the biggest issue is getting rid of the useless perks. For example, the lockpicking skill tree was pretty useless to me. Getting rid of unnecessary perks could do wonders for the linearity of the skill trees too, as perks you want are less likely to be hidden behind ones that are useless or you don't want.

In the typical Elder Scrolls game a jack-of-all-trades character is strictly roleplaying. Rather, it is specialization, the "pure" archetypes, that are not strictly roleplaying.

We are not part of an adventuring party in these games. In the typical Elder Scrolls game we are Lone Adventurers. It makes no roleplaying sense for a lone adventurer to rigidly specialize. In the American frontier lone adventurers such as Danial Boone were always "masters of everything." They had to be. It was necessary in order to survive by themselves. Anyone who couldn't do a little bit of every job for themselves would likely find themselves dead, and fast.

Specialization has a purpose in bureaucracies. It does not have a purpose when we have to depend on ourselves to stay alive in a harsh environment. Mastering everything is a more genuine way to roleplay in a typical Elder Scrolls game than inflexible, artificially-imposed "classes" and rigid specialization.

Well, I meant roleplaying in the sense a lot of people who complain about "casualization" mean. Hence why I said strictly. But yeah, I agree with you for the most part. I don't think roleplaying has to be relegated to "I have to stick to a rather arbitrary class with specific skills because of arbitrary rules." My characters are not really the masters of everything, but I like to make my characters as competent in the most skills possible or that I want to.

Although I don't know about it making no roleplaying sense for them to rigidly specialize. I don't prefer it at all, but some people like to play that way. And they should if they want, because player freedom is the core experience of TES. But that shouldn't prevent people who want to be a jack-of-all-trades from doing so either. Sure, there is some room to improve on that front, but I think this is one of many areas where there is a solution to please both "hardcoe" and "casual" players.

I'd suggest a system where not only do skills increase slower as they get higher but also the more skills you increase the slower they all increase. That way its still possible to become a master of everything but there is a reward for specialisation without reintroducing the straitjacket of classes.

Agreed. The streamlining started with Morrowind, not Oblivion or Skyrim. Morrowind was like a mobile device RPG compared to Daggerfall.


To be fair though, Daggerfall was extremely buggy.

Haha, very true. Even with the latest community patch, Daggerfall can be a mess. I actually had to purposely exploit a glitch to get inside the upside-down pyramid puzzle (or maybe it was one of the other ones) in Aetherius. I also had a habit of going into my inventory while going down elevators, only to find that the elevator was traveling down without me and I would plummet down after I exited out of the inventory...

In defense of Daggerfall, there were some neat aspects to it that I wouldn't mind seeing come back (although it isn't necessary to have), like only being to access certain services in a guild/faction when you reach a certain rank in that guild/faction. I still prefer the later games, but I did enjoy Daggerfall and some of its qualities (and quirks) if only for that game.

Quests like Barenziah's Crown are a bit problematic. In order to get all the stones, you have to join every guild. Once you've joined a guild, it kinda encourages you to level the skills that guild deems important.

Luckily its a completely optional quest. The real problem is picking up a stone and stuck with it in your inventory for eternity.

Actually, some gameplay concepts as far as Skills are concerned actually could make a return. What were once seperate Skills could be included in the new Skill tree system Skyrim introduced, if its utilized once more. I'd be especially interested in seeing forms of Streetwise and Etiquette make a return within the Speechcraft skill, more then anything.

Oh, I loved Daggerfall. That game was so deep. Fantastic game.

I feel like the newer systems make it harder to master everything. In TES V, in order to make use of a skill feasible, you have to invest perks into it. In earlier TES games you just chose three out of eight attributes to raise when you leveled up, now it feels like are so many more options and combinations in TES V, and more importantly, I don't have to very carefully manage my skill gains and slow my leveling in order to optimize the gains I make when I level up (made worse by the fact that the health gains from Endurance are not retroactive). Heck, in Morrowind, once you learn how to make lots of money, you can literally buy your way into becoming a "master of all".

Thanks for your views guys.I agree with a lot that was said here and its changed my view somewhat on the topic.I still feel that something needs to be changed here to reward the specialist of a particular class over the jack of all trades route.I disagree with the notion that people can just be jack of all trades in life.Some exceptions apply yes,but most of the time people have a particular trade that they are adept at in life.Can we change that trade?sure,but it takes time and effort to do so.This is why in society we have so many different trades,if all people could just choose to be great at everything there would be no uniqueness about anyone.Skyrim wouldn't have armorers,guilds,mages,Warriors,assassins,witches,etc,because everyone would just be masters of all and this is why skyrim and role play need to have more specialization vs jack of all trades imo.

I think you should be able to master everything. It should take a lot of work though.