I like it simply because of the perks, with out them it would just be odd like the last games. As for skills having no 'effect' that's untrue, its been stated skills will directly influence stuff like damage with spells and weapons. However that doesn't mean maxing out a skill makes you super awesome at it. I like to think of it as if you invest the time into it, you can be 'ok' at everything, but what you spend your perks on are what your 'really' good at, what you've specialized in.

For example even though a 1h skill of 100 does more damage then a skill of 50 (doesn't matter by how much), a person with no perks in that line wont be doing as well as the guy who's maxed out the 100% dmg boost and specific weapon stuff like crit damage or bleed damage on sword/axes. Or wont have any of the advanced special moves like anything under 20% hp has a chance to instantly die (think that's the decapitation thing with 2H).

So skill level still matters, but perks matter more. I think the stealth skill is a good example, folks will be able to sneak up from a distance in low light and get an x2 sneak crit with a bow easily enough with a max skill. But a guy who's spent perks in there can run silently, have a delayed timer before an enemy 'actually' spots you giving you time to back out to a better concealed location, and do x3 with that bow on sneak, or x15 with a dagger. As well as other stuff like perk that reduces chances your seen by %. So anyone can have a useful sneak-bow opener with sneak ambush. But someone who's spent the perks is going to be one hell of an assassin that outclasses the non-perk guy by a wide margin.

So yeah I love this system, lets you choose how much skill progression you want to do, what makes sense for 'your' character, while still making 'everyone' unique. And if you want to play a 'TRUE' Jack of all Trades it means you have to spread your perks out, and that means your going to be limiting your self on top-end stuff. I think its awesome, so I picked 'I like it' as I don't plan to max out all on 1 char, but like that the option exists.

I think it's more or less the same system. I see the system and sorta laugh, though I don't know if I'm laughing because they managed to change the entire system without actually changing ANYTHING, or because they managed to come up with a better system that can handle the old system's functions better. What I mean is, remember Oblivion?


The Old System

There were 21 skills: 7 combat, 7 magic, 7 stealth. Each class had 7 skills and the rest were minor, so you could essentially experience every skill via three different playthroughs. You could use every skill, but you didn't for roleplaying purposes (or you were a power-gamer and used all). When those 7 skills leveled, you leveled. When they leveled, you gained perks for them; some good, some bad, but it didn't matter if they were good or bad, because of course you needed to get the skill to level 50 before you could get it to 75, so you'd end up with every perk for that skill anyways.

The New System

There are 18 skills: 6 combat, 6 magic, 6 stealth. You get one perk per level, and the level "cap" is level 50. Each skill itself has an average of 8 perks (from what we've seen so far). 50/8 = 6, so choosing 6 major skills would be ideal. With each character ideally having 6 major skills, you could essentially experience every skill via three playthroughs. You could use every skill, but you might end up hurting yourself (or you might not, this is completely unknown as of now) and you can only get perks in ~5-7 skills (assuming you take EVERY perk in the skill tree) so you can only be specialized in 6 skills, regardless of how many you utilize in gameplay. Some of the perks are good, some of the perks are absolute crap. But this doesn't matter, because you have to take many of the crap perks to unlock the better ones, because each end-game perk requires weaker perks on the perk tree before you can unlock it, so you end up with the majority of the perks for a skill anyways.




At least, this is how it looks so far. Again, personally I'm laughing, but I don't know if it's because I'm impressed that they managed to move everything around without changing a darn, or whether I'm impressed at how clever the system is.

I think it is folly. I am definitely not going to play a maxed character.

There still is no point to simply maxing out all skills if you don't actively use them all. Only a handful of skills will contribute meaningfully to your level. Raising your final skill from 1 to 100 probably won't even level you once and if its a skill you don't generally use... why waste your time?

I don't care for it personally, but I'll just make a choice not to pick all.

I have the archetypes I'm looking forward to playing, so I'll keep my skills, to my ideals.

never liked that about these games, but don't really care because I never max out my guys anyway.

I usually dont since it would take so long, and it would take me to doing probably all the content and leave nothing for future playthroughs. But, they say content wise the game is the biggest they've ever done so...we'll see just how much I can max out the characters, get high level perks, without exhausting the world of content.

I don't care, because it doesn't matter to me. I've never tried to do it before (in MW, OB, or FO3), and I've never ever come remotely close to it in Oblivion. (FO3, with the level cap increase, it was harder to avoid. Still managed it, I think.... just takes not paying attention to leaving space for bobbleheads and skillbooks.)