I wouldn't say extremly vague, its probably based on how much you pay attention to attributes when designing your character. the whole conception that people against the change in attributes are just against change in general is bull. for me I like the idea about being able to switch up game play style mid way through the game (which is the confirmed reason for the change) with out being penalized or having to increase those skills to match the strength of my enemies. my adversion to the change is that it threatens my ability to design the character the way I want too.

I have not been following the press releases much, but the only thing I heard in an interview with Mr. Howard was that they planned to implement a variety of customization options and realized that having attributes alongside them would be redundant. I have no knowledge of the specifics in how they are allowing our characters to be customized.

The game still has both. Attributes have been filtered down to 3. Health, Magicka, and Stamina.

yeah, thats exactly what I thought when I heard that the norm attributes were there in the start. after starting the 'slightly depressed thread' I started a new thread that was supposed to be much more positive about the whole future of attributes. except I was pretty much flamed again and then the debate broke down once more into the state we have become familiar with. I wonder what people will argue about once the game comes out, and this issue is put to rest?

Having high strength with a low weapon skill would allow you to deal an almost unnoticeable increase of damage in Oblivion. Transitioning from one skill set to another was more about equipment and skill level than base attributes, although attributes did help more as you increased a skill.

EDIT: I am pretty sure that debates over attributes will continue, especially when TES 6 is announced.

I really believe that they removed attributes because they realized (from reading the forums, seeing what mods were made, seeing what was asked in FAQ's and hint guides) that the whole Major/Minor/+5 stat mod/metagaming thing was out of control and detracting from the games. Just making tweaks to the system wasn't going to save it, so they decided to go with a radical shift.

I'm looking forward to it.

I can't recall which one specifcly but it was explicitly said that their goal of making these changes was to give players the ability to change game play style, which again I think is good that actually frees up several RP scenarios. but I still believe that we could have done this by getting rid of main/minor skills and not the governing attributes, they also said that they wanted to get rid of things like endurance because of the whole "what were you trying to do when picking endurance; A: increase health, then just pick the health attribute. and that works for casual character design but really cuts off alot of indepth design. so really its a battle between hardcoe stat crunching VS lowering the learning curve instead of Attributes VS. Perks.



strength was more about carrying capacity in OB than damage, it had more role to play in MW when the combat style was DnD style dice rolls and the power of attacks then.

Sooo -you- are saying, Not Beth, not a soul in Beth are saying or rather implying on your own with no evidence from Bethesda that the Stamina stat BAR that players can choose to increase every level will determine how High I jump, how fast I run on default (I.E not sprint) how much I can carry, that the Health Stat BAR will determine how hard I can hit apart from skill (because a giant blumbering Giant isn't skilled with a club, but it still hurts like hell when he swings it), how resistant I am to weapons (no not HP till I die, RESISTANCE to weapons) and the Magicka Bar will determine how smart my character is, their resistances to magicka (which is assbackwards since High elves have the most magicka and are MOST VULNERABLE TO IT) right? right? just a question.

I mean...this isnt even about No attributes, this is modding in Attributes and you come in, why do I even bother responding?

People are allowed to have opinions. You think attributes need to be modded in. I don't. Enough with the personal attacks.

Heh when you find the part in my post were I was attacking you, by all means tell me.

as long as we are clear that your previous post where your trying to make this discussion pointless was an assumption, with no basis from Bethesda or otherwise.

That would make sense if, and only if Skyrim was based around social interaction like D&D and MORPGs. It's really not. There's no fundamental reason why you can't just define your character through action. Granted, the context of Skyrim might change some things, but if we assume general Morrowind/Oblivion rules, there's no real difference between Having a high intelligence score, and having no intelligence score at all.

2. When we're thinking of Mechanics (Magicka Regeneration from Willpower), we can't assume anything, because we don't know. Perhaps Magicka Regeneration (if it exists in the game) is a function based of Stamina and Magicka, in which case you can still define the character's arcane prowess as equally as you could through the willpower attribute. The problem is, we don't know. So let's hold mechanic-based arguments until we have more data.

1. check out what I just posted on the other smarter than your orc attributes thread, I just explained why I and others can't just define characters through actions, its very difficult to keep track of it all with several charcters without out stats.

2. that true, but I am just going with what i know. and the example was not so much about game mechanics as to just minor (non stat affecting role play concepts) such as having a smart character that does not use magicka. its not about function its about telling a characters story and not having to keep up with the stats made up in my head by having an ingame stats like intellegence and luck makes role playing so so much more fun and less of a time consuming progress like DnD. yeah luck and intellegence in these particular examples may not be useful when just playing the game for the action and the quests but they are very useful to role playing and role playing has been a very much supported cabability in the TES series. just doing it in our heads is not the reason role players pick up the game.

It wouldn't be too hard to mod them in but the bigger problem is having them work hand to hand with Perks. Your going to need to reduce the amount of damage that One Handed or Two Handed does if you want Strength to have a similar effect to what it had in Oblivion. I think the simplest way to put Attributes back in is to do it in a Fallout 3 style where you choose them off at the start and then you possibly could've raised them higher by doing quests/implants/perks. The Testing part is going to take the longest and unless somebody is truly focused on the project then I don't see it happening for 6-12 months after Skyrim comes out.

Some intelligent back and forth but I did not create this thread to argue over Bethesda's decision. That decision has been made. What I did want to discuss is the potential value of an attributes mod. Thanks to all who are contributing intelligently.

Among other things, I had something in mind where perks would be limited by attribute. The mod would make certain perks unattainable unless an attribute was of a certain level.

Attributes might also be used as modifiers on health, magika, carrying ability, etc. Again, too little known information to get too specific, but the general idea is that attributes would define the potential of the character. This would force choices to be made early on - what kind of character do you really want to be?

I think that is the situation they are trying to avoid. They want players to be able to develop a character and grown into a role instead of being locked into a role that restricts how they can develop.

strength never gave such a huge boost to damage, at least in OB, by most 2 or 3 if maxed but I can't image getting a boost of 4. I don't think attributes are going to effect perks or vise versa, remember they had put both in at the start of SK so at one point they both worked together until they decided to change the number of attributes. the only possible stipulation is if any of the new 3 macro perks are a prerequsite for a perk (which would be wierd any ways but...) and you would have to resort that out since modding in the old attributes would require removing or disabling the current ones set up.

Here Here :foodndrink: I'm excited about having not to have to metagame! :chaos: :hugs: HOORAY for Bethesda! :tes: :tes: :tes:

no one was ever forcing you to, the only reason to "metagame" was to squeeze every bit of the best you can out of the stats, and that will happen with any system no matter what.

Attributes

Baseline for Chars, variation for characters.
Strenght

• Would effect Damage out put for melee weapons and Hand to hand only
  
• Buffs against stat reducing attacks
  
• Augments the blocking skill vs the raaw strenght of opposing attacks
  
• Strength Higher than lets say 80 would come as an auto Demoralize effect and would boost speechcraft in intimidation.

Endurance

• Along with Strength would determine Carrying threshold as well as how much you can carry before your Stamina is significantly drops
  
• Lenght your character can sprint as well and how long they can run without rest
  
• Increases your resistance against Natural stat damaging effects like weather, Poison, Wouding.

Dexterity (agility)

• Allows for excessive moments such as Dodging, rolling, Climbing
  
• Aids in parrying and blocking with -weapons-
  
• High instances allow for jumping from significant height without damage
  
• being flexible in taking damage as opposed to strenght making you a sponge for damage.

Personality 100 makes no sense, what am I 100 good? or 100 bad, I would put this on a scale from -100 Pure freaking evil and Amoral 0 utterly neutral and 100 unfallible divinity, of course getting getting to -100, 0, and 100 would be nigh impossible unless you -really- worked for it and kept true to the concept. for example I can be 50 on the scale but still be ruthless or -40 and still have -some- compassion, I rather the bar be an indicator of the Character instead of something defining them point blank.

Intelligence would also be a bar from 0-100 but 30 intelligence doesnt mean my character is stupid, rather how much they can store in memory such as how many spells they can hold in memory, how well they can record information in the journal (fairly simple not a rewrite of multiple quests, just omissions of certain information) how adept they are at speechcraft and *catching on* to certain tid bits of information when speaking to other chars.

Speed im not sure about I'd hope some kind of synergy between endurance, Agility and strenght would govern speed.....so a character with 70 endurance, 70 Agility and 50 Strenght would be faster than a char with 80 strenght 60 endurance and 40 Agility

also since there is a soft cap for level and hard cap for perks, why not make a soft cap for Attributes? I rather not a character scoring 100 in everything unless the -PLAYER- works for that, wether it be Magical Augments, potions, Items etc etc, but essentially a Orc wouldn't easilty reach Dexterity 100 as a Bosmer would same as the bosmer wouldn't reach 100 in strenght as a Nord would. again, soft cap, not a hard cap, this coupled with Stat fluctuations, getting jailed, Injuries, etc etc would ensure the player character is Dynamic, and not All skills all Attributes 100 for the rest of the game.

Attribute affinity would vary from race to race, so as a nubile Bosmer, you have every right to fear that Hulking nord dual wielding two battle axes.

and while some one earlier said that there were no speech challenges that would make it matter for some one to have an intellegent character (other than Role playing of course) which would be an excellent opurtunity to improve the system. and reducing attributes to health magicka and stamina will completely rule out speech checks all together, unless having a bunch of health some how has a persuasive affect in conversation? :roleseyes: these are excellent reasons to mod them back in since this is clearly a way that the macro attributes simply are incabable of doing what 8 attributes allow.

Edit: soft caps are a good point, with the major and minor part gone there really would be a need for soft caps. idk that they should be super restrictive like having most be under 60 but I think having a few that can go to 100 and most others that can't go more than 80. the ones going to the hard cap could be determined by race?

I see hard caps as ....undesirable because one will be yelled at with a statement "well why the ***** can't I make my bosmer strenght 100? its my Game RHABPBRG:AGARBG :swear: " so Im being safe


gonna clean up and organize my last post

Ever heard of the speechcraft skill?

Used for, you know, SKILL checks?

wouldn't 100 be the hard cap, since you can't go higher than that.


I was talking about FO3/NV style, in which there was an extra speech option based on any of your attributes, and if your attribute, like strength, passed the check you could intimidate that npc. same went for intellegence. NV had one for all of them I think.

yes it would but it'd be best imo not to reach it too easily since at that point there isnt much variation between characters and we will be repeating Oblivion all over again, I would advocate beyond 100 in Attributes but then we'd be repeating Morrowinds level 400 Dunmer Spell sword who's pretty much a demi god of the game, in theory it would be fine if attributes didnt stop at 100 but Perks, levels and skills do...so :shrug: and I rather not some unrealistic farce where the game trys to level things with you...do you really want a Rat with 200 in strenght? no I thought not lol


thats another thing about no attributes is that what are creatures going to be governed by? creatures in prior games were fast, strong, and powerful because they had Attributes....lool.....PR talk at its finest, making people not think.

So am I. Even in those games the majority of checks were based on skills.



So there's no way to change speed and damage without attributes?