Ive been going back and forth in my mind as to whether or not I like the idea of attributes being taken out of the game, and I just realized one huge benefit that should have been obvious to me a long time ago... I won't have to give priority to boosting endurance at level ups in order to maximize my health gain.
Every time I played Oblivion I felt the need to maximize my Endurance first to gain the maximum Health advantage. Fallout 3 has a similar sort of problem with Intelligence. I always feel the need to boost the attribute that boosts everything else. Otherwise, I feel like I'm missing out on something that could be better. I really hope there is nothing in Skyrim that affects how many points you get to spend on any sort of attribute. This change will make me feel much more free to customize my character however I want

A similar system could, with enough imagination, have been implemented with the attrivutes still in the game, in the traditional sence.

Attributes are natural aspects of characters. I am optimistic about skills and perks providing enough character differentiation for fun's sake. Something important might go missing, though.

I was hoping they would cut classes and attributes. I couldn't have been happier when they said that they did.

I don't miss attributes too much, but I'm still skeptical as to whether perks can fully cover for them. I'm also hoping that Bethesda will still find ways to keep characters as interesting and varied as possible during character gen. Without birthsigns and favored attributes, this worries me slightly.


Have you played any Elder Scrolls games? I forget. You're the rare type who doesn't try to compare Skyrim to other TES games, which is a good thing, but I'm still curious as to whether there's an ounce of nostalgia within you.

Playing Oblivion with nGCD was really nice. I could ignore class and and attributes. I'm glad to see that Skyrim is following in a similar direction.

Well I hope at last hidden mechanic of attributes still in game and it will be easy manageable for modders, no need to show it for player but such fundamental cogs must work in game, too much relay on them to be simply removed without consequence.


You can ignore managing such features by self but such things still was in game and was used by different mods, now there is difference when attributes removed you still dont need to manage them by self but what will be equally used by mods and uncertain features what previously relay on attributes?

There is quite difference between having invisible mechanic what not require too much attention form player
and no such mechanic at all or having it in greatly reduced way then before without equal easy manageable replace.

This.

Best. Decision. Ever. Made.

I'll miss my attributes. No use complaining though so I'll just say I'll mod them back in and silently leave.

100% agree.
I'm really really happy for their removal.
The system that was before was a terrible mess that had tons of flaws.

I can't fathom how it might possibly be a good thing

Pretty much, I guess people didnt understand them.

This again? Todd Howard said the things they governed are still in the game and are simply determined differently now. An "under the hood" thing seems to be what they're going for. If they're going with my theory (skill synergies) it will still work based on a similar principle. Instead of raising strength-related skills and then choosing to level up strength it simply gets raised directly, eliminating the middleman. Seriously, who leveled strength-based skills and then raised personality by one point?

Regardless I won't miss them much. The new system sounds more balanced and seems to provide greater diversity as you level. I don't care much about character differentiation at the start of the game, personally, because level 1 characters always svck at almost everything.

EDIT: Mean comment removed. Xarnac's an okay guy. :foodndrink:

This
I won't miss the old attribute system at all. The new one deserves a chance but I'm uncertain at present.
Classes I won't miss at all

Well to be honest I've always felt that Attributes and mainly classes were quite redundant at times, as neither affected really much how at least I played the game, I always ended up with the same sort of demi god at the end, with a limited amount of perks there will be much more choice involved and thus leading to a wider variety of different characters. Personally I would like to see classes like they were done in DS I, I always found that to be a cool concept.

Or maybe people just didn't like them?
Attribute x modifies skill y's effectiveness or health/magic/fatigue etc, and leveling skill y increases multiplier for attibute x.....pretty simple concept you'd have to be [censored] to not understand that. I think some people just dislike that some people are okay with attributes being gone so they claim they have no understanding.

I just curious how you can model powerful character with great Strength but unskilled at all in skill thats use Strength be powerful and have skills thats not the same, besides having mechanic "under the hood" does not mean thats possibilities and easy management still here, there can be even reduction of actual variables, until I will see better explanations and detailed confirmations I will stay skeptical.

If attributes were removed from Oblivion, would Oblivion be a better game? Hmm ....

I never really liked the attribute system before. Given, I like the micromanagement of a character like the DnD-style kind of player I am, but getting 5/5/5 every level in the past 2 games was so annoying and tedious. There was a sense of accomplishment to max everything out, but it was sooooooooo boring. Sure, I might have all my combat skills and attributes maxed, but how did I do it?

I summoned a scamp, raised the difficulty so I wouldn't instantly kill it, and then punch/sliced/bashed and/or made it attack me to raise my armor and combat skills. Over. And over. and over. and over. and over again. Conjuration was ALWAYS my first master skill. Not because I like using summoned things in combat. Because I used it to grind ALL of the other skills and attributes, like STR and END. And that's the story of how my Blade, Hand-To-Hand, Blunt, and Heavy/Light armor and Armorer skill, and STR and END were maxed out.

In Oblivion, I maxed out sneak by used a rubber band and letting the guy sneak around in a corner in Weynon Priory for hours while I messed around on my computer. I jumped off the Diving rock over and over with small damaging jumps until I hit the base of the mountain to level up Acrobatics. I maxed PER and Speechcraft by spinning the dialogue wheel around for countless hours.

I even - yeah, you get the point.

I. Hate. Grinding.

Now I like strategy, and having to do math in my head to plan out my character to pit him against various challenges, but the grinding. Oh, god, I hate it so much. I want my success in combat and stealth to be from my own skill and the reflexes of my fingers. As for magic... Magic can still be grinding, to a degree. Restoration was a mountain of a molehill, but other than that casting the spells a bunch wasn't too bad.

That said, it better not be dumbed down though.

I'm still on the fence, but cautiously optimistic.

The intelligence pumping in Fallout is pretty spot on with regards to how attributes can fail, but I don't think the system was beyond repair. Still, the game may endup working just fine without them, though I would like to know how things like encumberance will be handled.

Out of the 3 "new" attributes, if health is the only one that automatically increases a bit with each level up, I can see it being universally ignored by players looking to max out their end-game characters, as health stops being an issue when you've got enough armor/potions/restoration spells/etc. Thus, only two attributes - magicka and stamina - may end up mattering for min/max players.

It seems that everyone forgets that they didn't removed attributes
They simply decreased number of them
Now we have only Strength, Inteligence and Agility (well, ok, lets call them for example health, magicka and fatigue, who cares!)
This games becomes more simillar to bad RPG games (Diablo, Dungeon Siege), only from 1st/3rd person pov
Necesity for more attributes is dictated not by need, but mostly by common sense (Agility=/=Endurance, Endurance=/=Strength, Iinteligence=/=Willpower, and for God's sake where is Luck now?)
Attribute system was broken indeed, but instead of fixing it (after FO3 and FO:NV I was possitive they were going in right direction), developers simply removed them
So this is mostly bad thing, whatever most people think, whatever Bethesda claims, no matter about few positive things it have, this is bad

If this will continue in the TES6 we will have only 2 atributes (fatigue is annoying anyway right?), and few skills
Combat (axes, swords, hammers and bows are all the same anyway right- they hurt?)
Magic (hey every spell works simmilar- you wave hands say few words and stuff happens, right?)
Stealth (security and pickpocket was already merged against every sense, why stop here right, lets throw sneak and speechcraft in?)
Crafting (alchemy, armorer and general crafting also serves same purpose- they make better things from worse things, right?)

So here we are, perfect roleplaying formula 2stats+4skills
Diablo had something similar and it worked, right?
Even more, Fable proved that we can throw out also magicka- we can simply replace it, for example, with spell cooldown (besides cooldown sounds cool, right?)
Anything else can be perfectly replaced by perks.
Want to use dual weapons? Perk. Want to carry more weight? Perk. Dumbed down and totally flat character developement? Once again perk.
There is nothing perks can't do. Perks can replace role system. Perks can boost graphics or UI.
Damn I suspect even more- perks can heal cancer, perks can stop wars, perks can feed the world and solve lack of energoresources.
PERKS- ultimate answer!!!
Perfect future for TES, right?


Developers are starting to ruin this series (for sure this time).
I really hope that TES6 will be more hardcoe RPG, like it should be.
But it looks like wishful thinking, because we have 2 games that proves that role system is being dumbed.
In TES4 they misused role system and flatened it, and now they claim that it was broken in first place. Liars!!!

P.S. Sorry for ranting, but it is so hard to watch, how something dear to you is being ruined. And it hurts

Oblivions attribute system was terrible.

Oblivion:
To increase X you need to increase Y.

Skyrim:
To increase X you need to increase X.

Whats the problem?

@blackrave: Idiotic exaggerations dont improve your argument, infact they detract from it.

Maybe, but it doesn't change sad fact that we have tendency to simplify role system.

Ohh they were quite confusing when i first got Oblivion.. But when i got Oblivion i got hooked then got Morrowind.. Never played it much though.. :brokencomputer:

Cause you wont find yourself in the situation where you are avoiding leveling up because you havent gotten 3 attributes to get 5 points yet.

The main problem with oblivion is that leveling up is too scientific. Theres too much focus on it. You should never say "oh [censored]" when you level up, im sorry but thats a broken game concept.