Attributes are not gone!

Attributes are now Health, Magicka and Stamina. There are three attributes.

Health = Strength+Endurance

Magicka = Intelligence+Willpower

Stamina = Dexterity+Speed

(This is not official info, but a guess of what they are equivalent to, Dexterity and Endurance could be switched out)

Luck and Personality are gone and tied into perks, respectively. Start thinking about those three like attributes and you will see that attributes are still alive and well.

Why does NO-ONE listen when Todd says this?!

They have eliminated as many up-front character choices as possible (birth-signs) so that people don't get stuck with something they find they don't like, so that people grow into an archetype that is born of their own play-style, not of how they THINK they MIGHT want to play. It is much more organic and yes, scary, to think that the game is left up to more subconscious rather than conscious choices. This also means that race and gender choices will only count for not much beyond a few bonus perks, some disposition and cosmetics.

Why does anyone not question the fact that the perk-trees are birth-signs? Don't you imagine that whatever perk-tree you fill up first IS your birthsign? It all goes back to Fate vs Chance people. Listen with your ears and think with your brains and all will be well. :whistling:

I hope this to be the case (a reference would be great. Not that I don't believe you...just want to read up on it). And hopefully this gives credence to my belief that some perks will be modifiers on those new attributes that will then fuel the perk (ie: jump height, encumberance, character speed, etc)

The last time I heard it was yesterday in the G4 interview, it was also covered in the GI interviews. Pretty much anytime Todd has been interviewed and attributes are brought up he says they've done away with the old attribute system, because they are redundant, and have re-purposed those things into the three main attributes. He has never said that attributes are gone, just attributes as we are used to them (secondary multipliers) are gone.

Since when is moving forward automatically = Something Good? if your going to work and your car is facing your house, do you ram your house?

Since when is Change always for the better?


Its not about people fearing change, or wanting the old ways or whatever crap your trying to label concerned users who saw these changes coming a mile away, its Bethesda's design descisions taking the usual route of axeing things and replacing them like that inherently fixes things.


what about, Fix the old system, expand on it, address the flaws and add to it, not chop it down and hope the new thing does have its own issues which it will.

this is just another instance of Beth overcompensating...no not even over compensating just erasing everything and hoping the "new" way works I.E enchanting from Morrowind to Oblivion, Quests directions, Level scaling etc etc, this is not a conspiracy theory it isnt a "BETH svckS" bid I don't know anyone who would stick around on the forums if they hated bethesda so much.

I like the perks, I just don't like removing attributes. Because attributes can do so much more than increasing health bar, mana bar and stamina bar. If you say perks give you that ability now to do bigger things or resist more, then you have that right to that opinion and you may be right in many ways. Attributes are more fundamental and don't require having a particular weapon/armor/magic set.

So this really won't affect Bethesda's big picture. Many people will buy the game including myself. And they will grow their fan base with the buzz. It just kind of dissapoints a few 'old school' RPG'ers like myself. But like I said, I'll still get it, and only the pre-order has been affected.

You can't move forward if you don't try new things. Otherwise, you'd just be repackaging the same game over and over with a different title.

Since when is moving forward automatically = Something Good? if your going to work and your car is facing your house, do you ram your house?

Since when is Change always for the better?


Its not about people fearing change, or wanting the old ways or whatever crap your trying to label concerned users who saw these changes coming a mile away, its Bethesda's design descisions taking the usual route of axeing things and replacing them like that inherently fixes things.


what about, Fix the old system, expand on it, address the flaws and add to it, not chop it down and hope the new thing does have its own issues which it will.

this is just another instance of Beth overcompensating...no not even over compensating just erasing everything and hoping the "new" way works I.E enchanting from Morrowind to Oblivion, Quests directions, Level scaling etc etc, this is not a conspiracy theory it isnt a "BETH svckS" bid I don't know anyone who would stick around on the forums if they hated bethesda so much.

Every Elder Scrolls game has been torn down and built back up with only a single philosophical game direction of "Creating a World" behind it. To "Fix the Old System, Expand on it, and Address the flaws" would make an expansion pack, rather than a new game. We'd basically be stuck with the Madden NFL equivalent of an RPG franchise, and not even (Until recently) was the Final Fantasy series guilty of that.

Not literally walking forwards into a wall. That's just stupid. It doesn't add to your argument, it actaully detracts from it because it is so useless and irrelevant.

Thing is, they have fixed the old system. By replacing it with a new one . And so what if they erase everything and start again?? Why should they keep hammering away at a broken system, just because it's already there??

R.I.P.
Classes, Birthsigns and Attributes. I will miss you...

It was fun starting my character with you in Tamriel, now I just have to choose Race and Gender and that's it... still RPG ? Yes, but I will miss you anyway...

Forgive us all the fuss about your death. Especially you, Attributes, you have flaws like all the others but I like you anyway.

Maybe I see you again in others RPG's... Thanks for all the fun ! It was great !...

Love...

:tes:

Diss the idea of perks adding nuance? I'm skeptical yes...but I'm being open to it. The argument I'm making is that the former system has alot of nuance, and that as of now, it seems to me to have more, and that that is important to me. Further, with the information we currently have, I prefer the old system as of right now.

You're making claims about perks adding more depth and that attributes add nothing, which is completely indefensible. You have no idea what these perks are, nor how they go about adding more nuance, nor how said perks would compare to the old system. Nice argument. Your infallible logic has compleletly won me over.

If you think about health, magicka and stamina as more than just a 0-100 bar, and start thinking about them like attributes (ie: total stamina contributes to your run speed, carry weight, etc.) then you start to see that this system is far more organic and closer to that realistic, unpredictable experience that dice have always strived for.

Every Elder Scrolls game has been torn down and built back up with only a single philosophical game direction of "Creating a World" behind it. To "Fix the Old System, Expand on it, and Address the flaws" would make an expansion pack, rather than a new game. We'd basically be stuck with the Madden NFL equivalent of an RPG franchise, and not even (Until recently) was the Final Fantasy series guilty of that.

Or course with the information we've been given you're going to prefer the old. You've played the game with the old system, and we've been released a tiny fragment of information about how the new system will work. It's akin to saying you'd rather a fully built, but flawed house, as apposed to the foundations of a new house. Because that's all we know of the new system. Of course you're going to choose the house over a foundation, but what happens when the foundation turns into a newer, much more awesome house later on??

Then I'll do what I said I'd do and embrace the new system.

What happens when the new house is saggy and the toilets are backing up?

I'll remain open but skeptical until I learn more about the system. In the mean time, at least I have a roof over my head.

Or course with the information we've been given you're going to prefer the old. You've played the game with the old system, and we've been released a tiny fragment of information about how the new system will work. It's akin to saying you'd rather a fully built, but flawed house, as apposed to the foundations of a new house. Because that's all we know of the new system. Of course you're going to choose the house over a foundation, but what happens when the foundation turns into a newer, much more awesome house later on??

Or course with the information we've been given you're going to prefer the old. You've played the game with the old system, and we've been released a tiny fragment of information about how the new system will work. It's akin to saying you'd rather a fully built, but flawed house, as apposed to the foundations of a new house. Because that's all we know of the new system. Of course you're going to choose the house over a foundation, but what happens when the foundation turns into a newer, much more awesome house later on??

Given what we know about Beth, given the kinds of things Todd repeatedly says in interviews for many years, and given the recent example of what they did going from Morrowind to Oblivion, the default position is clearly that the game has been dumbed down AGAIN. It's up to you to prove otherwise, which you can't do with the information given thus far.

I'm sure there were plenty of [censored] cheer leading Beth back in 2006 as well, and it wasn't until much later they admitted that Oblivion was a huge step back in RPG game design.

Given what we know about Beth, given the kinds of things Todd repeatedly says in interviews for many years, and given the recent example of what they did going from Morrowind to Oblivion, the default position is clearly that the game has been dumbed down AGAIN. It's up to you to prove otherwise, which you can't do with the information given thus far.

I'm sure there were plenty of [censored] cheer leading Beth back in 2006 as well, and it wasn't until much later they admitted that Oblivion was a huge step back in RPG game design.

and it wasn't until much later they admitted that Oblivion was a huge step back in RPG game design.

And it' all Todd's fault of course. It's not like he's the only who got skills in TES in the first place you know... (heavy sarcasm)

And FFS STOP USING THE TERM "dumbed down"

Also, given what we have seen of good games getting rarer, we might as well sell every gaming device we have, as there won't be any good ones after 2011.

What I think a lot of people are failing to realize is that the depth hasn't been removed...just shifted elsewhere and given life in a new way. I also think, after perusing the many perk vs. attribute threads which have spawned over the past two days, that people make the mistake of confusing subtelty and obscurity in a game element's design (mainly the attribute system), with depth. Sure the perk plus health/magicka/stamina system is more open and obvious in its design -- as in, you are made blatantly aware of the immediate effects that your customization will have on your character, but that hardly translates into less depth or complexity, in fact, I would venture to say that a greater range of characters are now possible with the new system, and also, that the choices you make in shaping your character from one level to the next are much more consequential, and force us to really think about the type of character we are trying to create. With only 50 perks for us to choose from a possible 280 and with the progressive nature of the 'perk trees', think about the amount of potential advancement and specialization that gets left behind. 230 defining perks will ultimately not be chosen in shaping your character's life -- can the attribute system say the same? Because even though it was useful, and perhaps accomplished many subtle combinations of things that the perk system cannot, the number of possible character types forged through its use may be more plentiful, but the range of possible character types is actually smaller, due to the fact that the variation that exists between one character and the next when using the attribute system has fewer noticeable, consequential and defining effects.