Yeah - I thought someone might go for that bit of equivocation, but I still maintained hope that it wouldn't happen.

It should've been clear, and I'd warrant that it was in spite of your response, that I was referring to the direct attributes - strength, intelligence, endurance, etc. - that have in point of fact been removed, rather than the "derived" attributes - health, stamina and magicka - that have been retained.

Try again.

Nah, use the search function. I've posted it like 4 times on the forums and another forumite also did the calculations and we talked about it in another thread. Your just gong to have to take my word for it or search, because I'm not going to go look for the exact calculations again. I gave you the rough calculations, it was in the Septillions for Skyrim.




But you said it was a net loss of 5, not a net loss in only the perspective of attributes. Why is it only relevant to point out a net loss of 5 attributes instead of also adding in what the replacement system adds. By saying "net loss" it just paints it in a negative light instead of looking at the big picture of the game which is that it was actually a net gain by a WIDE margin. Also, I've read your previous post well the first time through and read it again, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to see.



It's because your only focusing on what was removed or consolidated and not seeing what was added and that is a very long list of things added. You just have to be willing to see it.

For example, we have a new magic system, new combat system, 280 perks which all have leveled versions of themselves and more. If you just dwell on removal and not addition as well then all your going to see is removal.

I don't think health, mana, and stamina can be called 'attributes'. And because the real attributes were taken out, I am in denial.

If they made Perks and endurance, strength, agility, intelligence, willpower, speed then I will be a happy camper.

Gpstr, I don't think that anyone 'for' the new perk system is saying that a deep and diverse system of character growth, which used the perks, the attibutes and the skills of a character as defining characteristics, would be a bad thing (that's the one thing that I think both sides would agree upon). A deeper level of complexity is usually good, especially in an RPG, but that's not the reality of the situation. We have to accept what Bethesda has decided to do this time around, and argue one side or the other. However, the people arguing for the perk system are being forced to defend its depth when compared to the attribute system, which in my opinion, will remain intact, and perhaps even create a wider range of possible specialization -- only time will tell.

Well, this is a self-proving discussion. The title being pretty much the exact reaction: it's not the same as before in higher quantities, therefore it is less and the game is plainly going to be child's-wading-pool shallow and super-casual CoD with swords. This can be said with total confidence despite the fact we have nothing but articles explaining an hour-long demo. I know that makes sense to someone, but I am not that person.

You gave me no such thing, at all. No rough calculations, no rigorous calculations. You have said the word "septillions" a few times. Again, I don't believe that number and I would like to see your derivation. Please link it here.





My refutation of your argument? I was hoping to get some sort of response to that.

Refer to my post up the thread a ways. The only people who are treating this as an "either/or" proposition are Beth and you. NOBODY who is arguing against the removal of attributes is arguing that perks be removed. We want attributes AND perks - not attributes INSTEAD OF perks.

280 + 8 is greater than 280, no matter how creative you might get in your attempts to make it appear otherwise.

Hes basically just using every perk variation as a different build. If you and I make the exact same characters but my 50th perk is different from yours, its a whole new build. What he doesnt understand is that most perks will be mundane and all perks are related to skills. So while it will add diversity it wont add that much. you take away the perk variables and your left with the same or less builds than the previous games. If I make a thief build that relies on daggers and not bows and I take all of the correlated perks, its the same thing as if I did that in Oblivion, I just wouldnt have as many perks.

Because including attributes would not mean greater variety in any significant manner. I laid it all out for you there. Attributes were always far less important to their in-game expression than the skills associated with them. Having 100 blade and 50 strength was better than having 100 strength and 50 blade. The way the attributes were implemented in past games would make them both redundant and unnecessary.

Now what you're arguing for would require a complete overhaul of the way attributes work. But here's the thing: it always was attributes vs. perks for the reasons I described in that post. The whole point of the change is that when you start out the game nothing is predetermined except your race and gender. Perhaps there are some basic attributes that are set for each race and under the hood, e.g. nords can carry the most, khajiiti are the fastest, bretons regenerate magicka most quickly, etc. but we don't know and it's pointless to speculate right now. If you got your attributes and picked them at the start of the game (which you haven't been able to do since Daggerfall) then it would be a predetermining factor to what kind of character you want to make, and their stated goal was to get rid of that and let you decide what kind of character you're going to be as you play rather than at the start.

Other classic CRPGs have done this, most notably the Gothic series. gamesas's taking cues from them in other areas already, such as the woodcutting and smithing and such. Anyways, in that series you start out as a nameless prisoner (sound familiar?) and as you get XP and level up you get "Learning Points" that you can spend to improve your skills. Everyone starts out the same but ends up different. Your dorky English-sounding German guy is an axe fighter and my dorky English-sounding German guy is a fire mage. Very different skillsets acquired in-game, to the point that it doesn't really matter that they started out with exactly the same stats -- crappy ones.



You're wrong. Todd Howard has stated in multiple interviews that the perks are the core of character development. Your skills are still important but not nearly so much as the perks you choose within them. And yes, a difference of one perk would be a slightly different build and thus one that gets tallied up in the fifty bajillion YOU CAN DO ANYTHING statistics, but if you picked 20 perks that were different then the characters would be very different indeed, even with the same points in their skills and the same stat increases.

That's exactly what I suspected. On top of that, I have my doubts about whether he included perk prerequisite relationships in the calculation. Every prereq reduces the final number by some multiple.

There.. is.. another.. role..play..errrrrrr

I just think it is sad that people seem to be OK with starting out as practically mr/ms blank-slate if things get complicated/customizable later in lieu of say, having customization/quantification/definition at both the beginning and with each perk/level up. What a concept. We all know the 5 minutes to make ones character is too much for today's gamers (much like the director of the Star Trek reboot saying one couldn't make a ST II again because "todays audiences wouldn't go see it' cop-out.

And this - begin quote:
From reading the numerous posts and article posted so far I have sort of worked out (I think) how a level up will be handled for my pure mage character
(These figures are for example purposes only and in no way represent the decisions that bethesda have made for the game)

At the start of the game I will have a set level of

Health = 30
Magicka = 30
Stamina = 30

No perks
At level 1 I get 2 points in each

Health = 32
Magicka = 32 +2
Stamina = 32

But I can also add another 2 points into one of the above

And I choose the perk 'Focused Destruction' a perk to increase my destruction skill damage by 5%.

etc etc.
>>>>>>>>>>>

How can you be playing a unique character when you start out with a 30-30-30 character versus a 20-40-30 character. Playing a 10-30-50 gives you no information besides their ability to take damage, ability to use energy to sprint and attack and their magic energy for magic attacks.

"Characters" in say, call of duty, doom, wolfenstein also have health, energy, and something for "odd" attacks.. bullets but it varies.. but each time the "character' is a carbon copy. I welcome with open arms customization (perks) at each level.. love it! as they modify what came before - tweaking one might say.. but if you are modifying a practical blank slate (using stats above identify the orc smasher, elf archer, and human smasher - you cannot as health/energy/magic energy is never ever used in real life to describe people other than those with A.D.D. I do not oppose perks. I oppose there being quantification and qualification of the character I am to take on the journey. And they cannot do it in the beginning with perks as mathematically if you say, start with 20 perks from the get go that "define"you..each level you get 1 perk and you've changed by 5% - you won't feel very different at all.. thus the sense of accomplishment is diluted thus joy at the hardship of a new level is diminished, etc,etc, etc hence perks have to be non-existent/few at the start. I can very well be very wrong. none of us know, but going by the variables available (health/energy/magic energy plus perk per level) there is very very little to differentiate Michael Jordan from Einstein other than their sword skill and their speechcraft skill.

I haven't seen anybody argue against the perk system in and of itself. The arguments have been against the removal of attributes and the assertion that perks will serve to successfully replace them. Again, we're not arguing for attributes instead of perks, but in addition to perks. The only people arguing in favor of the removal of content are those (like Sleign) defending Beth's position. And they are "forced to defend its (the perk system's) depth when compared to the attribute system" because that's the only argument that they have any hope of making to appear valid. If they argued honestly against the position we in fact advocate - perks IN ADDITION TO attributes, then they'd simply lose, quickly and unequivocally.

Yes though - in the end, Beth made the decision and that's that. We just have to live with it.

Along the way though, I want Beth to know my opinion of that decision, for whatever small good that might do. To get it out of my own head, if nothing else.....

And I've also told you this is a redundancy that would more than likely add to imbalance as you are piling one system on top of another that do the same thing, it tends to overload things. It doesn't improve anything, it's just a waste of development time trying to balance things that have fallen out of usefulness over the years when you add a new system that does the same thing as the old system and more. I reposted my car anology earlier in the thread, that's the best I can explain it beyond this. Also, I never claimed anyone wanted to remove perks.



No, I've reposted them many times and if you aren't going to take my word for it then search for yourself, they are on this forums in several places for all to see. I don't see why I have to go through the trouble of looking them up again and repost them when you can do it yourself since you untrustworthy of people. Why you don't believe it when 280 is much larger than 8 so in combination with the other parts of the game such as skills, it is going to be exponentially larger of a number than 8 in combination with skills and other things.



I already replied to your refutation, read my posts. If you still don't think I have discussed it, then post what part you think I haven't and then we can discuss it.

Yeah, we want perks and attributes. Its not like perks are new to the series or anything. If attributes didnt matter to X person then make them better, make them matter. (although they always mattered to me) Have checks, have them access whole other parts of the game that you couldn't otherwise. the possibilities are really endless.

This is very nice quote that I would like to put in the lime light real quick. I like that he used the most negative situation to try to show how change can be bad, never mined that it doesn't really make any sense. No its not good to ram your car into your house, but it is good to improve your house the way you see fit. When people fix their house, what do they do? The take out old stuff that don't sit well with them anymore, and put something new that will go nice with the environment. Not only will the house look better as a whole, it will be sturdier and will last longer.

I remember them announcing this a long time ago, where you guys at when they first announced it?

But how is the attribute system any different? With the attribute system we had 8 base categories, each with its own range of depth. So for two characters with similar builds and whose differences were limited to a +5 in strength for one and a +5 in intelligence for the other, where's the great diversity in those two characters. The argument remains that a singular perk may create greater diversity and specialization between two similar charcters, than a +5 difference in strength and intelligence would.

But now the ability to increase the strength or intelligence difference is taken away as levels increase.

What are you going on about? Im talking about losing things from title to title. Id rather have a whole skill with perks that have been cut than just a couple perks to replace it outright.

We don't entirely know the limitation to these perks, so its better not to make some accusation about how they are taking out more than they are putting in. They took out attribution and put in perks, and will be awhile until we determine if it's a good trade.

Some time ago I would assume the following wasn't as strong as it is now. I think I read or heard a rumor that it would just be Luck and Personality that were removed, which was fine by me.

You stated baldly that "the fact remains that with perks character variety will become much greater." I pointed out that nobody is arguing for attributes instead of perks, but for attributes in addition to perks. It is flatly, absolutely, unequivocally impossible for perks to offer greater variety than perks and attributes. Since perks and attributes is the position for which we're arguing, perks and attributes is the position you must address.

Therefore, any nominal gain in variety from exclusively attributes to exclusively perks is entirely beside the point.

Except it won't work that way. You can't get every perk in a tree. It's not like "Oh I maxed out this skill so I get every perk in that tree". It has already been confirmed that you can't get anywhere near every perk. You get one perk a level and the cap is level 50, so that's 50 perks out of 280. Then you will also have to decide which you put points in, Magicka, health or stamina, which will all be different from character to character. There is a massive variation between characters with perks because no two will be the same ever unless you purposefully pick the same perks on each character. Attributes however, made very little difference to your characters variation. Speed maxed out barely made a difference in your speed, Personality was useless, Strength once again was meh at damage and really was only picked for encumbrance and so on. In truth, attributes made little difference to your character by themselves while perks make wide variations as they are the main source of your damage now, they can give your attacks effects and more. You can see by that, attributes pale in differentiating your character from another by comparison to perks. If you check most characters, they will probably have basically the same attributes maxed out but I guarantee that if you compare a handful of characters together in Skyrim, none of them will have the same perk and attribute combinations.

But they've done this since Dagger, with everything they've said, it doesnt sound like they are adding massive amounts of stuff. Almost every time they announce something its about how it was cut, merged, or streamlined.

If someone who likes the removal of attributes can answer this question:

If a male black belt 6'0 200 pounds fought a female black belt 5'4 130 pounds and the both had the same skill set, same health and 'perks' who would win if the attributes were removed?

It seems like 50/50 to me which doesn't make since.

However, with attributes it is more probable that the male would win because he is a bit stronger. It seems that Skyrim is making everyone the same. Now if the real attributes are still there (endurance, strenght, intel, willpow, speed, agility) , but we can't raise them, then I may be able to swallow the pill easier. Because that would mean the initial attributes will make a differnce througout the game and the Perks will compliment the attributes.

A single perk won't make a giant difference in characters, no, but those characters have been played in exactly the same way for however many levels, including perk choices because perks have other perks and skill levels as prerequisites. A +5 difference in STR/INT really never was a huge difference in the older games either. It got you 5 more magicka or 25 more encumbrance.

Now in truth the whole 8 vs. 280 -- which I'll remind you was the latest count, they might implement more perks before release -- is an incorrect comparison. Mathematically the old attributes provide many more numerically unique combinations, even if you put constraints on race which bring them way down. Thing is, those differences are far less significant than they will be in Skyrim if perks are competently implemented. The way a character who specializes in axes plays will differ significantly than one who specializes in maces now, whereas in Morrowind it was a different number being plugged in and in Oblivion it was a slight decrease in speed for a slight increase in damage. Now with perks a mace will ignore armor and an axe will inflict ongoing damage. And that's just a single perk difference. Axes may be able to split shields and maces may be able to temporarily disable an opponent's hand, making them unable to cast spells or something. I don't know. But since these perks will have a far more dramatic and direct impact on play than the attributes ever did, a difference of 5 levels could very well mean huge variances in ability between characters that were unseen in prior games.