I've been seeing a few posts lately about how upset everyone's getting with Bethesda throwing stats out and replacing them with directly increasing your health, mana, and stamina, and adding perks. "It's different! It's contrived! It's outside the norms of every other rpg game!" None of us has seen the system at work, yet everyone's drawing conclusions of how it will make the game more simple and there will me so much less depth. The only difference I see in the new system is instead of increasing your magicka by adding points into your intelligence stat you just add points straight to your magicka. I honestly don't believe that Bethesda would implement this new system if they didn't believe that it worked better.

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.

What were Daggerfall and Morrowind at first? a big ton of risks. guess what? it worked

This. I'm happy with the change anyway - The Athletics skill annoyed me so much (because it's so bad for RPers).

I like what I've heard so far. Can't wait to try the system out myself.

Bottom line, will the game be fun? - Hell yeah!!!

I couldn't agree with that more, most of the time...

But removing depth from what should be a deep, complex game is never a good thing. This seems clearly a move to do yet more streamlining of the game, probably in a effort to play even more to the casual gamer... and thats not a good move by Bethesda. I'll hold my final judgment till I play the game / we get more info... but on the surface this just seems like more dumbing down.

This works so well in my opinion..i felt stupid for never thinking about it but how great is it to finally be able to play the game and grow stronger naturally instead if being taken out of the game ever lv up to apply 3 points to a character sheet?..i played dungeons and dragons and i wasnt a fan lol...now wen u lv up u get to pick a perk that changes the stars above u and the world ur living in..u determine the fate of the world ur no longer a helper boy but are like the nevarine in a much larger scale..finally we're important again..we're dragonborn...all cheeziness aside...sry this games got too much epic i cAnt help but shout to the heavens

here is what I said in another thread




See it as a different system, not as a replacement. Because last time I checked, most casual gamers didn't care if the game had stats/attributes or not

If gaming companies don't do what Bethesda is doing, then they are all going to be like Activition's Guitar Hero. I am going to support Bethesda's decision 100%

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 have no problem adding Health/Magicka/Stamina directly as opposed to indirectly in the past games. Whatever...

What I'm concerned about is what seems to be a system that is far less nuanced...using perks to replace things that used to be handled by attributes. 100+ levels of attribute vs 2 to maybe 3 levels of a perk to accomplish the same thing...the former is just far deeper. And in many cases, if allows for more freedom. Let's say they put jump height into perks now, and there are three levels. If we apply that system to the great heist quest in the Thieve's Guild, then most likely no matter what you do, you lose the Boots of Springheel Jack. Clearly, the developers meant for you to lose them in Oblivion, but because of the depth of attributes (and other systems in OB) you could figure out ways to survive the fall and keep the boots. Just an example of why I think at this point, I prefer attributes.

I'm keeping an open mind though. I simply don't have enough info on the new system to figure out if it will be worse, as good, better, or just different. Maybe some of these perks act as multipliers on your Health/Magicka/Stamina to derive the stats for the perk you are choosing and therefore are even deeper than attributes in some cases. Don't know. But let's just say I"m keeping a skeptical eye on the new system until I understand it better.

COD

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:

Isn't this the same as all the other pro-stat loss threads?

I don't mind attributes are gone as long as were able to affect the abilities to change character some other way(perks).

Only thing i'm worried about are jump and speed based type perks or abilities missing.

This.

Although MW2's story was pretty good...

BUT, that's off topic. Sticking to The Elder Scrolls here. :tes:

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.

Pours one out for his homey...

you worry about the lack of nuance but yet you diss the idea of having perks that can add the most nuance any elderscrolls game ever had. its not because there are perks that by level 3 you will be as strong as if you had 100 in one handed. perks add nuance attributes add nothing. and the novice master journeyman thing perks are still in.

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.

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.

So the 3 attribute replacers will increase each level, and a further choice to increase one of them, and in addition a Perk.

If this is the way it will happen then it sounds quiet interesting in my opinion, gone are the days of a 'Jack of all trades master of none'. This is a true Role Play, you pick a role and play it with your base statistics of the character not their skills. all skills can be increased by practicing like real life,

If you want a healthy warrior then put skills in health.
A magic heavy mage then Magicka is the drop point for the skills at the loss of more health.

I like it

This people. Why is everyone giving themselves hernias over something no one has actually studied yet? Let's not count our chickens until they've hatched.

At least we know that the perk system guarantees that two epic level characters won't end up looking the same.

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:

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.

Absolutely right...


i do not recall many people being angry at the changes... Beth is only changing useless and bad mechanics..