Boats and sailing, I suppose. Hammerfell and Argonia would be most suited for pirate factions with full questline, ship boarding, sunken dungeons and whole cities underwater, etc... I think the water will finally get the attention and the content it deserves.

Sounds interesting and pleasantly refreshing

Maybe we've got this backwards. Instead of looking at ideas for attributes and the things they can do, we can try looking at mechanics that are already in the games that are better governed by attributes than skills or item stats.

We've already got health, magicka, and stamina. And separate regen rates for all three. Carry weight. Stamina cost of sprinting. Stamina cost of power attacks. Stamina cost penalties from the weight of worn armor. Movement speed penalties from the weight of worn armor. Stamina regen penalties from running. Stamina/Magicka regen penalties from the weight of worn armor? Organize them all into an attribute set that makes sense and doesn't give a heavy imbalance to certain attributes. Don't look at it thinking "well, we have to put an intelligence/awareness/whatever attribute in there somehow, so how are we going to justify it?".

A weird, spur-of-the-moment idea that I haven't completely thought out: a weird hybrid of Skyrim's skill trees and Fallout 4's nonlinear perk chart. Every perk in the tree has an attribute requirement, and you can take them in any order so long as you have the right attributes. Additional ranks in that perk require a higher skill level, though (instead of a level requirement like Fallout). So a skill tree for a melee weapon type: INT requirements on the crafting branches of the tree, STR requirements on the power attack branches, AGI requirements on the attack speed or parry perks, you get the idea. Doesn't have to represent every level of every attribute in every skill tree, but it still requires a big rethink of how attributes are handled in Elder Scrolls. I'd also suggest going easy on criticizing attributes that have more purpose in gating perks than they do in their base effects, like what Fallout 4 does; that's still a big way to define what a character can or can't do, and it's not a bizarre thing in RPGs for attributes to be tied into other parts of the character system to give them more weight.

Stray thought about Strength requirements: They're dumb and arbitrary. But something I really liked about Fallout 4's system was that it managed to avoid STR requirements or penalties on equipment, but still managed to create the same end result by putting the Heavy Gunner and Steady Aim perks high up in the STR line.

Seditious thought: Speech shouldn't be a skill, at least considering how it was used in Skyrim. Humor me for a second. In Skyrim, every character bartered and every character picked on the speech checks regardless of whether or not they had a high speech skill. There's no reason not to, and without the class system (which should stay gone) there was really nothing to prohibit characters from developing their speech skill just by playing the game. They should still incorporate the perks somehow, particularly the ones that add new options like fencing to any merchant, investing in merchants, or the new Intimidation perk in Fallout 4. But hey, this would be a nice way to fit in a Personality attribute in the weirdo Fallout-Elder Scrolls hybrid I sketched out above. (incidentally, this same logic could be used for lockpicking, which could potentially fit into Agility or Dexterity or whatever >.> if it fits i picks)

I want to see them expand on mounts and mounted combat. Make it a little less frustrating to use them (damn horses constantly jumping into fights or moving so fast downhill they leave the ground and ragdoll you), put more NPCs on horses, and have those NPCs fight each other on horses! "You got Mount&Blade in my Elder Scrolls! Ew!" "You got Elder Scrolls in my Mount&Blade! Yum!"

A "Radiant Economy" would be pretty great, too. Complete those Mine Ore/Farm Crops/Chop Wood quests to increase the amount of vendor gold in a region. Complete radiant quests for merchants to increase their inventory, or even engage in a little unfriendly competition to improve the economy in one region and reduce it another. Turn mills, mines, and farms found across the province into quasi-Workshop settlements that we can sabotage or repair to make an impact on the economy. And maybe put in some systems where bandit amass more loot as the regional economy suffers.

This is a solid idea with the attributes put at the opposite end of where they really should go.

So, instead of an Agility requirement on the 'parry' perk, we could have the 'parry' perk derive its chance of success from your character's Agility.

This way, if you have even just 0 agility, you can still choose the perk. It will have a 0% chance of succeeding, but there's less of a game-y number wall in between you and skill development. As your character's agility increases, so will their ability to use the 'parry' perk.

So there's my answer to the awareness/perception thing, too. Intelligence can cover it, provided it is tied in to the appropriate stealth- and combat-based perks.

That would actually be even more nonlinear than what I was thinking in terms of what perks are available, I like it. Just replace "chance of success" with "effectiveness" . But I think it would have to be a mix of both, since some perk effects are sort of binary on/off, and can't scale with our attributes - like perks that unlock crafting recipes, or a perk that enables you to invest in merchants.

Not really, but I do think some level of misinterpretation and talking over each other is going on here.

Too disorganized and disjointed. Fallout's Perk UI is...all right, but trying to fit Skills into it? You have a incoherent and jumbled up mess, unless you're talking about a different form of Perks detatched from the Skill trees. I think Fallout's perk tree works (err...mostly) for what it was going for, but that was because of how archaic its Skill system was. Problem is, they just made the Attributes as a figurative beef gates from certain perks, while not doing anything substantial on their own. And no, its not being unfair. The perks were an attempt to replicate the Skills, and while it sort of did what it was supposed to, you end up with a situation where the only concern is just getting an Attribute high enough to get the goodies its hiding, and not because of what advantages that Attribute inherently could bring. Not a good way of trying to make Attributes important on their own merits.

Nope, not humoring you. Fallout 4's utter lack of a Speech Skills was down right atrocious. A Speech Skill tree offers too many opportunities to bring back older concepts from Daggerfall like Streetwise and Etiquette, and I'd be damned if I'd let that opportunity slip for whatever attempt at streamlining for the sake of itself and ending up with a system that attempted and failed to offer a coherent diplomatic experience. Tying bartering into Speech leveling was doomed from the start, and actually getting Speech attempts would only make it worse.

Yes, I say this despite the fact that Fallout's Charisma Skill has always been something of a dump stat, alleviated only slightly in New Vegas.

Well, I'd argue Parry as a mechanic wouldn't really require a individual perk in order for you to partake in the action. The general formula though I'd agree with, since you could use another Attribute like Strength to outright weather attacks instead of actually trying to parry then.

Yeah, that's the gist of it. I think parrying should be unlocked by a perk, but that's fine. Take dodging as an example, then:

A huge brute can choose to learn how to dodge attacks. His chance of success would be calculated based on the weight of his equipped armour, his maximum carry weight and his agility.

So to take advantage of the dodge perk, he could either get really strong (to up his maximum carry weight) and really agile, or he could just be fairly agile and wear very light armour. The same perk can be used differently by different characters. Of course, a strong, agile character that equips very little armour will be the most capable at dodging, and a big brute would be better served by just tanking the shots or blocking, but the options are there.

This system encourages us to try different things. We can get by with just six attributes that only affect one or two things directly (like maximum health, magicka regeneration, etc...) yet fit in cohesively with the perks and affect gameplay without replacing skills.

That's mostly how I see things working, with small exceptions depending on the Skill. A dodge mechanic (Whether it be passive, or done by the player) being used through Agility naturally makes the most sense. A character that is really, really agile would get a lot of action out of it, even if their Athletics skills is frankly terrible, or they never invested in that particular Tree. They wouldn't be great at dodging or making the most out of it, but their ability to outpace their opponents means they can get some good licks in after they attack.

Meanwhile, you have things like Blade/Ax/Blunt. Naturally there'd be a whole different host of factors involving those. Do you want them to be strong enough to actually do any damage or being able to break an enemies block, and still having enough stamina to continue to fighting? Or maybe you could forego both Strength and Endurance, relying on Intelligence and Agility to get past an enemies guard, and knowing how and where to hit them so you do the most amount of damage possible. I think those would be interesting concepts to work with, if implemented properly.

Personality is trickier, since it either depends on how important NPC disposition is, and what its actually effecting. I'll probably get to that later.

Not my point at all. A character's personality should still be measured, and there should still be ways to define intimidation, diplomacy, mercantile, and even the damn creature language skills in the character system. I'm just arguing that the learn-by-doing approach doesn't gel with how speech checks are handled in Skyrim or any of the Fallouts (neither dice rolls nor hard checks), and so something needs a rethink.

If we're talking about what I'd expect Bethesda to do instead of what I'd ideally want them to do, I'd have to say they'll definitely rethink their approach to dialog after Fallout 4; but I can't imagine TES will suddenly have a robust and deep dialog system on the level of the most dialog-heavy RPGs... especially when every dialog system in TES so far (Skyrim just barely shies away from this) has put very little emphasis on expressing different personalities or offering alternative routes through quests, and almost all of it on collecting information. Sure I could be overly polite, overly dikeish, or just a normal dude in Daggerfall's dialog system, but all I could ever do with it is ask for directions or random trivia on factions.

With the classes removed (which was an improvement IMO; classes put unnecessary restrictions on the player before they even start the game, and are counter-intuitive to an emphasis on "player freedom"), some skills become problematic. Particularly, the skills that don't really have alternatives, or don't define a playstyle, or don't give you any reason not to use them. With a class system you can decide if your character's going to be an athlete or an acrobat, but you can't really choose not to run and jump, and if those were skills in Skyrim everybody would raise them simply by playing the game. You have very little reason not to attempt locks or speech challenges in Skyrim, too, so those skills invariably raise themselves to effective levels regardless of if you invest in them. And very few character types have any reason not to use crafting skills either, unless they simply don't want to be fussed with collecting materials. The greater point I'm getting at is, classes should stay gone but skills and everything else need to be adjusted to better suit a classless system.

I frankly don't even see how this is a problem whatsoever, outside the again terrible idea of trying to merge Speech and Mercantile haphazardly. Speech deserves to remain its own Skill, and you should have to put forth the effort in order to make that Skill work at the end of the day. You know what can do that? Skill Trees.

I vehemently disagree. Skyrim's piss poor attempts at implementing everything aside, you should HAVE to invest in a Skill in order to be good at it. You're right, there's no reason why a character wouldn't try to pick a lock. The difference here is, in Skyrim, there was never a chance to fail whatsoever. There was no reason to invest in that Skill, and you were rewarded with free levels for nothing. That should not be happening. You want to be good at picking locks, you have to make the conscious investment of actually building your character that way in order to acheive that goal. You want to be a good craftsman? You need to take the time to level that Skill and progress through the Skill Tree. You want to level your Athletics skill efficiently, despite the fact that you're always running and not seemingly leveling the skill efficiently anymore? You need to invest in its Tree. Without doing that, your Skills begin to falter and stop progressing a decent pace. You need to make that commitment to invest those precious points in order to keep everything running efficiently.


Investing in something should be a very important decision, no matter what it is. You shouldn't end up with something like Daggerfall or Morrowind where you would be punished if you rolled out a poorly designed character, but you need to make the commitment and investment in certain abilities a character possess if you want them to be good at them. If investment and leveling is as useless as it effectively was in Skyrim, you're right, there'd be no need for them. We're not talking about Skyrim:2.0 though. Going by what Fallout 4 in regards to hacking and Lockpicking, Bethesda realizes this to some meager extent.

Well, there's a simple fix for the athletics problem.

For the first few levels, simple running and jumping increase your skill like they did in Morrowind. But, and this may not be a good argument for every skill, in real life I can hop for my entire period of wakefulness every day and not get even the tiniest bit better at parkour. They can just program it so that as you progress with the skill you need to do harder things, like successfully dodging fast attacks, sprinting heavily and falling from heights to increase the skill.

Maybe we should talk about Personality for a bit, though. Personality should be used to calculate NPCs starting disposition, as it was before. And I still think we ought to be able to use speech to barter, bribe, taunt, compliment, rally and intimidate people. The problem with these actions is more with how they worked in the previous games. You can't tell someone they are beautiful, then spit on their shirt, then bribe them. You should only get a few chances at manipulative behaviour before an NPC stops dialogue with you. Then it would be more balanced.

Bartering should work a little bit more like Morrowind, in that you could raise or lower the offer. There should be a 'too low' that causes the merchant to get insulted, though. If you constantly low-ball a merchant, they may come to dislike you, even though they accept the offers.

Just some random ideas. I think Personality can be used to calculate the success for some magical stuff, as well, particularly in Conjuration and Illusion.

EDIT: And, importantly, there should be extra quests, items, and alternate paths for people who know how to sweet talk. Even just a few of these would be great. They wouldn't even need to record a bunch of new dialogue. Just have the NPC hand the character a note describing the situation.

If Acrobatics shifted the focus from jumping to dodging, that would be even better. You'd have to successfully sidestep attacks in combat, instead of bunny hopping everywhere, and you'd have to choose side-stepping over using a shield or just absorbing the blow with your unyieldy heavy armor.

Here's a thought: give attributes their own perk trees. At level up, rather than getting points to distribute to attributes a perk to put toward skills, give a perk for both. The perk tree for Strength, for example, would have a main trunk where investing perks simply increases your Strength and branches that provide non-skill-related features related to Strength. Continuing with the Strength example, let's say that each point in the trunk raises your Strength rating (can be used for gameplay checks, like trying to move a boulder) by one and gives a bonus to carry weight and melee damage. The perks in the branches would provide more specific effects, like a flat 100 point bonus to carry weight or an increased chance to knock someone off their feet in melee combat, but would not increase your Strength rating unless specifically noted. With that, you could have a perk that boosts your Strength checks by 3 instead of 1, but has no other effects.

With this kind of system, we could remove the Speech skill (which I find tedious to level) and relocate its functions to Charisma/Personality. Speech checks would be replaced with checking your Charisma/Personality score, modified by perks, and additional situational dialog options can be gained by taking branch perks with effects similar to the FO perks Child at Heart, Black Widow, Cherchez La Femme, Lady Killer, Confirmed Bachelor, and Scoundrel in that they provide automatic-success dialog options with specific people that provide an alternate way to finish a quest or a handy item. Other branch perks would do things like increase companion effectiveness or increase the number of companions you have have with you at one time.

We have Sprinting, potentially climbing and dodging, which is plenty of ways to level the Skill at base.

Beyond that though, I do think there is a way to replicate the Major/Minor Skills from the older games with the infinitely more fluid character system of Skyrim, and actually allowing us to control the rate at which our Skills grow...Skill Trees. Instead of having the first Technique in a Skill Tree be something that modifies your total damage output, it could instead increase the amount of experience gained when preforming an action. As your level increases, Skills become much harder to level quickly, but take a huge spike when it goes from one rank to the next. So, all characters in theory would be able to level their skills, regardless of investing in it or not, from Novice to Apprentice like you otherwise could in Skyrim. The problem for them comes when trying to level without that investment. The amount of EXP required jumps exponentially, meaning while it would still be possible to try and level the Skill, the amount of time it would take would be much, much longer then it otherwise would be. Meaning if you want to try and level things like Lockpicking and Sneak effectively in order to progress efficiently, you need to commit to them.

Well, this is something Fallout 4 presents a workable model for. Instead of Persuasion attempts (Which would be something different, occurring in natural dialogue), you could have a model that works like how Fallout 4 does when it comes to trying to deal with an NPC's disposition...if relevant. I kind of find it a little artificial at best, but if disposition can get us access to possible Radiant quests, it could be a worthwhile venture.

Though, I'd tie Personality off with modifying Persuasion attempts in (or against, depending on your level) dialogue, and have it be important to Companions fighting efficiency as well.

^Not sold. Fallout 4 basically does not implement Speech in a worthwhile manner, and makes it a after-thought instead of actually building your character around it. A Speech Skill on its own still offers more character builds that are independent from Attributes then regulating it to a Attribute can bring. I also generally am not a fan of Attribute Trees over Skill ones. They could provide interesting functions, sure...but the amount of opportunity and different ways you can grow your individual Skills far outpaces it. You can easily end up with two characters, who, while otherwise use similar Skills, end up playing radically differently because how those Skills are utilized differ a great deal.

Going beyond that, non-Skill based Perks that are devoted solely to Attributes are far too niche. Sure, there should be Perks (Different from Techniques, which what the Skill Trees would deal with) that have Attribute requirements...but there should also be ones that really don't have anything to do with them. Things like Berserk, Adrenaline Rush, Undead Hunter, wouldn't fit anywhere within Attribute based trees, and I find the concept too limited to actually work with.

Part of what made Speech fun for me in NV was that there was no grinding; you just leveled up and dumped some points into it. This made it an accessible skill that you could have some success with at low levels. If you want to get good at Speech in Skyrim, then you need to sell loot (tons of it) one piece at a time rather than in bulk. For Oblivion, you need to go up to every random NPC and play that stupid mini-game. For Morrowind, you need to go up to every random NPC and bribe and admire them for hours. It was a useful skill, but it wasn't fun. I think that Speech simply isn't suited to the level-with-use system that TES uses for skills. Attribute trees in addition to skill trees could help mitigate this by making it no longer skill dependent.

I do like the idea of having Perks separate from Skill Trees. It opens up more avenues for character growth and customization and allows quirkier Perks. Still, my concern is that Speech is not a fun skill to level. It either needs to be fun to level (it's not like it isn't fun to throw fireballs at people to level Destruction) or it needs to be implemented as something other than a skill to eliminate the tedious grind.

The problem is, since we're likely to continue using a dialogue system closer to Skyrim then Morrowind or Oblivion, is that leveling Speech took an inordinate amount of time to manage. The Skill wasn't supplemented with anywhere near enough opportunities to actually level it and have it matter in gameplay, and trying augment its effectiveness by reconciling Mercantile into it didn't help a bit.

Unlike Charisma in Fallout, which was THE dump stat, a well done Personality attribute wouldn't necessarily have that problem. The problem with cutting Speech out is that in turn, you cut down on development opportunities with it. It just means that every character has to have a high Personality in order to just try and persuade someone. Making a single Attribute that important for such a fundamental aspect of gameplay as character dialogue is akin to just trying to take Strength and hopes it can some how implement all weapon types inside of itself while removing all of the associated Skills. Its not really going to work, and cuts down on differentiating characters from one another. Some of my favorite characters are ones that are particularly misanthropic, but do know how to word what they're saying extremely difficult to argue against. I did a run in New Vegas where a character had a really high Chraisma attribute, but was downright terrible at trying to talk to people. Even without taking the mods into account, that ended up being a very interesting run, since Speech checks were not particularly viable.

The thing is that there needs to be ways to properly level it and...it wouldn't really be that difficult if properly supplemented. Most checks in dialogue, regardless if they're Intelligence, Awareness, so on and so forth would contribute to leveling Speech. They're all still about talking and trying to communicate information from one another, after all. However, Persuasion would be THE bulk of EXP gain, and if supplemented with perks that increase the speed at which that skill grows.

This is, of course if dialogue in TES:VI is properly expanded on. In an ideal world, it would be, but if Beth takes the Fallout 4/Skyrim approach...not so much. But this thread isn't really about what we're likely to see, however.

Honestly Speech is a skill that could totally be gotten rid of if they just bring back Charisma as most of the perks were just making Intimidate/Persuade have a higher chance of success or merchant has more gold.

Sure, if we pretend that we're just going to rehash anything Skyrim did. Which, you know, would be a bad idea.

Yes, Speech would be a useless Skill, if it was implemented as poorly as it was in Skyrim and had no real merit or ability to affect anything whatsoever. That's not what we're talking about here, and if you make dialogue an actual important and viable option within the game, there's no reason to even consider ditching an entire Skill Tree just because "it was useless" in a game where it was done badly to begin with. Stop thinking about how the Skill was implemented there, and start trying to figure out how to make it so that its no longer the case, which frankly is not that difficult to do. You can cover far more bases by having a Speech Skill Tree, supplementing it properly with a decent array of exclusive goodies, while Personality plays a different role. You know, like how all the other Attributes would work to begin with.

The difference is someone who is inherently strong isn't inherently good at swinging a sword or other strength based skills, you still need that one-hand/blade skill. Charisma itself can directly translate to speech, someone very charismatic is going to be a very good speaker. A charisma attribute itself gets rid of the need for bribe/intimidate/barter which is half of the skill tree and the half other mercantile stuff could honestly just be features such as; Investing in shops, selling stolen goods at invested shops, selling any item at any shop (just with a decrease value). If they could come up with enough unique perks that don't just feel like things that should be a game feature to begin with or are shoehorned in to replace a charisma system then fine. There are some good ones but perhaps not enough for a full skill tree.

How about something like this? http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/16394/?Perhaps a perk tree that unlock only when you join a Necromancer cult.

No, someone who has a likable personality is not indicative of their ability to form coherent arguments and being able to convince others easily. Just as you can be a terribly anti-social person but can otherwise be a pretty good speaker. I know both types of people. A properly implemented Personality is not going to have the problem of ending up as a dump stat, and trying to shoehorn Speech is bad idea that doesn't even begin to solve the core problem of both the Speech Skill or the Personality attribute. You know what it is? Lazy. All it does is force characters into those niches like in previous games. Your warriors have to be strong, your wizards have to be smart, your thieves need to be quick, your smooth talkers HAVE to have a high Personality. Its an all around idiotic situation that is outright jarring, since all of the other character builds would ideally not force you to build your character a certain way in order for it to work.

Are you even reading anything I have said at all? We're not talking about what Skyrim did, we're talking about an entirely different bloody Skill tree. Again, it was implemented badly in Skyrim because of its terrible perks. Why would anyone begin to think of trying to bring those things back to begin with?

I just hope the next game has it's own distinct "feel". Fallout 4 to me feels very much like Skyrim, which is the first Bethesda game to feel very similar to the last one (to me anyway). I mean, even the loading screens are exactly the same with a Fallout coat, i'm hearing the same voice actors, character movement feels identical.


I hope TESVI will be a fresh and rejuvinated experience that feels completely new, because if i had to describe Fallout 4 in one word it would be "tired".

I'd really like to see faster paced gameplay similar to ESO where you can string together multiple attacks. I really hope they do something remarkable with this game if there is one coming out.

I'm hoping that the protagonist in the next game isn't a boring and stupid troglodyte like the Dovahkiin.

Just let us play as a normal person who's actions and deeds are a result of his own merit and skill and not partially because of his birth. I think Oblivion did this right and Morrowind to a certain extent as well.

^ I agree here