I agree with the system as is. I want my character to actually be unique, and have a different playstyle from other characters.

If there's one thing I don't like about Oblivion (and there's more than 1, but just saying) it's that really, any character can be 100% efficient in everything. If a skill isn't one of your 7 major skills, you'll still be just as successful using that skill, you'll just have to grind your way up from the lower levels until you get it just as good as the rest of your abilities.

At least in Morrowind, even if you could do that as well, it wasn't a good idea to go into a fight trying to use Destruction spells if you didn't have Destruction as a major / minor, because you'd fail your casts. Or go into a battle with a long sword if your major skill was Blunt Weapons, because you wouldn't hit your opponent.

No, I'm glad that we only get 50 perks out of nearly 300. It means that I have to specialize on my character, and my character will be completely different from another person's character, and will even be different than my secondary characters.

I typed this on page 3 but I guess people missed it. I think this is the source of people's confusion

I remember hearing it on the gameinformer podcast with Todd Howard. I went back and listened to it and when he was making the statement, it was more of a theoretical response to how different characters can be with perks. Says"Even if a player raises all his skills to 100 and they're like level 50, they only got to pick 50 perks out of that 2 (assuming 280). They are very different characters" I have not seen in writing that you can only pick 50 perks.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=hfRe16V3YA8

For someone like me who plays a jack of all trades style, this is very irritating news... I'm not apposed to specializing your character, but I rarely stick to one way of playing the game at one time, so my preferred style has essentially been gimped out. 18% doesn't seem nearly enough, a more rational scale would be 20-35% achievable perks. Perhaps not 2 perks at a time, that would seem a bit too easy and cheap, but not allowing perks after level 50 is very limiting when considering the sheer vastness of the game and its perk system.

Maybe the last 10 levels of the 50 cap could be 2 perks per level? By then you should have an idea what you would like for your character and what would be a pointless perk for you.
Or perhaps introduce perk books, or other such methods of achieving extra perks without leveling up.

In any case, 18% isn't enough for me, and seems pretty contradictory to the general movement of "Your not limited to any class or play style, you play who you wanna be" as stated by the almighty Todd Howard, and that Bethesda are trying to work in this time around. Its pretty much their slogan at this stage.

Of course, I could be completely wrong and the perk system could be perfectly suited and work perfectly. I think I will wait until Ive played the game before I harp on this to much.

*Edit--
Another issue would be the gratuitous amount of time needed to experience 6 playthroughs, first playthrough estimated to be 300+ hours. I'll probably manage to have a second character, but even that would be pushing it for a lot of people. Some of us have LIVES to live... Sorry if you take offense to that (no I'm not...) but I have a job, amongst other responsibilities. While I respect anyone's decision (no I dont...) to spend 1000+ hours on one game, its simply unrealistic to expect everyone has that kind of free time to devote to multiple specialist characters because of a nagging feeling they've missed out.

In regards to the discussion at hand, I'm pretty sure in a Game Informer article I have they mention no more leveling past 50. They don't mention perks specifically. Just saying that "technically you can level past 50, but it's much slower" and imply but don't directly say, that you don't get the same level up bonuses.

I think I'd like to increase the perk limit a little, maybe just to 70 or something.

I don't understand the people arguing that the limit is good because it helps you specialize your character. Nothing is stopping you from choosing not to use the perk points.

I'm not really worried about it. I will be playing on a PC and this is one aspect of the game that will certainly get a lot of attention from the modding community. There will be mods that increase the number of perks, decrease the number of perks, add completely new perks, upgrade lame perks, nerf overpowered perks, allow you to buy perks, allow you to gain perks organically with skill increases and mods that allow you to delete no longer wanted perks to free up a slot for something else. At the end of the day, perks in my Skyrim game will work however I want them too.

Exactly! Daaaang 280?! O_O where'd you hear this?

The only build that's being "gimped", as you say, is the MASTER of ALL trades build. Not the jack of all trades build. You can still increase every skill to 100 and those skill points still contain some raw power. Just not all the power. Hence the master of all trades build being "gimped".

As for your last paragraph, no one is expected to play 300+ hours 6 times over. You know the saying that goes, "You only get out of it what you put into it"? So yeah, you only get out of it what you put into it.



Sounds like you're advocating bad design. Bethesda seems to think so, hence the 50 perk limit.

It depends if there are 280 unique perks, or if ranks of perks are totaled into the 280. I will frankly be very disappointed if the later is the case but it would fit into some of the things we do know. In particularly, how impossible it will be to come up with 15 unique pickpocket perks.

In the formal case where there are 280 unique perks with a rank of 2 per perk, you can only master 9% of the perks, or one skill completely. If there is the case I will agreed with OP that is too few. You wouldn't even have enough perks to become a master thief since you need 93 perk points to master sneak, pickpocket and picklock.

In the later case where there are 280 perk ranks in total, you can master 18% of the perks or 3 skills completely, which is a more reasonable amount. Remember that you can still use a skill effectively even if you don't have perks in them.

I'm fine with 50 perks, I want my character specilzed, not to be a master at everything. Also, the limit is definetly 50, if I recall, Todd said you could level past 50, but you would stop receiving perks at each level and that he doesn't expect players to go much higher than that, but that the mathematical level cap is 70-80.

Well I get what you mean (excluding the fact this thread is specifically concerning Perks, not skills per-say) about stitching up the "MASTER of ALL" build, I still think the basic 18% is cutting it pretty close. But as I said, I'm willing to wait before making final judgement on a system no one has played yet.

As for your last paragraph concerning my last paragraph concerning time devotion (ha), I clearly stated 300+ hours in conjunction with "first playthrough" as re-playability is only something to be determined after experiencing a game at least once. And also has largely to with personal disposition. But isnt saying "You only get out of it what you put into it" a bit pushy when discussing a game that requires at LEAST 5 playthroughs to experience the bulk of it? But again, nothing is set in stone. I could very well experience the bulk in 2 playthroughs if the game is done in a way to allow it.

Yes it's a thread about perks, but when it comes to character build, skill points are part of it. You get a "basic 18%" of the total perks, the ability to increase every skill to 100, and 50 - ~75 choices between Health, Magicka, and Stamina. Doesn't sound bad to me. It'd only sound bad to me if I wanted to make a Master of all Trades build.



It doesn't require at least 5 playthroughs to experience the bulk of it. If you're on a console platform, it requires 5-6 playthroughs to experience the bulk of the PERKS. There's a huge difference between experiencing the bulk of the perks and bulk of the game.

If you're on the PC platform, you can experience all the perks with relative ease provided you use the console and a test save (If you want you can use your regular save) to test perks.

So yeah, you only get out of it what you put into it. Or did you somehow manage to play all the races in the previous Elder Scrolls games in a single playthrough? Or did you somehow manage to try out all the preset classes in a single playthrough for the previous Elder Scrolls games? All the birthsigns? A combination of all the previous questions? O.o . . . o.O . . .

Personally I have no problem with 1 perk per level, and I even enjoyed character progression in Fallout: New Vegas which was limited to 1 perk every 2 levels.

I believe we will continue to earn 1 perk every level until we no longer increase levels (mathematical cap between 70 - 80).

On the other hand, If I'm mistaken and we suddenly stop earning perks at level 51 (assuming we even reach level 51 in a typical 300 - 500 hour playthrough on very hard difficulty), then it will feel a bit odd, simply because we will have gotten accustomed to getting to choose a new perk at each level up. If that were the case then it just won't be quite as fun to progress from level 55 to level 56, for example, compared to going from level 48 to 49.

I don't have any interest in mastering all of the perks in the game during a single playthrough - learning a limited number of perks out of the total 280 available certainly makes the second, third and fourth playthroughs more fun, since you can customize each character in drastically different ways. But suddenly stopping at level 51 takes some of the fun out of the level progression at the higher levels. Of course, who knows, maybe on a typical playthrough of 300 - 500 hours we won't even get anywhere near level 50.

i think that the 300 hours thing is a bit optimistic on bethesdas part for one playthrough. in fact i have never had a game that took me the "suggested" number of hours to complete.....ever. they definitely pad those numbers, maybe they walk everywhere and never use sprint, who knows. yes you can fart around for 300 hours but you can do that in any game if you really wanted to, its just easier in TES games.

its been mentioned that people dont want lots of playthroughs cause they have lives and dont want to spend hundreds of hours playing different characters. this type of thinking just boggles my mind. its completely irrational. the game doesnt magically disappear after 1 year and you never get to play it again. this game is the only TES game for at least 6 years if not more. noone should have an issue being able to fully play the game several times over the course of several years. and just like many people still play morrowind you can play it after the next TES game.

the alternative would be to have a boring TES game that could be completed in 40 hours for our more impatient friends here but then you would here whining about how short the game is. choosing between to long of a game and too short of a game shouldnt be a choice at all.

Seriously? This is a TES game - playthroughs of 300-500 hours are pretty common for Oblivion and Morrowind and even playthroughs over 1000 hours are not unheard of.

And I'm not talking about just "farting around."

My current playthrough was started in December, using FCOM and Duke Patricks I'm a few hundred hours in and barely at level 8. In fact, I haven't even touched the main quest or entered any Oblivion gates yet.

Skyrim seems to have a much greater replay value than Oblivion and Morrowind considering the following:

• *280 perks to choose from, making the second, third, fourth playthroughs more fun
  
• *20+ dragon shouts with 3 different levels for 60+ shout effects, making it more fun to play pure warrior or pure stealth characters who don't use magic
  
• *10 races with revamped character designs, making it a bit more fun to play new races
  
• *deep and quite different crafting systems for warrior, stealth or mage playthroughs
  
• *Radiant Story feature which alters each playthrough
  
• *Joinable Rebel faction, suggesting different outcomes for the Civil War
  
• *Many more features in the vanilla game allows for some truly ambitious mods!

Based on this info, I'm estimating (personally) 5-10 playthroughs of around 300-500 hours each, spread out over a period of several years

Kind of nit-picking aren't we? I did say the bulk of "it" so contextually speaking I was referring to perks... -_-

However, I am big enough to concede your points, though I maintain 18% of total perks seems stingy to me. Especially considering what some of those perks could possibly be, I may end up with a load of non-class sensitive perks and not getting a chance to specialize in anything at all (though that would technically be my own fault).

I guess I'm slow. It usually takes me longer to complete games than their estimated play times. I don't know if that's because most people dash through them or I'm just a natural moseyer.

I think that too many perks on a level up could wreck the game. We dont know how powerful later perks will be. If anything more than one it should be additional perks during low end level gains and fewer during high end level gains. A high level perk further in a perk tree would much more powerful than the initial perks of that particular tree, no?

I'm sure plenty of people have said this already, but that's the point. They want you to specialize and play the game more than once, with more than one character.

Several years ?! wow , not to judge you but some of us have ...... uhmmm ... busy lives .

I'm not sure if he'll be able to play Skyrim through the course of several years considering the expiration date on Skyrim . . . Oh wait . . .

It's kind of hard to gauge that until we actually get a chance to play the game for hundreds of hours and evaluate the pacing of the leveling, but Todd has claimed that we start out leveling quickly and then as we progress, it takes longer and longer to reach each new level, so the highest levels will take a really long time, until you finally reach the mathematical cap.

For all we know, it might even be the case that even after playing for 300 - 500 hours, we never get close to level 50.

I've been playing Oblivion for years and I still have absolutely no idea what happens after you take Martin to Cloud Ruler Temple.

the jury is still out on Skyrim, but who knows, I might not finish the main quest until 2016, just in time for the release of TES VI: Summerset Isle

He said the game was a 1-50 game compared to fallout 3 1-25 , I was level 30 at the 30 something gameplay hour , so you'll probably more than 50 after 30 hours in skyrim .