I don't understand why Bethesda couldn't take their original formula and improve on it. Why did they have to strip it all away and start from scratch? It's by no means a bad system. But it's infuriating to think it's going to take another game or two to iron out all the flaws and perfect it. I can see they are trying to experiment a bit and try new things, but why remove things from the game that already work? Why fix what wasn't broken? Does anyone else think it would have been better if Bethesda just kept improving on their original formula instead of experimenting so much? At least then Elder Scrolls V may have been a much more solid game and VI would be even better.

I'm not at all saying they shouldn't make changes. Morrowind and Oblivion were by no means perfect. And I don't agree that stripping it all away and starting over is a good idea. Instead of having a more solid experience in Skyrim and an even more defined experience in Elder Scrolls VI, they are going to be spending a lot more time trying to perfect an entirely new system that they aren't as familiar with. I think if they kept to the way things were but expanded on it and fixed it's flaws we would be getting much more solid games out of it. Because right now I feel like I'm playing an experimental beta which needs a lot more work over the course of a few games.

Because developers are starting to realize that vague numbers are a really poor way of handling character progression.

Bethesda have always said that the only thing to be guarenteed in the next E.S. Game is the lore.

This has played through from the first games, Anything is open to change.

I love Morrowind (1000+ hours and still playing), enjoyed Oblivion (500+ hours), and am currently rating Skyrim as the best yet (Although I am still only 30 hours in, but expect this to replace morrowind fully)

I think it's a huge improvement as to what's been done to Skyrim over the previous games. Quests that take us to different locations instead of bland cave like in the past games, perks which give us so many more choices then a flawed attribute system that did more damage then good and a random encounters system that makes each trip down the road different. I could meet up with Maiq or a bard, bandits, Redguards, assassins, Thalmor, etc instead of not meeting up with anything or a scripted encounter.

I'm just over 200 hours into Skyrim and It's definitely coming close to being my all time favorite TES game.

I actually wish they took some more ideas from Fallout. Perks in those games felt more like actual PERKS. But in Skyrim they seem to be there to increase damage and armor ratings and so on. I would have liked to have the attributes from previous games with the addition of perks which become unlocked depending on certain attributes and skill levels, like Fallout did. Perks shouldn't define your character so heavily by improving his damage output and other things. That's what attributes were for.

For example; If you have agility of over 60 and sneak skill of over 50, you can choose to unlock the silent roll perk. Instead, we have to go through a perk tree which I think is the wrong way to develop a character. Attributes have been a big part of RPG's for many years, why remove it instead of improving it?

This game has changes, but all the games have had changes over the previous title. In all cases, there were good things and bad things. Funny thing is, the things I thought were bad at first are not so bad after I play for a while. Then, when I go back to a previous game, I think, why don't they do this like newer game? Of course, not all things get that kind of turn around. Still trying to figure out if I like the Perk system or not as implemented in this game.