I was listening to Todd Howard, as I do frequently making sure the information he's provided thus far is drilled in my head, and considered the perk system and it hit me (and I used to be very opposed to the perk system, worried about skyrim becoming too much like fallout 3) the perk system can be amazingly great for creating your role playing character. I'll give some examples.

The three signs

Warrior
Blunt, one handed, swords, duel-wielding ect...
Thief
Sneak, archery, alchemy, light armor, daggers ect...
Mage
Destruction, alteration, staves, unarmored, ect...

Now lets assume you can only have 50 perks in total, and that there are a total of 280. I'll skip describing basic classes and skip to special classes.

Paladin
Master the blunt sections and shield section and go as high as you can in restoration.

Druid
Learn some alteration, illusion, and alchemy, also whatever your primary weapon would be.

Thief, assassin, barbarian, Juggernaut, Archemage,, Temptress, illusionist, alchemist. pyromaniac, ect... the possibilities are limited to your imagination.

what do yall think?

I think the entire answer to your question can be summed up thusly: "How great were the role playing enhancements of Diablo II's skill tree system" since everything said and shown about Skyrim's so-called perks appears to indicate the systems' basic functionality to be completely identical. :shrug:

I'm optimistic about the perks system. Bethesda has chosen to go in a certain direction and that's that. I'm not going to put them down over it without even playing the game first. They're constantly reinventing the series- I can only assume with as much expertise as they have in the RPG field, they'll be making the right call. Personally, I loved the perks system in Fallout 3, and thought they had tremendous impact on how I played the game- the same with Oblivion's perk system, which was there, just automatic/subtle.

Apart from the fact that I would train my Paladin with 2-hammers and heavy armor and as high in restoration(I think you are a bit more old school than me there ) as possible we agree that having perk trees will enhance roleplaying since it puts restrictions on our characters, and therefor making each build more unique.

they certainly do seem like they will allow more specialization and uniqueness than TES3/4.

I'm just hoping the perks will do more than 10% more damage every tier. But yeah, I think you're right

I've been saying all along that it'll be more unique and less restrictive. 8 core attributes, or 280 perks? Answers simple.

You know... it's a funny thing.... one of the things that I keep hearing is that one of the goals of Skyrim is to eliminate grinding, but it seems to me that the perk system is a blatant invitation to grinding.

All skills lead to level up, right? Perks are based on skill advancement, right? How, I wonder, is that going to lead to anything other than the following sort of scenario:

I've seen that there's a blade perk I want for my character. But just because of the particular quests he's been doing lately, he's been increasing his lockpicking and sneak skills quite a bit more than his blade skill. Oh no - I'm almost at the next level up, which means I'm going to have to pick a perk and I don't qualify for the blade one yet. I don't want to waste the perk on some other skill - I want that blade one, because that's the ROLE I want to PLAY for my character. So what do I do? What can I do? Grind blade. That's it. If I want that perk, that's the only option. Otherwise I have to waste a perk choice on something I really don't want that much - something that doesn't fit in with the ROLE I want to PLAY just because the particular quests I did at that particular level increased skills I wasn't that interested in.

I see that as a very real possibility.


To the OP's main point - I could already play any of those characters and more (and have played many more than that) in past games.

You seem to have some strange misconception of how perks work, even if you level up by only training sneak you can put the perk you gained in the mage tree.

Wrong, he's right. You only can choose a perk in a skill that has contributed to the level up. You cant sit there swinging your sword and then level only that skill, then level up, and choose a perk in restoration. So what he describes is perfectly realistic, like if he was doing thieves guild quests for a few hours.

I'm not sure the exact interview, but the question is asked how do perks work, and Todd says you choose a perk in the skills that contributed to the level. Your only able to choose either health, magic, or fatigue every level.

Know how classes are out now(obviously ), so we now define our own class through our play style. Our play style is defined by the skills we use, naturally, throughout the game. We then define our skills more through perks, picking perks for the skills we use, that define our play style, that define our "class". Unknowingly, you may become a thief, when you wanted to be a warrior, but since we no longer choose what we are, and it's defined naturally, it's ok. That's how the system has been designed. If you want to plan ahead then your going against this system, and you'll find out what your real class should be! jk in that last part.

What "misconceptions?"

Sure - you can put the perks wherever you want, but beyond the first one or two (if that) there are going to be skill requirements for perks, right? Yes or no?


??

I hadn't heard that. I was under the impression that you could put them where you wanted, and that didn't even have anything to do with what I was saying anyway - I was addressing the apparent fact (at least stated by Todd) that perks would have skill requirements, and proposing a possible scenario for approching a level up before you've fulfilled the requirements for a particular perk you want.

Unknown as of yet, however the most likely system would be
...4....5.......5.4
.....\....\..../../
.......3-2..2-3
...........\/
...........1

ect... that's the likely type of system that I'm predicting

I'll leave it at this:

In Fallout, there was a Cannibalism perk that allowed the player to eat corpses. You could base an entire character around that one perk.

Yeah sure you might have to grind if you spend too much time in Theives guild, but it won't be nearly as bad as Oblivion's attribute grind from minor skills :flamethrower:


In the end they do enhance RP, as I can now more tightly focus on daggers or swords or mace or axe (2h or 1h of each) instead of just Blade and Blunt. This is called further specialization. I foresee similar things for each magic tree.

I like your ideas IP, and I do hope they won't be throwing out classes altogether and instead do something like this with specialized perk trees for each class. However, gpstr's argument is a good one in that we could do all this far easier in earlier games.

I'll be happy as long as they just keep something like classes in the game, if every character I play is basically of the "adventurer" class, I'll be getting some mods for this stuff.

Classes are long gone.

Modding in classes would simply just give you your label back and a few starting points on skills at level 1. Pointless.

You make your class as you play, and its more unique/specialized than Oblivion = more playthroughs.

Well "Choosing" your class is, in reality though you are whatever class you want to be. In fact people ACTUALLY react to the class you choose to be in Skyrim.

Yea, I think the new system is more freeform and we can mold our class better than ever. I think the person I replied to thinks classes from previous games are returning in the sense that we choose a class in the beginning. That's why I said that.

That has nothing to do with what I said, or what I asked. I'm reasonably certain (though I don't have the citation at hand) that Todd stated that perks will have skill requirements. My initial point is based on that, and on the certainly confirmed fact that all skills will contribute to level up. I can see that quite easily leading to just the scenario I described - approaching a level up due to increases in less important skills, just because of the particular quests you've fallen into recently, realizing that you don't yet qualiify for the perk you really want, and having to grind the necessary skill in order to qualify for it.

I see no misconceptions at all underlying that possibility. There might well be further aspects of the game that could somehow serve to counter that (for instance, being able to skip picking a perk at a particular level up rather than having to waste it on something one doesn't really want), but that remains to be seen (and that particular way of addressing it would be problematic in its own ways, but that's all beside the point).



Two points on that:

1. Less bad is not the same thing as good.

2. I never grind for attributes in Oblivion.

Yeah, but the way you said it can crush the spirit of the people who think in terms "I am what I choose" believing you have to select an option, this mindset has been in every RPG after all it's difficult to get out of it, explaining what it means to still be able to be your class instead of "choosing" it is important to help these people understand. You aren't just some non-class you are what you want to be. As you said it's freeform and it's wonderful.

I find myself curious every time I see a statement like this - were you (and any others who say the same sort of things who might wish to chime in) really unable to be whatever you want to be in past games? Because I've never had that problem.

Many of my Oblivion characters have a class called "Drifter," just because that's the word I use when I dont have any clearer idea of what they're going to be. Virtually all of my Oblivion characters just go out and start living lives in the world and just end up becoming whatever they end up becoming. I've never felt at all limited by the creation process. I rarely start out with anything more than the most vague outline of a character - race, gender, maybe a favored weapon or armor, generally the overall archetype - mostly fighter or mostly stealth or mostly mage or some sort of hybrid. A lot of times I don't even know what any of those details are going to be. They're just a face and a race and a gender, and they just end up wearing whatever they wear and doing whatever they do.

Am I really an exception in being able to do that? I don't think it's anything special, really, but again, I wonder every time I see someone talk about how "restrictive" classes were and how they're so looking forward to this system in which they'll apparently, and as if for the first time, be free to play however they want.

:shrug:

Voted no.
Perks don't add anything to roleplaying. They don't further or expand the goals, ethics, and/ or personality of the role. :shrug:

In Skyrim they seem to effectively just be 'buffs'.

But 8 attributes do?

Absolutely ~usually; but you need a good RPG that takes their values into account before they are of any significance.