I prefer the DA method, too. And if what Todd has said is any indication, it looks like they may make it so.

The whole reason they got rid of the class system was because it locked you into a certain set of skills. If later in the game you realized you made a mistake, the only fix was to start a new character. It follows that they would implement a way to avoid this problem with perks and the obvious solution would be to use a "DA style" perk selection.

Yeah I remember that one. Just hope you can cherry pick what you want. The consequence is the implementation of an atrocious,generic, and all around terrible system found in all of the other wannabe RPG's. Bad enough they put the perk system in...

Just because you don't like a system doesn't make it not an RPG for this or any other RPG out there. I'm really interested to see how they do this.

links please?

I dont hate the system. The implementation is what I hate. In point of fact every other crappy western rpg uses a very similar system. There is no thought behind it as it is rehashed time and again. Typically in the name of shelling out a game faster and "selling it off" by slapping the rpg label on it. I could definately think of better ways to implement it. And it would be a hell of a lot better than pressing a button and watching a shiny star light up. But the creative spark seems to be dying in the industry of games.

Here's to hoping B- Infinite shows folks how it is done... at least from a sytemic point of view

It's hard to provide links because of the flood of re-tellings of that Skyrim demo the press got shown a few weeks ago. I'm positive I've read this too, however. Maybe someone can help you. I'm almost positive I've also seen confirmation of perk trees though.

Say there's a whole tier of perks you dont want. Its not who your character is, or would effectively ruin who your character is. Then I could see a reason to want the ability to bypass that tier. Again, if it worked like that.

This

A couple links right here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTVKXJVtZZs&feature=player_detailpage#t=157s

In that link he says something like...."you have your stats yes....but then it plays by what your doing....what your using and how you play throughout the game"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmq4jqT4Dmw&feature=player_detailpage#t=46s

In that above link he says at one point that you can raise all your skills to 100 while still only having 50 perks



In those interviews idk if he talks about tiers but im sure since theyve been working on this new concept for so long they most likely have a pretty good design for it. And if it did work in a tier form i imagine the upper tiers wouldnt require you to put points in the one directly below but most likely just put a specific number of perks into that designated tree as a whole.

They've said that perks are tree'd in tiers and have requirements. How it will work is anyone's guess. I was just giving an example on why holding off could be a 'good thing'. If it worked like that.

Youre saying so you could take all the best perks at the most powerful point of the tree instead of working your way there and just blow all 50 on the best of the tree you can get. I doubt it would ever work like that. (If thats what your implying you would save them for.)

The perks that have multiple ranks obviously require a player to choose each rank of the perk to reach the last one.

No, Im sayng that it would be bad game design to make us take perks that we dont want. If they did do that, the only way I see around that would be to hold off on perks. Even this could be balanced.

If we are allowed to level all skills to 100, what's the point of not letting us choose when to distribute our perk points? It wouldn't make sense.

Because of the whole concept behind it? for me i guess. I took perks as being a sort of way to hone your skills as you progress. As you gain more experience and use your sword often you slowly develop into a stronger more skillful swordsman(perks to me, maybe i understood it wrong), instead of just picking something then all of a sudden being wtf amazing at it out of nowhere. But on the stat quote he was just saying stats are more of a background thing now i believe.

You're not "just picking something", you've decided to hone certain skills. =]

That's my take on it, but there is nothing stopping you from playing it the way you want to play it.

Just in general, "tree" style perk/talent/skill picking requires you to take things you might not want. That's why it's a tree - low level things lead to mid level things lead to high level things. If you want High Level Perk 1, you'll need to take the lower ones that lead to it's branch of the tree, even if you don't want them.

Of course, there's all sorts of other systems (tiers, tier/tree mix like in WoW, just having higher ones unlocked by skills & levels like in Fallout 3, etc.) and we still have little idea how Skyrim'll do it..... :sadvaultboy:


(hmm, thinking about it, even standard Tier systems sometimes force you to take things you're not fond of, depending on how they make you "graduate" to the higher tiers. Like, need to spend 5 points in tier 1 to get to tier 2, but you don't like any of the tier 1 picks. Well, too bad, you gotta take some of 'em.)

Taking something I dont want=not being able to make my character how I want them. If I have to hypothetically go through a bunch of dagger perks in sneak, to get to the bow perks and I dont even use the dagger, that will be lame and pointless. Again, thats one reason I could see the ability to hold off on a perk a good thing. Id rather have that perk 'slot' permanently empty, than have a perk I dont want that ruins who my build is.

Well, a typical "tree" would be more like..... to get Awesome Tier 3 Dagger Perk, you need Average Tier 2 Dagger Perk, and So-so Tier 1 Dagger Perk. Crap, I hate the Tier 1 Dagger Perk..... but to get the Tier 3, I have to take it.


But, like I said, this is just a general behavior of "Tree" style talent systems that I've seen in other games. We don't know if Skyrim perks are tree, tier, hybrid, something else..... but that doesn't change the fact that in many perk/talent/etc systems I've seen, there's at least some amount of "have to take this svcky thing in order to get awesome thing".


Like... I'm playing Roland in Borderlands right now. In order to get the tier 2 "increased ammo capacity" talent, I need to have spent 5 points in the Tier 1 abilities above it. Which are "increased HP" and "your turret does a slow heal-over-time". I'm not thrilled to blow 5 points in either of those, but I have to in order to get to the more powerful abilities further down that talent track.

Similar things show up in the talent trees in WoW. And in other games.

In Fallout 3, the drawback was that the more powerful stuff only unlocked at high character level, at high skill levels, or both. So you would only have a few perk choices left to pick them with. (Until they screwed everything up by giving 10 more levels with Broken Steel, of course.)

Yeah, sometimes it's bad game design. But alot of other times it's game balance.



edit: of course, Borderlands or WoW-style talent trees have no issue with saving points til later, since the condition for choosing higher power talents is based entirely on your other picks, not on level / skill level / story completion.

As I understand you can save them, and it's a very good idea as it stop you from power training skills to get perks at level up.
Say you are very close to levelling up, you want an archery perk who require archery 75 and your archery is 74. None of the other selectable perks is very interesting compared with the archery one. Now to get the perk you would do nothing but archery and even restrict use of other skills to avoid raising them and force a level up.
Much like the 3x5 attribute chase in Oblivion they try to avoid in Skyrim.
No you don't has to do it but lots of players will do it as it makes them stronger and they avoid feeling bad for wasting a perk.

Yes level up on rest will work just as well, you has the ability to use time raising skills before assigning perks.
However I think I read that you will get a fallout 3 style level up message but can save the perk.

Those who argue about respecing should just go to the other thread that's actually relevant. This thread is about the ability to delay making a decision on gaining perks, anything else is offensively off-topic and confuse the issue. :brokencomputer:

It depend on the level requirements for perks, found that level was the main constraint for Fallout 3 perks, some I could not select as my skills or attributes was to low, but it was mostly perks related to skills like melee I did not use much. However most of Fallout 3 perks was not skill perks, it looks like all Skyrim perks are skill based and require pervious perks.

http://cms.elderscrolls.com/sites/default/files/tes/screenshots/SkillsMenu_wLegal.jpg
Her we see the perk tree for destruction and some other skills: Guess the four very bright stars with lines are selected perks, we have three medium stars who probably are selectable perks and five dim stars. I guess that the left dim star is dim because it require the perks below to be selected, however the dim star in the middle is next to a bright one.
To me it looks like it require a higher destruction skill to be selectable.
It also appears that the other star signs have stars in five levels, we don't know the skill requirements here, might be 0,25,50,75 and 100 who would make preserving perks important or it could be 0,20,40,60,80 who would make it less of an issue.

The other interesting thing about the picture is it looks like certain skills will have different numbers of perks. All the more reason, I think, to be able to make informed decisions. I hope we're able to look at the perk tree's and understand what perks will go with what skills ahead of time. Then, we would have the ability to plan the characters path that most appeals to us. The only thing that could prevent that, would be the perks being a must use at level up. If I want a sneaky marksman, but dont' have stealth and marksman to a level where a perk works for my character build, then what option do I have left, if I'm forced to pick a perk? Going into the game knowing we only have 50(I don't mean 50 is a low number, I think it's quite generous), but for a game that could take hundreds of hours, you're going to want to maximize your playthru. I think giving the flexibility to delay selecting a perk until a following level, makes more sense.

. I'll say it again. Terrible system. 20 other ways to creatively implement a perk style system rather than going down this [censored] "tree" system everyone else is so fond of