Yes of course, but why would FO traits influence TES birthsigns? It's this I do not get.

So the point is, in fact Beth finds it only natural to mix up two game franchises? That would be problematic, if that were the sole reason. There's no reason why they should do that.

Lots of people on this forum jump to the assumption that Bethesda is obsessed with taking elements from each of their series and transposing them into the other after perks were announced for Skyrim.

If they kept them, they all should have been turned into Once-Daily powers. You know, The Warrior gets a Critical Chance buff for 2 game hours. The Steed can Sprint without exhausting stamina for a Game Hour. The Thief gains a Sneak Attacking bonus multiplier for a few hours every day. Blah blah. A lot wouldn't have really needed major tweaking.



That's partially true. We just know that certain Weapons will have certain perks associated with them (Dagger: Sneak Critical Bonus. Mace: Armor Negation. Sword: Critical Attack. Axe: Damage Over Time) to call them a "Gimmick Though" is pretty simple minded. First of all, simply what we know, gives weapons better differentiation than we saw in any Elder Scrolls title, and actually makes it worthwhile to invest in a Master-At-Arms type character, who can select the best weapon for the right situation. Heavily Armored Target? Use a Mace. Agile-Shield welding oppoenent? Use an axe to get the most out of that bleeding effect. Dual Wielding Glass Cannon? Use a Sword to dispatch him quickly.

The same we know about Magic so far. You can perk out each element, and each element also has unique properties, which I really like. Fire is pure Damage dealing, optimal for something like a Battlemage. Ice spells which drop stamina. Great for slowing enemies down, or preventing special attacks. Shock is a counter-mage ability, draining magicka from your opponent as well as inflicting damage.



We'll see when we get there. But oddly, your Civ example is exactly what happens in both Oblivion and Morrowind. Greatly Favoring one race (Bretons and Nords for example) while other races, like Imperials, are virtually useless. And not even by virtue of attributes, but just on their abilities. If you can compare an innate "Magicka Resist" to Voice of The Emperor, and call "Balance" you have suffered too much trauma to the head, and that you can type, is nothing short of a miracle.

So what if they're similar on creation? All that does is allow players to pick off aesthetics more than which is statistically the best, which is really what the racial choice should boil down to. Hell, the only 'real' differences in race, should be between the Men, Mer and Beasts, because that's actual species boundaries, rather than geographical differentiation.


I'm just at a loss for words. The idea that a character should be defined by lists made in the first 10 minutes of the game, rather than just how you play is preposterous.



Sounds like something I'd say. That always bugged me in both Fallout3-NV and Morrowind/Oblivion that the skill and attribute bonuses were actually meaningless, and in some cases, a detriment, if you're calculating the hard-cap (Without using prison exploit).

I have always wished that the Attribute to skill bonuses in Fallout 3 were on top of the actual skill bonuses. It's about making things meaningful. If they're not meaningful they're redundant, Bethesda just has a bad habit of choosing the "Axe" rather than the "Bridge". Know what I mean? It may seem hypocritical coming off my previous comments without any context, but it's just because I see both sides of the coin. Like Attributes, I don't like that they were cut, but I can understand why, and the same goes for these birthsigns.

Well it's nice to have a boost in certain skills to begin with at least, even without the major/minor skill system, otherwise it is kinda assumed your character has been in prison for so long that he has forgotten all of his skills from his past life, which doesn't make a lot of sense.

I'm FAR more interested in seeing how they work out the perks on a tree like Alteration or Conjuration. THOSE are going to be either interested or totally dull.

They shouldn't be entirely defined by your initial decisions, but if you're a roleplayer (a loose term, I know) or rather the slightest backstory for your character, it helps if your character starts off naturally predispositioned towards some things and not others. I would rather not run around Skyrim in my first five levels, saying "I need to make a conscious effort to avoid raising my Conjuration as much as possible because my character was educated by a society of magi that viewed Daedra/undead summoning as heretical". It would be easier to simply assume on character creation he has minimal expertise with Conjuration, and then invest more attention into other skills he would have likely been practicing prior to the events of the game.


I have considered all kinds of ways the extreme contraries in Morrowind and Oblivion could be compromised, and I've seen plenty of insightful posts on this forum by others too. Bethesda, as much as people hate on them, is still one of the more professional American game developers I know of. Their mantra generally seems to be (as we can see in more recent things such as dragons), "we do things right or not at all." They would much rather rethink the character advancement system entirely than continually deal with the burden of a half-broken attributes system, although who knows. Even though each TES game has been a substantial departure from the last one, Bethesda still hasn't really done any genuinely radical changes between installments until now. It'd be interesting if, years from now, in TES VII or something, they somehow had attributes and perks working side-by-side.

But when developing a world as reactive as Tamriel, it seems like the underlying core gameplay is something you have to get out of the way as quickly as possible - because pretty much all of the NPC AI, faction, and quest designers have to have a pretty good approximation of how the final game's difficulty will play out before they can really do any work on the game. So they are a tad hasty with good reason.

Especially since most people tend to make their characters look quite young: "I've been in prison for twenty years...since I was two years old!"

That's really pretty lame. I don't mind the removal of attributes or anything else I've heard about Skyrim really, but the loss of the birthsigns really kind of bums me out. I mean, removing classes makes sense, removing attributes makes sense, but birthsigns? I mean, yeah, sure, I understand having the player choose who and what they want to be as they go along, but no one gets to pick what sign they were born under in real life, so it shouldn't really matter if you find out later that you picked a poor sign. It's just what the stars gave you.

Plus with stars and constellations being so important to the lore...ah, well, I'm ranting now. Oh well. They'll still be present in the sky, and maybe they're still relevant to gameplay in some way or another. I'll wait and see. If all else fails, mods are an option.

yes they are gone, but is not that bad

Just because they have no relevance on gameplay (or have differently...), that doesn't mean they're removed from lore...

The Dovahkiin's parents had him while they were in an Oblivion gate fighting off Clannfear CRIMINAL SCUM! They couldn't keep track of the stars.

While this is true, it does feel like there is a certain disconnection with it. Though I think we are jumping the gun to say they are removed, when we honestly know very little of the character creation process, or how the constellations come into play (as birthsigns were derived from the constellations)

Neither Arena, Daggerfall or Battlespire had birthsigns, so not really.

Also not everybody has been born under a certain sign with their powers...

Because all rpgs should be played with Excel in the background.

Sarcasm aside, the classless system is much better than having to dike about with the attribute system or the mostly useless birth-signs.

I wouldn't say there useless, but i would say there more suited as perks then as a before you play gamble for your character. who knows what skyrims world will hold? I think we need to explore our options in the world before were forced to make a permanent decision on how we'll play.

Name one thing that birthsigns gave that couldn't be achieved with a few hours of work, assuming the player has exceptional knowledge of the game and it's glitches.

Aww, I wanted to play with the atronach's birth sign .

Actually... I don't entirely agree with that.

While I like a bit of advancement, I play RPGs to see how a given character would fair in the presented situations... I play the game to explore the commitments of the 'build'; to see how the various physical, behavioral, and intellectual aspects of the personality serve them in their adventure. ~So I'm not interested in maxing their attributes (or whatever passes for that now); I'm interested in seeing how their abilities affect the outcome (whether they are high, average, or low) ~and most of those choices are made in the first 10 minutes. :shrug:

For instance... I played a game of Fallout where the PC was a nerd with mostly pathetic attributes, but great Charisma and communication skills... and so I found that he could convince the supermutants that he was an agent working for their master; and he was free to roam [the upper floors of] the military base, because he was able to look like he was supposed to be there.

http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/proof-1.gif

Well none... and i understand that, buts thats because most were either fortify/weakness effects or because they were spells, if you took some of the birthsign spells and put them in a perk for a constant effect then we would have worthwhile perks

Example: the LORDs: Blood of the North lesser power, Restore Health 6 points for 15 seconds (90 points total) on Self, multiple times per day at a cost of 50 Magicka, if this acted less like a spell and more like a constant effect lets say Ex: restore health 6 points EVERY 15 seconds, then this would be a worth while sign.

Bethesda has a habit of taking special abilities (e. birthsigns, race abilities) and dumping them in the spells catogory, when really if they wanted to make them worth anything game wise, they would make it a kind of permanent effect so we can enjoy the the ability without feeling like its something that we could of just picked up later and master even better than the sign can pull off.

So I understand what your saying but i also find that the effects could be useful with a little bit of tweaking on how they work.

Dammit! Birthsigns were how I decided my characters' birthdays!

:verymad: Todd Howard . . .

I really enjoyed the Birthsigns, but I guess they've decided to throw those characteristics within the other systems of roleplay: Race, Three Constellations, Three Main Attributes, Skills, and those Skill's Perk Trees. You're basically carving out your own star path within the three remaining constellations: The Mage, Warrior, and Thief which probably have they're individual bonuses, etc. I kind of enjoyed the lore behind it though. The people of Tamriel used Birthsigns to determine or predict ones path in life and that these different birthsigns actually marked you at birth with some kind of skill boost, or Spell Perk. Maybe this new system Reflects Nordic belief and the themes they want to present in the story. That we determine our own destinies, that we receive perks, skills, and spells not through birth but through hard work and determination within the circumstances of our birth. We may have been born with some talent governed by the three Constellations, but it's our own works that determine out final destiny. Not through some number or some stroll across a tutorial dungeon, but through how we decide to play and progress through the game world.

aaaw poor baby. :unsure2:


no but seriously you guys do realize that there are still race specific perks. Birth signs really did nothing

I think I'm going to develop those birthsign one by one, in a progressive way.

I.e. when you choose a birth sign, it starts small and gradually grows with you as you progress through levels or ranks of a related guild or some such.

For instant when you choose "The Serpent", you start at "Earth Worm", then advance in the ranks as "Pin Worm", "Adder", "Asp", and gradually grow in the birth sign's serpent-kin ranks until you reach the "Dragon" rank.

There could be some birthsign kin that could help you along the way.

I have been thinking about this progressive effect for birth signs for years, but now is the time to implement it.

I think I would start with a few birth signs and hope to get the support of a team along the way, so that I could turn that into a set of birth sign guilds with the quests and the lot...

That would actually be pretty cool.

Wow the Dovahkiin's 200 years old huh?