I'm sorry. I did read several posts but apparently missed the important bits. I know how annoying that is, and it's only my fault for not reading carefully enough. In fact, it's always good to have a system that works well in any case, and I'd want the system to be designed in a manner that works best and is most believable. Although I do think that spreadsheets and calculations are applying out-of-character knowledge to influence in-character actions, which is something I'd not like the game to expect me to do; the games balance is hard to achieve this way.
Let me try to explain: For someone who power-levels his/her character, the game will quickly become too easy if it's balanced around a system that expects the player not to do it, and vice versa; the game would be needlessly hard for people who do not wish to level in this way, if it was balanced around that. My first post was a poor attempt to point out this issue in the form of a disagreement between player types. Difficulty modes are only a solution if well crafted; a damage-slider as we know it would not be very useful for most people.

Now I did read the thread, and while I'd not write my post again, I'd still have said something similar, taking into account the posts before it.
So let me correct myself:

Yes, an improvement to the system would be a good thing, although my personal opinion is that the levelling system is something that was already rather good in TES games (increase by use is a concept that always seemed right to me).

Edit: To be constructive: I'd want the attributes to increase by use just like the skills; also, as I said elsewhere, I'd also like unused skills to suffer over time. I'd get completely rid of levels and have it so that the player can at any time re-focus the character completely (skill wise) given enough time for practice.

I agree with the topic creator all the way. You should never permanently lose a potential stat increase all because you didn't level enough of the "right" skills during your level. I modded this out for Oblivion and Morrowind and will do so with Skyrim if they do it again.

I just want to play the game. My stats shouldn't be punished for not micromanaging every little thing I do to get the right skills per level. It's counter-intuitive and outright annoying in my opinion.

I love the way people say Oblivion's leveling is broken because it doesn't mold to your will. You and everyone else that trys to play the game for the sake leveling are missing the intention all together. Your actions in the game are supposed to dictate your levels, your levels are not intended to dictate your actions.

Then why do magic skills not increase equally? :cryvaultboy:

I agree with multipliers being completely stupid, that system needs revamped.

Because you don't use them equally. If you did there would be no reason to make them level differently. Restoration is probably one on the slower leveling magic skills because it is used a lot and by others besides dedicated casters. Did Bethesda calculate the gain correctly? Maybe not, but does mean the whole system should be scrapped? What would happen if all skills raised at the same speed? Every character you made would master Athletics before everything else.

To get the most out of the train it to level it system you must stop looking at your stats to figure out what your going to do next. Just play the game and use your stats to keep track of what you've done.

Well yes - that is what I want to do - however have felt unable to do so in both Morrowind and Oblivion - I know I am not alone as the UESP has an entire section related to character levelling in Oblivion and links to online spreadsheet style tools for anolysing the most effective builds.

I don't seem to have this problem with the more traditional RPG of spending experience points - am not against the learn as you go method - I just feel there is something missing in the way the developers implement it - it's like they're tempting me with some sort of digital achievement skooma - because they include multipliers I end up feeling disappointed if i miss the 5x and yet despite the thrill of getting the 5x I quickly feel like a fraud when I do get it - knowing that I've moved from role playing into some grind mode

Being able to spread the multipliers across all attributes seems to cure me of the obsession but then defeats the purpose of what the developers are trying to achieve of the learn as you go way of levelling up

The games I grew up with rewarded you for perfection - you got to the top of the leader boards by collecting more, surviving the longest or achieving the fastest time - having multipliers in a game just plugs directly into my brain that I have to get those in order to complete the game in the best possible way - I just hope in Skyrim the levelling system is done in such a way I don't feel a compulsion to grab a spreadsheet and plot my course instead of just enjoying the world they create.

Ultimately, whether or not people "ought to not play that way if you don't like it" is irrelevant. If Bethesda implements a system that causes a substantial number of gamers to feel like they need to grind, and they do so, and they svck the fun out of the game as a result, then they don't think "I'm making this experience unfun", they think "Bethesda made a game that isn't fun". Fair or not, it's Bethesda's problem. Being a good game designer means manipulating gamers into actually having an experience they appreciate.

A thought experiment for BGS:
1) Implement software to track your gameplay behaviors.
2) Play through the game (for the sake of argument, let's just say "through the main quest" -- this is iterative, you can't spend too much time on any given playthrough). Do not, under any circumstances, "train" a skill for no reason. No bunny hopping, no summoning monsters to fight, no casting ten 1pt spells when you could cast 1 10pt spell on yourself. No using speechcraft on NPCs except merchants and people that won't divulge information. No making potions to level alchemy (but making potions for profit is acceptable).
3) Did you have fun? If so, go to step 4. If not, figure out why it wasn't fun, fix it, and go back to the start.
4) Now, use your gameplay stats. Which skill did you use the most? Awesome. Now, that skill is verboten. On your next playthrough, you may only use that skill if there is no other choice (and if that is the case, your design is probably broken anyway). The skill level should be locked at 0. The skill is dead to you. For the sake of time, you should probably drop the two or three skills you used the most.
5) Rinse and repeat.
6) Eventually, you're going to be left with a lot of skills that you struggle to find much use for. Maybe it's that the skill is useful, but only in a limited number of cases -- too few to level it up without some additional grinding. Maybe it's that the skill is useful at higher levels, but useless at lower ones, so you can't actually make it useful without training. Maybe the skill is just plain crummy. These are the skills that need your attention badly.

The only reason people feel the need to grind is because they look at their skill set and decide they want to see a certain skill at a certain lvl and then proceed to do what it takes to increase that skill. This is a throw back to older xp based rpgs that allow you to gain all of your experience through melee and magic combat and then disperse that xp amongst skills such as cartography, trap disarming and the like. In order to build a specific type of character you had to think about the dispersal of xp into skills. Now along comes a game that takes that away and says " the character you build is directly tied to what you do in the game" and it's met with disdain because it's not the way of ole. Trying to raise specific skills to specific levels goes against the intention of the game's leveling system and therefor any claims that it is broken cause it doesn't make grinding fun is baseless. Of course grinding isn't going to be fun in a system designed to eliminate it because your not supposed to be grinding. I didn't get that at first in Morrowind but going into Oblivion I embraced it and my character's levels are the sole product of my actions while playing the game as intended. As a result none of my characters are masters of all trades let alone a jack of all trades. If you play the game the way it was intended the leveling system is far from broken. Is it perfect? Not by any means, it can be improved but for those that insist on raising skills artificially in a do it to train it environment, your going to find that your always grinding and why should Bethesda make it fun for you when it's not how they intended you to play.

If I want to train my skills in any order or way I should be able to, without the game punishing me in any arbitrary way as well. Even more in a game balanced like Oblivion, in which most important quest rewards were leveled and forced the player without mods to work his way to level 25+ and hold on most rewards or end up with obsolete equipment. I'm forced to look at my stats and level because they basically dictate the state of the game world and everything revolves around them. They game punishes you in all the wrong ways, courtesy of level scaling and crappy level up mechanic that forces you to play in ways not related to your class or the skills you favor to aim for a silly multiplier, instead of rewarding the player for using the skills he prefers and aiming for at least some sense of specialization. A lot of things could be improved to make for a better experience, and I hope Bethesda spends some time on issues like this, which are in my opinion, a bit more important that things like a flashy engine and spectacular physics. There are a lot of good ideas floating around the forums, so hopefully something will stick and we get an improved experience regarding leveling in Skyrim.

As long as I get +3 in the attributes I want to raise I'm good.

But yeah I'm not a huge fan of how it works now.

I completely and fully agree with using nGCD(OB)/GCD(MW). Leveling was streamlined, varied, and it didn't punish one for choosing majors and minors.

To those who play consoles, read it up on the internet; it's the best solution to those grinding woes. You guy want this system. You need this system!

I don't get your point. The current leveling system rewards players that specifically grind and artificially train their skills with stats multipliers, instead of players like you that role play it. Its not as flawed in Morrowind because of the way level scaling is implemented, but Oblivion forces you to work for multipliers, or end up with a mediocre character that might have problems to deal with challenges because you didn't train all those other skills you don't use anyways to get a bonus to your stats. Oblivion simply punishes you with crappy stats for concentrating in your skills instead of your stat bonuses, and that's kind of a problem in my opinion.

Yeah, just kind of svcks you are screwed if you play on console, so I think there is a point to the argument if it makes the game better for everyone.

Honestly, I dont see an issue, I merely make the character with the race and skills I think fit what I want to play... if you can't control this.. I don't see how you would go about fixing it

reread what I wrote. I'd absolutely love it if the nGCD system was the default leveling system. It does what the level system should be doing, without all the micromanaging, and allows one to just play the game.

Otherwise, I'd rather the game go back to what Daggerfall did, +4-6 stats (at random) when one levels up to be distributed wherever.

Sorry, I got the impression you were suggesting to just use a mod, like someone before. My apologies.

I wouldn't mind Daggerfall's system either, its much better that the current incarnation. But a new and fresh approach would be best of course.

I wholeheartidly agree with the OP personally. The way lvling multipliers worked in Oblivion ruined the game completely for me. It wasn't untill some mods I could actually enjoy the game. Oblivion vanilla was just too hardcoe having to obsess about character skill ups to extremes.

Yeah that leveling system has to end imo. Gladly I play MW on the pc and I use a mod to change the leveling system, but before when I played on xbox I used to make a chart and write whenever I advanced a skill. I didn't mind so much about it, because it's a part of an RPG, but now that I can change it, it was the first mod I installed :woot:

I don't know if Bethesda will change this though, because it was both on MW and OB...

I had a perfectly power leveled 15 mage. I spent so much time casting 1 sec spells and sneaking around bedrooms where npcs were sleeping to get my Intelligence, Willpower, and Speed up to maximum. In between levels I would adventure and keep a notepad nearby to check any skills that raised themselves. This was a chore more than anything, but I had to have my perfect 15 character and it paid off. The result was my sacrificing fun in the game to satisfy my need to turn into an Oblivion god so quickly. When I was finished I had to lean back and ask myself "Why?"

And because I have a moderate OCD problem I pumped my fist in approval! So what if it wasn't that fun? I did it! And then proceeded to manhandle Shivering Isles with the god character. So you see, given the choice between casual, balanced, and caca, because of my little problem I was compelled to select caca.

But a player that lets the skill-ups come through casual play will be doomed with +2's and have always have stronger foes kick them down until they finally catch up in attributes at level 30.

Haters aside, I'm personally hoping Bethesda pretty much copies FO:NV's leveling system and pastes it in Skyrim, less micro management and could customize my character as much as I could in any TES game.

I think unused multiplier bonuses should be retained after level-ups. Otherwise, I see no actual problem with the current system. Most of my characters subsist on +2's and have no trouble handling the scaled opposition, since I take time to get decent gear and/or spells. The obsession with maxing attribute gains at every level is just materialistic greed.

That is only true if you want to raise attributes related to skills you don't use in normal play. Besides who says you have to have the max multiplier every time? 5 x 30 is 150 so right there shows you don't need +5 every level to max out an attribute. You get a +1 multiplier for the governing attribute of each skill you level and rarely did i ever get a +5 for strength or intelligence which was the focus of my character and yet I still managed to max out my strength and had 70+ intelligence by lvl 32. I don't see the problem unless of course your wanting the ability to max everything out in which i would tell you your depriving yourself of the true nature of an rpg, specialization. Adds replay value by specializing in something else on another play through. I won't deny that i'd prefer the attribute leveling to be done in the background but then that would go even farther away from what your shooting for which is to put points where they haven't been earned.

Just get rid of efficient leveling plz, its annoying.

Just give us all the same amount of bonuses but only give us choices between our most used skills. Not +3 or +1, just +5 but only to the mostly used skills.

If raising your skills automatically raised your attributes, there would be no OCD spreadsheet leveling, or really any leveling. You'd just get better at the things you do.