This was my experience too, though I did stick with those handful initial builds till level 10-15.
But that is part of what I love about the game. One of the things I enjoy most of any new game is that period in which you are figuring things out and dont yet really know how it works. Because there is a rewarding feeling in getting the hang of it.
My thoughts about Morrowind when I first played it and got hopelessly lost near Seyda Neen and dying of mudcrabs and trying to make sense of what it all meant were: Awesome! If it has such complexity, and such a learning curve the payoff must be sweet! And it was.
It took me months to figure everything out. Moments where you go 'Oh so that is what that does!' or 'You can do that too?' are sheer awesomeness.

A lot of modern games fail me on this point.
Yes, they are easy to figure out and intuitive but this goes at the cost of much depth, and the loss of that rewarding feeling when you do get it and turn from a failure into a fearsome hero.

Edit: to Mordy: Did you quote the wrong person or something? I wasnt talking about classes at all lol.

The feeling should still be unique. There will be perks unobtainable in someone chooses to follow a single path. Although you can still try and use any style you want at any time, but won't be very successful at higher levels.

Well, than your reading comprehension skills aren't very good.


What do you think Classes are anyway? In Oblivion, they were your inherent skills . . . the things that your character is most proficient in . . . and they affected how you level.

In Skyrim you play the game (just like you played Oblivion's tutorial) and the Skill that you USE while you are playing result in an increase in your experience points (or whatever they are labeled in the game settings, that keep track of your stats), and you Skill automatically increase when your experience points get high enough . . . This is EXACTLY the same as it worked in Oblivion's tutorial . . . Except that Oblivion took it one step further and used your skill experience point increases to assign you a Class that was closest to your game play during the tutorial.

In Oblivion, the Class (along with it's inherent skills) was recommended to you . . . but you were free to create your own custom class (picking your own unique inherent skills). Most players did NOT end up taking the recommended Class, but picked one that they felt better represented the character they wanted to play.

In Skyrim, as you play the game, your skills just increase as you use them . . . you have no inherent skills at all . . . all skills level up just the same.

The REASON why Classes were removed was, according to Todd: "People would play and the general pattern would be, they played for like three hours and then, ‘oh, I picked the wrong skills, I’m going to start over.’
Did you get the part about "picking the wrong skills"? . . . The think was, in Oblivion, we COULD actually pick our own skills . . . in Skyrim, the game picks your skills for you (based on what skills you have used) . . . you do NOT have the ability to give your character any Inherent strengths and weaknesses . . . we all start out with initial characters who are virtual clones . . . without any Inherent strengths and weaknesses whatsoever.

The choice of 50-80 out of possible 280 should make your characters special enough.

There weren't any inherent weaknesses in Oblivion, unless you took Atronach, Tower or Lord, or were an Altmer. Classes gave you no weaknesses at all, except a few lower skills and a few higher. Apart from that, it was all advantage, except scaling and +5/+5/+5 made your strengths ( major skills ) a huge weakness, but that is a game design problem, not a failing of the classes themselves.
I don't see how getting a +20 in some skills,when the lower skills increase at a greater rate, and can easily catch up, is so defining.

OP complains about making his characters all the same every playthrough.

Why are you using magic if you are a thief then?

Fault's on you OP.

If I play a theif on Oblivion, I'm screwed if I don't sneak around everyone or get stealth kills.

If I play mage, I run light so I can carry potions and soul gems

If I play warrior, I kill and loot everything, but have to hide behind rocks when confronted by a mage or archer.

We don't need restrictions in TES games. I use the skills I use because it fits my playstyle. Just like when I play other RPG's with class systems that do impose restrictions I tend to play certain classes and ignore others because those others don't fit my playstyle. I tried in MW and OB to play an Atronach birthsign character, but couldn't do it. Why? Because it didn't fit my playstyle so I gave up on the character. I typically didn't use Marksman in MW or OB because they didn't fit my playstyle. I didn't need class imposed restrictions. So what if at level 60 or so (in MW thanks to the limitless training and gobs of money I had) my guy would be pretty much the same as any other of that level. But guess what, I only had one character of that level. I only got there because of the training, not because I used the skills.

I prefer the "be what you play" style. If I prefer to use sneak on all of my characters I'm fine with that. I have my own restrictions because I like certain types of playstyles. Not all of them fit me. For those who do like all of the playstyles if we could get 100-200 perks then you would run into the same problem, but with only 50 to choose you have greater diversity. Maxing skills will have less of an impact, I think, in Skyrim than in previous TES games because of perks.

Lets hope that most/all are worth taking or you just might find a handfull of "must have" perks and the rest of your 50 just filler.