No there weren't.

So what's different?

Unique racial powers are hardly minor...

Attributes did the same as skills, they were always just as limiting.
Classes never mattered... nor should they matter.
Birthsigns are still in but it doesn't count because it's not from the beginning I guess, lol
Gender differences were 10 points in two attributes. Deep.

EDIT:

So planning out what skills to raise during the game doesn't count because...

So my plan is to hit people with sword to get better at hitting people with swords? Sure that works I guess but there is very little character background in that, you don't start better with swords.

Also, 10 points in whatever may seem like not much but if you are trying to min/max or roleplay your character it all counts.

Again, this is all just how some people, myself included, prefer to play the game. For us, it is unfortunate that this facet of the game was lessened.

Nice idea, I think that could work well to differentiate characters of the same race. I doubt Bethesda will implement this though, as one of the main things they're trying to do is make character creation simple. Choose race and looks, then BAM, start playing. I guess people had issues with making decisions at the game's start that continue to affect the character or felt their were too many menus to go through before really establishing the character.

I'm kinda bummed about this, I'm one of those players that really plan out a character beforehand and thought it was an enjoyable part of the process. I know the old system was flawed, but why scrap the whole thing just to make it quicker and simpler?

I plan on role-playing my character as much and as often as is possible.

Quirks, routines, superstitions, all of it.

I want the whole Skyrim experience!

The way I see it, I have my back story, I have an idea which skills my character will use, and more importantly I know which skills she will never use. I have a personality of sorts, how she will react to certain situations, how she will deal with people, and idea of her likes, dislikes, and ambitions. The system we have is sufficient, for my purposes, to delineate her progress as a heroine or villain, her competence in each area of ability, her chances of success in any endeavour . Enough to role play with. A few extra bonuses at the start will not make any difference to this.

It sounds like you're just restricting yourself. If you want to role-play you can that's why Beth makes the background of the character unknown. So you can invent the background if you so wish. Your stats shouldn't affect that.

In any case you'll ve able to choose your base stats and the start of the game. You just won't select a class. It'll be kinda like making your own class at the start of OB I recon. Then from there your character it yours. Without restrictions of class. You can be a warrior at the start who discovers his affinity for magic halfway through the game and decides to hang up his axe in favor of the arcane arts. You can be what you want. And change who you are. It's more real this way to me, it's not like we reach a certain age and are told we're a warrior or bard or something and have to stick with it.
This way we shape the character we want. I think you'll find the is going to be a much wider variety of characters now than there was. Because you truly do choose your own attributes. A opposed to picking a preset and leveling the defined "major attributes"

First of all, welcome the TES forums. And I'm personally happy to see a new member who shares some of my concerns about where TES is heading as a RPG. Lastly, thanks for your support. Some people here cannot seem to debate without resorting to personal attacks.

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@Daydark and Bukee:

There WERE initial limitations (quoted portions are from the TES Wiki, since that is a LOT faster for me than typing this all out . . . and just being accused of not doing any research, or knowing what I'm talking about):

Birthsigns: “In Tamriel, a birthsign is the constellation under which a person is born. Each bestows upon those born under it unique magical powers - either passive or active - and may be perceived as either a "blessing" or a "curse".” For instance, “the Apprentice ability confers a 100-point bonus to your Magicka attribute, but gives you a 100% Weakness to Magic.”

Class: “a combination of a specialization (Combat, Magic or Stealth), favored attributes, and major skills. Your character's class determines what skills you will be most proficient in, and this in turn affects how you level.” In Oblivion, you could pick one of the 21 Standard Classes, or create your own custom Class.

Race: “determines your character's initial Attribute values and also provides bonuses to various Skills.” Each race also has special abilities, and in some cases weaknesses. AND the skill points were DIFFERENT depending which gender you were playing. [Note, since the Attributes and Gender Differences were removed in Skyrim, the main differences between races are also gone.]

You guys keep acting like initial differences are not and were never important . . . that is totally NOT true. The hardest (and best) part of any TES RPG has always been the first few levels, because that was when your INITIAL character build had the greatest impact. This is what also gave these games the most replay value. Todd’s reason for removing Classes even supports my point that character builds did add limitations: “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.” If Classes made no real difference in how your game played, then why did so many feel like they had to start over, when they made a “bad” build?

You two (and others here) keep claiming that every character build ALWAYS ends up the same. This is simply not true either. The only time is even remotely true, is IF you max out all your skills. And, guess what? Not everyone who plays these games maxes out ALL their skills . . . in fact, my own feelings are this is not even the norm for MOST player. I NEVER even came close to maxing out ANY of my characters in either MW or OB. Every single character ended up VERY different.

PLUS, you two keep ignoring my first statement in this thread about the character build process, even though this is the THIRD time that I’ve repeated it:

“This wasn't done as well as it could have been, but it still worked (This could have been fixed just by slowing down the leveling up speed, and by making the Attributes only rarely increase, and by limiting the maximum amount that a skill could increase based that skills governing Attribute).”

Instead of improving it, by making the character builds have a greater affect, with more persistent inherent Strengths and Weaknesses, they pretty much just threw it all out, and gave us Fast Leveling (because “leveling up is fun”), and Perk Bonuses.

You absolutely can. Max out all your skills, and you can do anything a specialized character can. You can play with stealth, or with melee, or with magic, or some combination, just as well as someone who maxed only those skills. There's nothing to prevent a single character from switching between those play styles.


You can max out all your skills, but you can't get everything. Once you max out all your skills, you're done levelling and picking perks, and with the perks providing very useful bonuses, you're forever locked out from playing with those left-over perks without starting a new character. For example, a character has maxed out skills, but picked perks for destruction, block, and pick-pocketing. This would be a character that's good with offensive magic, physical defense, and stealing. This character would not be that good with melee, summoning, marksman, etc, so if you wanted to play a character that's proficient with them, you'll have to start over.

In addition, the perks provide a means of more differentiation beyond the raw skills. So for example, you can pick melee perks relating to swords only, and allocate the other perks to something else. This character would be good with swords, but not that good with axes or maces.


The starting differences in Morrowind and Oblivion were minor, too. They didn't give much that couldn't be overcome within a few levels. Todd has said that Skyrim works this way, too... that there's racial and other starting bonuses, but they can mostly be overcome within the first few levels.

There's also supposedly more flavor with the dialog concerning your race, and even some quests you may not be able to do solely because of your race (though admittedly not many). Plus, Radiant Story can generate quests and give you pre-made quests based on how you're playing. So if you're playing with magic a lot, RS can trigger an NPC to start a mages duel with you, whereas if you're playing with melee, you won't get that.

I still fail to see how it's such an insurmountable problem. So what if a Dark Elf starts with +10 Destruction? If you want a high Destruction skill as an Imperial, just throw a bunch of fireballs and you'll make up the 10 points in no time. And regarding starting attributes - you could just as easily argue that it hinders role playing, because surely a male Nord having only 30 Intelligence to start with would discourage people from being a Nord mage, encouraging them to be another race instead or just being a Nord Warrior.

This reduces their freedom in character building as much as anything else, especially seeing as the "governing attribute" system was pretty indecipherable to a lot of players (I'm not saying it's impossible to understand - I understand it just fine - but it wasn't particularly transparent unless you actually read up on it, which a lot of players won't have done), meaning that attribute deficits were far more difficult to recover from than skill deficits. If you wanted to be a strong Altmer warrior, then you'd have to work pretty hard to recover from that starting Strength of 30 - a lot of players would have simply opted to be a mage instead.

I'm still yet to see any official source that definitively states that all level 1 characters will have exactly the same stats, though. I'm convinced there will be some sort of stat allocation at the beginning. And I just can't believe that Bethesda will have thrown all the racial skill differences out the window.

EDIT: I forgot to add that when you level up, in addition to gaining a small automatic increase in health, magicka and stamina, you get some additional points to allocate to one of those three attributes. Which is a far more intuitive way of doing exactly what we did when we levelled up in Oblivion. It's going to be easier to play however you want in Skyrim than ever before, by the looks of things, and we won't be discouraged from playing any race any way (for example, the aforementioned Altmer warrior) just because their starting stats are wrong.

I realize there are philosophical differences in which way the game is approached. I could enjoy the game using either method.

However, I would like a few points, even 2-3 that I could use at the start of the game to represent, "things from the past."

A way to recognize that time before becoming a prisoner. I don't know what they are going to actually do. From what we have heard, to date, it sounds like there will be no points to distribute at all.

And, I have a question.

Did you notice that even though there are no classes, such as warrior, etc., (the archtypes are Combat, Magic and Stealth) the Guardian Stones are named like "Warrior Stone, etc.?" Perhaps the devs thought it sounded better than, saying "Combat Stone?"

Yes, you keep saying that and you also keep saying how there were limitations before with attributes.

Since you don't consider the racial powers/skills and the limited number of chooseable perks as a limitation, the attributes, classes, birthsings in games before shouldn't be limitations either.
You could ALWAYS easily overcome these. You started out with low in one attribute? Train it, and raise it during levelup. You started without a power a birthsign would give? Learn the same spell.
You keep saying to improve these limitaions, but there never were any kind of limitations to begin with!
All characters could become anything they want, regardless of race or class, only the path would be harder to take because you had bonuses on different ways, but nothing stopped you.

Skyrim is actually more limiting by not allowing you to pick every perk with one character, not even by maxing out every skill.

And choosing the wrong class made the game more annoying than impossible really. You choose to go with sneaking from now on, but sneaking is really low, so you'll need to practice it more often, and you don't even get expereience from it, because it's not a class skill.

In response to the opening post:

I think a change of perspective is going to be required. I've done a lot of hardcoe roleplaying in a variety of mediums, but primarily in Neverwinter Nights. I rarely roleplay in singleplayer games, but I can certainly sympathize with the idea that you want to write backgrounds and define personalities for your characters. I do the same in multiplayer to make sure that my characters feel congruent and unique, rather than simply mirroring myself. It tends to make them more believable and simply more enjoyable to play and interact with. When you are working from blank slate however, you are writing this story as you play. Rather than being defined from the start and deciding the path you take through the game, the path you take through the game will ultimately define the character.

Basically, you'll be forced to work in the opposite direction; Defining your character through gameplay, rather than letting the character define your gameplay. I know one of my friends work that way with her role-played characters too: She has some kind of loose idea of who her character is, but then lets that develop as she plays. Initially those characters feel a bit lacklustre and flat compared to those with a rich foundation, but after a while they'll have grown to such a point that you'd never have known it used to be improvized character at all. There are Pros and Cons to that approach, sure, but it's an interesting change of pace.