Many applaud Skyrim's removal of classes as a positive move. They felt that classes straight-jacketed characters and forced you into a mould that you couldn't escape from, and so removing them promoted realism and roleplaying. One could also argue that classes completely threw off the balance of the game, making it easy to simply avoid picking certain skills, allowing you to have 100 in Long Blade and Heavy Armour while still level 1.


And I get those arguments. I think TES could have better class systems.


But I don't think Skyrim's classless situation makes things any better at all.

Here's the problem with Skyrim: The game immediately kills any sense of roleplaying and immersion for me because your character has no history. Every single person of a given race to cross into Skyrim is, apparently, equally skilled at lock picking, fighting with massive war hammers, conjuring ghosts and shooting bows - as well as everything else. This completely ruins the game for me. You cannot play a Khajit thief who's fleeing into Skyrim or an Imperial knight-errant trying to cross over to investigate the civil war because the game refuses to allow you to have any skills that you might have developed beforehand. Everyone's walking into Skyrim as a fresh slate, some empty canvas that apparently wasn't born and raised, but rather simply popped into existence as a fully-formed advlt just outside of Skyrim - and while that may be funny and a little creepy on a meta level (because technically it is what you are), it's horrible for role-playing and immersion.


So, sure, we don't want to have classes. That's fine. Why not integrate something else then? Fallout's "tagging" system would work wonders for allowing us to determine skills that our character might have cultivated prior to the start of the game, or is naturally gifted at, without forcing people into the confines of a class. You could even bring back Major and Minor skills. Heck, even Primary skills, if you want to go back that far. You could tag one skill as a Primary skill (+15 bonus), three as a Major skill (+10 bonus) and five as a Minor skill (+5 bonus). Or not, and just have three skills you can tag like in Fallout. Maybe even have the tagged skills increase faster.

This allows you to form your character into something real and actual.

Agreed

It's designed so you can still give yourself a backstory. You can select a basic pseudo-class by utilising the three standing stones at the start, but then you'll quickly blend into the "class" that you originally had in mind.

I think the system gives you the flexibility to not have to regret your early decisions (which usually aren't the best). Lets face it, a +10 skill in One Handed really isn't going to make a huge difference at the start of the game as perks are really what contribute to you getting stronger.

You can still have a stereotype of a character in mind. The core numbers at the start may not show this, but I think we're slowly starting to stray away from number crunching and more into natural play styles which I think is a lot better and more fluid.

What do standing stones have to do with experience your character acquired prior?

Because by utilising one of the three standing stones at the start you're, in my eyes, saying "Hey, my character is a [style goes here]". You're giving yourself a head start in those skills before going into the big bad world, which is exactly what the class system used to do. Just you can change your mind if you feel that's not what you want, but you don't have to.

The classless system isn't the problem, the problem is the lack of character variety at the start of the game.
Give characters a background, give them birthsigns, tag skills, traits, advantages & disadvantages, lots of ways to vary beginning characters without tying them into a specific path like a class does.

I agree its pretty bad.. Its kidna like the bad form of choice.. Path of Exile did it perfectly with freedom to create classes, but I also like a pre-defined class.. Such as, if you start as a "rogue" perhaps you would be given a different system set just for that character.. Such as -10 armor, 15% faster, 10%, attack speed, -50% resisitant to physical strikes, and can climb..

Stats do not make a history. A history does.

You're focusing far too much on numbers. The current system is explicitely chosen so that you can't give yourself bonusses that turn out to be "useless" later on, one of the major flaws of the previous system.

A character's background is something that you determine for yourself, if you need to have a label of "warrior" on the screen to RP a warrior, your doing it wrong.