Reducing the number of attributes reduces the ability to model things. Now perks add customization, but they aren't a replacement.
There are a number of ways to build your character that are gimped by the change. Adding perks would normally increase it, but how damaged is the system with the reduction?
Lets remove all skills, and have magic, combat, and stealth. Lets face it, there are only 3 archetypes anyway. /sarcasm

I like perks, but they work in addition to attributes, not replace them.

But they haven't tossed it into the air. You're the one jumping to wild, unfounded conclusions that there is a huge flaw with encumbrance, that somehow people that have been in the gaming industry for more than 10 years in some cases, managed to miss. You don't even know how encumbrance will work. You don't know you can make a tank-thief, yet you keep spreading it round like it's the truth. If you can't trust people that have been in the industry, making game of the year after game of the year titles, then who do you trust to make games?? Would you rather a generic CoD that comes out solidly every year with very little change??

how is taking out 8 attributes and replacing them with 100+ perks making things less complex. It makes it more complex. I never felt like attributes added anything substantial to the game play with the exception of strength but only because of encumbrance. Instead of having a bunch of numbers that affect your character in minor ways we are given a vastly more in depth system of defining the character's abilities and people complain about skyrim being dumbed down rrrrreeeeediculous.

I, in playing the game, want to make a character and then take that character on a journey. If everyone is a like at the beginning except for stamina/health/magica then, in my mind, you're saying everyone is equally ugly, equally stupid, equally weak, etc etc - everyone is essentially identical and this is a streamlined way for the attention-span limited to jump right into the game. I welcome perks/feats/etc which later flesh out my character but if playing through the game the only difference between my first character at Ug the massive Orc smasher and Mitzy the Barmaid who is joining the assassins is the single feat chosen at first level and the skills increasing/perks learned LATER on.. what kind of character have I made? Not much of one. Can anyone name a RPG that does not quantify the individual the player controls? Not their skills.. skills are things LEARNED. Attributes is a quantification of your natural beginning stuff.

Another way is if you think time-lines like in ones history books: lvl 1-----lvl 2-----lvl 3 Now giving parks and improving skills each time is great. No problem. But not everything is a derivative of ones skill -be it with a blade or bow or spell. Also, by nature of a progression where very little is different between two people at the origin (health/stamina/magica and your chosen perk) means the Character I'm trying to create and play is identical to every other person on earth/in the TES world until I'm say20th level then I feel really different because of the perks I've chosen..hurray! I want to make a fully fleshed out character, not an amorphous blob that will later turn into something. My skills do not change my looks, my body size, my speed, my strength, etc. choosing skills, if given that option even, doesn't help much as its still amorphous blob + feat + which skills do I want a +5/+10 in.

I do trust them, but only so far - they've made mistakes in the past - every idea doesn't turn to gold and having every starting character be blob+skills+ allocation of health/stamina/magica+ racial modifiers doesn't feel like i am playing two different characters at all..

As apposed to the massively different feel you got when you added attributes to that list?? You really feel that 8 mostly arbitrary numbers felt like a completely different character??

Okay in the early posts on this thread, I was reading, "The flaw this" and "The only flaw that"

We are passionate enough about these games that we will argue heatedly over this, and that means Bethesda has done it right (to one degree or another) so far....we are still a great (and unbearable) number of months from the release and Bethesda is purposely not releasing every little detail about how the game works. They have a large number of people just like us sitting around a table with a beer in their lap going "Well, Dave, if we take out the attributes, what are we going to do about encumbrance and how do we avoid "Generic Template #1" characters right at the beginning of the game?" It is one thing to say I am scared that they took out the attributes because I liked having a large Intelligence score. But lets be honest...attributes or not, when this game comes out we are all going to living off adrenaline and junk food.

I wasn't saying they don't know what they are doing, I was saying I don't know what they are doing. I am not going to just blindly stand by keeping my worries in my head, I will be elated if I am wrong. but I won't know until it comes out. so until it comes out I am going to voice my opinion that they are making a bad decision when it comes up.

People are quick to cut, what about fix? How about making those attributes matter more, at least to you, not just cut them for the ease of simplicity. have attribute checks, have them access parts of the game you wouldnt otherwise be able to. Like NV but to the extreme.

Everyone being equally alike at the beginning (excepting health/magicka/stamina/first-perk) assumes that what attributes accomplish hasn't been worked in through other means. Or rather, that races don't have their traits enforced through hardcoded or otherwise invisible traits (or passive perks, or etc, etc). The existence of your natural beginning traits, or the lack thereof, is an unknown quality.

This. This all the way.
At first, I thought no attributes was a strange move, but now I see Bethesda's wisdom.
They know what they're doin' folks. TES is just as much their baby as yours.
I trust them, do you?

Lawl :lmao: you guys are so fixed on 100+ and 280 perks its disheartening.

280 perks. 18 skills


Each skill gets an average of 15 perks provided they are evenly spread.

What part of this, addresses Attributes, which are the defining aspects for each race?


Perks should NOT and from the looks of it DO NOT replace attributes, they should supplement attributes.

Attributes are your characters base, extensions and grounds for getting stronger and better... you can't do that with perks...

no. used to. but they let me down too much. they mock their loyal fans when they want to see a return of gameplay mechanics that made the game great before.

But you've jumped to so many conclusions it's insane. According to you the whole system was a waste of time, they should have kept attributes and spent the extra time adding in loads of perks, the new system is too complex, the new system is too dumbed down, the new system lets you because a master of everything and get perks for things you're not good at, whilst also allowing you to be a tank-thief. You've only focused on the negatives, and have built such a solid image of what the game will be you're not even going to buy it until someone adds attributes back in.

You're voicing an opinion they've made a bad decision yet you only know a tiny fraction of how the game will turn out. It's simply madness.

Got to watch who you put trust into these days. If it makes it "easier", "simpler", be careful. Someone may be trying to get more people by going for the lowest common denominator. Ask those who followed B. Madoff's easy scheme.

Absolutely and here's why: I have a 140 IQ but can only bench-press 90lbs, I can run 3 miles but not a marathon. Quantifying those on a numeric scale gives one an idea where one versus other humans.
If I had a 100IQ plus 400lbs bench press plus ability to run 7 miles - very different person

Person A: 100 health plus 50 stamina
Person B: 100 Stamina plus 50 health.

Which of the two examples gives you a better estimation of the human being being spoken about - or.. the character you just created.

Attributes are not the defining characters for each race. Their lore and design are.

And I'm pretty sure a player with 40 perks is going to be stronger and better than a player with 2 perks.

I can see a lot of things better about the perk system (hate the name "perk" but hey...) than the attribute system.

Pros:
It will make it less likely (and less possible?) to metagame and powergame or be tempted to. Less numbers to look at, and more contextual ideas makes for a system where you focus on what the character can do instead of what the characters "stats" are like he/she is a baseball card.

200+ skills you must choose only 50 of vs a handful of attributes you can take all to 100 means way more diversity in character customization and RP. Anyone saying that there is less could only mean that you are being forced into what the skills are and can no longer imagine what skills you might have with a high "Agility" or "Strength". Other than that, mathematically the diversity and options are far greater for what the game actually does present to you outside your imagination, and the fact that you are limited to not be able to get them all at the same time adds more choice and yet more diversity at the same time.

Cons:
If you aren't allowed to select low level perks during character creation, new characters of the same race will all be the same. You will have to play for a few, maybe even several, levels before you define your "class".

I'm almost certain that there is no way to avoid some perks being offered to you for use of skills that really shouldn't be related. If there is no Athletics or Acrobatics skill anymore, then speed and jump distance increases will likely be tied to Stamina and/or Weapon Skills, for example. This will lead to absurdities such as being able to select a speed increase perk because you leveled up your Blade or Heavy Armor skills which likely govern, in part, Stamina. However, this problem was present in the old system anyway, because gaining speed because you are struck while wearing Light Armor didn't really make sense either. Even though a light armor wearer relies on speed doesn't mean that getting hit while wearing it makes you faster... only training by running really makes you faster.

My personal conclusion:
The pros far outweigh the cons, especially given that some of the potential problems with the new system are variations on problems in the old system anyway. If they don't allow some perks at character creation, this seems like a fairly easy fix for those with access to mods, and even if you don't have access to them, having more diverse characters at mid and end game and having them all the same at the start is better than the opposite.

I honestly don't see why not.

Race-specific perks they start with that make them more unique and different from other races in a way that attributes could never do. Race-specific perks that help point you in a specific direction to encourage a specific type of play from a specific race, like bonuses to melee-related combat skills for Orcs, Nords, and Redguards.
Perks could even give Khajiits a new type of hand-to-hand ability to use their claws, rather than just a +5 to hand-to-hand or something like that.

The possibilities are endless.

With attributes...again, just seems redundant and inferior.

perks do good as a replacement for birthsigns... but not attributes.

That doesn't mesh with the design philosophy of the franchise at all. In TES player skill has always, always trumped character skill. Your guy can svck but if you're good he'll be alright. Fallout 3 and New Vegas are rooted in a more traditional type of CRPG, where your character's stats are king.

Okay, listen, people are decrying the loss of attributes without really thinking about what the attributes did. Here's what they affected:

Strength: Encumbrance, melee combat damage, and some health/fatigue influence.
Agility: Balance, ranged combat damage, and some health/fatigue influence
Endurance: Starting fatigue, health gain on level up.
Intelligence: Total magicka.
Willpower: Magicka regeneration and some fatigue influence.
Speed: Movement speed.
Personality: Character reactions to you.
Luck: In theory, a little bit of everything. In practice, a waste of an attribute increase.

That's it. Nothing more deep or complex, and nothing that cannot be functionally replaced.. The fact that you choose whether to increase health, magicka, or fatigue on level up renders that aspect of them completely redundant. Combat damage is governed by skill level and perks. Magicka and fatigue generation are very likely determined by perks as well, or by skill synergies. Movement speed and encumbrance are more difficult to pin down, but we have no reason to believe that they will not differ from one character to another.

In Ob we started all the same until; we got through the intro. Your class was picked later on in the into.

You must have never played Morrowind? My way works fine and would add to the game not take away from it. Your thinking too much about the name attribute, not what they are supposed to, or could represent.

It's already been said by Pete Hines that EVERYTHING THAT ATTRIBUTES DID IS IN THE NEW SYSTEM. Sorry for the caps locks, but this has been said several times now.





Yeah, the former is pretty defining, but it doesn't really bare any relation to the game at all, because those 3 examples you've given aren't the only things that define your character. You can run indefinitely in Skyrim anyway, and sprinting uses up stamina, so it's sort of a moot point.

What you really need to think about is everything that defines the character, like in Oblivion or Morrowind, and then take out the attributes. It's not altogether too different. And what Bethesda is trying to do is to stop you from thinking "I'm going to be extra clever but not very strong", or "Extra strong but not very clever", get 4 hours into the game and realise you don't like it so you start again. The way they've designed it you just go ahead and run the marathon, lift however many weights you like and read as many books as you like. It's all mostly the same really.

I agree with some of what you have said and you have very valid points. My issue is early on/character creation that without an ability to quantify the individual character i am creating all the person is is a perk or two plus how well they swing sword a/Bow B/Spell type C, D, E, F

If I make two characters: This guy: http://elderscrolls.com/skyrim/media/screenshots/dragon-approach/ Then this gal: http://elderscrolls.com/skyrim/media/screenshots/tavern/ Their differences are boiled down to their health/stamina/magica and a park (maybe)? Really. It oversimplifies the character creation/origin to everyone being practically alike until you flesh out the nameless blob.

I am pretty sure that was only the case in OB. MW was the oposite, you skills were king, the experience of being a vetran of the game comes into play of knowing what skills to select and improve. OB has been the exception to that rule and because OB has been the only TES game in a decade we all tend to assume OB was the typical TES design.