That isn't dumbing down, That's making specialization matter. It's making your playstyle matter.

I hope were able to give bonus to skills at the beginning of the game like Tagging was in Fallout 3. Hopefully we'll be able to choose 4 or 5 skills that we want to raise 15 to 20 points.

I miss the class system a little bit but I like the fact that it's gone.

Honestly I was really glad to hear that you don't pick a class and get stuck with it at the beginning of the game. However, I do think that it would be awesome if you could earn a class title after developing your skills. For example, if you develop a bunch of magic skills people will recognize you as a Mage... then if you get bored with magic for a while and start leveling up your Blade skill, people will start calling you a Spellblade or Battlemage, depending on your skills.

Games should not be a fantasy "life simulator" :shrug:

The best RPG's that I have played were "abstract life of the PC"; not first person real 1:1 simulations of mundane existence. To me that was Oblivion.

No one starts off in the world as an advlt with a blank slate past. That past would affect them, and class based systems reflect their past.

Planescape did start you off as an amnesiac (with a forgotten past), but his established history made him a quick learner of any class, as he had mastered them all during his (immortal) life, and his progress was mostly just recalling his past abilities.

I'm pretty much Neutral Curious. I'll have to see how it plays before I form an opinion.

The blank slate argument is a good point. And I agree, I don't want a life simulator, although I (respectfully) disagree that's what Oblivion was.

I want to feel like a real Hero in Skyrim, but I want to define that Hero as well, by focusing on the skills I want to use, instead of the skills a pre-selected template tells me are important. That's why I always used custom classes. I don't need the game telling me what type of Hero I am going to be. I believe the removal of the arbitrary class system will help that, and actually give you more ability to shape who you are in this game world. But they do need to be careful that it does not become too generic and vague. Your choices, as far as race, skills and perks should provide you with a unique experience, a unique story to tell, and a unique persona within the game.

Looking at the gaming industry over the past 20yrs to present it's plain to see the marriage between Action and RPG has been less than successful. Of all the Action/Rpg's on the market the amount of "RPG" in Bethesda's games is right up there if not the highest. We don't need to recap all of the previous game's faults to know that changes need to be made to make the marriage work better. Bethesda is trying something new, which is more than can be said for most developers who get a good formula then crank one game a year using that same formula over and over again.

If one thing can be said about this series is no two games feel alike and that is Bethesda's intention. So what say we actually play the new system before condemning it, who knows we may just find that it is the best Action/RPG hybrid to date.



Considering Bethesda isn't going to change the way we start their games anytime soon you can just add that to the growing list of reasons to remove classes from the game.

I would say yes, but you had to throw in that "jack of all trades" line like a biggot. I for one love being a jack of all trades, it has nothing to do with a class though, in fact it's more classless than anything.

Those titles are as subjective as spell school labels. It's really what you choose to call yourself. There are more classes in the Elder Scrolls universe than what they limit you to. And the very idea behind creating a custom class is that you get to call yourself whatever you want to. If I stealthily steal for money, I'll call myself a thief. If I murder for money, I'm a mercenary. And if I stealthily murder for money, then I'm an Assassin. Classes are just labels to generalize characters, which is one of the reasons warranting their removal. People rarely play their characters exactly as the class they chose/made.

My single first character in Skyrim will be ALL of the following: Spellsword, Battlemage, Blademage (my own name, as in "magic is just a better blade"), Arcane Warrior, Mystic Swordsman... See what we mean? They're all basically the same thing, but that's still, like, five classes that can all be applied to the one same character. These names are just for the sake of lore, especially since in a TES game you aren't restrained to any class at all.

Yup! That's what happened to me as well. I play the character the way I wanted to, and it turns out that the character in the end does not play the way that the class dictates (for some weird reason, lol). =)

I say you should change the first option in the poll

"Yes, I don't want every character to be a jack of all trades!"

no one's forcing you to!
they just allowed you more freedom as to HOW you make your custom class. in the past games, with major (and minor) skills, you had a set number of skills to pick as your majors, even though all you were gonna use in the game was a longsword, a shield and an heavy armor. you still had to pick more.
With Skyrim they're removing that, and allowing you to choose EXACTLY the small detail of your class, even though it's not officially labeled as a said class.
You want to make a character who ONLY uses an axe and nothing more? go for it! you want him to use anything he can find? go for it!
It's also gonna remove the possibility of not leveling while using your skills, so it won't be possible to get 100 destruction on lvl 1.

and besides, as far a skills themselves go, it's not gonna make any difference. so stop complaining "oh my god! they killed the RPG! I'm not labeled anymore!"

That basicly is the only difference, imagine you're living a fantasy game in life. You've been training in the ways of magic for a long time so you call yourself a mage. Then a powerful mage kills your family with some very evil magic so you decide to hate magic and become a warrior, will you still call yourself a mage? Just food for thought it allows you to not be classified when/if you decide not to follow the path you choose.

-edit- also if you picked a mage class and you go around stealing more than using magic are you really still a mage?

I was pretty happy when I read there won't be any more pre-defined classes

I don't understand why people are bothered by this, really. The classes in Oblivion didn't really mean anything - they were just skill bonuses. It sounds to me like in Skyrim your 'class' will be defined by your actions and choices, not something you picked from a list five minutes into the game. It's a far better system, not to mention it fixes all the [censored] powergaming that went along with Minor and Major skills. I'm looking forward to a character whose progression is dynamic rather than static like past Elder Scrolls games... to be honest, the levelling system has always been one of the series' weak points IMO.

Edit: and the 'yes' response in the poll is kind of biased. Bethesda has already stated that your highest skills will contribute more to levelling than lower ones, meaning that it might be more difficult to be proficient at all skills, not less.

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/915/915169p1.html

I'll just leave this here...
:)

The truth it I always created custom classes so having the defined ones gone means nothing to me

Most of dude's complaints are valid....10 years ago.

yes, that was funny, I wonder how many noobs took it seriously

I liked the custom classes. They allowed for variable types, but they still served the same purpose. You chose what your character had focused on earlier in their life; it reflected their current skill set, and aptitude.

I don't mind that in a series; if I'm on the hunt for a new game system, I look for other IP's, not games of the same series.

This is true, but I suspect its more due to a "design by committee" mentality rather than the original intention or an attempt to refine the series.

I don't mind the prison break beginning, but it'd be nice if the character choices during creation affected the reason they were in prison.

The problem is that In the period, society was rather class based and you got accepted for a trade skill ~and that's what you learned (if you were lucky to be accepted at all). In a fantasy setting of that period, the guilds would be exclusive ~even rivals... Oblivion's world seemed almost like a 12th century Harry Potter tale.

The classes IMO were well done and served a necessary need; whether the player sees it or not. Back then trade skills were guarded. Free and open learning is really imposing a 21st century mentality on a 10 to 12th century styled time period.

The others seem to be right that you can no longer call your PC a knight and the have the knight standing next to him be equally trained. This attitude of [now] politically correct design is IMO a failing of design, and seems to create worlds that in ways, remind me quite a lot of the story Harrison Bergeron. (and not that much fun to play IMO)

I disagree (highly). Classes (at their most simplistic) describe an expected skill set. Kind of like "Gynecologist", and "Neurosurgeon" ~they are not for show, and not interchangeable. In an RPG if your PC starts as a knight, its expected that they have trained in all of the equipment and know how to ride a horse.

Okay, can we stop comparing the world of Nirn to that of Earth? It is vastly different and in no way is constricted by how our society was, is, or will be.
In Tamriel you are very free to go learn some spells even if you've been a barbarian all of your life. Want be a smith? Sure why not. The Elder Scrolls is about doing whatever you want whenever you want.
It gives you far more freedom than any other RPG I've ever played. Getting rid of classes is the only logical evolution of the "Advance by what you do" skill system. I'll never understand why anyone *needs* the game to constrict them. I can very easily start up a game of Skyrim day one, call myself a mage and only use magic. It's really not that difficult to grasp. And you know what? No one else has to do that. If *I* want to, I am free too. But no one else is forced to play as a pure mage. Besides, you have never been forced to stick with your class anyway, so they never *really* mattered. If anything, in past games you should NOT level up what your classes major/minor skills were. Otherwise you wouldn't get the maximum benefit from leveling up. So classes really just contradicted themselves.

I say this new system is a great move, and if anyone feels like they need a game to force them to play a certain way I advise they go play D&D. It may restrict you to a class (which I hate) but it's the best if you have good players and a good dungeon master.

Thank you.

Oh I can agree with that; that is certainly the impression I got from it... but it does not make for a good game, and IMO makes for an even worse RPG. :shrug:

At first I was a little skeptical about this but after rading GI its looking like a good move.

It looks to be even better than that, start up a game of skyrim day one, call yourself a mage and only use magic, and then get better and more specialized in magic, the more you use it exclusively.