Yo dawg, I heard you like naming your class so now you can name your class while you're naming your class.

Very good decision by Bethesda, I often found myself changing my play-style in mid-game, and with the former system this was punished, you had to stick to your skills. The new system seems to be much better, so good news! :thumbsup:

Give it another read. You never choose anything, skills simply contribute more to your leveling the higher the skill is. This will likely still lead to most people focusing on a specific group of skills when they play, but it's less set-in-stone than it was is previous games.

It also appears they've dropped the whole efficient leveling thing, which is also nice.

Had anyone on these forums suggested the same changes prior to this news being unveiled, people here would have likely shot it down.

I'm glad they removed the classes because there really weren't any in Oblivion.

Agreed, I haven't personally read the article yet but IMO these are good news, although I personally never saw it coming :ph34r: .

Well that makes sense - thanks for jumping in - I was wondering how they handled the NPC's if there were no classes - I could not envision the NPC's not being mages and warriors

I never used the pre-determined class system anyways, so I won't miss it at all.

At first, I was disappointed with this new feature, but now that I've had time to think about it, I like it.
Also I know people want to be refereed to as a warrior, mage, etc in game, so they should implement a title system, and you should be able to change your title from lets a warrior to a mage if you decided to take your character in a new direction half way through the game. All NPCs should be given a title as well.

PS. I read about half of this thread, so if somebody all ready suggested this, my bad.

PPS. I just read SwitchBlayd's post, so my point seems to be moot now.

Agreed, I have never used a pre determined class. The only thing I used were the cool pictures for my own class haha.

My thoughts on the removal of classes: The thing I might miss the most is just the element that it gives your character a certain element of "backstory", that leading to the point where the game begins, your character has developed their skills in a particular way with a particular focus. However, after giving it some thought it might still be possible to think of things in a similar way if you just ignore the fact that all skills by default are equal. Sure, in previous games you could literally start out as a character focused on magic who has better magic skills than, say, sword-fighting skills, but you always start out with a certain balanced combination of the skills you wish to focus on-you can't go and say "My character is an experienced mage", or "My character is an extremely skilled thief"-you start out at a lower level regardless.

You can still say your character is a low-level mage or a low-level fighter or what have you-you simply have to ROLE PLAY the class rather than setting it in stone from the start of the game. From what I understand, there will be advantages to specialization so the term "jack of all trades but master of none" likely would apply to anyone trying to do a little bit of everything in a single playthrough. What does make me curious though is how attributes are going to come into play if at all. It's kind of silly hearing people talk about how Bethesda stripping down everything is making it less of a role-playing game when the way I see it the removal of fixed classes seems to actually encourage role-playing on the part of the player more.

The way they used to do it, the class you picked (custom or stock) only made a difference on your first level right out the gate. After that every character would tend to be more-or-less the same. Have to wait for more info to see if this new system will remedy that.

I think it's a real stupid thing to do. The class system wasn't perfect, some people here say it didn't have any impact anyway the article said it 'removed the restrictive class system'.

Just because a function isn't perfect you don't just remove it, you improve it.

At least we get used to a class less Elder Scrolls before TES VI, since it wouldn't make sense to have a class system for only three skills.

Removiving classes? It's a communist conspiracy!!!!!!

On the other hand though, removing the classes will add more class B)

I hated all class templates, and always went with custom.

Still, they could have refined the classes instead of removing them altogether.

Todd basically said players should be protected from making any bad choices early on, right? So no custom class either, you get to customise your appearance, level up faster and pick skill perks.

I'd like to hear more about the start of the game. Presumably races will differ with respect to their starting skill levels - all else being equal, a Dark Elf will have a higher starting destruction skill than a Redguard, for example. And, if starsigns are still in (and I don't see why they wouldn't be, as opposed to attributes) then presumably another way for characters to have different starting skill levels is to have different starsigns. I wonder how big these bonuses will be? And, whatever the bonus, how much of an effect will it have on the rate at which one can increase the skills which don't have a bonus?

For example: suppose you want to play a Redguard mage, and also suppose that your starsign is not a mage related one (there are lots of reasons why this might be). Going by the assumption above, you'll start out with higher combat skills than magic skills. But just how much higher? And, more importantly I think, just how much of an impact will this have on your ability to play a mage? After all, your magic skills will increase more slowly than your combat skills, because skills which start out higher will increase more quickly. But how significant is this difference in the rates of increase?

I think Bethesda will be on top of this, because I think they're aware that one thing TES players like is the ability to play any class with any race. So hopefully they've found a nice balance between race differentiation and that freedom to play any class with any race.

Same here :/ I've never once used a pre-set class in Elder Scrolls and never plan on it. So, it doesn't bother me that much. Plus this really seems like the only logical evolution of the Elder Scrolls style leveling/skill system. I always ended up maxing out all my skills and I love that. I hate being restricted by my class in other games.

good riddance I say

I always wanted something closer to Gothic-ish system where your free to be a mage or a warrior or anything you frigging want, making hard choices along the way because you just can't be an uber melee/wizard/archer/thief/rogue guy

This!
Well have to see if this ends up good thing or bad.

I won't change anything in terms of being a certain kind of character, it simply fixed the buggy leveling system, I like it a lot actually, one of the few choices they've made I'm 100% behind

Agreed, I'm going to miss confirming "Are you sure you want to be a Bad Ass?" every time I exited the sewers.

This

It should be in. But it should be improved with more restrictions (To actually justify the notion of it being too "restrictive", har har, what the [censored] does that even mean in this particular case. Restrictive how?) and benefits alike. Just as the race selection should make a difference in other than only "minor ability" kinda way.

This.

Some might think it’s a slippery slope towards "dumming" the game down but I don’t think so.

So long as everyone is still able to customize the character that they want, a little stream lining won’t hurt anything.

I don't care at all. I never played as anything but a custom class anyway. A system lacking classes is no different for me other than the fact that Baurus can't make a comment about you after the emperor dies. That was literally the only cool thing about choosing a class in oblivion.