When I first broke the news about this, the forum called me a liar and said it was something Bethesda would never do.

Now that we know it is true, what are your thoughts on this?

For those of us that haven't read the article, details please?

As far as I am concerned, it will be like playing a custom class.

I'm glad they god rid of it.

Does it really matter? With classes, you could still get every skill to 100

good riddance.

You no longer pick a class. Instead, every skill contributes to leveling up. But increasing higher skills contribute more to leveling up.

You can reach a "soft cap" of 50 (which seems to indicate that not every skill will be maxed out by then). After that, leveling up takes a lot more time. So pretty much, by that point, you're locked in to your character.

My biggest problem with this is that I can't name my class anymore.

Source?

Instead of having a few skills that you increase in order to increase your overall level. You just use the skills you want. As you increase your skills, your overall level increases. However, to promote specialization, increasing a skill from 34 to 35 does more to your overall level, than increasing a skill from 7 to 8. This way, if you try to be a jack-of-all-trades, if will take a lot longer to increase your overall level. Plus, there are now perks, like in Fallout. When you increase you overall level, you get to choose from a list of perks like "your mace can bypass armor" and other perks like that.

"Gone is the restrictive class system of earlier games"

-Matt Miller, Gameinformer February Issue.

Game Informer.

This is my only complaint. Other than that, I always played custom so it doesn't matter. The previous class system did nothing other than help you level certain skills faster.

I'm surprised by this info, but not really upset at all. Leveling has been a very sticky problem for the past few games. I'm glad the devs have decided to take a bold approach to improving the leveling system, perhaps taking some inspiration from the community's suggestions and some of the popular leveling mods.

I'm a bit disappointed, as I love classes in RPGs I had planned on role-playing as a Bard in TES V, but without a Bard class it’ll be tough. I don’t just want to use my imagination and pretend that I’m a Bard; I want the game to recognize that I’m a Bard. I REALLY hope the game has some Bard related perks in it (maybe even a perk that’s named “Bard”), as well as other class related perks.

This. I only ever used the assigned classes for the first playthrough anyway, until I knew how I wanted to play and how everything worked together and then made one myself. IIRC that's one of the reasons they did away with it - too restrictive from the start.

Just to sum it up: Bethesda have decided to remove the preselected classes (like acrobat, spellsword, monk etc.) They don't think it really works when players are forced to select a class and basically try to predict how they are going to play the game, based on a 10 minute introduction. For games on the scale of The Elder Scrolls, its not effective. So they have decided to remove the class system completely and now every skill will make up level up, not only the major and/or minor skills.

When I first read about it I was pretty pissed about it, I felt like they were destroying the very foundation of the gameplay in the series. But now when I think about it, it's true. It svcks that you are only able to level up with only a few select skills, it forces me to use skills that I may not even enjoy anymore.
Personally I never played as one class. I always play as a jack of all trades.

Besides, you can still play as a monk for example, you would just use the skills you relate to the monk class. But should you decided to try something else, you can do that to.

Overall I think it sounds as an improvement to the series, and I'm very excited to see how it plays out. I think I'm going to enjoy it.

I never used preset classes, always used a custom one. Saying that, I need to see this in implementation first to see how I like it. It sounds all well and good, but then again alot things about Oblivion sounded all well and good and we alll know how that ended up.

Bard... high speechcraft? Etc.? Just try and talk around. The way the Dynamic Story system seems to be set up, you'll get unique opportunities related to those.

Funny enough, the class wasn't restrictive. You could still raise all skills to 100, the only thing they did was determine how a skill affected the level up rate.

Now, the skills you use the most are going to make you level faster and that's it, which just mean that skills you use a lot are your "majors" and all the others are "minors".

I will not say that any of my characters rigidly adhered to the ideals of their initial class.

I will say that choosing an initial class made for a good RP framework, akin to asking a kid what they want to be when they grow up. "Oo, I want to be a Mage" my character would say. Then I'd sit back through the game and see how close my character came to achieving their childhood dream. Sniff, sniff, they have robbed my children of their dreams

I always chose a custom class so I'm not worried. I can understand that it's bad for those who want to be pure warrior, thief or mage class, and want to see the classes recommended.

I love classes in RPGs, and this made me a bit sceptical. But I would have to see how it really works in the game before I decide for sure what to think of it.

Just because you can still raise all skills to 100 doesn't mean it's not restrictive. It was very restrictive in another area: which skills you wanted to level up. Leveling up the wrong skills could spell disaster as you could gain levels but no real combat power.

This was only a problem in Ob due to level scaling. Remove the Ob scaling and any character build can get there eventually.

I like the sound of that. I always played a custom class anyways.

For the role playing aspect, title system would be needed. Doing certain quests and learning certain skills/spells would earn related titles for the player along with the fame score. Players would pick a title from the list of titles he has earned and use it. That chosen title would be displayed on the character sheet and some NPC would recognize them.
For example, a player who learned "turn undead" and "Major Heal" after joining a chapel faction would have a title named "priest" or something like that. Add a mace/shield, and you have "crusader".
Or say a player steals more than 20 times, he earns the title of "Thief". If he adds a trap-related perk and pick-lock 40 times, there goes "Rogue".
Reaching Marksman 50 would get you a title of "archer", etc