They've been syaing the whole time that "the power is in the perks". Skills still matter, but the perks are what make the character.

I've already said why in other posts,go further back and read my posts.
Also i'll counter that by saying,as i said before,come up with a better way to make attributes useful. Better than ranks,perks,spells,skills,enchantments,shouts,stamina,magicka,and health can do.
I'm sorry but the arguments are stronger as to why they shouldn't be there,even bethesda agree's with it,because they've done it.

How did agility effect security in oblivion?
Whats useful about endurance now we have health,stamina catagories?
Whats useful about personallity,when illusion and speechcraft made it useless?
Whats useful about strength,now we have encumbrance,and ranks and perks for that stuff?
I could on and on.

I find that disheartening though.

Yes, I can. I've always had 2-3 playthru's. One of those playthru's was always a luck based rogue. Now, I do understand the removal of the attributes, and I agree that some things can be accounted for thru perks, but why not have both? Why not have increased choice, rather than limiting choice? I'm not a fan of this change. I think attributes help define who your character is. For instance, I enjoyed playing a surly fellow and would adjust personality to match that. There isnt' going to be a perk to be a challenging personality type. There's not going to be a perk to be lucky or unlucky. I'm not saying do away with perks, but to do away with attributes and try and justify that with the perks, isn't deeper role playing. DA2 got drop kicked by fans b/c of the simplification of it. I hope Skyrim isnt' following suit.

(all perks are my assumptions)
Big ox guy - increased carrying capacity perk, increased damage with weapons/hand-to-hand, don't spend any level increases on stamina (bad heart), don't take any perks that increase speed (bad knees).

Skinny dude - no increased carrying capacity, lots of HP bonuses, possibly increased magicka (to heal himself), extra stamina, slight increase in hand-to-hand damage.

In the Oblivion system, you couldn't make a character that could hit hard, but not carry much. You couldn't have one that had lots of HP, but low stamina. Each system has it's good and bad.

You have every right to your opinion. But what if you weren't looking to power game and were looking to role play instead? What if you desired a low personality, an unlucky character, a muscle bound mage who had a major shortcoming to speed? All of these things are possible with attributes and not possible with perks. Perks simply add to your character wtih little to no side affects. Also, the perks are a static bump, not something that is customizable. Again, I respect your opinion, you'll never please everyone, but I think this takes something away from the game. They managed attributes and perks in FO3...but they can't do them wtih Skyrim?

LOL, just lol!

This topic reminds me of a story about a group of ancient wise men trying to figure out how many teeth a horse had by using philosophy. There was great discussion and emotion and much debate with no real resolution, kinda just like this thread.

It seems like there has been a lot of "philosophy" flying around with regard to this topic.

In that old story, a young man suggested that if they actually counted the teeth in a horse's mouth, they would have their answer.

Some of us recognize, of course, this was the most practical, if not philosophical method of attaining the desired information.

However, the great philosophers were shocked by this change in the way of doing things, and would not accept this idea.

I am sure the young fella was greatly chastised, scorned, and was probably even called a "noob."

The problem for us is that we do not yet have a horse.

Now, if they were to put horses into the game...

I like that anology. just shows that WE CAN'T JUDGE IT if we haven't even seen it in action


Also, I'm mot necessarily against one side or the other. I just would like people to understand that it doesn't svck because you decided so, if it svcks it will be because of a PROVEN thing

Maybe because they are still there, as a concept. The implementation is just totally different, we have lost 8 attributes, some of questionable value, and are left with the secondary attributes derived from them as our primary attributes, and a choice to take perks to mimic some of their effects, or not if some weapon or spell effect is more important to you. As for the implementation, you are free to hate it, but you have to admit it was not good before ( forced to use minor skills, limited effects, all characters the same at endgame ).
I understand that some (most?) want to see a number that giver a characters strength value, but that strength can be represnted through different systems, here skills and perks, and I personally will give this new system the benefit of the doubt until I am proved wrong, not through blind optimism, but because I can see the potential advantages of what we are being given, i.e. more distinct characters, development choices actually mattering, and the ability to fine tune a character build for an envisioned roleplay.

Well for a start atrributes could directly influence the amount of health, magicka and stamina you gain when you pick one of those.
Personality was indeed quite useless in Oblivion, but this could easily be made more useful by providing more choices in dialogue (which was severely lacking in Oblivion) and making the chance for a speech or charm (or all illusion spells, if it could make sense lore-wise) attempt to be succesful dependant on your personality.
At last there was never any information released when whether strength and encumbrance would be reduced to a couple of perks.

Please, do go on.

For any of those types of people, how did you do it in Oblivion with attributes? Everybody had luck start at 50, and speed 40. Personality had no real effect within the game at all. Hopefully, that can be done with conversation choices.

As for not having side effects, it's called Opportunity Costs. Just like in Oblivion where you can choose to increase a few attributes each level, at the cost of not increasing the others, In Skyrim you must choose which perk to take at the cost of not taking another one.

This This exactly im trying to come up with something else to say but theres really nothing else i could add

Why is everyone so ignorant to the number of times he said 'Perks or skills'? Everyone should keep their damn panties on, it will work out fine.

I do and like to roleplay,and i think i can do that without attributes. There alot of weaknesses to attributes if you really think about it. Spells,enchantments,even some skills made attributes useless. The new way will be more meaningful to your character and add more uniqueness,even when roleplaying.And as said in the G4 interview,thery are there in a softer tone,spread around in different things.There are better ways to go about strength,agility etc,than broken numbers,they did the same with spell making,it was all about the numbers. Same fireball effect,different number damage,thats not fun.I'm also glad i don't have to piss about using stuff i don't want to use with my character,just to get a +5 bonus. Everyone is entitled to thier own view,but i think some of you are not thinking about as much as others and are jumping to conclusions,like it's the end of the world.

Perks pertain to a particular skilll or weapon of choice. If you don't have the weapon/shield/magic, the perks are meaningless. However, an attribute is with you no matter what you use.

That's a dumb statement/argument,i'm not even going to say why,that should be obvious.

4 words: ATTRIBUTES ARE STILL THERE

you just can't choose them like you used to. but they are there!

Confirmed

Could you provide a link to a specific post? Otherwise this is getting really hard to track.

It seems your argument is that everything "redundant" should be left out, but I can't agree with that. In the end, we could just have our level as the only value, which results in higher damage, higher running speed, faster stamina regeneration, and so on.
Of course, you wouldn't want that, because this is a role playing game, and you'd like to distinguish between different characters. So you have to make choices, and your choices have to matter.

Attributes add another layer to that. You could have a master-swordsman with very high strength, or one with very high agility for faster attacks. Key to this is of course that you can't push all attributes to the maximum amount. Your choice has to actually matter.
There should be a fixed amount of points you can spend on your attributes, just as there is for perks now.

Yes, you could melt this down to Health, Magicka and Stamina, but why? This would oversimplify things and don't do attributes justice. Why should my stamina influence how fast I can run? Why should my magicka-amount influence its own regeneration rate? By narrowing the system down, you have to make choices that are not sensible.

We don't have the horse, but we have its mother and father. :shrug: We can guess.
(and wonder how many were pulled.)

Would you elaborate on one in depth? (opinion I mean)
How is any attribute useless in your opinion?

I haven't heard anything about that, can you link it please? I am under the impression that you can get perks all the way to level 70

While some of them are going to be tied to specific weapons/shield/magic types, not all of them are. What's to stop them from a perk that increases your melee damage (like strength does), or increases your magicka regen? We know that the perks are tied to the skills, but I highly doubt they will be simply, +X to your skill. I remember one that decreases the sound of your footsteps. As long as you have feet, that one is still good.

Your assumptions that attributes have to contribute to Health, Mana, and Stamina are based on Oblivion. Just because some part of this was true in Oblivion, doesn't mean this is the way it has to be implemented in Skyrim.

The str, agility, intel, will etc can be used to increase a players damage with all types of weapons or increase resistance. This can be in addition to 'perks' you have with particilar items.

Nope.

Btw, how many games have you designed? How many have made millions of dollars? And do you have a team of 100 professional game design personnel at your disposal?

If the answer to any of those is "no", then you need to be quiet and let Bethesda make awesome games. Who are you to call something a mistake when you haven't used it, you didn't create it, and you are basing your opinion off of another game??? Arrogant and rude, is what that is.

Actually, Bethesda is doing a very good job in refinining and streamlining it's current rpg system, and I for one am happy that they are reallly seeing fast forward on this since Fallout 3 and forth.People tend to interprete the changes and additions made to their game only on a gameplay level, and it's natural because their whole experience is reflected by that level of experience.But, in reality the game itself will be much more compact in it's internal calculations,and this will result in smoother and more direct levelling up.Last,the new system is more complex, sophisticated and robust.I think both the gaming and the modding community will see a benefit from this.