But they aren't dumbing down the system by that and that's the point! Attributes NEVER had much effect on roleplaying before so now they aren't there anymore and people cry that we lost something that did nothing much and then, it's dumbed down?


The reason Bethesda removed attributes is that because, if you did that in Oblivion right now, it'd would just work and nothing much would be lost! Except that the game would be more enjoyable because the attributes never worked well in TES since Morrowind in my opinion.


In a Oblivion without attributes, the numbers called "Skills" would be the primary factors to describe our chars and they'd still be as diverse as before (minus the couple skills removed). "Skills" might not be the best word to describe them because some people just cannot admit the fact your physical attributes are compounded in those numbers somehow and insist it should only mean pure proficiency/knowledge of the corresponding field but they are plain wrong. Especially considering, for example, how improving acrobatics just allowed you to jump higher which is 98% a pure physical achievement anyway.


Morrowind the game world never cared how strong you was. Oblivion never cared how strong you was. All strength did was derive a small damage bonus in the combat rules and encumbrance. That derived effect is still there in the skills and probably in a limited way in the perks you chose. The thing that did practically nothing in past games isn't there anymore to do what it did best, nothing, so the game is irremediably dumbed down and not an RPG anymore! There just too many fallacies in there to count them. Let's just keep at that one : Ghotic is an AWESOME RPG and it has no races, no gender, no attributes, no classes and everyone starts exactly the same. Yet it IS an awesome RPG. Why do you people think Skyrim will not just because they removed something that didn't do much in the first place while still keeping a lot more options and choices for variety than that one?

You people have way too much time on your hands, and take this way too seriously.

I didn't say it(int or other attributes) couldn't now affect dialogue, but explained why I don't think it should. Also you can't really ignore the game trying to give your PC a persona that you don't want him to have - it's somewhat inevitable that there are some limitations since they can only write so much dialogue, but they don't have to take it a step further and tell me "your PC can't use this dialogue option because he doesn't have high enough int - maybe he should've just been a mage".

As for question avoidance, I haven't paid enough attention to know if they've been doing such, but if they have I can't blame them. A lot of people are going to overreact to small changes, this thread is proof of such - people get used to certain things and become hostile to new ideas.

A quick note on attributes and such that just struck me:

At this point, Pokemon have more attributes than TES characters. And they're those attributes are more complex and more dynamic.


(edited for clarity)

Well ya, a team of 100,000,000 japanese people work hard to make dynamic pokemon.

Untrue

Every pokemon only have 6 numerical attributes that matters in any way.
They also have a "nature" from which these attributes are randomized. They also have a special ability and a type which will determine the elemental strenghts and weaknesses.
They can carry one item and have different 4 attacks at once.

Skyrim on the other hand has 18+3 numerical attributes stats.
They also have different perks, different types of armor and weapons and spells and maybe racial powers and dragon shouts. Race and items will determine the elemental strenghts and weaknesses.

Sure they are more complex, whatever you say :whistling:

No...just no.

We're gaining 200+ perks to replace the 8 attributes - the majority of which didn't do much other than calculate 3 stats that we'll still have.

Right. Pokemon have six attributes. Skyrim characters have three.

Each type has a set of base attributes, which define speed, hit points and two different forms of attack and defense (which is already more complex than Skyrim's system, right off the bat). Each individual has its own set of individual values that modify those base attributes. And each individual gains experience that adds to any of those six attributes, creating an enormous potential range, all of which is fully controllable by the player.

So a Skarmory, for instance, starts out with high base stats for physical defense and physical attack, average base stats for hit points, special defense and speed, and a below average base stat for special attack. However, a given individual might already have higher or lower stats for any one of those, depending on individual values and nature. Additionally, through deliberately seeking out specific types of experience, any Skarmory can come to have high stats in anything that started low, low in anything that started high, and anything in between.

That's both more complex and more dynamic than Skyrim's system, and that's even before accounting for all the complexities of type.

So you are just going to ignore the 18 skills...

you know, the numbers that actually matter?

Pokemon have 4 abilities.
Case closed.

That is a contradiction in terms. If it forces you down a path, it is restrictive. Making you commit to a build, by its very nature, limits the number of builds available to you.

Now, some restrictions are neccessary. You cannot be a full blooded Altmer AND a full blooded argonian, for example. You cannot complete a quest to protect someone from assasination and simultaneously complete a quest to assinage that person. Some things really are, and should be, mutually exclusve.

But being able to lift heavy objects AND run fast? Or being able to be a brilliant wizard but also be very fit physically? Or being a powerful warrior who has cat like stealth and agility? No, these things are not mutually exclusive, nor should they be. To suggest otherwise involves a number of logical fallacies. And, while I know Skyrim is not being near so ridiculous or extreme as to implement and force onto players the foolish old D&D build restrictions of stupid but strong warriors and genius but virtually invalid magicians, some of the trimming and curtailing does suggest a unpleasant leaning towards that direction.

The uber build is, or was, an option. And it was not one that everyone chose to create. Many people still managed pure builds, despite the other options available to them. For those who wish to build such characters, however, let them. What harm does it do to any of us? All the pure builds, and all the less uber hybrids are still available as well, to mix, match and play as you please.

The stated purpose of the games is player/character freedom. Not for the devs to sit there monitoring our games like school marms, and forcibly curtailing playing patterns that fall outside of their ideal.

Pokeymanz can also perform a maximum of four actions, a far cry from what a Skyrim character can do. You can't completely discount the complexity that skills, perks, and equipment add.

My take on the issue is this: it does both. It streamlines the game by making it less complex and thus less crunchy. But at the same time this necessitates removing certain aspects of character complexity, namely damage potential, locomotion, resistance to various effects, etc. I used to be in the "[censored] attributes" camp but the more I see of the system the more I move away from that. I've stated repeatedly that the old iteration of attributes was terrible and I'm glad to see it gone, same with the class system. But attributes? The new system has three "attributes" which aren't attributes at all; they're resource pools that affect ability and what actions can be taken. (In the instance of health: breathing.)

I would have rather seen a new way to implement attributes. They already have the talent tree thing going with the skills, so why not apply the same thing to attributes? Ditch the earned HP on level and force players to actively choose to increase their health, thus making it so that squishy mages and thieves will remain squishy as a virtue of the system. From there you go to a three-way tree loaded out with tons of options for each archetype. Under the Warrior archetype you get damage bonuses, encumbrance increases, and the ability to boost the amount of health you get with each HP increase, which acts retroactively as well. Improve your base resistance to physical dangers, an all-encompassing trait that covers disease, trap damage, poison, bleeding, etc. Under mage? Same sort of stat boost bonus, as well as magic resistance, magicka regeneration, potion/scroll use efficiency and potency, etc. Thief? Reduction of stamina use for stealth -- yeah, I think it should use up your stamina to actively focus on shifting your weight appropriately and carefully controlling every movement, for gameplay purposes -- increased movement speed/jump height, dodge capability, NPC disposition, treasure chance, etc. This sort of approach would adhere to the virtues of the perk system, granting the player total control over progression and the satisfaction of seeing a discrete and immediate improvement in the area of their choice. From there you move on to the skills and pick a perk there just as before. It would very easily add a layer of complexity to the game and would stack with racial bonuses, such as Orcs and Nords having a higher base HP and boost value by default, Bosmer and Khajiit have higher movement rates, Bretons get magicka resistance, Altmer get magicka bonuses, etc.

Yeah, we can talk about birthsigns too, but that's a matter of taste, I think. The Guardian Stones can take their place and I think it fits with the new blank slate philosophy, so I'd keep it as-is. There should definitely be a toll for using them, though, or at least a limit on how often they can be used, like an in-game month or something. I don't know.

You mean the numbers that some intellectually dishonest people like to make believe somehow make up for the removed attributes, in spite of the fact that they were already there?

I think his point was that the existence of those 18 skills add a layer of complexity that you're ignoring to make your point. Charizards of course have all sorts of stats that affect their actions, but when you get right down to it their flamethrower attack is always a flamethrower attack and all that changes is damage and crit chance/effectiveness. You're overstating the lost complexity. It's definitely reduced but it's not quite so terrible as you make it out to be.

Derp... I really hope there's not a soul over the age of twelve that still follows Pokemon. The idea of grown-ass-men or even teenagers playing games with the intellectual content of an episode of Teletubbies troubles me a great deal.

Anyway, it does bother me that they removed attributes but I'll reserve judgement until actually playing the game. However, since I'm not a psychic as all the pre-mature haters seem to be, I could be crazy wrong.

This doesn't make much sense...

Most of these things can easily be added under skills, this just add two perk choices per level.

How this would add complexity is beyond me.


Yes, because they always made up for the attributes.

Remember the redundancy arguments that has been thrown around about attributes? Yes, I'm using those.

This really sound like attributes were everything before, which is very far from the truth.

Sure, but that's not the topic at hand. The topic at hand is attributes, and that's what I addressed. As noted already, the skills were already there. The fact that they're still there really has no bearing on anything.

Skills + Attributes > Skills


This highlights a decided limitation of the new system that I realized recently - with only the three pools acting as "attrributes," it will be impossible to, for instance, account for the particular stamina needs of a thief. Yes - it should require stamina to sneak - potentially a great deal of it. But since stamina is now this huge, all-encompassing thing that has taken over the purposes of multiple things, there's no way to grant a character additional stamina without also giving them additional maximum encumbrance (more logically a function of strength) and, by extension, greater maximum movement speed (assuming that the maximum isn't fixed). If it was a truly separate statistic, then a thief could remain weak and "squishy," but still accumulate the stamina necessary for extended rounds of very careful and precise movement. Without those separate attributes, that's impossible, or more accurately, the "stamina" that a thief possesses will be in all ways exactly identical to, and have all the same effects as, the "stamina" a warrior possesses.

Que sera, sera.....

Yeah, those numbers that intellectually dishonest drama queens want to conveniently ignore to try to make a case that pokemon are more complex than Skyrim PCs I think is what he means.

Regardless the number of stats do not mean anything, they could add hundreds of small stats without making much of an impact on gameplay if they wanted. As I pointed out already, what matters is how complex the character is when you actually play it. Skyrim PCs will have more than four abilities, and they'll use those abilities while moving in a 3D world in real time interacting with varying numbers of NPCs that also have more than 4 abilities.

Pokemon have 4 abilities, they fight other pokemon that have 4 abilities - they take turns in doing so. There are plenty of stats that determine how much damage they can deal and take, but the same is true of Skyrim PCs who are far more complex with far more options that can be influenced by far more factors at any given moment. Hell, half the pokemon moves involved lowering or raising stats.

Some stats were handled decently some were not. Intelligence was handled better in FO3 than in oblivion, but still it wasn't perfect. Outside of maybe adding a intimidate option to high strength characters strength was handled very well and the current system wont cut it. If I improve my one handed skill but want to be strong how come by 2 handed damage is not going up? I can carry more apparently with a higher stamina, but not hit harder. The problem is stats fulfilled a nice role of having a general talent to a range of abilities, perks don't cover that since they are specific boosts. They might not cover everything like you can in a pen and paper game, but the idea that someone who is agile is naturally better at learning how to sneak, pick locks, and shoot people is fairly logical. You can't do that now, you can't even simulate it very well I suspect. It is a loss from past games and what could have been in this game. And I don't think anyone is saying the game will svck because of this, but a lot of people are saying the game would have been better if they had kept attributes in and even better still if they had improved how attributes work.

You said explicitly that pokemons have more complexity than PCs in Skyrim and that's simply not true in a practical sense, given that attributes are ALL they have. 6 attributes > 3 attributes, but 6 attributes < 3 attributes, 18 skills, 280+ perks.

And agreed on the limitation of the new system, which is why I proposed relegating encumbrance to a more appropriate place. If anything it'd make more sense crunch-wise to tie encumbrance to health, since that's the warrior archetype-related stat.

Remember yellowcake uranium? Make the world safe for Democracy? Free fall collapse? Hope and change?

Yeah.... I require a little more from an argument than a convenient and oft-repeated talking point.

It is actually a very solid old school rpg in a kids game package. The idea that a grown ass man can't see past some basic packaging troubles me a great deal.

If my pure mage has the strength to pick up a two handed axe at all I'll be upset.

Ah... I just went back and reread it, and I see where the confusion lies (well - in your case - many of those who have responded would shout "BLACK!" if I said "White").

"At this point, Pokemon have more attributes than TES characters. And they're more complex and more dynamic."

The pronoun "they" in that second sentence is intended to substitute for the noun "attributes" - not the noun "Pokemon."

Well, there's no argument there, obviously. This just goes to show that sentence structure and proper grammar are integral components of clear communication. The proper-spelling master race shall prevail.