Thank you. FINALLY someone gets it. Roleplaying is imagination and background. just because you cant see the stats doesn't mean you cant make the character you want. Stats does not equal role playing.

Yes Imagination. I am familar with the concept: http://i51.tinypic.com/skxfuv.png

However, I do prefer a game to be able to follow that imagination, not work against it. Like I have already said I can pretend my character is a Holier Than Thou person and never touch Deadric items for fear of thier evil taint. I can play a person that loves books. I can play a person that collects spoons. These rpg elements work well within the game as it is, as it did for the prior games. But I can't help but feel that losing classes and attributes just takes away from the rpg aspects and character play. I can surely PRETEND I'm a Knight, but it's a lot more fun when I actually am a Knight. Then the game is working with me, not just allowing me to pretend.

Seems to me that you can still plan your character by deciding what sort of character you want and playing that way and choosing perks carefully to build that character you planned. :shrug:

Maybe you will have to change your spreadsheets to better reflect what perks are available and such. :shrug:

Somethings not right here . . .

1) this is a game
2) you aren't a knight
3) if you think you are, you are pretending
4) labels limit more than they free
5) IT'S ALL PRETEND, BRO
6) stop metagaming

I've already said that the Perk might work great. Obviously Bethesda does. I hope it does and that I can design 'on the go' so to speak in game. My only real concern is the blank slate start that by design, is meant to prevent people from making poor choices at the beginning. Well a whole lot of games from the beginning of CRPG's have used the prior method. Character design on the fly for RPG's is fairly new and is certainly new in a TES game. I just really hope it works.

Uh those spreadsheets are not roleplaying.

You just planned out how you would choose your race and skills...
Why do you even need spreadsheets for that is beyond me as the game proper itself is good enough to tell you how your character will look like at the beginning.

It would make sense if you would plan out how your character will look like later on, planning on what skills you are going to train on during the game...

The beginning hardly really mattered, you could always just ignore your starting class and train something completely different, you just wouldn't get any levels from it, possibly broking the gamebalance.


Here's your main character creation and background: You walk around, just escaped and you find a small axe and a two-handed claymore on the floor. You pick up and use the claymore, but why not the axe? Because in your background you were training on two-handed weapons or something similar.
There your character is already different by using a different weapon than another, raising your skills in the meantime.

If there's more, you might have to figure out why you are so bad at using two-handed weapons... except you had to figure this out before too, as you always start at level one, with barely more than just basic training in your class skills.

Yeah the spreadsheets are just the old (very old) TT D&D player in me coming out. They are only good for setting my characters beginning stats and skills and overall design. With Skyrim's system I image that the spreadsheet is kinda a waste. I did use some on-line spreadsheets for FO3 though for picking perks and such as you level. I image in Skyrim this would also be useful if you are wanting to make a master archer and need to know what preliminary perks are needed first to get to the master perks you desire and such. So yeah, my spreadsheet obsession may continue.

So your intense metagaming doesn't ruin your roleplaying experience?

Let's also not forget that you are a prisoner, and skills dull while you sit in prison, so it makes sense to be a somewhat blank slate when you get free, if you used to be a fearsome axe wielder, you can pick up an axe and your body will slowly start to remember it's former abilities.

Taking knight as a class didn't make you a knight, it just defined your skill set. Becoming a knight is more than a set of skills, its a social position requiring you to serve a lord (eg the Emperor in the case of Imperial Legion knights).
I much prefer to earn my position in game. In MW and Oblivion I only truly felt I'd become a knight when I'd earned that position through ingame play.
A lot of good RPGs don't have classes (eg Runequest).
I do feel it is a pity that opportunities to define your starting character have been dropped although I feel that increased differentiation between characters as they develop more than makes up for that, but I'm glad classes are gone. They always stifled RPing forcing you into archetypes that you couldn't change. There was no good way to play the peasant who becomes a hero, the untrained natural talent who discovers they are a gifted mage etc.

I don't know about useless, but in Daggerfall after I got real good at the beginning dungeon, I used to design characters as weak as possible to see if I could get them out of the dungeon. That was more possible in Daggerfall than in any TES game since--and it was a lot of fun. I'm willing to try Skyrim's system out, but I feel unsure that it will provide as much fun as previous efforts.

In real life, not every person is naturally gifted in music, or in athletic abilities . . . we all have unique differences, even from a very early age. If you are not athletic, you will never be a professional athlete, no matter how much you practice.

Classes, Birthsigns, and Attributes in previous TES RPGs, gave us the ability to create our own unique STARTING character. This wasn't done as well as it could have been, but it still worked (This could have been fixed just by slowing down the leveling up speed, and by making the Attributes only rarely increase, and by limiting the maximum amount that a skill could increase based that skills governing Attribute).

It is true that in real life we don't get any say in our innate abilities, but one of the coolest parts of a RPG (for me at least) is that I can create the STARTING character that I want to play my game with. Removing the player's ability to pick their character's Class, Birthsign, and Attributes takes a LOT of the fun out of a RPG. There is no longer any unique initial character builds . . . other than cosmetic appearance, and some very small Racial differences, your character is basically a clone. Skyrim doesn't even have ANY gender skill differences (something that was present in the previous TES RPGs).

In the beginning of the game, your character is an advlt, so they would have like 20 years worth of experience . . . presumingly 20 unique years of experience . . . no mater how long you were supposedly in prison. My starting character should have some learned skills, along with her innate abilities (she should be better than average at some things and worse than average at other things).

Todd stated that an average game might last 200 real hours, during which you might level up 50 times (and gain 50 Perks). 200 real hours = 250 game days (based on a 30 Timescale) . . . which is less than 9 months. So my 20-year-old starting character would have no skills, no education, nothing they are good (or bad) at . . . yet during the 9 months of game time that I'm playing the game, they will suddenly be able to excel at any skill that they use. I'm having a LOT of trouble wrapping my brain around that kind of logic.

Arwen, I just wanted to say that there is no one, and I mean no one, that I respect more on these forum than you (well, maybe Rough). I've been following you and your journal since MW first came out. No I'm not a stalker, just a fan.

Anyway that's is exactly how I feel about it also. I just hope that some true defining of character can happen as early as possible in game so as to give some meaning to the characters existence.

From a roleplaying perspective I'm honestly more concerned with who I can become than who I start out as, after all, where am I gonna spend the majority of my gaming experience? in the beginning or the rest of the game?

The beginning is really just that...the beginning.

Oblivion's examples are what's being complained about. The game included attributes, but hardly used them at all in determining what the character could or couldn't do. Your Personality skill only affected prices slightly, since the Speechcraft mini-game was all but independent of both Personality and Speechcraft. In Morrowind, they directly affected the chance of altering an NPC's opinion of you through Taunts, Bribes, Threats, and Admiration. In Morrowind, if your character had a low Alchemy skill or Intelligence, your chances of making a successful potion were lower, as well as weaker if they did succeed. In Oblivion, it was automatic. With spellcasting in Morrowind, at low skill levels you occasionally (too frequently, I'll admit) failed to cast; in Oblivion you couldn't even attempt certain spells at 24 skill, but couldn't fail at 25, and there was really no other significant advantage to 26, 35 or 49 points, until you reached 50 and suddenly unlocked the next "tier". Willpower simply meant "faster magicka regen" and not much else. The loss of meaning to the skills and attributes made them "irrelevant" other than as "on/off" swtiches, so now they're being removed completely in Skyrim. The need is still there, but now Oblivion's mishandling of them is being used as an example of why they're not needed.

Since it appears that all Skyrim characters will start out identically except for appearances, it basically removes any differentiation between characters at the start, and any "backstory". Now, a starting Bosmer will be just as tough as a Nord or Orc. Like so much of the last game, your choices no longer matter, because all of the outcomes are potentially equal. When nothing matters, why play? You end up with a mindless hack & slash game with some pointless and empty RPG trimming to make it look like you've got choices that matter.

To me, having the numbers visible in front of me is a throwback to the "dice" days, and I can do without them. Taking the functional reason for those numbers out of the game takes the "game" out of the game, leaving nothing but a pointless "run around and kill stuff" activity to keep you distracted for a while.

That's hard to say before we get to play, as races have always had differences that were NOT up to the character. Argonians had water breathing. This time around Khajiit get 'claw' damage in melee. Dunmer get fire resistance. These will diferentiate a Bosmer from a Nord. I'm also going to give credit to Bethesda and trust that races may have innate 'perks' that made a Nord able to take or throw a punch better than an Altmer. They have simply replaced stats with perks, and in my eyes as long as its done well, that will work fine.

As has been said, imagination is the key. When you roleplay in a video game, you are both Player and GM. I try to do everything as my character can, working along with the stats. I can do exactly the same thing with perks. Rather than an extra +3/5 strength, my character will actually get more/new skill with their chosen weapon.

Inhenrently, a lot of the stats never made sense. Sure, on a small scale a Nord *can* take a punch better than a Bosmer. But does a dagger slipping between their ribs or a powerful blast of fire somehow do less damage because they have different muscle and toughness? Blades still cut the toughest man - and soldiers suffer burns just as badly as desk jockey. For situations liek the Dunmer, its taken care of with racial traits.

If anything, I find that perks may actually make the roleplaying deeper.

I don;t like doing it all by numbers, I like to do it all in my head, by knowing what my own character can do and building them as such. That won't change with Skyrim.

I learned this after playing a couple of Roleplaying RPGs.

It's fine that you can come up with epic backstories how your character learned and got abilites items and whatnot.
But you know what's better? Actually playing that part...

^^Agreed Bukee.

This isn't from someone who has just played 'teh Oblivi0n'. I own all the Elder Scrolls games but Battlespire, which i'm working on getting. Morrowind is my favorite storywise and character-wise, but Oblivion is my favorite.

I actualy prefer Oblivion for roleplaying to Morrowind, and i'll freely admit that Morrowind had a superior story and did lots of things better, such as not levelling monsters and gear. Being able to interact with the world (sit, ride, shoot targets, slice dummies that react to blows) and NPCs that actually moved and had schedules. They are what help me roleplay, not stats and such, a world that reacts to me. Mods make it utterly fantastic with Vilja and other such things, but even vanilla I would choose Oblivon over Morrowind, because things feel more flowing and natural. From what i'm seeing of Skyrim these things I love are being expanded, while also harkening back to some of the good thngs of Morrowind.

You made some very good points here. One thing I loved about MW was the fact that my characters weapon skill, not my personl skill with a mouse and clicking, determined whether or not my character struck someone in combat. Course the Action Players hated this and it got changed in OB, thus OB became more like an Action RPG. Because of this very thing it took me two years after OB came out before I would buy it. The whole time I was playing MW and loving it, modding it, etc. Once I played OB and got used to it I found it fun, but it never held me like MW and I went on to playing other things after playing it for about 6 months. MW held my PC hostage for many years.

My concern is Skyrim will be more like OB, but even worse. It will be a beautiful and very interactive world I am sure. But I fear that my character in the game will lose much of his or her personality and one character will seem very much like any others I play.

But what does Bethesda care, they will already have my money. <_<

Right now it's not that different, because attributes only affected skills, secondary attributes, and a few bits and pieces. So you can still say "I will focus on skills 1, 2, 3... and I will boost secondary attributes X and Y". It is about as deep as an Oblivion character, except you don't have to think "No I shouldn't put that in my Major Skills or I will level too fast and gimp myself". The difference is that the only bonus you start out with is racial bonus. But once all the perks come out it will all get much more complicated.

The objection is mostly that if you don't have bonuses at the start you can't imagine a backstory for your character before the game. I get it but it doesn't matter much to me.

The only thing i will miss is Birthsigns, but thats about it... Apart from that i feel not much has changed at all... If anything it sounds better.

Thanks LeBurns! I'm hoping that this is something that can be fixed with mods (and I do mean fixed, because for me, a TES game that doesn't have character defining Attributes, Classes, and Birthsigns is broken).

This is NOT about numbers and spreadsheets . . . it is about being able to create the unique character you want to play the game with . . . and with living with those consequences. Rapid Leveling Up and Perk Bonuses should never have replaced Character Builds, where your skills are limited and you improve SLOWLY, This is a HUGE mistake in my opinion . . . and I believe this is going to be Skyrim's biggest complaint (much like Oblivion's Level Scaling).


Sorry, but are apparently not getting this. In previous TES RPGs, the beginning is where you create your character build. This defines who you are, your skills are based on (and should be limited by) your character build. The way that the rest of the game plays out is based on your Character Build (which makes some things more difficult, and others less difficult) . . . this is all based on being able to define characters with inherent strengths and weaknesses.

But with Skyrim, Beth concluded that many gamers were incapable of (or didn't want to have to put any effort into) creating a character build that would work for then. So they just removed the starting character build (along with the defining Attributes, Classes, and Birthsigns). So now there are no limitations on your character (no inherent strengths and weaknesses) . . . you can just play the game without having to think (or having to live with the limitations of your Build). This makes Skyrim a lessor RPG in my book, and I was really hoping that Bethesda would would put the RP back into TES this time.

They took out absolutely zero roleplaying capability. Roleplaying is all in your head. Even in in D&D, where you sit around with about ten pages of character sheets, the numbers aren't your character, what you want your character to be is your character. Case in point, in Oblivion, if you wanted your character to be a battlemage, then you picked up a sword, put on some heavy armor, bought some spells, and you were a battlemage. What class you started out as didn't matter, except for determining you primary skills. It's the same here, except they made it so the example is quite literal. If you want to be a battlemage, well then be a battlemage. Numbers don't matter for roleplaying, only your imagination.

Even in D&D there are rules that shape what you can and can't do, however. There is also the GM who defines the world, enforces the rules, and is the final arbiter of how the story unfolds. With CRPGs, the game itself takes on the role of GM. It is the one who ultimately decides how "fun" your roleplaying experience will be. Go play a tabletop D&D session with a GM, who will never allow you to make an "evil" decision or will FORCE you to follow certain paths and directions that you don't want to go. It ends up being not nearly as fun. A good GM should be able to differentiate between allowing you the free will to do as you please, but actually enforcing certain rules that make the gameworld believable.
If you tell the GM in D&D, "I am going to sneak up behind that guy and slit his throat.".... He will tell you to roll your dice. Even if the GM secretly knows there is NO way you are sneaking up on that elven ranger while you are wearing full plate mail. Just because you can imagine something doesn't necessarily mean you get your way. Rules are there to keep everything somewhat sane. The numbers were there to help define the rules.

I am hoping Skyrim manages to pull it off, I really do.

You see you can count that you are baby when you start the game.. why ? becouse all babies are more or less similar however as your char grows level up you develop unique personality