Indeed. In fact all the skills should be removed altogether, to make way for a more playerdriven combat. Just have perks have special abilities - that aren't necessary. That would make a fine RPG, fit for the audience of today. Lots of money for Beth to create another fine game.

Well intelligence affects your maximum magicka, which is something we'll be able to boost at level up, but things like magicka regeneration rate or magic resistance are harder to do with just skills...

let's say there's no attributes, then. let's just ASSUME, despite the lack of evidence for or against this, that they removed attributes.

strength no longer impacts how much damage you do with a weapon. instead, weapons are given a set damage range, and your weapon skill handles how fast an attack is. perks would further influence specific weapon proficiencies - picking, for instance, a longsword proficiency perk would increase your ability to handle longswords, and possibly give them a damage bonus, but wouldn't affect daggers or maces.

endurance has always been pretty much useless. you choose how much of a health or stamina bonus you want when leveling up.

agility and speed are superfluous and could have been combined into one attribute a long time ago. an athletics skill could impact speed, rather than randomly choosing to be faster when you level up even though you spent that entire level throwing fireballs at a wall. you run more, you can run faster. additionally, you could pick perks to further customize this.

intelligence and willpower are both pretty much useless. you pick how much of a magicka boost you want when you level up.

personality is pretty useless too, and i don't think luck ever actually did anything.

basically the way i'm seeing this is perks operate roughly halfway between how they did in Fallout and how they did in Oblivion - you can get weapon spec perks and stat bonuses and stuff and you can also choose to unlock different POWER ATTACKS and stuff. dual-wielding sounds like it'd be a specialization too.

if they did remove attributes, i'm very happy they did, because i'm interested in seeing how they'll handle it. more numbers doesn't make a game more complex if half of those numbers could've been compressed into other numbers a long time ago because they don't do anything on their own. virtually everything attributes handled could've been handled through skills - this is just one step further away from traditional RPG norms.

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magicka regeneration could be affected by rebalanced birthsigns or by perks related to the specific schools of magic.



your sarcasm's getting pretty boring, bro.

The perks will allow for far more unique characters.

I have reserved my judgment until we get more information. Really, whatever decisions and changes they have implemented need to be seen as they could be a huge leap forward, or a step backward.

Anyone can answer, of course. :tops:

I really want to see a discussion about what it really means to have/to lose attributes in the game. It's something we've been used to in the series (and in many other RPGs) so our initial reaction is one of loss. I want to move beyond that initial reaction and really dig deep about the possible consequences of such a change.

Can it possibly result in a better, more immersive game experience? I don't know. When I told my friend about the news, he was very excited. He thought attributes in Oblivion and Morrowind took away from his ability to suspend disbelief and immerse himself in the world. It made him spend time crunching numbers instead of exploring.

Assuming they don't [censored] it up and end up with crap perks like Oblivion or Fallout 3.

As for attributes: Encumbrance would need to be tied to SOMETHING, and what about magicka regen? Would it directly be tied to your magicka (which you boost when you level up, based on choice)? Max magicka seems to be entirely decided by the player on level up (as mentioned in the article, your health raises then you get a choice of raising health, stamina, or magicka). Encumbrance might be tied to stamina. What about player movement speed? Tied to athletics?

There's a lot of problems I'm starting to see, mainly one of consistency. In past TES games, pretty much every derived attribute was formed entirely of attributes, but if there are no attributes and derived attributes are indeed formed as I mentioned, that separates them between too many factors.

Thank you for being rational.

This. From what I've seen, everything's become more passive, and a bit invisible. Good or bad, I can't say, but something's going down with this one.

By removing the attributes (if so) does it mean the player starts the game always as a dumb weakling? Do we start the game at birth? or there will be just differences between races in the begining?

Indeed, indeed.


I am interested to see what they do, in general. We can find evidence to support almost any theory while poking holes in all others with that 6 page spread. Yes, it could be a perk and skill system. It could also be a perk, skill, attribute system. It could also be hungry hungry hippo's for all we know, being once again hoodwinked by Bethesda press releases. I would prefer that Attributes become more useful alongside the perks that we have heard about, not through them. The whole discussion is about the cutting of things where the reduction of everything is not immediately necessary.

There is no need to brow beat everyone to think otherwise.


Would characters again be more unique if perks were avalible alongside attributes, or do attributes instantly turn character creating into mush?

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I think attributes contributed enough in the past games that they should remain. The main issue with attributes has been the multipliers upon leveling up, however the rest has been fairly solid. With some modifications (to justify them with what we know of the leveling system) I think Attributes could still have a meaningful impact beyond perks. And to start on that difference, perks are unique things that my character will learn or specialize in. They augment the skills. They do not replace the skills. Nor replace the attributes, nor did they in Fallout 3. GCD is a good example of how attributes should be handled. The Attribute raises as the skills raise, no calculated multiplier.

Stamina can still be figured based off of its former components, however it does not grow exponentially. It receives linear gains upon leveling up, upon the selected leveling bonus, and upon an increase in a corresponding attribute. Nothing is overly exploitable, nothing is entirely restrictive. And this same set up can exist for Mana and Health.

Now for what the Attributes do (along with reasons they seemed broken in OB):
Encumbrance (attribute multipliers for strength)
Health (Multipliers, and an exponential effect)
Fatigue
Recoil
Mana (multipliers)
Mana regen (multipliers)
Spell resistance (Will) (small effect)
Movement Speed
Initial disposition of NPC's

If you disagree on any of these let me know.

That is quite a few effects that would be changed into perks along with the leveling system.
I think a better fit is to keep the attributes and those effects while using perks for more creative ends.

You could calculate those things based on an average of your skills in the schools of magic.

More nifty ideas on how this could be done... Instead (or maybe in addition to) just a straight racial skill addition (IE: Dunmer = Destruction, Blade, Archery, Light Armor +5, etc) to signify racial affinities, the skill advancement rate gets a bonus for that race. Then also add in some manner of http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FighterMageThief (like "choose two, or choose one twice for extra boost"), which then also adds more skill advancement rate boost. Get ten skill boosts of any skill (no more major/minor/misc skills), and BOOM, level up. The game calculates Attribute boosts based on your skill-ups this level, then calculates how much of a boost each of the Three Vitals would get based on associated stats. Then you choose your perk and be on your way.

That would punish masters of certain schools, which is totally ridiculous, since a master of anything magical is sure to have amazing maximum magicka and magicka regeneration.

Or you could base it on the highest school. Or both, whichever gives the higher stat. Or simply based on the magicka you gain at level ups + perks.

There are so many ways to do it without involving attributes and the whole 5x multiplier debacle.

I think that may be too specialized - with the attributes, they were diffuse enough that your character's racial bonuses usually would affect at least one or two of your major skills. What you're suggesting effectively reminds me of the transition from Civilization IV to Civ 5, wherein they somehow decided that Bismarck's awesome ability to convert Barbarians could prove a more interesting factor into strategy than the leader traits of previous installments.

Finished the edit, but I will again say that a call do the attributes does not imply a call to the level-up-attribute-multipliers.

Ideally attributes would grow as their respective skills grew.

If attributes are gone, then I look forward to seeing the new system implemented. I won't really have an opinion on whether or not they should be brought back until I have much more information (probably when I play the game ). That being said, I doubt that they would be completely removed.

A way they were useful:

Well attributes used to govern how high their associated skills could get. They limited you from being overpowered too early and had to work for it. Or was that just a restriction on trainers...

this has always been my ideal evolution of the system. being able to choose your attributes on leveling up but not being able to choose your skills has always struck me as kind of silly - it makes more sense to have attributes directly influenced by skill (and vice versa, to a degree).

i'd like for this to be the case, though in a perfect world they'd abolish levels entirely (though now that they're incorporating perks it seems like leveling will at least be more interesting). if they did choose to drop attributes, though, i won't mourn their loss, and i am excited to see where it leads.

Let's say there will be attributes.

Strength will handle the damage potential (of given range) of the weapon and proficiency to use it at all. Do not meet the requirements, do not use the weapon (or use it, but at very inefficient way), the ability to not lift a weapon resulting in the inability to use it at all. It will also handle carryweight, more dialog options.

Endurance. The oveerall base health and stamina. Also determining the rate of the encumbarance effect and the efficiency to forge objects. A good Endurance would help you to sprint longer and recover more quickly from the loss of Stamina, more dialog options.

Agility. Makes you move faster, both running and using a weapon (if STR req is met, the effect will be more dramatic). It also governs your ability to stay hidden (a stat check bonus with pickpocketing and sneaking), and the ability to use more powerful bows (if req not met, a more ineffect usage of a bow resulting in accuracyloss and complete inability of using said bow). Also, factors in efficiency of picking locks (giving a bonus for lockpicking if the req is met), more dialog options.

Intelligence, the ability to use more advanced spells (with thresholds), more dialog options, more "skillpoints" in raising healt/magica/stamina at levelup, higher potential of learning from books, more dialog options.

Willpower. More magica, a bonus for stamina, more dialog options, the ability to create more potions/food/magical items, a higher ability to enchant and reload enchantments.

Personality. Bigger chances of getting a discount, determines to reaction modifier, a bonus to persuasive talk, a bonus in intimidative talk, a bonus on just getting more options on dialog.

Luck. Determines critical hit chance, factors in every chancebased activity.

For a quick example.

If they did apply attributes in somewhat that way (which they admittedly won't) I'd be very happy.

this doesn't really make sense. it would be better to split it over the relevant attributes (higher strength meaning more of a health boost, higher endurance meaning more of a stamina boost).

i'm cool with everything else, though.



why does everybody always assume the worst? i'm seeing this everywhere. everyone's going "BETHESDA IS INCOMPETENT, WHY ARE THEY DOING THESE THINGS THEY CAN'T PULL THIS OFF PROPERLY" and it's like...how do you know this? how much experience do you have with Bethesda games to assume they don't know how to handle a dramatic overhaul of their own skill system?

Removing attributes also affect the existence of some Birthsigns: the Lady, the Steed, etc. Some of them will need to boost skills now or just be removed entirely.

This is true, but I think it would (in this particular case) take too much weight from Intelligence.



Call it a hunch.

All seriousness aside, right now, the Hype is doing the talking and people are forming possibilities accrording to it. Many do so by expecting the lowest possible outcome (which is the best way to not get disappointed in the end), and some just don't trust in Beth (two disappointments in a row, the latter worse that the former, are enough to "dis the trust") from previous experience. In my eyes, they are a company that tries too hard to please everyone and in the end they end up with medicore product (Oblivion, Fallout 3) which leaves the core audience (Morrowind/earlier TES and Fallout 1 and 2 fans) cold. With all the exciting info there is, I'm expecting Skyrim to be a medicore hack&slash with little to no RPG depth from chatacter build or story. I hope they will prove me wrong.

if they are not there im guessing they are just hidden and when you level up they level up with you according to what skills you increased.