Its not about separating things for depth, its about things that were removed and never replaced. More is better though, especially since Beth is capable of quality and quantity.

gotta love your logic :celebration: B)

I played a thief. I tried to steal from castles, even the castles that don't have secret entrances. So because Bethesda didn't give me a special vine I can touch to climb over the wall, an access point for thieves like me, I say its bad design. Because there is no logical way to enter the castle to steal from them. In a sandbox game you assume that every building will have many different purposes, not just the purpose of the quest its linked to.
And then that vine in this hypothetical scenario represents a door essentially. Any character can use it, not serving its goal of only letting people qualified of entry in, such as people who have a high agility and would be capable of climbing it or what-not (or an really high strength I suppose). So to make sense for every building, because good sandbox design assumes that someone will try to steal from everywhere or maybe just climb on top to shoot at other people, we should have a special "doorway" into it, or maybe a few. Then you do have an effective sandbox level. But its not an efficient way, it could be handeled far better with climbing. Climbing would relate to every vertical surface, not just special "access points" and it would do the job of restricting access without having to define a parameter onto multiple entryways for every building.

So yeah, it is bad design. Its bad design to have levels designed in a linear fasion in a sandbox world. And Assassins creed is a poor example because its something everyone can do, but not everyone could really do it. Skills are a major part of an RPG, its how you represent how good your character is at something.

Lots of people seem to opposite Daggerfall/Morrowind's approaches, but those people also the ones who don't seem to have any idealized version of the game and just assume whatever is being reduced is for the greater good. So where does the simplifying rational and well-founded skill merging cross the line for you?

I actually like this idea. I'd like this more than having no skills at all.

"Hello daedric dagger, old friend but new aquantince. Soon I shall enjoy rending foes with your mighty blade, but first I must train, your handle is new to me, your edge unique, and your blade is far to cold to my touch. Together we shall train before the days of glory can be achieved, for my ebony dagger holds no surprise to me, but your edge contains mysteries yet unsolved."

I'd play that. That would really make you think about dropping your trusty old companion...

At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, that's a strawman's argument.


It's not very difficult to see why some people would feel that certain skills don't deserve to be removed. There's just no justification for it since it doesn't make the game any more approachable...all it does is remove choice and maybe cut down on production time.

I do have my idealized version of the game. What i think is that the less number to decide how the player plays the better. most things should be player skills driven and a few things that just cant be player skill driven should be skill or roll. for instance sword dammage should be roll (but dammage should change acording to location of hit too). So yeah i think that in a role playing game you are free to play your character how you want and most skills are redundant because they can be replaced by gameplay it self. the ultimate goal would be to see your character progress without having skills at all. this would require alot of time to think about how to do it tho

This is the reason Todd gave for why Class was removed from the character builds (19:15 of the Skyrim interview):

"People would play and the general pattern would be, they played for like three hours and then, ‘oh, I picked the wrong skills, I’m going to start over.' "

Since too many players cannot accept the consequences of their Class choice . . . Class was cut.

To me, this is simplification. You no longer have to give any thought to your character build . . . just play the game . . . thinking is no longer required.

The problem is that some of us REALLY liked this part . . . some of us like to put a LOT of thought into our characters.

and its not hurtin you since all you have to do to play the character idea you have is play like it...

I hope these new age "player skill" people understand the reasoning behind wanting more diffuse weapon skills. Generally when these arguments occur people will go the path of realism and mention how one doesn't handle a dagger the way they do a longsword, but the other reason is so that you can specialize in certain weapon types, and perhaps deliberately remain untrained in others. Daggerfall still did this best by even having "forbidden weapon/armor type" disadvantages you could choose on character creation.

Part of the fun is committing your character to, say, axes and then having your only axe break in the middle of a dungeon with no lootable weapons within grasp except swords. Do you make a run for it? Perhaps you have some fortify scrolls on you that would give you enough time to slash your way out using a sword?

In Skyrim, sure, you can always just use self-restraint and focus on specific weapons, but considering how perks don't seem to offer any actual increased damage or speed (just special effects and gimmicky maneuvers), in the end you're still advancing equally across all weapon types. Maybe I can make enemies bleed by using an axe, but if I found myself in the dungeon scenario described above I could just haphazardly pick up an iron sword and blaze through the dungeon without any sort of acknowledgement of my usually axe-based playstyle. :down:

As Arwen put it, there's basically nothing other than self-restraint keeping you from just randomly changing your playstyle and not having to deal with any (major) consequences. Maybe some people like that, but I myself am the same guy who wants an option to disable Oblivion-style fast travel because just knowing the option of convenience is there gets to me.


It's a good thing I play the Elder Scrolls games for their amazing worlds/freedom first and gameplay second, then. :hehe:

There's no context needed, it's still a pain to read. You can break up quote blocks if you can be arsed to put in a little effort.


You're making it sound like the player was frozen to one spot in combat. You could still move while fighting in Morrowind. Oblivion's combat was not that different, save for the fact it wasn't determined by a dice roll. Literally the only differences were player controlled blocking and the fact if you saw your weapon hit it did some damage.


Dice rolls are not the ultimate evil you know. They are a fundamental game mechanic you cannot completely get rid of if you want ANY aspect of your game to be based on a chance. The term "dice roll" is actually a throwback to old pen and paper RPGs, and in terms of video games isn't even an accurate one. It's simply another way to say "random".

If your character didn't have skills, as much as I love shooting games too, it would basically be Call of Duty. I love playing Halo, but there is no character progression, and without skills you would get just that. Without skills your character would be just as good as anyone else and the only difference would be player skill. And then there would really be no point in making different characters, since 1 character would be equally proficient in everything as everything else...

Skills and Attributes are RPG mechanics designed to show character progression. If you remove RPG mechanics you remove the RPG.

-The combat is easily alot more complex than Morrowind OR Oblivion. (DW, Dragon Shouts, Timed Blocking, Sprint)

-The character RPG complexity seems nearly same as Oblivion's while less simpler than Morrowind's. (This doesn't mean its worse, thanks to a Perk cap now all of your characters won't be the exact same at end-game.)

-The world RPG complexity seems above Morrowind and Oblivion. (Town economy's, Radiant AI,Quest,Story, Cooler dungeons, Not all animals attack, More armor/weps than Oblivion)



To those who think its less complex than Oblivion are grasping for straws. It is probably Simpler than Morrowind though.

This WILL hurt my game play. I don't want my skills to increase automatically . . . I want to be able to decide on which skills increase, and how much each one increases.

How do I play the character I want to play it the ability to nurture her growth is now done by the game?

And PLEASE don't try to tell me that my game play will automatically decide what is best. Because THAT isn't true.

When you play a RPG, you can only use what you have. Sometimes you have to rely on the things that you are not very skilled at, yet that shouldn't make you instantly better with that skill. If I want to be an archer, what happens when I run out of arrows? Then I have to rely on perhaps my short sword. After this happens enough, I'm suddenly better with swords than with bows. That is an issue for me.

Are you sure you played Oblivion or Morrowind, because there it worked the exact same way! You could only raised the skill you actually used! You only picked which skills will add to your overall level, and a small bonus on the beginning.

If you really want classes so bad, play D&D.

2 things.

1 i didnt say that Dice rolls are the ultimate evils in previous posts i said when i want skills and rolls to govern stuff in the game and when i want player skills to do so.

2 the term random is just as bad when you talk about video games because there is no random in informatics. infact the algorithms are often based on the position of your mouse and wicked stuff like the number of miliseconds since the year of 1992 or or stuff like that. there fore the term dice roll is just as fit. and it doesnt confuse ANYONE



@BoredVirulence please read the whole post before taking it as a quotation. its not because you dont know a better solution to current systems that there isnt one. PLUS RPG doesnt mean Mathematic Play Games it only means playing a ROLE this has nothing to do with skills and numbers. on top of that its just stupid to corner a game in a game genre and prevent it from going away from the stupid mold people think is essential to the genre.

Yes, but the criteria for "using" is a lot broader in Skyrim. So basically, I could spend my first fifty hours of gameplay with an iron shortsword and then will more or less be able to handle half of all the melee weapons in the game, because the skills are more generalized. And don't expect perk trees to cover most of that specialization, either - again, lots of the perks seem to be "instant gimmes". You raise your weapon skill from 47 to 48, and then suddenly you can penetrate armor or inflict bleeding wounds whenever you want. But I can still swing every one-handed weapon just fine. I haven't lost out on anything, except possibly a more preferable perk.

way to over react... if your skilled with a bow and not swords, and you have to use a sword for some reason your not instantly goin to be better than your bow skill. and its been said that the higher lvl skills will effect your lvling more than lower lvl skills the higher lvl you are. example if you have 30 bow skill and 5 sword skill, the bow skill will contribute to you lvling faster than the sword skill so essentially you are making your own class while playing instead of picking a simple class.

I just jumped into this thread, but what does Arwen's (in my opinion, valid) point have to do with not playing Oblivion or Morrowind? I think it was also a problem in Daggerfall-Oblivion (Arwen didn't say she didn't, however), but with these new, skill-related perks that steer character development in a permanent direction, the concern grows, and rightfully so. Now, we will be forced to level-up and take a perk based on our skills (of which all now contribute to leveling) that may not reflect our wishes simply because we dared to utilize a skill we're not too interested in on occasion and/or in self-defense. I'm not advocating the return of classes, but I do, albeit maybe in a somewhat different way (I don't know if Arwen is supporting classes or not. As I said, I just jumped in.), share the same concern.

I thought the standard algorithym was to use the time set on the computer, then scramble it until its unrecognizeable?

We aren't saying that Skyrim is less complex than Oblivion, we are talking that TES5 role system is simplified
And perks are NOT attributes, people tend to forget that.

For example
Brink have perks, but it doesn't turn it into an RPG, Brink is still a FPS (by modern standards)
Maybe 10 years ago parks could turn FPS into RPG, but today perks are common in FPS
(otherwise CoD and Battlefield also could be called RPG)
Perks are supposed to spice up RPG system, not replace it.

I find it funny that people want more choices and consequences throughout the game, namely in the MQ, but they dont want it during character creation. Why? Do you have no idea on how you will play and lack faith in Beth that they can make all combat styles more or less equally practical depending on the build? Todd says people had to restart their characters, why? Why not just make a new one and keep the one you already made in case you want to play like that at some point. this is the reason I do everything in the game, multiple times even, but I do it over two dozen or so characters. Now instead of hundreds, or even a thousand or two hours, I get thousands and in some cases thousands upon thousands of hours out of a TES.

Edit: Now I can understand being anol about your character and having to restart becasue you made a mistake (his nose wasnt the way you wanted it. etc.), but Ive always gone into TES games with an idea of the builds I was going to make. Even Arena, but only becasue I was an RPG vet when it came out and pretty much knew how it would work. then again, Arena was more linear than Dagger.

True but in my classes i learned to do wicked algorithms to basicaly increase security. i do have to agree it isnt realy important for single player games tho.
all i wanted to point out was that its not true random. just as its not true dice rolls.


@blackrave and why do we have to stick to old rpg mechanics and not reinvent the wheel?

I feel like the reason you disliked morrowind is the exact reason i liked it....i loved that it didnt tell you where to go and crap like that....dont want my hand to be held the entire way and be pushed in a certain direction

I like to think. I like to powerlevel my character. I like to spend those boring hours in math class counting how many skill increases I'll need in each skill of my class to make the best character. Half of the fun in any roleplaying game wether it be DnD, TES, or another comparable game is planning your character out. I don't want someone telling me what I can and can't do, I don't want the game to be streamlined for seven year olds. Now I'm not trying to say that if you don't put hours into character planning then your are a nubzor, I'm just saying that I love the fact that you can in TES.

Anyways, if none of this makes sense I'm on some painkillers that I can't remember the name of right now... Basically there's no skin on the bottom of my foot.

I really liked how in morrowind there was short blade and longblade. I think if game developers actually tried using or watching weapons being used they would understand why this was such a important skill definition. I'm a nationally ranked fencer and let me tell you, If I went around using my foil like it was a claymore I'd get my ass kicked. If I got in a dagger fight I'd probably be screwed too, because even though I can hit some one in 6 from halfway down the strip doesn't mean I know how to use a different weapon. To say all 'blade weapons' are used the same way is just plain wrong.