Lately I've been looking at this http://www.gameinformer.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer-Components-ImageFileViewer/CommunityServer-Components-SiteFiles-imagefeed-featured-bethesda-elderscrolls-elderscrollsv/SkillsMenu.jpg_2D00_610x0.jpg a lot, and thinking about some things that concerns it.

First, I want to express my feelings on Skills and the possible lack of Attributes.
Judging by that screenshot, one can easily assume that there won't be any kind of subsections for that "Skill Menu" that could describe our stats, attributes, et cetera. Assuming this is a console screenshot, I can't see the buttons that indicate how or where you skip to the next section. There is no "R2" or Right Bumper symbol there to show how to change to the next "page" and stuff. I really believe that attributes are out, but I would love to be proven wrong.

Even though they are out, it seems like the new and revamped skills will work pretty damn good, and probably take on the attributes role in a good way. They seem deep, complex, interesting and really well crafted, especially with the perks, which sounds and looks even better.

The Destruction skill, for instance, has 10 perk nodes in it's constelation, divided into 3 paths, I would assume each path covers Fire, Frost and Lighting effects. With time, a simple fireball might have it's damage increased or speed, or even blast radius, duration of the fire depending on the perks you choose for it's path, what intrigues me most is how some perks can be chosen again to improve it's effect, which really sounds a lot like Diablo 2's skill system, which IMO is the best.

But I have a question, you see, there are these 3 paths, so lets assume we have this on the first path:

-First Node: +10% damage / +15% projectile speed
-Second Node: Adds Area/Splatter effect / +20% Duration
-Third node: Adds the ability to charge the fireball / +5% damage

Yeah, sounds about right, my concern is, those 3 nodes seems like different "levels" to a same general perk (that were mentioned in the "Inside Skyrim's Menu System" article in GI as being similar to the perks in Fallout 3 that could be chosen again to improve it's effect) that being the first node or maybe each of those little "stars" could "level" like, again, Diablo 2. eg:

-First Node (Lvl 1): +10% damage / +15% projectile speed.
-First Node (Lvl 2): Adds 10% damage over the last level / +10% projectile speed.

And it goes on and on until, maybe, 10. For each of those nodes.
Now, I really really wish it works like that, it would make specialization in a single skill much better and open a lot of room for replayability and different builds, even on the same skill! Think of the possibilities, I would love if a dev came here and explained how it truly works. Tell me, how do you think this will work?

Okay, now, moving to the spears possibilities. Once again, based on that screenshot and more specifically, the perks.
Most of the perk trees (constelations) there either have 3, or 4 paths. Implying we have instead of blade/blunt, 1 handed weapons and 2 handed weapons. I can assume that:

1 hand weapon skill will have a perk path for:
-Swords
-Mace
-Axe

the 2 handed weapon would have:
-Claymore
-Warhammer
-2 handed axes (Could be a battle axe and that big long axe that is in the concept art)

These are the same weapon types as in Oblivion. So, 1h gets a 3 path perk tree and 2 handed 3 as well. Now consider the 3 and 4, and say 2 handed skill could have 4. It opens up a new possibility:

-Claymore
-Warhammer
-2 handed axes
-Spears/Halberds or just Polearms

Add this to evidences like, concept art spears, Todd claiming he is aware of the community wanting polearms back and we could assume that there is a great chance of spears.

Now, if you apply the same concept to marksman/ranged skill, you also open more possibilities, a 3 path ranged skill could have:

-Bow
-Crossbow
-Throwing Weapons

Ain't that grand? Sure, just a hopeful post, but damn, how awesome would it be if I were right?
____________________

Now, to finish and sum up my thoughts. The new skill system looks terrific, and it sounds even better, can't wait to get my hands with. If everything I said turned out to be almost true, I would dare say Skyrim could be the best RPG of the decade, or even the best TES ever.

Also, read my whole post or don't post at all. Feedback is appreciated, do you think I am right about the perk working like Diablo system? Or the possibilities of spears and other ranged goodies coming back? Or how skills could easily take on the role of attributes? Do you think like I do? Do you like what I said? Some questions to help with your post.

Thanks.
-Silvade

You spin a positive light on the, "there might not be attributes" and "there are less skills" complaints. That positive feeling is good. I still don't like it, but you make it sound better and I feel a little better. I would prefer more skills, and each skill having many perks, every few levels for instance. Thats clearly not happening. I would also like attributes to play a bigger role, making a bigger change and governing skills more than they did previously. That probably won't happen either.

But miraculously, because of your post, I m not here to complain. I am here to say that you may have made a system that sounds shaky to me sound better than before.
I still don't like it as much as I should, because i feel it should be different, but I like it more than I did before.

So congratz. :celebration:

For a little bit more feedback. I think that, and I have had a lot of thought on it, there should be more weapon skills, each having perks at every few levels.
To bridge the gap between them, a lot of people have argued that, "2 handed weapons are more similar to eachother than they are to 1 handed weapons" and such, we could use attributes. Strength affects damage dealt more in an axe than it does in a shortsword, because shortswords rely more on thrusting than chopping; shortswords tend to rely more on agility. However instead of having that 1 sided X attribute governs Y skills, we could have each attribute affect each skill, but certian attributes govern them more than others.
Strength would cause axes and longswords to do more damage, but they wouldn't affect shortswords as much (still adding damage, but not as much)
Agility would affect the speed of the weapon, more so in lighter weapons than larger weapons.
Etc.
Leveling each weapon skill would raise attributes automatically, and those most important more. So leveling axe would raise strength more than agility.

Long story short, weapons that are more like eachother than others would be benefitted by raising those other skills, such as blunt weapons and axe, because the attributes increased would benefit the other skill a lot.
So the skills that may be related to one another, like blunt weapons and axes, would benefit from eachother through these attributes.
Skills would really just unlock perks and raise attributes with that thinking.
I also think perks should include new power attacks, that are actually cool and useful

But of course we won't see that, thats the opposite of what they are doing.

Thank you!

Yes, I was waiting to come back and explain to all these forums lurkers and members that not everything seems to be lost. There is still hope for much replayability, roleplaying, character developing, etc.

I could write more, explaining what I think of equipment slots or absence of spell making, etc. But it would be too much, the post is already gigantic, I don't want people to sit and spend 30 minutes reading.
They would be bored, I am anxiously waiting for more replies, but it seems like some folks here aren't in the mood for a long talk.

Personally, I'd prefer perks that let you do different things instead of basically.. leveling the same perk for 10 levels. That would make the character pretty one-dimentional. I understand there will be some leveling perks, but I'd prefer if they weren't the majority.

I am one of those forum lurkers who thinks all is lost. (All to me is spellmaking)
But your idea was uplifting.

I edited my first post with an idea I had about weapons and skills a while ago. Its never going to happen, but its my take on what should be.

Sir, I can't thank you enough for actually putting some positive speculation up here on the forums.

Regarding skills, I think that perhaps area of effect and damage should be tied (at least slightly) to skill, not a perk. I've been playing Arena and I'd completely forgotten that the factors of spells in that game are determined primarily by your level, not attributes or anything else of the sort. Antiquated things like, "10 + 20 per level damage" which I think could transition nicely with skills in Skyrim. I'm still not sure what to make of perks - I'm hoping they can be unique, but also gradual enough (as in your example) that character progression is still nice and steady as it was with attributes.

I haven't played Diablo so I don't know how that perk system worked but I'm really optimistic for Skyrim's perks, by the way, have spears and/or throwing weapons been confirmed or was that still speculation

We've seen speers polearms in concept art. But that isn't really confirmation. If anything its a sick joke...

I am sure that most of them won't be "leveling perks" but for those who are, I hope for lots of levels.

Skills like Speechcraft for instance will definately work unlocking and adding stuff instead of modifying stats and such. For instance:

Speechcraft:
-First Path (Barter)

>First Node: Unlocks bartering.
>Second Node: Decreases prices -5% (Can be leveled up to 10 for %50 discount).
>Third Node: Unlocks investing in merchants.

-Second path (Speech)

>First Node: Increases chance of convincing/persuading an NPC. (Can be leveled up to 3)
>Second Node: Enables ability to try a speech test again.

And so it goes for other skills.

Oh come on. You can tell how hard Bethesda's worked to arrange the display for that little video of theirs. The concept art neatly aligned on the wall like a tetris grid, the shiny thumb tacks, the obviously fake fern on the table. The video presumably is only displaying what Bethesda wants us to see, as in things that are making it into the game in some shape or form.

Well they have been seen on concept art (polearms that is). Nothing was mentioned or implied about throwing weapons, this is just speculation of my part.

Although a lot of this kind of feels like it messes with what TES was about.
I mean, instead of skill trees, perk trees?

It kind of feels like a step in the direction of every other RPG i've ever played...

This is sort of what I am hoping for with the perks allowing for more variety within the same skill. Two different characters can have 30 points in One Handed, but since one focused on sword perks and the other on mace related the two characters would play differently. It could add more variety than the 21 skills of Oblivion allowed for. I personally hope that the attributes are there, but hidden making it difficult to play tricks like trying to get +5 in certain attributes by taking skills that have nothing to do with the actual character so you don't accidently level up too soon.

That's basically what I'd want. But why want a simple +10 percent damage for 10 levels.. I mean, that's what the skill increase is supposed to do.

Well, no one can really say what TES is about.

It's an RPG, it follows some RPG tendencies. But isn't perk constelations basically the same as skill trees? And, if something works so well and it's so interesting and fun to use in other RPGs, why not add it to TES, it would only add to what makes this game so awesome.

Change is necessary, and sometimes you can't come up with bright new totally original ideas for some stuff. So it's better to add what is already good in other games to it. It would even attract more people to play it, like someone is a fan of games with skill trees, he will look and say, "OH WAIT, THIS GAME HAS THIS THING LIKE SKILL TREES, I THINK IMAH TRY IT, IT SHOULD BE GOOD".

Just saying thats one thing that made it unique.

You are kinda right on the skill increase stuff. Maybe it might be kinda stupid, but it depends on how well the skill increase is going to work, how it's equations and formulaes are going to work, it would be nice if it was possible explain in game how exactly increasing those numbers on the right side of your skill will change your character.

In Borderlands for instance, it worked extremely well, in addition to the skills you could choose, there was a separate subsection where it showed your skill with each type of weapon, for instance:

Pistol: 8
Shotgun: 34
Sniper Rifle: 2
Machine Gun: 12
[...]

Right next to the bars where it showed the number and the experience left until the next level (50 being the max possible) it showed how increasing this affected your ability. "Oh if you increase your Shotgun skill one more number you get +10% damage and %3 reload speed. And from time to time, depending on which level you were it would change to like +20% damage and +10% accuracy. And so it goes.

In addition to this you had the skill section where you could choose specialized skills to increase a certain thing more often and make it work even better than just simply leveling the weapon skill bar.

So during your Shotgun skill increase, you would eventually reload it faster, but only eventually. So you had the option to take this specialized skill that increased the reload speed in +70% percent.

What I am saying is, make skill bar increasing worthy, to make it actually useful to increase, and use perks to specialize even more and unlock extra abilities.

This is a really cool way of doing it, Beth!

Sounds like a cool way of doing it.

Thanks!

Anyone else? I would appreciate more posts.

(Shameless sneaky thread bumping but anyway...)

You might be on to something Silvade. Not every constellation is going to have the same number of stars per se so your system could work just as stated.

If there's three/constellation the weapon skills could still be something like this though:

Slashing - Swords/Claymores
Bludgeoning - Maces/War Hammers
Piercing - Dagger/Spear

Axes will certainly have their own specific perks but they can fit into broad categories however the dev team decides they'd like it. I didn't list them because I'm not going to speculate on where they'll be this time around.

Yeah, I still think it could be done other ways.
But we aren't seeing it other ways, this is probably the best implementation of the system we have heard about.
Except maybe more perks that do cooler things.

So to clarify, yes I like it.

Even if this ends up being even vaguely like what you're describing, this could be very good for skills. I mean having the perks at all is an improvement, without factoring anything else in. 180 ways to customize your skills. Over twice what we had before. We've only lost 3 skills, so mysticism, blade/blunt have become one, and either barter or athletics/acrobatics? If the spells in mysticism have been redistributed, and either barter has been folded into speechcraft, or athletics/acrobatics has become one, that's not bad at all. All of those lost skills effects will be simulated by perks, with perks in each skill to spare. Blade/blunt has become one-handed, but that's not really bad because the perks will make you specialize, and eventually you will be better at certain weapons than others. You will be able to swing most one-handed weapons, but you will kick butt with one or two. Concentrating on the skills alone, without factoring in other issues like attributes, this looks win/win.

There are options there, that I don't think we're really thinking about. Alchemy, with 10 perks. Block, with 10 perks. et cetera...

Thank you for this thread Silvade, you have me thinking.

Yes I know, but I was making an assumption based on that image, where every constelation shown there has either 3 or 4 paths, of course some might have just 2 paths. Or some could have even 5 paths. Or some could have only 5 stars, while other could have 15 stars (nodes).

Your example is also pretty interesting, though I would prefer to have it the way I described, not that I don't like yours, but it kinda "limits" the uses of, for instance, a dagger or a sword.
I can still pierce with a sword, and still slash with a dagger. You know what I mean? A more generalized way would be having each of the paths for their type of weapon, sword would emcompass short swords, long swords and even katanas, as for it being basically a sword...

Very good ideas Silvade, I ike very much.