Why not? Assuming the Elf starts with a low blade skill, and the Orc starts with a bonus to it, the Elf has had to work harder to be as effective as the Orc. If they both have the same number of fights behind them, the Orc now has a higher skill, and hits harder. Starting a Redguard or Orc with higher weapon skills has the same effect, regarding the damage they deal, as saying these races are stronger

What? Wisdom attribute?...mana attribute?...

I'm guessing you're talking about willpower. However willpower didn't add resistance to magicka in OB, only in MW to Paralyze and Silence (I believe) but even then it's not really a necessary feature.

and so did the strength attribute. systems that have more than one source of stat manipulation are far better suited than systems rely on one source because your then stuck only playing the game one way to get certain benefits. and thats fine if you play pure character types, mages, warriors, thiefs, but if you want to mix it up its super difficult or not possible if you only have one skill or perk that modifies damage for a weapon type or that improves any other specific stat.

i'm seriously getting sick of this dumb statement.
as if morrowind or oblivion actually had a complicated leveling system. i knew they are rpg's, so at no point did i ever say while i was playing morrowind, "oh this game is great because it has such a ridiculous amount of number crunching in the background", because what do you expect from an rpg? i actually found its system pretty simple. AND I WAS NINE.

fast foward EIGHT years to skyrim (eight years that bethesda, a company that makes role playing games (you know, like the kind of game where you have a system of character progression and open-worldness) has had to learn and improve upon their mistakes) and there is even more number crunching is going on in the background, and you are trying to tell me that they are actually taking AWAY from the game?

they took away some skills, but trying to teach people like you the concept of perks and "what is good for the game" is like teaching quantum theory to a hamster.

can't you see that bethesda is adding a great amount of depth and functionality to and already robust system for a role playing game?

and if you are really pretentious enough as to think that bethesda who has been loyal to its fanbase for 16 years is going mainstream, i would question why you are on this forum. and i would question you the same if you are so nostalgic about morrowind that you want skyrim to fail.

^ what he said.

Take out Acrobatics and luck if you want to remove something, maybe even athletics. But the other attributes helped define your individual style.

Well, Oblivion made you use more of your intelligence so it was smarted up (TM of Sleign) and Skyrim is also smarted up (TM of Sleign). Also, your right, the old system was proven...proven to be inefficient and mostly useless in the scheme of the game. Athletics and Acrobatics did not help whatsoever to finish the game and was just an unrealistic gimmick to make yourself jump ridiculously high and run faster than a horse. The attributes system had several pretty lackluster attributes *cough* Personality *cough* and all the useful ones all had to do with (and this is going to be a shock) Health, stamina (fatigue) and Magicka. The only two things that aren't accounted for (at least from the info we have, I'm sure Bethesda already has it accounted for a finished) is how encumbrance and magicka regen works.



But that's the thing, that's not how it works. There are many perks for each skill and it seems like we have individual weapon skills still. That means a myriad of sources of extra damage. Strength was a pathetic source of damage anyhow, now we have multiple sources with unique effects, like making the enemy bleed for damage over time. Strength didn't do that :pinch:

Yet this does not in turn make what has been said false.

Truth is independant from belief. Regarless of what you beleive about something it is eaither true or it is false. Just claiming that if could be a lie because of shadowy marketing doesn't make it in fact it a lie.

Bethesda seems to me to be fairly upfront about their game desighn they aim big and they admit that sometimes they fail with a system, but i hardly think they are lying about their goals and their features.

Not really, it should be your skills more then anything. A muscular nord can be all powerful but he's crap if he can't swing a sword. You may get lucky and he'll hit for damage but more often then not he'll miss.

This.

:facepalm: actually willpower in OB did affect resistence to magicka, it modified your chances of successfully asorbing, reflecting, or resisting magic damage if you had one of those enchantment affects applied to your character. so if you were a orc your chances for resisting spell damage was higher if your will power was higher, just because it never came right out and said that doesn't mean it did not.

its easy to say attributes had no purpose if you don't know all the behind the scene applications they had. every attribute affected nearly every aspect of the game, thats fact.

its not simplified its purified

I like the skill points for swords etc and agree there. I am saying they should work in unison and not rely on sword skill points alone for damage. Or rely on raising the "health" attribute to increase damage. That is not intuitive, and doesn't make it easier in my opinion.

Being really strong is no good if your opponent is more skilled with a blade than you are. Your extra strong super attack could just be side stepped, or perhaps you could be feinted into attacking, and then you over reach yourself, and your extra strong powerful swing leaves you unbalanced and vunerable??




Again, being extra strong really won't help you (unless it's a sledge hammer and the other guy can't pick it up) if your opponent is a lot more skilled that you are. You can hit as hard as you like but it's not too hard to just deflect a blow, or just dodge one, provided you know what you're doing.



But why does using an club and getting really strong suddenly make you a better swordsman?? A club wielding brute will have not have the finesse required to be an expert swordsman. With perks you get to choose that if you've spent a lot of time using clubs, then you can make clubs even better. But you won't be able to suddenly be a master swordsman.



You can't dismiss the skill of hitting a target so easily. Of course it doesn't matter if a blade master or a novice stabs a guy in the heart, but will a novice ever get to the point of stabbing someone in the heart (short of sneaking up on them) if they are very clumsy with the sword?? In a small battle like there is in TES, the pure strength of the swordsman won't have a lot of effect. Especially considering that with a strength of zero you can still wield the heaviest weapons in the game. So a strength of zero doesn't mean you're insanely week, it just means you're quite a bit weaker than your enemy,

Really wrong. Your skills help define your style. Attributes were just a chore I needed to improve in artificial ways, End first because you HAVE to train End first to get high HP. Then Str because I want to be better with that weapon? Not at all, Str bonuses were tiny compared to skill bonuses. Str I wanted to improve to carry more. And then Int to get higher Magicka reserves. I actually was making hundreds of potions from potatoes and the like (is that even alchemy? Looks like cooking for me) just so that I could cast more fireballs without having to rest and use a potions. Wait, was I realyl improving my potion making skill so that I'd need to use fewer potions in the end? Looks like it.

explore your options...i have changed race and changed class many times....also your sign makes a difference...i have been pilgram, crusader, all that...i prefer what i am best at...and when you find that spot you will be happy...i know alot of people that play and the character they like is awesome even though i would have no part of it...cause we all have preferrences and talents that fit us just right...that is why this game is so cool, cause it gives us nearly all the options we need for a character...if something isn't working explore your options that you want...not what others suggest...i like spells and power, and there are many options that i took advantage of to create the character that is awesome....they made it that way cause they are awesome

Yet you can easily replace them with Health, Magicka, Stamina, and a skill perk system.

Strength merged with Weapon Skills One Handed, Two Handed
Intelligence is merged with Magicka
Willpower is merged with Stamina
Agility is merged with Archery/Stamina
Speed is probably at a set amount like FO3
Endurance is merged with Health
Personality can be merged with Speechcraft
Luck is useless and can merged wtih other perks

The attributes can easily be replaced and aren't as important as the skills that you use.

Wow. So how is increasing your skill to do damage and then buying a perk to do increased damage only one source of stat manipulation? Seriously? You are only focusing on one aspect to teh exclusion of all else and crying foul yet we know there are far more has been added. We have perks the create interdenpeancies between various statistics of the character creating a rich and complex relationship between the characters various statistics to achieve a desired effect. hardly one source manipulation

One of the things I loved about Morrowind and Oblivion was that your character's development was almost entirely determined by your actions. In Skyrim it seems your character will be defined largely by the choices you make at level up. To me that seems like a significant shift towards a more conventional levelling system and i'm not sure yet whether I like it. I think it will result in a better balanced game but I am concerned that a lot of subtleties of character development will be lost in the process.

Although 280 sounds like a lot of perks I don't think number of choices equates to complexity. A lot will depend on how the perk system is implemented and how interconnected the skill and perk requirements are with each other.

well I cant say much more than thats completely false, the old system worked (it was not perfect) but thats why we should improved instead of rehashed, besides the new system is designed to do exactly what the old did only minus the attributes todd litereally says this in his own words (the devs feel that attributes were a middleman, which is a mistaken thought) so saying the attribute system is inefficient and mostly useless is saying the same about the new system.

there is no written stone objective to TES, that is one of their selling points is that the game is not about "finishing" the game, its about an open world that supports as many play styles that they can possbly fit into the game. you may not have preffered the playstyles the acrobatics and athletics used but other people did, just because its not what you like doesn't mean it should be exiled from the series forever.

Ok then, if we're going off of what Howard has told us and what we know as of this very moment, Willpower has been 'trickled' into magic and should apply the same effects willpower has assuming you perk into it. What is the dilemma here?

No it did not.



http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Attributes

I think it might have been meant to, but somewhere along the way it got broken.

If by "worked" you mean it was an annoying chore asking you to keep track of every single skill increase, self preventing your usage of your important skills until you've trained some minor skill you never intend to use in the game so that you get the best multipliers and even going so far as to NOT pick as major skills all the skills you want to use to optimise your stat growth, then yeah it the old system worked.

Myself, I'd MUCH rather get Daggerfall attribute increase system or no attributes at all.

and yet again we have to explain the problems this will cause if you play any non tank type character that uses one handed weapons. by that list my thief would have the same character design as an battle axe wielding berserk. that makes rp'ing very complicated.



ladies and gentlemen I present you a perfect example of Sophostry, Gothfather took my words and twisted them into a context that was opposite of what I intended to make my point seem invalid if you only look at his post.

If I wanted to resist magic with willpower and did not want to increase magic damage. So I would point willpower every now and then and leave my dumb intelligence alone.

So now to get some effect of magic resistence, I need to increase the general magic/mana attribute. Where is the decentralization and more delineated choices?

Key phrase And according to UESP "Although there is a loading screen hint that claims "A high Willpower allows you to defend against magical attacks," no evidence has been found from gameplay to support this claim. It may be a residual message from earlier Elder Scrolls games, in which Willpower provided resistance to effects such as paralyze and silence" so you're wrong....