I'm pretty content with how they're handling the situation. Most of the hours upon hours of games I've played have been RPG's, but the class system in Oblivion really affected how I played it. I'd roll something simple at first, say, a heavily armored combat type. Since I had no previous experience with the series, I picked what I thought I'd like at the very beginning. Eventually (around level 7 or so), I got completely bored of it. Hit, block, hit, block. I had not picked any skills that were proficient at healing, so I always felt underpowered and that I made the wrong choices.

Pretty soon, I rolled another character. A Nord with a mix of Blade, Destruction, and Restoration for combat skills. I loved him, and leveled him the farthest in my journeys in Cyrodiil.

If I wasn't so lucky to get the right combo on the second try, I might have quit Elder Scrolls forever. The point is, that first stage shouldn't happen. I don't want any new players in the game to get as discouraged as I once was.

I'm sure BGS knows what they are doing. Like mostly every poster on these forums, I'd hate to see Skyrim become another Dragon Age or Mass Effect. Telling from what we've seen, I see my Skyrim disc making a home in my Xbox for a loooooooooooong time. :happy:

I hope you are right about that (the tagging 3 skills). It would go some way towards making beginning characters feel different (not far enough but it'd be something).
The quick levelling point is fair enough but I like my characters to feel individual from the get go.

Agreed.



This is exactly what I was thinking.

God forbid that a game punishes players for making bad choices.

"removing confusion"? Really unfortunate choice of wording. Hope it doesn't mean they are making it for who I will be in 10-20 years (senile, I'm 66). I'm not senile yet, would like a game for an advlt of sound mind. Have played Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion--didn't find them "confusing".

People should remember that videogames are still a business. And in that regard, the casual majority will always be catered to more than the hardcoe minority. Playing as long as I have, I've simply come to expect this to permeate in all games sooner or later.

I am okay with removing the classes as a decision at the beginning, but I still think they should be in, only they should be passive. Basically they would just be titles given to you based on your current skill levels.

So if you've raised skills X, Y and Z, and fuzzy logic says all those skills are closest to what an Assassin would have, you would be listed as an Assassin class in your profile. If you started learning other skills, eventually you might drift closer to another class and your title would change accordingly.

This would be an easy way to define the "classes" of NPCs as well; just give them the appropriate skill levels and voila, they are automatically that class.

At its most simple: It's nice to be able to give a name to what type of character you've been playing for 200+ hours

Oblivion...confused people? Who are these mysterious and reclusive individuals? I thought they were only a bogeyman created by the forums to foment hatred towards different parts of the fanbase!

I thought that was what the faction titles were for. It seems more meaningful to me to get a title based on what you've done in the game.

That's exactly what should happen. I think the controversy is all about character definition. This way the classes feel more defined while still being flexible.

Reminds me of a fleshed out system of Baurus's guess on your class. xD

I honestly don't understand why people call it dumbing down. It's a smart solution to a problem that Bethesda deemed an issue (one I agree with).

I personally like progressing my character in any RPG, and with the new system it sounds like he'll be more defined the more I play, instead of at the beginning of the game. The higher the level, the more my character's personality shows through.

And really, it's the same system as before with a new way presenting the information to you. Now it's cleaner and doesn't rely on you making any mistakes 5 mins into the game.

When they've made it a point to remove classes from the game and most of their talk centers around the "three main archetypes", yes. It is that far-fetched.

You just went off on me for "spreading misinformation", but you're going to make a completely unfounded claim about the possibility of tagged skills? The whole reason for removing classes was to prevent people from making the wrong character choices. Skill selection at character creation makes it possible for people to make the wrong character choices.

I really, really don't care how fast the leveling system is. It completely fails to address character distinctions at the beginning of the game. If the problem with the former system was that every character ended up identical, the problem with this one is clearly that every character starts identical. Beyond that, it was possible to remain distinct in Morrowind/Oblivion if you intentionally gimped yourself and didn't go for x5 attribute multipliers. The same is not true here, there is no level of self control that will not produce non-distinct characters at creation.

Being accessible (I hate that word being used in this context, it is accessible) to a "broader" audience is not good in my opinion. Eventually you'll have a Splinter Cell Conviction (or Resident Evil, or Silent Hill, etc...) on your hands in an attempt to appeal to a wider, diverse crowd that wants fast paced action over the core contents which were slow and steady. Also, Oblivion and MW weren't "complex" in the sense that it caused confusion, rather complex in the sense that they had many parts operating in the game to make it concise to an extent. However, the point of RPGing is to have a plan laid out for your character before playing, not jumping in thinking, "oh dis lookz guud", then picking that. Rather, say, I want to play a mage, so you pick classes according to that play style, and if people previously played Elder Scrolls games they would not have a problem picking certain classes because they would know how each and every skill operates, and if you did not play the previous Elder Scrolls games there is this thing they send with the game called a manual.

And taking out Hand-to-Hand because it was too complex is a valid reason, Todd? Seriously? Sounds more dumb than reasonable and more backwards than progressive. If anything, hand-to-hand combat should have been improved upon like adding in kicking. There is a mod out there that did just that, yet Bethesda believes it is too "complex" in appeal. You have got to be kidding me.

Well I liked the classes. I just liked them. I want to be Joe the Fighter, or Bob the Healer, or Grom the Barbarian. I like that.

And I like replaying the game. I play a warrior type, see some cool things I could have done as a rogue, so I start up a rogue character next. The class just kinda defined my character. When I look back at all the characters I played in MW and OB I think of Zeeya the Thief, Cylede the Witch, Oramac the Scout, and etc. Now with Skyrim it will be "That was Joe, the one that killed dragons, oh and then there was Dan, who also killed dragons, and don't forget Larry, who ... well he also killed dragons". I mean forget it. I want classes and I want my characters path defined at the begining of the game. If I wanted my characters to all start with the same clean slate then they should have had them start as a six year old and grow up learning something.

No classes, I am not pleased. Sorry Skyrim but I believe this is a fail for RPG'ers.

If you found Oblivion too confusing, maybe you shouldn't be playing RPGs. :facepalm:

Oh look, another terrible excuse by Todd. I used to love you, Todd . . . But now you're just acting silly.

The new system isn't stopping you from deciding who your character is from Character Creation, they're minimizing the potential mistakes for those who don't plan their characters out. The ones who do plan out (I'm one of them) typically have in mind what type of character they're playing even before they drop numbers into an arbitrary box that tells you what you already knew.

BGS seems to work by iteration, I suspect they had the OB system in place and changed it. If it stayed, then that means the team likes how it currently works.

Believe it or not I had the well pleasure or maybe displeasure depending on how you look at it of meeting one such person. This person claimed morrowwind was less confusing then oblivion and they certainly played it longer. At which point most of the people in the room disagreed with him :flamethrower: but there are such people that find it that way. I myself can't understand why anyone would say oblivion was a poor sequel to MW I found it quite fun and not at all controlling storyline wise (granted for the longest time i would not go out into the wilds with my first mage character for fear of opening a bliviongate: ) I found it quite fun the only thing I missed from the previous game was the sheer amount of books in MW. I don't think the size was particularly bigger because in MW you simply had to walk everywhere where as in OB you just had to fast travel.

Slimming it down can be a very good thing so long as its done right which contrary to most people's opinion is done right several times. Most of the time I think they just missed what other people saw as fun and only focused on the faults and not the perks.

THe new system will limit the godlike characters of the past and provide a more skilled/master character in a few areas; at the same time the godlike feeling comes from dragon shouts.

I am still trying to figure out which areas to focus in on becuase with the perks you only get one shot and that is it - no re-selection

My thoughts exactly.
What's wrong with reading the manual for a minute before you get started?
Or, if your stubborn/brave and willing to dive right in, discovery of the world and its mechanisms can be one of TES' most entertaining aspects.

I worry Skyrim will be too violent for the younger audience they seem to be trying to cater to (I certainly wouldn't let my 6 year old son play it). It will be too simple for me to enjoy (late 20s).
What is left besides the Die-hard TES fans, late teens button-mashers, and the few young kids with parents willing to buy it and not check the age rating.

I'm going to be taking a pass on Skyrim until I see some favorable reviews.

Skill selection at start isn't as permanent as the effects from class selection or birthsigns since you can always level up skills so I'm still hopeful you might get to make some choices at character creation. Only hopeful though, not convinced. Mostly I'm happy or can live with the changes Bethesda has made since Oblivion but I think they have really lost the ball with the blank slate approach to character creation. It won't kill the game for me but its a definite minus.

Well said. Now I'm all for better documenting how games work. For example, I think there would be a lot less animosity towards Morrowind's combat system if the game screamed at you during character creation "AGILITY IS IMPORTANT DAMNIT AND YES YOU ACTUALLY NEED FATIGUE IN THIS GAME IF YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO HIT THINGS". Because that kind of went over peoples' heads and then they were complaining about how they couldn't punch mudcrabs.

I love planning my character in advance and sticking with my intended playstyle - but since Skyrim is more or less focused on the three primary archetypes your axe-wielding barbarian could segue over to using daggers and still be just as proficient in killing things. They may as well not ship a manual with Skyrim (have they made any mention of one?) because the game pretty much seems to tell you everything through the skills screen. A shame, I need more toilet reading material. :spotted owl:

Why Bethesda can't simply leave that added complexity there for people who want to use it is beyond me. Oh right, because then we would end up with a game like http://i681.photobucket.com/albums/vv175/Proditus/Unnecessary.jpg.

Still, I don't know how somebody could get "confused" in Oblivion. Many a character has been overtaken by level scaled enemies by not training the proper skills as the level up, yes, but that is more of a design flaw in the game itself than the game being "complicated".

But if the point is that classes (an assortment of skills) were not clear in how they would play out, then skill selection (even if it doesn't lock you into those skills) will still start a character with higher skill levels in things they may end up not liking. If I make a character and tag One-Handed Weapons, but find myself mostly using Two-Handed, it is still better for me to simply start a new character. That way my real preference starts higher from the beginning rather than awkwardly shifting gears part way through the game.

It's more Beth's excuses that I have problems with. There's no consistency to them.

I got to go with one of comment of this article
"People were confused by Oblivion? Good God..."

No really, unless you can't read this game was easy to understand.

Damn, even in TES3 it took me ~15min to understand game mechanics (playing TES for 1st time and 2nd RPG at all- and that was without playable tutorial like in TES4)

So if if such game as TES4 at the age 15-17 brings you trouble, then I don't think that not understanding RPGs (that are generally more complex games) is your biggest problem
I don't think that creating game for "special" people (or ones close to it) is the best idea in game development.
Not trying to insult anyone, just stating obvious facts.

I didn't find Oblivion confusing, I just found it boring - and went back to Morrowind. However, that said, I completely agree with removing initial classes, and classes in general - and not for the reasons I think most people think.

The whole point of a role playing game is to play a role. TES games specifically start you out as a nobody, which I think is brilliant, but then (up till now) you had to choose a class. This made you no longer a nobody, but a professional. I would much prefer a system where you just enter the world with your name, race, and gender (Skyrim), and start doing things. Some actions work for you, others don't. The ones that get you what you want, you keep doing, and the game rewards you by upping your skill level in those. The actions that don't work for you, for whatever reason, you don't keep doing. They simply don't develop (though I would really like to see some skill atrophy for skills you rarely use)

By the end of the game, you simply ARE a certain class. If you spend the game hacking and slashing, odds are decent that you will be a fighter. If you cast spells the whole game, you are a mage, etc.

From that perspective, I think Skyrim could not only get it right, but do so better than any other TES game we've played.