NOTE: this thread is in response to the class debate and is more or less based around the PAST games, not specifically Skyrim and Skyrim only.


Ok, so I've been basically lurking around here watching all the topics go by, and I got particularly interested in the classes issue today. So I thought I'd give my own responses to some common arguments against them that I saw. Sure I could go post in those topics (note that the ones I've been looking at are a little old) but due to this boards rate of posting, so to speak, it would likely get drowned out and pretty much go unheard. Plus, its a big post, so why not give it its own topic.

But anyway..

#1 - Defining yourself as you go

So, the basic argument here is that, when starting the game, you are forced to decide what you're character 'can' and 'cannot' do. You are forced to take up a class and decide on what skills you want to use for the rest of the game, when for most players who haven't already been through this situation a hundred times (as is the common thing for ES players to do) you don't even know if you'll end up using those skills or if they'll even be useful mid to end game, or even at all. Subsequent playthroughs more or less dissolve the problem but for those who use this argument the problem for them is still there.

Now, my response to this is that people who think like this have missed something very big about character creation. Character creation is not meant as a mechanic with which to limit your character with, but to give them a boost in a range of skills that you select, which due to the fact that all characters start out as advlts, we can reason to be that set of skills we spent our lives up until that point training, which comes to form our class.

Our characters start out with a significant portion of their lives already passed and unless you're trying to play a character that starts out as a simpleton who has all skills at level 5 (which is what Skyrim seems to be doing, but the same effect could have been had by the simple option of "No Class" and then letting us define our class as we go, giving us the option to change class names at will) , then you're naturally going to have a specific set of skills trained up until that point where you the player take control, and as such defining your class in the beginning not only serves a significant roleplaying (where was your character going? What did he do, why did he do it, for who or for what? Etc) and realism (even simpletons have some sort of skill) purpose, but also for gameplay purposes with the aforementioned boost mechanic.

In pure gameplay the class means nothing more than a simple boost in skills you think you will most likely use throughout the course of that character so that you don't have to spend time getting them up to such levels. And if you decide that you want to drop Long Blade and go for Blunt, but you only selected Long Blade as a Major Skill, then not all is lost. You simply sit and train blunt up to a comparable level to your Long Blade skill. The same thing is going to happen in Skyrim, but now we only have two (stupid) weapon skills. If you want to forgo one handed weapons for two handed weapons after having already maxed one handers you're going to fall in the same boat as if you decided on the same thing in Oblivion or Morrowind.

No matter what, you will always spend the same amount of time getting the skills you want to use up to usable levels whether theres a class system in place or not. So, I think, this issue of 'defining yourself as you go >> defining yourself in the beginning" is really just missing the point of the class system in the first place as no matter what the same amount of time is spent if you decide to use different skills compared to what you started out with. Truly, the only real problem with the class system is that it is fixed in the name area. And this is a simple matter of allowing Class Name/Descriptions to be changed at will.

The same arguments here can also be said about Birthsigns. True though it is that you shouldn't be able to change that at will, and thus this creates a problem of having a useless birthsign for your character, this issue can be more or less avoided by the fact that there are plenty of generic and less class specific birthsigns to choose which can benefit any character as equal as possible if you're one to be changing what skills you want to use on one character.

This brings us to another common issue:

#2 The Stat Grind


Now, the argument I sometimes see here is that the class system exacerbates the issue of the "stat grind", where a player tends to be overly focused on making their character be the best possible thing ever by end-game so that they don't die in five seconds. The reasons should be obvious as to players who worry about such things, choosing the right Majors and Minors can either spell disaster or bliss.

This issue was most apparent in Oblivion, due to its terrible level scaling, among other things, and was only slightly an issue in Morrowind. However, on the assumption that level scaling is fixed (as it rightfully should be), then the only problem that persists is the issue of health. Non-warriors, or at least those players who do not bother to train endurance to max as early as possible, have a very high possibility of being gimped out of having high health due to how the health system works.

But the thing is, non-warriors by tradition don't need to have high health to cope with taking damage. Mages have multiple abilities at their disposal, including the ability to raise health to astronomical levels, to deal with damage and stealth characters generally are not supposed to even get hit, having put the time that could have been spent on being able to absorb damage on avoiding even being hit altogether. And melee characters obviously deal with damage by just absorbing it. And even disregarding that, those players that still want to have high health for their character (even though they may be some scrawny mage or thief or whatever) can still just train an endurance skill (or skills) up early alongside their other skills. And if you decide not to do so (and on the assumption that you knew better. Newer players should naturally fall into this issue once or twice) then thats your own fault. You should have other methods of dealing with damage at this point and if you don't, too bad, because you probably tried creating a character that shouldn't even be fighting anyway.

Now, Skyrim's answer to this issue is by allowing you to just raise health up directly regardless of what skills you train. And not only is this massively unrealistic but its also removes a fairly core gameplay mechanic for no good reason at all other than to appease the great mass of players who all yelled "HEY BETH OBLIVION svck SFIX IT ASDRHA;ESRHAESIRASDRIAESNF;ASDIHF1". Problem is, they fixed the wrong thing. In Morrowind, I hardly ever worried about grinding out my health stat except when I was taking on monsters which were naturally out of my powers to defeat anyway. Even on higher difficulties I only worried about it ever so slightly and even then I wasn't obsesssing over it. I felt no need to max Endurance by level 10 or some such nonsense. But in Oblivion, I most certainly had to because by level 20 monsters were going to start hitting harder than I could to them, and if I didn't have Endurance already maxed 10 levels ago I was pretty much screwed. Even on characters which I reasoned didn't really need health to such a great degree had to worry about it, which is sad, as I shouldn't have to worry about maxing Heavy Armor with my Thief.

The problem here was level scaling and a great lack of other methods of dealing with damage. Not the health system.

But those are the two issues I thought I'd give my 2 cents on.

I also want to point out that the player character was doing something before they were imprisoned, namely cross into Skyrim and -then- captured.

one can elicit a plethorum of trades a person would be, from merchant, refugee, merc, healer etc etc all of these illicite a past and a personal trade

I personally do not buy the start as blank slate bit and there is only so much a player should "conjure" up as far as RP goes that wont even be reflected in the game.
Be anyone do anything eh.

It prevents you RPing anything you want as backstory? Well yes, all TES, ALL RPGs did that. You cannot RP anything you want in the first place.

Also classes did NOT allow you to build game start according to whatever backstory you wanted. You were still limited to building a mediocre barely dabbling with corresponding skills barely above the average.

If Classes didn't come with any limitations, why did so many players feel like they had to start the game over after they discovered that they had made a "bad" character build?

So really it's no different if you start of as a blank slate again, for the third game in a row, with Skyrim. Just use your imagination to pretend you were a certain build before the game began if thats how you want to RP it,

At the beginning of Morrowind, you are a blank slate too (until you turn in your "papers"), and at the beginning of Oblivion it's the same thing, you are a blank slate until most of the way through the starter dungeon. Hell, at the beginning of Morrowind you don't even have a race until you get off the boat. So really it's no different if you start of as a blank slate again, for the third game in a row, with Skyrim. Just use your imagination to pretend you were a certain build before the game began if thats how you want to RP it,

Try to actually have fun and use your imagination!

"Character creation is not meant as a mechanic with which to limit your character with, but to give them a boost in a range of skills that you select, . . ."

When skyrim was announced the forum was filled with threads of people worrying if the restriction to classes would still be part of the game and now it is the lack of restriction to classes that they are whining about. Seriously... people are gonna complain no matter what BGS does.

@ AQ Except tag skills is basically the class system without the ability to add a class name and description. Which is what I'm advocating.

I don't want the old "major skills are the only skills that level you up" nor the relatively large skill boosts from the old systems. I'm perfectly fine with those being gone. What I do want is to be able to say, in game, that I'm officially a "Dragon Slayer" or "Epic Sorcerer" with a nice little description text. I could care less if classes have any affect on gameplay or not so long as I get my UI for it.

Again, not everyone likes to leave such things up to the imagination.



Way to go on not reading the topic. This isn't a topic about whining.

I don't want the old "major skills are the only skills that level you up" nor the relatively large skill boosts from the old systems. I'm perfectly fine with those being gone. What I do want is to be able to say, in game, that I'm officially a "Dragon Slayer" or "Epic Sorcerer" with a nice little description text. I could care less if classes have any affect on gameplay or not so long as I get my UI for it.

@ AQ Except tag skills is basically the class system without the ability to add a class name and description. Which is what I'm advocating.

I don't want the old "major skills are the only skills that level you up" nor the relatively large skill boosts from the old systems. I'm perfectly fine with those being gone. What I do want is to be able to say, in game, that I'm officially a "Dragon Slayer" or "Epic Sorcerer" with a nice little description text. I could care less if classes have any affect on gameplay or not so long as I get my UI for it.

Again, not everyone likes to leave such things up to the imagination.



Way to go on not reading the topic. This isn't a topic about whining.

So basically you want Bethesda to spend time developing features and user interface elements that do practically nothing of note in the game except existing? And how can you RP an Epic Sorcerer when you start with such a low magic skill you can hardly fry a mudcrab with your spells in the first place? You are not an Epic Sorcerer, you are a random guy that will maybe become an Epic Sorcerer somewhat later.

Congratulations! You are now a [insert class here]!

Classes restrict a character to a set of skills instead of choosing skills you want the character to have.

The statement at the end of your argument made no sense to me because why is it 'wrong' for me to want a mage who is hardier and more athletic at the expense of magicka. All magi should not be hardy or physically fit?

ZzAr.:hu,

I very much disagree with your statement that
Ideally character builds should not just result in a boost of some skills . . . it should result in a reduction of other skills. In my opinion, the best character build system in a RPG is one that allows you to create a character with inherent strengths and weaknesses . . . not just strengths (because that unbalances the gameplay).

Unbalanced against what? In a multiplayer game you may need to balance classes against each other but in a single player game the only balancing is between the character and his environment. I see no reason to impose weaknesses on him that limits his ability to deal with aspects of that environment on the bases of profession in a single player game since he isn't exactly able enlist the aid of others with different specializations. The game world is built for a single character to explore, so that character should have access to the tools he needs to do so.

As long as the quests and adventures are fun, challenging and not too easy then what more 'balance' is needed? It seems to me more likely that balance would be threatened not so much by the lack of weaknesses as by overpowered strengths ... being too deadly at combat, for example. I don't see how a class system serves to provide balance in a single player game. Classes seem most useful to me in distinguishing character roles in a multiplayer game.

The player character is always given a huge advantage over the majority of the NPCs.

Actually, no, TES has never prevented you from RPing anything you want as a backstory, and many times the only limitations to RPing were just the circumstances you had to come up with to explain why you're in the custody of the Empire (or in the case of Daggerfall, working for the Empire). And mods made it possible to remove that one, tiny limitation.

Skyrim, on the other hand, forces the fact that we are simpletons from the get go. Which is not good for RPing. Yes, there will be mods, and cheats will soothe those who want to use them, but the fact of the matter is mods are never counted in on an actual game review. Mods can fix everything a player may find wrong with the game but the game will always be objectively judged on how it works out of the box (or how it works after mountains of patches, but even then). And because of that, Skyrim is always going to be the RPG that forces us to start out as simpletons.

My only issue is that everyone starts the same right off the bat. Nothing separates your character from mine in the first 20 minutes after the first dungeon.
Similar to fallout.

But meh, it's all the same

How so , could I not say that my Dunmer was a Freedom Fighter who then fled for fear of being perecuted and was arrested in Skyrim.