The skills aren't superfluous they allow you to vary your character strengths for different playthroughs. Replacing them with universal perks just encourages minmaxing like nothing else and is dumbing down the whole skill system where instead of playing the character you want the way you want, you're just playing to unlock the next perk. Beth will either do the fallout method again and we'll have half a dozen useless perks or they'll do the mmo method and we'll have a grindy adventure of +1% chance of a critical hit on weapon perks. Or hey maybe they'll just stop kidding themselves and bring out the UAV, AC-130 and attack dogs.

To talk briefly about what we are all looking for in a traditional rpg is nearly impossible. But I will sum up my personal conclusions without another wall of text.

In the early days you had rpgs with little sprites you could barely make out were some kind of humanoid walking around an "overworld" getting into unseen random battles and fighting other sprites who had a set amound of "HP" or a number that, when reaching zero, meant it died. Why did we make a game like this? Was it because we thoroughly enjoyed number crunching? The short answer is no. We played our games this way because of the limitations involved in making a game that you could actually play. What we really wanted was a cool game where you could get measurably more powerful in an enriched fanciful version of reality (fact: level 4 is bigger than 3, therefor it's better and measurably more powerful). What we had to sacrifice to do this at the time (starting with table games like D&D) was the detail work of combat. Instead of trying to work out a large complex number system (which actually some games have done in the past) and trying to figure out what an attack on somebody's arm meant, or leg, or head or how the battle would have gone in a sea of detail minutia, we invented one overall value called your "Health" or "Health Points" and your character "Attacked" that pool of health until it was gone. Our imagination made up for the rest of the details of how the battle went (hence why you could even "miss" an apparent attack at all).

Or did it? I have seen a strange bastard child rise out of this HP and Attack formula that doesn't seem to be aware of its origins at all. It's almost like the idea of HP/MP and just bland statistics are holding rpg gamers in a trance and they need to be slapped to get out of it. We never wanted a system of numbers. We only like "levels" because they are a way to measure increased strength and ability. The reality is, if we had the technology and resources we would create a believable world with a believable battle system that was not reliant on a visible number system. Visible numbers substitute an otherwise impossible way to measure an increase in an avatar's skill through use. We want this to feel as much like real life as possible, while still granting us measurable success and power. To illustrate: If you are watching a movie like Lord of The Rings, a well written fantasy realm where power is tangible and battle with evil is more physical than spiritual, would you not notice if say Legolas fired an arrow straight through an Urikhai's head and he simply didn't die? Better yet, wouldn't you notice if that particular Orc walked about completely unfazed (because his HP isn't zero yet, it's still 5) and then after he is sliced by a dagger on his bottom left calf he keeled over and died, wouldn't you snap out of your 'suspense of disbelief' trance and say "that is stupid, this movie isn't realistic at all". Of course you would! You know it. Well we are at this point in video games, especially starting in games like Oblivion, where we really need to start shedding our outer shell of numbers and embrace a more realistic approach to the suspense of disbelief. I'm not saying visible numbers won't play a role, but I am saying that a greater effort needs to be done to incorporate realistic game-play with a measurable increase in power, balancing the two out until the day we can shed the visible number system some believe to be the crux of the genre.

Take the common rpg classes and look at the most successful rpg games today. You will find that there is the "warrior" the "mage" and the "rogue". For a game designer interested in making money and willing to use a proven system will try their best at balancing each class type and allowing each class to have their own forte and piano attributes. In a progressively realistic rpg we run into some problems with this right away, and you can see some of the balancing difficulties in a modern game like Oblivion. One problem is keeping your audience (like me) in a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief while balancing the damage done by different weapons used by different classes of attacker. It is common for game designers to make sure that a bow and arrow user is not inherently more powerful than a warrior, or else the people cry "imbalance".
But what is the reality? Sorry to say this, but using distance to attack your enemy is always going to be preferable. That's why you see the evolution of weapons like it is today. Police are not carrying around light sabres, but actually guns and plastic sticks. A Jedi and sword user may be a romantic (pun intended) way of fighting, but it isn't the evolution of fighting. My point? A warrior needs to encompass the real benefit of using a bow and a sword. If you can shoot your enemy in the head with an arrow before he can see you that will always be preferable. Close confrontation isn't as preferable. The sword is used in battle because in a real war close confrontation was often unavoidable, and the sword's durability for repeated use was needed. You can kill many enemies with a single sword, but only one with an arrow. However, arrows were used. In the rpg world it is not uncommon to see game designers foofoo the bow and arrow system to make sure the warrior-sword class isn't seen as an inferior option, when it actually is (for small fights, which is what every rpg to date is based on). This bleeds over into other areas too, and you often see unrealistic "damage" systems in place for every conceivable weapon type (long/short swords, knives, axes, warhammers, heavy/light armor etc). In the old world the Roman army was an incredible fighting machine, and they used a select amount of weapons. Fanciful options were for show and often used by Gladiators and not in real world application (hence why I laugh everytime I see a "bandit" running at me, when I have a bow, with a giant 'war-hammer'. Maybe better luck in the next life?).

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. ... -Albert Einstein

The question, "Complexity, but how?" can be answered by taking a look at the reality around you. Reality, that is apart from our own contraptions and machinations, is in many ways "simple". Think about what you need to live. You need to eat food, sleep and breath. Eating the right food is not hard, it's simple. But is that the end of the matter? Eating and digesting complex proteins is really a very wonderfully complex matter, not to mention the way the body uses this fuel to manifest new living cells and replace old ones. Everywhere we look in life things always get more complicated the more we look into them. There is a saying that some have, "the ignorant have deceived themselves into believing they know much about a matter, it's those who understand that admit they know very little". The point I am trying to make is essentially what Einstein said, and reality has a wonderful way of being supremely complicated and yet executed in its simplest form.

In a videogame the goal should be just that, to have a simple concept, something that is implemented to feel natural, yet if we wanted to know more or use an element in a more complicated way we could find and do exactly that.

For example you could have sword-fighting as a game element. If you are a casual player who plays a few hours here and there you will not want to open up your skill statistics and see 15 different kind of sword skills each with a set of leveling and possibilities. It's just too overwhelming! Instead having one skill that says: Sword-Fighting, knowing that it well represents your ability to use a sword is very satisfying. But what about those of us who are more interested in immersion? What if we want to be able to use a dagger more proficiently? What if we like katanas or long-swords? Well how does this work in the real world... If you are to become a swordsman you might start out learning some basic physics to swords. Even though there are many kinds of swords, the physics behind them is relatively the same. When you start out you know almost nothing about swords, and in a sense it would be like that casual gamer looking at his one skill "Sword-Fighting". Now lets say you want to advance your sword-fighting abilities and train under somebody else. You would probably do research and learn about other sword-fighting styles.

Which brings me to my next point, that rpg game developers seem to be on a 'dumb down' mission so their games are more accessible to a larger audience. But what exactly needs to be dumbed down? If you wanted to take basic sword-fighting classes in your hometown and had no interest in advancing because it's just a hobby they wouldn't need to stop all advanced sword fighting knowledge and implementation around the world on your account! And if you wanted to learn better fighting skills you would probably need to find and relocate yourself to train under the appropriate master. The same can be true for games. They can have a core set of simple rules in place that govern all your statistics, but if you are the 'hard-core' gamer and want to increase your skill in long-swords etc. it would be possible! There would be a sub-skill under the main element "Sword-Fighting" that you could find and train. But only if your looking for it! Just like in real life. You usually don't stumble upon a sword master at market, or a master iron worker at town and one thing led to another and you have an apprenticeship in their trades.

There should be the 'gloss' of simple understanding that does not need to go any further if one does not want to in games, yet have all the elements role-play gamer craves when he sits down to play. Deep leveling system and skill-trees. The ability to customize your character and plan out your avatars future as if he were the body of your soul, the complexity in place like it is in real life without detracting from the simplicity of normal gameplay.

You wouldn't have a giant sheet of statistics initially for the player to look at and get overwhelmed with. Just like reality often eases us into a greater understanding of the universe as we make progress from birth to old age, things should start out very simple and continue to get deeper and complex.

-snip-

While the loss of skills seems like a negative at first, the addition of a comprehensive perk list is going to more than make up for it.

The skills aren't superfluous they allow you to vary your character strengths for different playthroughs. Replacing them with universal perks just encourages minmaxing like nothing else and is dumbing down the whole skill system where instead of playing the character you want the way you want, you're just playing to unlock the next perk. Beth will either do the fallout method again and we'll have half a dozen useless perks or they'll do the mmo method and we'll have a grindy adventure of +1% chance of a critical hit on weapon perks. Or hey maybe they'll just stop kidding themselves and bring out the UAV, AC-130 and attack dogs.

I'm probably being too much of a traditionalist here, but I don't like reducing the number of skills, partly because I feel like having several different skills would actually work BETTER with the system of leveling and class design they're using now, because you don't have to just pick 7 or 10 specific skills, so there would be room for a few weapons skills and acrobatics and such, if you really wanted. But I'm not too against it; I'm excited to see how Bethesda will pull this off. And I love the idea of perks/skill specialization as a way to make develop one's character, and it will probably make the system deeper overall. I just hope specialization will be interesting, and not like "x% more fire spell damage." Also I kind of hope to see something like a "cosmic" specialization path in Alteration with a lot of Mysticism abilities =).

Truth be told, I don't think Bethesda will fail to please many new players, and many returning players. But I can't help but shake the feeling that this 'stream-lining' is to appease those who thought learning the complexities of each skill were 'too complicated', and making a character exceptionally proficient 'too tedious'. I see a dangerous trend towards appeasing the lowest common denominator, and in doing so, a shift away from the game's core.

I suppose it would only make sense for me to begin the discussion. As I stated in the previous thread, I think the new perks system has excellent potential, however, I do not appreciate the loss of skills, just as I disliked it in Oblivion. I feel a wiser solution would have been to fix skills which could be considered broken, rather than gut them entirely, simplify them into a perk or combine them into existing, functional skills.

Please, share your thoughts as well.

But only one skill was actually removed from Morrowind to Oblivion and that would be spears. The rest were merged into other skills that made more sense or they were put somewhere else in the game (enchanting) People see that the game had 6 less skills than Morrowind when in reality, you only truly lost one skill. Now however, Daggerfall to Morrowind was a real loss in skills, we lost 10 skills. No one, at least that I can remember, really harped on the loss of those skills because most of them needed to be gone or merged into other skills or just be inherent in the game (swimming for instance) In Skyrim, you actually not losing any skills at all, they are all being merged into another. Also, with the new leveling system, for all we know, 18 skills could be like 50 skills in Morrowind and Oblivion.

I'd like to point one thing out:

Oblivion itself had its own first attempt at a perk system when you leveled up skills to multiples of 20 and it gave you specific treats, though it was automatic. I think it's a nice catch if you think in retrospective and relate it with Skyrim now, despite the Fallout influence.

I think it was healthy in the sense that those benefits were felt very accomplishing to get, because the game itself gifted them to you and felt like something special.
When the game does this and it's not all "you choose" it feels like something out of the ordinary and packs an extra wow.

But only one skill was actually removed from Morrowind to Oblivion and that would be spears. The rest were merged into other skills that made more sense or they were put somewhere else in the game (enchanting) People see that the game had 6 less skills than Morrowind when in reality, you only truly lost one skill. Now however, Daggerfall to Morrowind was a real loss in skills, we lost 10 skills. No one, at least that I can remember, really harped on the loss of those skills because most of them needed to be gone or merged into other skills or just be inherent in the game (swimming for instance) In Skyrim, you actually not losing any skills at all, they are all being merged into another. Also, with the new leveling system, for all we know, 18 skills could be like 50 skills in Morrowind and Oblivion.