There's two attributes on the list that we just don't need, both for different reasons.

The first one is Luck. Not that luck shouldn't be a factor for your character, but as an attribute it is completely ridiculous. You can raise your luck when you level up by a point or two, but the change is so subtle that it ends up being worthless unless you get a large change. Take it off the attribute list where it is at a scale of 1-100, and put it in the character creation on a scale of 1-10. With ten stages of luck, the benefits of higher luck and disadvantages of lower luck are much more apparent. Then you can choose how high or low it will be, and it will affect your skills just like before. There should be a penalty in distribution of advantages/disadvantages though because without that, everyone would take a luck of ten.

Attributes leveling is already goofily disjointed from skill leveling. What, we level our skills by using them, but we're using the ancient broken attribute system of leveling where we pick any damn thing? What's the [censored] point? You level up the attributes as you use the skills governing them, because that's the obvious correct thing to do. This means luck needs to be pulled out of it anyway, because it's already separated from the skills.

Then there's Speed. Speed will be a tougher nut to crack for some people, but let me give you quick dictionary.com definitions of speed and agility.




So which is the definition of which? Exactly. In terms of the way the game uses the word (not mental agility or something like that) they're the same darn thing. They're wasting slots even trying to fit something into those. What did they do in previous games?

Daggerfall speed skills: Running, Dodging
Morrowind speed skills: Athletics, Hand to Hand, Short Blade, Unarmored
Oblivion speed skills: Athletics, Acrobatics, Light Armor

The only skill to appear twice in that category in the whole TES series is Athletics, which is about the same as running. Athletics, the skill that lets you run with less fatigue drain. Hell, it's the speed attribute which lets you move faster. The skill athletics gives you the very definition of ENDURANCE!

If you didn't get a connection just now, use this one; Make Athletics affect your run speed or swim speed, not a speed attribute. Endurance will determine how long you can make these runs, though they shouldn't be stingy on the run lengths. The other skills under speed like Dodging, Hand to Hand, Light Armor, and so on deserved to be in different categories anyway. Speed has become the waste basket of the attribute list, there's barely a reason for any of the skills to be included with it anyway. I'm willing to bet the only reason Light Armor was included in Oblivion was because they ran out of ideas for a speed skill.

Don't get some idea that I want a reduction of skills, I've got plenty of things to fill the remaining attributes list with, and I'm sure you do too. Don't tell me you want to keep the speed attribute out of some flailing nostalgia for a time when the speed Attribute also didn't make sense, fight for this failing trash bin and explain what there is to save. What's the use of having it when the skillset lineup for it is historically weak, and it's a wannabe Agility that doesn't get play? Why keep it?

I agree with you whole heartedly.

I think people will disagree with you solely because you are suggesting to remove things from the game.

I agree, especially concerning Luck.

i thought i was going to have to put my flame face on here.


you raise a very valid point


speed is different from endurance though, a marathon runner could be much slower than a sprinter, yet the sprinter could fail at keeping a pace for a period of time- but maybe that should be agility? but then again- are fantastic acrobats sprinters?

Yep, unneeded. Nix the both!

Thanks for the replies folks!

I agree, I was meaning that they were mishandling athletics in the previous TES games. They should reform athletics to cover your run speed, and the attribute endurance should determine how long you can run or sprint with your athletics skills. It seemed like a better fit than the current arrangement, as long as they aren't stingy about how far you can run with athletics.

Yes.

Bethesda doesn't emphasize optimizing their role playing game's rules system, for some reason. Taking away skills is about all they've done. Which is weird, when you consider you're playing a role playing game which is 16 ish years old.

Either look to another series for a rule system, or start over from Daggerfall.

I don't see any problems with your suggestion. I doubt they'd get rid of luck though. I can see them doing the whole S.P.E.C.I.A.L thing from fallout.

Actually just had a quick look, that's what you're saying. If we keep luck, and change perception to willpower and charisma to personality (S.W.E.P.I.A.L) that would be your suggestion.

I think the attribute system in TES has always been a bit wonky. I'd prefer something a bit simpler. In terms of Physical Attributes you really only need Strength, Endurance and Agility. Really these three attribute archetypes could be used for the rest of the attributes, Intelligence would be the magical/spiritual version of Strength, and Willpower would be like Endurance. If broken out that way you would need to have three attributes each for Physical, Magical and Social attributes, and that would require a complete reworking of the skill sets.

I'd keep Luck though. It is not a useless attribute, it just hasn't really been put to good use.

I'm still not convinced they should be removed, especially speed.

They surely don't hurt the game by being in there, do they?

I've never felt that leveling was bad or wonky or whatever you guys are saying it is. It was just that way in Oblivion because of the amazing level scaling that took place.

3 for Social seems a but much. And I am a bit curious how the third magicka attribute would play out.


Could you give examples for these?



[2] The [op] idea sounds great, and a good push towards a needed skill overhaul.

Yeah, after thinking about it for a few minutes I realized that this is Bethesda were talking about. They make great games overall, but they have never put too much focus on social interaction.

We have Charisma, which is how much people like you, but that's it. What about our ability to read other people, Street-Smarts if you will. Wouldn't it be nice to know that an NPC is lying to you or trying to rip you off some how? How about just general powers of observation, Perception, how well you are aware of the world around you. So much focus has been put on physical and magical combat, what about social combat, bartering, arguing, interrogation, these are contests of personalities.

Lets say you have to convince an NPC to do something they don't want to do. There could be a health meter of sorts for both you and them, making salient points and raising your disposition reduces their resistance to your suggestion until the bar reaches zero and they agree. Make losing arguments and you'll never convince them, you may even lose all the really good dialouge options and be reduced to name calling.

But your right, unless great effort is put into the social interractions then anything more than (perhaps including) Charisma is too much.

Indeed I do. Stop it, now.

Agility has been misnamed from the start, it's the governing attribute for skills that require Dexterity (in fact, that's the translation in the localized German version). There is no redundancy between Speed and Agility.
Removing Luck is just ridiculous.

First...I completely agree that the Attribute leveling system is screwed...why should we pick which Attributes to level when they should directly be affected by the Skills used that are governed by them.

The thing with Luck is that to get any kind of bonus from it you have to take it as a Main Attribute, and then raise it every level. I think it should be removed from the skill list and replaced in other ways. There should be birthsigns that give you a luck bonus. Maybe doing religious quests would increase your Luck (divine intervention) or any other number of ways.

The Speed/Agility thing is harder to solve. The way I see it, Speed is running speed, Agility is reaction time/flexibility. But there are many areas where they overlap, and there's no reason why Agility could also determine running speed.

I'd prefer to keep luck, but if they get rid of speed, that's fine.

Okay, that makes sense. You are right, I don't think Beth will get to extensive in that arena just yet, but gauging 3-4 skills per attribute there could be quite an addition.

I never did understand the luck skill. It raises the slowest in the game (since you can not get a multiplier), and it also contributes the least. It doesn't make sense that one can "raise" one's luck, unless you got enchanted items that did such a thing.

I completely agree on the Speed attribute as well. Its been a garbage dump stat for the longest time, and it seems to clash with athletics, rather than accentuate it.

Quite valid points with the two attributes.

I always thought luck was lacking, you never felt instant satisfaction when you raised it, and it had a vague effect on your overall character.

I always suggested replacing it with "Sight" or "Insight" attributes, and some skills can be visibly affected by a sight attribute, like perception, or archery, and the like.

As for speed, I always had problem with the skills that were attached to it, and I completely agree with what you sat about it.

I think we can have a dexterity attribute, and the skill of athletics, or running depends on that and affects running speed and fatigue on the ground.

Athletics or swimming affect the swimming speed, fatigue, and the amount of breath under water.

Dodging affect you defense mechanism when fighting, and so on...

I'm not too sure about removing speed, but I can agree on removing luck, you present a good argument for removing it, but I've always felt it should be gone simply because luck should not be a character attribute at all. It makes no sense to have it as an attribute, all the other attributes in the series represent the physical and mental abilities of a character. Strength is pretty obvious, it's how strong you are, endurance is your ability to put up with physical stress, agility allows for more agile movement, and speed, while you present arguments for removing it, still does represent a physical ability of your character. As for mental attributes, we have intelligence, showing how smart you are, willpower, which I think of as something like the mental equivalent of endurance, and personality is your ability to interact with other people. All of these things represent some mental or physical attribute of your character, but luck does not represent either. It's an abstract concept that describes whether things seemingly determined by random chance work out in a way that benefits you or not. When you say you're lucky or have good luck, it means that things you have no control over go well for you, when you say you have bad luck, then things have not been going well for you. If you win the lottery, than you'll probably say you have good luck, whereas if your dog gets hit by a car, a meteor falls on your house while you're at work and destroys it, you get fired for no apparent reason, and then it rains while you're stuck outside with no umbrella too, you'll probably say you've had bad luck. Now, it may be that not all events you would attribute to luck are completely random and there are unseen factors that made things work out the way they did, but this is not something you can readily measure, and it's certainly not something you can improve with training, neither is it one of your physical or mental abilities, so why should luck appear on the same list of attributes as strength, agility or intelligence? And logic aside, your right, since you can never raie luck more than one point at a time, I often feel it's just not worth bothering to increase it while gaining levels, after all, the benefit of one point of luck on any given factor is negligable compared to raising another attribute by even one point, and even if you don't bother trying to maximize attribute modifiers, you can generally expect to be able to gain at least two points in a number of attributes each level.

I have to admit it's a little surprising that the response to this thread is not more negative than it is, though. Because one often gets the impression that the very idea of removing things from the series is seen as a bad thing, regardless of what kind of effect the removal would have on the series. I guess it shows that not everyone opposes this sort of idea just for the sake of opposing, which is a good thing.



I would say that using such a system would be a bad idea as it would encourage players to grind skills their character should not need even more than the current system does. Because the current system often makes players raise minor skills a lot to gain the highest attribute modifiers possible, skills governed by endurance in particular often suffer from this because that attribute determines how much health you get, and while only characters who use magic need lots of magicka, everyone can benefit from having a lot of health, added to that, health increases every level based on how much endurance you have, and the benefit is not retroactive. Thus, not only is it wise for every character to raise endurance, it's wise to do it as much as possible, as quickly as possible, but at least with the current system, you can still raise attributes governing skills you did not use much or at all during that level, they'll just raise slowly. If you entirely remove the choice of which attributes to raise, you just make an already flawed system more broken by forcing players to use skills governed by whatever attribute they want to raise, no matter what kind of character they're playing. Which might not be so much of a problem if Bethesda can create a system where it is both viable and beneficial for players to put the focus of their character development on the attributes that their particular character type needs most, but I'm not confident that Bethesda could accomplish that, but even if they could, I still wouldn't want them to make such a system, as I LIKE being able to choose how my character advances, and I WANT to do so to be as simple as choosing to raise a certain attribute upon leveling up, needing to do it in a roundabout fashion by instead leveling the skills that are governed by the attributes I want to raise serves only to make it needlessly complex and ensure that players have less control over how their characters progress. Really, I'm not even sure if attribute modifiers are a good idea. They seem to make sense in theory, but in practice, the only thing they've done is to discourage role-playing. I'd say the skill-based leveling should stay, but that doesn't mean skills need to effect raising attributes. Other RPGs seem to do just fine with attribute increases being completely independent from skill increases.

Wouldn't Speed affect raw sprinting? The ability to get from point A to point B ~quickly. And isn't Agility/Dexterity, the definition of motor control? The ability choose and change direction; exploiting ones speed if needs be, but not dependent upon it, as the agile juggler, dancer, and (for sake of example ~Basketball player), need not be the fastest, to be the most agile.

(Is a horse more agile than a monkey? ~but who would win the 100 yard dash?)

I completely agree with the OP, especially regarding speed.

I disagree whole heartedly

Speed is useful, it deals with how fast you move. Move as in running.
Agility on the other hand deals with your ability to change body position. Agility deal with nimbleness, not outright speed.

You can have a clumsy sprinter, sprinters are not always nimble in movement. They are two separate, yet very similair attributes.

As for luck, it is not effective to raise luck through leveling. It is that way for balance, because luck effects all skills.
It can be very useful to enchant an item to raise luck, as we all remember Fargoth.

Should they make the attributes more distinct, yes.
And they need to revamp the luck mechanic, it really is more of a gimick than anything else, but it has potential

I think the attributes are fine as they are now. Maybe change what they do or change names, but don't take any away. Do we need to get more simple in TES?

I agree on Luck.

If something, they could merge speed with agility as Strength has to do with arms, and both Speed and Agility have to do more with legs and the lower body.

As of now, Personality could be ditched as well. It does have an effect on gameplay, but what good is a high Personality when you're up against the last boss?

EDIT: I agree on Speed as well, actually. The only thing it does is the same thing as Athletics does - why don't ditch it in favor for Athletics?

You make some very interesting and smart points!

Strength and Agility are both "whole body" attributes, and its more an understanding of how to make the most of what you have.
Many varieties of ape & monkey have short legs compared to their arms and many are still almost preternaturally agile.

Usually none... :sadvaultboy: (but wouldn't it be useful for the whole game leading up to that point?)