I hear people bashing on the attribute system in Morrowind/Oblivion and saying it doesn't make sense? Sorry, but just because you don't get +5 in every level up doesn't mean it didn't make sense. The +5 showed you did way more work towards an attribute, if you got +1 you didn't do anything. Just about all of the "perks" are just what you would have gotten more naturally in Oblivion/Morrowind especially the damage dealing perks.

No its not. I should not be forced to invest in certain skills just to get the same benefits that attributes gave me. Especially since they were governed by 3 skills. So I could invest in more than just one skill and get that benifit. I say they ditch the current system but keep perks. Something more than the bare minimum of stamina, magicka, and health.

:foodndrink: ^^^^^THIS^^^^^^^ :foodndrink:

People, YOU DON'T HAVE TO LOOK AT THE QUEST MARKERS!!! Ignore them. If you actually talk to the quest givers, they DO give good directions if you pay attention. In Morrowind, it was tedious at times with the amount of walking, kill cliff racer, walk more, kill more cliff racers, walk some more, kill cliff racers in a dust storm, walk some more. I like to be productive when I game, not spend more time walking then completing quests. Elder Scrolls provide some of the best gaming to be had, with the mod community that this series has, no one really has anything to complain about, sense the mods (once the CS is released) will give us everything we need to make Skyrim our dream fantasy RPG. Enjoy the game, instead of waisitng energy complaining, save it up and produce a mod that addresses what you don't like. I just wish gamers would appreciate what the devs create and understand how much effort and time is used to create these games.

Not quite, what a "lot of people" are asserting is that the result of the streamlining was dumbed down. Which, frankly, it is.

Now before someone leaps at me like a deranged mudcrab; (very nearly)nobody is claiming that the previous system worked perfectly, and in some areas it was just plain [censored]e. The difference in opinion comes from people who prefer Bethesda to simply excise any aspect which didn't work properly(or, as they call it, "streamlining"), and those of us who would prefer they actually put in some effort and fix them.

I was very leery of the new leveling system when I heard about it, but in practice I enjoy it very much. I think it's a huge improvement over Oblivion's and Morrowind's.
I no longer need to meticulously plan out the character that I intend to play before the game begins. I realize that some people find all of that planning to be appealing, but for me it's not.
I prefer to play the game and shape my character according to the events I encounter in the game instead of trying to force the experience to fit what I planned before I started.

It's also much easier to switch gears now. If all of the sudden I want to use daggers I don't have to worry about having them as a major/minor skill which would impact how fast the skill levels and how much I level. Instead I can just start using daggers.

me also.

honestly the mod I used in skyrim had my stats automatically go up with my skills to stop me from obsessing over +5 +5 +luck leveling every level. In the end it made it feel more skyrim like.

I don't miss the default TES leveling system.

But the thing is, Selling to a wider audience IS the reason why Bethesda "dumbed down" Oblivion and Skyrim. Because the real way they were dumbed down really has nothing to do with character advancement or travel features. It has to do with them designing the games with consoles as the baseline model rather than designing for a PC first and then dialing things back so they work within the parameters of the consoles.

The PC gaming market is big. But when you combine the PC and Console gaming market, the potential for profit goes from big to massive. And these game development companies are in business for one reason: TO MAKE A PROFIT. They will do what it takes to maximize their gain. They will sacrifice thousands of customers in favor of the potential millions that will replace them. And they do gain the millions of customers, make no mistake about that.

Bethesda is a corporate developer. They are backed by serious investor capitol. And as such they do not have the luxury to do anything other than seek the highest potential profit margin they can get, so the investors get a profitable return on their investments and so that Bethesda can make a profit as well.

We play games to have fun. They make them to be able to feed their families and pay the bills, and only DOLLARS are acceptable currency. I'd like to see them try to pay their house note with a stack of Morrowind discs...

I wouldn't be surprised if many of the people who scream that Skyrim is too dumbed down and that they won't buy another Bethesda title again actually screamed the same thing when Oblivion came out, but they bought Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles.. And started a new forum handle to avoid having to redact themselves... And now they've bought Skyrim too.

This is how the game development industry works now. I may not like it, but short of starting up my own indie development company (which I cannot afford), there's nothing I can do except for not buy the games I want to play. Even if I refuse, millions will not, so I'd only be punishing myself.

Bethesda no longer develops for PC only. Consoles will always be inferior to PCs because the specifications will always be static while PC specifications are dynamic. A PC bought for $1000 next month will be superior to the one bought this month for the same price. An Xbox360 bought next month or next year will be the same as the one bought this month or since it was first released. Because Bethesda develops with that in mind, they will be developing within the console spec standards. They have to. Because like it or not, there are more console gamers than PC gamers. More money.

It's the nature of the beast.

iT'S ALWAYS ABOUT THE MONEY! Just read about the things that took place on Black Friday. The shootings, the stabbings, the stealing, and the pepper spraying.

:clap:

Sway. c:

I understand where you're coming from in the OP, and can agree with you on some points, but there are two in particular that I really don't agree with and would like to touch on.



The x5x5x1 or x5x5x5 leveling system only became explosively popular in Oblivion due to the bass-ackwards level scaling that effectively mandated your player become as power as possible as fast as possible. It still occurred in Morrowind, but to a lesser extent and the only really big culprit of it was Endurance. I think that rather than remove attributes alltogether, Bethesda should have taken a step back and found a way to apply them more effectively in a way that didn't necessitate (or perhaps even allow) things like x5x5x5. Utilize more of a D&D styled attribute system, with a smaller number scale and only one attribute point every level/every few levels.

As for the whole "leveling attributes based on archtypes", I think a lot of RPer players here will say that they've made a character based around a concept rather than practicality. A high agility/intellect/personality, low strength/endurance Duelist-type character, or a high strength/wisdom, low intellect/endurance Warrior-Priest. The point is that the attributes had an impact on playstyle far more than simply adding a bit to either health, magicka, and fatigue, and they had RP merit, as well.



I've never liked this argument. At all. The way the perks have been designed do not present a meaningful choice of any sort for the player. 9 times out of 10, the only choice for taking a perk (that the player utilizes the associated skill for, mind you) is "take this and be better, or don't take it and don't be better". Look at a sneaky character who DWs swords and a bulky warrior who DWs maces. Aside from the weapon choice and maybe the stealth character not taking as many points in the power attacks, there's hardly any difference. They're both going to take all the DW talents, 5/5 armsman, and 3/3 for their weapon specialization, unless they feel like deliberately gimping themself for virtually no reason.

I'm not saying that I want attributes over perks. I'm saying that I'd like to utilize them in conjunction with each other and have my choice of perks to actually be a CHOICE rather than just "I'm using heavy armor, so I'm going to take literally every single perk in the whole tree because they either all help a lot or are a prerequisite for one that I want." I also would like to see perks actually have a dramatic impact on how you play (Which is something Bethesda promised and didn't live up to.) Currently, the only perks I can think of off the top of my head that add a dramatic change in how you play would be dual casting perks (Do I want to be mana efficient but weaker or do I want to waste mana just for that extra oomph?) and the perks that add new types of attacks (Shield charge/charge attack, power bash, etc).

For a good system that utilized both perks and attributes, as well as being the game that TES and pretty much every other modern day RPG gets its roots from, look no further than D&D. Attributes were there to allow access to different perks based on RP-sensitive context (Needing a higher Dex and Int for some special weapon attacks that would require too much finesse for a barbarian brute) as well as provide an impact on how effective the player was at certain tasks. Perks were there to really flesh out and add unique things to each character (Being able to cast spells with armor on, being able to use a 2h weapon in one hand, new attacks like knockdown, disarm, and riposte). Granted, I don't want to necessarily see those specific perks appear in TES, as some aren't very befitting of the Tamriel, but the overall concept of "This changes how you play" rather than "This makes you do more damage" is what I want to see in perks, because that's kind of what we were told would be the case.

The leveling system in previous games was terrible. You were forced to calculate everything with precision and powerlevel. "Just playing" caused your character to be weak. In Skyrim you dont have to powerlevel(although I like to do it sometimes) and the 3 attribute/perks system imo gives much more depth. I'd say that this is perhaps the only game where the "streamlining" has made the game better. Ill add that its even harder to "ruin" your character on pc because you have the option to respec via console. I dont consider that as cheating.

In Morrowind...

If I wanted to RP a character.
I had to make sure that I didn't put two skills associated with that Arch-type, that also governed the same skill in the Major list.
It was [censored]!

For example: (going off of memory)
Thief - Light Armor, Short Sword, Bows, Lock Pick, Stealth, Acrobatics...blah blah..blah blah.
Anyway, the point is, look how many "AGILITY" governed skills are in that list. That means your agility is going to be the SLOWEST rising attribute you have. Because you decided to put them all in the major/minor list.

In fact, most Character Builds associated with maximum efficiency, revolved soley around making sure you played with spears.
And for easy efficiency, keep all endurance governing skills out of the major/minor list.
Why a spear is associated with endurance? I don't know.

But yeah, I spent more time perfecting the puzzle that was proper skill allocation.
You know what I found out at the end of it.

Magic!
Magic became the all wonderful level controller.

If you wanted to play a Stealth archer?
Make him look like a pure mage.

If you wanted to play a 2 Handed brute?
Make him look like a mage.

If you wanted to play a mage?
Build him like anything other than a mage. (but take endurance into consideration)

Then when you're ready to level up. Go spam the spells/skills that shouldn't be associated with your character at all.





I'll Take Skyrim Thank You!

I think that people are "incommoded" because TES is using more and more a "Live Roleplay, Do Whatever You Want" approach than a "Pen-And-Paper, Plan Before You Do" approach.

Personally, I don't like the fact that if I want to take a little time out of my day to blacksmith and then enchant stuff just to purge my house of excess crap I end up gaining a few levels that make some spells like Fury and Calm etc obsolete before I've even got to really play with them (because they are hard level based and not scaling).

So my mage hates the current leveling system, but my warrior and thief don't mind it.

So?

Having made a build that used 3/5 strength skills I can promise you, Strength was the first Attribute to 100. Spear is Endurance based because... well there is some strength involved in wielding a spear, but yeah... endurance is correct.

Or you could do the experiment I did and select major and minor skills at random... and then just play, and dump attribute modifiers into the spots where you want/need them most... and not worry about having a "class" as such.

the problem with the current system is that it forces you to pick one of them. in previous games (using GCD and nGCD mods) i had it set so that all npcs including me had the same health. thats impossible in this game as it stands now. if i want low health i end up with a huge amount of mana and stamina both of which make the game easier in their own ways. there is also no possiblity of attribute dialogue checks like you had in fallout NV.

i disliked the vanilla oblivion/morrowind system but there were plenty of mods as the OP pointed out that addressed that problem. it would have been very easy for them to tweak the system similar to them. there also wasnt anything inherently broken about the system. outside of the 5x multiplier game which was easily fixable the TES games had one of the best systems around. if you want something improved then use it. you have to remember that the vast majority of games dont do it that way they just let you increase whatever you want which doesnt make any sense.

i feel the same way about armor repair. they wasted a really good opportunity with all the blacksmithing and forging stuff they put in. im always looking for a money sink because just like every other TES game out there its pretty easy to get lots of money early on. once you buy your house and equip your follower you pretty much done having to spend money on anything. i never have to buy gear except when i want a specific enchantment as i always find what i need on enemies and im finding health and magic potioins all over the place when i dungeon crawl. the only thing i end up spending money on are bribes because i have low speech skills on most of my characters.

I agree "dumbed down" is a ridiculous argument, but on the spells front while I think the actual casting system is better it fails overall because the spells do not scale.

They showed being able to charge up spells to use more magicka for a bigger blast, being able to combine spells, etc. This was stripped down to HAVING to hold down the button to use a spell at all... with the result the same always regardless of your skill or level, and only being able to combine the exact same spell.

The amount of spell effects is also drastically slashed overall. It's not dumbed down, but it is very disappointing. The excuse that they couldn't have put in spell creation is baloney. The system is too simple now for that to be true. Choose casting type, choose effect, balance out the magicka/power costs, done. The end system is FAR less complex than shown.

It's just disgraceful the spell types never even get replacements at higher level. A high level mage should want to switch between many types of destruction spells for example, rather than sticking to a couple high level ones and even then for pathetic damage compared to melee.

I love the feel of the spell casting. I just feel while it's not dumbed down, it's clearly vastly inferior to what they said it would be, and the scaling issues (or lack thereof) as you level are dumbfounding.

I think they gone to far with 3 atributes they should have stayed with only two - health and magica. If your a mage go magica if your not then go health. Thats the way skyrim works now, stamina is pointless because mages only need magica and the other classes need health because they can attack unlimited times anyway.

As the system of stamina is so badly designed and easily exploitable ppl believe spamming unlimited power attacks is the way of playing the game. Stamina is used only for running away so it should be a hidden stat governed by leveling and not dispalyed in the UI as it is now.

As for the perks themself they are kinda stupid. You need to allocate perks to actualy get better in a skill even if your using it all the time and take it to 100. If you want to take all the perks you need you are likely forced to grind other skills you would never used in the first place to level your char and get extra perks for your main skill.

True say.

I also thought this was about Illusion magic as well at first XD

I would be happy if they removed perks and just gave you the stuff in the skill tree's naturaly if you got the skill up. Perks are way too limiting in this game

Skyrim's character system is in many ways the very definition of "dumbing down". How one would deny that now weeks after release is beyond my comprehension.

This is a very good argument. This is what I call constructive criticism.

:goodjob:

What they did with the spell system is not streamlining. None can possibly argue with the fact that it was severely dumped down.

As for the other elements (like the attributes), you had a little more versatility in your character creation but i really don't mind this too much except perhaps the luck, acrobatics/athletics stats being excluded.

Also one thing that you will see dumped down after completing most of the content of the game is quest-lines. I was happy with the quests in general but many main chain quests such as the civil war or the guilds chains are really shallow, repetitive and short.

And one more thing that i don't consider "dumped down", more like "buggy" or broken even, are a large part of the dialog scripts/"npc AI" in the game. They should just fix that.