I've always been a huge fan of the idea that you get better at what you actually do in a game. Games that awards you XP for killing enemies can be quite fun up to a certain point, but it's not very realistic and it can sometimes feel a bit hollow - mostly for roleplayers, but I think most players would appreciate that a game made more sense. But the problem with the Elder Scrolls games is that leveling through skill-ups is designed poorly, it doesn't equally reward all player choices. Below, I will explain what exactly I mean by this and how Bethesda can easily improve on that - either for Skyrim or TES VI and beyond.

IMPORTANT:
As for any forumers who would lash out at anything after reading only the title or just a fraction of the post:
Have in mind that any kind of intelligent reply will require that you actually read through the entire post. Things aren't always obvious, sometimes their level of genius (or stupidity) is dependant on a number of governing factors. If you don't see all the factors (the pieces of the puzzles), you're in NO position to understand how good or bad the idea is. So please read through it all and contemplate it for more than 5 seconds. Thanks in advance.



Skill-based Leveling is DA BOMB!:

For the Elder Scrolls, it has always been about Skill archetypes. This is a good thing. I think most players prefer that all skills are easily distinguishable and provide a unique impact onto your playstyle. Whenever you choose a skill, you should have a clear idea of why you chose that skill. The problem is just that, when you assign a handful of skills (7 in Oblivion) to be the only method of leveling, it cascades into a number of consequences that happen due to other leveling factors as well.

First of all, if you choose a set of major skills and you then change your playstyle in Oblivion, you'll end up leveling a bunch of skills that don't give you level points (10 = +1 level). This forces you to either reroll a new character (and get a smooth leveling with a more interesting skillset), or use those skills that you started with and got fed up by, just to be able to find a better challenge.

Second, when leveling in Oblivion, you get to assign a point to an attribute with a multiplier as high as x5 (if you trained at least 10 points in skills governed by that same attribute). This poses additional problems, because a skill-conscious player will easily end up with 100 point in all attributes (overpowered?) - the roleplayer who doesn't care about numbers and thus the order of skills trained, could end up being gimped at the late levels (because he only gets +1 per level - well, +3 actually since it's 3 attributes). Personally, I would argue that roleplayers should have more say in the matter than stat-mongers, for the Elder Scrolls series. The entire franchise has always been about "Be what you want and do what you want". If that feeling is dwarfed by the feeling that you "need to get up to par" (either by getting high enough skill levels or leveling up to a certain "minimum critical level"), just so you can enjoy the game fully... well, then I think Bethesda has missed their mark.

Third, the Endurance attribute in Oblivion has way too much value. Imagine raising your Endurance before any other attribute, getting +5 per level until you get 100 Endurance, then continuing to level towards your theoretical maximum level while starting on Agility (+5 per level). Now imagine doing the exact opposite for a different character. At maximum level, the first character will have much more health than the second one, but the second one will not have "better agility/dodging/evasion/reflexes" than the first. Even though both now have 100 Endurance and 100 Agility. This isn't necessarily a major problem when facing enemies in Oblivion, although I've reported some encounters where that extra health meant the difference between a win and a loss.

I can definitely respect how Bethesda wants to reward us with both additional health and increased attributes as a way to make us feel more heroic with each new level. But I feel like the method they're using is somewhat naive and ineffective. So let me just suggest a better method, without further ado. I could've mentioned some other consequences to Bethesda's leveling logic, but let's just move on.



The Grand Solution:

First of all, we need to ask ourselves how we can improve an already existing system that, after all, works rather well - without messing too much with the core philosophies. In short, how can we make a better system and still let the leveling be skill-based?

1) At the core, I think Bethesda should allow players to level up with any skills, because that'll keep players leveling no matter their skill setup. This changes the purpose of having Major skills, something I will touch a bit further down.

2) Bethesda should specify a maximum level so that players get a clear idea of when they've peaked with regards to encounters, balance etc. I think Max Level 25 is a good number that I will explain further down.

3) Your starting health remains as before (Endurance based). But when gaining a level, additional health is no longer defined by the current Endurance of the player. Instead, you get a static value, e.g. +5 Health per level. Beyond that, you can gain additional total health by specifically raising your Endurance attribute (see pt. 4 below) through a new attribute mechanic.

4) All your Skills start at 0. Additional skill points are assigned by defining your Major skills, Specializations etc and giving the player some freedom at skill distribution. The idea is that the total skill pool before entering the game at Level 1 is [ 4 * 18 = 72 SP ], due to how the leveling process works, with neither skill going higher than 20 SP (which is the skill cap until level 5). 72 SP x 25 Levels = 1800 SP, the total number of natural skill points when all 18 skills in Skyrim are maxed. That means 72 SP per level, which in turn means that the player starts with 72 SP at Level 1. To reach the next level, however, the player only needs 1/2 of that - the 72 SP value is merely a way to make the leveling process start at level 1 and not at level 0 (the latter meaning that you'd have 26 levels in the game instead of 25).

5) You no longer increase Major skills faster than Minor skills. Instead, they start with additional SP (as mentioned earlier) and each point of Major skill matters more (as a hidden mechanic, visible only to the player by means of the "Major" title and players noticing that the skills yield better results in-game). This means that, for instance, 45 points in a Major Skill is better than 45 points in a Minor skill - signified easily by grouping those skills in a Major Skills category, as always. Furthermore, only Major skills can be Mastered (teaching you a special mastery move), although all skills can still reach 100 points.

6) Birthsigns like The Warrior or The Thief, now give you attribute bonuses that stack with your core attributes, allowing the player to gain more than 100 points in an Attribute once it has been maxed. This prevents the the birthsigns to be useless after maxing the attributes, and opens up a whole area of play where players can try (even with maxed out Skills) to reach the absolute maximum of, say, 150 or even higher (allowing both birthsigns, powers and spells to increase an attribute beyond 100).


The Leveling Process:

So, with all those factors above added to the equation, how exactly will the new leveling system work? With these new mechanics, we obviously also need to redo it. Again, have in mind that we're still keeping the idea of "skills doing the leveling", but we're simply executing it differently.

In short, the idea is that level 25 is the absolute maximum level and that you need to have 100 points in half of the 18 skills (for Skyrim, which is 1800 : 2 = 900 points) to reach that level. Having 0 points in all skills equal 0 SP, which is why we give the player some SP to distribute in the beginning (to define the first level).

Level 1:
You got 72 SP distributed among your skills. To reach Lv 2, you need to accumulate 36 more SP, which is done in the traditional way of using skills. Depending on how fast the devs want you to level, they define the rate at which you earn +1 SP. Until you reach Lv 5, skills are capped at 20 SP and Apprentice is the highest skill rank available to you.

Level 5:
Skill caps are raised to 40 SP, the required SP needed for Journeyman rank in any skill.

Level 10:
Skill caps are raised to 60 SP, the required SP needed for Expert rank.

Level 15:
Skill caps are raised to 80 SP, the required SP needed for Master rank.

Level 20:
Skill caps are raised to 100 SP, the required SP needed for Grandmaster rank. However, only Major skills can be trained to Grandmaster level.

Level 25:
This is the end of the line and half of your skills should now be at 100 SP (if not directly, then on average). The rest of your progression will focus on getting the rest of your skills up to maximum, so you don't have to worry about the game freezing any of your skills or abilities. You should always be able to max everything in an Elder Scrolls game.



But wait a second - What about the Attributes?!!

This could be a bit tricky, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. Attributes aren't increased for each level-up, but rather similarly to the character level itself. For each SP gained in any skill, the governing attribute gains "experience". After reaching a given peak, the Attribute gains 1 AP. It's actually very simple, but the devs need to put it into the context of the new skills for Skyrim. Let's try to do that for them:

Let's assume that we still got 8 Attributes from Oblivion - Strength, Endurance, Speed, Agility, Personality, Intelligence, Willpower and Luck. Luck is still a modifier of all the skills, and the rest are governing a skill set. Essentially, whenever you level up enough skills governed by the same attribute, that attribute is raised by +1 point. The total number of point an Attribute can gain before all its governed skills reach 100 SP, is 50.

So - with 25 AP at the start of the game, plus 50 AP gained through raising all governed skills, that leaves out 25 AP short of 100 for non-Luck skills and only 25 points total for Luck. But 25 AP per attribute over the course of 25 Character levels (except Luck which would then be 75 AP needed) shouldn't be too hard to figure out how to implement:

- Players could get +1 AP per attribute per level, starting with +8 AP to distribute at Character creation (for Lv 1).
- Players could be limited to 75 AP per attribute, and the only way to gain 100 AP would be to visit Daedric Shrines or whatever and get empowered by 8 different Gods.
- Extending on the above suggestion, each Daedric God could have a collection quest of 20 items, each giving +1 AP. Handing in the items would make you gain an additional +5 AP.
- If the total amount of AP earned by skilling is 50, then that can be changes so that the total is 75 instead (+50% gain to all attributes, compared to before).
- Luck could be special in that, whenever you gain AP from skilling, some of that AP goes to Luck instead (or additionally). 100 AP in Luck would then require 100 SP in ALL skills.

Oh and I'm sure that Bethesda themselves can come up with fun ways for the player to aquire those final AP, as well.



Conclusion:

I've just always felt that the leveling in Oblivion and Morrowind were too constricting as far as the "freedom of doing what you want" goes. I'm not sure how many agrees with me, but regardless I'd love to hear your feedback on this new way of handling Elder Scrolls leveling. Just have in mind that, if Bethesda finds interest in this idea, they are free to pick it apart and rethinking it any way they want. So if you don't like certain specifics of this idea, please explain those. Would be nice if we could get Bethesda to make a major change in this area - not necessarily my idea only, but a joint effort by the community as we look through this together.



Discuss!

Did you contemplate for 5 seconds about the stated fact that we will no longer choose to have 7 or 10 major skills, that there will not be any major skills in the way you want everyone to contemplate your post for at least 5 seconds when it is largely based around a feature that will not be in Skyrim ? Because your post is very much based around that assumption I say.

It′s very hard to determine anything ATM but I do agree with the Endurance problem, I don′t think Bethesda will make the same mistake, best of all would be if all the attributes worked like Endurance did in Oblivion because that will make two different characters even more fleshed out and defined depending on how they chose to progress, but I also believe that won′t be needed because of perks, with there being 280 perks and a maximum of 50 points to spend for those perks I don′t feel like anyone will have to end up with the same kind of character twice unless said person does exactly the same things, and then it doesn′t really matter, if the two did the same things there is nothing wrong with them being the same.

Sorry if I misunderstood something concerning the leveling skills, but the way you envision leveling makes you sound a lot like you have not been reading up on the leveling in Skyrim. Every skill will contribute to your leveling however instead by the time you hit level 50 you will level a lot slower. If I get it right then skills will still level at a good rate but levels will come less frequently.

the whole level up issue in Ob has been fixed by mods like nGCD imho.no micromanagement of skills, attributes (even starting ones) are directly affected by skills, REALLY end up with a character with stats and attributes reflecting how you played and not how well you can juggle stats.

Yes I did, but if you read my post you will notice that I'm making a suggestion to Bethesda about how the leveling process works. I'm sorry if I wasn't too clear about that. If Major skills are completely removed from Skyrim, well then what's the problem? Just remove "Major" out of the equation.

Btw, I rewrote the first part, just for you.

And yes, the very reason why I wrote that initial paragraph was so that certain forum tweens won't jump to the gun and troll to death this thread immediately after reading a fraction of the text. Anyone even remotely offended by that first part must obviously feel guilty as charged, or else you'd understand exactly what I meant by it. Anyway, I'm not gonna judge you, I don't know you and written text is easily misinterpreted.

But - my post isn't based around ANY assumption whatsoever, it merely takes various Oblivion features into account - just in case they ARE implemented for Skyrim. If they aren't, then those ideas can be scrapped or done differently. I'm sure that the developers have at least an average amount of common sense to understand that. In fact, I believe that Todd Howard and Company has an above average common sense. But enough about that.



My main concern is that they didn't change it for Oblivion (after implementing it for Morrowind). But I agree that, with the new ways of handling a lot of the character progression, maybe Bethesda has learned the lesson and come up with something better. I also agree that the Endurance problem isn't a problem at the core, but that it become OP because there is no equivalent consequence for any of the other stats. If they added those, then at least I would become more satisfied than I am today. Both directions could work, really.



It's just that I haven't seen any decisive confirmation that Major skills will be out of the game, I've only read that you no longer need to choose a class. In either case, my idea suggests exactly that - why should our leveling be limited to a handful of skills and not ALL our skills. If you're right about that, then that's another great improvement by Bethesda.

Same as above, have you even been paying attention to the latest news about Skyrim.
There are no major skills, all skills contribute to level-up, higher level skills contribute more. At level-up you choose an increase in either health, magicka or stamina and one skill perk and potentially bonus attribute points. There is a soft level-cap of 50 after which the rate of leveling drastically decreases and you no longer can choose perks. There is a theoretical max of about 75 i have heard.

Could you provide a link, please. Because I've read everything from PC GAMER, IGN and similar major interviewer, and I listened to the Podcast. The only thing I've ever seen is that Todd Howard tells us that the class system has been removed. Well, the class system is one thing, but Major skills is a specific feature that isn't necessarily tied to classes.

Why do I even have to explain this? No offence, but seriously dude. If the major skills aren't in Skyrim at all, well then just remove them from the equation. Just focus on how my idea could be implemented for a system free of any Major or Minor tag. If all skills are the same, then all skills will be equal in both use and leveling and all skills can be Grandmastered. It's not just 1 thing I'm suggesting, it's a revamp of a set of things.

Whatever is redundant, you ignore. Very simple. Thanks for the feedback though, hoping for the link

I read all the way through and what became apparant is that the OP has a number of misunderstandings. half way through these became obvious but I read to the end to see if he clarifies, he does not. first of all, the leveling system is completely different. its is not based upon major skills and just removing the major skill part of the OP's suggestion does not apply to what we will see in SK. second of all, the alleged problem with the OB system that the OP had is clearly his failing to understand that you were supposed to be leveling up those minor skills, other wise you would level up to fast and get owned by leveled enemies. the best way to balance that is to have your weapon and armor of choice not be your major skill because leveling them will make them stronger but won't make you level up faster. doing that makes you a more competant level X character.

I understand the confusion about, its my major skill so thats the skill my character is supposed to be good at, thats the misunderstanding. the major skill is the skill that levels your character up, your character's main skills are the ones you use the most and there fore level up the fastest, OB was made to be very difficult for people who power leveled. this is why Skyrim changes, the new system makes it very clear that your main skills are the ones you use the most and the balance of teh game will no longer be tipped in one direction or the other. its unclear how governing attributes will come into play but thats because the game isn't even finished yet and comes out at the end of teh year.

Sez hoo?

You people need to pay more attention, seriously. Especially you OP'ster, there are way more than just one or two articles out with info.

See here.

Skyrim Hub at GameInformer - http://www.gameinformer.com/p/esv.aspx

OXM Todd Howard Interview - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6Xn0GbweAE

also another thing I think that contributed to the awkwardness of OB major skill thing is that in MW your major skills were your main skills, that is if you wanted to actually hit any enemies. the removal of the skill check from combat had that impact on the way leveling is best handled in OB. I did not realize this until this thread came up.

Hence this being a suggestion and not a statement of how Skyrim, a specific ES game, necessarily will be like.


So what you're saying is essentially that it's my fault that I get killed in Oblivion and that I shouldn't be able to "be whoever I want, and do whatever I want". You basically saying that, if I don't play in a certain way, even if I play good, then I deserve to be punished... ok, good to know. Welcome to WoW 2.


So how come you're so certain about how the Skill system will work? Todd Howard haven't said anything concrete about it yet, to my knowledge. And, as you said, the game isn't finished and as such, changes will occur...

I generally appreciate your links, but I see nothing relevant in them. I'll review the OXM interview though again, I may have overlooked that. But if he's only repeating what he said about "Classes being removed", then what does that mean specifically. Where does he mention the lack of Major skills, specifically?

Nice post, but I'm not really sure if your attribute system would work well that way.

I thought that is was stated in the GI that while levelling increasing a skill from 45 to 46 would get you more 'skill points' counting toward your level than increasing a skill from 7 to 8.
In your system, increasing a lot low level skills would allow you to increase your attributes faster than if you where to increase high level skills. (If I misunderstood, please tell)

I suggest adding attributes on gaining a level but unlike of morrowind or oblivion (and sort of daggerfall) giving you no choice of selecting a attribute to increase.
Each time you level you would gain, for instance, 15 attribute points. If you levelled up by only levelling up destruction from 30 to 40, witch govern willpower, you would gain 15 points of willpower.
If you however level by increasing destruction form 30 to 37 and sneak (agility) from 20 to 30 you would gain 10 willpower and 5 agility as an increase from 30 to 37 has more 'weigth' than one from 20 to 30. such a system would also skills governing multiple attributes, one-handed could possibly have 1/3 agility and 2/3 strength.

That is just an illusion, although partially correct nonetheless. Increasing a low skill will make the governing attribute increase faster than a high skill, but all skills eventually get higher and if you choose to increase all skills as opposed to focusing on a few one, you'll end up with a slightly faster increase in attributes but you'll also gain levels faster too (until level 12-13, upon which the opposite will start to become true). At the end of the day, there's really not much difference when looking at all skills collectively.

A player who focuses on a few high skills will use the exact same amount of time to reach maximum level and maximum stats as someone who generalizes and levels all skills evenly.


In my idea, I'm basically suggesting that Attributes are dictated by what you do, similar to skills. For Oblivion, this wasn't entirely the case. You had a freedom to distribute attributes, but they were highly affected by how well you pulled off training the right combination of skills so that you would get the x5 multiplier. So the freedom wasn't complete.

For Skyrim and future Elder Scrolls games, I would like for Bethesda to just make up their minds. Either give us full freedom at distributing the points, or no freedom at all. What I'm suggesting is a "no freedom" approach, same as what is the case for skills. You cannot raise a skill that you aren't using. Same should be true for Attributes. If they're gonna have a hybrid, then why not assign, for instance, 25 AP per attribute to be gained by alternate means ONLY, and the rest to be gained by skilling ONLY.

With my system, the player would indeed gain Attributes according to the skills he used - but only up to a certain point. The rest of the AP would be gained otherwise.

I'm going to play you at your own game and demand a link

True, I agree with you they shouldn't do a hybrid thing again (though I would prefer no attr. freedom)

I just hope they implement such a system...

Bro, they redid the whole leveling system already.

Yeah but there is absolutely no information on attributes

Eh, even in Morrowind I remember "controlling" my level ups by picking skills I wouldn't ever use as my Majors. And then doing "training" (casting tiny spells, attacking a training dummy, etc) in my house when it was time for me to actually gain a level.

I look forward to their new system, hoping it won't lead to silliness like MW & OB. (Admittedly, it was more important in OB, when you were using the vanilla "whole world level scales with you" system)

I am in favor of abolishing "major / minor " skills. Skills should be skills, they are important and become important as you progress. You aren't born a carpenter, and can become one as a secondary career, or at the age of 50. Who you are should be freely decided without restrictions for the sake of restrictions at the start of the game. A person should be able to say "im a good thief, and a decent fighter" not be forced to say "my class is a thief, but I've only leveled up fighter skills." this does not make sense.


This is widely complained about and rightly so. Scrap it.


I don't see the point in levels. really. I'm a fan of the "hp = 100 + end" (or some variant). hp bonuses at level up are unnecessary and serve little point except to justify leveling itself. Why do I need an arbitrary number to show how strong I am? Isn't that attributes and skills job? How many layers of increases are necessary? Simplify it. Furthermore, why does a mage that studies all day gain hp over time? Shouldn't he LOSE hp as his body atrophies? Or does studying increase endurance?




Yes to "level with any skill" but...
NO. no maxes. No "hard" maxes at least. Arbitrary limits are frustrating. Limits should be practical. i.e. if you want the limit at level 25 make it so time consuming that no one in their right mind would try for level 30. This prevents the "I'm maxed so now I'm going to go play something else." Even a master has something to learn. Also, its more realistic. How fast can a human run? how tall can a person be? its not a hard number, but a practical limit. You can practice running forever, but the speed increase / time spent training will be less spectacular the closer you get to what's humanly possible. Let limits be represented by reciprocal exponential functions, if you must, but not simple lines.


I've explained why I don't like this above.



I would be open to the idea of starting all skills at 1 skill point (5 would make sense) and "deciding" my class by choosing what to level first. Eliminate the "roll your character / tutorial" beginning and simply give a large increase to the rate of skill gains for the first several gains. Or random early skills distributed according to race.

I think we can safely leave number crunching up to the devs, so I'll take your example at face value and leave it at that.
I believe I've made it clear, that I don't think "major/minors" are necessary.
I don't like the idea of only being able to gain abilities in a limited number of skills. If I can feasibly master a skill, then why can't I do what a master can do? 100 skill points is by definition a master. You are adding unnecessary arbitration. I don't see the advantage. If you want to prevent Super hero's (Which would be OK), then scale down xp gains as skills increase. So that at about the time you make 1500 total skill points, skill raises are rare enough (even with relatively low level skills) to make mastering everything unpractical. This is not WoW and Overpowered characters don't ruin the game for others. If you can spend 400 hours on one character, you ought to have something more to show than "yay, 100. yay"


This is an obvious omission on the dev's part. But I would go a bit farther toward making birthsigns more important later, and less of a crutch to new PCs. I would say all modifiers and abilities should scale with progress. In the case of the warrior: Say "str + .8%" or so. An advantage early on, a major asset later. Will eliminate "pick an forget". Also, I liked the old school method of adv / disadv. where you could truly customize your character. You could make an easy casual game, or cripple your character for a challenge. Does not need to be as potentially powerful (or game breaking, depending on POV) as daggerfall was.


I do not like arbitrary caps. These caps are especially heinous. So my chaos knight that is (for religious reasons apparent only to him) only interested in bone collection and therefore only needs to train his "axe to the neck" skill now necessarily has to put down his favorite chopper and do jumping jacks to get 1 more skill high enough that he can learn how to liberate craniums? or be content as a level 5 for the rest of his life? This is adding busy work for the sake of fleshing out the game and forcing "round" characters. bleh. bleh on you.


Once again. Level are unnecessary. And your on my side here whether you want to be or know you are or not. Tying attribute gains directly to skill gains instead of "through" levels further weakens character level's reason for existing. From the start levels have been the means to increase attributes. If you take that away, the only functions of level are:
1) to show the characters progress -- unnecessary, because of skills' progression.
2) to show relation to the world (relative strength of a character)-- unnecessary, because of skills, and attributes. Furthermore, all other characters levels are hidden and therefore don't tell the player much anyways. Furthermore, equipment, which is not considered in a person's level, can and should play a huge part in their ability. So, that lvl 1 encased in ebony, can and should be able to, beat that nekkid level 5 accountant without too much trouble. How are levels useful again?
3) to allow scaling. as in level scaling. As in "all the bandits now have glass maces" (<- I'm not going to address the poor scaling of OB, that horse corpse has been beaten) -- scaling could be accomplished by using averages of skills, or even by averages of skills per set (set : thief, warrior, mage). with the Radient AI (if it lives up to its hype) this could lead to very interesting game play and the complexity of the game play is limited only by the devs' imagination and time.

I would be OK with levels being used as a functionless number that shows the progress of a character. Essentially a "percentage of game complete".

you say "I've just always felt that the leveling in Oblivion and Morrowind were too constricting as far as the "freedom of doing what you want" goes," but from what I've read, I see many more limits ADDED than I'm comfortable with.
And before you get too defensive:
"So if you don't like certain specifics of this idea, please explain those."
I'm only cooperating and expressing, not attacking. Please take this as constructive criticism.

I've exceeded quote block limits. moar editing.... Limits....

Well, it's not always the case, but one consideration of "major" skills can easily be things that someone is naturally good at. "He's always been great with a bow, it's like he's blessed by Artemis!" "A natural athlete if I ever saw one!" etc, etc, etc.

In the case of the pre-packaged "class" skills, many skill-based RPGs have justified certain classes getting some skills cheaper by saying that it represents the early training in that profession - i.e, yeah, you're a level 1 Fighter. But you've been in apprenticeship and classes with the Fighter's Guild for years now, and that training is represented by the fact that your Armor and Melee skills start a bit higher and advance a bit quicker.


Of course, all of that can probably be represented by perks in the new system. We'll see.

Link to what? I'm referring to a law of nature. It's very simple:

E.g. you spend twice the amount of time per skill, leveling half the amount of skills - versus - spending half the amount of time (again per skill), leveling twice the amount of skills. What exactly do you need a link for? And no, it's not always twice or half, that's just a parable to simplify the line of thought.

A link to anything that says raising skills in any way affects attributes, which are still not even confirmed to be in the game, or that higher skills contributing to leveling more is an illusion, seeing as this is actually confirmed.

from the GI podcast:





In the GI article in the magazine it states there is a soft cap of 50 and Pete confirmed on his Twitter account that this means a cap on perks NOT leveling.

I must say that I really enjoyed your feedback, was a very nice read. I think we largely agree on things, so here's hoping that Todd Howard is with us on this. There's any number of permutations possible for what I suggested, so it doesn't have to be exactly like what I presented. Nothing is set in stone.

I largely agree with the Endurance / Leveling issue, but if they are going to have it in the game (maybe to simplify scaled encounters and give casual players a single number to focus on - kinda like gearscore or item level in WoW), then I'm suggesting the next best thing, which is to use a leveling system that makes a little more sense. But for Endurance - either make it ALL about the skills or, if they want us to gain some per level, a static value that isn't affected by how early you start increasing Endurance. Cause that's not only nonsensical, but outright stupid from a hardcoe player's perspective.

Thanks again for a great reply.