If you could pick the Levelling System for TES V, which would you use ? GCD all the way for me.

And there's no "Other" option for those of us who are actually using "Other"? :cryvaultboy:

Although for what it's worth, I'll try almost anything that's neither exp-based, nor a rehash of Oblivion/Morrowind a bit before I decide to replace it myself...

GCD or the oblivion nGCD.

There is a topic.. and poll on this already... like, right above this one.

nvm, misunderstood the topic. my bad. Idk the difference between these different mods <.<

Daggerfall: You get 4-6 points to distribute among all the stats
Morrowind/Oblivion: Stats are increased with multipliers
GCD/nGCD/RL: There is no Level screen, increasing your skills increases you attributes

Thanks, sorry its late and im grumpy, i'd vote for daggerfall then, i like choosing where my points go, but i dont like the idea of multipliers, makes you try and play to get the biggest multipley rather than just playing to play.

I agree, thats exactly the thing that happened to me with Oblivion, I got obsessed with efficient leveling which eventually ruined my gameplay experience.

The way the PLAYER levels is fine, except that the attribute bonuses should have diminishing returns instead of accelerating returns.

Instead of 2/2/2/2/3/3/3/4/4/5 which makes the benefits come faster and faster the more you train skills, they should be something like 1/2/2/3/3/3/4/4/4/4 which makes the benefits come slower as you train skills. Then the player won't feel pressured to freak out on minmaxxing the skilltypes they use per level.

Also level scaling should be destroyed forever, except within TIGHT ranges (10 or fewer levels) or with half scaling (enemy gains half a level per player level).

You should post that in the other thread...

I'd much prefer a GCD-type system
However the MW/Oblivion system is still preferable to a XP system for a sandbox game
An XP system will inevitably lead to players chasing the XP awards for the "correct" solutions for quests and punish those players creative enough to find solutions the developers didn't allow for

And the TES skill system doesn't have you "chasing" rewards?

If I take out an enemy cleanly with a poisoned arrow from a distance, I get like.. 3 skillups. A sneak, a marksman, an alchemy.

If I run in and start wailing on him with my dagger and healing as he attacks me, I'm going to get like 30 skillups from all the fighting. So I'm rewarded more for the clumsier solution.

Not for most of us, no. The point of using mods like nGCD or Realistic Leveling is make the mechanics of leveling invisible. You will not know when your skill level or character level have increased. I can't tell you how many times I have opened my stats sheet and been stunned to realize my character has gone up three levels and I wasn't even aware of it.

The player is still free to powergame if he really wishes but, because nothing is readily apparent, it takes some effort. And since most player install these mods precisely to avoid having stat increases pushed in their faces it is much easier to relax and concentrate on roleplaying when using these mods.

Making the flaws in the leveling system invisible isn't a complete solution, it just makes it a little easier for the player to forget about the problem. It's not a replacement for a well designed game.

Nobody said it was. *shrug*

I like nGCD/RL better than vanilla so I use them. End of story.

GCD and the like. The problem with the leveling systems in TESIII and TESIV (and probably TESII?) is the whole attribute multiplier thing at level up. Instead of being able to use my skills spontaneously, I have to micromanage what skills to make Major/minor/misc and what skills to level up and how many times to level them up in order to pump the attribute multiplier. This lead me to using skills that my character normally would not use, and thus broke my role playing experience to a degree. It disrupted my immersion by making me keep track of numbers, rather than allowing me to play my style. GCD-style leveling gives me the attribute increase immediately, and thus gets ride of "leveling" as anything more important that determining creature type spawns and loot.

I also like mods that remove the 100 cap. The problem currently is that you increase a skill more times if it starts low - thus, you can level up more if your skill/attribute starts lower, because of the 100 cap. If I start at 20, I can level up more to 100 than if I start at 50 skill ranks. Therefore, race skill bonuses - even the whole Major/minor bonuses - can handicap your character. You'd max out your chosen skills (if they start at 50) by X character level, whereas if they started at 20 skill ranks, you'd max them out at level X + n (n = some number greater than zero), thus increasing the attribute bonuses you can rack up.

A solution would treat all bonuses to skill and attributes as something that carries over past 100. Therefore, a big strong Nord get's a total of, say, STR 120 maxed out, while a Khajiit thief could only max out at 100. As it stands currently, both can max a STR of 100, rendering Race bonuses useless in the long run.

Definitely agreed here. The skill bonuses have very little point and the attribute bonuses not much more. It would be easy to change them to be "fortify" effects instead..

I voted for Oblivion/Morrowind way. I have used (i think) GCD and it is good and all, but I like to have more control over my character. In the game I'm rewareded if I level up the attributes I should (rewarded by the multiplier), but I can still ignore this and invest the points elswhere if i want. I do nto know, I never compelled to max up my character and I never really played to get the +5 multipliers before every level-up.i jsut took waht I got from a natural gameplay. And I totally agree that the 100 skill and attribute cap is a very bad idea. It should be gone. If you made a good character set-up, you could end up with a maxed attribute at level 10 or so, which is ridiculous.

Other.

The way i would have it would be rather than the player leveling you get better when you have better armour, weapons and atual game skill rather than making the same techniques work for everything, it's more realistic that way. Someone who barely manages to kill a rat with a katana, shouldn't be able to kill a giant mutant crocodile with their fists a few days later, that just seems wierd...

Ps: cba to fully explain what i mean, but it's not as crap as it sounds trust me =)

I liked Kobu's Character Advancement System, of all the Oblivion levelling mods I tried. KCAS was pretty customizable, I liked "The Two Rings" with slower skills turned on when playing with OOO.

http://www.oblivionmodwiki.com/index.php/Kobu%27s_Character_Advancement_System

Levelling is such a complex thing to get right, but one thing I do like is XP rewards for quest completion (as in Fallout 3), just because its nice to get something out of a quest without having to make the whole quest a combat opportunity, or having to count on random loot not being a disapointment.

Nope, since I'll use the method that works best for the character
If my sneaky Bosmer archer kills with a poisoned arrow, she gets 3 skillups
If she charges up and attacks the minotaur with a dagger she dies

I find XP systems tend to force you into certain ways of playing
In early D&D you got points for killing and gold
Nowadays you get points for killing and meeting objectives set by the designer

I don't like XP systems either, they're too rigid in what they incentivize you to do.

An acrobat should be rewarded for using his acrobacy to solve problems, a mage should be rewarded for using his magic to solve problems. None of this will necessarily involve killing enemies or finding gold.

I personally use a mod that makes it so that "spamming" your skills will give you a large short-term advantage to growth and a modest medium-term advantage but no long-term advantage unless you keep spamming the skills. And completing quests gives you subtle bonuses to advancement.

This way, there's a reason to "train up" your skills if you need a particular level in the short term (e.g: I have a mission that requires me to be invisible, I have 46 Illusion, I'll stand in the mage's guild practice area with a bag of magicka potions and practice Illusion until I get to 50-Journeyman), but if you're not "training up" skills, and instead just adventuring, you won't "fall behind" in the long term.

While thats a nice idea, how the heck would you code a game to recognize something like 'the use of acrobacy to solve problems" or non-spam-based magic skill increases? Again, in a perfect world... But the only practical way to do something like that is to build an extremely rigid game where the actual opportunity for player creativitity in problem solving is traded for increased specificity in valid solutions (ie you get XP for going though the "sneaky" vent specifically coded by the devs) -- in other words and highly scripted game where you can choose only which of 2 or 3 options you want to use, which isn't very TES like.

My least fav is OB's system because I needed to concentrate on the leveling as much as game play. This came about because in the first two games I tried, I somehow got unevenly leveled which made the Planes impossible to survive in.

Also the concept that as you level, so does the world, is so silly that it tended to ruin the immersion for me. I find it perfectly realistic that when you start out, you have to avoid most of the foes because they are too tough for you. The quests need to, of course, be designed so you don't need to overcome enemies which are way beyond your abilities, but that's hardly an impossible design task. As you level up, you can take on more and more of the world.

To me, that fits.

Like I said, I already have a mod that does these things . And it doesn't make anything rigid or scripted.

Here is how it works.

I make a new stat called "growth potential". It governs how quickly a character learns skills.

The passage of time (awake, not waiting or sleeping) increases growth potential slowly and steadily. Completing a quest adds a large burst of growth potential. Reading a skill book or having a training session increases growth potential equal to the skill uses that would have been needed to increase that skill naturally.

The mod occasionally looks at how many TOTAL SKILL uses (uses, not increases) a character has made and divides that by his growth potential. A result below 1 makes skills increase faster (by modifying fSkillUseMajorMulti and fSkillUseMinorMulti). A result above 1 makes skills increase more slowly. So basically, if the character is behind where he is "expected" to be by the growth potential, he increases skills faster, if he's ahead of his own growth potential, his skills increase more slowly.

Here's the practical ways this changes gameplay:

1. A character has less incentive to spam skills as much as possible (e.g. casting low-cost spells for a skillup's sake, attacking an enemy with a rusty iron dagger instead of his best sword) because it will just make him rocket past his own growth potential and make future skills come more slowly. A player instead has incentive to focus on the more fun task of overcoming the game's obstacles. However, spamming skills DOES give you a short term advantage. Here's an example. For simplicity's sake say that growth potential increases by 100 each day (so an "average" character is "expected" to make 100 skill uses per day). The character does do 100 uses a day except for day 3 when he goes nuts on skill spamming for some short term purpose.

Day 1: GP=100 Skillups=100/1=100 total skillups=100 Gmod=(100/100)=1
Day 2: GP=200 Skillups=100/1=100 total skillups=200 Gmod=(200/200)=1
Day 3: GP=300 Skillups=500/1=500 total skillups=700 Gmod=(700/300)=2.3
Day 4: GP=400 Skillups=100/2.3=43 total skillups=743 Gmod=(743/400)=1.9
Day 5: GP=500 Skillups=100/1.9=54 total skillups=797 Gmod=(797/500)=1.6
Day 6: GP=600 Skillups=100/1.6=63 total skillups=860 Gmod=(860/600)=1.4
Day 7: GP=700 Skillups=100/1.4=70 total skillups=930 Gmod=(930/700)=1.3
Day 8: GP=800 Skillups=100/1.3=77 total skillups=1007 Gmod=(1007/800)=1.3
Day 9: GP=900 Skillups=100/1.3=77 total skillups=1084 Gmod=(1084/900)=1.2

So despite practicing his skills 400 extra times on day 3, the character is only 184 skill uses ahead of his growth potential by day 9. He's still rewarded and given a lasting bonus to power for having done that extra practice, but it fades over time unless he does it again.



2. A character is not punished nearly as much for using his skills efficiently. A careful Assassin that takes care of problems with a single poisoned arrow from hiding won't have to feel like he's falling behind by not using his skills enough. Here's an example where a character uses his skills only 50 times per day instead of the 100 that's "expected" by GP:

Day 1: GP=100 Skillups=50/1.00=50 Total skillups=50 Gmod=(50/100)=0.50
Day 2: GP=200 Skillups=50/0.50=100 Total skillups=150 Gmod=(150/200)=0.75
Day 3: GP=300 Skillups=50/0.75=67 Total skillups=217 Gmod=(217/300)=0.72
Day 4: GP=400 Skillups=50/0.72=69 Total skillups=286 Gmod=(286/400)=0.72
Day 5: GP=500 Skillups=50/0.72=69 Total skillups=355 Gmod=(355/500)=0.71
Day 6: GP=600 Skillups=50/0.71=70 Total skillups=425 Gmod=(425/600)=0.71
Day 7: GP=700 Skillups=50/0.71=70 Total skillups=495 Gmod=(495/700)=0.71
Day 8: GP=800 Skillups=50/0.71=70 Total skillups=565 Gmod=(565/800)=0.71
Day 9: GP=900 Skillups=50/0.71=70 Total skillups=635 Gmod=(635/900)=0.71

Instead of being behind by half, the character is only behind by about 3/10ths because the gmod gives bonuses. Furthermore he can catch up to his potential pretty easily if he ever wants to because of the faster skillups.

Obviously, this mod has no point if vanilla level scaling is enabled, since characters are *punished* for leveling with scaling intact. However hopefully most of us have mods to get rid of at least that punitive aspect of leveling

Nice. Now that I've got my "other" option... (disclosure, Pure Immersion isn't that far off the nGCD option, but it still requires sleep + level-up screen, and that's what I'm using, but not what I want to try next game...)

What I'd like is a hybrid of nGCD and Daggerfall methods: your actual skill uses determine how many points you can disperse, and to a degree how, but only at level-up, which is itself determined by primary skills as in vanilla. Racial bonuses are not factored in to anything but final stat values. What follows is probably unsuitable for a Vanilla TESV system, and I would recommend something much more like the nGCD option if I were asked by Bethesda what to use.

You still level by using the primary skill set you chose, but instead of a multiplier, you get points that can be allocated manually. However, you can't gain 15 levels using Blade, Block, Armorer, and Heavy Armor exclusively and dump it all into Speed. However, you can pump a limited amount of points into Speed. Just not every point.

As hard math, it should look something like "cap = baseline stat value + (skill average * ((100-baseline)/100)) + maximum deviation", where cap can never exceed 100. Baseline stat value is generally going to be 30 to 40 (undecided), or whatever the race's default value is, whatever is lower. Skill average is, obviously, the average of the relevant skills. This rather assumes you start at 1 in the current formula. Adjustments can be made otherwise (all assuming default of 1 does is make early levels offer a higher reward than they should). If the baseline is 30, then you multiply the average by .7 (that's what the 100-baseline/100 is about). so for every skill gained, you'd get .7/number of skills per attribute added to your cap. Then the maximum deviation limits how out of whack a character can get. Huge limits (50) would allow the character to deviate wildly until they start capping out skill, and small limits (5) pretty much allow you to prioritize a bit vs. nGCD.

Racial bonuses are applied after all this, so having 50 base strength does not mean your baseline is 50, nor that you cap after adding 50 STR. It simply means you can exceed 100 STR by 50-baseline.

Luck, however... I'd want to do something radically different with that, so it would be "baselined to 0" and racial bonus of 0. Any class/birthsign bonuses would appear in "Alternate form" and you'd still start with 0 luck. There would be 100 points of luck that could be gained from doing things. But never from leveling. Why? Because it strikes my fancy.