Right, so the idea is that an important aspect of the game is the detailed development of certain character traits, and the best way for the player to manage the details of this development is to be presented with the numbers. Using more imprecise means of representing the character traits makes it more difficult for the player to guide their character's development with sufficient control.

And that's fair enough, I've got no quarrel with that. But I think it's important to realise that this is just a preference about what features one likes in a game. Someone might like to have detailed control over their avatar. Others might be happy with less control, and care more about dungeon crawling and exploring the landscape. No one is right or wrong in this.

(You might deride the second group as "action gamers" or whatever. But so what? Liking "action" games over "RPGs" is itself just another matter where there's no right or wrong. And, as far as I can tell, Bethesda aren't under any obligations to make games which appeal to people with certain preferences.)

Well since we don't know what kinds of perks are going to be in the game, it could very well be that some of those very same modifiers are included in them as well, leading to nothing more than a duplication. Which was very common in Oblivion already, like Speed and Athletics for instance, or Personality and Speechcraft/Mercantile.

Except that there not taking away any depth, they're refocusing the depth of the system into something else.

From what I understand its like this....

The game will start like how Oblivion did, you pick your race, your gender, and that's it. Along the way you start to think, "you know I really liked fighting with two handed weapons so I'll do that". So you keep at two handed weapons. Along the way you level up and the game says, hey I noticed your using two handed weapons a lot would you like to focus on that? Ok what kind of two handed weapons are you thinking about focusing on swords, axes, or warhammers? Swords then? Right well there's some pretty cool things you can do with your two handed sword here's some perks that would fit well with that.... and so on.

What it's not doing is holding a menu up in front of you face and saying, "CHOOSE YOUR CLASS" "CHOOSE WHAT SKILLS YOUR GOOD IN" without knowing what those will be because you really haven't had a chance to try them all.

A new player can try out skills and see which ones they like, instead of having to worry about choosing a "wrong batch" of skills. And I hate to say it, but everyone that walks into this game is going to be a new player, because the skills are likely going to work differently then the previous game.

Precisely, and its the same flame retardant Todd tried to use in the magazines and interviews, notice how Bethesda comes otff hypocritical almost saying there are no classes but because he "equips a sword and a spell he's now a spellsword" Pun intended? or that he equips only spells and he's a mage, like really? just say classes are out and not beat around the bush Oblivion and Morrowind didn't recognize that you were a particular class Beyond baurus in Oblivion and NPC's who shared your class in Morrowind, everyone played the same in Oblivion unless the player conciously stuck with whatever class they chose to play as.

you can Put on an outfit and think you are a class, but the game doesnt recognize that. why would it? there are no cues.

In Skyrim there are no defined roles, and even more so the game encourages you to Hybridize since you can snap to a new set of skills with neglible effects, Perks are fine little do-dads but they don't show what the character is strong or weak against, they are just tricks/benefits a player can employ. now my Point


A player decides to switch builds they are tired of being a Archer, somehow they managed to go much of the game to level `15 without swords (which probably isnt much since its stated that players will level faster than Oblivion....and in one good dungeon for about 10 minutes a player can gain 5-8 levels) now he wants to level Sword skills...oh but look....no perks for swords because his skill is too low, thus a weapon that would be fairly strong in striking power is jelly in his hands, had he had strenght from knocking arrows all day (an example of making strenght grow and matter to the player based on their actions) maybe the sword would be a little more useful(because of the light gain in strenght a exceptional endurance.)...but at the moment its not because he doesnt have the perks to give his sword permission to hit harder, also because of no strenght and endurance and the player boosting their Stamina more than health because they needed to speed and fire more with more Stamina, he can't take more than a few hard strikes and goes down when he tries to play the sword game. Intended play style? possibly but if someone realizes they are getting face hugged because the game is getting harder, what is this player to do?


Attributes don't need to be exactly like Oblivion and games prior....its a new game, change it..make it matter, Perks are not Omnisituational especially when they are intertwined with skills and the game encourages Hybridization of no longer existing classes


What Im trying to get people to realize is that, the 3 bars that have been in every TES game was the culmination of Attributes.....3 Bars do not say how Agile, strong, or how much one can carry in a game, and we do know what kind of perks are going to be in Skyrim...Skill perks..

Well TES has always been an RPG, ever since they decided Arena wouldnt be a two person fighting game and an RPG. So to make this into a linear action game would hurt its core demographic. Would other people flock to it? Sure, but the core that liked it for what it was, a game that made you think, would be out a game. And its not a mater of opinion with an RPG based on visual cues, you just cant have a deep RPG without displayed stats. The first thing people would want to see, is what these choices they've been making have been doing.

Speculation aside. Perks could never replace attributes, but they can compliment them. Perks are specific to particular skill, while attributes are more who you are at the core that effect all you do. The clothes don't make the man.

Well, there are a couple of things to say in response:

1. Yes, fans of previous games might not like the new ones. And, yes, it svcks for them. And you might even argue that Bethesda have made some sort of moral mistake here, by going against the preferences of the fans who helped make them the company they are today. All fair enough, but I don't think any of this shows that it is any more than a simple matter of preference as to whether or not displayed stats are a good feature of a game.

2. I think you might be right that it's not a matter of opinion that a deep RPG must have displayed stats. But I think that's only right if you get to legislate on the meaning of "deep RPG". Forget the labels, can you have a fun and rewarding game without displayed stats? A lot of people think so, even if not everybody thinks so. Maybe Bethesda are making a bad play in wanting to call Skyrim an RPG. I guess I don't see that as an important issue.

Well thats what separates a "fun and rewarding" game with what the juggernaut TES has been up to this point and thats one of, if not the best RPG videogame(s) ever made. That's what demographics and genres are for, when they intermingle its a good thing, but when one tries to jump into another's pool, there's a problem. All the water evaporates from one pool. Some crawl to another pond, but most original inhabitants die.

I'm not sure I entirely follow that metaphor, but I think we've reached the end of our disagreement anyway.

It means, if all RPGs turned into watered down, glorified action games, (The profitable thing to do) the action game demographic would be happy and just have more games to play. For people that really only like RPGs though, they would unfortunately see their market evaporating. Something its been doing for a decade (although this isn't entirely genre merging's fault).

I'm out for a while too, Peace!

What I want to know is why are you anti attribute peeps so opposes to a revamped attribute system with perks and skill? That's the common stance I'm seeing. Barring the fact that no one has played the game...

I'm not entirely sure about this either, but I think the idea is that everything that attributes did in previous games can be done more economically with the derived attributes, skills, and perks; furthermore, any of the suggested additions to how attributes worked in previous games could also be accommodated with just attributes, skills, and perks.

So it seems to be that attributes were largely redundant, so one might as well get rid of them to avoid information overload.

But I guess I should leave it up to more sympathetic defenders to state the argument. :shrug:

??

You know - I keep seeing this claim that athletics and speed were redundant, and, as with so many of the specious arguments I see on this topic, I can only wonder how it is that anybody actually says this. I have little choice but to ascribe it to an all-consuming need to give the appearance of defending the status quo no matter the arguments necessary and/or a surprising unfamiliarity with the game.

In point of fact, athletics and speed are used entirely separately in movement speed calculations. Base movement speed - walking - doesn't rely on athletics at all. It's calculated solely off of speed (modified by encumbrance, whether your weapon's drawn, etc.) All other movement speeds - running and swimming ("walking" swimming and "running" swimming) are also calculated from speed, with athletics only serving as a fractional modifier. The primary effect of athletics wasn't on movement speed at all, but on rate of fatigue regeneration.

So sincerely, the assertion that they were "a duplication" in Oblivion is flatly false.

Similarly, and actually even more significantly, personality and speechcraft/mercantile are not by any stretch duplications. Aside from other factors like fame and race, disposition is ONLY set by personality. Speechcraft and mercantile have absolutely no bearing at all on initial disposition. Mercantile has absolutely nothing to do with disposition at all. It only serves to establish, in combination with disposition, the limit to which one might successfully haggle prices. Speechcraft has some small bearing on disposition, but only in modifying it - not in establishing it. It only determines the amount to which disposition can be increased through the mini-game - NOT the initial disposition score. That, again, is established by personaliity (in combination with fame and race and such). So even more than is the case with athletics and speed, the assertion that they were "a duplication" in Oblivion is flatly false.

Which simply leaves me wondering why anyone would make such a blatantly false assertion.....

No.

With race the one big choice all you would get from adding back in atributes that way is a lesser race effect and the missing chunk now being what you can do with atributes.

Id rather they stick all the oomph of that starting choice in race and not use any of it for atributes.

Also I would much rather have a magicka and health and stamina I directly increase as I please then to have intel endurance and such.

I am in complete agreement with this.

Funny. Morrowind's gameplay hinged on trial & error. You didn't receive much help for character creation, and you didn't receive much help for the starting quests. Make your char, get a package, get pushed out the door. Good luck! Is this character build good? Who knows.. try it and see if a mudcrab kills you. Can you go along this path? Who knows.. try it, and if you run into monsters that kill you in one hit, that's a no. That's the epitome of trial & error gameplay.

Both Oblivion and Skyrim are moving towards making sure the player is better informed when character-threatening choices have to be made, and that it's harder to irrepparably screw up over an uninformed decision.


No one has ever said that Health, Magicka, and Stamina themselves alone replace all attributes. Your skills, perks, and H/M/S all together in combination replicate the functionality of attributes.

The way I look at it is this:

Attributes give your character a broad and blurry shape, a rough indication of the activities at which your character will be good and not so good.

Skills bring your character into sharper focus by representing the activities in which your character has specialized.

Perks are the flourishes and details on top. They represent the tricks and abilities that your character learns through excellence in specific skills.

Many of these discussions have centered around Perks vs Attributes as though they are in opposition but viewed as above I think it's obvious that Attributes, Skills and Perks all bring something different to the character development party.

Now, because vanilla Oblivion did not make full use of Attributes except as stat modifiers I cannot argue against the idea that Perks can mimic the effect of Attributes. But I ask the question, is that really the best way to use Perks?

If all 280 Perks were going to be like the 'sixy' ones that have so far been mentioned (eg Bleeding effect on axe damage, zoom aim for marksmen) then I would be very excited at the prospect. However, since we know that Perks are now replacing a lot of the effects of Attributes it's a fair bet that most Perks are actually going to be mundane stat modifiers: Damage multipliers, Magicka regen boosts, Encumbrance modifiers etc.

So, I think there's at least a couple of reasons to be disappointed by the removal of Attributes. Not only does it extinguish any hope that Bethesda would actually try to use the full potential of Attributes, it also forces Perks to do the stat-modifying donkey work that Attributes are much better suited to doing behind the scenes.

I'm not against attributes (assuming they were better done than earlier TES games but something like GCD would've suited me fine)
However we know traditional attributes won't be in
What I'm wondering is why given the lack of details we currently have some people are so determined to be negative about the new system before we know the details

It's fairly natural that someone who likes attributes would have a negative opinion of them being removed. But if you don't care for attributes or have a lot of blind faith in Bethesda then I can understand why you would find it hard to fathom.

That, and it helps to have a practical look at it. Bethesda was not opposed to having attributes, since Skyrim had them early on. However, due to their redundancy, their implementation had no purpose. The only thing they could've done, besides removing them, would be to fundamentally change them (and I guarantee people would complain if they did that, too; maybe not the same people as now, but there would be people comaplaining). That would obviously take planning, work, and testing. However, since they were already doing perks, they had an elegant solution to the problem already implemented that required little adjustment. They apparently felt that the time needed to substantially modify attributes was not worth it, when their functionality could be folded in to an already-existing system. This also helps free up development resources for other things, without losing anything.

I would not be opposed to them substantially reworking attributes to make them fresh and useful, as long as it didn't detract from other good features and didn't de-balance the game. However, that is simply not likely to happen, as Bethesda has made their decision. Since we aren't losing anything that the original attributes they planned for provided, and with their functionality being taken over by more flexible perks, I see absolutely nothing to complain or worry about at this point in time. Indeed, this change looks to be an improvement over what they were originally going for. It makes me interested to see how it all turns out. I would absolutely be concerned, however, if they did a 180 at this point in the dev cycle and put attributes back in to placate people that didn't want them removed.

I wouldn't consider it blind faith to wait for details before making a judgement.

No more grinding for +5 +5 +5

Well how about traits? Specially designed perks thats have improved mechanic of attribute system?
Implementing starting traits thats do the same things thats before do attributes is not hard to do and allow define natural abilities of character and define background of character and his inborn abilities. Such traits can be not tied to skills and be just additional stars at three major way of character specialization, so we don't start with generic blank character since all have different natural abilities decided by traits.
For example there can be Beauty and Charisma trait thats increase initial disposition and add charming options to dialogues and increase chances of successful checks of Illusion and Spechcraft skills
or athleticism trait thats increase speed of character and decrease fatigue usage such traits can be done even on base perks system and believe certainly used to decide racial traits and powers in game since Todd say they are still here.
So with trait system can be fixed many flaws of implementation of attributes in previous games, as well such traits can be used in alchemy and in diseases for replace attributes, traits can be used even as base for Birthsigns and Advantages&disadvantages.
Traits is not leveled by the same way as attributes before, mostly they will available only at start but at certain levels can be chosen again and can have requirements also, because of smaller stages then attributes have ( for example 10 vs 100) their effect will be much more visible in game, traits can be racial also so not all races will have them, traits can have side effects so no all of them will be completely beneficial, as starting traits there can be disadvantages thats can also be applied but will free some additional traits points to make starting character even more unique.

I believe adding such traits allow increase customization of our character much furtherer then just by adding more magicka health and fatigue and some bonuses to skills.

Think about it this way. The only thing attributes do is to influence other stats. If that is the case then they can eliminate the middle man attributes and create a better system. Some attributes are required and it makes sense to be attributes and not perks because the detail is important: health, magic, stamina, concentration. Other stats like intelligence, personality, luck can be replaced by traits.

What the ES system needs is traits, which complement perks and skills. Clearly not every char ability is learned by practice. Some lucky bastards are born with a natural talent and they can learn a certain skill much faster or are simply stronger than most without having to workout.

About the lack of classes TES has always been an rpg where you role-play creatively (not in a dumb sense). You explore the world and social relations with important npcs and try to build a reputation for yourself. It's not the kind of rpg where you explore the system and try to make the most out of your character.

Who would? I was quite specific in that I was talking about opinions, which is all we really have at the moment whether negative or positive. If you were complaining about people being too judgemental I wish you would have made that clearer in your original question rather than twisting my reply out of context.