How is that worrisome? They are addressing the problems of having too many skills, they are trying to get them to the point where there aren't redundant skills. They have gotten to that point in Skyrim. I don't see why people need more skills for customization because you have 280 perks and with the new leveling system, you have more choices then we even did with our 37 skills in Daggerfall, which is pretty damn impressive. There is nothing for people to complain about when this game has more choices then games in the past. We did the math the other day and you have 57 Septillion (24 zeros) combinations with everything in Skyrim. In TES VI they will be able to add new skills if they feel they need to with this leveling system now that they got rid of all the redundant ones but it won't matter if they do or not, because 18 skills with perks and the new leveling system gives you as customization as having a large number of skills.

Edit: if someone needs to see what 57 septillion looks like as a number:

57,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

So yeah, chances are your character isn't going to be exactly like any other character, the chances are astronomical compared to past games.

personally I like the new system, it gives a good base, giving you more freedom to be creative and not shy away from things, while the perks still offers specialisation and a way of defining your character.

/thread

My opinion is this: many of the skills in Morrowind were nice for the purpose of roleplaying, but they didn't actually add very much to the game itself. Take for instance the skills 'Shortblade' 'Longblade' 'Axe' 'Blunt' 'Spears' etc. These skills seem awesome, because it looks like your character can specialize in many different ways. However, what these skills do is actually pretty simple, and if you think about it they're the same plus or minus some aesthetic preference. As it stands, you can 'lunge', 'swing', or 'chop' with either an axe, sword, stick, or dagger-shaped object, and the result is basically the same. Now you may say that the system is actually more interesting than I say it is, because some weapon types work better against certain armor types, so there is actually some level of choice involved beyond just pure aesthetic. However, I claim that this justification of the current system is an evaluation of the entire strategic potential of the system; truth be told, the mechanics aren't very interesting. The same level of differentiation between axe, blade, blunt, spear, etc, could be determined with a far simpler system characterized by only two skill levels; the relative player skill with a particular weapon would be given by a function of the two particular skill values.

So how can the system be improved? Answering this question requires a lot of introspection. In what ways does our current notion of the combat system hinder our capacity to improve it? What do we actually want from the combat system?

Personally, I want a combat system that will keep me interested in the game for its own sake, the way people play chess or checkers for its own sake. RPG's need to deal with many different gameplay elements at once, so it is difficult for them to attain the same level of richness as a pure strategy game. The gameplay of RPG's tends to resemble that of card-games: one hand beats another hand, one weapon type beats one armor type. This school of game design is useful when the primary appeal of a game is the narrative, but for a game that requires some level of lasting appeal (such as a sandbox game), this level of complexity is not sufficient to maintain interest. I think that this is why Oblivion was not quite as popular with longstanding fans of the series as it was with newcomers; the gameplay was not new enough to be interesting. I'm happy that the developers are trying new things; most of the ideas that have been mentioned so far increase the level of player interaction in the game, so I expect it to keep me interested for a while.

When did you ever think to yourself "Oh I ran out of choices of skills to level" in Oblivion? Really, I want to know who didn't have to choose what they wanted to level. This argument just turns into, "I played Morrowind first so I want a Morrowind clone." If more skills are better, why not go all the way and get as many skills as Daggerfall, nevermind many of them are redundant and aren't really useful beyond certain situations.

Right to a limited degree. Chain will distribute the force to the adjacent link. That's enough to blunt the impact of a sword slash along a line, but not a hammer concentrating its full weight on one small spot. Plate armor is only good up until it buckles, and then it suddenly becomes a twisted piece of metal digging into your skin.

Thats what perks do, you take perks to specialise instead of skills. SKills allow you to specilaise via perks, not specialisation through 500 useless skills.

personally going to miss them, but I can hope for the best


The only way either system can be commended is if it is properly balanced with itself and the game world requirements of it. That has yet to be seen for perks.

And with perks being more segmented it is going to be more hit and miss with the balance, but it shouldn't be outright bad with all the experience Beth has.

(Sighs), here we go again :facepalm: .
I fail to see the logic of how choosing a weapon skill in, say, Morrowind, made any more a substantial decision than just what types of weapons your character would be limited to. Seriously, that was it. The skills and weapons themselves weren't at all that much different, except that some were two-handed and dealt more damage overall... oh, wait, isn't that the diferentiation we have now?
And what other skills are hacked: Mysticism? It was a skill for everyone to use as an additional one, but not truly substantial. Acrobatics? Most acrobat characters also use Athletics anyway, to be able to move quickly in combat. Only makes sense to merge the two together, so that one choice doesn't take up two "choice slots".
This reasoning is followed throughout all the changes to the skill list.

Try and keep the sighing to a minimum, you might hyperventilate.

I gotta agree with this.
Trimming is good.
Too much trimming is bad, and that's how it seems they are going.

Oops, too late. It just infuriates me when people complain about "this or that" when in reality the new system does exactly what the old one did but better. It may look different but in the end it has the same effect as the old one but with a bonus at the end. This is what the new perk system and the new magic system and so much more does in Skyrim. From what we know of Skyrim, the systems that they replaced the old ones with far out perform the older ones and give you the same effect and more.

I dunno, they seem to have compensated for the trims with perks this time. A whomping 280 perks - that perhaps even added more fat than was lost with hacked skills.

Name one thing in Oblivion that you will not be able to do in Skyrim.

They could easily trim things all the way down to three skills, and then convert all the skills we have now into perk-tree's that act like sub-skills. The more you used something specific like destruction magic, the more options you'd be able to choose with the perk trees, and the basic magic skill would make it so if you can use some destruction magic, it would be easier to use and learn restoration because you're handle with gathering and molding magic would be greater.

Its not like they're getting rid of anything at all. I don't see a reason to even think like that. They've added things. They could go a lot further with it, but its people thinking like this that are infact holding back the rpg aspect of combat. With perks, one swordsman would be different when compaired to another. With things the way they are now, we only have a single line called the one handed skill, with a few twigs pointing off to the side to make things a little different, however a swordsman will still be simmilar to the next one. I'd rather have a tree for the sword sub-skill instead of a little twig that's sticking in the ground, but people are in panic mode because they are getting less lines and more divercity. Honestly, how can you even call the new system less of an rpg? How?

I agree with this....i really can't understand why people don't think it will be better.
People seem to have an obession with numbers for some reason.....and if you look at it that way or any other.
18 skills + ranks + perks = a hell of a lot more than 21 or 27 skils,plain and simple.

^_^


And I think I will appreciate the things it has to offer, but its down to the core issue again that people have different interests in performance. SUV, truck, van, commuter, cycle; which one has the best performance?

[] just want to clarify, that was an example and not a metaphor.

One thing?
Spell making.
Also, you act as if Oblivion is the mold in which I base what a good game is. :rofl:
Oblivion was horrible compared to Morrowind. Morrowind was better in almost every regard.

Sorry, I'm not that up-to-date. What are those "ranks", and how they influence char. advancement?

... and we've seen that they are in fact addressing nigh every misstep made in Oblivion: level-scaling, landscapes, atmosphere, artistic direction, you name it.
Also it's arguable that it's worth sacrificing spellmaking for the sake of a better magic experience. Though we will have to see how that plays out. It's a risky move.

This.

Please just let it die that you are going to have a one-handed and two-handed weapon skill instead of different several weapon skills, I say let you start off either wielding a one-handed or two-handed skill and then let you choose perks that allow you to specialize weapon abilities, instead of forcing you to shoot yourself in the foot by making you choose between maces/axes and swords because each weapon can have an enchantment that makes it just scream your playstyle but you cant make much use of it because you took blade and it's a mace and even though it's late in the game and it could be just the thing that helps you gloriously pwn your enemies, your blade is at 82 and your blunt is at 17, so you can't do jack in the way of power moves or damage and you're pretty much dragon chow.

From some of the whining that I've heard over the difference between swords, axes and maces, I'm convinced that some of the members want separate skills dealing with the color of the weapon. Just give it a rest, buy the PC version and wait for (or make) a mod that can revert it back to your playstyle.

Because spell making has so much to do with skills. We'll still be able to combine spells anyway. You just cant get 100% weakness to fire and 100 fire damage in your left hand and the same thing in the right. Because that wouldn't be over powered. Two hundred percent weakness to fire along with 200 fire damage. lolz

Morrowind's combat was so much worce. Oblivion was much better in my opinion. My arguement infact gets stronger when you like morrowind's style better. You're telling me the combat experience you gain fighting enemies with a sword would be useless when you have an axe? You're combat style would be different, but you'd know what the enemy would be planning due to youre experience fighting in general. Also...what makes one spear fighter different when compaired to the next? Nothing, it was a stright line. Rpgs are not about straight lines, they're about options. Perk trees give options, while the spear skill does not.

It's not really a situation where performance of the system depends on how people feel it fits what their idea of what the system should look like or not, it's more down to the actual function. It has the same effect as the old system and adds even more customization and bonuses to your character, the only difference is that they look differently and people really shouldn't let an optical illusion rule their perception. That very fact is what made so many people not like Oblivion even though it was a very good game. People were too busy trying to spot and complain about the differences between Morrowind and Oblivion instead of actually paying attention to the game and enjoying it. Nothing ruins your gaming experience if your not putting yourself in the game and your too busy trying to compare it to the other game. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy if you say it's going to be worse than the previous game so your unhappy while you play the new game and then when you finish the game all you can remember is you being unhappy during the game, thus you feel the game wasn't as good. It's not fair to the new game if your going to do that and then that person doesn't have the right to judge the new game when they didn't even give it a chance in the first place. That's how I feel the majority of the community on these forums are going about it, just like they did with Oblivion.

Quote from the podcast: "there's a lot of perks. If you count the ranks in, I think there's something like 280 of them...".
When people on this forum say 280 perks they don't literally mean that there will be 280 absolutely different ones. If we asume that there are 10 different kind of perks per skill, that makes 180 perks. The other 100 comes from the fact that you'll be able to choose some perks several times over to get increasingly more powerful versions (ranks) of them.

Yes please.

The MMO skill would cover neon
Tournoment skill to cover standard hue differences
Single-Player to cover the rustic, realistic colors.

----

I want to make sure you understood what I was saying, and for that I am going to ask you a question.

Are you trying to infer that I did not think the skill growth system in Morrowind fit what I see in the world, and that I am here solely to complain?

Umm the only thing you named out of that list which was a misstep in Oblivion was level-scaling. The landscapes were more beautiful than Morrowind, the atmosphere had a lighter feel to it and progressively got more ominous as the main quest line progressed. The atmosphere felt really ominous when you got close to Oblivion gates. I don't see why people think the atmosphere or landscapes were bad when in fact they were unique, beautiful and the atmosphere fit Cyrodiil and what was going on in it. The artistic direction, I don't even know what you thought was wrong with that.

As for spellmaking, spellmaking has been replaced and improved with the new magic system. We have done the math in a previous thread, there are more combination out of the new magic system then you ever got from spellcrafting. Putting spellcrafting in on top of the new magic system would be redundant and would quickly get out of hand like Morrowind's enchant stacking. In short, spellcrafting's main feature is still in the game, you have the same effect of spellcrafting and more with the new magic system itself. No one is losing anything and if people are too blind to see it then it's their problem and they can just not buy the game, we won't miss you <_<



If I meant you I would've addressed you directly. That entire statement was a generalization of those that misinterpret the new systems and only see loss when in fact all they did was gain more customization and everything they say are the important things, yet they somehow don't see how they actually gained instead of lost.