It doesnt matter if it mattered, whats important is that I enjoyed being 'Merari of Artaeum, the Altmer spellsword'.
Its about roleplaying for me. I always used a custom made class anyway. But I enjoyed that little extra bit of character customisation.
I also miss the different ways to wear clothes we had in Daggerfall. It doesnt directly add anything to gameplay except for roleplaying.
And I like roleplaying more than I like action/ adventuring.

So thats why I hope we still get to name our class/ profession even if its only cosmetic because it is these little customisation details that are so helpful in roleplaying. Not only in giving yourself, but the entire NPC population an extra layer of depth.
The more 'superflous' options are removed, the less of an RPG it is.
That is why people miss crossbows and spears, not because they were the only weapon they liked, but because they like lots of different weapons.

And can't you still be Merari of Artaeum, the Altmer spellsword, in your mind? I thought that's what role-playing was about.

I agree. The class selection wasn't complex at all. It was just unnecessary and inconsistent with what Elder Scrolls is about.

When I was talking about complexity I was really talking about the system in the previous games as a whole.

but its not, since all characters have had predefined strengths and weakness in every TES, excluding maybe Skyrim. So removing classes would be inconsistent with what TES is about, or was. Its kind of like Beth insulting themselves saying that they cant make good enough combat through the roles, in that youd be happy no matter what you picked, so instead of picking a general way to fight, you just have to test it out (this is alright for newer players, but what vet doesnt have some idea on how he will play a TES?). I already have 17 builds in my head ready for Skyrim, as long as they dont cut the content and game mechanics needed to make these RPs.

Care to back that claim up? I can think of only a few factions in Morrowind where you can exhaust all content without killing anyone, and even then it's something you have to work hard at. The Temple commands you to cleanse a Sixth House base (read: kill all of them), the Mage's Guild orders you to assassinate a necromancer in Maar Gan, and even the Imperial Cult wants you to track down and take out a witch. And those are the "peaceful" factions.

Regardless of the figures I can pull out of my ass, the fact remains that TES is a series geared primarily towards giving you lots of choices in the category of murdering people to death (until they die from it). Compare this to, say, the original Fallout, where it's possible to do almost everything without lifting a finger to harm another soul. That's got nothing to do with attributes or the number of skills. It's a central design thing.

Xarnac, I have played TES games for some time now, and while I understand what you are saying... sometimes in Oblivion I created a class and, after some hours playing, I realised that I had taken bad choices. Yes, I could start a new character but... with this system, you can just change your way of playing without the neccessity of starting the game again. I don't see it being useful only for new players, it's something that I welcome as well. It makes things more... natural, in that way.

You can get all the way to the end of Morrowinds MQ without killing anything and plenty of other quest that can be completed the same way throughout all of the TES games. Not to mention I dont know why you keep bringing up passive characters. Most of the time my passive characters did free form quests that I "wrote" for them.

Of course I can, and I will.
But, again, that is not the point. The point is that these little things that are not expressly needed such as clothes, silverware, written dialogue acknowledging your class are great tools for roleplaying.
You have to agree that one of the reasons a TES game is better than say a Bioware game is that there actually are cups on the table that arent just scenery.
It is this level of detail, this attention to customisation that makes the difference between a playable game and a good RPG.

As I said, if I didnt play on xbox first thing Id do is add classes in as a cosmetic.

But it would be so much better if Bethesda did that, gave us the opportunity from the start to deepen our character, make him more of the world he is in. And if there were a few instances where the game would acknowledge this.
"%PCname the %PCclass has payed in full for the land west of Winterhold known as Brookmeadow farm." on a note you get afer buying some property. Or something like that.
Its a very little thing, it has no downsides and it enhances roleplay.
Whats not to like?

I completely understand your point. But I see that you know that you are going to be Merari, the spellsword. But some people doesn't have it so clear. Referring to an example from Todd, maybe you planned to play as a pure mage, but then you find a sword and you think "Hey, I like this" and you begin to use it a lot, so you focus a little bit in combat, and you stop being a mage and you begin to be a spellsword. But - d'oh! - there is something that says that you are "Bob the mage", not "Bob the spellsword" or just "Bob whatever you want to be through your actions".

You could basically do the same thing in Oblivion. Dont like blunt anymore? Use blade etc. You still had to level it, but you'll still have to level it in Skyrim as well. I just see it as a choice and a consequence. If you mess up by doing somthing you didnt want to do, even though you like your build, thats what multiple saves are for.

Correct, and with some clever usage of the tools given by the spell system you can do even more things peacefully, at least more so on Morrowind than Oblivion.
Many a quest item can be stolen without killing, but for instance the Bloodworm helm can be obtained by casting disintegrate weapon on the NPC that wears it until it breaks and he de-equips it. At wich point the man can be calmed and the item stolen.

My Argonian healer never took a life, but that doesnt mean she wasnt evil. She left poor Crazy Batou rooted to the spot because his strength was fatally damaged.

The outcast ashlanders can be made permanently peaceful by casting a calm spell and then raising their disposition to 100, as Nerevarine I didnt really want to kill them. Its unbecoming of a champion of the people.

Many, many things can be done without ever killing at all.

Agreed aswell, the class system were nothing more than this with a title to display that you never really used.

We can make up the class name in our head if we wish to.

You say how little classes mattered in TES, and that's pretty much why they've removed it.

No, i said that even if you choose a certain role, through time and working at it, you can make him somthing else. That character wont be as good at his new "role" as someone who specialized it in the beginning and they wont progress as fast either. So no, they were not pointless.

I think its funny people want more choice and consequence, but when its given, or its been there, they dont want it anymore.

The problem I have is that, as you have said, I can not be as good as someone that has specialized in it from the beginning. If I'm doing the very same... why is that? Aren't our actions what defines ourselves, and not our labels?

No, becasue we were not born in that prison.

Imo in previous TES games there were less class restrictions than there will be now hopefully. Did your class really matter? You'd get a few extra points on a few skills (which didn't matter at all since they were in the lower skill range and thus easy to gain anyway even for people with a different class) and you had your major skills, which would level up a bit more quickly. But in the long run all characters were the same. In Skyrim the limited amount of perks you can choose will hopefully make each character different so at level 50 you have a certain 'class' that you specified yourself while playing the game with each perk you selected while leveling up. Unlike in Oblivion or Morrowind, where at level 50 each character was exactly the same.

Additionally you can choose only one of the three main attributes (health, magicka, stamina) per level up. Again unlike Oblivion or Morrowind, where you could get all three stats to their max amount if you leveled carefully.

To finish Morrowind's main quest you have to kill someone. Dagoth Gares has to die in order to move forward with it. You have to kill members of the Erabenimsun tribe to be named Nerevarine by them. Hell, even if you go the "back path" you have to kill Vivec, and there's no way to get into the Heart Chamber without "killing" Dagoth Ur.

And of course most of the content in the game can be done passively if you make up most of that content yourself. That's not really roleplaying, not in the sense you mean when you talk about an RPG. That's playing "Let's Pretend," and you can do it in any game. In Modern Warfare 2 you can pretend that you're an alien who jumps between human bodies to gather intelligence about the way they fight their ground wars, and use your mind control powers to trick the moustache guy into nuking the space station, which was the best chance these pathetic humans had of detecting your race early! Mwahahaha! Also, you don't use shotguns because they're against your alien religion. They will be banned immediately after establishing control of Earth, and their manufacturers will be sent to the salt mines for punishment. Their suffering shall be our spice.

Yeah I think this too.

Never really enjoyed classes. Now I am what I play. I fully understood Todd's way of expressing it and I'm glad Skyrim has taken this road.

Uh read my post again, henct the "you could get to the END of the Morrowind questline without killing, you cant beat it, but you can get to the end.


Uh, yes, that is roleplaying.

No, thats roleplaying. Its an RPG, and thats what you do in them.
Do anything, be anyone.

No, you can't. The end of the main quest is severing Dagoth Ur's link to the heart and being given a crappy ring by Azura. And again, you can't even get anywhere near that point unless you kill someone, as I've illustrated by pointing out your orders to kill Dagoth Gares, which come so early in the quest line that Caius Cosades is still around to stand uselessly in his house and do nothing. And usually when you refer to roleplaying in a CRPG most people mean letting your character's mindset and capabilities dictate how you deal with the challenges presented, not how you choose to ignore them completely and, say, pretend in Fallout 2 that your Chosen One just wanted to settle down and start a family, but can't because he's got a nasty gambling problem that keeps him from leaving New Reno, not to mention that murder mystery he's got to solve in the part of town that was never actually in the game...

And really, if that's roleplaying... why does the loss of classes bother you, exactly? If it's something that's entirely external to the game mechanics then said mechanics don't matter in the least. You'll still be a mage who exclusively deals with magic spells and enchanting, and makes the conscious decision to pursue Destruction perks over Enchantment ones, as the headmaster of his magic school back on Summerset Isle told him any proper mage would do. You really need to label your high elf who never touches a single weapon in the entire game a "Mage" to RP him as such?

May I direct you to the posts I made on the previous page for an answer to that?

However, in this case he's right. In Skyrim classes have the possiblity end up more unique/specialized than in Oblivion and possibly Morrowind. Classes would just be a label at this point.