That's what I dislike about them. Your skills determine your effectiveness at your various abilities, so having attributes feed into them is basically encouraging a monotype character. If you're using skill X, Y, or Z, you should get attributes A, B, or C that makes you better at using them. I'd prefer skills to interact with your character in a way that skills can't, to make them worthwhile additions, rather than being an extra way to buff your skills. I remember Dargor suggesting an idea I liked, that every attribute should be useful to every archetype (strength should be useful to a mage, intelligence useful to a warrior, etc), but I'd like to see it in a way that doesn't just grant a bonus to skill effectiveness.

Except both Fallout 3 and NV had the 1-10 setup, and its generally agreed that attributes were basically worthless outside their use in skill checks, and that having 5 in an attribute was barely any different then having 7 or 8.

Attributes, no matter the scale, will never be worthwhile so long as the games are so player driven in terms of things like combat, and there is a 0% chance of Bethesda going back to character driven combat after the backlash that was Morrowind's combat, and the general progression of every major RPG developer into more player driven action based combat, and the removal of attributes.

That's not so much a problem with the 1-10 scale, but with the continued problems with the interactions between Attributes and Skills. And that's one of the things that has been consistently problematic in TES since as long as i can remember. Trying to keep both Skills and Attributes relevant, without one overshadowing the other, is a very difficult balancing act. Most games that include both simply treat Skills as a 'Can you or Can't you' sort of dynamic, where as Attributes are what ultimately govern success, but neither TES nor Fallout do that.

It wouldn't even be doable without sacrificing much of the real-time nature of the games, or reverting to an overly simplistic AI reaction model. As soon as you implement AI that will actively try to get out of your way, having things like a 'Miss Chance' becomes a crippling liability. The only alternative to maintaining that sort of interaction, while keeping the dynamic 'image' of combat, is to automate it like D&D games do, but then you're stripping away player agency in favour of letting the game run a combat simulation.

I think attributes can still have a place in more player-driven systems. Oblivion had both attributes and heavily player-skill driven combat. It failed in meshing those two things together well because it just used their preexisting attribute system which was made to work with die-roll hit/miss/dodge/block/etc systems and giving the players greater control over the combat just made many of the attributes either irrelevant or nothing more than a point dump to increase your damage. When something like that happens, Bethesda tends to just cut something. They weren't going to cut the combat system since it was relatively popular, so they cut the attributes and tried to fill that void with perks instead.

What they didn't do is try to rework their attribute system into a new one that worked better with player-driven combat. No games that I can think of have really tried to do that, let alone succeed at it. Earlier action RPG's like Oblivion tried to superimpose the old attribute/stat systems and it didn't work well. Since then most of the RPG's with an emphasis on player-driven combat have simply eschewed those systems and instead gave players more choices in which new skills and abilities they got, like Deus Ex, The Witcher, Dragon Age or Amalur. Skyrim seemed to be trying to do something like that with it's perks, but since all players have access to all skills at all times rather than needing to unlock them as they progress like the aforementioned games it doesn't work as well since perks at best slightly improve/change a preexisting skill, rather than unlocking new ones.

If some company can find a way to make stats feel relevant in a way that isn't just increasing damage dealt or damage resistance (or just arbitrary caps that you have to reach to unlock something new) in a more action-oriented combat system I will be a very happy camper. If Bethesda is the first to do it, I'll be even happier.

Well it used to be, at least in Morrowind, that attributes determined weapon damage, while skills determined weapon hit chances, at least when it came to melee weapons. But, ever since they got rid of hit chances, in Oblivion, both attributes and skills controlled weapon damage, which just made one of them redundant.

Basically what you said

I apologize if I come off rude when saying this, but that is not an argument.

That's because skills are not something one should need to unlock. This is not an MMO where you can't wear a hat until level 12 because reasons. ANYONE, especially in TES where everyone is magical to some extent, can just slap on heavy armor, or cast alteration spells, or w/e, and learn to get better with it. Perks should not exist to unlock new skills, they should exist to improve the ones you use. That's the point. Anyone can pick up a sword, or a shield, or a magical spell, those are not special talents people need training to unlock, those are things anyone can do, which is why they are automatically open.

You did with Morrowind's attribute system. You used a Longblade and your strength improved. But strength was not just used for longblades, but also for axes and 2-handed weapons, and athletics, etc. Your strength was not segmented into specific singular skills, but all skills that utilized strength. That makes sense to me...

I really wish Strength was a lot more useful if you trained your Player Character (PC) to kill enemy NPC's in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Well, the change was again something of a necessity as they moved AI forward targets that move around, try to get into cover, or flank you, rather than stand there as you smack them, don't facilitate dice-roll to-hit mechanics. The options were either change things, or keep the world clunky and static.


Even then, the Morrowind era was simplistic to the point superficial. Because you were presented with such one dimensional interactions between Skills and Attributes, the only reason to NOT advance primary attributes was to deliberately hamstring yourself. This type of simplicity encouraged mono-typed characters, making all Weapon-users Strength Based, all Rogues Agility Based, and all Mages Intelligence based, while offering very little incentive for them to invest in anything else. This also created problems with hybrid classes, spreading too much out across different skills and their governing attributes. Without a high strength, your weapon skills were basically useless, so gods forbit you also had Marksman, Speechcraft and a Magic major skill.


And this isn't even dealing with the issue of Skills being far more important than they were in Morrownd. Strength is a secondary concern to Skill, and should act as a complemnt, not an equal party. Skill doesn't just determine IF you hit, it determines how you hit and where you hit. Particularly in combat skills, Strength is often a secondary concern, just as raw intelligence can't make up for a glaring lack of knowledge. This was compounded by the weirdly carved up Skills, rendering a seasoned and skill fighter a bumbling child as soon as they switched to a slightly different weapon, but that only exaggerated the artificial nature of the Attributes and what they governed.


And even then, the expression of these characteristics isn't as uniform as it's typically portrayed. Just because you can hit hard doesn't mean you can carry a lot. Just because you're nimble doesn't mean your quiet. Just because you're personable doesn't mean you're good at talking.


Both of these were addressed somewhat by Perks, where you had to 'manifest' expressions of old Attributes and how they related to specific Skills, but it was done in an extremely poorly represented way that left no association with the Attributes that were being represented. There was nothing to indicate that Magicka Efficiency was a 'Willpower' effect, or that increased movement speed in armour was an 'Endurance' or 'Strength' effect. This was further compounded by the flat-rate values of these Perks, which only served to divorce them from any sense of physical or mental development of the character and make them feel like they were simply things that should happen automatically with the Skill.


In a purely functional sense, Skyrims Attribute dynamic (because it DOES have one) is functionally superior, because of the way it spreads out the interactions of those concepts. It falls flat, however, in it's ability to represent its self, to the point where virtually no one even recognises that theres an Attribute system there at all. It also still fails to address the issue that, you can drive these characteristics even if you don't know how to apply them... So you can still be strong, without it having any bearing on your sword play.


On the whole, its a sloppy side-grade. As Kovacious said earlier, combining the two approaches would have offered (potentially, assuming Bethesda didn't do its usual thing and stumble over its own execution) a new benchmark in Character Options, but as it stands, what we got basically just covered some of the weaknesses of the old system, with none of its strengths.

Even though The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim have Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) that hides for cover, moves, and flanks your Player Character (PC), they both should of still had weapon damage that makes sense when hitting the enemy NPC's.

For The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim it would of been so much better to have the Attributes and have weapon damage for each weapons and have Strength for them. Hit harder as you get stronger, etc.

Once again you say they could of kept the video game static if they didn't change.

This is not true they could of added the Attributes and Skill back in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and improve them to be better than what we have in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

That's because they weren't trying to relate them to attributes, they were trying to relate them either directly to skills, or the direct stats of HP/Magicka/Stamina. Skill level exists only to represent the most basic general knowledge of a skill, which is why weapon damage, armor effectiveness, and magicka costs, do improve by raising the skill, but only by a little. Perks represent deeper specialization into something, which is why most of the improvements were located there.

Trying to connect them to the old attributes would be fundamentally counter to the entire intent of the system.

No it isn't, and it was and explicitly stated intent of the Perks before release. The goal was to make becomming stronger feel more impactful and more obvious in how it related to the activities you were engaging it. You take that Damage Perk and you instantly hit harder, you take that Magicka Efficieny Perk and you can cast spells more often. You take that Dialogue perk, and youre immediately more personable.


They were there to more directly relate to the Skills, and offer a more obvious interaction, not to disappear entirely. But the way that interaction ended up being represented totally concealed that Attribute-Concept interaction.

It could of been even deeper if The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim had the attributes added back and improved.

There is a attributes mod for the PC version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on PC that seems to work absolutely fantastic with the perks, attributes, and skills.

Instead of removing the attributes, Bethesda Game Studios should of just kept it and experiment with it to improve it further and try to see what they can develop on.

Exactly, by getting rid of attributes, and injecting everything they did directly into the skills themselves, they wanted to make leveling skills feel better, since you were no longer being gimped by the tacked on existence of attributes, that really served no purpose anymore.

The whole point of the perk system was that attributes were holding back how powerful skills could be, by the dves being forced to move parts of skills, like much of the weapon damage, into attributes as a means to justify their existence, when they really had no reason to contiue existing since attributes only existed as a means to represent character ability, but the game had gone full on player ability.

They don't connect to attributes in any ways because they aren't supposed to. Attributes are supposed to be gone, period.

And yet the perks in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim don't feel much more impactful.

The many mods for the PC version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on PC where PC gamers who make mods to improve the perks system feel a lot more impactful.

And then there is what I just told AwesomePossum of mods that exist that add the attributes and keep the perks and they just feel a lot better playing with them.

Attributes are not holding anything back. Improvements can be made.

You are either not understanding, or misrepresenting, my arguement.


I have never argued that Attributes are useless, nor that they cannot have a worthwhile interaction with Skills, and the comment about the static world was in direct relation to the to-hit mechanics of older games.





That isn't a problem with the concept, but with Bethesda's execution. And they ALWAYS have a problem with execution.




Attributes are not a codified system of RPG features though. They are an abstract representation of bodily characteristics. That there is a common representation of that doesn't mean that changing that representation stops it from the same thing. Whether you have an Endurance stat, or an Oxegenation Rate and Toxicity Tollerance Stat, they are both representative of the same concepts. If you have a Strength Stat that determines how hard you hit, or a Perk that increases how hard you hit, they are again representing the same abstract concepts.


It's all Attributes, just different packaging.

I see it differently.

It's all various RPG stats, just indifferent packaging. Attributes are one kind of packaging, the skill/perk system of Skyrim is another. If you have one, you do not need the other.

At this point, anything someone suggests as a new mechanic as a means to justify to reintroduction of attributes can easily be questioned with the logic of "Ok, that may be cool, but why add it to an attribute instead of a skill perk tree?". There is no need for attributes, nor any need to make the perks in the perk system reference them.

Ok yeah I 100% agree with you.

Bethesda Game Studios really needs to take their time with gameplay mechanics and how they develop their video games and try lots of different experiments instead of just removing features from each brand new video game that they develop.

Sadly we can't do anything about it. I wish we can, but even us complaining on their forums doesn't have much impact on them to listen to us. Yeah they read the forums hidden.

I disagree, though I see where you're comming from. I think there's a lot of value in a sort of 'Combined Arms' approach, because it allows you to cover a greater range of what these abstracts represent.


Of course, my 'Ideal' would be virtually unplayable for even the most hardcoe RPG gamers, but even just combining the old with the new offers greater range of interactivity between Skills and activities. It allows you to increase the options and range of impacts from Perks, as well as the cross-Skill benefits of particular areas of personal advancement. It also gives you grounds to have non-Skill driven interactions, creating room for more activities that don't comfortably fit into any of the Skill-Concepts (where would you fit 'Push big ass rock'?).

Adding attributes doesn't really increase the range of anything TBH.

All it does is force devs to split up the mechanics they have across multiple systems, and the need to keep them somewhat balanced means that, the more systems you add, the less and less each point per system can offer. It just leads back into the Oblivion/Fallout3/New Vegas problem where skills and attributes did so many of the same things that each point of both the skill and attriude added negliagable benefits. This is why they got rid of them in the first place, so they could jam everything into ONE system, in order to make that one system feel far more impactful.

A good game wouldn't have situations like those. Any point at which one could pose the question of "do I have the strength to push this big rock" one can also pose the question of "why is the game only letting me move this rock with pure strength, and not any of the 100 other viable alternatives that don't require any real strength on my part". Which is why the overwhelming majority of devs have gotten rid of those kind of skill/attribute check situations entirely, in favor of more puzzle based solutions to getting rid of/moving obstacles.

Well, part of the problem there is the way Skills have traditionally been handled as well. Again, this runs into the problem of the Mono-Typing that plagued earlier dynamics. If you hit things, you needed Strength. That was about the depth of it. Skills progressed in one way, were related to one Attribute, and that was it. A Master Swordsman was a Master Swordsman, end of discussion.


Skyrim started to buck this trend by creating more options in HOW Skills develop (though, in usual Betheda fashion, the actual execution wasnt that great). And embracing this idea is what allows Attributes to remain relevant without infringing too much on Skills, or without rolling Attribute-Concepts entirely into Skills.


You can then use the more traditional Attribute model as a means of encouraging and guiding Skill development, increasing the range of options and potential 'builds'. Any given Weapon Skill could have Perks that increase the benefits of Agility, Intelegence or Strength, creating multiple approaches to the same Skill. No longer is a Swordsman just a Swordsman. This also overflows onto other Skills, where of you've focused on the importance of Intelligence in onse skill, doing the same in another offers greater overflow benefit.


Of course, you should always be able to do everything, but that becomes a question of time-investment.

I'm going to try to explain one more time, then give up.

PC gamers who make mods have made a few mods for the PC version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on PC that keeps the perks system and adds the attributes and missing skills and it works ok (Not perfectly), but it works better than what we have in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

More improvements can for sure be done.

I don't think that would be a viable system to build unless each skill's interface with the various attributes was even more paper thing then it was before. Not to mention I don't think most people would ever really get it, or ever use it to any significant advantage.

For example, how would using a sword, hammer, bow, or heavy armor increase intelligence in any way?

It's not really possible to have every Attribute apply to every Skill. At least, I've never been able to figure it out. Having 3 Attributes apply in different ways, though, is more doable.


Take 1-Handed Weapon as an example. Traditionally, it's been Strength=Damage. But you can broaden that to also accommodate Agility; allowing you to recover from attacks quicker, increasing your overal speed of attacks, and Intelligence; increasing your Critical Chance as you are able to better exploit vulnerabilities. All of these effects can be handled as just straight Perk increases, of course, but doing so doesn't offer any sort of incentives towards specialisation. You could probably manage some sort of 'Synergy' bonus, increasing the relative effectiveness of all 'Strength' Perks based on how many you've invested in across all Skills, but that also doesn't offer any sort of fall-back options for dealing with non-Skill related activities.


Combining the two, Traditional Attributes and Perks, allows you to do more then either system allows you to do individually. And this is because of the core difference between them. Both Traditional-Attributes and Perk-Attributes follow the same concept. Representing generally abstract bodily characteristics ad functional elements and variables. The Traditional system focuses on Generalities, while the Perk system focuses on Specifics. Alone, the Perk-Attribute concept allows you to do more than the Traditional-Attribute concept, but together they allow you to cover just about anything.

It is possible. It's been done with mods.