Thank you Bethy not every RPG on this planet needs to be "streamlined" and stripped down let us have our levels its an RPG not some basic shooter I play RPG's for a better more involved experiance. Not every RPG needs to be dumbed down for the basic shooter crowd. (Shame on you Bioware.) :swear:

Progression, variables, representation, they would be removed if we lost leveling in some way. With that said, I can see where some, neophytes presumably, might question levelings merits with the dread bane that was level scaling.

I very much agree

Attributes and skills are far more important than levels. Levels really don't have anything to do with the RPG core either, as you said, it's the most contrived, arbitrary and redundant number in the whole genre.

It seems everyone assumes the new generation is being "catered" to, yet games like Dark Souls exist, and WoW, one of the most popular games out there, recognizes the hardcoe bunch while still allowing casuals to enjoy their game.

Levels aren't the only way to demonstrate progression. Nor were attributes. Infact, it's rather lazy to simply define ones personality or intelligence by raw numbers. Such concepts are not so simple to measure.

Why? Exactly what difference would it make if your character, for instance, gained 10 skill increases and leveled up, gaining 10 hit points and a perk, or if your character gained 10 skill increases with a 1 hit point gain for each one, and with the tenth qualified for a perk? The only thing I see missing is the sincerely arbitrary number attached to the entirely contrived notion of "level." All the progression is still there. All the variables (other than "level") are still there and all the representation (again other than "level" is still there.


Neophytes? Really? Are you sure you want to stick with that?

As opposed to skills? Health? Stamina?

The system in Deus Ex and SS2 worked well due to the relative linear progression through the environment. I'm a little sceptic about an implementation in a free-roaming game as TES.

There's a mod for Morrowind, called Galsiah's Character Development. With this your level becomes nothing more than a gauge of your progression and general power level (insert worn internet meme here), which the game still uses to decide which lists to generate content from. All stats and sub-stats are calculated from your skill progression and racials/class, eliminating the min/max juggling at level-up of earlier TES games.

However, level does not tell precisely how well you would fare in an encounter, since you could have gained a chunk of your levels through non-relevant skill progression. That deviates from most games that use level based progression. Furtermore, mob level is not displayed either, so we can't see if an encounter is too hard for us at our current level.

We do have a lot of freedom in this game, and freedom do demand a certain amount of common sense. If you step into a hostile world, you might want to increase your combat skills a bit, unless you want to get roflstomped by mudcrabs.





It's probably due to the ambiguity of the OP. One part seems to address the problem of levelling up through non-combat skills. Another seems to want level-based restrictions removed. Language barrier, I guess.

^^^ THIS
If most players (and apparently developers) don't want TES to be an RPG, lets turn it into adventure game with minor character development
ME2 did this and people loved it.. except they did not (game was good despite its primitive role system)

Having more complex RPG game would increase enjoyment not only for hardcoe gamers, but also for casual ones
Because casual gamers are biggest lairs in the world- they request simpler games (they call it "convenient games with fluid gameplay")
but when they have such in front of them [cough] Fable3 [cough] they start to yell: WTF? And I payed money for this [censored]?
Fable was created for casual gamers, did it end up good? I think "no" is correct answer.
Please don't make mistake and don't listen to casual gamers and to gamers that mistakes TES for other genre games (TES was and should be RPG/action game not action/RPG game, like it or not)
Some games are meant to be played slowly (not jumping in and killing your first dragon in 10min)

Just as example.
How I got my hands on TES3:Morrowind disc (first time I encountered TES)
I got it from my friend (at that time CS fan, now CoDhead), he offered this game to me telling, that it is worst game he ever have played
Game is hard, nothing is clear and stuff like that
After I bought it from him and played for few days, then I asked what in the world made him think that this game svcks.
He bought this game, played it for 15min killing everyone he met, then after few unsuccessful attempts he gave up and uninstalled the game
So can you imagine if TES was made for players like that?

The new generation is being catered to there is very few games like that now reguardless how popular they are and what about the people who hate or dont play MMO's.

Yes but its a game, an RPG so why not stick to the core of an RPG I would have rather had skills tie to my health,magic and fatigue.

I love the Elder Scrolls because it is an open world roleplaying game that gives me an epic amount of freedom to craft a charater with RPG elements then role play them however I choose, I would not like it as much as I would an open world Call of Duty.

I don't normally post here, but since this is one topic that i think is actually interesting I shall add my thoughts.

People need to get away from the idea that there are set rules as to what makes a 'Role Playing Game' . The only rule set in stone is that the person musr be able to create and develop a 'Role'. How that can be accomplished is very flexible.

Why not get rid of levels and just have the entire game skill based? As someone said health, magic etc can easily be linked into skills. These skills themselves could be measured on arbitary names rather than numbers, i.e noivce, skilled, adapt, expert etc with the actual numbers hidden. Wouldn't it make more sense to meet someone who is an expert swordsman rather than a level 75 in one handed weaponary?

As for perks, again these can be gained by actual doing. Shoot someone in the head 100 times and you gain the 'headshot' perk which causes extra damage on a head shot. Sneak past someone whilst running for the 1000th time and you gain the 'stealth runner' perk that grants extra stealth whilst running. etc.

People need to think differently sometimes or we are in danger of being restricted by tradition.

Levels, skills, and attributes are just figurative representations of your character's general abilities. Not your skills as a player, but those of your character in the game. Skills, attributes and the like refer to your character's general abilities, while Level refers to your overall level of experience. Its both an aspect of realism, and an aspect for gameplay improvement. Aside from creating diversity, and creating a general hierarchy among inhabitants of the world, it's also just fun. level helps signify that you've made progress as a human being, and anybody would be lying if they said that they didn't get at least a little bit of excitement from leveling up.



Because RPGs are not about you, they are about your character.

Player =/= Character

This would work to but these are also a base formula to RPG's in general as I said I would have liked to see skills instead of levels but we got levels I just want it to have more RPG elements it is an RPG and it should be treated as such. I know RPG means you play the role of something but several of us want the base mechanics in one form or another.

LOTRO does this for traits. It's the most annoying system ever.

Leveling could be removed entirely. The new attributes could be determined by skill levels. Magicka could be determined by a function of mage skills, Health with warrior skills, Stamina by thief skills. I believe nGCD for Oblivion does something like this. Magicka is determined by Intelligence, which is itself determined by magic skills, but leveling the skills themselves increases magicka by small amounts as well. Same with health and combat skills. The question is what to do with perks. You could just be awarded perk points by total level. You lose the complexity of the skill level-based weighting of Skyrim's system though.

Why not? (specifically I mean ~with an example).

I see the loss of stats as a pure simplification of the game. We now have changed from a list of values to a list of talents (the perks). No longer is there a measure of the character's wit, perceptiveness, personal affability, agility, outright wisdom. :shrug: ~They have lost all identity (of what little they had). Now you need a perk to get the dialog option? (like ladykiller) ~That's awful IMO.

Agreed :tops:

(But a lot of people don't play it that way).

Levels are hardly an integral part of RPGs. Can't remember which was the 1st level less RPG I played, Traveller or Runequest, but it was way back in 1979.
Every thing about the character in Skyrim that is handled by level could be handled by something else. eg skill perks could be directly connected to score in skill. Every 10 points in skill get a new perk.
Where levels are helpful is for the game designer allowing them to set up mechanisms for levelled loot and enemies but there are ways around that, mainly through having areas within the game that are clearly known to be less or more dangerous (like Red Mountain in MW) so if a character goes to them they are aware of the rewards and risks.

Leveling, its what you call progression. I am leveling up. Whether you want to call it that is subjective. What you describe is leveling and remember, your talking to someone who had to circumvent leveling in a vanilla OB, which was difficult and relied on damaging my own stats and skills in some circumstances to achieve "balance". I capped all characters at level 25 or 30 dependent. Level scaling it was terrible, but even if I raise a skill, its still a for of leveling. Truly getting rid of leveling would mean an action game.

I know what your doing though.

Everything you have said I could not agree more. :clap:

I could understand removing visible levels. They could still apply the same way, just invisible. Now how would this system work, you ask?

Well, judging from what I've read, you can increase Health, Stamina, or Magicka at each level up.


Each time you increase a skill, each of the following happens:
It increases the sub-level variable by one (this is invisible to the player, but lets the game know what to spawn). Each time it reaches 10, it sets itself back to 0 and increases the level variable by 1.
If it is Combat Specialization - Increase health by one point.
If it is Magic Specialization - Increase magicka by one point.
If it is Stealth Specialization - Increase stamina by one point.

Just my view on how it could work...

Valid points, but that doesn't make mine any less so.



It sounds like you want nostalgia. Or perhaps you are afraid of change. Innovation is the future, don't be afraid of change!



If skills were tied to your main stats directly, you would feel obligated to level them up for survival, possibly limiting your freedom.

And there's no way this is going to be TES: Call of Duty.

Theres a difference between "Role Play" and "Role Playing Game"

the "role play" logic can abide by anything. When Im playing ArmA 2 I *could* say Im role playing a soldier, when Im playing Goldeneye im "role playing" James Bond, etc, etc. That does not make ArmA or Goldeneye role playing games.


To be a role playing game, it requires that the player's character does not abide by the player's skills and abilities. The character has their own skills and inherit abilities, and it's up to the player to control the character, and the player's overall effectiveness in quests will be defined by how they control their character, and what the characters strengths and weaknesses are in comparison to those of other characters in the game world.

As long as they maintained some way of registering and displaying the overall 'power' of characters, I would be ok with it. My feeling is that they won't be able to do this for sometime. You would need some serious visual aids to make you go "man this guy is immense" (talking about your character) and none of that cheesy fable crap.

Erick Wujcik made the RPG Mystic China ~and that game's combat was diceless... and your PC could win a fight for simply being better; (it was more complicated than that, but it just doesn't seem to apply well to cRPGs).


Agreed (again) :tops:

I like the base traits and or levels for RPG's if that is nostalgia I will cling to it. I love change but cahnge in a way to put the core elements in.

I was just saying I would hate a pure action Elder Scrolls, if this became TES: Call of Duty I fear I would be scarred for life. :cryvaultboy:

Yep. You dont need stats in a RP that takes place in the real world (RP in the bedroom), but in a cRPG you need the variable, statistical representations to make the perception that you can play in.

You're equivocating.