Why can't they. The game already has a working skill system and it would be much easier to balance if there weren't any levels [for example,1. if at level five you had 4 magicka, but you were a seventy on a magic school. You wouldnt be able to cast high level spells becuase you don't have enough magicka until you reach level thirty.2. If you train as a thief/crafter and you are at level fourty you will be wasted the minute you step into the path of a level 5 beasty which would be easy for someone with fighting skills. If there are no levels than scaling would be done in a different manner and probably work based on skills.]. I really don't it makes sense with elder scrolls.

Levels still have some benefits for an easy way to increase the HP and other stats of the character, and it's an easy way to give the player an extra sense of accomplishment.

But if they came up with a good system, I wouldn't mind levels being gone from TES6 at all. It works rather well in other first person action RPGs like System Shock 2, Deus Ex and VtM: Bloodlines. And that's what TES is, and always have been.

Alright if you can find a logical reason why it makes more sense and would be easier to balance then lets hear it.

The level system works pretty well from what I've seen. It gives a sense of progression that just getting better at skills wouldn't give, in my opinion. What would govern how much magicka you have? It scales with magic skills? Then there's no real point to having the stat, then. Just give us unlimited everything! :thumbsup:

If there are no levels, how do they register what is stronger than you and what isn't? There is not indicator of what you can handle and what you can't. For example, what if you get a quest that puts you up against things a billion times stronger than you, but because it has no level restrictions, its just like "too bad, you've got it, go do it". And what if this happened, and you haven't saved in a while, and you get auto saved into an area deep inside that quest zone. Then you have too options. Die constantly, possibly with no hope of getting out, or use an old save that will take you a ways back.

what is this i dont even?

This man speaks the truth.Heres a fishy stick!

Its what I does. And gratzi for da fishy stick!

Had I been able to do it my way, the game would've kept most of the stats that have been eliminated, and would've eliminated levels.

It's an odd thing too, since I would've done that for many of the reasons that many have cited (erroneously, in my opinion) in support of the removal of attributes specifically - levels are entirely contrived, with absolutely no real world counterpart, and they're ultimately redundant, serving only as "middle men" on the road of character development. If a character should gain additional health or magicka or whatnot, then that character should gain additional health or magicka or whatnot - there's really no reason to attach a number to that point. If a character qualifies for a perk, then the character qualifies for a perk. Again, there's no valid reason to attach a number to that point.

It just amuses me that there's this stated goal of getting rid of contrived, arbitrary, redundant numbers in favor of a more organic gameplay, yet the most contrived, arbitrary and redundant numbers in the entire game are still there.

If that happens, it's really the fault of the player. To have a huge colored icon above an enemy that change color depending how hard it is to beat and be handheld thru the game would be rather boring. If you start the game and kill rats and other tiny things, it should be quite obvious that you shouldn't attack a huge giant troll.

If you play the Gothic series you will notice there are plenty of moments in that game where you can stumble upon enemies that are bloody hard, and not really possible to beat them until later in the game when you gained better equipment and so on.

Besides, the enemies have always been level scaled in the TES series, and I'm sure they would be able to level scale the quest related enemies depending on how good skills the player character have.


Don't spam nonsense :nono:

I'm not saying they should have a big flashing number above there head or anything of that sort. I'm saying that levels allow you to be locked out of quests that are way out of your league.

Why not remove all RPG elements and just call it an action game and give up the facade that its an action RPG

Finally! Somebody who agrees! :celebration:

Because this is an RPG, not an action game.

Just like any number, levels keep things more organized. I'd rather think of my character as a level 50 mage than a mage with 13838957 magicka, or a more reasonable amount. I don't see a reason to get rid of them, as the only place they show themselves is on character screens and higher level quests. It's nice to think of a more flowing experience without a cool level up screen, but I don't think Skyrim is the game to have it.

There are very few quests in Oblivion which restricts the player because the level is too low. And those could easily be replaced with restrictions about skill X, Y and/or Z being too low.

I don't think a character should ever be locked out of a quest. There should be enough dialogue and enough other clues in the game to make it quite clear that a particular quest is extremely dangerous, and then if you go ahead and try to do it anyway with a weak character - too bad.

I could see how having no levels would work. Your skills would basically dictate how powerful you are. For example, if you are 5 in one-handed, you can take on rats or mudcrabs, but maybe can't feasibly defeat trolls until that skill is at 25 or so (I picked these values arbitrarily). Granted, it would mean running or avoiding a lot of creatures or areas until you are more proficient. As for the stats, every time you level a combat skill, you'll get a health increase by whatever appropriate value. Likewise, when you level magic skills, you gain magicka, and when you level stealth skills, you can gain fatigue. This would eliminate the need for level scaling and solve the problem of magically appearing creatures in the world, and could possibly contribute to a nonlinear system of weapons and armors so that iron and leather or fur may actually have benefits to be as viable as glass or whatever throughout the game. Perks could be awarded and chosen from when a certain skill level was reached, similar to past games. I think I could live with this setup, but it would lead to more god characters since you could become good at everything. Unless of course, there was an arbitrary cutoff point for skill gains...

Just because attributes are gone doesn't mean the game is dumbed down. Don't think I've forgotten your rather tasteless remarks about the new community being full of ADD

Edit: OP, levels are good to have. Perks/Skills would overloaded if levels didn't offer HP/Stam/Mana

In your opinion its not dumbed down

In my opinion it is

And the twain shall never meet

And according to your opinion, the entire gaming world is going down the drain because the mouthbreathing ADHD kids only care for action.

And yet, I have ADHD, and I care for such things. So taking that into consideration, your opinion lacks merit.

This is going way off-topic, this has nothing to do with ADHD. Stop it :nono:

ACTUALLY in my opinion the game companies are making games to cater to those that cant or wont focus on a game long enough to get past the first 8 minutes without a huge fight. That they cant focus on character creation without getting bored

With ME2, DA2 and Skyrim backing me up i think my opinion is absolutely valid

That's fine. The argument I'm simply making is that removing classic rpg elements such as levels, does not necessarily mean the game is no longer an RPG. There are many ways to achieve a task, levels are simply one of them. Removing them just means the game is no longer a classic rpg.



1) DA2 doesn't count, EA was involved
2) Never played ME2, so I can't say
3) You've never played Skyrim, so no, it's NOT backing you up.

I agree with everything here, right up until:

I dont' see that as the case at all. The game could be balanced just as it is and simply skip over the level up bit.

Regarding skill increases - there's no reason to speed up the rate at which they occur. They'd nominally occur at the same rate they would anyway, so that would remain the same.

Regarding derived attributes - if, for instance, leveling up requires ten skill increases and grants the opportunity to add ten points to health, then simply set it so that each skill increase grants one point of health (or magicka, or stamina, as the case might be). Just have all of that going on in the background all the time. Set the incremental increases low enough that they work out to the same basic increases you'd get at level up, and it'd remain balanced.

The only issue remaining would be a maximum level of skills and/or maximum number of perks. I've yet to come up with a satisfactory way of dealing with that.