"Bethesda's ditching the eight main attributes you may remember from Oblivion. Intelligence, Agility, Speed and all the rest are out."
"In Oblivion you have your eight attributes and 21 skills. Now you have 18 skills and three attributes."
"Howard says it's a natural evolution,"

http://pc.ign.com/articles/116/1164053p1.html

Obviously, the removal of skills and attributes is controversial, but I fail to understand the slow progression.

If the objective is to phase out unnecessary skills or skills in general, why not lob them off entirely and stop pretending it's an rpg.

I get that it's their game, and they can do what they want with it, but I don't understand why they're being so slow about it.
It doesn't make any sense to me to drag it out, as it just isolates the fanbases of the individual games.
If they just went and did it, and it fails or doesn't do what they want it to do, they can simply return to an stronger rpg form.
These half formed gameplay styles, fail from what I've seen to bridge any gap between hack-n-slashers and rpg players.

What do you think?

I think that removing all of them removes the entire point of what coalescing the 8 attributes into perks/health/magicka/stamina/ purportedly accomplishes.
Namely, preserving the entirety (or the majority) of what the original system did, while decreasing the number of inputs that are required to pull off the functionality.

Whereas removing all the inputs doesn't keep the function, it just scraps it entirely.
Your argument precludes the possibility that a game with fewer stats can still have as much choice and consequence and functionality as a game with more stats.

The objective was to get rid of attributes. They did that.
The article you're quoting is claiming that Health, Magicka, and Stamina are attributes.
Additionally, I don't think they were ever trying to get rid of the skills, they just thought attributes were unnecessary.

They've clearly been trimming skills for a while now.
They've eliminated specialized weapon skills entirely, as they're now relegated to "perks".

Okay, I'll go over this one more time. The attributes aren't "out of the game", they are still in the game and their functions are still there. The only thing that was really removed was the 8 names of the attributes and then we got perks as a nice replacement system that adds way more customization and actually makes a difference in your character. Now when you level, you choose your attribute to raise and you choose a perk under one of the skills that you used to level.



Actually, Morrowind was the only game that cut massive amounts of skills. Oblivion only cut one, spears and Skyrim is adding a ton of content and much more customization than was in the previous two games. Delegating weapon specialization to perks is a much better system and actually works out to more differentiate weapon types then just being different weapon skills.

If they are still there but I can't touch them, how does my character's speed increase over time?

Speed's a somewhat tricky one. But...

1. Perks can increase speed. Either through perks that directly are there to increase a speed modifier, or as a secondary consequence to other perks such as through quick-fire marksman perks or fast-slashing dagger perks.
2. Speed can be increased based on the weighted averages of speed-dependent skills, aka skills that used to be governed by the speed attribute.
3. Speed can further be incremented based on a formula of one's level given a fractional weight by that average above.

Etc, etc. The only attribute that's really really difficult to approximate after removing it directly is luck.

I don't really need to say anything, because this guy pretty much summed up what I think.

If you get a sense of character progression, if you know what your character is capable of, and which areas your character is weak in, if your character is clearly defined by the game's system and the choices you have made, then what is the problem?
Personally speaking, a sense of my characters abilities, and more importantly, a sense of uniqueness in that character's abilities, is more important than adhering to any particular system just because it has more numbers in the stats screen, but leads eventually to all character's being similar in capabilities.

This is... another attribute thread? See, the OP seems to be saying that the intention is to remove RPG elements. Because plainly Attributes=RPG.

As has been said elsewhere, if they had done nothing but remove attributes then maybe all this whining could be justified. However, they replaced them with tiered perks, which may even allow for more choice and variation. So really, all this fretting is less about "attributes are removed" and more about "they changed it so it svcks."

Please don't take this the wrong way because you do a pretty good job of explaining things the way they are but don't skimp on the details. Oblivion removed more than one skill so just say it like it is and don't leave these things out or incomplete because it just damages your credibility.

Morrowind cut more from Daggerfall than Oblivion cut from Morrowind.

he is right, so in order to take weight off a tennis racket, lets remove the head

they did not get taken out just simplified
also systems are put in place to replace taken off attributes/skills like perks
also lets see how the new system works before we criticize

I am almost positive an entire team of developers know more than you about how to make a video game

I'm assuming he means that Oblivion functionally removed only 1 skill from Morrowind, namely spears. The other functions were still present in Oblivion from Morrowind. I still wouldn't agree with it, though, seeing as Morrowind's handling of those functions had greater breadth than how Oblivion handled those functions.


Glad that Skyrim perk trees will allow for reasonable assimilation in the skills while allowing for differentiation of skill-parts via player choice.

Todd said it's "natural evolution".

Pretending? Have you even heard about the perk system yet? :facepalm:


I think people need to stop [censored]ing about the loss of their precious attributes.

Through Perks, one handed mace, sword, dagger, or axe will all now behave very differently - and you will be able to specialize in which ever one you want.


Did Oblivion have this depth of weapon specialization?

Errr what? So because you don't like that they are revamping the old system to be more efficient, they should just scrap it? I agree with what the first reply said. Removing the entire system is entirely pointless. They seek to make it more efficient, not to remove the character development aspect of the game.

It's a roleplaying game. It strives to be a real experience. The less time we spend distributing points or in menus or acknowledging "skills," the better. In real life, we have none of that. We only have those still because it's still a video game and the technology is limited. TES can't be a full fledged virtual reality, it has to settle for being an RPG.

Keeping the same attributes and skills would make sense in a series that's based on a certain set of rules and the core mechanics don't change much between games, but in TES that isn't the case so I can buy the argument that there's more than they need. Throughout the series it seemed like they were kept the same mostly for tradition and there wasn't a lot of consistency. Willpower went from magic defense to magic regen, agility from accuracy to resistance to staggering, speed no longer affected attack rate, bow damage went from strength to agility, swords went from an agility-based skill to a strength one.

If they were designing the game from scratch I don't think they'd probably put in a stat that covers bow damage and knockdown resistance. Or have a skill (illusion) that's based on and raises the attribute that it is an alternative to if they didn't need to fit more skills to personality. I think it might make more sense and be easier to balance if they decide what the game will do first and then create as many stats as are needed to cover that rather than keep the stats and then find something for them to do.

A little crude......but I guess it gets the message across.

The Attributes are still there, but its just been trimmed a little so that it won't be redundant with the new perks system that they have incorporated into skyrim. One will still have attributes that improves on health, magic, and fatigue. The perks are there to help improve all the other skills such as swords, blunt, shield, and even running capabilities. This makes a lot of attributes somewhat useless since you can improve the same things with the new perks system.

You sprint. Not sure why you should get faster over time. I walk all the time, I don't get any faster in real life.

I do worry a bit about the removal of attributes and will do so until I see how the new system works
In the meantime there are positives. No more chasing after +5s at level up for one
I do agree with Todd about removing the superfluous (if not always with what he decides is superfluous). Mechanics should never be complicated for their own sake

He should have said that then. Whether or not we agree is irrelevant because it's how he see's it and therefor he retains credibility. Omitting that though is what is damaging.

And on the fewer skills, Todd specifically said he didn't like every player spamming jump and running in circles in the last games to get a few cheap levels.

I have to agree with his opinions lol. So there is 18 skills, but they are extremely more fleshed out than TES3/4...10-20 perks each...which the few we have seen are awesome and not just "+1% dmg" per lvl crap.