If you were to go on Todd's PR jargon, then I would say yes, they kind of are. Or at least doing things to pander to an unreceptive audience. And there was nothing worthless about attributes. Some people apparently didnt understand what they represented, but they certainly werent redundant, or pointless etc.

No i agree it is logic what you write however i think it is matter of adjusting and eventually you can have the immersion you like
It is my personal opinion i think i won't have a problem with it at all
I do get your point tho

You have an interesting perspective on this which I'd like to understand a little better.

Are you saying that in Oblivion and past TES games, when starting a new game you would spend some time leveling up certain skills in a certain way to set up the specifics of your character build before actually diving into the game?

Or that the lack of birthsigns worries you because birthsigns traits were a necessary part of rolling what you felt to be a balanced character?

In "real life", anyone as old as the PC, would have long since built up their preferences ~and that is partly what a class represents, and why it grants 'starting' bonuses.

Classes can also represent personal aptitude for certain skills over others, and these skills advance at a slower pace, and so, are more expensive to increase.

**Also... when in a medieval setting, the trade skills were guarded, and that would make them all the more difficult and expensive to learn.

***Personally I can't stand the classless 'be as you do' style of RPG. As kids we tried that ourselves in our own games and abandoned it.

I'm not exactly overreacting, if you take into consideration how much people have overreacted about things like crossbows and spears and no classes. They twist things just as much as I purposely did, like saying how Skyrim is going to be "streamlined" or "dumbed down". It's just gotten to a point where the only way you can get anywhere with them is to overemphasize and exaggerate on how bad the game is going to be. I'd much rather someone rationally explain why they think something isn't going to be great about the game versus "this game is disappoint!"

I will admit my response to the OP was sarcastic.

You are far more forgiving and flexible then I

That is what you are


I do not hold myself out as their super fan ( i didnt even play Arena)

I do believe that there will be no pure RPG if Bethesda and Bioware sell out to the hybrid system.

It is interesting to see how this develops obviously gamers don't agree with this issue
it is only a game tho a very good one
I do think they are talented enough to know what they are doing but hey that's me i guess

The only info I get on it is from here and recently from E3. Of course they want to get more people to buy the game, that's the only way they make money; but are they dumbing it down? Nah, not really. Most of the older gamers who played the previous ES games have grown up and can't afford to anymore. Not ALL, but a lot of them have. That's just the simple truth of having a series that started 10+ years ago. And of course they want to get newer generations into their games. That promotes a productive future for Bethesda. But I don't think they're streamlining. Trying something new is different than catering to the masses.

What I should have said, was to ME, the attributes were practically worthless. I didn't specify, so my bad there. I can understand where you come from with what the represented because I've lurked enough and read some of your previous posts on the topic, but I would like to see them do something different with them, and they are. Attributes aren't gone, and they aren't just mixed in with the perks. If this system does truly svck, and I'm wrong about it, then I will admit it. I just don't like seeing masses of people claiming it's going to svck when they haven't played the game yet.

Define this "hybrid system."

Who else here had to guide their play through in regards to leveled loot, specifically uniques? I know I did, even as far as going to level 25 or 30 then quit leveling before I started my actual playghtough. Then again, I capped all OB characters to 25, or 30. Leveled uniques are the devil.

It'll be fine, and "There is no way WE gamers are going to just play the game without paying attention to stats, and just do what we feel like while our characters levels up according to our 'personality'." Yes, you will bear through it, like everyone else.

No - not at all. I'm talking about character creation - once the character is set up, I just play. The most grinding I might do is to work on Illusion off and on over the first few levels so that a character who won't otherwise be using it and started out with low skill can cast night eye instead of light. And that's only if that's the sort of thing that character would do. Other than that, I can't think of a single skill I ever grind, for any reason. I just play the game and it all comes naturally.

But that depends on some very precise and well-thought-out character creation.

For instance - I want to play an archer with blade backup in light armor. He's going to make most of his attacks from a distance, but isn't going to be afraid to switch to melee if/when he's pressed. That would be...... probably marksman and light armor as majors and blade as a minor, but with a combat spec. Combining spec minor and non-spec major tends to keep things fairly balanced, marksman increases very slowly (steep learning curve) so it works well as a major and he's probably not going to get hit a whole lot, so his armor experience needs to count for as much as possible. He's not going to be terribly skilled with a blade at first (low staring skill as a minor), but he's going to learn quickly (combat spec).

Once all that's set up, then all I have to do is go play, and everything just takes care of itself. The thing that concerns me about the new system is that I'm apparently not going to be able to set any of that up in advance, so I'm going to have to keep tabs on the character and keep making decisions that simulate the gains he would've gotten automatically if I'd been able to just set him up how I want him in the first place. Again - it might work out okay - those decisions might be automatic and natural and it'll work out to the same basic thing - just playing and letting things happen. But if that's not the case, then there's not going to be a way to compensate for it.

As for birthsigns........... was it my mention of the updated doomstones that brought that up? Obviously contrary to the early statements about those, they don't seem to be a substitute for birthsigns AT ALL. They're much more accurately a substitute for majors and minors and specialization. At least from what we've seen so far, their effects are to increase the rate of skill increase for ranges of skills, which is precisely what majors and specialization did in past games. That's the only reason I mentioned them.

Birthsigns.......... I liked them from an RP standpoint, but I'm sort of ambivalent about them being removed. I'm fundamentally opposed to the idea, but only because I don't think that removing content is generally a good idea. But I'm not that attached to them personally.

The hybrid system is one where action (the movement of the mouse or the button mashing of the controller) means more then how you have developed your character

If person A who has never played a TES or rpg game can match someone who has because their reflexes were honed with 1000s of hours of Call of Duty then the game is not an RPG

Stats should mean something, not just a thin facade to disguise an action game.


If you had PVP say in Oblivion

My +5 x 3 every level carefully crafted character would obliterate a willy nilly twitch player no matter how bad i was with the mouse or how good they were with it.

From what I know from the interviews, the removal of attributes and derived attributes, the only real focus of the RPG is on perks and the rest is on twitch combat

This sounds familiar, of course, you're being careful with your words now.

The removal of attributes was a bold move, there will almost certainly be flaws, but at least it's something new.

Definitely. I'd try and level in random ways, and especially do the Arena on a hard mode to level my skills faster(more hits - more blade raises) to become a higher level before starting real quests. I'd get to like 15 before looking for a real adventure.

Why even bother getting the Escutcheon of Chorrol unless you get the highest variant of it?

So what else about skyrim is apperently broken and a pile of dump cuz what im getting from the forums is a bunch of ppl who "know how it should work and bethesda doesnt know how to make it the right way" and im startin to think everyone wants bethesda to scrap the whole game...or all these forum posters want bethesda to take a seat so the "glorious pc master race" can "fix" the game...and by fix the game i mean make it pc exclusive...im getting tired if this...

What you're trying to say is 'it won't work for YOU'...

Sorry, I remain unconviced that it is not goiing to work... Get over yourself, you're not the only RPG player...

The "we will switch to Marksman to raise the skill" description fitts better with classes then no-classes.... Why raise it when you don't really use it?
But if you thought on the beginning of the game "heey Marksman can be pretty cool", you put it in your class skills, find out it svcks and there you have this skill wich with you have to keep up with because it's a major skill.....

My opinion is to see how it works. Like I said, removing attributes was a bold move, and their reasons for it made sense to me.

So what part of MW or OB weren't button mashing? I had to do that in MW until my long sword skill was high enough to hit them almost every time. In OB, I had to button mash enough just to do some practical damage with a long sword while trying to level it up. Although in OB the more i did something the faster it leveled up, so the RPG elements were in it. Attributes were just secondary and unnecessary to me in the whole Role Playing aspect. The class was also secondary. A soldier in real life can start up a shop or business of some kind and be a good people person, but in previous games, if I wanted to get anywhere with mercantile or speechcraft, I would have to include them into my major skills for them to do me any good. Trying to play a warrior and giving up two of those skill slots isn't that much fun.

PVP is for MMO's and not Elder Scrolls. Nowhere do I see the "hybrid system" in the making of Skyrim.

It wasnt a bold move it was a sell out move

Well IN MY OPINION

I'm well aware of that opinion and another one of yours. You believe everything is being dumbed down for us "ADHD" kids.

? No you didnt. you could max any skill, major or minor. You may not be a personable negotiator or salesmen, but then there's always other ways of raising personality independent of Majors. if your character is more proficient in mercantile or speech craft, then you should pick them as majors, if your saying that hes better at that than X combat. Assuming your not using any level formula, like Majors as Minors etc.

Kindly explain a number of things to me:

1) How sticking to a particular development plan as you play your character is metagaming, but meticulously planning out your character's development ahead of time to maximize his potential is not.

2) How, precisely, providing a quicker leveling pace to a particular set of skills that conform to a particular archetype (class specialization) differs from... providing a quicker leveling pace to a particular set of skills that conform to a particular archetype (Warrior, Mage, and Thief Doomstones).

3) How you could have possibly dictated the rate of your leveling in any manner outside of those specializations.

The difference between major and minor skills in Morrowind was how much of an initial boost they got when you started the game. Apart from that they leveled at the same rate, and the only thing that altered that rate was the specialization that you chose. I can understand that you're upset about not choosing a specialization at character creation and how switching between specializations to suit your play style can be seen as metagaming -- it is, honestly -- but your statement that this new system will restrict your freedom and force you to metagame more is not compelling in light of the reasoning you present.

My two cents, as usual:

Same [censored], different thread.

I adhere to the notion that having classes and utilizing a system wherein your skills increase through repeated use of them are incongruous premises. They never really seemed to jibe with one another, and it felt highly counter-intuitive to me that you could spend countless hours practicing your skills to become a master swordsman or archer and have it contribute absolutely nothing to your leveling because they were not tagged as "major" skills, despite the fact that you're clearly using them more than the other skills you have. And I've yet to see a compelling reason to retain the class system, other than RP reasons, which is of course a wholly subjective line of reasoning and will vary in importance from one person to the next.

Frankly I don't see any problem at all. It's a natural progression of the "learn by doing" character advancement philosophy they've had going on since Daggerfall, and I really think that it has potential for much greater balance and fluidity than the previous system. The fact that you're limited in the number of perks you can pick means that character differentiation is greater by default. The fact that perks have prerequisites and are arranged in a tree structure, coupled with the fact that increasing higher-ranked skills contributes more to leveling, means that specialization is very strongly encouraged, so despite the impression some have that you'll just [censored] around and stumble into victory by doing anything at all, the fact is this system will offer quite a bit of incentive to plan your character's development ahead of time.

There are 3 stats.. if you need more health you pick it if you need more magicka you pick it if you need more stamina you pick it.

If you cant handle that... How exactly did you manage to get here?


There are 18 skills... people will try em and like some hate others. Whatever they like will get higher and most likely get perks. If you cant handle the concept of putting your perks into skills you like to use.. being a good idea.. again how did you manage to get here?

Its like 20-30 people here trying desperatly to tell me I cant make a grilled cheese sandwitch unless I have the sandwicth maker 2000 turbo elite X2 green edition..... Then comming up with insanely innane examples of people dieing in sandwitch making accidents...

I am capable of making a character without a class. I am capable of picking perks I like. I am not stuck in an infomercial for classes. My frying pan will not explode my oven will not melt and my face will not be turned to gooey ooze by a fatal burrito event.

I will survive!