...Are we playing the same Witcher 2 here?

Witcher 2's success derives from its interesting talent trees, immersive lore, blend of RPG and action mechanics and - very importantly - choices and consequences. It may not have had attributes, but that really meant little in the long run.

Skyrim has lore and...that's about it. Perks were boring as hell, with generic +damage perks everywhere and some downright useless trees, like Lockpicking.

Google it? We've been playing this game for a decade. Don't you think we know what we're talking about? Morrowind does not have the "problem" you were talking about. You're confusing it with the "Majors as Minors" approach to dealing with Oblivion's leveling.

Quite the opposite is true, actually. If your skill level is too low, it's completely ineffective. So a "Miscellaneous Skill" in Morrowind is almost useless until trained up.

The problem that Morrowind newbies have is that they try to fight with a weapon governed by a non-class skill, which is useless because they only have 5 in the skill, and then they complain that "the combat is broken" because they can't hit anything.

Exactly. It has four areas (same as TES attributes) in which to choose talents in. Of which one is just a starting field for everyone. In Skyrim they had magicka, stamina and for some strange reason... Health??

The talent tree is like Skyrim's skill tree. Skyrim's skill tree offers more choices than previous TES games


We all know what we are talking about. You are saying I am wrong. I am saying google it and see "manuals" on character build for Morrowind to say Iam not wrong.

Okay, Mister Highlander
1. Are you going to reply to our key points or just some minor ones you seem to pick by random?
2. Have you actually played Morrowind, Oblvion, Witcher or any other games you list there? It seems like you read up on them and misunderstood a lot.
3. You are also forgetting that you are arguing with TES veterans here, who played 3 or even more TES games. We know how the games work and how they changed over the time. Currently, TESV has introduced a very big step towards simplification if compared to other titles and there's little which would justify or make up for that.

What a load of nonsense.

Apart from the bit where we finally agree that TES V has introduced some very big steps forward.

Are you trying to troll or earn a warning there?

Like asking if I've even played the games

No, it is quite apparent that you haven't played Morrowind, maybe dabbled in it a little, but that's it. You even confused Oblivion's level scaling problems with Morrowind's and then tried to use that as an argument, despite everyone calling you out on that nonsense.

Also stop editing large parts of every post after someone replies on it, it's quite rude.

So you are saying that you don't choose your major skills as minor and vice versa so that you can level your minor skills faster? I said google it to prove my point. Obviously your "superior" knowledge means I have never even played the game, lol

WHAT?!

That's Oblivion workarounds and they only work there because in Oblivion you cannot miss with a weapon or fail at spellcasting.
In Morrowind however, nearly every skill (especially weapons and magic) was utterly useless until it got into its thirties. Thus choosing a main combat skill as a minor and starting with 20 points in it was suicidal.

Everyone who played Morrowind and Oblivion for at least an hour knows the difference.

I'm on a phone so I can't provide a link but I'll know they'll be there. The "Oblivion workaround" was being done before Oblivion even existed. As for suicidal.... no it isn't.

No it wasn't, since there's no point in doing so. Any weapon skill starts to be really useful and fun after 50. Starting out close to that made the early game even easier.
Powerlevelling attributes was implemented via a different route however. There's no limit on how may times per level you can train. Thus training otherwise unused minor skills to get x5 multipiers to its governing attribute was very easy.

With a score of 20 in any weapon skill you won't even get a reliable hit chance against a mudcrab.

P.S.: Since you have exhausted everyone's goodwill here, I'm not buying your excuse.

I'm just trying to view sites on the screen on my phone which is a bit of an esra. Admittedly it's been a few years since I last played Morrowind and It seems i have been getting the games merged a bit in my mind. Minor skills will overtake major skills so choosing skills that are used a lot as minor skills and skills used less often as majors is way of getting them up faster.
Then there was the bit about having to have a skill of every attribute.
The fact is this all proves my point that it DOES take a manual to get it right and there are ways to power level which is therefore a failure in my mind. Sure there are those that want to take that extra time learning and trying to understand but that is the beauty and success of Skyrim as it has corrected these faults.
What is also good is that characters aren't having to run miles to level speed. Instead we are all able to run to a similar level so inter-character changing doesn't become massively frustrating when one can hardly move and one runs stupidly faster than a horse. It also stopped characters jumping everywhere to level to a point they can stupidly jump into roofs. Admittedly more should be done in this area to give stealth players more ability to dodge and climb but much if this would be better covered as an attribute the same way stamina and strength is dealt with for a warrior.

Going back to my point i am trying to make. Why and how does multiple attributes for the same workout become beneficial? Stamina, endurance & strength are all products of the same workout and lifestyle. They come together. Athletics in heavy gear builds up muscles and needs stamina and endurance or else the workout runs short meaning no muscle building.

Surely it is better to have less attribute and a better skill tree offering more options. Players should be able to choose a skill that they feel is best suited for their particular build / class without having to download a manual just to understand the attributes and how it effects their levelling.

The skill trees are junk in skyrim.
I don't have a clue about any previous games, but picking perks for retrieving more arrows... give me a break; picking perks for increasing damage and success rates ... ridiculous .

What you retrieve from a kill should be pure chance, increasing rates of success, damage and ease of tasks should solely be based on the direct level of the charictor.
Infact, they should just drop skill levels and go back to class/EXP progressions with skills being attained at particular levels along with rate percentages contingent upon the level attained.

I applaud attempts at making better mousetraps, but it's awfully hard to improve on a time tested system of PC management.

This thread has gotten way off track. Even if Breton Highlander is right that Morrowind's + Oblivion's skill + attribute system had some poorly designed aspects (to do with counterintuitive, meta-gamey choices of major + minor skills), this isn't an argument against skills + attributes. It's an argument against skills + attributes in conjunction with (i) increasing attributes only at level up, (ii) how the number of skill increases gave you attribute multipliers at level up; (iii) enemy scaling; (iv) probably some other stuff I can't think of right now.

It's an entirely possible to have a skills + attributes system that is free of the problems Morrowind + Oblivion had. Bethesda got rid of attributes mostly because they wanted the focus to be on skills, and to put even more emphasis on character customisation as you play. I think it is less to do with the perceived audience, and the imbalances of previous games, and much more to do with Bethesda's own considered design philosophy.

And that (what I underlined) is why people say "dumbing down."

I'm not quite sure what you mean the topic's gotten off track. Sounds like your spliting hairs.

The question of this perk system leading to something better is 'no', it's conveluted, dull and petty.

It's a system to designated to give the PC a set of abilities to navigate and progress through the landscape. Though decent in concept, it only serves to burden gameplay with a myriad of abilities that most won't utilize, and reduces the need for radial items, which in my case become collectables, as there isn't a need for them since this 'master of all skills' philosiphy gives you everything you need inharently, and is a large factor in player complaints of the game being too easy at higher levels.

And for you casual players, have a casual mode. NOT A hardcoe mode for typical RPG play.

It's obvious you are enamored with Skyrim, and I am happy for you. You are not going to convince people enamored with Morrowind or Oblivion otherwise. The reasons you like Skyrim are the very reasons these people (myself included) dislike it. The same for others trying to convince you. Your game play style differs greatly from those you are arguing with. It will never end.

Enjoy Skyrim! It is a fun game

My point was just that people have got too caught up in the question of whether Morrowind's skills + attributes system was badly designed, because it encouraged people to do counterintuitive/meta-gamey things like put the skills that "defined" their character into Minor skills (or even Misc skills). Even if that point is correct, it's only an argument against a specific implementation of skills + attributes. It's not an argument against the general concept of designing character customisation/development with skills + attributes.

Well I did say that I've never played Morrowind or Oblivion so I don't know how abilities were handled in those games, So I'm not sure what you mean by, ( counter-intuitive / meta-gameplay ).

I just know that using classes that also split into specialy sub-classes and even futher into specialised ability groups, promote specific strategies depending on what the PC is. You can still choose to dual or even tri-class your PC, but there still will be consequences that hinder the PC whatever class you choose.

That being said, multiple play thoughs would be more attactive in that you could be a completely different character making the experience just as varied.

Just think of how much harder it would be to play a Palidon in Skyrim versus a thief. You definitely couldn't just steal/kill NPC's to get what you need .

I think the Perk trees are a step in the right direction. There were lots of pointless perks and the trees could do with being re-designed, by I like the concept and now that they have been used in a game I think the next game will use them better.

I don't think Perks can be used as a replacement for attributes; they are different things so technically all 3 should be used and in the game.

I'm not really bothered either way, as my main priority is improving things like the story, the guilds, the combat (things that actually make you want to play the game for longer), but having said that if attributes were brought back I wouldn't mind.

There's one thing though that always didn't really make much sense with attributes. Part of the point of the skills is that you increase what you do and the more you do something the better you get, this aspect makes sense and is sort of like real life. Attributes however are chosen from a list whenever you level; its this "What attribute do I want to magically increase this time" that doesn't make sense to me. In Skyrim; Stamina technically is for warriors as they use this for certain attacks but as it increases the amount of items you can carry then this is something I tend to increase with any build that I do.

I think attributes should return but not be chosen like they have always worked but increase over time like how skills work; this makes more sense with the improve by doing things statement. Now I haven't properly thought this through, but I think this could work if done right; here are a few examples of how this could work:

• A mage would constantly be casting spells, so the more spells that are cast could mean a slight increase in their Magic meter. Therefore the more you practice spells, the more spells you can do at once before you are emtpy.
• You could add the speed attribute back (I know some people like to create a character that can run fast); the more you sprint the more this attribute increase which in turn means the longer you can sprint for and the faster you can run. This one would be similar to jumping; some people like to jump high so the more you jump the higher you can actually jump over time.
• Being hit a lot and then healing would sort of build up your tolerance to being hit and therefore would slowly increase your health.

These are just a couple of examples; maybe you all think this would be a stupid idea but I think it makes more sense with the "Learn something by doing something" rather than just choosing an attribute yourself to increase each level up.

Either way though; what ever direction Bethesda choose to take the game I do think there has been big improvements in a lot of areas so I do look forward to TES6 in 3/4 years (or whenever they have finished it).

Well I like it.

Although at a certain point there should be a cap or a drastic slowing in gain.

I've played MANY characters in Morrowind with starting weapon skills in the 20-30 range, and I've even had a few where they used a Miscellaneous weapon skill (at 5 points), and succeeded. Granted, it's a LOT harder, even with slightly higher starting Agility (which improves your hit chance slightly), but it can be done. By the time the skill reaches 40-50, it's hitting close to 50% of the time, and combat starts getting more and more like the later games (except that in MW you do FULL RATED WEAPON DAMAGE if/when you hit, provided that you took enough time to allow a full weapon drawback before striking, not nerfed like in OB because of low skill). At any rate, Perks were a poor substitute for Attributes, although the idea of using "multipliers" and boosting selected Attributes by 1-5 points at level-up was an abomination. They should increase SLIGHTLY as their related skills increase, but the character's initial "build" should still be the dominant effect. In short, if you design a character who is tough and powerful, but dumb as a bag of rocks, they should have to struggle a lot more to become a master spellcaster. If you design a frail but sharp-witted character, magic or certain stealth skills and their related Attributes should come a lot more easily than bashing opponents with a heavy 2-handed weapon. You are born with certain characteristics and aptitudes: these are "Attributes". You learn various things throughout life: these are "Skills". There are tricks, quirks, and other details that set you apart from others around you: these are "Perks". All three aspects define a character far better than any one or two of them. I don't know what this forum did about a week or two ago, but I can't use the ENTER key to create a new paragraph on this site. Forget all of those things that I want back from the older games, I want my ENTER key back!

In addition Morrowind had more skills, making it easier to find weak minor skills to train cheap, Morrowind was also very easy at higher levels making it less important to maximize attributes.
Oblivion started to get harder at high level where you had the best weapons with maxed out skill while enemies continued to get more health. This made it important to get the important attributes up.
However I think some people power trained skills like sneak acrobatic and athletic but this was mainly to get the skill high, not to get the +5.

Well it's a very good suggestion but you know in the old days, when you actually had strength, constitution, intelligence so on.., the PCs attribute starting point was preditermined, (mind you different from any other PC as in life), then you built it up from there.

Heath(HPs) increased by level dependent on you class. REMEMBER heath also took into account dexterity and fighting skill in a PCs ability to absorb/avoid damage hince damage multipliers for sneak attacks and other like situations. WHICH IS THE ONLY REASON FOR SNEAK ATTACK/CRITICAL HIT DAMAGE BONUSES! Which is catching and opponent, or visa-versa, in a comprised postion, (or a lucky/skilled strike).

There definitely wasn't a difference between strength and carry weight like Skyrims stamina to carry weight disperity when augmenting stamina with potions, gear, whatever ... which was really frustrating for me at the beginning.

ANYWAY, like I said in an earlier post; I applaud Bethesda trying to make improvements, but come on Bethesda, there's a pretty close to perfect system that's been around for over 30 years which only needs a great translation to computer code.