TES has not have EXP since Arena, closest afterward has been the counter for skill increased who level you up in Skyrim.
After Elder scrolls EXP feel like an cheap shortcut, remember I needed better science skill to hack an computer in Fallout 3. How to raise the science skill fast? Go downtown and shoot up supermutants until level up. I will actually say EXP is an cheap shortcut, with pen and paper D&D the bookkeeping of tracking skill use would be impossible, far easier to add experience for killing monsters and doing quests.
This was some of the thought behind Daggerfall, track skill use and reward it, no problem doing it on an computer.

Classes are pretty pointless in an single character game anyway as you has to be able to do all things with one character, you have no healer to heal you. Classes since Daggerfall have only been an guide.

Perks create specialization as you can not select all and just one each level up, the five +20% effect perks create Skyrims classes.
No not perfect should be more weapon and other specialization and fewer forced irrelevant perks.

What's with all this disdain for the game manual? Every game, except for casual things like Angry Birds is complex enough to require a manual. If you are overburdened with reading a couple of pages in a manual, it's your problem. You are seriously forcing others to sacrifice depth and immersion just because you cannot spare 5 minutes to RTFM?

Have you ever worn armor and trained with weapons? I have and thus I'm not buying your fantasies on that. It needs all three, skill, attributes like strength and derived characteristics like overall stamina. They also do not come in a magical bundle, but each one o them needs dedicated training. Someone lacking any one of these cannot expect to win against a trained opponent, however.

Additionally, Morrowind was very forgiving if it came to levelling. Even a poorly designed build could survive any level and there was really no need for powerlevelling unless you choose to raise the difficulty bar up to 100%.

If you want to argue about the future of TES series seriously, you'll need to dispel your Skyrim fanaticism and to view the pro&cons of every game, including Skyrim's failures. You'll also need to actually start discussing things with people. Nobody questions that Skyrim was a huge financial success, but that doesn't mean that it'll be as good and long-lived as the previous games or that it's game mechanics are in any way groundbreaking.

With a skill of five, it's nearly impossible to hit anything. With a skill that low the only viable combat strategy is trying to literally click an enemy to death. But since the enemy does usually have a better chance to hit, you'll need some very good armor or even a rat will kill you easily. Overall it simply doesn't make any sense, since you can train those skills quite cheap. Acquiring money is not really a problem in this game.

Yeah, Morrowind was quite easy at higher levels, that's why they seriously beefed up the enemies in the expansions. But even then there was no need to powerlevel anything.
Oblivion's level scaling forced everyone to level efficiently, sacrificing character build options and non-combat skills. Fortunately there are mods to fix this. I wouldn't have bought Oblivion if not for mods like OOO. In fact, I didn't even bought it right from the start, because I wanted to vote with my wallet.
The same goes for Skyrim. Even while it's an awesome game in its own right, it simply doesn't feel like TES. That's why I haven't even bought the game yet and I'm playing it at my friends Xbox currently. Since I'm going to vote on it with my wallet, too, I'll buy a GOTY for maybe 20$ just because I'll need to heavily mod it to be just as enjoyable in the long term as the other TES titles.

Actually, yes, this skill unlimited training was a viable powerlevelling exploit in Morrowind, that's why it was capped to 5 training sessions per level in Oblivion.

Well lets agree to disagree. Looser is faster so the more intricate the PC management system, the more involved the game play.

AS FOR THE FALL OUT SERIES, I really wish people would stop comparing it to Skyrim. Truth be told, I played Fallout 3 for about twenty hours was completely bored and abandoned it and NEVER picked it back up.
And unless my memory is off, Elder Scrolls was a pen and paper RPG long before it was on PC, so all these so called "improvements" are in attempt to streamline gameplay, for people like you, who find being involved in managing your charitor 'impossable'.
TRUTH BE TOLD, working on my charitor's development is one of my favorite things to do. OF COURSE, I also miss having to have hirelings, such as "link boys" to help me clear all the loot out of a dungeon. But maybe that's just me.

Pen&paper Elder Scrolls? Ain't no such thing.

The comparison of Fallout and Skyrim is not that far-fetched. The skill perk tree is derived from there, for example. Granted, the original Fallout games very quite different from gamesas's take on this franchise. But it still had the same skills/perks/attributes character build options.
That's also why people say that is was dumbed down, because they simply removed one third of those options without a substitute.

Well I admit I'm not sure but I really though ES was started by a group of British guys wanting to make their own AD&D back story. Maybe I'm thinking of something else, but I thought I remember seeing books and manuals for ES. Whatever.

As for my comment about Fallout 3, though eliments of the 2 games maybe comparable, the thought of TES VI becoming any more like Fallout is depressing.
And maybe I'm stuck in the 70 an 80's, BUT when I hear roleplaying, I think of a swords and shields fantasy world, not a post-apocalyptic setting.
I don't see Fallout as an RPG, just a game.


WHICH I feel like is how a lot of people in this forum see Skyrim, just a game. When it comes to my RPG's it's my alter ego I'm playing. Honestly, if they could/would develop an ES game as I would like to see it, I'd never buy or play anything else.

I've loved AD&D as a child and miss it as an advlt. If only they could truely covert it over to code, oh well.

IIR, from what I've read the devs played an in-house AD&D campaign while putting Arena together. As for perks trees, don't like 'em. Worked ok in Diablo and Dungeon Siege and should of stayed there. I do agree with the statement 'they simply removed one third of those options without a substitute'.

I didn't mean that TES becomes similar to Fallout in setting but in game mechanics. It's mostly the perk tree, really. gamesas created it for F3, liked it and they thought it would be an asset to their new TES game. That's not a bad thing as of itself, but:
- removing attributes & skills
- pointless +N percent damage perks
- lack of classes and main skills
largely spoiled or/and overshadowed the initially good idea. Well, at least we have the modding community to fix those issues.

Personally, I only see the original Fallouts as RPGs, the F3 is too much like Oblivion with guns for me. It's a fun game as of itself but it lost most of its old appeal and roleplaying value.
Haha, forget the Skyrim forums. Due to the immense (current) popularity of the game it is flooded by all kinds of people. Including those who aren't truly interested in playing RPGs, but just jumped on the bandwagon. Give it a couple of years and only the core target audience shall remain.
I think It's mostly the human interaction that you're missing. Sadly, the MMO's couldn't implement it, but nothing stops you from assembling a D&D group! There, unlike in a single-player game or MMO, you can get some selected people with common interests together and have fun. No game design can replace imagination and a good GM.

I can see this, as initially Arena was meant to be a gladiatorial combat simulator of sorts. Good thing they switched it over to an RPG.

Fun thing, even Diablo successors like Sacred featured perks, skills and attributes, some of them even class-specific.
I'm just waiting until this http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/21587has developed into something more suiting my view on TES character building.

Really, I do not see how removing attributes and classes benefited character building. It just ripped a chunk of off original TES and replaced it with a hack'n'slash game mechanic.

I'm on board with everything you said. BUT, though I do miss interaction with people, even though it was tough to get everyone together often as we would like, I really miss the freedom of gameplay. Build a castle, fill it with mercs, then blow it up if you wanted. aw well... PC programs probably be sophisticated enough to incorporate all the things I'd like for another decade or so.

You know, a voice recognition system worked into the game would go along way....

Fallout is relevant as its created of the same company, as then seeing Fallout 3 I could relax about level scaling issues in TES5.

Other stuff I miss more than classes and main skill, pants for one, will not talk about spellmaking.
My first Morrowind character used an custom class named Tourist. had perhaps a couple of characters with default classes, none in Oblivion.
I'm pretty happy with the classless world of Skyrim, I do not need an character sheet to differentiated my thief from ranger even if stats outside of pickpocket and crafting are pretty similar.

I also don't mind the +N damage/ effect perks, they are for specialize your character, some skills you use pretty often but don't want to put lots of perks into it.

However I miss the attributes, they gave races more flavor,

On the subject of attributes, in addition to whatever other benefits they may grant (stronger melee strikes, more magicka, etc), they could also influence how you interact with the world. Someone with high Intelligence would be able to make relevant lore checks (like in the Integration mod for Oblivion - at least, you wouldn't be asking "who's Azura" or "what's the WGC") or identify magical or historically relevant items (like the Necromancer's Amulet in Skyrim's Butcher quest, or the unusual gems), a person with high Strength can simply brute-force doors and portculli, etc.

Could play a part in quests, too. An intelligent character or a conjurer might be able to decipher the daedric sigils keeping the daedroth out, but an intelligent Conjurer would know how to alter the sigils to compel the daedroth to serve him or banish it from Nirn.

My ideal leveling system:

If beth are smart, they can create a unique class system that offers great replayability.

1. Bring attributes back and make them relevant. When people say attributes were useless, that's hardly their fault. It's the developers fault for making them useless.
Add them back in and do them in the way S.P.E.C.I.A.L. was done, eg. you can only choose them at the start of the game from a limited number of points.
Have them affect everything: How much you carry, how good you are with weapons, how much health you have. All the basic stuff that will be with you for the rest of the game.
Of course ones like speed can be left out.

2. Return of the class system. I don't know why this was removed. It focused your character in to what you wanted to be and gave you a clear direction. It was also something to RP with.
Now I don't know about anyone else, but I like getting to the max level for my characters to feel complete. I just think it's bad that I must level every skill to 100 to do that.
Having the class system would allow people to reach the highest level without breaking their playstyle or RP.

3. Races. Now we all love to hear about NV, but their's something unique in NV that should really be in TES: Traits.
From small bonuses to massive changes, these can severely change the way you play and TES already has a system in place for brining in some unique ones.
Make all races fell different and and truly unique. Different starting stats, disposition and other bonuses can help do that.

4. Give skills their use back. This is a fault of Skyrim. They took away skills use and instead made "20% cooler!" perks instead. This is both a waste of perks and skills.
They should also add more skills back in, separate the weapon categories into individual weapon skills, remove the "Mage, warrior, thief" thing they had in Skyrim.
And lastly, skill based perks. Oblivions unique thing: as you gained level in a skill, you gained perks relevant to that skill automatically. This could really allow something unique.
If they made it so that you only gain these for class based skills, it would really open up class diversity.

5. Perks. This one is simple, you gain a perk every few levels and are allowed to pick from a list of ones that you meet the requirements for.
The way NV does it. These perks are unique and game changing, not some crappy 10% bonus to sneak.

1. At least Fallout 3 had attributes.
2. Default classes are moot anyway. I think the only standard class I ever used was Mage in Oblivion, mostly because it simply encompassed all magic-related skills.
3. Classes and main skills gave every character a backstory. In Skyrim every single char starts with their racial bonuses only, like they were created right on the spot. In previous games you had the feeling that he existed before and did something.
4. +20% damage perks are quite useless, since that can be done either with skill (Oblivion) or attributes (Morrowind) without the need to create an elaborate new perk tree system. Perks however should add something more interesting, like the original Fallout perks ("Doctor" gave a bonus to healing and damage vs. living, for example). A bland generic perk without a background story is a wasted perk.
An AI sophisticated enough to simulate all that? Interesting, but it may just as well refuse to do it, because it doesn't like castles.

Ya'll make some great points. Since I don't know how thiings were done in the Oblivion or Morrowind, that part of the conversation is lost on me.

But I do know the success of putting attributes back into the game would depend on how well the logistics are developed.

I feel like a majority of issues could be addressed by having (CLASSES FIRST) abilities and skills that are attained at certain levels dependind on the class of the PC.
Allow ability/PC diversevication through the use of sub-classes with there own level dependant abilities; and for true life feeling, make some sub-class opportunities available by "chance" ...... for you GAME OF THRONE fans, something like ARIA's chance meeting with the "FACELESS MAN".

OF COURSE, Aria didn't take him up on the offer, but you know she will down the road, (usisg the coin he gave her). Saying that, have opportunities that you can consider, and those you either do or don't right then.

Anyhow, by 500hrs into the game, even though me and you began as 'thieves', our PC's are completely different.

AS FOR PERKS, I don't know, maybe only get one every couple or three levels just for specialisations like a given weapon proficiencies or if you really like crafting poisons. What I'm getting at, these things would be player preferences like using 2 weapons or preferring the bow.

WHATEVER, Ihope they do something to make me feel like my PC is different from yours when we talk in the forums.

In Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion you selected an class with primary skills, not selected skills became minor skills. Main difference is that Morrowind and even more Daggerfall had more skills and grouping of primary skills.
An primary skills starts higher, its level up faster and then you raise 10 primary skills you gain an level, The lower level primary skills in Daggerfall and Morrowind get an lower starting bonus and did not level up as fast.
Gaining an level let you raise attributes for related skills, sneak and bows relates to agility, sword and axes to strength, illusion magic and barter to charisma.
However also the minor skills help raise attributes, so by raising axes you get more strength who help you using swords and carry more.
This run into problems in Oblivion where you could not abuse trainers and the game was pretty hard at high levels making you want to raise important attributes as much as possible, this created a mess with metagaming.

The problem with your idea is that we will not agree with that the classes should involve, an assassin, a thief and a ranger use lots of the same skills, because its a single character game all need to be able to pick locks, heal themselves and kill enemies, has not been an huge problem as we could customize classes since Daggerfall and many of the stock classed would not work well.

Your idea is interesting but don't fit the game, will run into problems with the variations of play styles,
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Classes her is an overview of Oblivion classes.

I agree with almost everything that Ledgend1221 posted, with one very notable exception. Having "automatic" perks for skills (as was done in OB) means that you don't have a choice, and have to take the perk, even if it makes no sense for your character. I'm not talking about the "powergamer" aspect of it, where OF COURSE you would want the perk, but about the RP aspect, where it might not fit with the character's concept or moral standards. I HATED "auto-perks" in Oblivion; I don't want them to come back again.

The autoperks in Oblivion weren't that bad. Even while the execution could've used some improvement, the general idea was good. It spiced up the game. Having selectable perks is even better, but not if attribute and classes are sacrificed for that.
Overall they should just return to having the skills&attributes&classes spiced up with some selectable perks.

Well said, but I still believe perk like abilities, (sneak, lockpick, backstabbing multipliers...ect) along with % chace and success rates should be class and level dependant.

Nah, class dependency would prevent too many hybrid builds or even custom ones altogether. Making the perks dependent on certain skill and attribute requirements should be enough. Again, just like in original Fallout .

For example, a backstabbing perk would've have tree levels with increasing combat or sneak skill and agility/luck attribute requirements. Thus you could use them on a thief (skill-based stealth avoidance), assassin (skill-based stealth combat), nightblade (magic-assisted stealth combat), or some custom shadow-warrior build, etc.

I don't kwon about fallout, I pesonally I don't mind being an assassin that started out as a simple thief. I could see the use of perks to sway the assassins abilities more towards combat and less toward trap of poison making, I don't know if I'd want to give up steath though.
EIGHTER WAY, I'm following you.

Maybe if a PC chooses to become an assassin when it's available, (such as an option for a 10th level thief ), the PC's thieving skills stop at whatever level the PC switches over.

Well, if you like RPGs, you should try it then. This gem is on par with classics like Planescape:Torment or Arcanum.
No, that's exactly the restrictive class mechanic from D&D I would like to avoid. Also what's a thieving skill? He would still be sneaking around and opening locks is essential.

Basically, it'll be like that:
- 3 perks that increase backstabbing damage and provide additional bonuses like a paralyzing strike
- while the first one would require only ~30 sneak skill and an average agility score, the 3rd one would require exceptional skill, agility and luck

This means that a nightblade which relies on magic for stealth won't get his sneak skill high enough for the last perk, but will still benefit from the first one. He can make up for the other two with some magic.
An assassin which uses skill for stealth would increase his sneak skill quite fast anyway and since he also relies on skill for dealing out damage this perk will be quite crucial. Especially since he wouldn't have enough endurance(hitpoints) to survive pure melee anyway, because he invests in other attributes instead.

I see nothing wrong with auto perks as they were done in Oblivion. From a RP standpoint you simply would have to earn certain skills to be considered a master at anything. You cannot be a master without some tricks of the trade. I personally think they should reintroduce the Novice, Apprentice, Adept/Journeyman, Expert and Master levels as some kind of measurable increase in skill. Like all of a sudden being able to deal more bleeding damage with a sword or cast more Alteration spells for less mana. The %reduction/increase perks were by far the most boring and terrible examples of a perk system. Perks are supposed to be just that, perks. Not the main course of the meal but the spices and sauces. They did this well in Fallout 3/New Vegas. Perks felt useful and were interesting.

That's exactly why I don't want them to be automatic. I like a bit of salt on this course, but prefer that one with a touch of garlic. Now I've got no choice but to eat everything with ketchup, because that's what the developers decided for me. FO and even FO3 gave you that choice; the skills and attributes just unlocked the possibilities, but it was still your choice in the end. I don't mind being forced to choose a skill-related perk at a certain level of skill, as long as there's more than one possibility. The alternative is LESS diversity, not more, and defeats the whole point of Perks in my opinion.

That's exactly the point I do not get about Skyrim. They already implemented perks in a TES game and they had experience with perk trees from Fallout3. Why not combine all that? For example, since there are many different approaches to sword fighting, the perk tree could've feature a couple of different starting perks (schools), but all of them leading to mastery perks.
Instead, they took the bare perk tree, stuffed it with bland & generic perks and fused it with a minimal hack'n'slash-like attribute mechanic. Additionally, as per custom, they reduced the amount of skills. Granted, the levelling mechanics of all TES games were quite awkward (and were subsequently improved with mods like GCD and AFlevel), but they weren't universally bad. Instead of improving it however, they simply dumbed it down. Heck, even the F3 char building system was better then the one in Skyrim. I really hope they will improve it in the next TES game.

WELL, if percentages and damage rates were 'level based, you wouldn't need to fool with perks for that stuff.

I mean, if they had a palidon class, there would be some skills/abilities inherent to that class that you would get at particular levels, percentages go up as levels increase,INCLUDING HEALTH, then perks could be saved for special things that may or may not be also available to other classes, (specialty stuff for one class might be a standerd thing for another .