Because when I make a character and make a backstory, I don't want him permanently tied to that backstory forever.

Say my character was a thief that was caught crossing the border. He's an expert at using stealth and bows. But while in Skyrim, he wanted to repent his ways. He joins the companions and decides to get trained in the art of using heavy armor and a sword

Morrowind and Oblivion meant I had to use light armor, a bow and my sneak skills for the rest of the game, because I declared myself a thief at the start of the game. Skyrim means my characters skills and specialities can change organically depending on the outcome of the game, as in real life.

Say it with me now:
Role-Playing-Game.

if it matters to him, then it matters. the game encourage you to make your own backstorry

What about my name?

those are three long forgotten words among the mainstream gamers

As a roleplayer, I don't miss classes at all. Though I do wish they would take a note from Fallout and allow the player to tag skills to determine what your character already has proficiency in.

I can't think of a single instance from Daggerfall on where I played a built-in class. Having played lots of other CRPGs, to me the option to 'roll your own' was what made TES games different.

Well, I suppose in Stormhold I used a built in class, but thats because it had no class customization.

The earlier games had horribly restrictive leveling systems. I always found it ridiculous that you could break your ability to reach the game's level cap by accidentally leveling the wrong skill at the wrong time... Skyrim has virtually eliminated that with the perk system replacing the attribute bonus system of Oblivion. Now, you still have a lot of the same bonuses, and some new ones, can level any skill at any time with no fear of reducing the max level cap, and you can choose which bonus skills you want/need and which you don't, as well as when you opt into each of those perks...

Funny, since people still use the term "class" to describe their characters ad nauseum across multiple threads since Skyrims release, I mean the irony is crippling.


Do you peeps listen to yourselves when you make this statement?

The Majority of the Fanbase, aren't on the forums. the Majority of the Fanbase, aren't as passionate as forumers, the Majority of the Fanbase, don't speak up. therefore they are "happy".

Bethesda effectively doesn't know anything about the "majority of the fanbase" and neither do you..since they aren't -here- but the things wanted by "hardcoe tes fans" are exactly the kind of things "the Majority of the unspoken fanbase" do not want.

Where is the Logic?

wuts a logic

are you saying bethesda doesn't love us?

If I had to choose between classes and no classes, I wouldn't be able to choose.

I just want birthsigns and attributes back. (which would actually mean a class, since the birthsign has to be chosen)

Every time attributes are brought up, I see people talking about how it forced you to level only certain skills to get those attribute modifiers. Funny, I played through Morrowind and Oblivion with classes, and not once did I level up a skill just to get a higher multiplier. I got the multipliers for the attributes that governed the skills I used most; I didn't get multipliers by using the skills governed by the attributes I wanted levelled. Sure, I guess I wasn't playing the game "efficiently", but I never ended up underpowered. In my Morrowind mage character, I've practically become a demigod, with 100 Willpower and 100 Intelligence, because I used the skills important to those attributes.

I never really thought about classes until they were removed. They just seemed normal to me; it wasn't anything like, "Ugh I hate these things they limit me so much." They didn't. If I wanted to be a Warrior who got the money to pay for his armour by stealing from the wealthy, I could make a class that fit that. If I wanted to play a Mage who crushed some bandit skulls once in a while, I could make a class that fit that. I saw nothing wrong with them.

some people think of the elder scrolls as if it was an MMO, it's all about making the perfect character and all that. all in all, it does not affect gameplay att all, power leveling is completely unnecessary

I'm saying people think Bethesda pays attention to everyone else (who aren't talking) but their very own forums.

I HATED classes. So restricting. Especially if im new to the game. How do i know magic is gonna be better than melee?
Skyrim did it perfectly. Be who you want to be. Don't stick with a silly archetype.
Thats what I hated most about OB and MW

When I watched a video about what makes Elder Scroll games great, I heard something like this.

"-your character only becomes as powerful as the work you put into it."

Classes typically limit gameplay to a certain style. You can still use a bow if you focus on melee or magic but you may not be as good as someone who spent the talent points on bows.

I don't want to see Elder Scrolls become another one of those fantasy action/rpg games who have you specialize as the stereotype warrior/mage/thief.

If I spend 50+ hours playing an elderscrolls game, I may get bored hacking things to pieces and want to sling some spells and conjure daedra or undead to kill my enemies while I stand and watch. Then start to sneak around killing my enemies with a bow or dagger.

You guys are hilarious, make up your mind.

First it was "classes are just a label, they didn't matter, they are arbitrary, take them out"

now its "classes are restrictive"

Its telling that you folks have 0 idea what was causing your apparent "woes"

you want to know what progressive thinking looks like?

Tie "classes" players pick to Radiant Story, and tailor their experiences (like they boasted about before Skyrims release) based on your class, so that each players run through would be different so that each new game would be different. so that re-playability skyrockets

if magic is better than melee then the problem is the balancing, not the classes. if they somehow made the classes more understandable then i'm sure less people would walk in on the wrong one

They were meaningless in previous games, the removal was not significant to me.

I do like having meaningful differences and limitations for characters though, and while perks were okay for this, Skyrim's system was still pretty lacking - although it's impossible to tell just how much of that is simply due to the combat being terrible rather than purely the fault of a bad character development system. I certainly think it was a terrible idea designing perks around overly rigid skill trees, while its a form of limitation it seems to've lead to terribly boring perks that merely replaced the stat buffs that used to be handled by skill/attribute values(and some still are, making some things redundant).

they certainly where not meaningless, what makes you say that?

meaningless in that they didn't do anything, atleast in Morrowind/Oblivion. atleast in Daggerfall you got familiarity, but Daggerfalls Char creation is da best ever tbh.

It does, unless you turn the difficulty down when you fail at making a good character.

The mania-sided battlemages (absorb health spells) toasted the ass out of my daedric armor wielding, two-handed warrior. A lonely saber cat 1 hit killed my assassin character. It did affect gameplay, a lot.

i agree on that, daggerfall had something going.

that's poor balancing, but you have a point
(ops, double post)