Yeah, I really don't get these comments about the perk system encouraging "action gameplay" over something like attributes. Oblivion's combat is just as "actiony" in feel yet it still has attributes and no perks. Perks are just a form of character customization, nothing more and nothing less. It was a good idea and it could have been a great way of letting people specialize their characters in unique ways, just a shame that so many perks were boring and just as redundant as the attributes that were removed (wooo, +X% damage with my weapons. Which is exactly what my weapon skill does anyway......... Choices!!!!)

Agreed to most of this however not all atributes were redundant. Strength added to how much one could carry in Morrowind and also influenced the damage across all weapons and determines your maximum fatigue, endurance works on health and fatigue and slows down fatigue loss, willpower influenced chance of success across all spell types and your resistance to magicka etc. So with strength you don't get something that is redundant like 20% more damage with one handed something that is done with the same skill the perk belongs to but you actually get slightly better with every weapon increase how much you can carry and other stuff. So attributes while they could be better designed aren't redundant.

Willpower wasn't "redundant," but its primary functions no longer have a place due to game mechanics (spell failure isn't a thing anymore, whether you're hit or not is dependant on whether an attack actual connects with the person rather than dice rolls). Attributes could have still had a place in Skyrim, but almost all of them would have needed new functions.

And there's another case of something "cut," because in Oblivion, Willpower determines the rate at which Magicka regenerates. No need for that in Skyrim, because the rate is the same for everybody, all the time, no matter who they are. Another character difference goes in the trash.

There's a perk that increases your magicka regen. There's also a Ward Stone or two that do so.

edit: Heck, Restoration in genral probably has the most interesting perks in the game.

New functions that added something in the game. Spell failure was a rather realistic feature that could have been added to Skyrim. Or perhaps willpower would have made spells more powerful or cheaper to cast or would have replenished mana faster. But no everyone has the same spell chance just like everyone can open every lock. Same with speed. Why not have something that determines how fast you attack or sneak? Because it is redundant right?

The fact that the game doesn't have the proper functions for attributes doesn't mean that attributes aren't needed but the fact that the game needs those functions.

EDIT: Ninja'd by glargg

@Ehra: that perk sits in a poorly designed perk tree and is far less capable and precise than the attribute willpower that also increased your resistance to certain spells. Why do some characters regenerate magicka? Willpower gave you an ingame answer: your character can shape the world more by sheer will and thus can resist a some illusion spells and tap into the ambiental magicka (or something like that). Some characters did it worse some did it better and that could gradually improve. Now you have the less immersive answer of there is a perk and characters either have the perk or don't without any relationship to what you learn or do ingame. Is it a fail? No for an action game but gamesas sold RPGs.

Like I said, attributes could have been made to work but they would have needed to have vastly different functions for the most part.

I agree that locks should be much more difficult than they are for people that don't pick security perks or increase their skill. Speed (be it movement or attack) could have and should have been perks but, like I also said before (so much repetition in this thread) the perk system should have done lots of things that it never ended up actually doing. Sticking some attack speed boosts in the light armor perk tree would have been an interesting way to further differentiate between a heavy stand-still-and-trade-blow-for-blow brute or a more agile fencer. But instead the majority of the points you can even spend in the armor trees are just different forms of "+% armor."

edit: Looks like this is going to go back to the same old "I don't like it therefore it svcks" discussion that most threads devolve into. If anyone wants to actually discuss the merits and downsides of the directions each system is attempting to take then I'll gladly take part. If it's just going to be people going on about how much they dislike one system or the other because it's different then I won't be replying.

Duh, thats the entire point of not scrapping them, and instead improving them and adding on to them. Thats what people who want attributes actually want. They don't just want attributes copy and pasted over from Morrowind and left as is, they want a better attributes system. Not the absence of one.

Yes, but those work for everybody, in exactly the same way. Total equality, all characters the same, in the same situation.

Most functions are still there (like the willpower magicka regen or strength and carry capacity). Also perks can't show gradual improvement the way attributes do. They are skill related in ways attributes are not and that both enhances them or limits them. Perks can be used to further differentiate between characters in places were new skills are redundant and thus improve the game. Maybe Beth could with a lot of thinking on their part make a new user friendly set of perktrees that can do what the attributes did and add something new. But it's not easy or they would have done better in Skyrim so why not keep the attributes and work on having less bugs. Or maybe having mounted combat so the player doesn't have to dismount while being attacked by a dragon. I am not against new stuff but the fixing what's not broken and cutting what is broken isn't a way to have better games.

No, they work for anyone who takes them. Going by your argument of "perks work for everyone in exactly the same way," Willpower's scaling magicka regen works for everyone exactly the same way, you just have to increase it to the point you want.

Ward Stones only work one at a time; they provide unique boosts to characters but you have to choose which one you want to use. That's exactly the type of character customization that games should have; meaningful decisions that actually change how your game plays beyond making you do X more damage or making it X% more likely for an Admire check to work.

edit:



Since when? The game is full of multi-rank perks. If the trees were loosened up more so there wasn't such a linear progression through them, increased the amounts of ranks per perk, and somehow increased the amount of perks characters got, there'd be plenty of room for fine tuning character uniqueness even with just perks alone.

I don't get what's so difficult for you guys to get. The perk system could have done all of these things, the reason it didn't is either because Bethesda didn't put enough thought into it or they, for some reason, didn't want the system to have that much depth. Your immersion argument about Willpower vs a perk that increases magicka regen could have easily been overcome by simply naming that perk Willpower, or something along those lines. Instead of just "Increased Regen" or whatever it's called.

Perks and attributes are litterally just different forms of measuring the same things; character abilities. Anything that an "attribute" could theoretically "do" could just as well be "done" by a "perk."



If developers stood by the "don't fix what isn't broken" mantra then we'd still be playing Pong.

While Willpower's Magicka Regen does work the same for everyone, the chances of any two characters having it identical are less until the Attribute maxes. Racial/Gender/Class choices affect both the level of Magicka and the level of Willpower in previous games. Those choices have mostly gone out the window with Skyrim, so we have this homogenized situation where all characters start from the same place.

In Oblivion, you could make two characters with the same classes, but different races (or vice versa), and if you played them the same way, they'd still be different (although they would trend more toward sameness as the game advanced.) With the Skyrim system, if you play the same way, it makes no difference who you were or how you started, you'll end up the same.

The issue here is replay value. When you remove Attributes, even if they were internally redundant, you have removed player choice. Role play is more limited. The fact that you've added choice later doesn't make up for the loss of starting choice, because the previous games also had later choices; you could choose which attributes to raise when leveling up.

I don't disagree with your last point. (Stones like that exist in Oblivion, as well.)

I don't remember if I've mentioned it in this thread before or not, but I think something else that really would have helped Skyrim in the "character uniqueness" department would have been to bring back something like Daggerfall's Advantages/Disadvantages system. Make that work as the character customization at creation; let people choose "inherent perks" like, say "Brute" which gives you a boost to heavy armor and 2handed skills, but a reduction to magic and/or conversational skills. Maybe provide some kind unique passive boost as well; like your Admire chance can never go above X% but you've got a permanant boost to intimidation. The current setup could have been the default so that new players aren't overwhelmed with choices, but then this would be an optional step that would let people fine tune their characters.

Combine that with the issues I mentioned above with the perk trees in general, and I think there would have been plenty of room for letting people flesh out their character concepts. As is now, you're complely right in that regard. There isn't much relpay value in making differen't types of characters. There aren't many skills to choose from which would potentially be ok if there was a lot of room for customization in each skills' perk tree, but the trees are all so limited and linear that most people who choose to spend points in X skill tree will all end up having the same perks.

All in all, I think the direction they seemed to want to take with Skyrim could have made for a great RPG system. I don't think the problem is with the concept in of itself, I think the problem is that not nearly enough was done with it. I'm really looking forward to seeing what people do with the perk system once the construction kit comes out. I never had much urge to make mods, but this I could see being something I mess around with.

Then why perks and not attributes? And can you really make 100 ranks of perks to match the attribute's flexibility?




No. Devs created new content not fixed everything. Look at the difference between Daggerfall and Morrowind. Daggerfall was buggy to the point of broken and it was very repetitive. Beth knew it didn't have the money or the time to make a bugless and interesting version of Daggerfall. So they concentrated on a smaller space and filled it with unique things to make up for the loss of Daggerfall's vast area and thus Morrowind was born. They had a broken concept, couldn't fix it and so they worked their way around it and made less space become more unique content. But they didn't change the attributes much. Why? Because they weren't broken. And thus they had time to make other things.

100 rank perks would get silly, but there's definitely room for allowing more fine tuning than what's currently available. As for why using perks over attributes, the answer is that perks allow for, potentially, more meaningful differentiations between characters. Attributes are generally just stats like Strength or Agility that passively increase your skill in various mundane ways. Combat wise, increasing your Strength just adds X more damage per swing. It doesn't make your power attacks work in unique ways, it doesn't make you, say, more stamina efficient with your attacks. Well, it potentially could but then you'd have monster attributes that are doing 6+ things at once which would get difficult to keep track of. Instead of having Attribute A that universally governs your ability to do X, Y, and Z, you instead have perks X, Y and Z that you could, theoretically, fine tune specifically how much of each boost you want for your character.

The biggest challenges of putting that type of depth into the perk trees would be conveying all of those options without overwhelming the less hardcoe players. You've also got the challenge of deciding how you're going to structure the trees. A lot of work and thought would need to put into the system to prevent what we have now from happening.

You could ask why it'd even be worth the effort, which is I suppose where my thoughts largely differ from yours. I personally can't fault a developer for experimenting and failing. Does the system we have now work well compared to what we had before? In my opinion, no. But I like the direction they could potentially be going in, and I'd like to see what could be done in the future. You might say that instead of taking that risk they should have just stuck with the old system and just made tweaks to. I agree that definitely would have been the safer route, but I can't say I think it would have been particularly interesting either. Heck, Oblivion already felt boring and seemed like "more of the same" when it came to how similar the systems were to eachother. The few things that saved it were the changes to the combat system like manual blocking and the removal of dice rolls in general. I can't see Skyrim having introduced similar gameplay changes, so I think it would have really started to feel derivative if it had stuck with the attribute system and just made a few "tweaks" or "fixes" here and there.


To be honest, I feel that "tweaks" and "fixes" to the systems are the sort of things we have mod tools for. If I want to play Morrowind then that option is still there, and if I want to play Morrowind with some issues ironed out then I can do so. The old system was around for two games (three if Daggerfall counts, don't have firsthand experience it). By then, I think it's ok to try mixing things up. When it comes to a AAA game that costs $60+, I expect gameplay changes that go beyond what I could expect from a mod a single person made in their free time.

The issue is not that "Attributes can't work" or "Perks can't work", but that Bethesda chose to replace a flawed system that needed a few fixes with another system that also needs a few fixes. It's "different", but not necessarily better for some, and not necessarily worse for others. In other words, something needed fixing, but the net result of what they did is still a flawed system.

The "ideal" approach, in my opinion, would be to have only limited increases in Attributes after character generation, and use Perks to allow for specialization and unique abilities that Attributes and even Skills are too general to cover. Attributes are "who you are", Skills are "how much you learned" and Perks are "tricks you learned" within those skills or "special abilities" not covered by any of the above.

I couldn't agree more with this.

I'm no expert on how Skyrim works, and when reading what I have to say here, please keep in mind that I'm not referring to it in the least.

For many years, I've looked at how Morrowind handles character development as being very ideal, not because I'm so attached to the game, but because the system simply makes sense. To an extent. In looking to improve it for the next game, I would definitely look at the method used in Galsiah's Character Development for inspiration.

A lot of people seem to think that redundancy is a bad thing. I do not. In real life, there's a lot of factors that go into things we humans are capable of doing, such as sword-fighting, and a great number of things are dependent upon the same attribute, such as strength, and when attempting to create an immersive experience in a video game, it makes sense to replicate that as much as possible.

In ES games, there's no getting around having ones strength be raised at a rate inconsistent with ones aims. Why? Because it takes strength, no matter how little or how much, to do just about any of the things we do in these games. Even pure magic-users are going to be running and jumping around (especially when they don't have levitation to count on) a lot in their adventures, because no matter how we go about exploring the in-game world, exploration is something ALL of us do.

To physically move requires muscles, and regardless of how small or how big, muscles equal strength. A skill can be tied to any attribute the developer feels is appropriate, but really, most skills should require a number of attributes, not just one, and a lot of times, strength is going to be one of those attributes.

It doesn't matter if ones weapon is more of a factor than ones strength when it comes to dealing damage, unless it's completely and utterly weightless, strength is still required in order to use that weapon, and therefore should be a factor when determining how much damage the character can inflict with it.

Of course, when putting together a system where using just about any available skill in the game raises ones strength attribute, you have to compensate for that by getting the math absolutely perfect when it comes to leveling up those skills and attributes. That requires not only a solid plan before you ever even start putting the game together, but extensive testing as well after you've done so. I'm thinking Bethesda doesn't put much stock in that.

Perks should be something extra, some special ability that the player obtains through the hard work they put into developing a particular skill or skillset. A good example, if climbing were a skill in ES these days, would be the ability to do something like a back-flip off of a wall once the player's climbing skill, athletics skill, and related attributes where each up to specific levels. Or something to that effect.

I think a ZX Spectrum could probably handle those complex background calculations you're referring to. I don't see how reducing a table of 40 numbers to a table of 15 numbers will make much of a difference to the CPU load.

The entire thread is full of insightful posts. This one is one of the best.

It is a good post. But if attributes are "who you are" then really they should never change at all throughout the game.

Or if they do then they shouldn't change by very much, and certainly not always in an upwards direction.

That's the classic D&D model. You roll character attributes at the beginning, and any changes to them are additions/subtractions based upon equipment, curses, etc. Your skills improve over time, but your basic attributes remain fixed.

Exactly, and attributes in TES should be determined by your race choice AND a sort of Advantage/Disadvantage system to simulate your character's persona.

EDIT:
Totally agree.
Read my opinion above.

That's not very realistic, attributes being "who you are" also means you're physical ability and intelligence ect... And even so, are you the same person you were 10 years ago in terms of character? Of course not, you haven't completely altered sure, but you've definetly changed, I know for one I have and all of my friends have and relatives have and just about anyone I knew that long has. It's unnatural to think that one doesn't change over the course of life especially in a TES game over the course of such incredible and eventful adventures.

EDIT: I do agree that some attributes should drop and rise depending on what you do, but to remain static seems pointless and unrealistic.

I'm not really all that heavily invested in the argument, I just meant in relation to the outlined model I was referring to. Having base levels of aptitudes in multiple disciplines, then skills and knowledge learned from experience on top of that, and then extra special unique tricks and skills on top of that. That's a nice model. It's not a nice model if your base aptitudes can all rocket skywards at the same rate as everything else. It kind of renders them meaningless if they work that way.... which is how they did work... oh and now they're gone. Hmm...

The rate at which they increase or decrease should be different, I agree. A great deal must be learned to alter the aspect of a fundamental principle, but to say that it is never changing is another thing entirely. That's the only point i'm trying to make.