The thing is with time constraint. Publisher or the PR people set the date in stone. 11/11/11 it's kind of hard to argue with that. So they focused their effort on what would make most sense to them. I won't blame them for that.

3 months more development time could've possibly have improved this game vastly, but well, we don't live in a perfect world..

To me, classes being chosen at the outset and being more or less defined by the developers of the game are a thing of the past. By cutting such things, companies aren't removing options, they're allowing for more freedom. Maybe my character isn't intended to be thought of as just another evil Altmer wizard? Granted, my Altmer's class being defined before I've even started really playing the game doesn't prevent him from being as complex as I would like, but at the end of the day, the game still labels him a wizard, regardless of how he actually behaves. How many classic wizards charge into a huge battle smashing everything in sight with a Daedric Warhammer? Sounds a lot more like a barbarian or warrior to me. But that's not what my Altmer is.

Our class should be how we choose to define themselves, and by how our actions support or even contradict that definition. It's the way a lot of RPGs are going to be doing things in the future, and I consider that a step forward, not an act meant to cater to idiotic casual gamers with short attention spans.

What consequence does class have to begin with anyway? Any good, open, non-linear, sandbox-style RPG worth its salt is going to refrain from punishing or rewarding the player based on their choice of class. As much as possible, at least. Don't get me wrong, I see the value in limiting oneself through choosing a preset class, I've done it myself, and the challenge was quite enjoyable. That's why I want the classic style RPGs to stick around, they're still fun. But things like class selection are not the future of role-playing games.

Combat and magic systems are evolving as well, and I welcome that more than anything else. The technology of modern times allows developers to grow beyond the standard spell-casting methods, to make them function more like what we see in movies with wizards doing battle. That wasn't an option back in the day, so certain rules had to be set up, rules involving dice rolls and the like. As technology has improved, old ideas have given way to what I imagine a lot of developers would've been doing from the beginning if it'd been an option. The D&D style may still be fun, but it's not the future of role-playing games either.

The thing is with time constraint. Publisher or the PR people set the date in stone. 11/11/11 it's kind of hard to argue with that. So they focused their effort on what would make most sense to them. I won't blame them for that. 3 months more development time could've possibly have improved this game vastly, but well, we don't live in a perfect world..

That's why I'd like to see release dates being set way too far in advance become a thing of the past. As far as I'm concerned, no one should even be talking about a possible release date until the game is nearly finished. I'm talking gone through beta testing already. If the game's not going to be done by the Christmas shopping season, tough luck. You don't rush a masterpiece, I don't care how badly you think you need the holiday rush in order to sell enough copies. The fact that that's not standard operating procedure can be directly attributed to the businessmen in the game industry wielding so much more power than the artists.

There's nothing new about the concept of starting with a "blank slate character" and having the game-play determine character development. The shining example of this would be Planescape:Torment, one of the best RPGs ever, in which character action determined not only how the character developed, but actually affected the world. I don't really consider the newer TES games to be a "step forward" from that, but that's very much a matter of opinion.



I disagree with this. I believe that choices should have consequences. If I choose to create a stupid character with no discernible fighting ability, shouldn't I find it hard to get by in a hostile world?


I don't understand why choice has to be thrown out. Why not provide a system that allows one to start with a "generic" character if one chooses, or to go into a "Custom Character Trait Window" that allowed you to make a few "tweaks" to make the character fit the role as you see it? Do we have to throw out one to have the other?

Even in an open skill system like TES, I think there's still a place for having pre-defined classes just to help out the newcomers who might be overwhelemed with having a lot of options thrown at them before the game even starts. The issue is that lots of people seem to be upset about the wrong thing; the lack of classes aren't what they seem to be really upset about so much as the lack of any options outside of race to customize your character from the onset. I never payed much attention to the modding scene, but that's something I intend to look into changing once we get the construction set.

Did that game have classes?


Your class doesn't determine if your character is stupid, YOU do. And I don't know about Oblivion or Skyrim, but Morrowind certainly punishes players who don't know what they're doing, regardless of class. Your behavior should determine your success or failure, not your chosen class.


I look at it this way: Elder Scrolls games should provide freedom to develop your character any way you choose, not pre-define them from the get-go. There's no better blank slate than one that can be achieved through an absence of class-based options. When I first played Morrowind, I never chose a preset class, I always created one myself, and no matter what I named it, I never lived up to it. Not entirely. I was just adapting to the nature of the game, learning what choices would best allow me to prosper. In Morrowind, for me at least, that means being a warrior who knows enough magic to give themselves a considerable edge over just about anything that gets in their way. I didn't want to do it that way, necessarily. But that was my option.

What kind of tweaking options are you looking for?

@Scow2: Morrowind was textbase and so had more unique dialogue than any other TES game. The repetitive greetings were never ment to be the key feature of the dialogue system unlike voice acting in Oblivion. Also I agree with your points on spellmaking but the problem isn't the spellmaking itself but the interface. Also you have to think when picking perks. Is going from 40% to 60% more damage with two handed better than dealing 25% more with axes?

@Ladyonthemoon: gamesas sells those games so anyone who bought them should complain. Saying buyers shouldn't complain about TES is like saying citizens shouldn't complain about their government: people should complain and if things don't get better don't buy the next game (or in the case of governments don't vote again).

@Tonal Architect: Classes are quite redundant and constricting but having a limited amount of points to distribute like in Fallout or some dialogue where you choose a few skills that your character is better at would be nice. Also Planetscape had classes.

I cannot speak for Glaarg (but I might be anyway), but I want to define my character as more than just a blank slate at the start of the game. I want to determine if they are strong, or weak, or agile, or clumsy, smart, stupid, charismatic, etc... I want to develop their background, so I know who they are. Someone who is a minor aristocrat who has been in training for knighthood since childhood - first as a page, then a squire - is not going to start out knowing nothing about weapons, or physically weak. They are going to start out with some skill at using weapons and armor, know how to ride (which granted the ES games do not care about). They are going to be strong and toughened, knowing how to roll with punch and endure hardship. I want to define all these things when I start the game, because these are who the character was before the events in the game happened.

You do not need classes for any of this. I am with you when it comes to doing away with them. All you need is to give the player some options to determine the attributes and skill levels they start the game with. Just like the Fallout games (which also lack classes) let you determine your attribute values, tag 3 skills, and pick a perk at the start of the game. (Looks like alex25 ninjaed me on the last part)

All things considered, I'm kind at a loss as to why Bethesda didn't bring back something like the Advantage/Disadvantage system from Daggerfall to spice up character creation a bit. Just make it optional so new players aren't scared off. Call then Inherent Perks or something and they'd be a natural fit for Skyrim.

edit:



No, it happens if you're leveling at all. The simple mecahncs of the games are that you're eventually going to get to the point where everyone is the same with nothing but race and star sign to distinguish each character. Choosing to intentionally ignore skills is fine if that's what you want to do, but that's by no means a form of "character customization." You can just as easily ignore skills in Skyrim as well.



Reread what I said. What you're arguing about is having choices to make at character creation. That has nothing to do with classes. Skyrim could have just as easily have allowed players to adjust their starting skill values and it could have been done without ever adding "classes" to the game.

edit: bleh, double post.

I agree with this. See my comments below regarding "classes" as opposed to "inherent perks."


This is not correct. In both Morrowind and Oblivion, once you have maxed the "class skills," you can no longer level up, because leveling occurs as a result of raising "class skills" 10 increments. If you play the game using primarily those "major" skills, you will raise them -- and the attributes that correspond to them -- more than you will raise the remaining skills. Some people would argue that this is the "wrong" way to play the game, but it is in fact the way the game is designed to be played.

In order to end up with characters who are all the same, you have to engage in a practice of meta-gaming, raising minor skills to get better attribute bonuses. That's certainly one way to play, but it's not role playing.


No, that's exactly what classes are, in TES games. We're arguing over a label. When one creates a "custom class" in Morrowind or Oblivion, one is "adjusting their starting skill (and favored attribute) values." You're doing the same thing when you're selecting one of the pre-made "classes," even if it's not presented that way by the chargen system.

A class, in TES games, is really the same thing in terms of starting characteristics as what you called "Inherent Perks." It's simply a way of setting up characters so that they're not all the same at the start, so you can role play a "past" for the character, and influence their future abilities. I don't particularly care how it's implemented, but I believe that for role play, and especially for replay value, a game should allow one this kind of flexibility.

The "in the end every character is the same" bit can be solved by perks and by making it harder to level up at higher levels. There wouldn't be much of a problem if a character maxed out on all his skills after 300 hours. The problem is when that happens after 40 hours due to skills that are too easy to level.

Did you even ask people about "Rumors", "Little Secret", "Some Advice", "My Profession", or "Background"? Those were all highly repetitive between NPCs.

As far as perks... yes, you have to think about them, but the numbers are all pre-determined and balanced. You don't have to fine-tune or tweak perk choices to get the effect you want. It's not so much about the actual percentages as "Do I want to do more raw damage with Two handed weapons, or do I want to improve my ability to activate the special effect of my weapon of choice?"

What? I've got ~40 hours in and I don't have any skills at 100.

The rumors, little secret and all the rest of the small talk are absent from the more recent voiced games. In Morrowind you had lots of things explained in dialogue from the tribunal saints to directions. That doesn't happen in Oblivion and Skyrim. Also the concept of spellmaking was to finetune the spells to fit your character. Not all perks are balanced and many do the same things the skills do so to benefit from them you have to plan in advance. Smithing and enchanting are easy enough to abuse and will get you to 100 in a hour or two but even without touching them I got two handed to 100 with my nord in about 45 hours and destruction to 95 with my Aragonian in about 50 without ANY training...

If I remember correctly, the rumors, secrets, advice and such, were NOT dialogue, but text. Alex was refering to dialogue. Regardless, when it comes to repetition, Skyrim is by far the most repetitive game in terms of dialogue, EVER.

"Trinkets, odds and ends, that sort of thing." "You looking for protection? Or do you just wanna deal some damage?"

Yeah, yeah, how many times have I heard all that? Ya know, they kind of all say the same damn thing, like, not even each smith differs in what they say almost likely their psychically linked.

Like I said, not all future RPGs should be like Skyrim. I certainly welcome some that embrace such features as finite points to allot to whatever attributes/skills one wishes at the start of the game. Sometimes it just works better that way, like in KOTOR.



I agree that a great level of customization at the outset of the game should definitely be present. But, as you agree, you don't need classes for that. You need the ability to give your character a scar on their face, or a missing ear, or a considerable bulkiness, or even a great deal of fat about their body. Something to inspire a sense of history to the character, something that the NPCs could notice and comment on (or be afraid to). And of course, to an extent, the starting attributes and skills should reflect ones decisions in character creation.


This I like the sound of.



Indeed they were. There's a reason people have thought to make some pretty expansive dialogue mods.

I don't think so I love the game BTW.

I agree I started playing the series at Morrowind and the things that have been removed I have missed but people seem to dwell on that instead of accepting the new features that have replaced them. That being said I do miss the levitation trousers!!

And in Morrowind if you started a GOTY playthrough, everyone on the island will tell you where to find a boat to Solstheim. The repetition of that had me wondering if the dialogue writers were daft or just heavy handed about having everyone everywhere tell you the same thing.

Agreed. While I am a huge fan of Morrowind, my first proper character came out of pure luck in Skill assignment - I even managed to whack Alchemy in there so I got to know what my potions did. In Skyrim, I actually changed my tactics from dual-wield maces to swords halfway through with little to no penalty, and it made my experience a LOT better.

Kotor is a very diffrent game from Skyrim. It is very plot driven, it isn't a open world game like the TES series. You are placed in a rather constricting role in Kotor while in most TES games you create your character and then play like you want and the world reacts to it. Of course due to technical limitations this doesn't quite happen but the fact remains that TES tries to build a world and tell a story while Kotor just tells a story.


Maybe they just forgot to filter that bit of dialogue?

Daggerfall has ~35 skills. Morrowind has 27. Oblivion has 21. Skyrim has 18.
Daggerfall has... well, I don't care for counting the [censored]ton of spells every game has, but Skyrim certainly has the least.
Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion have 8 attributes. Skyrim has 3.
Daggerfall has 227 quests. Morrowind has 426. Oblivion has 231. Skyrim has 244 (though this is debatable.. some articles say Morrowind has less than 400 quests and I'm sure I've read that Todd Howard stated Skyrim had more than 300).
Daggerfall has 6(???) joinable factions. Morrowind has 16. Oblivion has ~14. Skyrim has 9.

I could go on, but that would be stupid. All of these games are different, with their own strengths and weaknesses, but there is a disturbing trend. Each new TES game seems to offer less than the previous one, which means content is getting cut. Skyrim may have added content (children, marriage, dual-wielding), but they never really expanded upon those features. The children all look the same and sound nothing like their parents. Marriage is a complete joke. Dual-wielding doesn't have any fluid movements whatsoever -- all they really did was allow you to equip two weapons (or spells, for dual-casting) at once.

Spellmaking, which allowed players to trascend into "godhood" (pretty much in line with the lore) was cut and replaced by a mediocre spell system that actually offers less vanilla spells than Morrowind and Oblivion did. D'oh.
Sense of exploration and discovery? Cut. You can admire the scenery and walk around, but thanks to the compass you'll never be surprised by the locations you find. In Morrowind, you often didn't find places unless you quite literally stumbled upon them (can you remember the first time you found the Dragonbone Cuirass? You were rewarded for exploring).
Freedom was metaphorically cut as well. (I'm not quite sure how to use that word just yet :/) Freedom was limited. In every TES game, there's a scripted storyline you must follow, but that's how games work. Skyrim seems to give you much less though. Bethesda designed the quest in such a way that there's only one way of completing it. In Morrowind, you could kill Vivec (who was marked as essential for the main quest), but Bethesda actually included a separate route to complete it anyway! Oblivion didn't quite continue that, but it should hae. And so should Skyrim.
The amount of essential NPC's (in this case, less = good, more = bad) seems to have doubled (tripled?! 4-p'led?!?!) from Oblivion, and even more from Morrowind, though that ties in with far more limited freedom. Sure, you can kill people, but only if Bethesda wants you to.

Well, Daggerfall has 6 unique and Joinable factions that offer quests - The four "Core" guilds, a Knightly Order, and a Temple. However, there are a lot more factions that you can interact with as well.



I've always been surprised about what I end up stumbling onto. The compass encourages exploration, as it says there's something off in a given direction, but you don't know how far... and there's always stuff around those markers as well. The compass merely no longer requires you to explore with a fine-toothed comb. As for things to find... I've stumbled across magical weapons, assorted bodies, random people, powerful loot, exotic ingredients, stunning vistas, mysterious architecture, unmarked stones, secret entrances... I could go onandonandon.

Most NPCs in Daggerfall were unkillably essential. While Bethesda doesn't do Essential NPCs quite as well as they need to, I feel that some NPCs need to be "unkillable" prior to a certain chain of events.

Ahh, I figured as much. Same applies to the other games as well, so joinable factions probably isn't the best number to go off of.

You don't really stumble upon it though. You know what it's going to be, just not what it looks like (specifically, anyway). It doesn't encourage exploration as much as it encourages discovering pre-approved places. If you're walking straight down a path, and you see that there's a ruin to your left, you'd probably turn left because it showed up on your compass -- even if there's an amazing waterfall just ahead with a pot o' gold at the base. It would have been better if places didn't show up on your compass unless they were marked on your map first.

Why? Why shouldn't there be meaningful consequences? It detracts from character development and gameplay experience when Bethesda makes it so quests can't be failed (even if you don't intend on doing them) or certain NPC's can't be killed (Todd Howard: "No, you can't role-play a murder! You have to keep that person alive just incase you want to be a magician! -- but you can't be a good magician either because you spent too many perk points on becoming a murderer!").

It's pretty much Bethesda saying, "You're playing the game wrong." How can that be in an open-world RPG like Skyrim? It just doesn't make sense.


Also, there's the journal. I know that's a hot subject on these forums, and people certainly have mixed views on it.. but quests aren't nearly as meaningful when they're displayed as simple objectives on a list (and by simple, I mean simple -- most of them couldn't get any more vague or literal). Morrowind may not have had the best way of doing things (according to some people), but it was headed in the right direction. Oblivion basically fell of a cliff in that aspect, while Skyrim only succeeded in climbing 1/4 of the way back up. It's not an MMORPG. Objects don't need to be short and literal or vague. They should be full of detail (only the details you're given, mind you). Same goes for marked objectives. If someone wants you to go to dungeon x, but they don't specifically tell you where it is (or even that it's a dungeon), it shouldn't automatically appear on your map. The kind of depth and detail in the quest system has greatly diminished since Morrowind (the fetch this/kill that quests in Morrowind had a storyline and plot behind them half of the time -- but even when they didn't, they made since.. no newcomer to any guild or house is going to be sent on important missions at first, for instance).