Here's to hoping you can actually do that.

Better question: Why should they stay?

In other words, it wasn't a problem of attributes mechanics at all, but in specific need to 'perfectly' level up always.

It was kind of like in Nevereinter Nights 1 when many ppl were complaining why you could not have full HP at every level up - you could, but it would be BORING, coz you had to cancel the level up sheet and click on it again and re-do all skill, feat choices over and over till you got that max HP.

Guess what ppl are complaining now in NWN 2? That level up should not be a fixed HP amount! Companies often go crazy with too much criticism on one subject that they offer the exact opposite, thinking it will be better. And it never is.

In my opinion RPG stands for Role Playing Game where you play a role within a game setting, which means that you fit in within a plot, that has a path for you to walk, which is determined by the choices you make during the progression of the path by deciding who to kill, why to kill and how to kill or to save, to whom to be aligned and enemy - that's playing a Role within a Game (in my opinion), and it doesn't necessarily mean you have to have spreadsheets of formulas on how to maximize your performance in leveling up, which is stupid and very nerdish! I Have been a fan of TES since I bought Morrowind and I wasn't a very big fan of the leveling system, though in Skyrim I really love the new Perk system and it's simple nature, yet complex in the background.

The new system lets people enjoy the actual gameplay without worrying about numbers but feeling into the world of Skyrim and it's lore and I believe, they have done a great job at it! And you can't really compare two totally different types of systems, that the new system is bad only because you are used to the old. You could also say that Cars are dumbed up Horses, because you don't have to watch out for it, feed, it won't run away and wont poop like horse does, yet both are transportation devices. The game is fine with the new systems and stop complaining, this is the game, that should have been Oblivion in the first place, because there is a certain ammount of Morrowind feel into it as well, not to mention the complex landscape, quests, puzzle solving quests, traps <<<--- that is what you have to worry about in a RPG, not necessarily stats and stats alone by loosing the connection with the game itself.

In a "classic" RPG game people spend too much time worrying about their stats and maximizing them, that they loose the link between having fun playing the game, enjoying the sceneries, fights and so on while depending too much on stats. Here in Skyrim you actually have to play the game and rely less on stats, which I have been doing all the time and it is fun. Even when I have 500 Health and Dragon armor, I still don't like the sudden dragon attacks behind while fighting through a bandit camp. New system puts the player closer to the control of the character and his actions and rely on them instead of some numbers, that calculate hit percentage and so on, because you can't have 100 in Heavy Armor if you haven't been playing for a while and fighting enemies like madman, it takes time to become stronger and you get to feel that connection with that very closely. You can use whatever item you want in Skyrim, but to utilize it truly, you have to use it to master it - very well played idea, because you won't be able to spend points in some perk tree, that you haven't been playing with a lot

I already know how I am going to add it in and its very easy.


Tell THAT to car thieves, gas and global warming (no offense but you just got served).

Most excellent. Definitely looking forward to it!

I do hope you are serious about it.

In general I agree with Bethesda's scrapping of the attribute system. It wasn't necessary if replaced with something more logical. The new system is almost perfect. The ONLY thing I would have liked is a way to distinguish the races more. How it is now, a level 80 Nord could theoretically be the same strength as a level 80 wood elf. This doesn't make any sense. All things being equal a Nord should always be stronger than a wood elf while the elf should always be faster than the Nord.

With a few mods I imagine it will be even better than it already is.

Todd Howard already said that the scripting has been "rewritten" which is true, it will be interesting but should still be easy enough .

From my mod notes for when the CK is released.

SPECIAL Stats

20 points to spend and each stat has 10 ranks max.

Strength - Each rank increases all damage done with melee weapons by 3% (actual damage and not skills) and increases maximum health by 6.

Perception - Each rank increases all damage done with ranged weapons by 2% (actual damage and not skills).

Endurance - Each rank reduces all physical damage taken by 2% and all magic damage taken by 1%.

Charisma - Each rank increases the speech skill by 2 and increases the success chance of Persuasion by a small percentage.

Intelligeance - Each rank increases maximum magicka by 5 and all damage with spells by 1%.

Agility - Each rank increases maximum stamina by 7 and increases the sneak skill by 2.

Luck - Each rank increases ALL skills by 1.

Divinity II handled it perfectly. It kept attributes but also had some awesome perks or talent trees if you will, to choose from. Skyrim really dropped the ball with this one. Feels more like an action adventure like many fear it would before release.

Whats wrong with an RPG being an Action RPG, at least playing Skyrim I don't fall asleep. P.S. I am myself a big fan of Diablo 2:LOD and many other dungeon crawler RPGs


Well for once this could be a game, that my girlfriend could actually like and would have fun playing, because she wouldn't have to worry about maximizing the performance of stats by doing the perfect level up formula.

+1 Bethesda for scraping out the old system and giving us the new one in Skyrim!

Talk about forest for the trees. Numbers are the point of RPGs? Here I though it was the role-playing...

Look, I know that making numbers go up directly releases dopamine into our brains (MUST MAKE THE NUMBERS GO UP) but honestly, what was the actual function of the stats in previous games? Increasing my sword kill makes my sword hit harder. Increasing my strength makes...my sword hit harder? Don't you see the redundancy there? In a game where you have specific skill points, those are your stats. The attributes were just overkill, and in oblivion, broken.

Personally I think the more relevant gripe is the UI for the skills page. Was that even designed by the same people who made the rest of the UI? On one hand you've got clean, simple, elegant menus, then suddenly you're dropped into the technicolor starscape of 3D "movement navigation". Very odd. Can't wait for the mods.

Looks pretty good. Might want to do a bit more with luck. though. +1 to all skills is nice, but doesn't really do much for you in the long-term. Maybe up drop rates in chests by a percentage (like a +2.5% gold drop increase or additional items if possible) or something similar.

I'd like to see a D&D-eqsue mod, especially one with the same variety of spells and loot that the D&D games had.

So, people complain that games are going away from the D&D format and eliminating stats. Can anyone tell me (keep in mind, I havent played pencil and paper D&D in about 20 years) exactly where in the D&D rules you gain points to add to your stats when you gain a level?

If there were stats in this game, a lot of people would be doing nothing but wasting time figuring out how to game the stats to max them out. remvoe the stats and now they can just play the game. What is typically the effect of higher intelligence in an RPG? More mana. so now, you add mana instead of adding Int points (which, btw, is closer to D&D rules than adding stat points ever was).

I think was unnecessary cut and actually broke some game mechanics like you cant increase speed of the character or its agility m it looses connection between amount of items to carry and health and it merges too much stuff into derivative things , for example now vampires and werewolves can jump like normal human just couse there are no more the athletics stats to modify ... its just too much simplification and a bad design choice ... .

Stats don't really matter it's just numerical values and have no real impact on the game other then perhaps bragging rights to your friends to compare. Changing it for a perk system instead is fine, some would say it would be even better. The only drawback with this system that I can see, is that you will cap out your power once you invest perks and get your skills up for them.

If you really focus on heavy armor and 2 hand swords for instance you could hit your peek potential around level 25 if you also pickup some smithing to forge weapons and armor, this means that each additional level after is potentially a waste for your champion type except for adding another 10 health each time. If you actually had a stat system with strength you could keep on improving your damage, but in skyrim's case this doesn't work, at least with the current perk system it would be easier to balance the game since you don't have to take into account additional stats.

Can't agree with that, because there are always ways to figure a workaround in the game, such as enchanting your gear with a carry capacity increase enchantments or stamina enchantments, also well you can sprint while holding ALT, which depletes Stamina, so you could enchant your gear with stamina bonus making you sprint longer and with the ability to carry more items with you, also you can use your companion to carry stuff as well. The fact, that you can't jump sky high is pretty reasonable - you aren't a Kangaroo, your muscles aren't that tough no matter what race you pick and the fact, that you become a werewolf doesn't necessarily mean you could jump higher than a humanoid. Also the disability to jump high gave the level designers more space to work with, so you don't bug the game so, that a boss can't hurt you because you jumped somewhere, where you shouldn't (then people would complain, it is too easy).

I was hoping they would adopt a S.P.E.C.I.A.L.-esque system in Skyrim, and was disappointed that they didn't. I like systems where the stats are set in stone at character creation, for the most part, like fallout or d&d. I always thought it was unrealistic that over the course of a game you could go from weakling to rippling muscles by pumping points into strength every level-up, not very realistic.

I didn't read a whole lot of info on Skyrim before release, mainly because I wanted to be surprised. The lack of stats was a surprise, but not necessarily a good one.

There's still a level of simulation, where all numbers are arbitrary. If you have that much problem with it please go and play some play by post games where it's up to a team of players to collaboratively work out a logical story (or however illogical they want). Perspective is needed. It then comes down to how much simulation you want in the video game, you can't have none. That isn't possible. But removing stats is by the very nature removing simulation and removing the point of playing a ROLE playing game. Though you can still play the role in a game without stats, but that's a different kind of roleplaying. Less based on simulation, and more upon immersion. In other words, how much GAME do you want? That comes down to personal preferences.

Edit
Numbers determine how much GAME a role playing game has, so yes. For some people who do like to keep track of their own stats and abilities it is part of what an RPG is. Just like in real life not everyone can be the fastest or strongest. Certainly no one is good at everything. Stats cater to simulationists more than they do the people in it for immersion or the storyline. The two can be mixed, but the end result is the same. Most people don't like numbers, and they get cut from the game more and more until you get something like Mass Effect.

Removal of stats, item degradation, and classes was the best thing Bethesda has even done for Elder Scrolls. Finally you have to put some real thought into character building, rather than spreadsheets that were more tedious than they were deep.

And in response to Gamgee's post above me:
The best definition a character can get is through their actions, not through a numerical representation of their abilities. How many great characters have their been throughout history that were known for their specific physical and intellectual properties, rather than what they achieved by using them? Roleplaying is about being a character, not a set of numbers that defines you. That's what is so great about Skyrim: it's an RPG where you play a character based on their character traits, and not the numbers that represent them.

Have they REALLY done away with classes? Looks like they failed to me. You can't hope to win unless you specialize to some degree. Thus making an old class, no all they did was reword the class system and confuse people. But whatever, they're happy now I guess. Item degradation I agree with. The stats I don't, but I've made myself clear on that.

I'm about 70 hours in and the thing I am missing most so far (other than a decent UI) are stats. I know they're "arbitrary", but they're much more interesting than the "increases x skill by y%" perks I find in the trees. I greatly enjoy min/maxing my characters but they made it way too easy to achieve in this game.

Otherwise, I think this game is amazing and I hope someone steps up to the plate and adds them back in through mods.

Okay, you're obviously full of it.

Divinity 2 was an action game, it even only had 6 attributes, all of them doing basically ONE thing. Vitality raised health, Spirit raised Mana, Strenght, Dexterity, Intelligence raised Physical, ranged and magic damage and resistance.

Heck, the game doesn't even have different elements, just magic.


There were no numerical skills like in Skyrim, AT ALL, just ability "trees".

Now there's nothing wrong with that, it worked pretty nicely, but claiming that Divinity was much more "complex" because it happens to call the number that raises health "Vitality" and adds a different number to it more "complex" is incredibly ignorant.
Another proof that people [censored]ing about this only wants attributes, just because, doesn't matter if the exact same things can be changed already, there are no attributes -> No RPG.


So CHOOSING between 3 main stat is not like an RPG, it's too much like an action game? RAISING different SKILLS is not depht then CHOOSING the needed perks is too simple for your tastes? How is this any different from what we had before?
I played Morrowind, and I looked for SKILLS to set.
I played Oblivion and I focused on raising SKILLS.
I played Skyrim and I used what to describe my character? SKILLS!


No, we don't need more stats, it doesn't make the game "deep"