They've done away with classes in the conventional sense. You no longer define your character through an arbitrary traits spreadsheet at the beginning of the game. Your character is placed in a class based on their actions instead of basing their actions on their class. I.E., any person who dedicates themself to magic is a mage, and not that mages are people who can only dedicate themself to magic. Personally, I hate the idea of labeling a person from the start with a restricting set of definitions. I find it better to let the character develop in the way that seems most natural, and it leads to a deeper roleplaying experience.

I'm kind of rambling, but my point is they basically flipped the class system on its head, and it's an incredibly refreshing system that I hope will return.

Stats haven't gone, they've just simplified the stats to the stuff you care about, namely the length of your bars and amount of your skills.

Each game has less and less skills. Less ways of deciding what you are, less ways to be unique. Pretty soon just Warrior, Thief, and Mage.

Edit
You even said it yourself people are still playing warrior's, thieves and mages. You define yourself, but unfortunately you still HAVE to define yourself for balance reasons. The less focused a class you make the less effective it tends to be, so really they're shoe horning people into three set roles. Rather than giving them the ability to set up how they want to play from the start. It's pulling the wool over your eyes really. I admit I like that anyone can level up in any skill that's good, but the way it all balances out doesn't work so good. Often forcing people into those arbitrary limitations they thought themselves free of. Nothing has changed except they turned it upside down. Your happy? What if I tilt your screen? I completely change the way you see the world MAAAAAAnnnnn /hippy

I'll ignore your condescending tone and address what you're saying. The "less and less skills" is not an issue. The 18 skills in Skyrim have more depth than all 35 of Daggerfall's. Various traits from redundant, useless skills were integrated into skills that they should have been in in the first place (Backstabbing -> Sneak, Etiquette/Streetwise -> Speech, et cetera). The design decision to integrate blunt and blade together and keep the skills defined through skill trees was a good one. Instead of damage being determined by a separate, redundant Attribute (Strength), your character sticks to what they know. If you can swing a sword, you can swing a mace. Still, you specialize in a sword, mace, or axe through the skill trees for each of them. This also prevents endgame godmode characters that are masters in every single form of combat.
You also misinterpreted my previous point. The new system isn't so much refreshing because it's new, but because it's the new improvement that RPGs as a genre have been needing for years now. More and more tabletop RPG elements are being swept aside in favor of systems that are more suitable for videogames (such as Morrowind's diceroll hit/miss system, which was a worthless remnant of pen-and-paper RPGs and was redundant to the player's actual input, which is something videogames are capable of rendering without the use of RNG), and Skyrim is the current leader for a new generation of good RPGs where character depth goes further than the starting-screen character creation and spreadsheets that plague far too many RPGs.

As far as I can tell, they removed the 'min' from 'min-max'.
Everybody starts out as a strong, smart, agile, lucky, and charismatic person with no downsides.
You then make yourself more awesome than normal mortals via the perk system.

Though some may be unable to imagine it, not everybody wants to play a game where they are a god among men.

True to a degree we've been getting rid of some useless skills, but where will it stop? Who needs skills when we can have abilities? Who needs perks when we can have them tied into abilities? Just let people play the game and pick the abilities they want. At some point the simulationist nature (which calls for complex redundancy) will be over shadowed by a narrative style of play. It comes down to personal opinion. This is the line that blurs a simulationist heavy game like Skyrim with a simulationist light game like Diablo 2 or Mass Effect. So yes, everything removed is an issue, the more padding you have the less of an issue this is until a certain point. Statistics didn't need to be complicated for your character, now they've ripped and gutted them out instead of fixing them. A very crucial element in a simulationist style of play. Your arguing for a narrative style of play, but keep in mind that eventually leads to different generes. There is also the gamist perspective.

I like complicated RPG's as long as they are functionally simple to use, a simulationist perspective. My friend likes hack and slash a gameist perspective he wants the most everything and to "win". Another wants to be in the role of a character and damned be the rules as long as there's a good character/story and that would be the narrativist style of play. These are all different genres, now do you see why one large camp is mad at this? It's a large step away from how they as a person view gaming. When you mix and match play styles the mos tpopular tends to sell well. I guess if you care for nothing but your own preferred method of playing you'll be fine to trample over others opinions.

I too miss the stats. They weren't complicated at all for people who could think even a little bit.

At the very least, I would have liked the option to pick a specialization at startup (magic, stealth, combat) and get some minor bonuses to those abilities.

Simulationist > Want's to play within the defined rules of the world/character. Can sometimes overlap with Narratvist sotry, but they do it for different reasons. The Simulationist seeks accuracy to some degree, and to "fit" in the world and have his defined abilities. IE a simulation.
Gameist > The hack and slash lovers, these people don't care for fitting in or for story. They tend to want the bes gear, stats, potions and loot. They are in it to win and conquer the game as a game.
Narrativist > They enjoy playing for being immersed in the story or the cast of character and getting involved crafting their own story. Can sometimes overlap with Simulationist, but often times for a different reason. They get into the lore and setting as a way to further their personal stories.

A fourth style is not valid here.
Social > Someone into playing games because everyone else does. They otherwise probably wouldn't be playing, and the social aspect of playing with friends is their motivation. I wouldn't expect too many in Skyrim.

All styles overlap to some degree, but people tend to favor one or the other.

So our disagreement is in the fundamentals of what makes an RPG. Personally, I believe that videogames are more inclined to narrative roleplaying whereas statistical roleplaying belongs in tabletop RPGs.

It's all personal opinion and all are valid because people like different things. Don't be so foolish to think either of our ways is correct. I'm simply trying to show you some insight into why people play games, and why they have and like different things. No one is wrong, but one group tends to dominate different genre's. Typically Narrativist and Social games sell better and you see those elements added in and the other elements gutted. I can only hope that TES as a series doesn't go this far, but I don't think I have to worry too much.

Your semantics skill has increased.

Yes. "Perspective is needed." And, as you intimate, the amount of perspective gained from numerical feedback may vary from player to player. Some people simply need more of it than others.

As someone who's watched role playing games grow from the basic-red-book D&D set to Skyrim, I can honestly say I feel like this is huge step in the right direction. I have a job. I have a wife. I have an infant son. During the limited amount of time I have to play a video game, I'm thrilled to be able to invest more of that time "playing" than "accounting."

Well first off i had no problem with the "thinking" part of the old stat system. It was still a terrible system that was overcomplicated. If you have 3 apples you can say i have 1 + 1 + 1 apples and while everyone would know you have 3 apples, you overcomplicated it for no reason. The system was bad because you DID have to do some good planning if you wanted the perfect stat distribution. You were forced to level skills that were meaningless or skills that you hated.

Right in the beginning of the game you run into a set of stones that lets you level certain skills related to those 3 classes faster. Not that it's a direct minor bonus but it's similar.

I like stats they are a nice companion to skills. Where skills show specific mastery attributes contribute to general competency.

Congrats you've grown up and don't have the time you used to have. Your being responsible awesome. Again your taking on a different perspective to playing. I will admit simulationist gameplay does tend to be long, and it literally can't be for everyone. I hope, or games would go on forever and nothing would get done. But that's how I like to play, a level of complexity. I'm sorry if you once enjoyed this and can't anymore. Your post comes off sounding kind of bitter.

Agreed.

I'm not sure what part of "I'm thrilled" translated to bitterness.

Perhaps that semantics increase went to your head...

If people think I speak in semantics they have no idea how biology works or psychology. There is literal verifiable differences in how humans perceive the world. How can any one way be better than others? They're all valid. Just because we haven't perfected the differences and what they mean doesn't mean we can't see them there. The brain is complex, and we're just starting to learn and study it. People are different, live with it.

Edit
Do you even know what semantics means? Your just throwing it around with such disregard. Oh god the irony of semantics being misused. Hahahahah!

THat is not a good reason at all! The whole game is unecessary if you are strict. The magic system is unecessary. Having more than 1 type of weapon is unecessary, havign weight in your inventory is unecessary. You not starting with all items is unecessary since only makes you loose time looking for your first equipment etc..


Because something is not necessary it does not make it unwanted, neither makes it better than not having it. Suspension of disbelief not elegancy is the target when making a game, and currently we made a step back on that. The game is LESS interesting that it would be with attributes.

Master "your vs. you're" before you presume to lecture me on linguistics.

I don;t necessarily miss the leveling system from Oblivion, I certainly like the new one in Skyrim, but I do miss having a single view of my characters stats (regardless if I add points to them manually or not), their armor and weapon loadout (paper doll), buffs, debuffs, etc...

Best move ever. Why?

Because if they left stats in the game, it would be counter-productive to the "you are what you play" philosophy. You'd cripple yourself from the start by choosing stats that don't support other classes you may try out later. Even from a RP perspective, statistics are completely unnecessary - you don't need stats to tell you that you are a mage - just level those magic skills and wear robes or clothes and carry a staff or whatever and there you are.

I *love* the fact that statistics are gone.

Now that is one hell of a diversion. I forgot an apostrophe, somehow my argument falls apart?

Semantics: The Study of Meaning.

At what point was I not clear on the meaning or tried to divert my response? Much like your doing now? Instead of picking at a few spelling errors which you can read through just fine. How about actually coming up with a counter argument? No? Okay then.

i think people are crying about this game too much. its brilliantly done, and pretty much over 70% of the people complaining are children who dont think the game is easy enough for them and they couldnt make a better game if they had all the tools to do it right in front of them...so they complain about everything and waste their time not playing the game a different way to give them a better experience.

you're right, the stats were not complicated (then again, I am an engineer and I certainly can think more than 'a little bit'). They also were not necessary. Initially, I thought I would miss the stats but really, I dont.

Your race gives you minor bonuses to abilities.
you can specialize in magic, stealth or combat based on the perks you choose and the way you assign the 10 points to health, magicka or stamina when you level...

I miss speed :/ Its wrong an orc in havy armour is as fast as a khajit in leather.