It would be interesting to see the responses, if this was posted in the Fall Out forum?

So you hope they ditch SPECIAL?

If they ditch SPECIAL I will be very sad.

Yes. And make it something that makes more sense. As stated, beating a gecko with a pipe, does not mean you should get more skilled with a bazooka.

Well, there are still going to be new, fans, unless everyone on the planet suddenly stops having babies, and they have a right to enjoy the game just as much as us.

Here's the thing, though: if they're both equally masters, does it really matter if they have different Agility scores?

In order for attributes to be worth including they have to have a tangible effect, and alteration of leveling rate really doesn't matter since anyone choosing a given primary combat skill is going to max it anyway. It is a sticky question, though; as we've already seen, linking attributes to specific skills can get ugly, but at the same time not doing so largely negates the point in having them since they're not actually doing anything.

I wouldn't mind a system wherein attributes had similar effects as in previous titles, but were not necessarily linked to a specific set of skills. As for raising them, at each level-up you'd get a set amount of attribute points to spend as you saw fit, rather than Skyrim's one.

Yeah and Newfans have a right to enjoy streamlining like it's liquid gold and help push for 'less barriers to entry' in RPG's and dramatically alter the way RPG's play. They have every right to do so and enjoy doing and revel in their victory. And I have every right to hate them.

Go right ahead, but news flash, nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to play the game.

I think FO should stay FO and TES remain TES.

I like the FO leveling system being based on XPs from awards. It is just the difference in one game from another. When they stary to marry too many of these aspects, then they become the same. I want a different experience and game feel when I play one from the other. At the same time, it is not a bad thing for developers to learn from each other either. Mimicking some things are perfectly acceptable, and even encouraged, but some aspects go a bit too far and games take on entirely too much similarities. It's a fine line to walk.

So when you're talking about new potential running backs for your favorite football team, you don't talk about how fast he can do a 60 yard dash? When discussing Usain Bolt, you don't talk about his 100 meter sprint time at all? Really?

If we are to describe relatively abstract people inside a fictional world then assigning them attributes is a great way to do so. Mind you, strength doesn't have to be represented in numbers. Putting numbers on attributes is indeed very "specific" and perhaps overly accurate. We could use letters instead or we could make labeled categories. Categories for strength could be: Weaker than your average houseplant, pathetically weak, mush for muscles, weak, average, muscled, strong, can wrestle with oxes, wins when wrestling with oxes, absurdly strong, titanic.

It's not that numbers absolutely have to be used to describe strength but rather that all people have some level of strength that can be described in different ways. If a battle-hardened Nordic warrior arm-wrestles with a Breton librarian then you'd expect the Nord to win. Having that reflected in the game world makes sense. Not having any description of how strong, agile, sturdy, smart, charismatic, strong-willed, well-behaved, fast, and quick-reflexed your character is relative to everybody else does not make it easier for me to relate to my character, in fact it does the opposite.

Of course, if I'm making a Breton librarian who happens to be an arm-wrestling freak then I'd expect to arm-wrestle with the best of them and utterly destroy any other librarians I arm-wrestle with. You could try to make that perk-based but in the best case you'd end up with a five-scale attribute and in the worst case you'd end up with meaningless gunk like what we have in Skyrim, where there's effectively none of the synnergies you'd expect from being a hugely physical warrior or a brainiac mage while the few synnergies present make no sense whatsoever.

I don't necessarily want perks to disappear, but I do want them to be used with reason. That which is an attribute should be described as an attribute and not indirectly with perks. Describing attributes through perks is like referring to cars as wheeled umbrellas with windows, doors, and an engine. It's not sensible, smart, elegant, or clever. It's moronic, confusing, annoying, and a colossal waste of time. Just call it a [censored] car and be done with it.

Indeed you can. And you should be able to do so. You'd then have made a sprinter-mage, which is fairly odd, but maybe he just likes running. Regardless, you'd have to take your time and practice running for you to be able to outrun that warrior. That's totally fair and how things should be. Meanwhile some other mage might have spent the time you used running around on mastering spells a bit more or training to use light armor instead of clothing, which means he's more arrow-resistant than you are, even if he's a lot slower.


And how would the game know how much muscle mass a character has at any given point? Exactly, it would treat the muscle as an attribute. Which takes us back to strength and rate of encumbrance. That's quite like Morrowind, isn't it?

Any character in a software application is by necessity just the sum of his numbers. You can hide the numbers, you can abstract the numbers, but ultimately any character is just a collection of numbers. For instance, you might also describe the perks in an x-dimensional vector, with each dimension corresponding to a specific perk. With attributes gone and skills almost meaningless except for unlocking perks, your character could then reasonably be described as merely some vector.

By removing attributes, you're not getting a numbers-free character, you're merely getting a "sum of his numbers" character based on less numbers, which makes him less interesting and more generic. Now, you're quite correct that all characters could become more or less the same thing in Morrowind, assuming you cared to invest crazy amounts of time. Did you actually care to do that?

I've played Morrowind a whole hell of a lot, I consider myself fairly experienced with the game, and I've never managed to max out a character. Not because it would take too long (training cheese + console...), but because I simply couldn't be bothered. True, I made a fair few characters that could use any weapon or magic to destroy any enemy, but so what? Morrowind wasn't about the end result but rather the journey, and the journey would not be the same for a Breton battle-maiden or an Altmer pure mage.

so much this.

I have enough trouble picking between the three attributes we have in Skyrim and my main has 16 unused perks. To be fair, that's more to do with the inability to reset stats and perks rather than anything related to streamlining.

Having never played Oblivion or Morrowind, but having been tortured by stat-heavy games in the past, I favour the flexibility offered to me by Skyrim's system. One of my biggest problems with D&D is its inflexibility and the rigidity of the class system. I don't like to be trapped in one role for the entirety of my playtime. I don't like to deal with almost every enemy who draws close in the same way. I find this repetitive and I find the spreadsheet-heavy stat systems to be a tedious encumberance. At the same time, I feel that perks allow me to specialise my characters in a favourable way, as there are enough of them that my characters can have multiple specialities, which offers me the variety I crave.

My feelings might be different were there a way to reset stats and perks, as I am greatly looking forward to GW2, which has strong class boundaries... but destroys the MMO Holy Trinity and does only offer four stats.

I think he meant that a Kajiit runs just as fast as an Orc, or that a Wood elf is only a little faster than a High Elf in Steel Armor.

D&D is supposed to be a party game, not a solo game. That's why is has classes. Each person has a job to do and they do it well. anyway with the new editions you cna take cross class skills and be pretty mcu has good as class specific skills of the other classes.

Regarding your first sentence about measurements, it's exactly that a measurement. When a player runs a 4.4 40 at the combine they train weeks and months to get to their peak speed. They run the same drill over, and over slowly trimming down their time. But guess what, it's never exactly the same. It's almost impossible in the real world for a player to run a 4.4 40 consistently. Not to mention that doesn't take into account field conditions, weather conditions, and pads. That 4.4 40 is a number so that you can say "X player is this fast" and the other person will understand that measurement because he understands numbers. If you say "X player is as fast two birds in flight" nobody will know what you're talking about.

As for the reflection of attributes in perks I don't believe there are any attributes reflected in the perks. What you have is a melting pot where strength meets 1h or 2h handed skills. Or where destruction meets willpower/intelligence. The perks a combination of skills and attributes from prior games.

All I'm going to say is that they both lead to the same result. They both represent a character in different ways. With games coming this far I see now reason that numbers have to be the sole determinant on whether I'll hit a person, or not. How fast I can run, or how high I can jump. It to me feels boring, cheap, and dated. I've seen this with games, numbers are being replaced with "abstractions". Health bars in games no longer display numbers, they're just a red bar with health. Weapon damage in CoD is just a bar that is either half full, or 3/4s full. Your health in shooters has evolved to blood splatter, rather than an actual health bar.

You no longer see XP jump out of some ones body, you no longer even have XP in Skyrim (at least not that I've seen). The question now is do I want attributes to be bars? To me that looks sleeker and more modern. But it still is the exact same thing as number, all of these are just different ways to represent an abstraction. I prefer the more organic form, naked form of representation... just the abstraction itself.


You can hide numbers infinitely, it's called not knowing them. There is no such thing as number for they're just a concept we have created to explain the world. Without numbers there would be no society, no understanding of the world (at least not in the way we see it today), we'd be caveman basically. I understand that, however no matter what there is always something behind the numbers. Do I want the numerical value for what this keyboard weighs? Or do I want to hold it and weigh it with my senses? Either way you're effectively doing the same act, just with different means.

Many MMOs often have areas specifically designed for parties too. These are often based around the classic 'Trinity' setup (Tank, DPS, Healer) and I hate that because it's much less about synergy and adapting to a situation than it is about people performing seperate roles, the way they would anywhere else in a campaign, with any other people. I like flexibility, that's incredibly important to me.

Going back to GW2 for a second, the Warrior class is a weapons master but he can fit into a support 'role' should the moment need it (banners, shouts etc.) and is just as good with a rifle as he is with a greatsword or dual wielding axes. This way he can react when a plan falls apart and adapt to an unfamiliar situation rather than rely on the same tactics everywhere.

So you're admitting to be a single derp away from total derp-tardation? Would it be terribly rude of me to agree completely with that assessment?


By all means. My post quoted your herpa-derp garbage post and I'm sure the mods in here aren't complete derp-tards, so I'm guessing they'd agree with the assessment, delete the supposed flame, but otherwise not do much. And maybe, if they're having a good day, take out the trash.

I want weapon damage to make sense. When I put my ~200 lb body into swinging a mace into your face, it's going to feel rather differently than when a 120 lb frail girl tries to do the same thing. And please don't give me any crap about waif fu and how her investing perks in being a universal master of one-handed weapons is going to make a much bigger difference than me being a hell of a lot stronger than her.

Just because this is a game doesn't mean it has to be a game taking place in freaking bizarro world.

Who jogs the fastest, you or a marathon runner? Who sprints the fastest, you or Usain Bolt? Whether running is supposed to be a jog or a sprint, different characters are going to have different abilities unless we've relocated to bizarro world. Speed may have been something everybody would work, but even so it was a very sensible mechanic that created needed uniqueness between actors in the game world.

If an enemy has 3 x Int magicka then which is easier, reducing Int or reducing magicka? And in a conceptual non-bizarre world where magicka is correlated to intelligence but not a direct derivative, and where spells have an int requirement to be casted safely, an enemy mage might have a level scaled magicka in the thousands but still only 100 int. In that particular case, what would you rather do? Try to hurt his crazy high magicka pool or simply hurt his ability to cast spells directly?

By the way, the concept of a magical feeblemind-curse is hardly new. Why should I have to approximate it through effects that indirectly render the enemy in much the same state as if feebleminded, instead of doing what I actually wanted to do? Hurting someone's reserves of magicka is not remotely the same as making that someone a drooling idiot. Both approaches stop them from casting spells but only one of them results in the target pissing his pants to keep warm, which is what I want to do to hostile mages.

But I digress. The concept of trying to RP in any given situation and using my skills constructively, as opposted to simply playing some arcade action game, makes me think of a lot of things that can't be done in Skyrim, and likely won't be possible in future TES games either.

having carefully tweak your skill growth to get the most out of attributes when leveling up was what turned me off about oblivion.

you are not alone

Actually that is what prompted me into a build-N-play approach to TES. I enjoy playing the game more as a fully built char. Grind out a char, THEN explore and do quests. I play as a go-N-grow char at times, but I still find that once I get to level 45 I am maxed for that char and still have 75% of the map left anyway.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L allows for much more variation and forced decisions than M.H.S., where you either emphasize health and stamina as a warrior or heath and magika as a mage. It would have been nice to have adapted S.P.E.C.I.A.L to Skyrim. It would have also been fun to play cards in Skyrim bars with a high Luck attribute and get into barfights after winning too many games. One can dream I guess.

@ Kal-el

You commented inside my quote. That makes it rather hard for me to tell what you actually wanted to comment, but I'll try.

On strength being equivalent to skill with a sword:
Absolutely not. If it was then olympic fencing would be a weight-lifting contest instead. It isn't. This difference is obvious as hell so I'm curious as to why I even had to explain it.

On agility and stamina being different things.
I encourage you to use any dictionary and look up the meaning of the two terms. I'm not throwing dictionary.com pasta in here to save time and space, but I'll give you the short version. Agility = how flexible your body is. Stamina = how long you can endure physical exercise. A marathon-runner has a ton of stamina but likely not much agility. A gymnastics performer is likely flexible but can't keep up the exercise for hours on end. Different things. And again it's very obvious, so again I have to ask why you're asking me to waste my time on something this damn trivial?

On it making sense that everybody runs equally fast:
Are you [censored] kidding me? It makes absolute no sense at all. I damn well know they're not defined by any visible attributes (though of course there are attributes behind the scene), but how does that not make the game world an outpost of bizarro world? Look at real world, for [censored]'s sake. Do you see many people who run with exactly the same speed? No? EXACTLY! A male marathon runner can do 40 kilometers of running in 3.5 - 4 hours. Your average American could maybe walk 40 kilometers in a day. Consequently it makes less than no [censored] sense that a senior citizen mage can jog just as fast as a through and through scout build.

I'm not trying to rile up "people" (which is plural), I'm simply telling someone that I consider his post to be mindless drivel. It's not polite but then he wasn't polite to make that post to begin with. Replying to valid points with "derp" and laughable reasoning can really only serve one purpose, so even my supposed flame was more akin to a conclusion based on the observed behavior. In retrospect I probably should've reported him rather than waste time arguing with him, but I'm a hothead who vents steam first (and second, and third...) and only then starts acting rationally.

I have only played New Vegas, but Im quite fond of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system.
It allows for a wide variety directly at the beginning and is mostly set from there on, bar for boosts and the rare ability to get a +1.
I liked how different the game felt with intelligence very low, when for instance a dialogue option went from 'my interest in this place is scientific' to 'I is scientist.'

New fans aren't the problem. Action gamers who want to piss all over RPG mechanics and turn one of the last RPG franchises into yet another action game franchise, well...

I agree completely.

Indeed. And not playing the game is quite possibly exactly what will happen. I see a lot of people talking about being jaded after the initial rush and we're a measly three months after release. I don't want to think about what happens three years after release. Do you see yourself playing this the next 5-6 years? Do you see yourself investing hundreds of hours to fix the flaws in the game? No? Indeed.

The "new fans" are a transitory kind who don't know loyalty and who see games as interactive TV. The "old fans" see the game world as a second home and go to arguably stupid lengths to make that home feel just right.

I think I still get nightmares about that attribute system.