Its been inherent throughout the lore of ES, this isn't "other RPGs". Its The God of Gods, the Holy of Holies, the ES SERIES.

You asked why I used that word. I wondered how one didn't know what that word meant in the first place. The origin of perk had everything to do with your latter sentence, separated from its main body. Trying to argue semantically fallacious rhetoric? You asked what that had to do with anything, you didn't know that's where the word came from, now you backpedal. Also, the original meaning is the same as the current. Did you not read its second definition? I didn't want to use this card, but I will: "Know more about life, newb".

They don't necessarily need to be equal. Fair would be a better term to use. It's fair if I work to increase Lockpicking to 40 to open the container silently, while a warrior with little or no experience can pick up a weapon and break it open (risking detection and less value from its contents), or a wizard with a spell he bought easily can open it too (with the risk of being detected).

Becuase of balance.

Warriors cannot be any more negitivly affected while doing thier lockpicking equivilent then the other two classes, just like when mages wear heavy armor they should not be any more or less detectable without spells then if a warrior uses it

Maybe it would be easier than I thought, perhaps assign a percentage of the damage from each hit to the contents. They already have a slot for how much damage most stuff like armor and weapons found in chests can take -- oh wait, that was Oblivion. Well they would need to add that back in and include a damage number for potions, scrolls, jewelry and gems, which could be destroyed pretty easily by a big Nord/Redgaurd/Orc banging away with a hammer. But I think the idea has merit and could add some fun to gameplay. I mean what warrior type isn't going to get a heck a lot of fun bashing a chest after getting frustrated by breaking his last lockpick? They could incorporate physics (chests move when struck) and animations for when the chests smash open. The more I think about the idea, the more I like it.

You keep repeating that as some kind of mantra with little more in the way of explanation. Are you going by the good old "if I repeat that often enough, it'll be true" argument?

Last time I checked, the 8 attributes aren't in the lore of ES any more than dirt is. Sure the idea that someone is strong and smoeone else isn't denied, but it's not anymore in the lore that the existence of dirt is. Unless there's some TES book somewhere I missed talking about in this case I appologize, but it's not as if you were helpful at all on that topic because you gave no hints to it's existence anyway!

I know what the word meant. It has no place in this argument which is why I was asking why you used it while it was so evidently unappropriate here.

That statement justifies my sneak character to be able to go up against a Hagraven and take the same damage as a Breton with magicka resistance. It's about specialization and character development. Of course a thief has a better advantage to open the lock because he's trained to do so, whereas the others have to take risks because they're not as skilled.

It has as much place as using the word aggression over the word aggro and that's just semantics, I guess you have missed lore though. Even in Skyrim they talk about the inherency of luck and its indirect contribution from Nocturnal. What this luck is exactly, or how its represented is not shown however, because its not even there. And that's just one example from one excerpt of Skyrim no less. Shall I humor more?

Bull. They can. In the act of bashing a hard metalic object into something, it might break.

No it doesnt becuase I specifically specified WITHOUT SPELLS.


A Warrior, a mage, and a theif each with 100 base Heavy Armor skill should get the same base damage protection from it. A warrior, a mage, and a theif each with 100 in thier respective lockpicking skills should be equally undetectable with a equal chance to open a 100 skill lock. A warrior, a mage, and a theif each with 100 blade skill should do the same base damage.

Making warriors use a loud bash as a lockpicking equivalent is unfair and balanced agasint warrior and most people would rather use the theif or mage equivlent becuase its less nosy and has no chance of losing itmes from breaking the box open

All 3 should have an equil chance.

This really irritated me. Yes, I should probably use a lock pick but I'm a Mage! And it's perfectly viable. With the unlock spells you at least have to have enough magicka and a high enough skill to use them. With lockpicking, all you need is enough lockpicks.

And if we're talking redundancy, then why is there a fire shout and spell? To add immersion and different options!!! I just think Beth missed the mark in a few different aspects with no unlock, night eye, or feather spells.

I have a different memory of Morrowind than you do as it seemed to have more than just a few hundred spoken lines, but anyhow:

The development time of Oblivion was no more than Morrowind and a little more than Skyrim. Todd Howard even stated in a video interview last June that Skyrim's development wasn't started until after Fallout 3's release, that makes it three years, and I bet the game was mostly completed 6 months ago. IT took a short time because the engine is nearly the same. Oblivion was started shortly after Morrowind and took less than four years, but the engine was new still. Keep in mind, that Morrowind partly used the Gamebryo engine that Oblivion and the latest two Fallouts used. Skyrim's game engine is nothing more than an updated version of the Gamebryo engine, though Beth made claims to making a totally new engine. Making the engine to a game from scratch is the hardest part of game development and can take up to three years of the development time outside of creating the story, characters and writing.

As an example, Dragon Age Origins used a completely new engine, and that game took over 5 years to develop (they started development on it shortly after the release of KoTOR in 2003). Dragon Age 2 took less than 2 years (mainly due to re-using maps) because it used a revamped engine used in DA:O, so they didn't need to do anything in that area, except write the dialogue and create the characters and maps. Keep in mind, that DA2 used all voice acting, and it took less than 2 years to make.

Ah yes, Luck of course I should have seen it coming. Well Luck was very well represented in Oblivion : it was a hidden +1 skill bonus for each 4 point of luck above 50 (and malus under) for all skills. I guess if you wanted to make Nocturnal's influence on the thief's guild luck really present in the game, a good "-25 to all skills" debuff until you get back in her graces would do perfectly. Funny, I though the presence of the "Luck" number somewhere in the game was an inherent (meaning, essential, irreplaceable) part of the game. It doesn't feel that irreplaceable to me.

Well of course, but that's up to you. You can go around, bashing people's brains in with a sword and still be skilled in Lockpicking, if you so choose. But some may not want to put time and training into Lockpicking and want to go with an alternative, i.e. the lock bashing or unlock spell.

Luck affected every variable except for loot in every ES back to Arena, not just skill. Thats just one small excerpt example though.

It seems like you are comparing apples to oranges here. If the warrior wants to open a chest silently, there is nothing to stop him from picking up a lock pick and flailing around with it in an attempt to open it silently. A warrior bashing open a chest is qualitatively different than a mage wearing heavy armor.

Also, I am not even sure your premise is accurate. A mage that is not experienced wearing heavy armor or physically strong enough to easily carry around the weight of it will make a lot more racket walking around in it than a warrior who is experienced wearing it. That's why in both Oblivion and Skyrim there are perks that make the heavy armor weightless, at which point those wearing it are less detectable than those wearing heavy armor without this perk.

Yes, as I said : hidden bonus to all skills dependent on luck. That's not that much really, the bonus didn't unlock anything if it got you above the threshold and it didn't even allow you to go past 100 in many skills.

Luck had some meaning when the game rules were full of dice rolls. Unfortunately, since we've been going away from that it has lost a lot of it's useful effects on the game.

Nobody is talking about "making warriors use a loud bash as a lockpicking equivalent." What we are suggesting is allowing warriors who don't have 100 lockpicking skill the option of bashing in a chest. Sure, if a warrior type wants to invest time and perks in lockpicking and open chests that way, they would have that option too, and in that case it would be silent. TES games are all about choices . . .

I can't argue with the exact number of spoken conversations in Morrowind, but they're much less than Oblivion and Skyrim. What do you propose the reason for cut content is then?

If you're saying game development is fairly quick, outside of creating a game engine, then why isn't there more conversation and options than there were in Morrowind? I'm sure it can be done, but it's awfully expensive. It's one thing if Morrowind got an average reception, but it won numerous awards and was tremendously successful, so why change the formula so drastically?

Not just all skills. Chance. Every chance, except for loot. And THATS JUST LUCK, and in the context of what we were originally talking about, lore prevalence.

Going away from character skill over player skill, is going away from the RPG and role playing. And "dice" still have an effect over real time player manipulations. That's what the in game dice were there to represent in the first place.

He shouldn't have to use another classe's equivalient skill to get the same effects. If mages and thieves get silent lockpicking so should warriors.


If mages had thier own specific armor skill I would expect it, while at 100 skill level, to eaither provide the same protection as a Warriors armor skill at 100, or provide a equal yet slightly diffrent armor rating, such as less physical damage resistance but more elemental resistance.

You don't know how RPGs work.

And pray tell me, how many dice rolls there was that weren't directly linked to a skill in the first place? Example, Daggerfall : "There are no skills in which luck is the primary attribute, but your odds of succeeding in any skill trial is modified by your luck." Hmm, they seem to say that luck's only effect is to make all skill checks more likely to succeed. Something that improving your skill does the same. Kinda like if luck's effect was to give a hidden bonus to all your skills.

There's no need for randomness to have character skill play a role above the player skill. Ergo, removing dice rolls isn't going away from character skill over player skill, it's just that : removing randomness.

<--- has been playing RPGs since Baldur's Gate.

And the critically unbalanced nature of them has always peeved me.

I understand what you're saying, but I don't feel like there should be class restrictions. That's one of the reasons why Skyrim's leveling system allows players to change their fates much easier, which I'm for. It allows for more customization and the player is less likely to feel trapped in being one thing or another. Of course in Skyrim, the depth of customization is debatable.