The ideal character development system, imo, is one like this one I'm about to layout here. Its one where skills come in 3 categories, with 3 or more specializations within those categories, that govern a specific set of skills within the categories themselves. The categories would look like this (note that much of the skills and other suggested ideas are only there to further illustrate what I mean by this system. I realize not all would possible nor for that matter even easy to accomplish. Thats not the point of this however):


Skills of the Adventurer (combat skills, from where your combat skill would be derived. The part of the world that scales would only respond to increases made within this category. Quest rewards would respond to any of the categories. (as not all quests would require combat, but that shouldn't mean those quests can't give proper rewards just because combat level is low))

• Weapon Skills
  
• Armor Skills
  
• Magic skills
  
• Shield use (both offensive and defensive)
  
• Rogue skills (things like dodge, parry, etc)
  
• Horse Fighting (would encompass all combat types from horseback)

Skills of the Citizen (Crafting and General use skills)

• Smithing (which would encompass all weapon and armor crafting of all types)
  
• Weaving (For clothing)
  
• Alchemy
  
• Enchanting
  
• Fishing
  
• Cooking
  
• Athletics and Acrobatics (These two may or may not be combined with Dodging)
  
• Climbing
  
• Woodcutting
  
• Horse Riding
  
• Etc

Skills of the State (these skills would accompany more political quests, true warfare mods, etc)

• Speechcraft
  
• Mercantile
  
• Tactics
  
• Leadership (would basically be tied to an overhauled companions system, where leadership would directly influence how you interact with companions, what you can command them to do, etc)
  
• etc.

Legendary Skills (quest specific skills that can only be unlocked through quests or other similar means)

• Thu'um (the Obvious one)
  
• God related skills that grant specific abilities based on the gods that grant you these powers. Talos' Skill would be based around combat and warfare, Hermaeus Mora for magic, Mephala and Namira for assassins and thieves respectively, Zenithar for crafting etc etc.

And I would redo perks to accompany all of these. Some perk trees would be small some would be quite vast.


I would imagine class creation to have a base menu where you can name it, create a description, pick your main specializations (from each of the categories besides legendary. Combat, Magic, Stealth for adventurer. Crafting, Work (for lack of a better term. For stuff like cooking, fishing, etc), Fitnes, for Citizen. Warfare, Speech (again, for lack of a better term), etc for State.) and you could then select your class skills, which would be central skill, majors, minors, misc. Which could all be mixed and matched as you see fit. Your attribute bonuses would be generated according to the skills you took.

For example, lets create a male Nord Knight using numbers from Morrowind as a base. (Some skills are just made up on the spot)

Nord

Agility 30
Intelligence 30
Endurance 50
Luck 50 (I bumped it to 50 because balance should dictate that I think unless you pick a birthsign that says otherwise)
Personality 30
Strength 50
Speed 40
Willpower 40

Specializations:
Combat
Work
Warfare

Central Skill: Longsword

Majors:

Heavy Armor
Heavy Shield
Tactics
Horse Riding
Horse Combat

Minors

Athletics
Enchanting
Speechcraft
Mercantile
Smithing

So with that class picked and a birthsign of the Lady (Personalty +25, Endurance +25), we would end up with the following stats (note that these are just mostly just arbitrary numbers. The real thing would have a real formula that would do it properly):

Health 150
Magicka 75
Stamina 200

Strength 75
Endurance 75
Speed 45
Intelligence 40
Willpower 45
Personality 65
Agility 30
Luck 50

Combat Level: 8

From here you could also pick character traits such as favored gods, political alignments, etc. Or leave these options blank and let them grow over time

Now obviously those numbers seem rather high for something claiming to be balanced (even despite the fact that I made those numbers up) and the automatically assigned character level, but this system would be coupled with my solution of combining GCD-like leveling with a removal of skill, attribute, and level caps, so in truth it wouldn't be unbalanced at all, and with proper scaling where appropriate most of the world would adjust to your characters beginning level, and XP rates would properly scaled as you get to higher and higher points of power.

This class system wouldn't be permanent however, as there would be not only be an option to deny a class altogether (where your combat level, attributes, etc would be derived from all skills. This option would be slower to level than a by using a class, but would give complete control over how you level (for those that like that) and would eventually come out to an even end-game regardless if the same sorts of characters were created, just sans class. Perhaps this option could result in more power. Or not.) but also the option to freely change a class (with penalties to xp rates for a short time, and cost in gold) or abandon one at any time.

And of course to make this even further viable as a system, one would need to see attributes fleshed out more so that they influence the world and in order to encourage class use NPC responses would have to be overhauled to respond to character traits if only in a subtle way that would be beneficial and balanced. Increased and/or decreased dispositions would be basic (and as such, increased or decreased rewards), Hostility a bit more complex, Worldly events (assassin or mercenary attacks with greater reason behind them, etc) in the advanced.

Another idea I had was for dynamically random spawns (bad name is bad) for mobs that actually takes scaling out of the question entirely and makes the best compromise between a static world and a randomly generated one. Every area you go into will have a random chance of spawning different types of mobs, at different levels with every reentry to that area. So in this way one could enter a cave and all you'd find is rats. You could come back a week later after killing them, and bandits have moved in. Clear them out, trolls have made a nest. Slay them, a dragon moves in. And so on forever. And the best part about this system is that if you enter an area and find yourself overwhelmed by that enemy (like say, you run into a den of Giants at level 1) then you could leave and come back to face down the enemy that scared you away when you're more powerful. And there would of course be the option to make static areas/dungeons so that quests are supported as well as for providing specific High level areas and specific low level areas for players to complete. Bleak Falls Barrow would be an example of a static, low-level dungeon. Skuldafn would be an example of a static high-level dungeon.

Random mob levels could be as low to the point that they're basically butterflies for all the challenge they provide to the point that you'd end up fighting essential demigods. The only scaling is that the random chance would be influenced by your combat level so that you don't run into demigods very much if you're not at least semi-capable at being able to face them, but that so you also don't keep finding rat dungeons when you've reached essential demigod status yourself.

Balance in this system is had by the sheer fact that there is no guarantee that your uber-smithed-enchanted Daedric Sword of PWN will actually help you out. Now that isn't to say that things like smithing and enchanting wouldn't still need balance fixes but it does lessen the effects of such systems from being grotesquely overpowered compared to what you could face.

As higher "levels" require more skill points to reach, it becomes more difficult to estimate just how many skill points that translates into. I've always wanted to do away with "Level" entirely and just have the sum of all relevant skill levels. IE "light armor 59; short blades 46; 7 other combat skills at 15" = 59+46+7*15 = 210 Combat skill.

Move athletics and acrobatics out of Citizen skills. Fluff content like crafting/brewing/enchanting belongs there, but acrobatics at least is definitely belongs to the rouge. As does climbing (I don't think I've seen climbing skill since pen & paper - wait no scratch that. I need to play Daggerfall again apparently). Basically anything a cat burglar would use. Athletics belongs in general combat as it is definitely a soldier skill being able to jog 10 miles with 100 lbs of stuff on your back.

The initial idea I had for this was that every 10 points above level 20 in a combat skill (Which would basically be equal to absolute beginner/novice where your knowledge is equivalent to what you might get from watching a movie with sword fights in it, for instance) would raise your combat level by 1 to a point. After, say, level 100 in a skill, every 10 points would lead to 3/4 of a combat level. 200, 1/2 a combat level, 300, 1/4 of a combat level. And so on until it becomes near impossible to raise that skill anymore anyway due to how XP progression would have scaled.


That is a good point.

I like your character creation ideas very much. The only change I'd make would be to restrict Specializations to one. I think picking one Specialization (as in Morrowind) would help make each character a little different than the last and contribute to replayability (I make a lot of characters so replayability is pretty important to me).

I'd gladly play a game with this chargen system.




I feel like I'm missing something here. How is this different from Morrowind or Oblivion? In Morrowind if you came back later that Nix-Hound might be replaced by an Ogrim. In Oblivion if you came back later that Imp might be replaced by a Minotaur.

Perhaps. My original thinking was based around the idea that most players would certainly choose an adventurer specialization (combat, magic, stealth), and indeed for virtually every character (even non-combat ones) it would be imperative to take an Adventurer spec. But rather than forcing either type of character (non-combat or combat) to fix their specialization to just one sub-category within the 3 overall categories of skills, I figured it would be better to allow 3 specializations to be chosen. Only one would actually affect combat level to any degree, and the other two would only affect the world's response to non-combat (and from what I've seen, most people that will go non-combat will not generally be concerned about balance so allowing for 2 specializations in non-combat skills isn't really going to matter much. For combat characters it won't affect anything that their combat level won't either override or already take care of) so balance is already taken care of.

And hell, allowing that goes towards making every character just a bit different from the last as you say, as that adds more options to further customize your character.


Because in my system theres a chance of that Ogrim turning back into a Nix-Hound or a pack of bandits or hell an Imperial Legion outpost, a chance for that Imp to change into a dragon which then is replaced by a witches coven which then becomes a brothel. (<-exaggeration on that last one )

Rather than having a fixed-level (relative to player level) limited pool of enemies to draw from in determining what spawns where, dungeons would instead draw from the entire enemy pool and would only respond to the player's level so far as ensuring that too many dragons dont' show up on level one characters, and on the flipside preventing too many rats from showing up on level 80 characters.

Not only does this help keep the game fresher for even longer (as you'll never know what you might encounter. Pairing this system with something like Mart's Monster Mod would be ideal) but, as I said earlier, also helps remove scaling from the picture and thus help fix character development.

You know, its truly a damn shame TES will never reach this level of character creation ever again. With the sucess of Skyrim's system, there's no way in hell beth will alienate the masses with an innovative system like your own.

Agreed.

This topic needs more discussion

A bump for the move to Skyrim General.

The cleverness in this system is making only a certain category of skills affect the level scaling of combat opponents, making it more balanced since it means my combat opponents aren't getting bigger and stronger because I get better at speechcraft.

I don't think bringing back the old attributes and major/minor skills integrates very well with the game mechanics, it is simply a clumsy and ugly character creation mechanic that interacts poorly with the game environment. The new Skyrim system is more organic and better integrated with the first-person action adventuring that TES is built around. Without explicit classes and major/minor skills I've been able to stay much more true to an original concept and actually playing within a "class" in Skyrim than I ever were in the previous TES games.

But again, thumbs up for the clever categorization of skills that makes for a better balanced level-scaling and even without going back to attributes and major/minor skills it can easily be adopted to fit in a future system built around skills and perks.

@ZzAr.:hu

Nothing to add really, just wanted to say good thoughts...BUT <--- notice the but? hihi.

You need to make it more fun

I read it all, no problem there, but so many places where you could've sneaked in an innocent small little "joke" or something
Now you just made me feel awkward, i was inserting those harmless jokes myself and laughed AT myself and not WITH myself (which would've been scary).

I will confess I just skim though the OP. But what I get was the impression that there are three main categories of skills and each has it's own level. Then challenges in each category are scaled to the respective level?

That would be troubling I'm afraid. Because then any challenge becomes no challenge at all. For example, if I'm a warrior, my tradesman level is low, but it will never matter, because if a tradesman challenge ever presents itself, it will be scaled anyway so I can always pass.

A static non-scaling world is actually always prefered. Except because of the free-form nature of sandbox games, a certain amount of scaling becomes a necessary evil.

In short, a warrior should feel that combat is easy while trading is hard. A merchant, in reverse. Your proposed framework would make that distinction immaterial.

Is this something you plan on doing..somehow? Or just something to talk about?

Ck releases tomorrow (today!) so uuh...get on it!

I don't seem to miss attributes, but one flaw I see in the current system is that all my playthrough end up being kind of the same character build and or play style. The older system forced you to play different classes to exprience their specialisation, but you can pretty much to everything with one build, provided that you are willing to compromise truly experiencing the benefits of perks in each skill tree.

Ah but thats the beauty of this system. The general concept behind Skyrim's character creation is present in my system as well. Classes (and as such central, majors, and minor skills) don't have to be taken, and at that point the only difference between Skyrim's system and mine is the inclusion of attributes (and obviously the amount of new skills and categorization, which as you say would work well with Skyrim anyway) and that my system would be completely handsoff except in the case of perks.

The only time the player would really have (as in, absolutely can't avoid it have to do something) to do anything as far as their character development is concerned is pick perks when a level is gained, which along with everything else is handled automatically as you play.

You can sit and just play and character creation will be just as smooth as if you sat there and planned out every little bit of it.


No it doesn't work like that. Only combat skills (one category out of three) affect scaling of enemies (presuming my system for getting rid of enemy scaling altogether isn't present) and scaling of quest rewards. The other two categorizations (both groups of non-combat skills) only affect scaling of quest rewards where the quest in question was primarily non-combat in nature.

Challenge is not scaled lower if the skills for that challenge are lower, and really challenge would ideally not be scaled at all in any direction, as ideally this system would be coupled with my dynamic monster spawn system and attributes taking a greater effect on the world itself, and in turn providing challenges that will rely on specific skill/attribute checks being met). As such, a warrior will have a hard time selling his wares just as much as a merchant would have a hard time bringing down a giant.


A little of both. I've had a lot of big ideas for the game(s) lately and it would be shame not to see these brought to light to some degree. However, I've only just started modding with Skyrim so if these do ever see the light of day it likely won't be for a while unless other more skilled people make headway in my stead.

very interesting. I like the idea of having a 'leadership' skill or score; like a passive skill that determines the potency and functionality of your companion (their health, regen, damage, etc) The higher the score, the better the influence.

^ Indeed. And I also imagined that it could relate to any war mods that come out, helping determine your ability to command your troops and such.

i love these ideas, and how they aim to enhance RPG elements i like the idea of your detailed class system

I think the days of attributes are dead. Attributes work for a table top game, or games that don't have the budget of of TES. Attributes took a huge step back in Oblivion and didn't have nearly the same effect as they did in Morrowind. It's nice that they took them out.

As for the overall system it is too long to be anything more than a tease, not to mention you'd have to also balance everything together which would be much more difficult given the size of character creation. As for the tease part I'm more or less saying your character could never really be fully represented visually with such an extensive character loadout.

However you bring up good points. TES needs to really expand upon crafting, and horse back riding. For now crafting has its benefits, but could be really fine tuned to make it more on par with say... WoW. As for horseback riding there really is no incentive to even ride a horse. You may travel slightly faster but you're then limited to agile movement, and your ability to fight back is non existent. Having some type of horse mechanics (even if it as simple as Dynasty Warriors) would make the game much more enjoyable.

I'm interested to see how well Kingdoms of Amalur does as I think the premise is genius. Your character actually feels powerful, and I'd like to see some type of skill system that affects your list of moves, if they ever enhance the combat. I like idea of crafting your character over time as it feels more natural... mainly because that is kind of how life is. I know Skyrim messed around with this idea and it works to a degree, however there is still room for improvement.

Nah, they're still alive and well, its just that no one bothers to focus more energy on it anymore, and whats worse non-focus on better character development isn't even necessary, for if you do it right you can satisfy virtually any gamer (barring those who wouldn't be interested in your game anyway, and there is zero reason to cater to those people) with your system.



Difficulty is no excuse not to bother with something (only impossibility is), and as for the rest of what you said here, I have to say I disagree. Though then again I'm not necessarily sure what you mean by being represented visually, so I hold my comment on that.

Shmump.

I think you're being overly optimistic. Nobody spends time on attributes anymore because they're not the core focus of an RPG. I think if attributes were reintroduced into the TES series (as they have been slowly phased out) they'd have a role that is severely reduced... even more than in Oblivion.

Your system seems like a melting pot of different ideas that require a large amount of balancing. As someone who has been playing through Morrowind I can say that it is very easy to game the system, and while that is still present in Skyrim there are ideas implemented to stop you totally taking advantage of the system.

As for my reference to representation I'll say this. Attributes are a way of representing a character when you have no means to do so. A good example would be D&D, since there is no way for you to actually become the character, you need an unbiased way to succeed in your actions. This idea translated into PC RPGs as you didn't have the technology to create combat systems like we have today. The ability for a person to have the level of influence that he/she has today was non existent. However as time has progressed, and games evolved the ability to have a fighting like combat system in an RPG has led to the removal of stats as they become a bit redundant as you have as you ultimately have two things presenting the same thing... and in that way neither can shine.

Either attributes will hold player skills back, or player skill will hold attributes back and honestly I prefer the latter. For if I miss it's because I missed, now if I fail to open a lock pick it was because I failed rather then the a attribute or skill being the deciding factor.

No, the core focus of an RPG is role-playing. Character development (which attributes are a part of) is a major part of that. And from the way you seem to prefer player skill, it seems to me that you're confusing RPG's with action-adventures.


Not really. Balancing will initially only have to go so far as combat skills (as the removal of non-combat skills from affecting combat level and non-combat skills only affecting non-combat quest rewards already takes care of most of the balancing required beyond combat skills) and by rescaling crafting mechanics so that whats produced will be far less powerful than it is now. You can only improve a sword or a bit of armor so much before it either becomes impractical or will actually be worse off than it was when it was blunt.

For instance, its possible to sharpen a sword in real life that will be able to slice a sheet of paper or silk in midair, but that sword won't last in battle very long. You'll get one good cut then the blade will be blunted. Sharpen a sword too much and it'll break. Armor can only be made to block more damage so much until you're trying to make yourself a bunker instead of a functioning set of armor.

It would also be crucial for crafting to reintroduce failure and degradation. Enchanting should return closer to the difficulty it was in Morrowind. Alchemy should be made so that it is vastly harder to create potions or poisons more powerful than what already exists in the world. Smithing just needs failure introduced to it period.


You're missing the point of this system. Player skill is irrelevant.

Again, don't sit there and think this system is bad just because you don't like character skill emphasis. This isn't really a system that's meant for players like you.

I think your ideas are brilliant. I miss the level of customization that Morrowind had and I think even it's system could be overhauled given the level of technology today. I don't think the level of detail you propose could be adapted well to Skyrim, but it'd be an outstanding jumping off point for future games, by any developer. I'm not a game developer/designer or modder by any means, but I've played through these games a lot, and I've taken note of where the short-falls lie. If you want help organizing this or fleshing out your system, let me know. I'd be eager to contribute (at least on paper).