While I liked Bethesda using perks in fallout 3 (it suited that genre), it really doesn`t suit a game like Skyrim

Perk is too modren, too gamey and it actually takes away from the `ye olde fashion` feel of pseudo fantasy medieval games.

Perks should simply be called skills or traits...

But what the heck, we have a satellite GPS in Skyrim that makes absolutely no logical sense at all. At least in FO3 you could say that the advance PIP boy technology made it possible.

But in Oblivion and Skyrim, these modern things are just there. It`s like making Lord of the Rings and giving Gandalf a GPS phone because that`s what we have.

Perks in this game are boring and lame.

With mmo's, leveling is just an obstacle. It's all about getting the next new best gear once you are at max level.

It shouldn't be all about the gear, the gear should just compliment the capabilities of the player. It should be about player progression. The increasing of levels and skills. The acquisition and application of perks.

I think that maybe the smithing tree should be removed entirely. The ability of upgrading would make sense if it allowed you to upgrade your current gear rather than replace (a kind of either/or), but if you can upgrade daedric as well as steel (to the same degree), then you are still gimping yourself by not replacing your steel armor with daedric and upgrading that instead.

Perhaps it would have been better had the degree of upgrading a material was based on your skill's progression past the skill required to begin working with it.

Thus, once your Smithing skill is at 100, you are 80 skill points past being able to work with steel and just 10 points past being able to work with daedric. So, with your skill, you should be able to upgrade the steel to a higher degree than the daedric. The idea is that armor and weapons, through the use of black smithing, become more of a matter of aesthetics rather than necessity. Allowing you to maintain a certain look.

Maybe three crafting skills need to be level based as much as skill based. Or at least the perks themselves.

LMAO. I never even looked at the Lockpick tree until this point. That is sooooo derp.

I don't like the perk system on Skyrim. Just because it was ok on Fallout doesn't mean it should be on Elder Scrolls.

I remember Todd Howard say something like "On Oblivion, you become only as powerful as the effort you are willing to put into your character." I think that was on the bonus CD I got with the collectors edition of Oblivion. I have Oblivion, Morrowind and also Redguard. The limitless potential with character advancement is what I've always loved about the series. Now Elder Scrolls is falling into the same old hum drum warrior, mage, thief crap that I think makes so many other fantasy rpg games so bad. Sure we can change up the game play as we go along, but the perk system makes certain aspects of game play ineffective compared to what you've invested in.

Skyrim is a great game and making the game play for a wider fan base is ok I guess but I just wish Todd and the rest of the crew would have stuck with what set TES apart from the rest of the rabble,

Yes, I love the perks as they are too. Deciding which one to get really makes one think, and this has to be a posiive point for this game.

Yeah... it's dumb.

*Looks at Username*

*realizes he is in the thrall of fandom*

*Disregards everything he says*

this^

The thread is correct. Perks are a fantastic idea in Skyrim, and some of them are really well done, but overall the implementation is kind of botched. First off, too many perks are simple percentage multipliers. It gets pretty boring taking the 20th perk that "increases x skill by x%". Also, some perks are absolutely useless, like most of the lockpicking ones, while some are unbelievably overpowered (smithing).

Balance is not one of Bethesda's strong suits, this is no secret. In a perfect world they would hire Valve to design their skills and perk systems.

You're bashing the whole system because ONE tree is flawed ?!

I think it's good, all the skills I took are used and needed !

Nice strawman

I think there are plenty of tree's that are really bad and have nonsensical overpowered perks at the sole reason to even pick anything in the tree.

I like the perks, but moving around the trees were horrible.
There are some pointless ones though and what svcked was that had ta get it ta get the next one in line.

On the whole though I thought they did a great job of it.

Uh, no, as said above that's kind of a straw man. I used lockpicking as my main example, but all trees are flawed. See this post-

Couldn't agree with you more OP. The perks in Skyrim aren't perks at all. They're a substitute for the skills themselves. Which also serves to make it a more level based system rather than the skill based system it used to be. Someone with 100 skill in one handed and no +damage perks does less damage than someone with 25 skill with one of the +damage perks. That is frelling [censored].

I'm with the OP on this one. I like the idea of perks, but I don't like the implementation very much. It's just kind of clunky and hacked-together and just floats around in a void. Perks are essentially 'tricks' that one can learn when the player has achieved a certain level of mastery in a skill, they shouldn't replace basic stats (+20% damage etc.). I'm okay with a perk that allows you to shield bash, or disarm an enemy, or dual-wield because those are 'extras', they're tricks that warriors learn that are not based on simple stats.

Personally, I think they should have tied perk trees to faction quests so that you have to join guilds and learn perks from a trainer. That way you could do things like have different schools of magic that teach their wizards different spells and different fighters guilds that teach different fighting styles (shield, dual-wielding, archery, hand-to-hand, etc.). Example: a school that teaches stealth-oriented spells (Open, Muffle, Chameleon, etc.) In order to get the Open spells, you have to spend a perk (just one) to unlock that specific group of spells (Open Novice, Open Apprentice, etc.). That way, not every spell-caster would have access to the same spells. A mage should be able to devote their entire career to magic, of course, and learn every spell type, but only at the expense of learning other skills. Another example would be crafting: the player would actually have to learn how to craft Orcish, for example, at the feet of a master. They wouldn't necessarily need to learn how to work other metals first, they just need a high enough skill level. I think perks only work for skills if they unlock new abilities. They don't really work very well as buffs because they make the skill itself somewhat redundant.

I'd also like to have the option of taking 'character perks' when I create my character like the ones in FO.

What?! You mean actually learning something when going through guilds rather than just plowing through to a meaningless title?!

Blasphemy!

This is a great idea.


This is not.

Well that was sort of something birthsigns provided, although I guess they're stones now so it's not quite the same.

More general pro/cons at character creation would be nice though.

I'd say

Race
Appearance
Birthsign
Traits
Deity(optional)

Would be a pretty solid starting character creation.

I am in total agreement with the OP on this one.



Why is it a good thing for it to be tied to skills. I don't mind skill requirements for perks that are logically tied to a skill, but making them tied to skills as its basic format really limits perk design and the trees limit it even further since it disregards the possibility of perks that are tied or related to multiple skills. I mean while yeah a bleeding perk might be logically tied to axes so might require a one or two handed skill of 25 but if it were not tied to an individual skill it could be an or situation instead of having to take the same perk twice for both skills, and a perk like extra pockets if renamed why would it need to be tied to any skill, and wouldn't a passive resist to elements work if tied to both destruction and a defense skill like heavy armor.

Just another shoddy aspect of this game.

Smithing for example has been designed by an comatose amoeba

It is clear also that many perks exist because they needed to put something ANYTHING and were totally out of clues.

In order to maintain the "drawing this custom constellation" aesthetic that has incidentally played a large part in making Skyrim's skills menu a superb example of what NOT to do when designing a UI. That is why this was done.

75% (perhaps even more) of the perks are filler because they needed stars for their precious pretty light patterns. Nothing more than that.

This is the impression many of the perks give me unfortunately. The set based armor ones for example, did we really need more armor for wearing all one type and more for wearing a matching set? All this really does is screw some players over for not wanting to wear a helm or wanting to wear one piece of a different type of armor for an enchant, and isn't really any more interesting than the 20% increments in the first 5 point perk.

Or maybe they just didn't spend a lot of time on the perks.

To me, it's not just disappointing that a lot of perks are filler, but almost all of the perks (even the truly beneficial ones) are just plain uninteresting. Putting 5 points in a single one handed skill to improve damage by 100%...*yawn*.

And to the fan-boys here who accuse me of min/maxing, I say: I'll happily take sub-optimal perks if any of them were fun or interesting.