I don't want to be forced into a mold and not be able to deviate from it. If I choose to be a warrior, I'm stuck using warrior skills. Yes, I could simply use non-warrior skills, but that ends up me being a master-of-all-trades, or I break my class and have to start over a again.

Now, I get my class solely based on how I play, with perks to fine tune the experience. And since I can carry unused perks over the levels, I can mold my character to fit in setting late-game.

Even if such a leveling system would remove the disadvantages of becoming a Jack of all trades, then a class would still be a label, unless you restrict freedom by removing the custom class altogether. I am not in favor of that.

Once again:

It was never the attributes, spellmaking, classes or anything like that that was wrong with Oblivion.
All those systems work perfectly fine.

It is that the terrible, awful, horrible level scaling system ruined many aspects of the game, including those.

It is not the attributes, it is the level scaling.

I miss Oblivion/MW skills and birth signs, but I always made a custom class anyway. Premade were junk for the most part.

It broke the system. It allowed you to improve to very high skill levels without getting high player level out of it, thus breaking the leveling system of the game by getting a char which power level is completely above what was expected from your char level.

Every single thing the "pick major/minor skills" system did was either broken, exploitable or negligible.

Your class choice limited completely which kind of character you can be in past TES games. You can't level up without using the specific major skills you have taken and thus, it limits your character through the entire game. "A" class system doesn't have to be that limiting, but "THE" class system was.

Sheer nonsense.
This is not halo.
This is an RPG.
Yes, you can min/max like that, but it is hardly the most fun way to play an RPG.
Meanwhile, now all the glorious freedom of the previous games has been removed because too many people who do not understand that this is not an FPS complain about wholly optional things.

One can say the same is still true considering you can max Smithing and Enchanting early on and have a character that is completely overpowered in comparison to the content at your character level because difficulty only scales around level - which in Skyrim is completely arbitrary due to the fact that only Perk investment and Skill level affect your power as levels are fairly artificial. I think with the migration of the system to the current one, they should have created a better difficulty scaling system, or at least one with more player discretion. The fact that enemies stop scaling entirely at certain levels, is a huge problem in this game.

You could always make a custom class. Nothing has changed in that regard except for the fact pre-made classes have been abolished. Perk choices still limit what you can do or what kind of class you can make.

How is that not broken? First, you're required to pick skills that will advance your character level before really knowing how the skills work and how you want to play. Then you can freely go and use skills that were not designated to advance character level, so you could reap their benefits without having the world respond to it. Go and level swords, armor, and smithing to 100, and have your character remain level 1... that's not broken?

It left no room for character development beyond the planned character design, as the skills you pick at the start are what you'll be stuck with. You can't role-play one type of character, then during your adventures have something unexpected happen that has some kind of life-altering epiphany, because you must stick with the skills you selected at the start. A mage that becomes a warrior after realizing his magic was no match for a dragon, a warrior that gets pulled into thievery after encountering the corruption in Riften, etc.

Attributes, as they were in Morrowind and Oblivion, were rather flawed and I say they're better gone. For one, they created a feedback loop with your skills (level Skill X to raise Attribute Y, which buffs Skill X), and beyond that they mainly just increased Health, Magicka, and Stamina.

I'm sure an attribute system could be made that Works Well™, but Morrowind and Oblivion's system wasn't it, and as said, it's better gone.

Doesn't change the fact that you were stuck with a preselected set of skills for the entire game.

That custom class limits it in just the same way as the other does. In oblivion, you have to make the choice before knowing anything about the game. In Skyrim, you level up as you go. If you figure out two-handing is boring after 2 hours, it's not a big loss. In oblivion it'd mean you'd lose 1/7th of your leveling up potention, unless you started a new character.

Well there′s your problem right there: you always want to play the exact same characters because you have grown attached to the characters themselves and when the game changes and you can′t recreate those exact same characters in the exact same way, you believe that there is something wrong with the game. The problem lies with you, not the game. I always make a completely new and different character to whatever game I approach, that way my experience does not get distracted by some rosy notalgic attachment I may have for a previous character.

I didn't read all the responses but to enjoy Skyrim and all its flavor you have to exhibit some self control. Don't use any magic with your swordsman or don't wear armor with your mage just to level light armor etc or do that to the detriment of everything else. You create your classes and that's what I like.

However in Skyrim you cannot gauge effectiveness really unless you have made Perk point investments. Until around level 25, I cannot tell how effective certain things will be. In previous TES games, almost immediately I could tell how effective the class I created was. Each system has its drawbacks and I think we are seeing that these issues could have been solved with a respecialization or Reperking ability to allow players unhappy with performance or who figure out "what character" they want to play the ability to do so after they have already made allocations. To say either system solves the problem, is silly.

This. A thousands time this.

The game has evolved. They created an extremely permissive system to allow you to tinker to your heart's content. But, in the end, it's your self discipline that determines your role-playing mileage.

If you flesh out a back story and approach the game with discipline, then you've already established your character's predilections. Through self control and "role playing" those predilections, you've essentially determined your "class" and "major skills." Butt sore because your character is the same as every other character at the start of the game? I have good news. The start of the game is like a river. Once you step in one part of it, that part of the river has already passed you by. Now you're just wet. The "start of the game" has simply yet organically become "the game."

That is just powergaming, you can easy go the other way with focusing on non combat skills, an pure thief who is mostly doing pickpocketing and burglary for an long time will have problems in combat, same in Morrowind where I leveled many levels as an thief in cities on my first character.

Morrowind was less broken than Oblivion here as you could have more skills both helping you level up and get 3x5.

Okay, I haven't read this seven page monstrosity, so apologies in advance if I'm repeating what's been said before, but I have to agree with the removal of the class system. Yes, in Oblivion you could create your class, but you were still restricted by that class decision (custom or pre-set) that you made at the beginning. Classes still exist in Skyrim, it's just that you create your own class as you progress. You can start as a warrior and pick up some magic ability later as you progress, and become a warrior-mage. You can start out as a thief, decide you need some illusion skills for the invisibility and calming and the like, and become an illusionist-thief. Or perhaps a warrior decides he wants to become a wandering priest of Talos, picks up some restoration ability, and models himself after the old AD&D cleric - weapons and armor plus healing magic.

Respecialization and reperking goes too far in the other direction, though. Nobody can undo the time they invested in learning skills in the past to instantly get other skills and abilities instead. I spent several years as a news photographer, but I'd like to learn to fly. Can I take the five years I worked in the news business and swap what I learned for five years' worth of flight training in an instant? No. And please, nobody give me the "It's not Earth, it's Tamriel, so maybe things work differently and that's possible." Because that would be absurd.

This is at the end of the day an RPG. Instead of a 100% limiting class, Skyrim has perks, which do not limit the character in the beginning at all. As for solving "the problem", I'm not sure we agree with what the problem even is. The problem is you creating a character that you do not want to play with, although it sounded good at first. If you spend over 50 of the 80 perks available on something you do not like, then you've spent them poorly. However, in oblivion, the choice you make in the beginning is made without any knowledge of the game. The chance of you creating a character you don't like in oblivion is a lot bigger than it is in Skyrim. Thus, Skyrim solves "the problem", while oblivion causes it.

If you character uses magic, he's a magic user. Nothing stopped you from using magic in oblivion, thus this argument counters itself by saying oblivion did something right and skyrim did it wrong, when it did it in the same way.

I agree I effiently leveled a character and it wasn't fun I got tired of mud crabs hitting me over and over again.

Actually I find this a bit realistic. A level 30 thief shouldn't be as effective in combat as a level 30 warrior.

Exactly. Both games require the player to make committments, but Oblivion requires you to make one huge committment (class choice) up front, while Skyrim asks you to make little committments (perk choices) repeatedly over time, and you can change the direction those committments are progressing as you like. You can't undo past committments, but you're free to make your committment choices in the future conform to a completely different principle.

That's the level scaling that is broken actually. I mentioned the 'dissonance with the scaling" before. This is it. Without level scaling focussing on non major/minor skills leaving yourself at low level should put you at an insurmountable disadvatage until you level up your major/minor skills.

Also BGS have always been total munchkins. There's plenty of ways they could have kept the Major Minor Level Systerm, kept attributes, and added perks and kept us from being able to master everything but that would have been more work. Much easier to scrap all the old and remake it in a simplified way for NewFans to understand and for developers to code.

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The game is made for Newfans and that's fine. I still like the game and find much to enjoy. However, It is simpler. It is easier to understand, and the areas where they should have focussed on the most (adding complexity, adding reactivity of the world, deepeing quests, adding C&C, improving AI, expandfing and deepening Spell Crafting instead of removing it etc. etc. etc. ) are not what they focussed on.

Games in general are more about pretty pictures and fancy voice acting now, and while they are still fun, they are not as good as they used to be. I blame the fans as much as the developers. Most of you don't like reading, won't play games unless the graphics are 'top of line', don't want to stick with a character concept from the start of the game (you can just make new characters you know), and most of you want to be able to be the guild leader of every single guild in the game. Further most of you keep pushing for Player Skill to take priority over Character Skill and that is anti to what RPG is to me.

I am not saying that the Skyrim system is worse, I am saying that it still does not address the issue the person I quoted says the Skyrim system fixes, which was that they believe the Skyrim system where everyone starts as a blank canvas allows players to play the game and get a sense of what kind of character they want to make and define their class along the way rather than select Primary/Major/Minor skills at the onset, which makes players choose what kind of character or what "class" they want to make before they start playing. I like the Skyrim approach, I think it does help players, however it is just as unforgiving as the old system was. Once I make my Perk investments, there is no going back. I can play around and level my skills up, but Skills have such a minor impact on your character until you have made deep investments in the Perk tree, you really do not know how it will be.

Further, as my previous post was discussing, I think there are things left out that would not "pigeonhole" the player that you could choose as part of the Origin of your character. Really and truly ANY system can be implemented even one that forces you to choose at the beginning - as long as you can change it LATER. Really and truly, this should be an option to players. I myself do not really care as I am always careful to plan my classes. People call us "min/maxers" like this is some new phenomenon, but I have been doing this since pen & paper and Ultima for Apple II. Because people like myself exist, we are able to provide insight to others so they do not exhaust 60 hours into the game and come to the realization they have to reroll because they are unhappy with how their character is performing.

Agreed. Also, it gives you the opportunity to "role play" any "mistakes" you may have made. You know, just in case you're one of those people who plays RPGs to "play a role" as opposed to "construct a flawless killing machine."

But why should people stick with a character concept from the start? People simply don't always do that in real life, and it's silly to design a system to hinder changing direction. And if you can change it later, what's the point of having formal classes at all? With Skyrim you simply are what you do. Go and put on some heavy armor and crack some bandit skulls with an axe and you're a warrior. Melt some faces and you're a destruction mage. Go around pickpocketing, hiding in the shadows and picking locks and you're a thief. Start raising the dead and you're a Necromancer.