You are misunderstanding what I am saying. I said I typically used "about half" of my minor skills and did not level them all to 100. Never said I played "only" with my major skills. That would be dumb.

Plus, your argument compares apples to oranges. Choosing not to level your minor thief or warroir skills to 100 because you are roleplaying a robed mage is nothing like overlooking flaws in Skyrim's NPC interactions by simply imagining it.

Do you always do everything you are told?

@ papercut_ninja

You are also ignoring the basic argument I made against the perk system. Neravine complained that under the class system all characters have (at least the potential) to end up the same by the end of the game. I responded by pointing out that under a perk system all characters start the same. That is a bad starting point because it takes away all decisionmaking on character building at the time of character creation and dispenses it out in small doses on each level up. I'd rather see a system where you pick your class in the beginning and then just play without having to make a bunch of mini-character-creation decisions throughout the game. That type of a system would be more immersive.

I didn't either, I got bored with the entire system very quickly and just stopped playing...I won't waste hundreds of hours on a game with lousy mechanics.


I do what a game mechanic encourages me to do by rewarding me for it, that's fundamental to all game design, in order to get players to play the game as you have designed it, you offfer them rewards for completing certain tasks, in this case I am rewarded for using my minor skills, so I will use them.

So then Skyrim is the first TES game you have invested much time in?


You sound like a mouse at one of those pellet dispensing machines I learned about in my high school psychology classes. Sorry but that is not how I approach games or life. I make my own decisions.

The whole notion of getting "players to play the game as you have designed it" is completely contrary to the "do what you want" theme that TES was built upon.

I like it. But it could have been better but i still love it.

I still love Skyrim as a whole, although there are specific elements of it that do not like much at all. But that was the same for Oblivion and Morrowind. Great games but there are always things to complain about.

EDIT: Actually not just "great" games. They are about the only video games I play. If it's not a "do what you want" game, I don't have much interest in it.

Personally, I think the perks does close to nothing. It's almost only the base perks that actually do something useful (increase weapon damage&armor rating mainly). Personally, I think bethesda went wrong with the leveling system after Morrowind. Since it's a role-playing game where the character develops, it shouldn't be determined by player skill. Morrowind might be a bit too much dice-rolling but it's better than oblivion which almost solely relies on player skill, and Skyrim, which does the same but not to the same degree.

Hehe i agree with you very much. No games are perfect. And every Elder scroll game are good on its own way.My favourite game series

No, I played a lot of Daggerfall...which I don't rank as a great rpg, it was just fun and simple to play at the time...a casual way to play Doom in a fantasy setting...


If you think that the TES games aren't designed to encourage certain actions or behaviors from players, then you are insulting the game designers. They give you loot to encourage dungeon crawling, stories to encourage you to take quests and character improvement to encourage character development. Getting your character to be better is a huge driving mechanism behind any rpg, if the mechanics tell me that I can improve faster by doing certain actions, then I am not playing the game very intelligently if I ignore them.

Speaking of insults, do you realize that you have just insulted most of the roleplayers on this forum? You just said all those folks who gimp their characters for roleplaying purposes, like the warriors who don't cast spells and the mages who wear no armor and use no weapons are not playing intelligently?

Wish I could stay on this thread until it hits the post limit but I gotta run and won't be back until tommorow. Ciao!

No...more like saying that if you are a mage and refuse to buy or use any spellbooks to learn new spells, then you are obviously missing one of the important mechanics for making a good spellcaster that the designers have implemented, and you are not being very smart about it...

These base perks do quite a bit as I see it, they seperate those with advanced knowledge and training in a skill from the masters.
An example from your mentionings:
A Legendary quality Daedric Warhammer with 100 skill in two-handed, but no perks will get just under 60 damage. That is less than an unupgraded steel warhammer with 100 skill and barbarian 5/5 which has 60. You cannot argu that is lack of effect, and that isn't counting any perks but the most basic of them all. The three different weaponspecializing perks bring some subtle changes to the weapons as well. Then there are the improved powerattacks. The one most noteworthy is the (Great) Critical Charge: it unlocks a new powerattack that is a guarantied critical hit.

Player skill has and will always be a part of games. That is why they are games. Tactics are playerskill, timing is playerskill and pretty much any interaction in a game is conencted to playerskill in varrying degrees. Some have mentioned that the old school RPGs required little playerskill, but I wont believe that until someone takes an amateur, put him in a game situation like a just above average difficulty fight and videotapes him/her actually doing it.

Another option would be to play a warrior or mage or really anything without sneak in Skyrim without perks on adept. After doing so(and providing proof) I believe they might realize character skill is very important in Skyrim. I mean really, a DAEDRIC LEGENDARY WARHAMMER is weaker than a simple STEEL WARHAMMER without the perks?

I haven't played daggerfall, but from what I hear I'd love it. I haven't played it since I can't stand controls not working. I'm not having problems with the graphics.

The TES series, as it is now, is more of a action-adventure than an RPG. If you're playing an action game, you'd only think about going on like that. WoW saying that it's an RPG is an insult in itself.


I agree with you, that's stupid. But they don't need to have the best spells either, or they can specialize in for example one school. For example, the character might be afraid of fire and he thinks it's really dangerous. Also, he's afraid of putting things on fire. Due to this he wouldn't learn any fire spells.

Judging from your signature and your earlier posts, you probably haven't played any REAL RPG's

Forgive me, I might not have been to clear about my statement. My point is, they rely too much on player skill. Also, a mage who's not an archmage would fail at casting their spells once in a while, and even an archmage would if he was tired. Skyrim? Who cares about that...

I'm sorry if I sounded angry. I am not, and the post was not meant for you alone, but everyone who claims character power is irrelevant in Skyrim.

Perks could work.

I'm a fan of II & III, and think that they could have benefited from the mastery perks like in IV. They complemented the attribute system.

Bethesda outright replaced the attribute system with perks in Skyrim. Though this could work in theory, if it provided the same functionality, but the current perk system is so simple and unbalanced it doesn't provide half the functionality it used to. Agile character types are virtually impossible, with no speed or dodge bonuses (bandits in heavy armor will run your naked a** down in Skyrim, the armor penalty is marginal), and even after dumping everything into stamina, leveled bandits STILL run me down because they're leveled to do so. There's also cross-skill bonuses. IE training a skill that makes you physically stronger makes an untrained skill requiring strength easier (Governing attributes). Perks don't have that functionality either.

The attribute systelm allowed for much more complex mechanics as well, with a potentially more realistic combat system. Imagine if Morrowind was fully animated. Suddenly you, the crap swordsman, never landing a hit on the better swordsman makes more sense, yeah? (Not hitting mudcrabs was still [censored] though). Instead we get the guaranteed damage system, which fully animated in all, is right out of a JRPG hacknslash. Skyrim melee combat will be nothing but cinematic kills thrown on top of hacknslash until they allow for more complex mechanics again. I demand BOTH fully animated combat AND complex combat mechanics. Take M&B, have a professional studio do it with attributes and well researched swordplay AI and a greater range of attack directions available. [censored] in my pants thinking about that.

There's hardly any character variety with the current perk system. Not when you have stuff like both armor types reaching max protection and weighing nothing (read: No [censored] point). The attribute system had character variety that developed gradually as you played, giving you that +25% whatever bit by bit. Perks can do the same thing, in gigantic chunks locked away from the player. Perks also limit the player more by physically limiting the significant bonuses they can have. The attribute + major/minor system also limited the player's max attributes they could ever obtain which added more end-game character variety than people here are saying, but was significantly more frustrating. I think the perk system COULD encourage more character variety, IF they were more thought-out (No worthless perks), had actual consequences (no weightless armor type [censored]), and... actually a lot more like Fallout. Then the smooth attribute system picks up whatever would be a "worthless" perk or 'consequence free'.

Why are they called perks at all actually? Think of Fallout (best early implementation of "perks" in a game). REAL perks then in TES were the unchangeable birthsigns and ACTUAL RACE VARIETY with ACTUAL CONSEQUENCES. Both of which were COMPLETELY REMOVED.

I'm not offended, I just felt like I didn't say it well enough since I felt like you misunderstood what I said a bit.

If I have a beef with the Perk system of Skyrim it's this:

Since it has replaced attributes and "class" choices-- the balance of your game is uneven.

Early on, since you have not selected a "class" archetype, you are basically a vanilla nobody. For example, let's say you want to play a Mage. You aren't any better at mage-ing than the guy next to you that wants to play a Barbarian, or the guy playing a Hunter. And neither are they better warriors or archers than you as a mage. Since the "class" effect of your choice doesn't come into effect until you can buy Perks....

You'll have to spend Perk points to start fleshing your character into the archetype you desire. And since that requires often at minimum 3 Perk trees, if not 5.... it can take you well into your 40s before your character FEELS authentic.

And by that time, the game isn't difficult anymore. It's become trivial, and at that point the Perks and archetype etc aren't important.

So by the time I can really feel like the Battle Mage I wanted...... I could just be soloing around with 1 button on my fire spell. :/

With "class" choices to begin a game, or with "specialization" choices in attributes/skills (like Oblivion), it gave you the feeling of your class early, and throughout the game. If you were playing a Barbarian, it felt like a Barbarian right from the get go. Like most standard RPGs, you chose a class and he would excel in the things he should excel in. Even from the start, so you were ROLE PLAYING the character from GO.

That is what I don't like about the Skyrim Perk system.

Also, I feel throttled into ONLY advancing the skills relating to the Perks I will need for my archetype. Say if I am a Warrior, I better not be advancing my Smithing, Alchemy, Enchanting, Pickpocketing etc... because those will level me up and now encounters with mobs will be tougher. And I won't have the necessary Perks (and their requirement skill levels) in my 1-handed, or Block, or Armor... It can make the game unbearably difficult if you didn't grasp that concept early. So you end up ignoring Smithing let's say... and find that later to level it up you end up having to spend Perk points on lower level armors (such as Dwarven or Elven) that you aren't going to be using at your level anymore, just to get to the armor you will use. Uneven, and unintuitive.

--------------

Now, the higher game isn't so bad for us PC users. I use mods such as Wars In Skyrim, Warzones, DeadlyDragons, double arrow damage, etc to make the game more realistically difficult. There are even mods that tune the level adjuster for mobs so that they don't cap out too low for you to find any challenge post 40.

But this doesn't defend or help the console player, or the PC player that doesn't want to become well-versed in Moddery usage.

A pleasure to read, since I agree with so much of what you said. One useless perk I want to mention is that the heavy armor weights zero, heavy armor in skyrim already weights little. In Morrowind the difference between the best light armor and the best heavy armor (just the cuirass) is huge. Glass cuirass weights 18 pounds, Daedric cuirass weights 90!!. Daedric armor pieces weights between 5 and 10 times as much as glass. A whole set with glass armor, including a tower shield weights less than the cuirass alone. Include a good dagger, a decent bow and a couple of arrows and it still weights less than the daedric cuirass ALONE. Now, that's a difference. The carrying capacity in Skyrim is a joke, since it's so low, armor can't weight much more than the other, and therefore making the heavy armor weights nothing perk useless. I took it before I got ebony/daedric armor. Pointless. Also, a Daedric Warhammer weights 96 pounds, thats a full set with glass armor, a decent bow and a good sword.

Agreed.

It appears overall too nerdy in its design.

Not everything about Skyrim is golden.

You sound like someone who would love it: endless customization options (with lots of them being purely flavour and no effect on gameplay, and others extremely exploitable) and a huge gameworld (slightly repetitive since it consists of the same trees, buildings and features randomly spawned 1 million times)...I′ll sell it like that not to get your hopes down too much by mentioning some other less appealing aspects of it...

So, yes, a mage who doesn't use fire, would still desire to have a very high ability in destruction magic, and high magicka, so in prior games I would still be encouraged to focus on minor skills in order to develop my character into a good non-fire destruction mage since I want the attributes. The mechanics in this case cripples the roleplaying because my non-fire destruction mage will spend more time grinding other magic schools or skills like alchemy and security than actual destruction magic (and being fast really doesn't hurt either since kiting enemies is by far the most effecient form of combat, so lots of swimming and swinging short blades will be needed as well). Which one of us is it that is defending a game mechanic that encourages the breaking of character and LESS roleplaying?

great post.

It's not the first time I've heard that, and I think you would be right. I just can't stand controls that doesn't work. If it was a bit laggy, I could get over it but when I can stand there for a minute or two, trying to swing my weapon and nothing happens I get bored. And yes, I do know that you actually have to swing it with your mouse......

Not all perks are worth the same. Some are obviously stronger than others. Placing weaker perks (worth less than 1 perk) infront of strong perks (worth more than 1 perk) is a valid way of balancing a skill tree.

Obviously people will rate the value of a perk differently and not all skill trees are of equal worth compare to each other. Example will be the fact that light armor skill is directly superior to heavy armor skill. Nevertheless, the METHOD is a valid one.