I have something important that demands your attention. We are all aware that Skyrim has no classes to choose from and you basically just grab something and kill with it to level up. I am a fan of user-friendliness and appealing to larger crowds, but what they did with Skyrim was completely limit how you can play to essentially a Warrior, Rogue, and a Mage. To play with anything but these 3 generic classes requires and extreme amount of effort to do and it almost feels like the game is steering the player away from trying new things by limiting the overall diversity of playstyles. The whole class system in Morrowind and Oblivion(and previous TES games), allowed the character to be more creative and to stay on track with how they were playing. I enjoy the new perk system and all, but I still like the class system of doing things. Also, a lot of skills were dumbed down or completely chopped out. Conjuration, compared to the other games, is a joke due to the lack of creatures you can conjure. Also, I am really suprised that they did not introduce polearms(spears, halberds, etc) into the game despite the requests in the last game. It could be a new tree, one for spears in the 1 handed categorie and one for poleaxes in the 2 handed category. Also, I am sad that they removed hand to hand and acrobatics skills. Doing backflips and punching people to death as a monk was quite fun. Does anyone else share a remotely similar feeling regarding this topic?

I read that whole thing with Thors voice lol.

but on topic yes i agree i miss the class system as well

Lol. It kept things feeling like Elder Scrolls should. You pick/make a class and you get into the mood of how you should playing as someone like that. If I selected the bard class, Id occassionally stop at inns for a drink. If I were an agent or acrobat, Id use my acrobatics to jump onto ledges, wait for enemies to get close, listen to their dialogue with each other, and then silently kill them with a bow. In Skyrim, I either feel like a rogue, a generic warrior, or a mage. Also, I liked in Morrowind that you had a helmet, pauldrons, left/right vambrace, cuirass, greaves, and boots. Now you have a chest and legs piece, gauntlets, and boots. Lol, at this rate, in future Elder Scrolls games we will have to pick between suit of armor one-sie's.

...er, what?

Classes in Oblivion meant almost nothing - you could still use any skill, at full effectiveness. In fact, most of the "efficient leveling" crowd (the people who felt it was important to have three +4 or +5 stat bonuses every level) didn't even use their class/Major skills except when they needed to level - they actually played their characters off the Minor skills.

(I did something like that - I always picked the Custom class, didn't bother giving it a name because the name didn't mean a thing, and picked seven easily trained skills for the Majors; one for each primary stat. But I used whichever skills I felt like - there's no reason the ever have just used the Major skills, even if you picked one of the preconstructed classes.... that's the great thing about the TES games, the total free-form ability to just use any skill you feel fits your character & playstyle.)


Skyrim? My first character was a Ranger-type (mix of around eight to ten Warrior and Thief skills, plus Restoration). My current one is a Mage/Archer. So no, I've no idea what you mean by it taking an "extreme amount of effort" to play anything but a Mage, Warrior, or Rogue. But maybe that's because it's never occurred to me to only use the skills in one archetype. (I also don't bother with the first three Guardian stones - skills level fast enough, there's no need to make them go faster.)

Don't really see what exactly classes offered. Perhaps this is because I always made up a class instead of following a vanilla one, but you can still follow a class strictly in skyrim. In oblivion you were equally capable of not following your class and really weren't punished that much. In skyrim however you would lose a lot more putting perks into random trees instead of focusing of focusing on the trees your class would use. As for removing skills, that really doesn't have much to do with classes. They could have still had a class system even with those skills removed. It would be nice to see some of them return, but it doesn't need the class system for it.

If they honed what classes did for the player(ie making them unique) instead of cutting it out (bethesda's favorite way of dealing with problems), it would have turned out better and less generic IMO.

This whole post is exactly my thoughts.

Classes in Oblivion were nothing but a restriction. Fact is, you can still play any class you like, and not just a pure warrior, mage or thief. What in the world stops anybody from playing an illusionist/thief or a warrior-mage in Skyrim? Nothing. Too many people seem to think "I just don't feel like I'm really a warrior unless I can hit the tab key, flip to the right page, and see a little box that says 'warrior' as confirmation." Seriously, if you put on armor, pick up a mace and shield, and kill your enemies by bashing their skulls in, you're a warrior. If you learn to cast illusion spells and go sneak around stealing things, you're an illusionist/thief.

Classes in Oblivion were purely a game mechanic used to play against the game system, rather than playing the game. Efficient leveling was a prime example of that; people sitting around crunching numbers figuring out how to rig the leveling system rather than just playing the game.

Classes gave the game originality and variety. For me, It set the guidlines to how I played my character. The Hotkey sytem was 10 times better than the favorites system they had. If i want to be a Paladin and use restoration, i have to scroll through a list and pause my combat breaking all fluency. Thats why Mage, warrior, and rogue are just the way the game mechanics force you into these generalizations.

What? How is it generic how it is. I can still be a battlemage, sorcer, ranger, etc. if it is naming yourself, it really doesn't do much. No one ever reconishes your class so it feels exactly the same, I just don't need to go though that whole menu every time I start a new game. If you feel your generic because you aren't told your major skills than not seeing why that is important. You can always tell your major skills by what you actually put points into.

I don't miss pre-defined classes at all since they restricted you to certain skills throughout the entire game. That's fine in games such as Baldur's Gate where you have a team of characters to play with, but in a game such as Skryim a more organic, flexible system is necessary.

I do miss attributes however, and I feel the inclusion of them along with the current character progression system of Skyrim (with perks) would allow for a greater diversity of characters and keep more of the forum members satisfied.

edit: Oh, and classes are still in the game. They form and take shape as you level up your skills and choose perks.

Dude, the hotkeys are the restriction. i cant fluently heal myself in combat with there method of hotkeys. Its not really even hotkeys, its just a list to scroll through.

No not really. If you can't follow guide lines you really aren't to disciplined. I would suggest looking at one of the old classes, writing it down and following it. And again you bring up something that had nothing to do with the class system. Besides hot keys are still available for the pc atleast, and the Xbox has that whole kinect hot key thing. Ps3 is a little out of lyck for this to my knowledge atleast.

How did it give the game originality, when those classes have essentially existed since the dawn of the RPG?

And what variety existed then that doesn't exist in Skyrim? What classes can't be played? And why not?


You aren't forced into anything. If you're playing on PC, you still have eight hotkeys if you're using keyboard and mouse. If you're using a 360 controller on the PC, there are mods that will let you have eight hotkeys with the controller, using the D-pad. If you're on console, sure, you only have the favorites menu, but it would have been the same way with playing Oblivion on console.

That's the thing - I set the guidelines for how I play my characters. Don't need the game to tell me. So Skyrim's pretty much the same as Morrowind and Oblivion - I use the skills that I decided to base my character around, when I created it. Only difference is that now (with any skill contributing to leveling, and no Dumb Stat Tricks needed to fight the enemy scaling), I can just play rather than keep record sheets of how my leveling is going.

That's true; I forgot about being able to use a zillion voice commands with the Kinect. You could basically never go into a menu for anything except inventory any more.

They essentially force you into their 3 roles. How can you be a battle mage, by all means tell me? In oblivion I had a mace and shield and was able to cast spells. In skyrim, i have to constantly pause combat to switch between shield and fireball. They also removed touch spells as well. Common example why mainstreaming is not a good thing in this case.

I personally prefer the class system of oblivion. I actually don't know why, I just do.

I don't know why they didn't incorporate some kind of system where your class isn't a set definition, but evolves on your playstyle and changes in your playstyle, rather than just be rid of the whole thing. Starting out every player could have the generic "adventurer" class. Suppose a player earnes the title "warrior" in low levels, but say midway through the playthrough he decides to incorporate magic into his work. He's no longer a "warrior." Now the game, as well as other NPCs call him "spellsword" or "battlemage." The perks and perk trees could easily be part of this system as well.

This pops up ever so often. We still have classes. You can be what ever you want and specialize in what ever. The old way was bunk, because it confined you to the "preset" guidlines.

Hell, I always created a custom class anyway, as did most of the other people that posted in the Oblivion forum.

This, I actually agree with you on this. It's almost like, when I build a class, I have to tell myself this. "Okay, the default combat will be, fire in the left hand and a sword in the right hand. I start putting a bunch of perks into some other skills, which, in the end, I will never be using.

Class system? All it was, was just a bunch of random skills with a name tacked on to it.

There is no real difference.

What? Again nothing to do with the class system. If you are talking about game mechanics restricting classes than we can understand that, but how you originally stated it the classless system was the problem. Anyway don't see how switching is a problem. As I said pc has hot keys and Xbox has connect. It actually makes more sense for you to have to have a hand open to cast a spell, and I don't remember any battle mages actually carrying shields in oblivion. In morrwind you actually had to put both your weapon and shield away, imagine that. You would probably have a hard time playing morrowind, which most people who are antimanstream worship.

By being a character who wears armor, and attacks with a combination of weapons and spells?


The hotkeys work fine - my current Mage/Archer has something like: 2. Bow, 3. Ice Spike, 4. Firebolt, 5. Heal, 6. magelight. Forget what's on 1, and haven't put anything on 7 or 8 yet. And going into the Favorites menu - to, for example, switch between my 4 favorite shouts - is fine, too. In Oblivion and MW, I was constantly popping into the menu to do things like drink potions, or select some of my other weapons or spells.
(Trying to remember what the hotkeys were on my Ranger. I think it was 1. main sword, 2. bow, 3. alt sword, 4. shield, 5. heal, 6. light?. And again, common shouts I selected in the favorites menu; uncommon shouts, potions, and other specific weapons/arrows/armors I used the Inventory menu.)

You are only losing a shield in said situation. You still had to switch spells and weapons in oblivion and morrowind.