steo on 14/5/2011 at 19:29
Surprised (
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/18/skyrim-skills/) no ones linked this yet, guess TTLG doesn't care that much about Skyrim.
Anyway, not particularly recent article outlines that there are now only 18 skills, down from 21, and the attributes have been removed entirely. Oblivion had eight attributes: Strength, Endurance, Speed, Agility, Personality, Intelligence, Willpower and Luck - all of these had an effect on other stats, such as carry weight, speed, melee damage, health, magicka, magicka regen, stamina etc. Skyrim apparently only has Health, Magicka and Stamina as level-able attributes.
They justify this by saying that it streamlines the game, and perhaps it will work out being better, but I am a little concerned that it will also reduce the variety of characters that you are able to play. Having said that, perhaps skills, perks and races will be enough - and the attribute system of Oblivion/Morrowind which forced you to be careful about which skills you level in order to get the biggest stat gains was pretty fucked.
Maybe in TES:6 they'll get rid of the inventory and TES:8 will be a linear CoD-style shooter...
Koki on 14/5/2011 at 21:34
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Let me repeat:
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Matthew on 14/5/2011 at 22:41
Honestly, anything that improves the absolutely horrendous levelling system that bugged the last couple of games is worth at least trying in my book.
Nameless Voice on 14/5/2011 at 23:19
Yeah, I'd rather get rid of attributes altogether than have that horrible system that Morrowind and Oblivion had.
That said, it still sounds like a really stupid idea. Now no one has anything to distinguish them; and a warrior will have the same amount of magicka as a mage, who will be carry the same amount as the warrior and wield the same weapons. That sounds idiotic.
On the other hand, if the warrior puts his levels into health and the mage puts hers into magicka... hmm.
Not sad to see Athletics go.
Thirith on 16/5/2011 at 12:36
I always liked the thinking behind the Elder Scrolls levelling system, and it made a great change from D&D-type systems where you could level up in a skill that you never used because experience points weren't skill-specific, but it was clearly flawed in practice.
I think it's only fair to say, though, that in practice and for people who weren't trying to play the system (i.e. how do I best play to maximise my gains?) the system worked pretty well. There were exceptions (e.g. playing a character focused on stealth and social skills), but by and large the Elder Scrolls system gets less shit from people who simply went and played as they wanted without trying to power-level.
Nameless Voice on 16/5/2011 at 13:05
Don't get me wrong, I love usage-based skills. It was just the bizarre way that you gained attributes which felt broken, as the game penalised you significantly if you didn't power-level - especially with unfair things like the extra health from increasing Endurance not being retrospective.
Matthew on 16/5/2011 at 13:28
I know that in Morrowind my battle mage felt significantly underpowered when going up against some of the end-story enemies.
steo on 16/5/2011 at 17:37
Magic in vanilla Morrowind was pretty immensely underpowered. Probably more fun to play though.
Nameless Voice on 16/5/2011 at 18:15
I thought it was very powerful in Morrowind?
The magic in Oblivion, on the other hand, is ridiculously underpowered. It starts off being decent, but the magicka cost of increasing damage doesn't scale with the default levelling of enemies, making your spells become increasingly weak unless you use cheap tricks like throwing on "Weakness to..." spells to increase a damage multiplier for each hit.
steo on 16/5/2011 at 21:06
Well... Enchantment/Alchemy were very good in Morrowind, but actually using spells for combat was really underpowered - Magicka doesn't recharge over time, spells take a long time to cast and also have a chance of failure if your skill isn't high enough. Alternatively any character can (pay to) enchant a ring with any spell they want - which can be cast almost instantaneously, requires no magicka, has no chance of failure, and it will recharge for free over time. Rings generally weigh less than magicka potions, and a player can easily carry a whole bunch of them and switch between them when they're empty, and even if they do run out of charge, you just need to use soulstones to reload instead of magicka potions.
