Elder scrolls- two steps forward, two steps back?

[Eddie the head]

Gear should not be a progression system IMO, gear should be something you pick because you like it, which is what Skyrim moved to.

Sorry, but chain mail is inferior to plate armour and no amount of modification will change that fact.

Not true. Chain mail distributes kinetic energy much better then plate mail, meaning it blocks projectiles better. Any arrow, or magic attack with kinetic force, would have it's energy "absorbed" and thus not be as effective. So you can't say one is binarily better then the other. It would depend on what is being used.

 

[SajuukKhar]

And you know what? Those SMALL CHANGES would have made the game much more balanced and much more friendly to the rpg crowd.

The thing is though, most Elder Scrolls fan don't want that.

People who try to suggest forms of limitations like "only being able to smith certain armor types to only so high" or "can't make spells with contradictory effects" get flamed like mad on the official Elder Scrolls forums because its really a stupid idea.

If you don't want iron armor to go past a certain level then don't smith it that high, if you don't want a spell that does two contradictory things, then don't make it, if you don't want to put some uber-enchantment that gives you like +500 skill or something, then don't make it.

The game is made to be broken so that people who want to keep the game balanced can, and the people who want to become uber-god of unstoppable power/doom, can also. Why people feel the need to impose some uniform "balance" against everyone is beyond me.

Player choice > forced limitations.

 

[charge52]

The entire game is reliant on stats.
- It doesn't matter how well you can spam mouse 1, if you don't have a high one-handed/two-handed/Archery skill, and perks, you won't win combat.
-It doesn't matter what badass armor you have, if you don't have a high heavy/light armor skill, and perks, you will die.
-Your ability to smith, do alchemy, and enchant, are entirely based on stats.
-All magic skills need perks in order to be viable past early-game.

- Have we played the same unmodded skyrim? You will win in combat if you spam mouse 1 regardless of whether or not you have invested perks in the weapons respective tree. The only way you could lose is if A) You are fighting a giant at level 1, or B) fall into a coma and forget how to open your inventory and drink a potion.
- Same as the top, whether you invest perks into the armor or not doesn't determine whether or not you will win, especially in your scenario where you have badass armor.
- This is the only part where I agree 50%, they are based on perks, not stats. You can have as high an Smithing level as you want, it's still perks that determine what you can do.
- Not really, the closest to this is needing magicka. Even level one spells can take down most enemies in the game, it takes longer at higher levels, but unless you somehow missed the boatload of health and magicka potions they never require perks to be viable.

 

[SajuukKhar]

- Have we played the same unmodded skyrim? You will win in combat if you spam mouse 1 regardless of whether or not you have invested perks in the weapons respective tree. The only way you could lose is if A) You are fighting a giant at level 1, or B) fall into a coma and forget how to open your inventory and drink a potion.
- Same as the top, whether you invest perks into the armor or not doesn't determine whether or not you will win, especially in your scenario where you have badass armor.
- This is the only part where I agree 50%, they are based on perks, not stats. You can have as high an Smithing level as you want, it's still perks that determine what you can do.
- Not really, the closest to this is needing magicka. Even level one spells can take down most enemies in the game, it takes longer at higher levels, but unless you somehow missed the boatload of health and magicka potions they never require perks to be viable.

-Yes I have, trying to take on Falmer warmongers, high level vampires, mid-high level dragons with a glass sword, and no perks, will make you loose, you simply cannot do enough damage to kill things with nearly, if not over, 1000 hp, when your sword only does 16 damage. they will out damage you, even if you have 80% damage resistance.

-Without perks Daedric armor only has 205 armor rating, and that is at 100 skill, which is so low that bandits with bows could hit you for over 200 damage, trying to kill anything like high level Falmer, vampires, giants, dragons, will get you killed.

-even with potion spamming, trying to kill a elgendary dragons with a 8damage firestream attack, will result in you dieing long before you kill them.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Oblivion doesn't have perks. Why are you using perks in your example of Skyrim spells?

X and Y.

Because the perks simulate the repeat of spells in higher classes that Oblivion had.

Like there being an apprentice, adept, journeymen... etc. etc. level fireball spell in Oblivion, is now replaced by the Fireball + augmented flames + other perks, spell in Skyrim.

The magic perk system in Skyrim fixed the notorious issue Oblivion had of there being way to many spells that clog up you spell list, and having like 1 out of every 8 of those spells be repeats of other spells, just with different damage.

 

[Joccaren]

It does make sense that it is tied to a perk, otherwise then every character has access to the exact same thing from game start making all characters more homogenous. Also, it makes sense that it would require some amount of training to be able to know, and hit, armor foes with maces in a specific spot so that the maces damage "ignores" their armor, or how to use a sword in such a way that you utilize your swings better so you get "bonus critical damage" etc. etc. An average Joe who just swings weapons around wouldn't be skilled enough to get those "effects" to work.

Eh, I'm going to disagree with you here. A giant hammer/mace will get the force of its attack through armour so long as you hit the opponent. Its why the weapon gains the perk - not because you have to hit it in a certain place, but because of how the weapon deals its damage. It doesn't try to cut through the armour, pierce it or otherwise damage it. It just tries to hit that armour, and transfer its kinetic energy to the person inside said armour.
And in what way would this make characters more homogeneous? It increases weapon diversity and still allows for archers, mages and such to go about their merry business. All it effects is warriors, and then only slightly. They can still improve in different directions, and use different weapons/combos primarily as well. If anything it lessens the homogenisation for early game as every weapon no longer does the same thing, and late game warriors will still be using their favoured type of weapon, so... yeah.
Of course, it does remove perks from the warrior trees [One handed/Two handed]. So, what to do with this? Add new perks that improve those bonuses the weapons already have, add new perks that unlock new things that you can do as the warrior [For example, the backwards/forwards power attack sort of things, but with different combos], or add new perks that do something completely different. In that way you increase weapon diversity, increase early game warrior diversity, and still allow for a different set of perks for warriors to have end game.

Leveling your magic skills actually does increase the number of charges you get from magical staves. It doesn't make much sense that leveling restoration would make you do more damage with a restoration staff, as the staff enchantment is like blue paint on a car, you may be master of paint but that wont magically make the paint any more blue, or turn red, it may let you spread the paint out more so you can have "more" by using what you have more efficiently though.

The way magic works in Skyrim is equivalent to paint on a car. Doesn't mean it has to be. Could be equal to your speaker system in the car. With worse speaker systems, you can't amplify the music the radio receives that much. Get an amazing speaker set and you can shake the neighbourhood with the sound you can create by amplifying what you're given by the radio. It can work with increased damage too.
By virtue of the 'Holy Weapons' comment, I also get the feeling that he's got weapons in mind that aren't in Skyrim. Things like Dawnbreaker, which is a Holy Sword of Meridia, only your level of a certain type magic determines how well you are able to wield the power within that certain magical artefact.

The entire game is reliant on stats.
- It doesn't matter how well you can spam mouse 1, if you don't have a high one-handed/two-handed/Archery skill, and perks, you won't win combat.

Not really. I can manage most fights in vanilla Skyrim without being hit, and when I am hit I just chug a potion, or tank it with my ridiculous health - which is attainable through finding health bonus loot without even putting points into health, though of course not to the same extent.
More to the point, if you don't have any points in one-handed/two-handed/archery, the fights might actually be fights rather than 1 hit kill fests.

-It doesn't matter what badass armor you have, if you don't have a high heavy/light armor skill, and perks, you will die.

Not really.
Armour caps out at around 80% damage reduction. It is possible to get this just from armour alone. You don't need skill in heavy/light armour, you just need to have money to buy the gear - and money is everywhere.

-Your ability to smith, do alchemy, and enchant, are entirely based on stats.

They're based on perks that are unlocked by doing something over and over. The stats do little to nothing [Smithing I'll give allows you to upgrade weapons more], and the perks are what do pretty much everything for those skills.

-All magic skills need perks in order to be viable past early-game.

Not really. No matter the magic or skills you just need patience for it to be viable late game, and you can get some pretty mean loot drops that do away with any need for levelling those skills too.

Might I also point out that you've actually accurately labelled these things as what they are - SKILLS. In an RPG context, these are seperate from STATS. The three STATS that exist in Skyrim are Health, Magicka and Stamina, and all they do is directly influence their namesake by 10 each level for one of them [With stamina also increasing carry weight].
A cry for STATS is a cry for things like strength, that will increase your damage with all melee weapons, your carry weight, how much damage you can block and how far you can draw back a bow [In other games it would also influence whether you could wield heavier weapons or not, but that doesn't really fit with TES], or Intelligence that increases Magicka regen, spell potency, how quickly you improve skills and how much potions effect you.
This allows greater diversification of characters, and the only downside is it requires a bit more thinking. You don't even have to make anything chance based, but they effect your character so that your incredibly strong Nord who is pro with one handed weapons doesn't have to had spent his life using two handed weapons to deal a heavy blow that knocks an enemy down - he just uses his raw strength.

When comparing a game that has X and Y, and a game that as Y you can only compare the Ys since it is the only thing both games have. It was a completely fair comparison because I only compared the things both games have.

Besides the point that vanilla in moddable games generally means "Without mods" rather than "Without using what is in the game to make something" [I.E: The potions you can craft in Skyrim aren't vanilla from the way you're saying this, yet they ARE in the vanilla game], In the context of this argument, I don't quite agree.
The argument was that Oblivion had more spells than Skyrim. You said otherwise. All that gets compared here are spells. Not whether Bethesda designed them or they were designed using the spell making mechanic. If you decide that a perk that increases damage in Skyrim counts as extra spells, increased damage spells thanks to perks/things used in spell crafting count as extra spells too.
If the argument was simply which game had more Bethesda-Made spells, your statements might hold a bit more ground, but from what I could tell it was just spells that were mentioned, not whether they were Bethesda made or in game player made.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Eh, I'm going to disagree with you here.

It makes characters more homogenous because you are taking a special effect that only Warrior has, and giving it to Thieves and Mages. It's like if Mages had a perk that give fireballs a AOE effect, and instead of making it a perk, you just gave all fireballs the aoe effect by nature. You are taking away an effect that only one class has, which gives them a difference from the other classes, and giving to everyone, meaning everyone has the same effect, and making everyone more homogeneous.

The way it is now, the game has weapon diversity, by letting people pick the special effect they like most, making their preferred weapon type better then the ones, and it allows character diversity by giving that character effects other characters dont have, and if they do add more perks to replace those perks, people will just sit there and say "waa we want THOSE effects to be in weapons at the start also". It's an endless cycle.

The way magic works in Skyrim is equivalent to paint on a car. Doesn't mean it has to be.

Weapons like Dawnbreaker get their power from the Daedric lords who created them, it still doesn't make a lick of sense for your magic skills to influence the power of an artifact made by a god. That system just doesn't make sense with how magic works in the Elder Scrolls universe, and doing a retcon of that magnitude would piss off so many people.

The Not really. I can manage most fights in vanilla Skyrim without being hit,

Well first off, even with 100 smithing, and the dragon smithing perk, the highest you can smith a Dragonbone sword, the strongest sword in the game, up to is 75 damage, and that's with 100 one-handed skill, and all +damage perks applied. Without those perks, its more like 35. Mid-level bandits have 300+ HP, and mid-level versions of everything else, such as Falmer, and Draugr, have even more HP. The only way the game can turn into a one hit kill fest is if you alchemy exploit your smithing skill to some ungodly level.

Also, even with 400hp, 80% damage resistance, and 45% magicka resistance, most high level enemies such as Draugr Death-Overlords, Falmer Warmongers, and Ancient-Legendary dragons, still take large chunks of HP out with only a hit or two. Unless you do some major potion spam, which is in itself an exploit, they will kill you long before you can kill them, if you are using a one-handed weapon without perks.

Not really.
Armour caps out at around 80% damage reduction. It is possible to get this just from armour alone. You don't need skill in heavy/light armour, you just need to have money to buy the gear - and money is everywhere.

100% wrong. With 100 heavy armor skill, and no perks, a full suit of Daedric armor + shield, the best armor in the game, only reaches 205 armor rating. The cap of 80% damage resistance is only achieved at 567 armor rating. It is 100% impossible to reach the armor cap without perks, and/or major smithing, and even with every single heavy armor perk, Deadric armor only gets up to 530, meaning you HAVE to use smithing, even with all heavy armor perks, to reach the cap.

They're based on perks that are unlocked by doing something over and over. The stats do little to nothing [Smithing I'll give allows you to upgrade weapons more], and the perks are what do pretty much everything for those skills.

and perks are part of the skill itself.

Not really. No matter the magic or skills you just need patience for it to be viable late game, and you can get some pretty mean loot drops that do away with any need for levelling those skills too.

Nope, magic at higher level is worthless without perks, unless you exploit enchanting to get 100% cost reduction, but that is an exploit.

Trying to kill a Dragur Death overlord, with ebony weapons, while your just shooting your 8 damage magic stream, and it has over 1,000 hp, will get you killed longer before you can kill it, Unless you potion spam.

Might I also point out that you've actually accurately labelled these things as what they are - SKILLS. In an RPG context, these are seperate from STATS. The three STATS that exist in Skyrim are Health, Magicka and Stamina, and all they do is directly influence their namesake by 10 each level for one of them [With stamina also increasing carry weight].

Well first off, raising your health/magicka also increases your health/magicka regen rates. Health and Magicka do more then just raise your total pool.

Secondly, attribute systems in Elder Scrolls, and indeed in other games like Fallout, are flawed. Raising your special skills in Fallout by 1 or 2 points via implants, and the intense training perk, has very little, if any, noticeable to your character. It's only through extreme attribute gouging, like lowering a special to one, or raising it by 4 points, that any real noticeable changes take place.

The same is true in past Elder Scrolls games. As you leveled up, you got bonuses to your attributes, based on how many skills points from skills in that attribute you raised. Due to all of a classes skills only taking up 3 of the 8 attributes, one would eventually get to a point were all of their main attributes were maxed, and so they had to raise their minor attributes to continue leveling. This resulted in all characters having several maxed attributes, and many others in the 70s, and while a difference of 30 points may seem like a lot the way stats were calculated mad it not really that big of a deal. The difference between the magicka given at 100 INT, and 70 INT, was 60, and that was the cost of maybe two mid-high level spells. The difference between a mage who had mastered INT and Magicka, and a warrior with a INT of 70, was TWO SPELLS.

My Oblivion Warrior and Mage characters with 10 in all skills, and 70-100 in all attributes, played exactly the same, had practically the same damage, practically the same magicka, and the basically the same armor protection.

My Skyrim characters on the other hand
-Warrior, has access to three special power attacks, does twice the damage, has several special weapon bonus, has twice as much armor protection, and isn't slowed down by wearing armor.
-Mage, can fire nearly 10X as many spells as my warrior, can heal many times as much, cna use illusion spells on monsters my warrior could never dream of

The simple fact of the matter is attribute systems only impose conformity amongst different characters, and the "diversity" supposedly brought by them exists only the displayed number, and not in the real mechanics behind the game. This is true of past Elder Scrolls games, it's true of Fallout, is it true of ALL games with attribute systems. It is best to just strip it out, merge the effects attributes governed with those skills, and allow for true character customization.

The removal of attributes only increased the real diversity of characters in Skyrim by 10-fold, and bringing back attributes would be a significant step backwards.

Besides the point that vanilla in moddable games generally means "Without mods" rather than "Without using what is in the game to make something" [I.E: The potions you can craft in Skyrim aren't vanilla], In the context of this argument,

Vanilla spells are spells that exist in the game at rlease.

The things listed are not spells but spell effects, I will admit Oblivion has more vanilla spell effects then Skyrim, but in terms of vanilla spells, it does not.

 

[Innocent Flower]

I can't tell if you're serious or not. that's the most... wrong argument iv seen.

Real logic, gameplay... what comes first?

Logic
It makes no sense to have 100 skill and no perks being less effective than 20 and two perks. In some skills (iv looked in the creation kit)such as enchanting there is NO increase in enchant power from leveling said skill up.

Axes do cause people to bleed. You don't need a message from the stars to let you make people bleed with axes. It's just stupid. Infact most pointy things should be able to make you bleed and including a few blunt ones. perhaps less than an axe- but a katana slash across the chest should result in a little blood trickling out don't you think?

and it just doesn't make sense to have such massive jumps. Like suddenly learning to do 15x damage with sneak attacks or gaining 100 extra carrying capacity.


On gameplay

We could have already had incredibly diverse rolls if granted a fallout style 'choose stats at start' and not increasing them without a perk or enchantment throughout the game. (no multipliers at the end of a level)

But what about the people who level up who can attain many perks but can only choose one? why must they choose when they've worked hard on many skills?

Half the perks are completely useless. the other half are vital. There isn't actualy many that are a 'perk' Rather than a gamechanger or useless.

 

[SajuukKhar]

snip

Gameplay comes before everything in a game, everything. Just like movies do what makes the movie better, not what is necessary logical in the real world.

If Jame Bond villains followed logic, the movies would be over, and Bond would be dead, because the badguy would just shoot him, instead of leaving him in some easily escapeable trap. The movies not following logic is what makes them better, and more exciting.

Games are GAMES first, and logical second. Just like movies are movies first, and logical second, and books are books first, and logical second. Media should do what makes it more exciting, not what is "logical".
.
.
Also
-It makes no sense that a warrior who is heavily trained in one-handed weapons, by having a crap ton of perks, and a mage who isn't, by having no perks, do the exact same damage, with the warrior only having a slight increase in weapon bonus powers.

Making weapon damage primarily focused only on skill, instead of perks, only forces homogenization as it removes real differences between character types, and instead turns the difference between a warrior, and a mage, into trivialistic "the warrior does slightly more bleed damage", instead of "this warrior does twice the damage with one-handed weapons then this mage."

Trivialising character progression for the sake of "real-world logic", especially in a fantasy game, is generally considered bad game design.

-Actually, daggers go from X3 critical damage, to X6 with the backstab perk, to X15 with the Assassin's Blade perk. One could argue that the X15 should be brought to X12 to match the previous doubling from X3 to X6 that backstab provided, but daggers ARE supposed to be the uber-stealth-skill weapons, but the point is that it isn't a single jump from X3 to X15.

Also, it doesn't make much sense in the first place that I can carry like 15 battle axes either, that I can get 100 more carry weight is no less inconsistent with "logic" then what I could carry in the first place, and changing the carry system to were you can carry like 15 battle axes kinda negates the whole "loot " aspect of the game.

-The Fallout style of attribute system is also broken, as I mentioned before. Having a difference of one or two points doesn't actually change much in your character, it is only through extreme STAT manipulation, like dropping Charisma to 1, that any real change takes place. It is better, and offers more real change in your character, in the long run, to remove attributes entirely, and just make all of their effects into perks.

Also, forcing people to pick their attributes, that are unchangeable, at the beginning of the game, requires that the player have some psychic foresight about how the game works, in order to prevent themselves from making a build that isn't viable. I don't know about you, but most people I know dont have pre-cognative powers.

-

But what about the people who level up who can attain many perks but can only choose one? why must they choose when they've worked hard on many skills?

What? I am sorry, but this makes no sense. I dont know what you were trying to ask.

-The only perks I have found "useless" are the lockpcking ones, all other perks from all other skill trees have use depending on your character's archetype.

 

[Joccaren]

It makes characters more homogenous because you are taking a special effect that only Warrior has, and giving it to Thieves and Mages. It's like if Mages had a perk that give fireballs a AOE effect, and instead of making it a perk, you just gave all fireballs the aoe effect by nature. You are taking away an effect that only one class has, which gives them a difference from the other classes, and giving to everyone, meaning everyone has the same effect, and making everyone more homogeneous.

Thieves and mages aren't going to use that though. A mage is going to use their spells, and a thief is likely to use either a bow or the daggers for the sneak attack bonus, or just sneak past without a care. Spellswords might use weapons, but they'd have unlocked those perks anyway as a part of that build.

The way it is now, the game has weapon diversity, by letting people pick the special effect they like most, making their preferred weapon type better then the ones, and it allows character diversity by giving that character effects other characters dont have, and if they do add more perks to replace those perks, people will just sit there and say "waa we want THOSE effects to be in weapons at the start also". It's an endless cycle.

There is no weapon diversity outside of the speed of strikes and the proportional damage. There is class diversity in that a 'warrior' class is able to gain special bonuses when using certain weapons, but the weapons themselves have no such inherent value. They are merely spam-click objects that behave pretty much exactly the same.
And don't try a slippery slope fallacy. Its the same as me saying that you getting your way in Skyrim means that you'll be crying for weapons to be locked to classes for diversity in the next Elder Scrolls. Simply because your view on this subject revolves around tying something to a class doesn't mean that's your view for everything. Likewise, so long as there is weapon diversity, what reason is there to call for special warrior styled attacks or upgrades to those perks to be made available from the get go?

Weapons like Dawnbreaker get their power from the Daedric lords who created them, it still doesn't make a lick of sense for your magic skills to influence the power of an artifact made by a god. That system just doesn't make sense with how magic works in the Elder Scrolls universe, and doing a retcon of that magnitude would piss off so many people.

Eh, I'm not going to argue about lore, but I don't think it would be too outlandish for one to be able to amplify the magic sent out by an item with their own magic. Even if it is the power of a Daedric Prince, its only a tiny portion of that power - as is evidenced by the rather pitiful bonuses overall, likely in the name of balance.

Well first off, even with 100 smithing, and the dragon smithing perk, the highest you can smith a Dragonbone sword, the strongest sword in the game, up to is 75 damage, and that's with 100 one-handed skill, and all +damage perks applied. Without those perks, its more like 35. Mid-level bandits have 300+ HP, and mid-level versions of everything else, such as Falmer, and Draugr, have even more HP. The only way the game can turn into a one hit kill fest is if you alchemy exploit your smithing skill to some ungodly level.

One hit kill fest might be a little bit of an exaggeration. Anything that didn't scale with your level is a 1 hit kill fest. Everything else dies in about 10 seconds anyway thanks to Duel Wielding Power Attacks, and if you have it the Elemental Fury Shout its closer to 2 seconds. It ends up as 35*4*1.5=210 damage per power attack, not including criticals, enchantments or anything else. 35 base, 4 attacks in the dual wield power attack [One left, One Right, One both], and 1.5 multiplier for it being a power attack.

Also, even with 400hp, 80% damage resistance, and 45% magicka resistance, most high level enemies such as Draugr Death-Overlords, Falmer Warmongers, and Ancient-Legendary dragons, still take large chunks of HP out with only a hit or two. Unless you do some major potion spam, which is in itself an exploit, they will kill you long before you can kill them, if you are using a one-handed weapon without perks.

This really is a question of how bad you are at dodging. If you stand still, yeah, you're screwed. As said, enemies rarely hit me. If you can master the timing of the attacks in a battle, you can dodge a fair portion of them and greatly lower your damage recieved for the fight. Let us not also forget the faithful meatshields - Lydia/Other companion, your horse and your dog. Whilst generally useless in a fight, their tendency to just run in and get attacked distracts enemies for long enough for you to take on at least one, and after that they periodically return to get their ass kicked so you can dodge some more attacks.
Also, in what way is chugging potions exploiting? Yeah, its OP as all hell. You don't exploit anything to do it though. You just drink potions in your inventory, as it seems pretty clear Bethesda intended for you too. The only way it would be exploiting is if you Alchemy crafted tons of potions of +10,000 health or something, or otherwise get the system to work in a way that wasn't really intended. Thanks to the way potions work, they're pretty obviously meant to be chugged en mass when you need them. There's not really any need to set them up like they have been otherwise.

and perks are part of the skill itself.

And abilities in most RPGs are unlocked at each level. Does this mean your level is what determines how many spells you know in that game?
No. Whether you've put your level up points into abilities does, and the same holds true for Skyrim. The only thing that changes is what exactly it is that prevents low level players from getting the high level spells. In most other RPGs its Stats, in Skyrim its your Skill level.

Nope, magic at higher level is worthless without perks, unless you exploit enchanting to get 100% cost reduction, but that is an exploit.

Is it efficient at higher levels?
No, but even with perks its not - it just takes too long to kill things.
With or without perks it is possible to use magic and get through the game well enough. Its just very time consuming, which holds for both magic with and without perks.

Trying to kill a Dragur Death overlord, with ebony weapons, while your just shooting your 8 damage magic stream, and it has over 1,000 hp, will get you killed longer before you can kill it, Unless you potion spam.

Done. Kite, kite, kite, kite, kite, kite, kite - repeat for ages. Occasionally dragon shout stun it. Takes a lot of time, and if you just stand still you're dead, but really, in an action game you shouldn't be standing still. If you are, you're doing it wrong. You kite the enemy, send magic at it, and wait until its dead. You're out of mana? Wait till it comes back. If you're even a moderate level though you should have a lot of magicka from putting points into Magicka upon levelling up. 10 levels and your capacity doubles. Thats without perks or increases to that magic class's skill.

Well first off, raising your health/magicka also increases your health/magicka regen rates. Health and Magicka do more then just raise your total pool.

That is because Health/Magicka regen is % based. The more health you have, the more you'll regen. Far as I can tell increasing Health/Magicka doesn't change that % heal rate, merely the amount it heals thanks to giving you more health. Could be wrong though, and it increases health regen by 0.1% or something [Increasing it by 1% would allow you 85% health regen per second at max level, so I'd be extremely surprised if it got that high] I'll check the Creation Kit later.

Secondly, attribute systems in Elder Scrolls, and indeed in other games like Fallout, are flawed. Raising your special skills in Fallout by 1 or 2 points via implants, and the intense training perk, has very little, if any, noticeable to your character. It's only through extreme attribute gouging, like lowering a special to one, or raising it by 4 points, that any real noticeable changes take place.

The same is true in past Elder Scrolls games. As you leveled up, you got bonuses to your attributes, based on how many skills points from skills in that attribute you raised. Due to all of a classes skills only taking up 3 of the 8 attributes, one would eventually get to a point were all of their main attributes were maxed, and so they had to raise their minor attributes to continue leveling. This resulted in all characters having several maxed attributes, and many others in the 70s, and while a difference of 30 points may seem like a lot the way stats were calculated mad it not really that big of a deal. The difference between the magicka given at 100 INT, and 70 INT, was 60, and that was the cost of maybe two mid-high level spells. The difference between a mage who had mastered INT and Magicka, and a warrior with a INT of 70, was TWO SPELLS.

My Oblivion Warrior and Mage characters with 10 in all skills, and 70-100 in all attributes, played exactly the same, had practically the same damage, practically the same magicka, and the basically the same armor protection.

My Skyrim characters on the other hand
-Warrior, has access to three special power attacks, does twice the damage, has several special weapon bonus, has twice as much armor protection, and isn't slowed down by wearing armor.
-Mage, can fire nearly 10X as many spells as my warrior, can heal many times as much, cna use illusion spells on monsters my warrior could never dream of

The simple fact of the matter is attribute systems only impose conformity amongst different characters, and the "diversity" supposedly brought by them exists only the displayed number, and not in the real mechanics behind the game. This is true of past Elder Scrolls games, it's true of Fallout, is it true of ALL games with attribute systems. It is best to just strip it out, merge the effects attributes governed with those skills, and allow for true character customization.

The removal of attributes only increased the real diversity of characters in Skyrim by 10-fold, and bringing back attributes would be a significant step backwards.

So, basically, because Bethesda has done a poor job of Stats in the past means they are a flawed concept?
Seriously, from the way that's described, Bethesda fail at the mechanical side of games. They can make the world, but the mechanics they just can't do. In most games there is a noticeable difference between a mage and warrior class, even if you were to remove the fact that they are unable to gain each others skills by virtue of their class.
For one, remove limits on how many points can be put into each skill. Then reduce the number of points given on level up to 3 or so, and have each skill start with maybe 10-12 points in it. Have each point increase to a Stat provide a marked increase to a value. One point in Wisdom gives 10 more mana, as an example. Then one level nets you 30 more wisdom at max, though generally you'd probably only get 10 or 20 as you'd put points into intelligence for increased potency as well. A level 10 warrior with 10 intelligence and 12 wisdom will not be able to use spells near as effectively as a level 5 mage with 23 wisdom and 17 intelligence - the mage has a 110 mana bonus for one, as well as bonuses to spell potency.
Its not an issue with the system, its an issue with how Bethesda fail to balance it, like they do everything else.

Vanilla spells are spells that exist in the game at rlease.

The things listed are not spells but spell effects, I will admit Oblivion has more vanilla spell effects then Skyrim, but in terms of vanilla spells, it does not.

In that case niether your increase fire damage or stagger things are extra spells, as they are simply spell effects too. The individual spells are just "Flames" or "Frost" or W/E, simply adding a new effect to them doesn't change that.

 

[Joccaren]

Also
-It makes no sense that a warrior who is heavily trained in one-handed weapons, by having a crap ton of perks, and a mage who isn't, by having no perks, do the exact same damage, with the warrior only having a slight increase in weapon bonus powers.

Making weapon damage primarily focused only on skill, instead of perks, only forces homogenization as it removes real differences between character types, and instead turns the difference between a warrior, and a mage, into trivialistic "the warrior does slightly more bleed damage", instead of "this warrior does twice the damage with one-handed weapons then this mage."

If it is based off skill, you'd assume that warrior would have a much high one-handed skill. As such, his damage would be much higher as well. The mage would probably only have the default 15 one-handed skill. If they had a decent one-handed skill, they're no longer a mage. They're a battlemage/spellsword and should be good at using one-handed weapons as well as magic.
Really, all the perks do is make it so your strength increases in jumps rather than gradually over time. That 20% bonus damage could have been added at 1% per level for the first 20 levels. Hell, I think it is, its just there as an additional sudden jump in power.

Also, forcing people to pick their attributes, that are unchangeable, at the beginning of the game, requires that the player have some psychic foresight about how the game works, in order to prevent themselves from making a build that isn't viable. I don't know about you, but most people I know dont have pre-cognative powers.

Agreed on this. Stats should have a certain level of them chosen at the start, but be mostly gained through playing the game. In this way you might build your character wrong initially, but be able to turn out well once you understand things and start applying your points properly. Of course, adding items, spells or quest rituals to reset your stats and allow you to select them again also works, but can be easily exploited and thus should only be allowed to occur once, or should be very expensive.

What? I am sorry, but this makes no sense. I dont know what you were trying to ask.

Basically its along the lines of people who level up destruction magic, alchemy, smithing and one handed, gain a level, and can only gain a bonus in one of them because of that. Should not a small bonus be applied to each instead of a large jump to only one?
Of course, some stats do gain a small bonus from levels without perks, but for the majority its either utterly unnoticeable or non-existent.

-The only perks I have found "useless" are the lockpcking ones, all other perks from all other skill trees have use depending on your character's archetype.

Useless perks largely depend on what you're playing. Playing a one-handed sword user that duel wields? Many of the one handed perks involving axes or maces are useless. The majority of other trees are useless - magic, two handed, block, archery - ect, and a number of armour perks [Iron fists as an example. Sure it helps in the occasional brawl, but really, when are you going to be seriously fighting without a weapon?], or things like the speech perks that increase your sell price and decrease buy price [You're already swimming in money and struggling to sell stuff because all the merchants are broke, what use are those perks?]. If you become Thane of a hold the ability to bribe guards is generally useless, unless you go on a mad killing rampage or get yourself into a situation where bribing them is impossible or impractical.
Dependent on how you play, the majority of perks are useless on any given playthrough. When you've filled up the perks that are useful to you, you're left with points that do nothing 'cause you put them into things you nearly never use. I'm at level 30 in my current playthrough and its already almost at that point. I have 8 points left to spend that will actually help me. After that, its all just a matter of "Here will do", or even "I can put a point here so I'll do it" rather than "This could help me, so I'll improve it".

 

[SajuukKhar]

snip

-That Thieves and mages use it or not is irrelevant. A mage who picks up one-handed weapons late in his life, aka after he has used all of his perks, should NEVER be able to match the damage a trained warrior, who has spent his entire life training with a sword, aka who has put perks into one-handed. It makes zero sense, and even then there are still plenty of mage character that use one handed, and they should not be able to do as much damage as a warrior.

-Actually, one handed, and two handed, weapons have different reaches, with two handed weapons having 30% more reach then one handed weapons, and each type of weapon, axe, mace, swords, has it's own chance to stagger enemies when using a power attack.

-Dual weilding is meant to be the strongest means of damage, but it comes at the cost of not being able to block, and thus taking more damage. its a tradeoff.

-Not everyone uses a meatshield companion, and then again, abusing the game's systems to your advantage is a choice you make, and that's fine, but people who play the game normally, and dont abuse the game's systems in a similar way, have different results.

-I am not sure of the point you were trying to make about perks/abilities in other RPGs anymore.

-Having to spend 10 hours to get through one dungeon because magic does so little damage is not a viable means to play the game, you will never get it done at that rate.

-Even with 200 magicka, and 100 destruction skill, the most basic flames spell still costs 8magicka a second, giving you 25 seconds, at most, of use. And since the flames spell only does 8 damage a second, which gives you only 200 damage, less then 1/5 of a Dragur Death Overlord's health, and the fact that it takes nearly two minutes to fully regen your magicka while in combat, means its going to take AGES just to beat one guy. It is not a viable way to play the game, as it takes far to long to get through anything. Being able to do it =/= viable.

-No your not wrong when it comes to health/magicka regen.

-No, it has nothing to do with BETHESDA's ability to do attributes, it has to do with attribute systems in ALL games. Every single game with attribute systems has the exact same flaws, putting points into yur attributes does very little to effectively make your character better, it is only through MASSIVE point differences do any real changes take place. The difference between characters in games with attributes is mostly only in the displayed numbers on the screen, however, under the hood, when you actually calculate out all the damage resistances, or critical chances, etc. etc. you will find that there is little real difference between your character.

-No, that isn't the case at all, your not making any sense. A fireball spells, and a fireball spell with an added fear effect, are two different spells. A level 10 magnitude fire spells, and an 11 magnitude fire spells, are the same spell because they dont have different effects.

 

[Innocent Flower]

That's just stupid.

How could you not understand that attributes can work and that perks should not be like they are in skyrim? The point of tes is to get better at what you DO by DOING it. Fighting with swords all day should make you a better swordsman. Using destruction magic should allow you to get better at destruction magic. Smithing all day should make you a better smith. you should NEVER get 20% better at something because the sky offers you a choice of perks and a perkpoint for one thing to get better at.

It would be easy to have attributes matter more. For instance having 0 strength at 0% strength and 100 strengh being 100% stengh. Meaning that someone with 40 strengh will find it easy to smash past the block of someone with 20 strengh. being twice as strong. or someone with 100 endurance running 10 times as far without tire than someone with 10 endurance.

Furthermore attributes CAN work and are neccessary for the ballancing of Enchantment. By this i mean that you should increase your strengh or speed or agility than your swordsman skills. Or at the very least increase your willpower rather than reduce the cost of a single school of magic to nothing.

people CAN pick the correct ones at the start. I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that a warrior should be stronger and that charisma has something to do with talking to people. Especialy if you give little descriptions. Im sure a company as large as bethesda could also put in a little calculator that describes the kind of character recomended for someone's chosen stats. there's also the lovely prospect of tutorials.

skyrim did it wrong. oblivion did it wrong too... multipliers are silly. But less wrong.

 

[WoW Killer]

That's just stupid.

How could you not understand that attributes can work and that perks should not be like they are in skyrim? The point of tes is to get better at what you DO by DOING it. Fighting with swords all day should make you a better swordsman. Using destruction magic should allow you to get better at destruction magic. Smithing all day should make you a better smith. you should NEVER get 20% better at something because the sky offers you a choice of perks and a perkpoint for one thing to get better at.

It would be easy to have attributes matter more. For instance having 0 strength at 0% strength and 100 strengh being 100% stengh. Meaning that someone with 40 strengh will find it easy to smash past the block of someone with 20 strengh. being twice as strong. or someone with 100 endurance running 10 times as far without tire than someone with 10 endurance.

Furthermore attributes CAN work and are neccessary for the ballancing of Enchantment. By this i mean that you should increase your strengh or speed or agility than your swordsman skills. Or at the very least increase your willpower rather than reduce the cost of a single school of magic to nothing.

people CAN pick the correct ones at the start. I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that a warrior should be stronger and that charisma has something to do with talking to people. Especialy if you give little descriptions. Im sure a company as large as bethesda could also put in a little calculator that describes the kind of character recomended for someone's chosen stats. there's also the lovely prospect of tutorials.

skyrim did it wrong. oblivion did it wrong too... multipliers are silly. But less wrong.

I'm not going to claim that the perk system is perfect or anything. I can come up with as many nitpicks and suggestions as you can. But it's still a significant improvement over the old system, because it puts the player in control over their growth. It's like you say, the skill system is there so that you improve at the things you do. You're supposed to play the game organically and let the skills raise accordingly. That's not what happened with the old system. It promoted artificially power levelling your character. If you went out and completed quests, doing the content you wanted to do, then your character would end up less powerful than if you had stood by a bed spamming cantrips to yourself. That can't be right.

Same deal with Morrowind of course, but it was less of an issue back then because it was a much easier game. No matter how you levelled you'd be a walking god before long. With Oblivion's much more aggressive scaling you had a real sense of your character becoming less powerful through levelling. The scaling itself was a good idea though, don't get me wrong. I think the ideal a lot of people are looking for is a more challenge orientated gameplay style in the kind of worlds you get in TES games. Skyrim falls a little short of that ideal because the combat isn't yet good enough IMO, but it seems much closer than any of the other games.

Now a few comments on design.

You still need to reach a certain skill level to take the relevant perks, so it's not like you can get better at a skill when not using it at all. I can see how there's still a certain disconnect. If you don't have enough perk points by raising the skills you use normally, you can end up raising an easy-to-level skill (e.g. Illusion) just for the extra perk points to put in something Combat related. Again, I'm very much against this power levelling thing, so moves away from that would be improvements for me. They could maybe split the character levels up by combat/stealth/magic, and so have it that you can only buy combat perks with combat levels etc. Come to think of it that'd be pretty similar to the levelling system in Neocron. I also don't like how after a point I can't progress further by using the skills I want to use (e.g. if I'm playing a strict no-Magic character, then there's only so far I can go using the Combat and Stealth skills). That's an issue with all the systems though. There's an easy fix if they allowed over-levelling of skills, e.g. after 100 a skill can raise from 99 to 100 again and give the same xp towards your character level. Then they can still have a cap on the max level of 81 (or whatever they wanted it to be).

I'm not a fan of the more passive perks. I imagine these are in there primarily because they couldn't think up enough active perks for each tree. That's perhaps something that will improve in future when they add more depth to the combat system. I'd prefer it if the perks were more about adding options with the skill levels being the main basis for pure power. That way your choice of perks becomes more of a flavour decision than a min/max one. A better use of caps could also help out, like they did with armour. I notice that discussion on the perks needed to reach the armour cap above. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember a character with perks in Smithing and Enchanting can still reach the armour cap with a full suit of Daedric, while not needing all the Heavy Armour perks (this might require the bugged Ancient Knowledge effect, I can't remember). That's the sort of thing that could work; depending on your perk choice you could still reach the caps, just in different ways. Imagine if there was a similar cap for say One-Handed damage; an Enchanter could then reach the same cap by using up slots for Fortify One-Handed, so you have different routes for the same min/max outcome. But then the Enchanting route still wouldn't get you the active perks like Critical Charge, so the different builds still have different advantages (the One-Handed specialist would also reach the cap without needing Enchantment slots, for instance). That's more the sort of thing I'd like to see.

Also, I think the game is much better for having actual build choices, rather than having a character that can eventually do everything. I've been able to replay Skyrim multiple times, sometimes back to back, because there are real differences between each character that I've made. That is a standard design choice in RPGs though, and I can see pros and cons either way. See for instance how they took the build options out of Diablo 3, and the different opinions on that decision.

 

[Nomanslander]

I own Morrowind and Oblivion; time and time again I've tried to get into them, and time and time again I've chosen I'd rather stick with Skyrim. Those games might have looked better on paper, but when played they'd get wet, and all I would be stuck with was wet paper.

=/

The only thing that really annoyed me about Skyrim was the fact that I could be leader of the Dark Brotherhood, of the Companions, and Thieves Guild, all at the same time. I mean why stop there Bethesada? Can't I take over as the Stormcloak leader too? Oh oh, and also Empire, that way I can fight myself. And when the Aldmeri come around, I'll be instantly crowned as their emperor for no reason too.

>>

I mean, really? I know I'm suppose to be made out to be some great hero of the land, but that was just getting ridiculous.

 

[SajuukKhar]

The only thing that really annoyed me about Skyrim was the fact that I could be leader of the Dark Brotherhood, of the Companions, and Thieves Guild, all at the same time. I mean why stop there Bethesada? Can't I take over as the Stormcloak leader too? Oh oh, and also Empire, that way I can fight myself. And when the Aldmeri come around, I'll be instantly crowned as their emperor for no reason too.

Bethesda lets you join every guild because some people want to. However, if you make a mage character, why would you join the Thieves Guild, or The Companions, or the DB?

If you actually stick to your role-play then you wont be joining every guild, but the option does exist for the people who chose to.

How could you not understand that attributes can work and that perks should not be like they are in skyrim? The point of tes is to get better at what you DO by DOING it. Fighting with swords all day should make you a better swordsman. Using destruction magic should allow you to get better at destruction magic. Smithing all day should make you a better smith. you should NEVER get 20% better at something because the sky offers you a choice of perks and a perkpoint for one thing to get better at.

Because attributes dont work, as shown by every game that has them. Attributes only impose conformity amongst characters by turning progression into trivialistic increases, instead of game changing increases like they should. Also, Skyrim does work on the "the more you use it the better you get with it", if it didn't perks wouldn't have level requirements, or pre-reqresit perk requirements.

It would be easy to have attributes matter more. For instance having 0 strength at 0% strength and 100 strengh being 100% stengh. Meaning that someone with 40 strengh will find it easy to smash past the block of someone with 20 strengh. being twice as strong. or someone with 100 endurance running 10 times as far without tire than someone with 10 endurance.

That can also be achieved with perks such as a "increase the chance of breaking through an enemies blocks by 10%", which force less conformity amongst players then attributes do, and raising your Stamina does let you run farther, then someone with lower stamina, without tiring.

Furthermore attributes CAN work and are neccessary for the ballancing of Enchantment. By this i mean that you should increase your strengh or speed or agility than your swordsman skills. Or at the very least increase your willpower rather than reduce the cost of a single school of magic to nothing.

There is no need to balance enchanting when the only thing making it unbalanced is peoples choice to make it unbalanced. Also, it is impossible to reach 100% cost reduction in any school of magic without using enchanting exploits, which is the players choice, and a choice they should have.

people CAN pick the correct ones at the start. I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that a warrior should be stronger and that charisma has something to do with talking to people. Especialy if you give little descriptions. Im sure a company as large as bethesda could also put in a little calculator that describes the kind of character recomended for someone's chosen stats. there's also the lovely prospect of tutorials.

They can also just make perks to do the same effects attributes have, while at the same time making character growth larger then if it was done via attributes, and dont require people to have foresight into the game's systems before they play the game, allowing for more organic growth.

Then they can still have a cap on the max level of 81 (or whatever they wanted it to be).

Skyrim actually has a soft cap of level 50, meaning, the average player is only supposed to get to 50 by leveling all of their chosen skills. The level 81 "hard cap" only exists for people who power level and raise all their skills, your really not supposed to go past 50 if you play the game normally.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I think what needs to be considered is the fact that it's all subjective.

I loved Oblivion. I loved the Alchemy system, I loved the sheer flexibility of it all and I loved how I could turn my character right around in the middle of a single playthrough and go for magic instead of combat.

When you look at it objectively, Skyrim offers the same exact options. The only things that have changed involve the streamlining of the more needlessly complex elements. Fantasy games tend to naturally gravitate around the Warrior/Thief/Mage trinity, and they're still letting you mix and match as desired. The level-up scheme makes progressing less of a frustrating ordeal and makes it so the trainers around the province are there to give you a leg-up. In Oblivion, you more or less had to sink a huge amount of cash into trainers to get the best out of your abilities. Not so with Skyrim.

As for Spellcrafting; that's really in line with Alchemy. Yes, Oblivion granted you more choices, but let's be honest for a sec. Who actually bothered with whipping up custom spells? Most of the users of that system intentionally glitched it or used various fortifying tricks to willingly create an OP spell with close to zero Magicka cost. Alchemy still offers the same modular aspect, and look at what happens in Skyrim: people exploit the way buffs work to craft god-tier gear way ahead of time.

Objectively, nothing's changed.

Both games aren't so much broken as there's so many cracks and nooks and crannies to sink into that you can game the whole thing against itself. That's regardless of how many weapons there are in the game.

Plus, why whinge about the state of the Elder Scrolls series when it's as modular as you want it to be? Miss the old class system? There's a mod for that. Miss the weapon selection from Oblivion? There's a mod for that. Miss the way enemies scaled or didn't scale? There's a mod for that.

Virtually any complaint levelled at a Bethesda game can be fixed by the fan community.

 

[Joccaren]

-That Thieves and mages use it or not is irrelevant. A mage who picks up one-handed weapons late in his life, aka after he has used all of his perks, should NEVER be able to match the damage a trained warrior, who has spent his entire life training with a sword, aka who has put perks into one-handed. It makes zero sense, and even then there are still plenty of mage character that use one handed, and they should not be able to do as much damage as a warrior.

And they won't be able to. The warrior will have 100 one-handed skill, a charge power attack, a decapitate power attack and a paralyse power attack, as well as bonuses to speed and damage for duel wielding. This is all not tied into bleeding or critical, or armour penetration, which was the subject of discussion on weapons, and doesn't include any replacement perks that could be added.
Is it possible for the mage to get to this level too?
Yes, but it is anyway thanks to the way Skyrim's perk system works. The thing that would prevent this would be a well done stats system, where the warrior would likely be 30-50 strength about the mage, and thus deal 30-50 more damage per hit [Probably 20-33 more damage thanks to how Skyrim's balancing seems to work].

-Actually, one handed, and two handed, weapons have different reaches, with two handed weapons having 30% more reach then one handed weapons, and each type of weapon, axe, mace, swords, has it's own chance to stagger enemies when using a power attack.

Yes. The reach is the thing that plays the biggest role in all this, and is the main reason two handed plays differently to one handed IMO. Stagger, apart from between 1 and two handed weapons, seems to be rather negligible, and based more on timing than anything - trying to stagger an already staggered opponent will do nothing, and you're better off just using normal attacks until they're back up.

-Dual weilding is meant to be the strongest means of damage, but it comes at the cost of not being able to block, and thus taking more damage. its a tradeoff.

Of course, never said otherwise. However the lightning kill speed makes the tradeoff very worthwhile, especially if you can dodge the attacks your enemy sends between your power attacks.

-Not everyone uses a meatshield companion, and then again, abusing the game's systems to your advantage is a choice you make, and that's fine, but people who play the game normally, and dont abuse the game's systems in a similar way, have different results.

In what way is it not normal, or abusing the game's system?
The game gives you a follower. That follower will charge into battle screaming something like "Skyrim is for the Nords!" and you can do nothing to stop them. What you can do is use their distraction as a chance to fight groups of enemies effectively, killing enemies while their back is turned to attack your follower.

-I am not sure of the point you were trying to make about perks/abilities in other RPGs anymore.

Basically, just because a skill unlocks a perk doesn't mean that that skill influences what the perk influences. In Enchanting, levelling the enchanting skill does nothing. Unlocking perks with your levels does something, but you can't say its the enchanting skill that has increased the number of enchantments you can put on your weapons. No matter how much you level your enchantment skill, you won't get that bonus. Only by buying that perk will you get that bonus.

-Having to spend 10 hours to get through one dungeon because magic does so little damage is not a viable means to play the game, you will never get it done at that rate.

And with perks you might spend 5 hours. Still not viable.

-Even with 200 magicka, and 100 destruction skill, the most basic flames spell still costs 8magicka a second, giving you 25 seconds, at most, of use. And since the flames spell only does 8 damage a second, which gives you only 200 damage, less then 1/5 of a Dragur Death Overlord's health, and the fact that it takes nearly two minutes to fully regen your magicka while in combat, means its going to take AGES just to beat one guy. It is not a viable way to play the game, as it takes far to long to get through anything. Being able to do it =/= viable.

Of course a level 10 mage is going to be meh. However, perks do little to alleviate this situation. Lots of enchanted gear is what increases your mana pool's viability the most, and perks will double your damage. Even with 16 damage, it'll still take ages.

-No, it has nothing to do with BETHESDA's ability to do attributes, it has to do with attribute systems in ALL games. Every single game with attribute systems has the exact same flaws, putting points into yur attributes does very little to effectively make your character better, it is only through MASSIVE point differences do any real changes take place. The difference between characters in games with attributes is mostly only in the displayed numbers on the screen, however, under the hood, when you actually calculate out all the damage resistances, or critical chances, etc. etc. you will find that there is little real difference between your character.

Of course you're not going to get a massive jump in power each level. You get a gradual increase so that a level 2 will still beat a level 1, but won't stand a chance against end game bosses, nor have 10,000 health because of one level. Many games do stats effectively. The first boss of the game becomes a commonplace enemy you can one hit kill in games like Dragon Age: Origins. Sure, part of that comes down to your increased weapon damage, but your weapon has increased its damage by... 7 points? In most cases, which is absolutely nothing when you can 1-2 hit those things.
By end game, you end up with very different characters thanks to their different attributes modified by their stats. A mage will likely have a fifth the health of a warrior, and with a sword deal less than a quarter of the damage - when they even hit, but that warrior, were he able to cast spells, wouldn't be able to touch rank 2 spells, let alone do the spell combos that a mage can pull off with ease.
Stats work, just obviously not in the game's you've played.

-No, that isn't the case at all, your not making any sense. A fireball spells, and a fireball spell with an added fear effect, are two different spells. A level 10 magnitude fire spells, and an 11 magnitude fire spells, are the same spell because they dont have different effects.

I'm sorry, but your list included Flames+Double Damage Perk, Flames+Stagger Perk, and combinations thereof. Those are spell effects being added on. Going into technicalities there's not even a change in the Creation Kit for them if memory serves, but even then, except when combining two different spells into one with duel casting [Flames+flames is still flames], its the same spell.

 

[Nomanslander]

The only thing that really annoyed me about Skyrim was the fact that I could be leader of the Dark Brotherhood, of the Companions, and Thieves Guild, all at the same time. I mean why stop there Bethesada? Can't I take over as the Stormcloak leader too? Oh oh, and also Empire, that way I can fight myself. And when the Aldmeri come around, I'll be instantly crowned as their emperor for no reason too.

Bethesda lets you join every guild because some people want to. However, if you make a mage character, why would you join the Thieves Guild, or The Companions, or the DB?

If you actually stick to your role-play then you wont be joining every guild, but the option does exist for the people who chose to.

The hell with what players want, I learned a some time ago that if you give the players ultimate choice, they're just going to end up making a game they won't want to play afterwards. It's like over modding a game or cheat codes. Back when I played Vice City I used up every cheat in the book and got bored of the game in a week, but with San Andreas I stopped doing that and played the game almost to the end.

Point I'm trying to make is there is a point where a game can make you too powerful or too badass, and after that things start to get boring. When I can be leader of both the Dark Brotherhood and the Companions. The lore aspect of the game feels cheapened just to satisfy me. They feel like two complete opposites and joining one should disallow me to join the other. But it doesn't do that, the game is too preoccupied holding my hand like it's my rich daddy and getting me everything I want to the point nothing seems interesting or challenging.

That's why two thirds of the way through beating Skyrim, I dropped the game and started replaying Dark Souls again.

 

[SajuukKhar]

snip

-If the difference between a 100 one-handed warrior, and a 100 one-handed mage, is three flavor power attacks, there isn't much real difference at all. That's like saying a warrior and mage are different because the warrior does 6 bleed damage over 3 seconds, while a mage does 4 bleed damage over 6 seconds, its a trivialistic increase.

Also, if a mage tried to raise his one handed after spending all of his perks in his magic skills, as a mage would, then he wont be able to match a warrior, because he has spent all of his perks. This is a system tat makes REAL effective character differences, and not some flavor only BS.

-Stagger actually determines how much of the stagger animation plays, not your chances of staggering an opponent. So it affects how long they stay staggered.

-Yes, the tradeoff is worthwhile, that is kinda the point.

-Because you are using a obviously broken system, and one they admittedly need to fix, and using that broken system to make the game far easier then it should be. That is exploiting defined.

-Magic isn't viable with perks if you only use the most basic spell, but why would you? Magic, except destruction magic, is so OP with perks its crazy.

-Where did you get the level 10 mage from? I was talking about a level 81 mage with 100 destruction skill, and no perks.

-Dragon Age: original still suffers from the problem that most mages will play like each other, because the way the spell and stats system is made, if forces mages as a whole down a samey path, same with warriors, and rouges. Comparatively, Skyrim offers far more variation in what you can do with mages, warriors, and thieves, then DAO did, and it does so without stats.

Funny how games with stats always seem to impose conformity amongst character types, and when removed, the conformity vanishes, in large part.

-How is a fireball, and a fireball with an added fear effect the same spell? Is a fireball, and a fireball that has a 15 foot aoe effect the same spell also?

Once again, perk change the spell into something It wasn't before, be it by added damage, or extra effects. Trying to say that a fireball spell, and a fireball spell with an AoE effect, and a fireball spell with an added fear effect, are all the same spell, is disingenuous.

snip

I play Skyrim, and games like GTA, more then any other game. I can never get bored of them because they let you do everything you want. It's like G-Mod, or Minecraft, it's just "here you go, make whatever you want, do whatever you want, have fun".

Also, how is the game letting you do what you want holding your hand? if anything, it is the exact opposite of holding your hand, because it doesn't lead you to anything, it doesn't force you down any path, it just says "here you go, have fun, I'll be off"

Preventing you form being able to join every guild, now that would be holding your hand, because the game is acting you lack any self control, and need daddy/big brother to sit there and look over your shoulder so you dont do anything your not supposed to, or might upset you.

I dont see why people need developers to sit there and babysit them with artificial lockout mechanisms when people can choose to stop power-gaming whenever they want. It's like gamers have no self-control, or self-responsibility, anymore, and so they need developers to run their games for them. It's actually kinda sad.