Good point about the "unallocated points at startup". Most of the D&D games let you re-roll until you get an attribute balance you like, so why not just give you a set of points to distribute?

It's a fact of life, and thus of a roleplayed life, that not only do people have inclinations and aptitudes, but time and energy are finite things. Not only are people inclined to be more skilled at one or another thing, but they only have a limited amount of time and energy to invest into doing things, and which things they choose to do will have a great impact on how skilled they are at one or another thing.

It's not necessary that a roleplayed character be constrained by a set of little boxes first outlined by Gary Gygax 40 years ago. It's only necessary that they be constrained by inclination, by aptitude and by the finite nature of time and energy.

The first - inclination - is, or at least should be, entirely within the hands of the player. If the player decides that the character is inclined to do this and not do that, then so be it. It's certainly possible for a player to choose an inclination that makes no sense within the context of the character, but in my opinion, that's just really the way it goes. I don't believe that that choice should ever be denied the player, and I really have no idea why anyone would wish to deny players that choice. It's not necessary to playing balanced characters, since balance is achieved through other means anyway, and it's certainly not rewarding for a player to be told that s/he is not allowed to choose this and must choose that instead, so I see nothing to be gained by even attempting to constrain it.

The second - aptitude - should be within the hands of the player, just so that players can play the characters they want to play, but it has to be constrained in some manner, just because there are natural limits to aptitude. And yeah - I think that being able to distribute points between a range of "attributes" is the best way to do that. If it's a game with different races and genders, as most are (and as TES is), then I think there should be different ranges for different attributes between the different races and genders (so that, for instance, the strongest Altmer still won't be as strong as the strongest Orc), but the actual distribution of the starting points should be entirely within the hands of the player. Balance is maintained by having a pool of available points to work out of, so that any notable increase in one attribute can only be at the expense of another. And as SubRosa notes, this is the place where Skyrim fails utterly, and that failure is in fact the biggest reason that I simply refused to give Beth my money for that product. Whether simply in order to save themselves the time and expense of devising and coding a workable attribute system or to save casual gamers the risk of picking a "bad" set of aptitudes, or, as I suspect, a little of both, they simply eliminated that whole aspect of character creation entirely.

The rest - necessarily finite time and energy - is actually the easy part to do, though it's potentially difficult to do it right. All it requires is some sort of skill/experience/level/etc. progression, and all that really does is scale the game time to the time the player will spend playing it. The amount of time the character will be able to invest in pursuing one or another skill is already constrained by the fact that the player can only spend a finite amount of time playing. So it's really just a matter of scaling the two well and matching them up with a workable growth curve. That's something that Daggerfall and Morrowind both did pretty well. Vanilla Oblivion is only so-so - the growth curve is a bit too steep to make for a good, lasting game - the time from being a beginner to being uber is too short. But with a bit of careful major-choosing, it's possible to get the curve down to a more comfortable pace. I have no idea how it is in Skyrim.

So...as far as this specific aspect of all that goes, that's my ultimate RPG - wholly unconstrained ability for the player to pursue whatever inclinations s/he might prefer, but with the actual results of that pursuit being reasonably constrained by the aptitudes of the character and the time and energy spent pursuing them. I see absolutely nothing to be gained by creating some predefined set of arbitrary constraints when all the constraint that's necessary to play believably limited characters can be handled otherwise.

As but one example - my Breton spellsword Lydia. Lydia wanted to be a swordfighter. That was her inclination. Nobody told her she couldn't be - there was no "class" designation that prevented her from doing it - that's what she wanted to be, so that's what she pursued. And it was a hellacious struggle. She had terrible strength and terrible blade skill and could barely manage to survive at all. Grudgingly, she had to shift to using magic a fair bit early on, which was easy enough for her, since she had a racial predisposition to it. And again, there was no arbitrary constraint that said she couldn't do that either. All there was was the fact that she knew that the time and energy she spent casting spells was time and energy she didn't spend swinging a sword, and thus was just that much further from her goal of being able to swing a sword. So she tried to limit her magic use, just so that she could keep gaining skill with a sword, so that she could do what she wanted to do in the first place. And so she kept plugging away at gaining skill with a sword and filling in the gaps with magic, and finally reached the point at which she could make it through the world without having to use magic at all, just relying on her sword skill. She was a great challenge to play, and ultimately a very rewarding character.

That's all the constraint that's necessary to create a believable and interesting character, and it existed not because of some predefined box into which she was stuck at the beginning of the game, but simply because she started out with a particular set of aptitudes and a particular set of inclinations, and invested a particular amount of time and energy into pursuing those inclinations. That's all that's necessary and all I want (as far as that particular aspect of a game goes).

Skyrim actually did the leveling far better than Oblivion, in terms that the game speed of inclination matches the output to achieve the results. In Oblivion every skill leveled at a different pace and if you chose the wrong matching majors then you were in big trouble (as you know).

The problem with your second paragraph is that we could both play opposing characters with different inclinations and yet end up at the same place after 50 levels. ES does not have the scope through only adding attributes to the mix at the beginning to fix that. After 50 levels the game will simply flatten out to the uniform boorishness that ES always becomes.



Okay. These are my thoughts.

First- Bring back character classes. After all, how can you play a role without any role to play. Simple right? As I said above simply adding attributes will not address the leveling out that happens over the journey of a Beth game. Changing the beginning will not change the end. Try playing 300 hours of Fallout 3 and then see how different our characters turn out. I doubt they will be any different.

Second- Scrap the silly start-in-the-jail idea. That is nothing but lazy game design. So typical of Todd and his team and those who accept it.

All characters should start at 0 level and be involved in apprentice/training in their chosen profession. Join the parade ground in the Imperial Legion, work for a local footpad thief, go to class in the Arcane University, etc. Room should be allowed to achieve honors or be a trickster like Maxical, it all depends how you wish to play it.

Guild Quests should only be open to those of that profession. However, if a warrior class wanted to join the Dark Brotherhood there should be ramifications for doing so. Perhaps they insist that you murder one of your colleagues to prove your worth and the Legion becomes very annoyed as a result.

Cause and Effect.

And if you wanted to abandon your apprenticeship then that is okay as well. But that would mean you miss out on the specialization perks or attributes that belong to that profession. This is where you would simply add the points at the start of the game. I say make those adding points meaningful.

Perhaps skill caps at 80 for those who run away and later on they must make a costly visit to a master trainer to get that skill up to 100. Just like real life where if you skip school you pay the price later on.

Multi-class skill sets (Mystic Archer) would be allowed for combat, but there must be a penalty for doing so. Buffy should not be allowed to achieve the same level in archery that a specialist would get to. Sorry folks, but that has always been the rules of multi-class. In the same way the highest level spells should only be available to those who specialize.

That is one thing of many that role play should be. Do I specialize or multi-class. This do-anything-I-want attitude of ES is ridiculous.

Spellmaking and Enchanting should be in the game, but I would only allow the mage class to access it. Warrior and Sneak class would either have to pay for the service or find better weapons and equipment then is currently found in standard ES game, helping them keep up to speed. While playing a mage the said weapons would not appear, thereby depriving them the advantage.

I would bring back attributes, gender differences and also consider personality traits and likes/dislikes. Anything to brake up this boring same pot that Beth forces us into. I would scrap health regeneration and bring back armor and weapon degrading. I love using repair hammers!

Lockpick and Security needs to go back to the way it was before. I loved the auto attempt feature which made the character play the game instead of me. And the Open Lock spells must make a return. A mage using picks is wrong on so many levels.

Role play should always be about choice, variety and cause/effect. It is far deeper than simply adding attributes back into the game.

Marriage and Adoption is a complete waste of time and serves no purpose. Instead I would put effort in putting retirement into the game. Perhaps each time you start a new game the system asks you if would like to retire the last character. If you choose 'yes' one of the in-game homes is taken out of action and your character lives out their life there. A good aligned character can be spoken to with dialogue options, an evil character will be more reserved. And you might even see them around town when you visit.

All quests would reset with the new character and if you wanted to keep playing that old guy you could still reload an earlier save.

I haven't even looked at fixing the Main Quest story writing to suit an evil character or those abysmal fetch and carry quests that Beth love to use. But it is not hard.

Of course, if Elder Scrolls is not a RPG and is nothing more than a exploring and collecting game, then just leave it as it is!

Oh, and gpstr, you will probably find that a spin off series will certainly work. If for no other reason the it will now be a 10 year wait between ES games. Five years to Fallout and another five to the ES.

I cannot see that happening, at least in the long term. Beth Game Studios will break into two companies, one to build each game. So you might get a different direction yet!

The game flattens out later because all the races and genders have the same maximums. It flattens out because an Altmer with maximum strength is exactly as strong as an Orc with maximum strength, which is exactly why I've said, more than once, that the races should have different maximums.

I don't need classes to play a role. I have no idea why you think I do.

Read this post: my characters. Every one of those is a role. Every one of those is a rich and detailed character with strengths and weaknesses and virtues and faults and things they're good at and things they're not good at. All of them are roles. None of them are classes.

It's not necessary to "allow" or "not allow" that. I addressed that in my last post - it's just a function of time. Even in Oblivion, even with its balky leveling system, those penalties already exist, simply because every single moment that your character spends doing one thing is a moment that s/he doesn't spend doing another.

One of my characters on that list - Jibran - is a swordsman. That's all he is. He uses no magic and no bow - he has no ranged attacks at all. The only thing he's ever done in combat is swing a blade. That's it. And consequently, he's far and away the best melee fighter I play. He leaves everyone else in the dust, just because while they've been gaining skill in a bit of this and a bit of that, he's been gaining skill in blade and only blade.

Now - if I kept playing characters long enough, they'd all catch up to him sooner or later, and if I played with a vanilla style build, it'd be sooner rather than later. But that's because the system in Oblivion is poorly designed - because skill progress happens too fast. If the system had been designed better - if it hadn't been designed to accommodate people who just want to be uber in a few hours - then no other character could ever catch up to him, just because they'd still be splitting their time between different things while he'd still be investing all of his time solely into the blade.

You're right that specialists should end up more skilled than hybrids. The place where you're wrong is your insistence that there has to be some sort of arbitrary rule that decrees that. If the game is designed well, then that takes care of itself, and that's as it should be.

Again, I could not possibly care less what has or has not "always been the rules."

Yes - it should - and that's exactly why I detest the sort of rules you're demanding.

Yes - there has to be cause and effect and there have to be advantages and disadvantages and benefits and penalties, but for a fulfilling game, and specifically in order to allow the "choice" that YOU have just advocated, that cause and effect and those advantages and disadvantages and bonuses and penalties need to be worked into the game organically - NOT just slapped on top as arbitrary rules.

Here's a Sufi proverb that's exactly on topic:

"In the desert, there is no sign that says 'thou shalt not eat stones.'"

You seem to think that such a sign is necessary. I say that all that's necessary is to design a game that's balanced and accurate enough that, just as in reality, it takes care of itself. And then, if I decide I want to play a character who eats stones, I'll play a character who eats stones. And s/he will suffer the natural consequences. That's what I want. What I don't want - what I resent with every fiber of my being - is someone else decreeing that I am not to be allowed to do that at all.

I think everyone would like that to be honest, after all, everybody here is a fan of role playing games. Emphasis on role playing. The closest game I ever played to what your suggesting was probably Fallout 2, back in ye olden days of choices and ideas over incredibly pretty graphics (hell, not even that ye olden, less than 20 years ago). Now, the emphasis is on real time action. Which I guess is what most people want. Not me, but I'm not the target demographic these days.

Maybe one day... Hopefully...

I've fallen off the demographics target too, but I kind of took myself out of even attempting after seeing Skyrim.

If it was an example of the future of TES, I didn't want to keep following it down that direction it was heading. I agree with you that the trend is moving away from freedom/autonomy/and choice and without these it suffocates roleplay.

My two cents:

Yet it remains a 'role play' game. It may not be the role you want, but Bethesda does give you a role to play. Hell, they even force the role upon you. You are Dovahkiin, and it is up to you, as the role-player, to decide what that means in your particular play through.

'Rosa mentioned Mass Effect earlier and I think that's a perfect example of a game that is basically on rails in the sense that you have no freedom at all in the ways in which you proceed, yet it still provides a deeply satisfying (well, to me at least) role-playing experience.


How can you argue for more freedom while lamenting the fact that the game doesn't follow a rule book?


To each his own. Personally, I find this to be a trend worthy of applause. Taking attributes out of the game works when those attributes become a hinderance. gpstr's argument that the strongest Altmer should never be as strong as the strongest Orc insinuates that the argument works for the other attributes as well. To say that my Orc can't be as charming as an Imperial or my Redguard can never be as smart as a Breton is simply ridiculous (not to mention the fact that it comes close to being insulting). Such constraints on character are exactly the opposite to the freedom we all claim to want. I would love to see attributes return, but only if those attributes can be chosen as they are in the Fallout series. Then one of the previous mentioned constraints can serve your role-play by giving your Orc/Redguard something to perpetually fight to overcome. However, that decision should come from the player. It should not be a mechanic built within the game.



I second this whole-heartedly (as does Acadian, I suspect)!

Speaking of our esteemed GM… it behooves all of us to take as example what Acadian has managed to do with Buffy. Sure, there are mental gymnastics required to achieve it, but he has managed to create a character who would be any role-players dream within the so-called limitations of Skyrim’s character/leveling system.


This is exactly the problem I had with the old class system!


This seems like an empty gripe when you consider that the game does give each race a starting bonus to half a dozen skills, and everything else you want can be addressed within a few minutes/hours of leaving Helgen Keep. In a game that encompasses as many hours as Skyrim that isn't a deal breaker IMHO.

I can't believe that I (of all people) am the devil's advocate in this thread.

I like this idea and will certainly love to see it incorporated into future design. However, it still doesn't address the problem that happens with skill as it raises.

The game as it currently stands is a spreadsheet of values where you gain by everything that you do. The problem of that is that the level cap of Beth/Obsidian games has increased dramatically in recent years. Look at where it has gone- from 30 to 50 and now to 100+ with Legendary Skyrim.

Now what that means is that to reach that cap you will need to lift all skills to even get close to reaching a high level. And this is the key- what will happen if Bethesda decides to only unlock items (enemies or equipment) at a very high level, say 50, or 80 or even 90th level. And what if half the quests in the game have a level cap?

On Oblivion we were lucky that everything unlocked by around level 25, but what would have if Beth had designed it that everything unlocked at level 40?

My way of thinking is that a Warrior class should only receive a skill increase if he used the skill that was connected to his class. He should not receive an increase for using lockpick, or backstab or destruction magic, things that don't belong to his class. I would never advocate a rule that said, only a certain class can do a certain thing. Sure use that magic spell or backstab, but it means nothing to the level progression of the warrior.

And then all the equipment, bonuses, perks, quests, whatever, could be tailored to suit each respective class. Without having character classes Beth has no idea what we are going to do and so cannot design a game that has any proper merit or level design progression. By the time we reach anywhere near the level cap every character is uniform and boringly the same. The problem is far worse than just saying, make each race unique and have different attributes.


That is certainly an impressive list. But I fail to see how having classes would ruin that list? Character classes would be connected to skill and character leveling, not to things like personality traits.


The reason you say that is because you don't care for character classes. I get that. But a game that had character classes in it would certainly have to care about the implementation. Sorry, but I thought we were discussing 'the ultimate TES game'? Perhaps not.


What are you getting so worked up about? I understand your passion for RPG but not why you think that I am forcing anything on you? If I was saying 'you', it would mean, 'you, the player,' not you, gpstr.'

Anyway, I was responding to a quote from SubRosa in my last post, Hence, the quote tag. SubRosa and I have discussed Fallout many times and the whole post flowed from there. Why would I mention 300 hours of Fallout to you?

The trouble there is that every member of each race is an exact duplicate. Apparently there are factories out there rolling out elves, humans, orcs, etc..., since we all start out with the factory-standard model. That would explain why the children all look the same... I find it very un-i... (sorry Renee, but here comes the 'I' word) immersive.

But more than that, the bonuses they give the races rarely match up with who my character is at the start of the game. The characters I create are people, with their own personalities, histories, and stories. Not toons I roll to beat the game with (Ph3R M3 n00Bs!). Because of that I could work past the inability to customize my stats at the start of the game. I play a person, not a bunch of statistics. However, it makes it difficult to do that working past, precisely because what my character can or cannot do from the very first moment in the game does not match who that character is in my head. For example, one of my earlier characters was Hera, who was an Altmer barbarian. She was raised from childhood in the wilds by a Nord mountain man named Alp, and was a truer True Nord™ than any Nord could be. So she was supposed to be practiced with two-handed weapons, armor, and so forth. The things her 'uncle' Alp taught her from childhood. She wasn't supposed to know the first thing about Illusion, or Enchanting, or Alteration, and so on. Yet she started with Two-Handed at 15, and Illusion at 25. WTF? The Illusion I could ignore, since I would never use that. But the 15 in her main weapon skill made those earlier levels more difficult than they should have been for someone with her proclivities and background. Because of experiences like that, I now use the console and creation kit to tailor make every one of my characters.

So I really don't want a blank slate to begin the game with. Nor one that is exactly like what some guy sitting in the DC suburbs thinks every elf is supposed to be like. I want to think about who my characters are as people, what they like, don't like, can do, don't want to do, and so forth. I spend days, sometimes weeks, just figuring out what they will wear (take a look at some of my character cosplay topics in the Fan Art forum, I have three separate topic for just one character's outfits). In the end (or should I say at the start?) I want the character I play to fit that vision in my head, right from the get go. I shouldn't have to wait until 5 hours into the game to be able to play the character the way I envisioned them being at the start of the game.

I have to say, I agree with a lot of what gpstr's posted. And it's always nice to see someone else who refused to buy Skyrim

Personally, I think for classes we need something of a hybrid: The setup from the older TES games, pick your skills, favoured attributes, and specialisation at the start, and from then on all your skills count towards your leveling. It would have to be combined with something like nGCD of course, to handle attribute growth, perhaps set up to give smaller attribute gains from minor skills.

As far as skill management goes, I'm delighted with a little mod that I use. At the beginning of the game, you choose a cap level for all of your skills. The skills will then level up only to that cap and never beyond. For example, Buffy's caps are:
Archery and Sneak - 100
Illusion, Conjuration, Alteration and Speechcraft - 75
Every single other skill is perma-capped at 15. Even if she reads a skill book on heavy armor or gets free skill training as 'reward' for some silly quest, the knowledge does not translate to any improvement of skill beyond its cap. Simply looking at those skill caps gives one a pretty good idea her strengths and limitations.

This does, for better or worse, also limit Buffy's ultimate maximum character level as well (to about the mid-30s in her case). I have no problem at all with that because there is nothing beyond about level 20 that we want - and that is only to ensure we have pretty snow bears in our game.

Plenty of mod solutions out there for PC users. I admit that, without mods, I would not enjoy TES games. The real challenge is that if you put 10 players together, you'll get 10 differing visions of how things should work. So I'm glad I'm not a game developer, and think the smartest thing they can do is make sure and offer their tool kit (CS / CK) to the fan community.

I think most folks can agree that they don't like being forced to try and jam their creative round peg concept for a character into a square hole. And I think most folks could agree that doing a quest because you want to is good, but being overly pushed into an unwanted role as The Chosen One as viewed by the devs is not so good. Similarly, if you join a faction the option to rise to the top is fine as long as the option to simply remain a 'working' mid-level member of that faction is also supported by appropriate quests.

The smartest thing to do is make it the way I want it!

And I can understand that point of view. The point I'm making is that, if the opposite were true and we went back to fixed attribute starting points for the various races, then we would inevitably find ourselves in a situation where developers give us elves that are physically weak and orcs that are mentally inferior. That, to me, is far more limiting than just starting me with a blank slate that I can then develop the way I see fit. I'm okay with it taking me 5+ hours to get the character I'm going to enjoy for the next 150+.


I think we're actually in agreement here. I've still never even finished the main quest of any Bethesda game (going all the way back Morrowind, and that includes Fallout 3). My characters start with a personality, not with a pre-formed skill set. You are arguing that your characters are 'people, not a bunch of statistics' while being put off because you can't start with the statistics you want. My characters discover who they are throughout the course of their adventure, that's a big part of the fun for me… and all I'm saying is that I don't mind starting my character off as a blank slate if that means that I don't have to be burdened with the ideas of that 'guy sitting in the DC suburbs.'


So it sounds like what you're really put off by is the fact that Hera couldn't steam roll the earlier levels the way you wanted.

Think about it… your Altmer barbarian was still able to use two handed weapons (which in a number of so-called rpgs would have been impossible because you had the effrontery to pick a high elf... and everyone knows high elves are just mages), she just had a not-too-steep learning curve to negotiate at a time in the game when enemies are easy anyway. You were also able to fit her into the fur armor you wanted (again, impossible in most so-called rpgs). As you've stated you could just ignore her apprentice level skill in Illusion… or you could just incorporate that into your role play by using courage spells to simulate her leadership qualities. All of that came with the vanilla game us console players use which, being on the PC where you can just change things to the way you want anyway, doesn't apply to you.

I have always sought out and respected your opinion, 'Rosa. But, in this case/thread, I think we're all getting upset about the wrong things in Skyrim. Personally, I don't care if they continue to streamline the mechanics. What I care about is that they continue to streamline the story-telling! Give me an epic and engaging MQ (hopefully one I'm not forced into), and interesting side quests & faction quest lines. Make the effects of these quest impact the world beyond whether or not a tree grows in Whiterun. Give me a world filled with 3 dimensional characters and relationships that feel real and not contrived. Do that and you can take away all the attributes and impose as much homogeneity in character creation that you want!


I'd buy it… as long as it had a tool kit!

Not steamroll. I don't expect that until the later part of the game. I just want to possess the basic competency of a person who has been using the weapon/skill since childhood. Along with the basic incompetency in other things they have not been using.


My elf characters in all the other RPGs I have played - like the Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate games - could start out as muscle-bound barbarians who were good with a sword and clueless about magic as well. So I am not sure what other RPGs you mean?

Fair enough. Ten points give or take at level 1 is still not immersion breaking for me... but I can respect that it is for you.


Okay well, since you brought up Bioware, how about KOTOR. If I recall you yourself used it as an example when you said you hated the fact that your Jedi couldn’t be good with a lightsaber and computers unless you chose a Consulor. What about the Mass Effect series? There choice of class limited you in what weapons/armors you could wield/wear. Try to be a dwarf mage in Dragon Age... you can’t. Even if the developers site story reasons as explanation it remains a somewhat arbitrary imposed limitation.

Being on the console I am at an admitted disadvantage when it comes to good RPGs. You obviously have more experience with the subject. I, for example, have played Balder’s Gate but not Neverwinter Nights. I’ve also never played a good pen and paper RPG so anyone who has is bringing to the subject more experience than I. I am simply saying that, on console at least, the Elder Scrolls still gives us more freedom than just about anyone else. I should have framed the argument in those terms initially, sorry for the confusion.


Edit: Look, every opinion expressed so far in this thread has been passionate, heart-felt, and well thought out. All of them are defensable and none of them come across as ‘wrong’ to me. What I’m saying is that none of them get to the heart of why we feel the way we do about the current trend in the Elder Scrolls series. We were all able to suspend our disbelief and fall in love with this series when the battle system was, quite frankly, trash. We did so because the stories we were able to tell within this world were so good.

Immersion doesn’t come from attributes or racial specials or any of the other bells and whistles that constitute game mechanics. Immersion comes from a suspension of disbelief inherent in the personal story being told in a living, breathing world where actions have consequence (which, correct me if I'm wrong, is ultimately the point that gpstr was making) . A story of good quality can withstand flaws in the battle system, or the absence of attributes, or even the loss of the freedom to do what you want in the way in which you want to do it. A poor story makes all of these errors stand out in bold relief. Lack of this basic element is why Skyrim, as Winter Wolf so astutely pointed out, feels a hunderd miles wide and one inch deep.

Once again I have succeeded in de-railing your thread, Vital. That's enough out of me. Apologies.

I agree with all of that. I don't like other people choosing what my class can or cannot do. But I thought we were talking about specific races being prevented from starting the game with certain skills/abilities/equipment? I never had a problem playing an elf and being a Jedi Guardian in KOTOR, or a Soldier in ME. Oh wait, yes I did, because there are no elves in those games! You are quite right about Dwarves being prevented from playing mages in DA though. I was never really thrilled with DA:O. The classes felt claustrophobic, and I didn't like the game world at all, so I haven't felt the desire to try any of the sequels.



In a sense you have played a pen and paper RPG, in the least that the BG games use the 2nd Edition D&D rules underneath the hood. Though it is true that was not the best of RPGs. The Neverwinter Nights games are definitely worth a try. I highly recommend them, especially the first one. They use the 3rd Edition D&D rules, which were a big improvement, as they give your characters a whole lot more they can do. If you liked BG1 more than BG2, then you would probably like NWN1 more, as it more similar in the way the world is laid out, being a very open area you can almost wander at will (though not completely). Where NWN2 is more like BG2 in how you can only go to areas after starting a quest that takes you there. Both games are dirt cheap on Gog.com.




I agree in the suspension of disbelief. It is just that some things help some people suspend their disbelief, but not others. The story is the only thing that kept me playing Mass Effect 1 until the end. The gameplay itself left me cold. To be honest, I enjoy the sword fights in Skyrim. The addition of bashing adds in a new dimension that the previous ES games lacked. You can play a one or two-handed weapon character and literally never get hit, so long as you time your attacks and bashes and movement right. It turns every battle into a ballet, which I find very fun.

I have never been impressed with the storytelling in the ES franchise. I have always played the games for the open world. In the end I prefer to write my own stories with my characters. I just need a sandbox to play with them in, just like the good old days when I was knee high to a grasshopper. That is why I don't really hate Skyrim, and I am sure I will give ES 6 a try whenever it comes out. Though I think I will wait until they patch the backwards flying dragons in that one. So long as Bethesda gives me a sandox, I'll get my knees dirty in it.

It has been very interesting to read the posts here. I guess the one part of role playing I had never considered is that most other people on this forum like to take time and discover the role their character will play.

That is something I have never done myself, whether on paper and dice games or on the computer. I am fired up from the first moment and always know exactly what type of character I want to play. Sure, things like mannerisms and personality are smoothed around the edges as I go, but that is it.

The basic core and what he/she will achieve is burning bright right from the start.

I am curious though, how do you decide majors/minors if you have no idea what your character will become? Do you just take anything and then fix the character as you go with console command and mods? I have never had to do that as I theme everything around the character, majors, leveling, quests, equipment, you name it.

For me role-playing is storytelling. I take a character with some basic attributes (such as my female Redguard character, Julian of Anvil). She's weak in magic, but strong in athletics and combat. The story that unfolded as I played her built up her stealth traits, and finally her magicka to the point where she could cast a flame atronach. Can she summon Volanaro's Dremora Lord? Not without some help from the console, so she doesn't use it much. But she has built up her magic skills considerably through the course of her story, to the point where she actually leaves combat behind to take up study at the Mages University.

Alise Sudmeri has done the same in Skyrim. She is a lonely character who is a bit of an outcast, unable to find a place where she feels safe and loved. So she shivers her way through the northern province in search of a home. All the decisions she makes reflects this. How have her attributes grown and changed? I'm not really sure at this point. The only thing I'm sure about is that she loves her adopted children and will do anything for them. They bring out the mother in her that has been repressed for too long.

As but one example - Dawn the Breton. She uses magic and a claymore - mostly destruction and illusion magic for ranged attacks and crowd control, and a claymore up close. She has no need for the sort of limitations you insist on since she's already limited by the fact that she's splitting her time and energy between divergent skills. She'll never be as skillful with a sword as Jibran, for instance, who's never done anything but swing a sword, and she'll never be as skillful with magic as Tim, for instance, who never did anything but cast spells. The limits you believe necessary already exist solely as a function of the fact that time is finite and time spent doing one thing is time not spent doing another. And, more to the point, in your demand that some sort of unnecessary restriction be placed on characters, it's quite likely, just because this is "the way it's always been," that you would decree that she, as a "mage," can't use a claymore AT ALL. She'd be arbitrarily required to use a dagger, as if there's some sort of law of Nirnian physics that causes weapons bigger than that to literally leap from the hands of "mages." So she couldn't even exist.

Um... what?

If you say the former, you necessarily mean the latter. That's exactly the problem. If you say that "you, the player" must be compelled to do this and prevented from doing that, then you're not only saying that I must be so restricted, but that every single solitary person who might ever play the game must be so restricted. That's exactly the thing to which I object.

Well... actually, to some notable degree, for me, it does.

It's not a coincidence that I've played so many unusual characters - Altmer barbarians, Orc mages, Orc thieves, Breton tanks... I like playing against the grain, and specifically because I like the challenge of working out how to get this Orc to be a powerful mage in spite of the fact that he's less well-equipped to be a powerful mage than the Bretons and Altmer around him. I love the fact that my Altmer barbarian started out fragile and weak - that meant that he had to REALLY want to be a barbarian and had to REALLY work at it to succeed, while a Nord or an Orc could've just effortlessly cruised to the same end. His shortcomings, and his struggles to overcome them, are a huge part of his story and of his personality.

It's a basic rule of storytelling - the way you create an interesting story is to create a character, give him a goal, then put an obstacle in his way. The drama of the story comes from the things that need to be done in order to overcome the obstacle. With no obstacles, it's just a boringly straight path.

Now personally, I have no idea why anyone prefers complete blank slate characters. To me, that just means that there's no reason to even care about picking a race. With racial differences, I get to choose whether I want to play a mage from a race that's predisposed to magic and thus has an advantage and will become extremely powerful or a mage from a race that's not predisposed to magic and thus has to work that much harder to succeed. Without those differences, I get to choose whether my mage is yellow or green. That's it. The former pair of choices goes some considerable way toward defining the character and laying a foundation for his story. The latter pair of choices is ultimately meaningless trivia - there might as well just be one race and a skin tint slider.

I should note at this point that I think a whole lot of the problem (broadly - I make no claims about you personally) isn't really about the game at all - it's that the distinction is made in the context of "race," which triggers a basic gut-level reaction in people. I don't think it actually has anything at all to do with how the concept of racial differences affects the game, but is primarily just a fundamental discomfort with the notion that there might even be any notable differences between "races." And I can't help but wonder if this controversy would even exist if they were referred to as different species instead.

In any case, whether it makes sense to me or not, it's undeniable that that's how some people prefer that "race" define nothing more notable than skin color and ear pointiness. So that means that my ultimate RPG (I can't even say ultimate TES game, because that's so thoroughly inconceivable - Beth WILL NOT make any game even vaguely like that) includes attributes and includes racial/character presets that can be toggled/adjusted to the player's preferences, so those who want diversity and advantages and disadvantages can have them and those who want a broad sea of undifferentiated blank slates can have them. I'm not wholly comfortable with that, just because it would seem to invite balance problems to have to build a world around some potentially relatively broad range of choices there, but that's the best I can do. I think that sort of thing is vital - that fully-fleshed characters can't be defined solely by their skills - that, just like real people, they also have to have talents. Just like real people, they have to have things that they're innately talented or not talented at - things that they'll be able to do easily if they choose, and other things that they'll find difficult to do if they choose. If they have the exact same aptitude for everything as everyone else, then much of the pleasure I find in roleplaying is gone, just like that. That others don't share that pleasure is just something that needs to be worked around - I'm willing to accommodate that.

For the most part, I use a standard set of general purpose majors that are simply ones that increase slowly enough that I get to spend as much time as possible with the character before s/he becomes overpowered and boring - things like Mercantile and Restoration are ideal, since pretty much everyone uses them, but they increase very slowly.

I have to have some basic idea of what the character's going to do to survive, because some majors, and more significantly, their specialization, are going to depend on that. But it's not necessary to know much - I just need an idea of what type of melee weapons they'll use if any, what type of armor they'll wear if any and what type of spells they'll cast if any. It's only necessary to set things up so that they don't level too quickly but they aren't crippled either - basically, that just requires making sure that their important skills are either non-spec majors or spec minors. Beyond that, it generally works out - some struggle more than others to gain the skills they need, but that just becomes part of their story. And if all else fails - if a build just isn't working out - I use the console to retcon it. I just change their majors around as necessary, then edit their skills and attributes to match. That's pretty rare though - I've done it enough times now that I've got a pretty good feel for assigning majors and specialization so that the character can do anything within a fairly broad range and at least not be crippled and not level up so fast that they're uber after too few hours, and that's pretty much all I require as far as that goes.

CLICKY





To piggy back on hautee's point:

Just because I don’t yet know who my character will become doesn’t mean that I don’t know how he/she starts out. Like you I have a very clear image in my head of who my character is to start the game. I just go in knowing that the events of the game are going to change my character in ways that I can’t yet foresee.

The best characters change over the course of time. They take on new skills and discard old ones. Their attitudes evolve (or devolve, as the case may be) based on their experience. Look at the fan fics we all love on this forum. Buffy, Julian, Teresa, Maxical, Athlain, Jerric... they all have changed considerably over the course of their various stories. The character arc is one of the key elements of effective storytelling and, when you get right down to it, isn’t that what ‘role-playing’ is all about?


Believe me when I say that I know the basic rules of storytelling. And I like to play against type too. I love playing Redguard mages, Orc spies and Bosmer tanks. Nothing in Skyrim (which I assume we’re talking about because it’s the only game that starts you as a blank slate) prevents you from doing this. I find it interesting that you oppose restrictions while simultaneously calling for them. You decided the nature of the obstacles your characters had to overcome. The game was incidental in that decision... in fact, the game is merely the setting for the story you want to tell. If you want your Altmer barbarian to start off weak, then make him/her so. But you have no right to decide that my Altmer barbarian has to start off the same way.


And see I come at it from the exact opposite point of view. Every character starts as a blank slate, regardless of what starting skills or attributes the game determines you possess. Nothing that makes your character special or unique comes from within those starting attributes. Remember, all the values for those skills and attributes are going to change based on where you decide to take the character. I personally don’t need the game to determine something for me that I am comfortable determining for myself. I still come into the game knowing that Altmer are considered the best mages, Bosmer the best archers, and so forth. None of the racial norms/stereotypes have changed. My choice of race is still made acknowledging those differences, but I like being in control of determining for myself how successful/unsuccessful my Altmer barbarian can be without the game forcing it upon me.


First of all I thank you for making this distinction, even if it was unnecessary. I think we all on this forum have devoted an appropriate level of thought to this subject. Your arguments so far have been eloquent and extremely engaging to read. I don't believe you have to worry about offending, and I don't believe that you think my comments are some knee-jerk reaction based on the fact that some game developer thinks that black people are dumb.

If you only see the various races as a predetermined set of attributes and skills then I can see how you think there’s no reason to choose a race if all those attributes/skills start the same. But I think that misses the bigger picture. When I decide to play an Altmer the starting attributes, skills, and racial specials are completely irrelevant to me. I am choosing to play as a member of the first race to navigate the oceans and seas of Tamriel. I am choosing to play as a member of the race that gave all of Tamriel its language and science (not to mention its religion and magic). When I choose an Orc I keep in mind the founding of Orsinium and Boethiah’s harsh treatment of Trinimac. When I play a Bosmer I try to hold to the Green Pact and a healthy fear/respect for Y’ffre if my character hails from Valenwood. As a Redguard I wrestle with the conflict of Crowns versus Forebears and, now with Skyrim, the betrayal by the Empire when they signed the White-Gold Concordant. Race is more about viewpoint based on shared cultural experience than it is about pointy ears and yellow or green skin. That viewpoint doesn’t waver, even when everyone starts with the same attributes.


This is the first thing you have written so far that comes across as condescending and it is, quite frankly, beneath you.


And that is exactly what Bethesda did in Fallout 3. S.P.E.C.I.A.L are attributes that each player can tailor to his/her liking right before the player is given the option to select 3 skills to 'tag.'

The one mistake I have made is that I came on this forum and started preaching 'character classes,' without defining what I actually mean by that. Somewhere everything got mixed up in the discussion about role play and the direction that the game should take.

My idea of classes is very similar to the way that Acadian demonstrated in the example above. Buffy takes certain skills out to 100 and others out to a lower value, and that is exactly what I would promote. Those values determine one class from another and is a way to prevent every character from becoming bland and uniform after you have either reached (or come close) to the level cap.

The system could look like this as an example-
Four specialist builds that take 5 skills out to 110 max. (fighter, magic-user, rogue and archer)
Then as many multi-class builds as the player can imagine that have 7 skills that have a 80 max.

All other skills not chosen would only be able to reach 25 (Apprentice level) and have to stop. Currently in Oblivion we can still level all minors, in fact, every skill out to 100. This is something I hate with just as much passion as you hate character classes.

The main difference between my design and the mod that Acadian uses is that I strongly maintain that a specialist character should always advance further than a jack-of-all-trades character, thus the skill level caps that I would use. Of course, Buffy is in many ways more extreme (and fun) in the example of character classes. She has her non-using skills sitting at only 15.

Dungeon and Dragons did have the rule that restricted use of many things, ie Clerics cannot use edged weapons, only thieves had back stab, magic-users could only use a dagger etc, and the reason for those rules was so that each player had a different character around the table. It would have been ridiculous to have 6 identical builds playing the same game at the same time.

Elder Scrolls is strictly a single player game so I see no reason to promote such rules. I would prefer to have the player have to tag 'blade' as a skill if they want to have it reach a high level. 110 for a specialist build, 80 for a multi-class character and only 25 if they have not chosen to tag it.

Other than that the player can player the game anyway that he desires.



Thanks for going to time to explain the way that you build the character. I did think it might be something along those lines.


Destri- I really like that you have pointed this out and it is something that does slip under the radar in the real world that we live in. At least by hopeless people like me who rarely get to see the world from another point of view. I do agree with the way that you see the starting game, as every race can have strong or weak, fat or skinny, fast or slow individuals, and it makes little sense to determine a set group of values to those individuals at the beginning.

This is partly the reason I will always see the end of a Beth as more important as the start. Oh how I hate having every skill hit 100 and a level cap approaching god-like status!

I just got to this thread and the idea of defining what I really like in a game caught fire so here goes.

I need to preface this with a my simple philosophy about games. I think people play 1; for the bragging rights and 2; for the entertainment/escape value. Entertainment effects tend to wear off in time like watching a movie too many times. Bragging could be among friends but is mostly done in a forum or game-chat. I think the very best games offer some of both hence the popularity of games like WOW. The point being that yes, the numbers do matter but they shouldn't disrupt the roleplaying. That said, here's what I want.

Number one, above all else, it must be sandbox.

Overall, I liked the gameplay of Daggerfall best. I also preferred it's scale both in territory and dungeons. I liked it's were-beasts, it's faction vendettas, spell casting and weapons based on a combination of skill and chance.
Banking.
Making your own armor.

Morrowinds extensive MQ which took you in one direction at the start and then turned it all around by the end was truly epic. That's what I want in a quest. Otherwise, just let me discover things as I travel around.

Levitation; nuf' said.
Believable transport options.
Really nice smoky, sparkley, spell effects.

I want the best of graphics that pushes the rendering to it's max.
The excellence of Oblivions sound effects (with a few really lame exceptions).
Character animation that doesn't make them look like crash dummies. A good example of doing it right is the latest 'Witcher' game.
Interesting Companions that do a better job of traveling with you rather than trailing behind you.
Charming, elegant, cozy, or foreboding homes the PC can own.
The game must have a Construction set with the powers of the existing CS plus import/export capabilities to a range of current modeling programs such as 3Dmax, Maya, and Blender. This should include adding animations as well as meshes and textures to the game.

Years ago, there were voice simulation programs that sounded very good and could provide enough variety to give game characters their own unique voice. This has never been incorporated into a game but I want it.

AI, and AI, and more AI.

Hand development over to Obsidian

My ideal TES game is probably not feasible, but one of the main things I'd like to see is take the best out of what each game has to offer, with some tweaking and improvements. Some examples:

Arena:
-Number of miscellaneous magic items (i.e. amulets, belts, torcs, etc., not weapons or armor that can be enchanted)
-I'd like for some dungeons to be the length of those in Arena
-Bring back some of the creatures (e.g. lizard men and medusas) found in the game
-Include some of the deities from the game that have never or almost never have been mentioned since then

Daggerfall:
-A length of time passes before you can move up ranks in guilds; in Daggerfall, when you meet the requirements for a higher rank 28 in-game days had to pass before it was official (obviously not feasible in the later, scaled-down games, so I'd like for some ranks to have a 1-3 day waiting period before you rank up)
-Some services in guilds are restricted until you reach a certain rank; I'd like to see something similar applied to guilds in a new Elder Scrolls
-The character creation system (by the Nine, there is so much that can be done with that if it was brought back)

Morrowind:
-Variety of magic spells available
-Less reliance on markers (or better yet, allow for markers, a radius, and be given directions to where you need to go
-More methods of travel

Oblivion:
-Variety of miscellaneous quests (I personally felt that Oblivion did the best job in this regard)
-Pacing of the faction quests (also felt that Oblivion did this the best, for the most part)

Skyrim:
-The perk system, which I think has allowed for the best differentiation in characters' progress thus far
-Functionality of the spell system

Online:
-More emphasis on the culture of each province
-More utility to food and drink
-A lot of the elements of the crafting

Battlespire:
-I have played very little, but I know Battlespire shows some Daedric politics, which is really cool

Redguard:
-Obviously since it isn't an RPG and it has a set protagonist it is hard to come up with things that would translate well to TESVI, but I'd love for more lore on Cyrus

Can't speak on the mobile games because I'm not sure if they have anything to offer for a new TES game.

I have issues with the way that Daggerfall did character creation, but I agree that it could be the basis for a better one. The idea of trading weaknesses against strengths when creating the character is the right one, but they failed to link them, so you could pick weakness to paralysis, for example, at the same time as immunity to it. That would have been better on a slider, with immunity at one end. I'm not sure what belongs at the other end, though. Inability to move?

There are some attributes that are inherently binary, like waterbreathing. You either do, or you don't, and percentages don't make sense. These are perhaps the ones to distribute, one per race, as differentiating bonuses.

And by Race, I mean man, mer, cat, lizard, and maybe some new ones, rather than the artificial cosmetic ones we have now. These should also act as factions (although others should exist) with some inter-faction disposition consequences. It would be good if the edges of the races overlap a bit, with the ability to create an elf who passes for human, or vice-versa.

Morrowind's variety of transports was welcome, but its "walk everywhere, or you'll fail if you run" wasn't. It also made a few places hubs and thus diminished all the others. An expanded Mark/Recall that effectively let you add you own hubs was a popular mod, if only so you could go home to dump your loot.

In Oblivion, I found myself using the same "wait for it" style in my own mods. The way you get people to do all the quest lines is to make them wait for the next step in each, and look around for something to fill in the time. This was much better than Skyrim's tangling one quest line with another, so that you have to join the College to do the MQ, etc.

Skyrim's mechanics, such as the event-driven scripting and Radiant quests are a must for a mod-maker. I'd keep the choices of the perk system, but tone down the effects of the steps. Especially the sudden ability smith with a particular material.

This topic is dangerous for me, as my "ideal" TES title is feasible only on a more advanced form of the Holodeck seen in the old TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'll throw out a few ideas that don't require so elaborate a setup. Even so, at least one is impossible with current PC horsepower, more are impossible or at least impractical on console, and one is might be highly unpopular.

World Size: Daggerfall got it right. If we're talking "ideal", this is a must for me.

World "composition" (for lack of a better term): In Minecraft, the entire world is composed of squares or derivatives thereof. These "building blocks" can, for the most part, be manipulated by the avatar. My ideal TES title needs this too. Only, the basic Minecraft "block" is half the size of the avatar, far too large to realistically represent a great many things. I'd compromise and settle for building blocks the size of grains of sand. I'd make it so the avatar can manipulate these "blocks" only in a realistic limited manner so that, for instance, an avatar can not chop down trees with his or her bare hands. My thought is that an avatar should be able to, say, take shovel to ground and see it response realistically with dirt flying at each dig. A game world the size of Daggerfall, composed of sand-grain size nodules, is the demand I see as impossible for now, even on high-end consumer PCs.

Fast Travel: Here's my unpopular stance. In a game world the size of Daggerfall, I'd abolish the sort of "casual" fast travel seen in Oblivion and implement a more limited system. My thought is that fast travel should be confined to sanctioned teleport authorities, along with clandestine "shady" practitioners available to those who choose a "dark" path. Teleport service comes at a cost, which can be quite steep depending on distance traveled (and the agency one deals with). On the other hand, those required to travel long distances in the execution of official duty can obtain "passes" from an authority allowing free travel to specific task related destinations. (The game might also have other forms of fast transport such as Morrowind’s Silt Striders, but these would travel in real-time at whatever speed is realistic for them, as do Oblivion/Skyrim horses.)

Jobs: My ideal TES entry would sport a wide variety of “meaningful� career professions the avatar could avail him or herself of if they so choose. Road Patrols provided by the Oblivion mod “The Elder Council� are an obvious and fairly simple to implement example, as are its embryonic tax gathering assignments. These need more sophistication, but if properly implemented can provide avatars with lifetime work. Again, this are examples only. There should be a great wealth of professions of all sorts.

Guild Leadership: Of the five TES entries, I prefer Daggerfall’s advancement mechanics and mundane quest assignments, along with Oblivion’s story-line quests. An avatar should not be offered leadership position within a guild unless meaningful responsibility comes with the title. (These would then fall under Jobs.) If leadership is offered, avatars’ should be able to opt out for whatever reason.

I’d like to see more survival/immersive/Sim-like elements added. Heck, Minecraft’s food/health maintenance/recovery mechanic is a cut above what TES provides. (While not ideal, I wouldn’t mind a mod that implements that exact mechanic in Oblivion. Don’t know that I’d install it, but I’d be tempted. Yes, I know similar mods are available. None excite me enough to want them in my load order.)

Better / more realistic Melee Combat: Why not? Kingdom Come: Deliverance looks at if it will prove that this is possible, though it itself isn’t perfect by any means.

I’ve been giving much thought to timescale, but that’s a whole other topic.

I’m losing my train of thought, not that I had much of one to start with. Better call it quits.

I think the ultimate TES game would be coded by some company other than Bethesda.

Oh, absolutely on Daggerfall. It wasn't perfect by any means, but due to the variety of things you could do with it and the depth I thought that had the best character creation in TES, at least in concept. Building off of that would be welcome to see. But along with refining strengths/weaknesses, the division of major/minor skills, etc., I'd like to see at least some of this to be at least mostly optional, if not completely. If somebody does not want to deal with the details of their character and make them completely average, let them. If you want to add flavor and spice things up by tweaking the minutiae, go for it. That's a general overview of what I'd like to see from character creation.

I still wish for fast travel mechanics to be kept, but have enough "natural" means of transportation to be able to cater to a wider variety of players. I like having the multiple means of transportation, but sometimes I'm just lazy and want to fast travel. Having mark and recall back would add some more variety, and through perks you could even set 2 or 3 marks to recall to.

I have some ideas for smithing, but that is a topic for another time.




Part of me does want a world the size of Daggerfall. That was part of that game's charm. In the interest of feasibility, I'd rather keep the scaled-down, heavily detailed worlds of Morrowind onward.

Regarding your jobs paragraph, something I'd really love to see is more guilds and a wider variety of them including brand-new ones. As an avid history lover, I'd love for an historical guild of sorts that delves into the past of the province that we are in.

And for guild leadership, I agree on the optional part. It should not be an office thrust upon the player and there is nothing they can do about it. But if the player wants it, they should be able to have it. Obviously if it was realistic they would have a lot of responsibilities to attend to, but in the interest of fun (it is a video game after all) I'd rather these be toned down and/or optional.

I hear this argument between size and detail quite often, but don't buy in to it, especially as we're talking "ideal". My ideal TES title would be both Daggerfallesque is size and richly detailed, its graphics quality at least on par with Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

Fair enough. I was just trying to come up with what is most ideal to me but was still in the realm of what is likely currently technologically possible. But I digress.

I wish we could have a mix of Arena and Daggerfall in terms of scope. All the cities and main quest locations from Arena (if lore-wise are still standing, in the same place, etc.) would be available, and then jam-packed with locations like in Daggerfall, and each province has a scope similar to High Rock and Hammerfell in Daggerfall. We would also have multiple modes of transportation and fast travel, but if you wanted to you could travel on foot to each location. A couple things I wish we could have seen in Skyrim is the Fortress of Ice from Arena and some lore on what exactly happened to the Arena city of Snowhawk. I really appreciate how Online has some main quest locations from Arena (e.g. Crypt of Hearts, Selene's Web). I'd also like to see the ruins of Crystal Tower, and what a modern-day version of the Adamantine Tower is like now. All of this is graphically at least on par with Skyrim or Online.