New skyrim previews

[Johannes]

Why'd you say anything about its RPG-ness then, if you're not willing to offer any kind of logic to back it?

 

[Metro]

Why isn't it a true rpg?

 

[Mastermind]

Why isn't it a true rpg?

What about it?

 

[ElectricOtter]

I CAME RAGE



Seriously though, I think Skyrim has set itself on the path to be a poorer RPG than Oblivion. Shit. Eh, I'll still pirate it just to fuck around and admire the scenery a bit.

 

[Bigot_]

Why isn't it a true rpg?

What about it?

Not enough immersion

 

[Archibald]

If perks are done right primary atributes can go to hell. We should all know damn well by now that Bethesda can`t do anything good with "traditional" stats system so we might as well see how this turns out.

seriously though, I think Skyrim has set itself on the path to be a poorer RPG than Oblivion. Shit. Eh, I'll still pirate it just to fuck around and admire the scenery a bit.

Because atributes really helped out Oblivion to be a richer RPG.

 

[Lingwe]

Some Joystiq [strike]braindead loon[/strike] editor contributed this to the "how debased can our we make our profession" competition.

Also, the skills have been simplified to three categories: magicka, health and stamina to make the RPG elements slightly more streamlined.

So many things wrong in a single sentence. And people think political journalism has problems!

 

[DraQ]

If perks are done right primary atributes can go to hell.

You're p. stupid... oh, right - 2010.

Perks are not valid replacement of attributes, if anything they can be used in place of traditional skill system, but not attributes. Attributes are scores representing basic qualities of a character - large linear scales describing how strong, fast, agile or smart the character is. They form solid trunk of the stat system and constitute rough outline of the character. Skills determine how good the character is with particular activities and are modified by attributes. Perks are usually binary abilities, techniques and such that are too small to actually be described in terms of numeric value, they may represent specific bits of knowledge and other fine details, and are used to make skill no longer appear as plain linear scores.

The attributes are typically the least fluid aspects of the character, while the perks are added continuously. They CAN'T substitute for each other. You can technically remove the perks and have the game rely solely on skills and attributes, like Morrowind or Wizardry 8. You can remove both, skills and perks, and make a crude RPG with coarsely outlined builds. You can remove skills and represent all abilities in terms of perks alone, adorning the solid kernel of attributes.
You can't however remove the attributes as they are the very core of the system.
At least not to any desirable effect.

If anything, TES games suffered from attributes being too fluid and thus not significant enough, removal of attributes altogether exacerbated the problem instead of fixing it - instead of limiting/removing the possibility of semi-retarded barbarian becoming a genius, they cut out the notions of "semi-retarded" and "genius" altogether. There is no nimbleness, nor clumsiness, intelligence nor dumbness, strength nor weakness in Skyrim anymore.

We should all know damn well by now that Bethesda can`t do anything good with "traditional" stats system so we might as well see how this turns out.

Following this logic, Beth should just sell blank DVDs.

It's not like they have ever done anything, barring possibly worldbuilding well. It's that their earlier games were bold and ambitious, grand and imaginative. They were flawed gems. And flawed gems are always better than plain horseshit - even flawless.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

There is no nimbleness, nor clumsiness, intelligence nor dumbness, strength nor weakness in Skyrim anymore.

Can't perks take care of these things? It's not like the meaning of "perk" is set in stone. You could have all characters start as a blank slate (as in, the equivalent of a level 1 piece of crap character) and add perks that double as clusters of character attribute points.

Like, 3 ranks of "Nimble" perk makes your character run like a 80 speed character in Oblivion, 2 ranks in "Swordfighting" equals 30 points in OB's Blades, or something like that.

 

[Dezzy]

It looks like an RPG to me. Not every game needs to use MS Excel as its game engine to be an RPG.

 

[Gord]

Not every game needs to use MS Excel as its game engine to be an RPG.

 

[DragoFireheart]

TES is better off getting rid of attributes. Fuck, they hardly made a noticeable impact anyways and leveling them was a pain in the ass. The perk system may be better but I wait and see.

 

[DraQ]

There is no nimbleness, nor clumsiness, intelligence nor dumbness, strength nor weakness in Skyrim anymore.

Can't perks take care of these things? It's not like the meaning of "perk" is set in stone. You could have all characters start as a blank slate (as in, the equivalent of a level 1 piece of crap character) and add perks that double as clusters of character attribute points.

Like, 3 ranks of "Nimble" perk makes your character run like a 80 speed character in Oblivion, 2 ranks in "Swordfighting" equals 30 points in OB's Blades, or something like that.

Nope, since the perks are going to be associated with skills which makes them even more specific than those skills, let alone attributes. Even if you have "intelligent" perk tied to, say, enchant skill, it won't be available to someone without sufficiently high enchant. You could, probably work around that, like you could work around pretty much any ass-backwards solution, but it'd be unnecessarily convoluted, messy, possibly unreasonably limited and generally piece of crap compared to rationally designed system going from general description of character's potential using few, precise linear scales describing how strong, fast, intelligent and so on the character is, through large number of (possibly less precise) scales describing how skilled this character is in various areas, to numerous binary perks describing singular abilities and various details of various character aspects. You'd need to code some perks with multiple levels, tied to multiple skills, prohibiting multiple selection of the same perk from different sources to avoid situation where player needs to master short blades if he wants to run fast and so on - stuff that rational attribute-skill-(perk) system handles implicitly.

Also, you've just pointed out another problem - all characters starting as a blank slate. It's not inherently bad to have no pre-game build describing the character if this character is already described by some archetype. In a classless RPG with widest possible variety of specializations, however, this doesn't mean "the equivalent of a level 1 piece of crap" - it means "the equivalent of a level 1 perfectly serviceable jack-of-all-trades", since our blank slate needs to be competent enough in every possible area to be able to progress in any possible direction while surviving the associated playstyle. Earlier TES games at least had enough decency to make convergence towards ultimate JoAT endgame/powergaming problem, here it strikes right at level one. If you tried to learn using long sword in combat by yourself in Morrowind as a lvl1 mage, it just turned out to be learn-by-dying rather than learn-by-doing educational experience - here it's going to be THE way to build your character.

TES is better off getting rid of attributes. Fuck, they hardly made a noticeable impact anyways

Oblivtard detected.

 

[Johannes]

They thought that attributes in Oblivion sucked. So they remove that and add perks instead. I don't see what's the problem really. Unless you thought the attribute system in earlier TES was awesome, in which case it makes sense to miss it.

I don't see why you couldn't have a good character system without attributes like intelligence, strength etc. if the system is diverse enough to allow other means of differentiation. Sure the Skyrim system might suck anyway, but same goes if they'd kept attributes.
Well, you don't even need good character system to have interesting combat and nice hiking atmosphere. Even if Skyrim might fail on both things.

 

[villain of the story]

As long as there is a distinct separation between the player and the player character and the performance of player character is mostly if not completely handled through a layer of abstraction, I don't see any problems with removing attributes or calling it an RPG.

And the "Attributes > Skills > Perks etc." setup in RPGs has become an extremely dogmatic cope-out either way. They are usually bloated with an inclination to favour one stat over another regardless of anything else and mostly because games rarely have any interactive content outside combat and a few other "side occupations".

It's just that I have zero confidence in Bethesda to make anything meaningful and diverse out of it. Judging by the way they are marketing Skyrim, it seems to have no difference than any straight action game with some talent tree. And then you have got Todd The Brainfart giving you examples of how quests play, which shows ZERO RP of G and instead sounds like Call of Duty: The Elder Scrolls, except with hiking simulation. And if that's what they want, and it sounds like what they have ALWAYS wanted (and those shitty interface screens is another proof of this), this design decision is pretty normal.

The part that really sucks is that nerfing the system down to an action game quite possibly means that they also took a huge dump on the flexibility of scripting, so forget about improving the RP potential of the game through new story mods, TCs and what not. Now everybody will make new hack 'n slash mods with emo-fag romance and nudies.

Don't spew bullshit about past TES games regarding attributes, though. Attributes made huge and very noticeable differences both in Daggerfall and Morrowind.

 

[Captain Shrek]

I am not an indispensable asset or anything, but please remind me why I come instead of going to Biodrones inc.

 

[moraes]

It seems evident that the removal of attributes weights the system towards a generalist approach to character development. But this can be offset by racial perks (implicit ones like crap mana/magic skill growth) or perks unlocked by branching paths in the storyline, e.g. a magic oriented character can only cast the most powerful spells after receiving training in the appropriate guild, the cost of wich is a series of jobs that place the player character at odds with most other guilds, etc. --> this, however, can have the retarded consequence of a "fighter" with 100 in Destruction that can't cast the most powerful spells.

The above assumes that Bethesda is competente enough to balance the intrincacies of such an untested system.

 

[Archibald]

Following this logic, Beth should just sell blank DVDs.

Would be preferable to be honest.

If anything, TES games suffered from attributes being too fluid and thus not significant enough, removal of attributes altogether exacerbated the problem instead of fixing it - instead of limiting/removing the possibility of semi-retarded barbarian becoming a genius, they cut out the notions of "semi-retarded" and "genius" altogether. There is no nimbleness, nor clumsiness, intelligence nor dumbness, strength nor weakness in Skyrim anymore.

You said it yourself here damn well, i don`t know why are you even arguing. All TES games had fluid and rather pointless attributes. Their whole system of skills being trainable by their use suggests attribute free gameplay. They never fixed it nor will they so why fucking cry when they remove something that never worked in their series? I`m not saying that perks should be mandatory instead of attributes, i`m just interested to see how this turns out and knowing how attributes worked in past games it can`t be much worse.

It seems evident that the removal of attributes weights the system towards a generalist approach to character development.

I think from oblibion and F3 it should be rather obvious that this is what they want in their games.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Don't spew bullshit about past TES games regarding attributes, though. Attributes made huge and very noticeable differences both in Daggerfall and Morrowind.

Those games were still very action heavy and attributes weren't the primary means of a character performing well. Dodging in and out while swinging was and still is a player-skill that could be abused in those games to succeed. Skills have and still have the largest impact on a characters ability. Attributes are and have always been handled like ass.

 

[Mastermind]

It seems evident that the removal of attributes weights the system towards a generalist approach to character development.

Have you actually played any TES games? Skyrim's perk system is the least generalist in the series since Arena. In Morrowind, Oblivion, and to a lesser extent Daggerfall there was little reason not to be a spell slinging warrior thief. You could be all things because there were no real constraints other than the amount of time you put into it.

 

[Metro]

I hereby declare that whomsoever agreeing Perks as a valid REPLACEMENT FOR ATTRIBUTES is a retard, a fag and a nigger with questionable parentage.

The truth is that world is full of such people. Enjoy the everybody.

There sure were a lot of stats and meaningful attributes in Witcher 1, amirite? Some of you guys are so inconsistent it's hilarious.

 

[Xi]

I honestly don't get it. RPGs are about player driven character development and skyrim is set up to have the most character building options since daggerfall. Attributes were removed but the 300 or so perks more than make up for it. Not that I wouldn't rather have both, but attributes are just a way to distinguish characters. They're not vital to the formula as long as there are other ways to do it.

The only saving grace is the perk system. If it's as shallow as the skills/stats then the question of whether it's an RPG will certainly have to be raised.

 

[Mastermind]

A number of classic RPGs the codex splurges over that I've played have had shitty, utterly shallow skill systems. Might and Magic, Daggerfall, Fallout, Torment, Gothics, etc. Nobody questions whether they are RPGs or not. It seems that it's become codex standard to label any new rpg they don't like as "not an RPG".

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Edit: Duh.


So basically, Dragon Age 2's route plus a perk system.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

It seems evident that the removal of attributes weights the system towards a generalist approach to character development.

Not quite. If these perks are unlocked depending on how many related perks the character already has (You can only have great combat perks if you have all the basic combat perks, for example), it would encourage specializing.

I hereby declare that whomsoever agreeing Perks as a valid REPLACEMENT FOR ATTRIBUTES is a retard, a fag and a nigger with questionable parentage.

I care little for your theories on which elements a tr00 arpeegee should contain. Beth was never good at handling attributes to begin with, so if exchanging them for perks could generate better results, I don't mind it.