Sarkus
3461
I actually had a guy at work offer me money to sell him the game early. Pretty easy decision to say no since we don’t have it in stock yet anyway. ;-)
First of all don’t project onto me, no-one is upset, I was just expressing my preference.
The system that is going to be in place is more in line with reality where you can’t be awesome at everything. Short of a system where skills decline as you don’t use them (which everyone would hate), a system where you just can never get as good at some things if you don’t take them as perks is the next best thing.
To counter your analogy: were you upset in KOTOR when your character couldn’t take every feat and every force power?
I actually do find it disappointing if a game goes to the trouble to have some sort of system of character development, but then caves and lets them be great at everything. If there aren’t going to be any interesting choices involved in building your character, then why even do it?
The funny thing is, it’s not like the Skyrim system is all that restrictive. It looks like you can easily max out two or three trees and still have a bunch of points to spread around on low-level Perk buys.
Exactly, me and Sones are on the same page here. If by the time you are level 50 every character is the exact same then what does character development matter other then the order in which you train yourself? (This has been the case with all the ES games so far).
I am all for a change that makes the leveling go faster and characters being very differentiable at higher levels, especially since you can get to level 70 with all skills maxed.
Other people obviously have a right to disagree, but it’s just a fundamental disagreement about how we want character development to play out. There’s no point arguing about it.
tincrow
3466
Yeah, personally I’d be happy if these games had a class system, since if Morrowind and Oblivion are any indication I’ll likely play a certain amount of 10-20 characters before I’m done with the game. I really don’t like the “one character can master everything” idea from a replayability perspective, but I can see how people would want to end up with a walking god. Luckily with Elder Scrolls fairly simple mods will likely solve these problems for people.
Kunikos
3467
Any game that let’s me only have enough skill points to distribute around a big tree better have a way to respec in it.
Yeah, but reality sucks. The goal is to make a game that improves on reality. And while I agree with you and Ben that forcing you to make some choices is a good thing for a game to do, I also think that letting you get to an absurdly powerful end state, where you are one-hitting dragons, jumping over buildings, and casting fireballs that annihilate a city, is pretty great.
I think that a system that paces your progression, but lets you get to insanely high levels, is probably the best of both worlds. You still have important choices to make, and most people will never get to be super-awesome, but those people that put in the time will get rewarded with being great by the end.
To counter your analogy: were you upset in KOTOR when your character couldn’t take every feat and every force power?
Well, a) like you say, “upset” isn’t quite the right word, but b) I suppose I would have preferred it if I could have, except that c) Bioware games don’t have the same scope for off-quest piggling as Elder Scrolls games, so basically everyone would have gotten to that by the end, which means that you basically would have spent a lot of the endgame leveling up skills you didn’t want in the first place, which would suck.
KWhit
3471
What game are you playing that lets you do that?
In Morrowind as a werewolf with high base Acrobatics and Agility + the transformation bonus I was able to jump a story and a half in the air.
Which leads me to a complaint: do I notice that athletics/acrobatics are no longer skills? So everyone runs/jumps the same speed/height?
Why does “insanely powerful” have to include “at doing everything?” The game will let you max out your power in several areas of specialization. If you can one-hit a dragon with a bow, is it that big a deal that you can’t also one-hit a dragon with a warhammer? I just really don’t understand the desire to throw character customization to the wind and make some sort of ubermensch that has ALL TEH SKILLZ!!! For me, the ability to develop different kinds of characters is a large part of the appeal of an RPG, and the idea of making them all converge and become basically the same character at the end of the game seems dumb. In any event, I’m sure that any number of mods will allow you to realize all of your game-breaking dreams.
WarrenM
3474
It feels to me that an RPG where I can be awesome at everything doesn’t have meaningful choices. I’d rather have to pick and choose and if I want a different experience, start a different character.
I never, ever replay games, so if I don’t get to do something on my first playthrough, I will never get to do it. For some things, that’s okay – I loved that my choices in Dragon Age were meaningful and I didn’t get to see every bit of plot and dialogue in the game. But for my character’s capabilities, well, I’d like to see how a fancypants magic person can be without having to necessarily devote my whole playthrough to being a fancypants magic person.
I believe your run/walk speed and jump height are now goverened by armor weight (and what perks you have said armor types).
Morrowind (with its crazy broken/awesome athletics and acrobatics) came the closest, probably. I was disappointed that that stuff got tuned down in Oblivion.
Kunikos
3478
Sounds like a personal problem. Replaying good games a year or two later can be fun.
Is there preloading on steam?
There is supposed to be, soon I believe. Pete tweeted this 18 hours ago:
“It’s a go for preload, just isn’t available yet. Pinged folks tonight to find out when it gets turned on.”
