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I always find myself missing the nerdy "number crunching" aspect of the older games when playing skyrim.
There's not much that goes into actually "building" a character; you use skills you like, put points into those skills to make them better.
I think a return to specializations would also be good. The 3 starter stones kind of replace this in skyrim, but at the cost of making birthsigns kind of bad. Same goes for races: racial choice doesn't make much of a difference(granted, I don't mind the race thing too much, since racial choices are largely an aesthetic preference.)
The problem with TES attributes has always been that they lock one into trying to "efficiently level." For example, in morrowind, there was the trend of "Always be jumping" and to never mark acrobatics as a major attribute, so you'd always have a +5 to agi on level up no matter the class given how important agi was. In Oblivion it was much worse because of the harsh scaling of enemies to the player, making the game extremely spongy if you didn't build your character perfectly. Likewise, Oblivion had strict hard-caps after which skills and attributes would give no or very little benefit.
I think what might actually work is if class specializations return, as well as classes and custom classes in general. However, the game would go instead to a more traditional exp system based on doing quests, killing monsters, exploration, etc. Upon leveling up, you'd be given an amount of points you could distribute into desired skills.
-Skills outside of your specialization would cost more, but could still be leveled.
-Your class skills would simply determine your starting level with said skills(as would races to a lesser degree: race choice would mostly impact powers and racial passives.)
-Perks would still exist, but be more like modifiers and gameplay additions rather than determining overall base effectiveness. They would largely be similar to Skyrim as-is, but fewer in number, with more potency on how they change up gameplay. No more "increase X by Y%" type stuff, more things along the line of "Casting fire spells at enemies affected by frost spells critically strikes, and causes them to explode for additional damage onto nearby enemies."
-Skill points in a skill would determine raw base effectiveness. For example, each 1 point in heavy armor would make armor value from heavy armor 1% more. So, even without any perks in a heavy armor tree, someone with 100 heavy armor is still gonna be quite good with it.
-Amount of skill points per level up could be determined by a variety of things, and attributes could be one of those, but I think it'd be more interesting if it were determined by quests you do and things you find while exploring. Maybe the end of major questlines would increase skill points gained.
-Skills would cap at 100, but attributes would not. Attribute caps would effectively not exist beyond certain hardcaps to things like crit chance. They would follow a parabolic curve to prevent power scaling from getting out of hand too quick.
As for attributes themselves, I like to imagine them as base modifiers that blanket the broader scope of a character's potency. Raising them, however, would NOT be through leveling. Instead, it'd be through gear. A problem in TES is often gear isn't very interesting outside of aesthetics and how much protection it gives when it's unenchanted. I think giving all gear a range of attributes they can provide would be much more exciting than getting a neat piece of armor and it having something near-worthless like water walking.
So, at very low levels, you'd usually find items that would just offer small amounts of attributes or no attributes at all. Something like an irony helmet might just have a +10 to strength on it(it could be any attribute, maybe with some weighting towards a character's specialization or class skills.) However, a late game daedric artifact might, in addition to its base effects, might offer +80 str, +65 end, and +40 int. Attributes would not really have a hard cap unlike skills, so there would always be incentive to keep leveling and delving dungeons(I actually like the legendary skill reset system for this in principle.)
What the attributes would do:
Str: extra melee damage, carry weight, tempering quality of heavy armor/weapons
End: fatigue/stamina, reduction in stamina consumption from sprinting and power attacks, overall HP(would also modify rate of resistance to hunger, sleep, and weather effects in survival)
Agi: critical chance and damage with melee and arrows,stamina/fatigue regen speed, tempering quality of light armor/weapons
Speed: Movespeed(normal and while sprinting), jump height, fall damage reduction
Int: Magicka pool, spell critical damage, conjured minion effectiveness, tempering quality of clothing type items like wizard robes and jewelry.
Will: Magicka regen speed, magic damage/effect resistance, spell critical chance
Luck: Increase gold find, overall quality of loot found(would add a modifier to the rolled attributes on found gear)
(tempering under this system would not just effect base armor/damage values, but also attributes overall)
Attributes would also increase slightly upon level up, in accordance to specialization. Only luck would not increase. So, a combat specialization would see a small bonus to strength and endurance upon gaining a new level.
Keep in mind spell criticals wouldn't just be destruction and restoration, but all spells. Utility spells 'critting' would double their effective level value and/or duration. For conjuration, it'd impact summon duration and hp/damage values of the summon(conjuration's level itself would determine the hp/damage values of summoned creatures alongside int so it scales well enough into late game)
All of these attributes would be additive to gear modifiers(like weapon damage) BEFORE multipliers from skills, which would be before bonuses from perks. So at 100 strength and 40 two-handed skill with a 45 base damage weapon, and a perk that makes attacks critical against certain enemies: (100+45)1.4x2=406. Of course, this is before fatigue calculations and also not considering power attacks. Fatigue determine final damage as it used to(so it's worth paying attention to again), but I'm not certain how.
The final elephant in the room is enchanting. It's something either broken to the point of feeling mandatory(skyrim), or near useless(oblivion.) Instead of doing the obvious thing and just making it give extra attributes, which would make it feel mandatory, I think it'd be better if it remained similar to how it is and offer unique effects to weapons and gear. Instead of something lame like base magicka and regen speed, maybe something that, when casting a lightning spell, there is a chance for an echo of it to fire as well at 25% effectiveness. Chance determined by enchant quality.
I think all of this would give a lot more depth to the loot and leveling system of TES, because a problem each TES game runs into is that you very quickly reach a point where leveling and getting items feels pointless. Character growth always out-paces the game too quick. Combined with a good endgame system that gives incentive for dungeon-diving even already cleared areas, this could make for a VERY addictive game loop similar to some MMO's, Shlooters, and ARPG's. Some mods already try to approximate some facsimile of this(experience and static skills, albeit I never got static skills to work), but it never goes the whole mile since Skyrim simply lacks the framework necessary for this in the first place.
Also...FFS...clean slate character start only. No Shakespearean 'I gotta find my parent/kid/' bs...leave that crap to Disney and...*sigh* Fallout.
I would not hold my breath for Elder Scrolls (Or Bethesda games in general) to become actual roleplaying games again. Their games will continue to focus on action and combat, while simultaneously removing more and more ways to approach combat.
They have nearly reached the pinnacle of stupidly oversimple, from then on you either add complexity back or you end up with a hack and slash game....
I don't think it really has anything to do with the engine. Besides, there is a mod out there that has already added back attributes in the style of the older games, E.S.L.A.
That said, if someone has done a mod for it, then it can be done.... whether or not BETHESDA are capable is another matter.
They essentially burned the ship with FO76, and scattered the ashes with Starfield....
ie, it's a pipedream, Bethesda clearly isn't going to do what the fans actually want.
That's how things used to be done when we were little gamers, and we didn't know any better. Kids these days mostly aren't satisfied with the same-old, and neither are we anymore. Yes. There are some who, apparently like Bethsoft, don't want anything to change, but they're the loud, vocal, stuck-in-the-past fogey minority (of any age).
We want something new.
Though, SF should show Bethsoft that trying to have the engine create the majority of the content just isn't going to work. No procedure, algorithm, or "AI" will be able to provide the nuances that players love in reactive settings. (Heck. Even conversational AI admit to having no ability to handle nuance... something I already knew years ago when this tech was just becoming more widely known.)
If Bethsoft follows their current MO, they'll double down on the procedural, bland content instead of abandoning it as a failed experiment.
We'll see if Bethsoft will get out of their familiar style rut, but they're cowards thinking that $$$ comes from doing the same thing over and over. $$$ will eventually stop coming, and it'll never return. So, they can either keep milking the same-old, tired stuff until it runs dry or tap a new well.
Bethesda's cutting out parts of the formula is getting more and more bland and uninteresting... Skyrim is pretty mediocre, it's only redemption is the combat is better.
Well that and it has a lot of content on the map...
I prefered Oblivion TBH, and probably would have preferred Morrowind if I had gotten it to work decently.... I love BG3 and various other games with better storytelling and characterisation, which Bethesda could seriously do with...
Considering how bad Starfield was received and they are using the same engine once again if i am remembering correct.
And yes TES6 is being developed, how good or bad it will be is up for debate, but they are making it.
In Oblivion you unlocked new abilities and grew in power by just leveling your skills- now we have all these perks protracting the whole character growth process and forcing you to choose between distinctive abilities and boring +X% Buffs every level in piecemeal fashion.
I'm not a fan.