Starting attributes are just that, starting. They're pretty much irrelevant, since even the 'high' attributes are so low that you can train the really low ones to their level in no time. That is how it's been since Morrowind. Not so much in Daggerfall...
The only lasting effect that you mention is the birthsign, but then you immediately correct yourself by pointing out that it is not a feature of class at all.
Birthsign might as well be a feature of class anyway, since what skills you pick, attributes you pick, race you pick, and birthsign you pick are all totally arbitrary and unrestricted. Some happen to fall under the "class" templates and some don't, but this has absolutely no practical bearing on your character.
I agree that favored attributes didn't really do much, and I think they should have done more (perhaps by messing with the multipliers or something). However, they could certainly be consequential (especially with Luck, since you can never get multipliers on that), and you
can start with some stats pretty high if you pick a strong race/attribute combination.
And you know that based on what? AFAIK no details of the character creation process have been revealed yet, so you're just jumping to conclusions like Amp did. All we know so far is that you don't select favored skills.
We know that you can't select favored skills and that you can't select a birthsign. What else is there? Obviously you'll be able to choose race, although it's not clear what effect that will have, and I doubt they'd leave in favored attributes but not skills.
People know that "class" was never really a part of TES in more than name, right? The "classes" you can select are just skill templates. Your character has always been created by selecting which skills you want to use as primary, meaning you start with them being higher than others, and you level up (i.e. increase attributes and gain health and mana points) when enough of those skills are raised.
Exactly. Well, it's also favored attributes, but your point is correct. "Classes" have just been prebuilt templates. In effect, the classes themselves were meaningless except in an in-universe "professional" sense, because you could alter any of them to your liking however you wanted.
It's possible, though, that what with the number of skills going down from whatever it was in Daggerfall, to 27 in Morrowind, to now 18, that it is becoming more and more difficult for characters to differentiate from each other.
Especially since characters aren't actually inherently better at any of them; they all have the exact same potential and raise skills to the exact same degree. Every Redguard is born the same, etc.
Now we've got 18 skills and I'm not sure how many you pick.
They mentioned that the class system is gone and put emphasis on "you are what you play". Judging by this, the goal is that you don't pick starting favored skills at all (aside from whatever effect your race has), with what your character is "good at" being determined solely through play.
Anyway, what was cool about Daggerfall is it allowed characters to be way more differentiated and specialized. Sure, not every skill was good enough that you'd want to use it as a major skill, but who cares? Nobody is going to role-play an Olympic swimmer, but it's cool that you can have your character be above average in swimming. Or climbing or whatever.
Daggerfall's "perk" system was also cooler, I think. In Morrowind and Oblivion you got to pick a birthsign that gave you certain advantages (and sometimes disadvantages) and/or activated abilities. They were pretty unbalanced in Morrowind, but less so in Oblivion. But in Daggerfall you could pick from a long list of handicaps and bonuses, each worth a certain value, and if that value was around zero, the speed at which you levelled up was normal, but if it was higher or lower, you'd level up faster or slower than average. You could pick all kinds of different stuff, like only being able to use magic in daylight or at night, or regaining health when submersed in water, or I can't even remember what else. Once again, a lot of them were broken (99% of fights that mattered happened in dungeons, so being unable to use magic in daylight was almost a free way to be able to afford other bonuses), but the point was there was a ton of customization available. That gets lost the more you "streamline."
I haven't played Daggerfall, but I'd love to see a system like that that did itself justice. Unfortunately, I don't know how feasible that is. Especially these days, content is streamlined and trimmed down like crazy in games because they just wouldn't be able to build up enough content and develop for long enough to justify all of that. Modern AAA game development is very much about catering to what people immediately see without having to think very much about it. The goal is to be accessible because they need to sell a gazillion units to make bank. Even if that weren't the case, implementing things like climbing and swimming properly would be difficult, because the more "real-world" you flavor your skills, the more "real" your world needs to feel. And that's always been hard.
I've always despised the completely artificial and arbitrary concept of 'class' in rpgs, and I'm glad a developer finally has enough balls to get rid of it. Maybe it won't work in the end, but I think it is worthwhile as an experiment if nothing else.
Are you kidding me? How is Morrowind-style "class" at all "artificial"? Literally the only thing Morrowind's "class" says about your character is that you naturally focus (and have natural aptitude for) certain skills and abilities over others, as well as a minor tweak to your attributes. I fail to see how this is at all unrealistic, all things considered.
Again, I don't think that's necessarily the case. With a perk system, it would be very easy to put in some of these options in the form of perks that you can select only during character creation (much like Neverwinter Nights and its Feats). We'll have to wait and see.
I think D&D-style feats are a very bad idea for TES. They're way too, I don't know,
gamey. I like TES to feel like an organic, immersive RPG, not a hack-and-slash.
Author
Topic: Elder scrolls V: Skyrim (Read 265746 times)