Skyrim

[Ghengis_John]

Does Skyrim still use the god awful leveling system in Oblivion?

In Oblivion, you had to select your seven "major" skills. You could level up all skills, but these would be your "major". For every 10 ranks you earned in your skills (major or minor), you would gain a level. However, here is the problem; the number of attribute points you get to spend when you level is directly dependent on whether or not the ranks you earned were major skill points, or minor skill points.

So if you wanted a good character, it pretty much forced you to purposely not level up certain skills, because it would weaken your overall character... which is... WTF? God forbid you slip down a rock, accidentally earn a rank in safe fall and fuck up your character build.

All skills level you up now. Inversely there is a perk system in place. every 5 skill ups or so you get a level increase. Every level increase you get a perk point. (might shift to ten skill ups at level ten, seemed to go slower. I'm not sure.) At any rate you are now probably looking at the inverse of the old paradigm. Where now you will be learning skills you never use just to try to milk one more point out of the tree for the ones that you do.

You also do not level up when you sleep and there is no more condition stat on equipment. What this means to you is it's easier than ever to find a mud crab and let it hit you for the next ten hours so that you can level up armor and resto. So in respect to previous elderscrolls games that tradition is still as strong as ever.

I gotta say just some input, I ain't loving what they've done to speech as a skill. Harder than hades to level it up now and chances to use it come once in a blue moon. They combined it with barter into "persuasion" which was like creating one skill for "social". That said plot wise this is the first elderscrolls game that has actually managed to get me to want to do the main quest. Kudos to it. They learned a lot from new vegas on this one. A LOT. From the choices presented to the player, the the allegiances you make effecting not just who your friends in the world are but in some cases who's alive or dead, to the little activities that make the world more believable like people farming or working, to the fact companions have personalities. You could do worse than to check it out Jaxel. It's a lot of little things that make the world feel more alive.

At the start of the game you have the choice of escaping the big opening to an rpg WTFBREWHAHA moment with an imperial army allied nord, or a rebellion allied nord. You go to their towns, their homes and meet their families afterwards. The imperial allied nord has a total "duty, honor, loyalty" aspect and has the feel of say the old British army while the rebel's family has a total IRA feel to it.

 

[lobo]

i skipped the story altogether and bee-lined it to the mage college that everyone was talking about. i like that there is no level requirement for anything. i'm also going pure mage. augmented doublecast firebolt is the business. i just cot the dark azura's star and put some blind NPC's soul in it. now if only i can figure out wtf it does...

so far i haven't seen ANY of the frame rate/freezing issues that plague oblivion and the fallout games. thank god. i may go as far as to say this is the best RPG i've ever played so far.

jaxel, much like fallout, you now get a perk for every level up, and each perk can go into a skill tree a la FFX. i think it is leaps and bounds better than the oblivion system. the downside is that there is bound to be a level cap, so you have to be choosy about where to dump said perks. the old system of just leveling up and making a sort of jack of all trades is out the window. as for speech, mine is getting kinda high, past 30, just by selling shit.

the one thing that i HATE so far, are the stupid door puzzles. they aren't clever. they aren't enjoyable or rewarding. they are fucking stupid.

 

[franman]

I've downloaded the game through GameStop's Impulse program. My only beef so far is that there are no longer hot keys to quickly get the favourite stuff you wanted to use. Instead it's just a quick menu that is just based on your favourites.

 

[Jaxel]

GameStop's Impulse program

I hate you... I miss Stardock Impulse.

 

[lobo]

this joker thought he'd fly down and do one of the random dragon encounters...while i happened to be ten feet away from chatting up the arch-mage. ROFL. not only did he get raped in like 10 seconds and hook me with a dragon soul, he died in the most awesomely awesome spot everrrrrrr.