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Skyrim's leveling up system was pretty brilliant

Skyrim's levelling system was a massive improvement on Oblivion and Morrowind.
Skyrim did away with the old stats system that meant you had to level a bunch of minor skills to avoid having sucky stats. It got really stupid, counter-intuitive and metagamey
(e.g. if you picked a lot of strength skills as your major skills, then you'd end up with a very low strength character due to not levelling lots of minor STR-based skills)
Meh, removing limitation to fix this problem is like removing a machine from a car because it caused so much heat. The only failing in the old system like you just mentioned is that stats progressed normally regardless of that skills being a main skills or not, which mean being main skills would make your stats lower that it should be. Rather than removing limitation and stats, which is stupid, they could just make it stat progression from main skills is actually higher than those from non-main skills.
Shame they can't just, you know, make it great/stable out of the box. That's just asking too much.

The system fundamentally broken, changing it is like you wish some modder would turn the combat into Souls-esque with full worked rolling.

EDIT: Then again, maybe I could understand why people loves the freedom in Skyrim where you can switch your playstyle at whim. I know I could because the world is so goddamned dull, lifeless, and boring that it doesn't worth a second visit, so they have to make due in one, and only playthrough.
No matter how much mod I installed, how great they sounds in the description, I could never, ever able to get into my Skyrim 2nd playthrough more than five minutes.
 
I really enjoy the leveling system. It's great to get better at archery, just by..using the bow and arrow. It makes sense. I also liked that it gave me incentive to constantly switch up my playstyle. I would switch between the Bow, Melee and Magic all the time so that I didn't level one too far ahead of the others.

I do agree that they need to work out some of the grindy issues of the crafting skills (I made 1000's of iron daggers).
 
The name escapes me now, I expect there were a few mods that had this aim, but some of the most fun I had with Skyrim was extending the Skill Tree with more perks past the 100 limit. It really added an extra bit of life into a game I already spent a good 500 odd hours on.
 
Brilliant?

The UI was messy and hard to navigate. Especially on PC.
60% of the trees were pretty much useless.
No balancing at all; some talents were 100 times better than others. Some top talens were completely useless while some tier 3 talents were mandatory.
I really didn't find it fun at all to put in talents in the Skyrim talent-tree. Never felt like it did anything really, and so much was pointless crap.
Skyrim Redone made it a bit better, but still the same crappy UI.

Edit:
Good talent trees for me would be Wow during TBC/WotLK for example.
 
Oblivion had the least rewarding leveling up system ever conceived. Somehow, leveling up didn't feel like you becoming more powerful. Oh wait, that's because the rest of the world levels up with you! So, what was the point of leveling up anyway when everyone was the same level as you no matter what?

I heard that Skyrim has improved the system but its basically similar. I wouldn't want to waste my time with something like that again.
 
Brilliant?
Good talent trees for me would be Wow during TBC/WotLK for example.

That's true, but I for one did enjoy the leveling system in skyrim. Pretty, satisfying and worked well with the open world of Skyrim where you can go where and do what you want at any given time. Having a great modding community helps alot too. There's plenty of great mods out there that balances things out better and introduces entirely new skill trees as well.
 
The name escapes me now, I expect there were a few mods that had this aim, but some of the most fun I had with Skyrim was extending the Skill Tree with more perks past the 100 limit. It really added an extra bit of life into a game I already spent a good 500 odd hours on.


Skyrim Redone (SkyRe)
?

Though iirc it doesn't do the uncapping on its own; you need a separate mod to push skills past 100 (for more levels and thus perks).
 
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I wish it wouldn't allow you to become the best in everything. If I'm a powerful mage, I can't be the strongest warrior at the same time. Also the best sneaky thief. And a master archer.
 
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I wish it wouldn't allow you to become the best in everything. If I'm a powerful mage, I can't be the strongest warrior at the same time. Also the best sneaky thief. And a master archer.

Not that that isn't an issue, but it really doesn't become one unless you play the game for really long.
 
Level scaling is horrible.

and I do not like that most RPGs are doing away with traditional xp. I like grinding .. There is nothing wrong with grinding.

I would argue about lack of grinding in Skyrim. Grinding 20 hours making iron daggers was pretty groanworthy.
 
It was certainly an intuitive system. It could have been a bit more balanced, and the level scaling was pretty awful. I played as a sneak/archery character, which is absurdly overpowered in some scenarios, but painfully weak in others. While leveling, I could sneak undetected through dungeons and kill most anything in 1-2 shots, but I would die to large enemies in seconds when outside. Closer to level 40-50 I overpowered everything, including dragons, but I expect that would be true for most "classes" that late in the game.

All in all, I liked it, it had some frustrations, but some of the skills were cool, some were really effective, and some were fun... not too bad of a job for allowing so many options.
 
I would argue about lack of grinding in Skyrim. Grinding 20 hours making iron daggers was pretty groanworthy.

20 hours? 20 minutes is closer. Seriously, just get a bunch of iron ingots for practically nothing and kill a few bears and deer and then make leather strips out of their hides and you're just this shitty-weapon-making one man factory. You'll be in your 50s or 60s before you even realize it.

On that note, making 5 crappy, blunt iron daggers improves your skill more than forging a suit of plate armor from a lost dwarven alloy that people don't even know how to create anymore. It's also cheaper by a factor of ten. It's not a well thought out system.
 
I wish it wouldn't allow you to become the best in everything. If I'm a powerful mage, I can't be the strongest warrior at the same time. Also the best sneaky thief. And a master archer.

I wish it didnt let you become head of the mages guild when all I know is how to cast a fucking basic fireball and healing spell

Fuck
 
I don't get what the point of no leveling is in a free roam game.

If you literally cannot roam very far without being killed, it's hardly "free" roam.

/puffs pipe

Yeah, I just always turn the difficulty down and just enjoy the exploring and questing and not having to worry about the combat or put a lot of thought into leveling etc.
 
I like it a lot. It just has some weak spots that invite to abuse.
For example:
The Smithing exploit where you raise your skill by forging iron daggers over and over again.
Or repeatedly cast muffle to raise the Illusion skill, as well as cast soul trap on a corps again and again for easy Conjuration experience.
Apart from that its awesome, you really get the feeling that you actually achieved something when reaching a new level and put a perk point into a skill that you worked so hard on raising.
 
I liked it. It was the first ES game I ever played as well. But I don't like level caps. Never did. I don't know how developers could remove level caps without letting you gain every skill ever but I just don't like that there's a limit.
 
It sounds like some of you guys min/max the fun out of the game. I have level 37 character that I have 135 hours in and he is not even close to "the best at everything."
 
It sounds like some of you guys min/max the fun out of the game. I have level 37 character that I have 135 hours in and he is not even close to "the best at everything."

yeah, I generally think it's best to have one character per style of play.

the game became less fun when I began to realize the shallowness of the combat.
 
Coming from someone who loves Skyrim I think it was poorly handled. I'm all for leveling up what you actually use, but Skyrim didn't give you enough perks to fill out those trees, so you would end up needing to grind skills you didn't want to use to unlock perks in the ones you did want to use.
 
Worked like shit imo.

Because the whole system was broken. I stopped playing when I got one hitted by some scorpion creature. Then a dragon drops from the skies and starts attacking the scorpion. The dragon get three shotted.

I shook my head and deinstalled it, never to come back.
 
Had fun just leveling all those fun secondary skills until world filled with all kinds of ancient dragons and I had no proper defense nor any perks on melee skills.. ups.
 
It sounds like some of you guys min/max the fun out of the game. I have level 37 character that I have 135 hours in and he is not even close to "the best at everything."

I'm like you. Have a particular view for each character and just play the game, letting the levels come as they come. Works reasonably well in that respect.
 
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