Determining Character Class, through gameplay Options

[RobRendell]

I'm not sure if this is a worthwhile topic of speculation, but I guess the moderators will let me know if it isn't

I'll be really interested in seeing how they do class choice through game-play. I only recently worked out how the question-based character class choice in Morrowind worked, because I started playing Arena.

It was much more apparent in Arena that each of the three options to each question corresponded to "cunning", "valour" or "lore", and your class suggestion was a function of your resulting levels in those three traits.

In Arena and Morrowind, you have 10 "votes" to distribute the three traits, so it's fairly easy to see how they could map that to the various classes. 100% cunning is a thief, 100% lore is a mage, 20% cunning, 40% lore and 40% valour is a spellsword, etc.

However, in Oblivion it's apparently going to be determined by your actions through the initial escape. So, how are they going to do that? There are (say) 10 obstacles, and the game checks how you take them on? What if you sneak for a bit, cast a spell at a rat, then run up and whack it with a blade? You've used all three behaviours on a single obstacle...

It all seems much more analog and difficult for them to classify. Any ideas or thoughts about how it might work?

This post has been edited by RobRendell: Oct 7 2005, 11:00 AM

[RobRendell]

Yeah, that's what I'd expect - Arena and Morrowind both had an option to answer questions to determine your character class, but both gave the result as a suggestion only, and you could easily override it.

So, I fully expect that it'll be a suggestion only. That doesn't change my fascination with how they're going to determine what they're going to suggest, mechanically.

I hope there aren't too many tests like "which of these three items are you going to pick?" I mean, come on - everyone will take all three of them, kleptomaniacs that CRPG characters seem to be

Also, something else... before you've determined your class, you don't have any skills (or at least, the game doesn't know which ones are your major skills and which aren't). So, I wonder how it'll handle the player fighting, sneaking and casting spells, when it doesn't know what skills you've got?

Also also, in MW I believe that the list of your starting spells was a function of your skills; I didn't work out how it worked exactly, but I presume that there was a list of "starting spells" in each school of magic, and you started knowing any whose casting chance (which is based on the appropriate school's skill) was over a certain threshold. So, what list of spells does our as-yet-undefined character use in the pre-class-choice gameplay?

All food for thought...

This post has been edited by RobRendell: Oct 8 2005, 02:57 PM