HomeLAN - How will the RPG aspects of the game be handled this time for Oblivion in terms of skills and "leveling up"?

Ashley Cheng - We have tweaked the skill-based system, but it remains virtually the same.

With Morrowind, you would create a character that you thought would be fun, but hours later, once you figured out how the skill system actually worked, you would realize that you really wanted to create a different character to suit your style of play. While we can never truly get rid of this problem, we've done things in Oblivion to address it.

We've made tweaks so that if all you wanted to do was play the game and never look at your stat sheet or track how many uses you were getting with a particular skill, you can still enjoy the game - regardless of your character stats.

One of the ways we solved this was getting rid of the combat die rolls - the roll to hit. In Morrowind, we found players would swing and swing and it would appear like they were hitting a creature but they would do no damage because the die roll would say they missed. It felt broken. In Oblivion, if you hit the target, you hit the target, period. The variable is the amount of damage you inflict, based on your strength, skills, and other factors. So the stats are still there, and very important, but they're used in a way that makes much more sense.