The Elder Scrolls 6 is currently in development at Bethesda, and fans of the franchise remember a plenty of features while playing Skyrim. One feature in particular isn't new to The Elder Scrolls games, but it is a feature that for better or for worse, pigeon-holes players into a particular play style. The choices players make early have a profound effect on the difficulty of the game going forward, so it's time for The Elder Scrolls 6 to ditch the old experience system.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has an experience system that works by giving the player the ability to level up by exercising their skills. For example: When the player casts destruction magic spells on enemies they gain experience in destruction magic. This experience levels up that skill tree and in turn strengthens the skill the next time it is used. After a certain number of skill levels are acquired, the player gains a real level-up which gains them a choice of a 10 point health, mana, or stamina increase and one perk point.
What is the Problem?
Now it may seem simple, but there are a few catches to this experience system. First off, Oblivion and Skyrim both employ this system and both have a similar system when it comes to enemies. As the player levels up in The Elder Scrolls games, the enemies around them will level-up with them. There are a few exceptions to this rule which are enemies that start at a fixed level, but they are easy to spot. All other enemies will scale with the player's level and become increasingly difficult as the game progresses. This raises the first complication.
The Elder Scrolls games and RPGs in general reward players for making good choices when leveling up. However, bad choices over the course of the game will make later character levels difficult as a result when the player finds themselves unable to contend with enemies at their level. Leveling up alchemy and smithing in Skyrim early seem like good ideas because it will give the player better gear early. Unfortunately, it will also mean that their damage skills will be severely under-leveled when fighting against an enemy scaled to their current character level.
Another aspect of the experience system in The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim that may throw some players off is the inability to re-spec their characters without DLC. Every time the player levels up, they get to choose whether to increase their maximum health, mana, or stamina and choose one perk from one of the 18 skill trees. Every point invested is important because enemies will scale with the level of the character, so any mistakes will make combat more difficult. This is possible after playing through Dragonborn, but that's still quite a ways into the game.
The indirect result of this is that players are forced into making sure they have combat down before doing anything else, which can ruin certain play patterns. This brings to attention the next issue with the experience system in The Elder Scrolls; there is no room to pivot. As the game gets scaled up with each level gained, there is less of a chance for the player to second guess themselves in how they want to play. If the player starts out as a mage, but becomes more interested in playing a warrior or a rogue later on, the player still has to level up those relevant character skills that they ignored up until that point. Doing so can feel like starting at square one while the rest of the game is super far ahead.
The last major issue with the experience system in The Elder Scrolls is that some skills are, for whatever reason, way harder to level up than others. If Bethesda wants to support all skills in The Elder Scrolls 6, they shouldn't make certain skills like restoration and conjuration so inefficient to level up like they were in Skyrim. If a player wants to level up their conjuration as fast as the destruction skill, they would have to spend every fight spamming bound sword to gain experience.
Fighting with the bound sword actually levels up one-handed instead, so it would make sense to use the summoning feature of conjuration to level up faster. This would be true except the summon needs to be in combat and they need to do the damage themselves to gain experience. This means relying on the game's AI to gain levels. Whereas with destruction, just casting it like it was meant to be used levels it up way more efficiently.
What is the Solution?
So what is the solution? What The Elder Scrolls 6 should do is ditch the old system and adopt an even older one. Nearly all existing RPG games with leveling systems use a basic experience system. Every time an enemy is killed, a skill is used successfully or a quest is completed, the player gains raw experience that only applies to the character level. Then once they level up, they gain points to be spent leveling up their skills by exactly how much they want. The SPECIAL system and skill point system from Fallout compared to Skyrim is a world of difference,  and it's system is a much better representation of a classic RPG leveling system.
Bethesda can keep the 18 skills from Skyrim, maybe add some new ones, and then just allot points to the player to raise their skills the way they want. Players can even keep the perks, but they would have to be chosen after the skills are leveled, just like the Fallout games.
When developing The Elder Scrolls 6, Bethesda should also have dedicated NPCs around the game that specialize in re-specing characters for a price. The price could be as steep as a single use per game or just a payment of gold each time, but it needs to be included in order to correct player's mistakes. These NPCs should be few and far between and made available later in the story. Having this kind of utility will allow players some breathing room to try different styles of combat out without the risk of making the game impossible to beat.
Understandably, the developers want to balance the game in their own way to make the open world experience they want when they release The Elder Scrolls 6. The system they had with Skyrim may have solved balancing issues for them, but players know that its not a perfect system. This is why Bethesda should make The Elder Scrolls 6 with a regular experience and skill point system that has been done with so many RPGs before it like Fallout.
The Elder Scrolls 6Â is in development.