Stats don't matter any more. Long ago, RPGs were about your character. You had to raise your stats to get good enough to be able to kill most enemies. Of course, with clever skill, you could take down much stronger enemies, but you could also raise your level to 100 and just blast through everything in a fury of god-like might.
Now, RPGs have become a lot more twitch based. Stats, they've stopped mattering. Instead of dodging attacks based on your skills in blocking, agility etc, you know have to manually time the attacks and roll out of the way. But, "Surely," you say, "that sounds like an improvement.", and I'd agree with you, if we were talking about adventure games, fps games or fighting games. But, we aren't. We are talking about Role-Playing games, games which are supposed to be about the character, not the player. The player gets better at the game, obviously, and some skill is required to play, but a limit is needed. I shouldn't be able to start a new game and defeat gods and demons just because, despite being a weakling stat-wise, I can time things well and roll about.
What can be done to stop this FPS-isation of RPGs? Well, first of all: Stop !@#$% making enemies level with the player. This is the most stupid idea ever. It just does NOT work. One of the best feelings in gaming is that, after entering a tomb and finding it filled with enemies too powerful for you to defeat, you bare escape with your life, only to return later at a much higher level and rape everyone inside. Revenge is a dish best served with a high level spell and perfect d20!
Bethesda forgot this with Oblivion, but after hearing them talking about Fallout 3, my hopes are up they remembered this...please Bethesda, do not !@#$% on our memories of Fallout, please! And all you other RPG developers, learn from the old games, don't !@#$% on their graves! We like our stats, we like that our characters skills, not our own, decide our strength. Yes, sure, we get this still in MMORPGs, but some of us can't stand them and like the single-player experience. These people still make up a large part of the gaming market, throw us a bone once in awhile!
