I voted Morrowind. I want the ability to wear a ladies' blouse over my deadric armor for the levitation it provides.
Too bad a ladies blouse wasn't an item in Morrowind, and you couldn't wear clothes except robes over armor, it went under it, and could only be seen in places the armor did not cover.
Morrowind didn't have individual boots, I don't know why so many people keep thinking that. Morrowinds slots were:
Indeed, I have to wonder if people who think that actually played the game, if they did, they probably need to play it again to refresh their memory, or acknowledge the fact that it's been a while since they played it and their memory of it might be a little fuzzy.
It's also worth noting that the ring, amulet and belt slots were not visible. So the Visable rings and amulets from Oblivion was a good step forwards.
Also, belts weren't visible in Morrowind either, though since Oblivion removed the belt slot I can't really say its handling of them is a step forwards.
What if clothes couldn't be enchanted, but can still be worn for looks?
Then that would completely ruin unarmored characters and simultaniously make wearing clothes utterly pointless, there wouldn't be any difference if you were naked as far as gameplay is concerned, if you don't want to unbalance the game and can't balance wearing clothing and armor together, then don't allow it at all, a much better solution then turning clothes into what is, to the player, worthless rags, it's not like wearing clothing under armor would have a point if you can't enchant them since you'd probably only see what you're wearing on top anyway, and if I can neither see the clothes I'm wearing under armor nor get any use out of them, I have absolutely no reason to bother wearing them, it's just adding redundant weight to my equipment.
Also, the idea that that clothes under armor unblanaces the game is silly
Morrowind already had the limitation in place to balance it.
I'd argue that the problem wasn't that using armor and clothes together was overpowered, one could debate whether the presence of enchantment limits actually served to balance it or not, but if it didn't, adjusting the limits should do so, Morrowind already has the mechanics in place to balance enchantments, it's just question of numbers whether it actually works or not. The problem is that wearing armor over clothing is completely superior in every way to just wearing clothing, you get more defense with a good suit of armor than from unarmored even if your skill is at 100 (Also, the defense granted by unarmored only worked if you had at least one piece of armor, but that's just a programming issue which could have been fixed, and in fact is fixed in the Morrowind Code Patch.) this in itself is reasonable, if you want to just stand in place and shrug off blows, you should wear a strong suit of armor, unarmored fighters are generally supposed to try to dodge attacks rather than soak them up, the problem is that unarmored characters also suffer from fewer enchantment slots, meaning they can't have as many strong enchantments, while clothes might sometimes have greater enchantment capacity than armor, the fact that you can wear both together means you can get many more enchantment slots with armor and clothes than just with clothes. Moreover, in Morrowind, they didn't really get any special bonuses to make unarmored worth considering over armor, the reduced weight doesn't matter much as if you wear light armor, the weight really isn't that much higher than just wearing clothes, and the additional enchantment slots from your armor could be used for constant effect fortify strength enchantments to easily offset the weight of your armor, while potentially allowing you to carry more loot than you could if you only had clothes to enchant, and let you do more damage, and Morrowind didn't have any other benefits for not wearing armor. In the end, it's not too hard to keep wearing armor over clothes from becoming overpowered in itself, the hard part is ensuring that there are merits to playing unarmored characters.
Of course, Oblivion didn't really fix this issue, because by removing the unarmored skill entirely, they ensured that unarmored players have no way to gain defense except with shield spells and enchantments, and the things that players could still do to avoid damage while not using armor, in other words, dodging, could be done by someone who wears heavy armor just as easily, plus, Bethesda, for some reason, decided to remove unarmored gloves, thus, if you don't wear armor, you miss out on one equipment slot. Bethesda introduced spell effectiveness in an effort to encourage mages to not wear armor, but I did not like this idea as it seemed like an attempt to enforce the tired old stereotype that mages should be weak and vulnerable, just because my character uses magic does not mean he should have to be all squishy, and really, it didn't work anyway as the reduction in spell effectiveness from armor quickly become so small as to be trivial as your armor skills increased, yet if it had been a strong enough penalty to really matter, then it would have effectively been Bethesda saying "No, mages can't wear armor! You have to go into battle without any protection! Abide by generic fantasy stereotypes or die!", thereby undermining the freedom that the Elder Scrolls is supposed to be about. But that's another matter, I simply wanted to acknowledge that removing clothes under armor didn't really fix the problem.
Now, back to the subject of equipment slots, I would hate to see a Fallout 3 like system in Skyrim, in the case of Fallout 3, it at least has the excuse that it was like that way in Fallout 1 and 2, I don't really think that means Bethesda made the right choice in just having full out fits and helmets/hats and glasses, because Fallout 3 already made many departures from previous Fallout games in terms of gameplay mechanics, including bringing in some elements of the Elder Scrolls, we can argue about whether this was for the better or for the worst all we want, but it does not change the fact that this clearly shows that Bethesda had no qualms with trying their own take on the series when they took it up, even if fans did not approve of all their choices, and if Bethesda can completely change the perspective and combat mechanics of the series, I hardly think that seperating armor or clothing into more pieces is an appropriate place to draw the line, but still, we can defend the decision by saying that it was like that in past games, in the Elder Scrolls, there would be no such excuse. Using the Fallout 3 approach would undeniably be a change from past games, and it would be a step in the wrong direction I'd say, I want my outfits to be divided into multiple parts as it allows for more customization, I'll understand if Bethesda doesn't want to allow wearing clothing under armor for the sake of balance, but at least I want a return to Morrowind's approach to gloves, gauntlets and pauldrons, while wearing gauntlets that don't match might not always look good, it should be my choice to do so, I want to decide what combinations of clothing and armor pieces I want to wear, not have the game choose it for me, if I want my character to wear a different pauldron on each side, I should be able to do so.
What they need to do is remove all "%resist" enchantments on armors, stacking those on several pieces will make your character invincible. How about instead of "20% Shield", "20% Spell Resist" etc. they'd just have "2pt shield" which would negate 2pts of damage off of any attack, instead of the current x% of any attack. This is also a problem with how so many rings/amulets only use % statistics, which make them never deteriorate or "become worse" compared to newer gear as the player advances through levels.
So essentially, your suggesting that instead of absorbing a percentage of damage, it should absorb a set number from said damage, similar to damage threshold in New Vegas?
» Sat May 28, 2011 12:13 pm 
