It's not just Mages vs Battlemages, it's ANY multi-role character versus a specialized one: Thief, Mage, Fighter. There's no downside to being ALL of them, and plenty of downsides NOT to. There's no disadvantage to Light armor in OB, since at high skill levels it offers the same protection as Heavy; there's no disadvantage to Heavy armor because at high levels it weighs the same as Light armor in the game - NOTHING! The games aren't so much "you can be anything you want", but more like "you can be everything you want, all at the same time". Morrowind suffered from it, and Oblivion merely took it a step further.


Edit - Consider what "Sneak" does for a Fighter character. Being able to tiptoe silently up to someone, while wearing Heavy Armor, and then backstabbing them with a Claymore, was somewhere between absurd and game-breaking. In that case, the Fighter with sneak is far superior to the one without. Your Mage <<< Battlemage is just one more example of Standard <<< Multiclass character.

That certainly made no sense that heavy armor weighed the same as light armor in the end of your skill progression. I hope that isn't in TESV.

As I see it, the disadvantage is this: in order to reach 150 % effectiveness in light armor the player has to spend a good portion of the game in armor that is less protecting than heavy armor. Another disadvantage to light armor is that, even at skill 100, it still needs to be repaired more often than heavy armor. Conversely, in order to acquire heavy armor's weightless perk at 100 the player has to spend a good portion of the game seriously encumbered.

I don't know how it is for other players but I typically spend far more time with armor skills at less than 100 than I do at 100. And my armor skills tend to go up more slowly than many other skills. I have retired more than one character who had not yet reached 100 in an armor skill.

I agree with what you say about high level armor skills but you overstate the case when you say there are no disadvantages.

IMO everyone seems to be missing a vital point here. Mages aren't supposed to be in close combat with their enemy (exception being battlemages), but should rather rely on various slow, invisibility, teleport or paralyze effects to keep their enemy at a distance. Especially ways to slow down your enemy or teleport a short distance away are things that I could see as a great way to make playing mages more viable and fun, the whole unarmored skill seems somewhat silly in my view, sure you should probably be somewhat better at dodging when not wearing armor, but not enough for it to really matter.

Another thing which I have been hoping they'd implement is to redo the shield spell to actually work like a shield. How awesome would it not be to have it as a sort of channeled spell that puts up a magical field in front of you that blocks incoming blows and arrows, and possible make it absorb or reflect magic as well, sort of similar to how blocking with a shield works.

I would disagree with that. There are styles of martial arts whose defining characteristic is in avoiding and deflecting strikes (including from weapons) in close-quarter combat. Someone who is agile and knows how to move their body can be very effective at dodging blows without really moving; something you can't really do as well in even light armor.

A monk, or a monk/mage hybrid, I could see going the no-armor route and still be effective at mitigating physical combat damage just as well as someone in armor without the need for shield spells or the like.

"Bagua zhang's evasive nature is also shown by the practice of moving behind an attacker, so that the opponent cannot harm the practitioner."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baguazhang

You're ignoring the fact that, despite Mages having the most disadvantages, most of which could be easily overcome, they also had by far the most advantages. They are the only group that can do powerful group attacks, heal themselves, get peoples disposition up without using a hundred gold, and become invisible. Mages are just the most strategic class.

Personally I think if Bethesda would actually like mages they would aim to make the magic system work much better.

For example, in vanilla Oblivion, there is no ingame way to remove a spell from your spellbook !

Another example - there are "fortify attribute X" spells, but doing so will often have little to no effect. For example, you dont deal more damage for strength values above 100.

The number of effects available is rather limited. There are different kinds of damage, but they all work the same way.

And so on.