Like Acrobatics and Athletics were actually skills. Oh look, I'm running and jumping, this clearly means I should level up!
Mercantile was useless and is now mixed in with Speechcraft, which was also fairly useless, into Speech.
Mysticism was just a filler skill for spells that didn't fit anywhere else.
Hand to Hand, really, how many people actually used it?

I don't understand the Athletics and Acrobatics argument, when they took out Mercaltie (SP?) and Speech covers both now. They said running, swimming, and jumping is something you do automatically and what not, but isn't that also true for talking?

Lol'd. We didn't "lose" anything. Bethesda stripped the trash that wasn't necessary, and merged everything that they stripped but was needed into other areas. Attributes are really only necessary from a role-playing perspective if you ask me. If you like to role-play in The Elder Scrolls Series but need attributes to do it, you need to expand your imagination. Why should weapons degrade? In previous games when they reached '0%' they didn't break or visibly change, you just couldn't use them unless you had a hammer. It was more of a chore than a feature. What the hell are you implying by a "loss" of classes? If anything, the new system lets you distinguish your class far better than in Oblivion.

They will probably remove lockpicking, pickpocket or both, as well as the armor skills. Smithing is up in the air, as is enchanting. As said above, one-handed and two-handed might be merged. I don't see how they would cut any more magic schools, although all of them are quite pointless in Skyrim. Maybe they will be merged to a simple "magic" skill. Maybe they axe restoration and move the healing spell to alteration.
Speech will probably be gone, too. It's only useful now to get better prices, and that's quite a limited feature to reserve a whole skill for. Maybe disposition will return, so prices will fall for specific NPCs you do quests for.

There is still so much to be removed!

How many people use maces? Let's remove them.

How many people use carriages? Let's remove them.

How many people use cooking? Let's remove that.

How many people use Bosmer? Let's remove them.

They could merge all of the magic schools into just a few news ones. Necromancy, Restoration, Defensive, and Offensive magic.

Two handed and one handed won't be merged. I don't get why people think it will.

Because all their perks are the same (except for dual-wielding ones), and all the power lies in perks. It's the very definition of redundancy, which Bethesda seems to hate (I don't).

Removing useless skills to make room for other things seems to be a positive change, but you'll never be able to please everyone. I don't think they would be able to remove any others, but I'd be willing to wait and see what happens.

All of them will be lost. It'll be a platformer, with cute big headed anime kids. Run while you can. Cry if you must.

I actually came in here to say pretty much that. Removing things from previous games seems to be par for the course for TES, so I really would not be surprised if that eventually happens.


There was a whole thread where I argued this. Suffice to say, yes they are skills. Can you run as fast as an Olympic gold medalist in track? Can you jump as high as Michael Jordan from his heyday and dunk from the freethrow line? No you can't because you have not trained your skills nearly as much as they have.


Take a piece of metal and bang it as hard as you can against another piece of metal for an hour. Then note the difference in the metal's condition from before and after. That is why weapons should degrade.

I'm right there with you. I'm at level 40 now and about 120 hours into the game. Also, I haven't yet completed the MQ (I left off where I'd found Alduin's Wall) and the only questline I've completed is the Campanions. I'd say I'm on pace to put more hours into Skyrim than I did Oblivion.

I heard skills, gear and spells will be removed due to making the game "too spreadsheety".
These have been replaced by being able to select one of four archtypes: Blue Warrior, Red Wizard, Green Elf or Yellow Valkyrie.

But it will still be GOTY!

I do not think they will remove any skills...because I think the next game will play very different. If Bethesda turned around and said, "We're just refining how characters interest with a big world" they will already have admitted defeat.

The next game without a doubt need to be based on a character that INTERACTS with the world via physics. The player decided if they want to crawl, walk, run, jump, grab, climb, or swing. How much the player decided to do the actions should determine "level" which corresponds to how far, how fast, and how long you can crawl, walk, run, jump, grab, climb, or swing.

That means the skills will have to change from being things 'you have acquired' to 'things you do'. If you want to sneak around and slit people's throats, the game should say, "Fine sneak around, stay in the shadows, move quietly in quietly and don't get seen...it should not be based on a perk where at the highest level you can be lazy and run around like a fool and still pull off a stealth kill. Level 1 or level 100 should require the same player skills, the difference should be how far, fast, and long you climb or walk silently. Are you strong enough to climb a 20 story tower or just strong enough to get yourself up to the second floor of a modest house. Can you climb up or down 1000 feet of rope or just 20 feet of rope before getting tired?

To be honest I think Bethesda has bigger fish to fry then what they decided to do about abilities, levels of abilities and perks….their current game is not exactly a model for “how games should work”.

This. Is having more skills really that complicated? They waste so much time with the radiant AI , voice acting and fighting dragons, yet skills should be pretty easy to make.

Over 9000.

I agree with Chunkyman and think it will come down to Magic and Combat (maybe Crafting has it's own), with Stealth coming under Combat. You raise those two skills, and choose perks that take the place of abilities.

Hopefully they'll add stuff back to the game rather than taking more out. But let's be honest here, how often do you really use pickpocketing? Even my thief character never uses it except when it's needed.

And how that would make sense for an RPG? Wait, stealth is not based on skill? A fat, brutish orc can be sneaky just as well as a trained bosmer? It all depends on the player's reflexes? Please. Skyrim was a great game, but as an adventure one. I like Skyrim for totally different reasons that why I loved Morrowind. Why change the style of the series?

It's given me arround a 30% more than vanilla Oblivion, and a 30% less than vanilla Morrowind. So It's not shorter.

Oh, and To OP's question... four. No, five.

Suffice to say, the type of degradation system the previous games had were useless and more of an immersion breaking chore rather than an actual feature. I would be fine if they put that back in the game as long as you could actually visually see that your weapon quality was declining. Weapons getting weaker and breaking eventually would be an awesome feature, but a weapon condition percentage going down as you use a weapon is boring.

obviously all bethesda games follow the same changes as the last I mean look at Daggerfall and Morrowind, Morrowind was a 100th of the size of Daggerfall, so Oblivion must have been 100th of the size of that, so Skyrim must be 100th of the size of that, and after a few games it will be so small we wont be able to move all because of casual gamers not being able to handle the complexity of walking

Really?! then you do it wrong. I played now exactly 102 hours and i am level 39 no enemy can really hurt me much, and get killed with maybe 2 hits. And what i said was that it is shorter then Oblivion. And i don't think you can change my opinion of the game. I simply feel that i am almost finished with all the Sidequests (maybe there are still some hidden) and Civil War quest in short time. I started already to get quests from Jarls all the time "Kill the Bandit!" "Kill the Giant" "The jarl wants the Dragon dead!"

Games are changing, and now games are more about showing and doing then dice rolls. Why say an arrow was a critical hit when you can see it hit the other character in the hand? Why show a decapitation move when one second ago the reticule on the screen was pointing my sword slice at his knees?

Games are now about "show" and "do.” Do not describe a snowy mountain..make a snowy mountain . Do not say I swung my sword to decapitate a foe...allow me to swing the sword at the foe's head when I actully DO THAT.

I only needed to read to here. Obviously you're the one who is wrong. There is no "wrong way" to play an Elder Scrolls game. If you think so, you're doing it wrong.