no,i rather have 25 totally diff armor,than mix 100 types of the same parts

This is the only piece of information I've been genuinely dissappointed about. I hope clothes will still be separate, at least.

meh I just hope robes look cool this time

Each race has it's own set of armour (so that should be 10 right there). Then we have the new dragon armour in light and heavy variants (I'm assuming they will look different but they are variants so I'll count it as 1 set for now). Then we have the usuals: fur, leather, iron, steel, dwenmer, elven, glass, ebony, daedric (along with variants, that's about 9 sets not sure if I missed some) and finally any new Skyrim specific armour sets. (Dark Brotherhood armour has also been spotted in the trailer and considering they're in they are obviously going to have some re-worked shroud armour so that's another.)

So that's 21 not including Sykrim specific sets and unique armour pieces that can still be mixed and matched with boots, gauntlets and helms. Not to mention robes have been completely re-worked to stand out rather than just be different colours. Then on top of all this we can now add beards, scars and adjust characters body type.

I still don't like it but unless i have missunderstood him he is saying that the armour is a one pice in style so basicly you can get a set of greves and curless and then add to that with greves and boots helmit's ect i assume that thats what thay are trying to get at but i supose we will see soon enougth

I'm more than confident the game will make up for this in other ways. Not an issue for me.

Bad excuses, bad decision, bad game design. I'm tired of them constantly taking away the little things on which the game rests. Armor slots are fundamental to gear uniqueness, and they're quite strongly heading towards one suit armors. Imo they might aswell just do it now. For those of us who like to mix and match, the current slots are absolutely pointless anyway, o nly the small slots such as hands, feet and head and seperate, meaning you cant change anything major about your look anyway. This is by FAR the worst news about the game so far.

Whats more and possibly even worse, is that he dodged the layered quesstion strongly hinting that nope, no layers again... what the heck? Like everyone has been asking for this since Oblivion.. even if quite a few are now buying their excuse. I don't mean to be a [censored] here, but just wait till ya try da game, I seriously dobut their excuse will be enough when 4 pieces makes up for a complete armor set.

If having combined armor means more NPCs can be on screen why not just leave the combined armor for the NPCs and keep the PC's armor separate? If it's solely because of time constraints they should've thought ahead and planned time accordingly.

Bethfail.

Besides, how many more NPCs are going to be added? It's not like we're going to get huge, bustling cities like in Assassin's Creed. Maybe a few more than in Oblivion....................lol?

This is the first I've heard of this. Source? Can anyone else confirm this?


I can't see how it would provide anything other than a negligible benefit, and even if it did how are these NPCs not going to choke our CPUs with their AI routines.

I don't see why people are upset. Most of us probably kept everything the same anyways.

its about the possibilities, I personally liked to mix and match in Morrowind. It's also about the idea that they're not not very far from single suit armors. Worst of all, it means one less piece to find for a complete set, which is terrible.

Look at it this way. Any time customization is cut for no good reason and we get lame, pathetic excuses from the developers it disheartens and lets down a lot of people.

It's really a bigger issue than just the merged armor. It's a general trend they seem to be taking with each successive game. We don't know everything about the game yet but chances are, as trends show, we're going to find out about more things that'll let us down. It seems to be one reason they're being very tight-lipped.

I still don't think that reducing armor clipping, improving visual design, and improving game performance are lame and pathetic excuses.

http://planetelderscrolls.ign.com/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_V:_Skyrim_Armor Theres this though I think it's old because it says sets are one-piece. I'm sure one of the devs mentioned it a while back cause there was a big chunk of topics about it. An example would be legion armour, we know the legion are in Skyrim so they are obviously going have their soldier armour (so this is the imperial race armour).

Bah, I say. I see the complaints, though. I didn't see much complaints when Dragon Age did it. GRANTED, Dragon Age never used the old customization method, so the whole defense is moot. I guess this is like fast travel. People love it or hate it.

I don't mind the merge as I tend to use a full set whenever I can. I'd be upset if the headpiece slot got merged though as that part I do like to mix with something else sometimes.

Same here. I tend to wear hoods with most my characters (In Oblivion) as most the helmets were pretty awful.

If they keep on simplifying armour slots like this, they are going to invalidate some of the in-game artifacts.

If they keep on simplifying armour slots like this, they are going to invalidate some of the in-game artifacts.

For future releases, I really hope merging greaves into curiass' is where it stops.

EDIT: Sorry for the double post, I can't figure out how to delete my last one.

It doesn't, never have, nor will it ever bother me that cuirass and greaves are combined. It would have been better if they was. But if it makes the game run smoother, then so be it.

Cuirass and Greaves meging together means the game renders faster, meaning they can have more NPC's on screen/more armour types without slowing the game down a ton, i don't see how that's a crappy excuse. I can see what people are talking about when they mention customization but in the big picture its only one armour slot.

This isn't a defense of multiple slots (I have no opinion.), but I fail to see how merging them together allows the game to render faster and allow more NPCs to be on the screen or that other thing you mentioned. That second one is actually just impossible. The limit on armor types in a game is called disk/hard drive space and merging greaves and cuirasses really won't do anything to help with that (plus more variety in items have absolutely no correlation to game/rendering speed). As for the first one, it still makes too little sense unless Bethesda is that terrible at optimizing game engines. There would be something seriously wrong with the engine if an extra armor slot had such a drastic impact, if any, on performance. What I do believe a possible reason may be are more unique and aesthetically-pleasing armor sets. They could do that, anyway, but if you were still able to mix and match armor sets as unique as I'm implying, you end up with clipping... and critics really hate clipping so apparently an option needs to be taken out to annoy those who don't care about the clipping simply because having the option to do something flawed is, apparently, worse than just not having the option but otherwise having the same results.

So, I think this is more for aesthetic differences. For example, they can now make more creative midsections on armor, but the merging has no relation to armor variety (just not possible) and the performance thing just seems unlikely and more of an excuse, to be honest.

Dude I agree with you I was just giving the reason that one of the Devs said in an interview. The limit on armour types probably isn't affected by rendering, that was just me hazarding a guess at why they had more armour types this time around. And even if you do believe the whole rendering defense to make too little sense its the answer that Bethesda has gave us and I don't see any reason why they would lie to us, do you have an alternative explnatation as to why they merged cuirasses and greaves?

Pretty much how I see it, I call shenanigans on that. And now everyone keeps parroting the interview, I fail to see how it affects rending speed if it is in one piece. It still has to render just as much stuff how does it change so drastically in one piece?
The real problem with alot of NPCs in one place is the AI. I can put tons of NPCs in a room in oblivion and it could be a slideshow and then if I type "tai" in the console the fps jumps a staggering amount.

I just said it. I think it's to avoid the possibility of clipping while creating more unique and aesthetically pleasing armors.