This is not about armor skills, but rather the armor it's self. What is the difference between light and heavy armor? It's one of my pet nitpicks about oblivion, but it dosen't feel like there is a solid difference between light and heavy armor.

Visually there is not a whole lot of difference. If you took pictures of all the armor classes in oblivion and ,without looking at the names, sort them up into light and heavy armor. How would you do that? Leather fur and chain mail look light enough. We can drop them into the light pile, but when you get up to mithril, eleven and glass. They look just like the heavy armors. They might literally be lighter, but they don't look like they are.

The next problem I have with them is how different they are in game play. What is the difference between light and heavy armor? Threw all my time playing in oblivion, I only noticed one difference. Light armor weighted less and heaver armor had more armor. Granted that's a difference, but it's not a very distinct difference. It's the same kind of difference between armors in the same grouping. Fur armor weighs less and leather has more armor.

Now that I have defined what I think is the problem, I want to talk about how I think it can be changed. First I say change the names of the classes. Light and heavy are not very descriptive. Make it something like leather and metal. If you see leather armor, you know right away it's leather. If you see metal, you know right away it's metal. Next the two armors should have unique benefits not available to the other armor. You can do this quite easy with perks. For example, Archery perks that let you shoot faster in leather armor, or sword perks that make your charges more deadly when you wear metal armor.

This is just what I think. If you think the system is fine or that it should be handled a different way, please post.

the way i see it is that light gives high speed while low armor while heavy gives high armor but low speed so its a trade, depending on your play style or character one is better.

I would say have a significant decrease in armor health. Iron/steal are going to withstand more blows than leather and fur armor. Have the health of these armors decrease faster so you need to repair them more often. That would be a start.

When I think of light armor, I think of things such as leather and fur, sure. But I also think of how much skin is visible and how "chunky" the armor is. Light armor should feel more revealing and "chunky" compared to heavy armor in my opinion.

I agree that the mechanics didn't really give you the feeling that the two armor types played differently.

There were some minor things; lighter boots were better for sneaking, for instance.

I'm hoping that they allow us to see a bigger difference between the two types; speed, stealth attempts, swimming checks, and several more should be affected.

In reality, there's no distinction, more of a continuum with some patchwork stuff mixed in to confuse it, and most real armor sets include pieces which would fit into either category (jousting armor aside, which was too heavy and restrictive to use in actual combat). There SHOULD be one overall "armor skill", if there's even any rational excuse for having it as a skill. The distinctions should vary from set to set in terms of durability, protection value, weight, restriction to movement, repairability, cost, and rarity. The traditional "classic RPG" linear progression of "this one is made of something really costly, so it's got to be better in everything" doesn't hold up at all in real life. The "rat race" game mechanism where you grind to get the next better set gets old and annoying after you've seen a couple of games do it.

This is a nice idea and I've been hoping that they would have something like that.

Gives you the ability to further specialize your character. Like if you're a ranger type you could use leather armor and although you have lower protection you still gain an attack bonus rounding it out. Makes the problem of having to get the latest armor in order to not be at disadvantage instead of wearing the armor you like.

^ My feelings pretty much exactly.

I wikipedia'd the subject when discussing the subject of armor skills on these forums awhile back and most armors outside of a few extreme cases are easy enough to move in, and how well people move in some of the heavier armors is determined not by any special skill, just by the general strength/endurance and athleticism of the wearer.

This. Players wielding heavy weapons should eventually be strong enough to move reasonably fast in the Heaviest Armor, Players wielding light or no weapondary should not be strong enough to wear the heavier armors and should settle for something lighter.

Light armor as a skill is about learning how to most effectively use light armor's strengths and weaknesses to your advantage. You must learn to move in such a way to minimize damage to your armor (and yourself) with each blow. The armor still takes some of the force of the blow, but you move in such a way that reduces or redirects that force. Take for example, the following story, where the proper use of netch leather armor is demonstrated:

-The Rear-Guard

Heavy armor is about moving around with a heavy metal suit on. The armor takes the blows for you, but you have to still be able to move comfortably while wearing it. Simply put, you have to get good at not getting knocked on your [censored] with each blow, and you have to still be able to move effectively, so you can hit your enemy without being hit in a vital spot, yourself. See "How Orsinium Passed to the Orcs":

-How Orsinium Passed to the Orcs

So some half- brained football player isn't going to put on a suit of heavy plate mail and instantly be able to move around nimbly, unless he's The Hulk .

Say I show you a solid block of Aluminum, and a solid block of Iron.
You can't tell which one is lighter, although one is hundreds of pounds heavier.
Point and case?

Bump, totally agreed. There should be a more distinct feel to each type of armor. Perhaps the swing should be slower, and the roll should be heavier (like demon souls). In addition, the reaction to attacks should be noticeable. Getting slashed while wearing steel and leather should be pretty different, in my opinion. In addition, if you are wearing full steel and is blocking, the stumble shouldn't be as noticeable compared to light armor.

Sorry to be so picky, I love TES too much and really want to see this game turn out amazing!

I'm just hoping light armor will make sense even for the buff warriors. It didn't make sense wearing fur armor as a Nord warrior. Maybe make it WAY easier to dodge and allow for more extensive weapon swings? Or at least faster hits.

please bethesda don't make it like morrowind where light armor outclass every armor in the game even daedric!

It's pretty much

Heavy Armor : Very heavy (ugly) but gives good protection

Light Armor : Very light but doesn't give a lot of protection

It would be nice if they had reasons to wear clothes and robes too. Sounds like a perk for the alteration skill.

Mudcrab Armour beats all.

So, I heard you like mudcrabs?

hey if they add Light and Heavy army as 1 skill who knows.. maybe we'll get Medium Armor again =P more variation and sets is always good in my book.

Not a Speed reducer at all if you're a Master of Heavy Armor, which can be obtained pretty quickly.

Forget Oblivions ridiculous perks. Armor should be handled like in fallout, then improved:
* Damage threshold per part, but weapon skill will help. Going head to head with bow vs heavy armor would be foolish.
* If you can "penetrate", energy is absorbed less effectively and you take more damage the less armor is "left" (armor condition).
* Heavy armor gets a speed penalty, and anything related to "agility".
* The weight has its own problems but is easily expanded to jumping.
* The more heavy the armor, the less boyant you are, and need to direct more forward motion upwards in order to stay afloat.
* The big big bonus of course, is protection against direct blows.

No stupid perks like "wearing heavy armor makes my sword better", yuck, it just doesn't make sense.

I completely agree with you, I was simply pointing out the seemingly "childish" fantasy of a perk in Oblivion.

I hope the two skills aren't seperate anymore... Instead, just one armor skill. Protection value should be relatively stable across the field, but what improves would be stagger-resistance, speed, mobility, and resistance to movement-based gimps in combat.

The skill should increase based on how much of the armor you wear, with "light" armors not counting for very much (Giving fewer penalties), and heavy armors counting for a lot more. Then, you can effectively wear a mashup of armors. (Orcish Gauntlets, Ebony Pauldrons, Mithral Hauberk, chainmail greaves, Duke Nukem's Big Boot.)

Personaly I hope there is no armor skill and that the choice of heavy light or clothing results in solid and fun gameplay changes.

Chainmail should have amazing defence against swords but horrible against arrows. Als o I think that there should be different wep resists in each armor acording to real physics.

A lot of people think of heavy armour as plate and put chainmail as medium, leather as light. When in reality, Chainmail was a lot more of a burden to wear then Plate.

IF you want armour to be treated more distinctly imo you need to get more into the tiny areas. wearing different kinds of armour should change things like the sound, so when you wear plate and move around it's obviously more noisy. So if you wnat to sneak about it wouldn't be smart to wear. Whereas leather would be extremely quiet compared to it and let you sneak around without causing a lot of noise.

As far as speed goes. IN Plate armour people could still run, mount t heir own horse, hell they could even pull off a cartwheel if they wanted. It was heavery then Leather armour yes, but not to the absurd degree some people think of it as though it makes you likea "turtle" very slow and unable to get up, etc. So the movement affects shouoldn't be that drastic in regards to movement speed per se, but rather to acrobatic things.

Like the ability to quickly jump and climb things (you can sitll jump/climb in plate armour, but wouldn't be that capable as say, doing parkour types of things ithat someone in little to no armour could do).


Advantages of plate armour should be obvious. It was the best type of armour (in our history) for a reason. Itcould virtually make arrows useless against it, (no not even bodkin arrows easily penetrated it (like some myths). The main weapon to use vs plate was a mace or similar weapons that could be a great amount of crushing force into the impact point.


Swords could still be used against plate, but the fightingi changed as you would want to get your sword into a weak point (IE groin, arm pit area, or neck/visor slit). Though mots games ignore this completely.