If Todd's justifications weren't so flippant ("Isn't the name just so redundant guys? I mean, come on!"), and if there weren't even more skills dropped (27 in Morrowind, more than 30 in Daggerfall), this probably wouldn't be such a big deal. At this point, reductions just seems typical...

On the topic of perks, I hope you choose perks based on skills that contributed to leveling, and not picking perks across the whole spectrum.

Enchant is back as a skill it seems. Maybe soul trapping is governed by enchant itself; it'd give you more opportunities to improve the skill.

Groan, really feel let down on this. It was already cut down to 21 in oblivion, and it was fine there.. We need to have a variety for replayability and diferent character builds.
I know lots of people like the enchant skill coming back... but it was great as mages guild perk like in Daggerfall.

Please put it back to 21!!

the problem OP is not merging skills.

its not adding new ones ie climbing.

Mysticism's skills probably got scattered. Alteration and Restoration seem like the two most likely candidates for inheritance. The Absorb spells were already moved to Restoration between MW and OB.

Yay for calling people with opinions trolls.




Otherwise, I disagree with the armor part. Heavy armor is, well, heavy. I'd be surprised a thief could work well within one. He needs to be agile and not make noise yes, but not everyone can be able to wear such armor without feeling utterly fatigued in a matter of minutes. Same thing for blades. Long blades are REALLY heavy, not everyone should be able to normally use one, while pretty much anyone can keep a short one easily in their hands, but that doesn't mean they're as good using it. Each type of weapon can be used differently and are used differently. Short and long blades are totally different.

And I also disagree with athletics to a certain extent. Since there seems to be fast travel but not travelling system, I agree that pretty much everyone can have a decent athletics skill but if there were travelling systems giving you the possibility to not walk much, well this changes. Personally, I would LOVE to see a swimming and climbing skills. Maybe as perks? Hopefully. Because really, swimming has nothing to do with running, and not every adventurer in Oblivion got round Lake Rumare twice a day. It would add a lot of customization and immersion to the game. Imagine having to cross a big lake knowing you might end up at the bottom and drown if you don't have water breathing potions or if you're not a mage who can water walk. You'd have to get around it. Maybe there's (would be surprising considering fast travel) a town nearby with a method of transportation, and maybe the shorter way to get there would be by climbing a cliff and some steep areas, and maybe you're fortunate enough to have the climbing skill/perk. Wouldn't that be awesome? It would ensure each subsequent playthrough to be quite different and unique, and that you don't get tired walking through the same places all the time. How is more skills less?

This is what I'm hoping for. More types of armor and weapons, but grouped into fewer skills.

From the sound of it, the combat skills are going to be based loosely on the weapon's size, so I could see something like:

- Block (shields)
- Small Weapons (Offhand weapons like daggers or knives)
- Medium Weapons (Swords, axes, maces)
- Large Weapons (Bigger swords, axes, maces)
- Polearms (spears)
- Marksmanship

Hell, you could probably even consolidate that into Block, One-Handed Weapons, Two-Handed Weapons, and Marksmanship, and it would still allow you to have a variety of weapons. Not necessarily ideal, but still better than Oblivion.

Do you know how long it would take to level a separate skill for climbing? It wasn't a picnic in Daggerfall. Why does everything have to have its own skill? Maybe climbing is possible, but is integrated into a combined skill of running, swimming, jumping, and climbing. Who knows?

We know for a fact that there's at least one skill that's never been in a TES game before.

I believe it's smithing. Just a rumor, haven't seen that.

So each character can be more specialized and unique, so more different playthrough are possible and so each playthrough can play quite differently. Don't you think swimming and climbing skills would make gameplay quite different up to a certain point between several characters? Read my post above for more details. I just don't want solely combat to play out differently, I want to feel I'm some badass barbarian who never got around learning to swim in Skyrim's cold lakes, or want to feel I'm some very acrobatic and swift thief who can run really fast and climb anywhere. It would just make the whole thing deeper. Maybe perks could work fine, but there'd have to be such perks for these things.

My issue with being able to level up to level 50 and getting a perk every level is that it wouldn't surprise me that when you are level 50 you pretty much have all perks. Which doesn't really make your character unique.

My sentiments exactly, I'd rather have less skills and more weapon types then the opposite.

I've seen the screenshot in question. There's definitely a skill starting with "Smi...", which doesn't exactly leave a lot of options.

Climbing, swimming, and jumping seem like they could work better as perks than individual skills because of the leveling rate.

Like, if you need to jump a pit, the skill is very useful at that moment, but they won't be everywhere. So make the skill level very fast, but now you can't just jump around without leveling through the roof. So slow it down, but now if you don't jump everywhere you'll never get a decent level, so when you actually come to a pit you won't be able to jump it.

More specialized? In what way? How do you level up a key skill and differentiate a character when there is only one repetitive action that levels it up? Separate swimming and climbing skills are only a pain to level. How do you specialize when raising a key skill is either overly tedious or impossible while actually playing instead of climbing over and over again or swimming against a barrier for several hours?

I too initially wasn't impressed with the concept, but with the aforementioned reasons and the addition of the new level system, it makes sense. After all could you imagine how slow it'd be levelling someone with 24+ skills? Especially since now it's not "K, level the hell out of these skills because I need to get more endurance early levels so I can have better HP endgame." etc etc. The only thing I'm remotely worried about isn't mentioned yet, and so personally the entire magazine amped me up and I'm ready for this game now.

...Hint hint Bethesda.

Judging by the article they've given the leveling and character systems a pretty major overhaul, so it seems a little silly to criticize it for the fact that there are three fewer skills when we don't know what those changes are.

That said, the one skill that we know for sure has been removed is Mysticism, which... well, honestly doesn't seem like that bad of a choice. Like Todd Howard said in the article, having a magic school of mysticism does seem a little redundant, and most of its spells could pretty easily be folded into some other skill. If I had to guess on the other two, I'd say that they're probably removed a single skill per character archetype - Magic's lost Mysticism, so Stealth has likely seen Speechcraft and Mercantile combined together and Combat has probably seen Athletics removed. Could be wrong, of course, but those would be my guesses.

I'd make some skills like swimming and climbing far easier to level up firstly. Secondly, I don't remember about Oblivion, but in Morrowind when you created your character and chosen your major skills, depending of your race, your major skills could start up pretty high. Everyone experienced never being able to land an arrow or to kill a rat with a sword in MW once, but if you made your character intelligently, this wouldn't be a problem at all. Plus, there's trainers and books. A thief may climb houses often to get inside an house too, or get over several cliffs often to get to a spot. But like I said, making several skills easier to level up would fix a big part of the problem.

Also I don't about your concern on specialization, I already attended that... I mean, I don't want every combat-based character to be too identical, I want to be able to make very different characters, something that's not mostly so because of combat. I want skills to have an impact on pretty much everything. Make combat skills longer to level up and the others easier.

Smiling, the new persuasion skill.

I'm a big fan of Morrowind but Skyrims skill system sounds very neat. :thumbsup: Less skill but with perks to specialize sounds great and it's more realistic IMO. I can become the greatest swordsman in Skyrim but still be decent at swinging maces. That wouldn't work in previous TES games. Nice to see them trying to make TES V instead of Oblivion 2. :tops:

I agree, especially on the point you made that each one gets to be unique now. Was there anything worse than planning a character and endlessly debating between a few exceedingly similar skills? It always frustrated me and I'll gladly support Beth's move here.

Then you have an overly abundant amount of skills that are so easy to level that there is no need for specialization, defeating your original purpose. When leveling up a skill becomes as significantly easier as it needs to be to actually level it up, specialization is a pile of horse manure. I don't know about you, but I've had it with power gaming, and useless skills are useless. Individually, there isn't much about them to warrant leveling them, anyway.

This makes sense, I hadn't really taken a stance, but this gives me hope. They say they have A LOT of perks (1 for each level and still room to specialize) so if it works well, i'm looking forward to it