The thing with class chosen by main skills - perk invested ones, I'd say that the social environment could notice and comment on the choice made by the player, e.g. guards would compliment only the highest skills (chosen) instead all maxed ones, and eventually comment on the class made by the combination of chosen skill set.

There are already two sets of each armor in the game for male and female characters and I heard people ask for race based ones - orcish armor doesn't feel like it's made especially for orcs, and since it's not the best armor most people won't chose to wear it by the end. So if armor would change slightly based on chosen class it would make it more personal, and it wouldn't have to be a big thing, e.g. just slight color change or different placement of ornaments (could be done by simple texturing). This way players that both have chosen heavy armor wouldn't look exactly the same without using a mod, because others skills would customize their look - even a choice of weapon type. The harder way would be to remodel the armor a little based on class - so the paladin and berserk wouldn't look the same (berskerk could have more leather between iron plates, and paladin not only lighter color, but also more polished look to the armor).

The next question would be how to make the armor look at the default for the player that haven't chosen all his skills. At which point should the armor change? Does it change only once when player sets his class in the stone, or maybe it slowly evolves with him as he progress his skill. Making additional 3 or 5 step change for each armor is more like a chore, and most people wouldn't even notice or appreciate the effort. So the visual change of armor should happen at a high level of progress with the skill - the number of chosen skills depends on the class system itself - whenever player gains the class name after choosing all skills or maybe 4 or 5.
in this scenario it's possible for player to choose heavy and light armor skill, but I can't see now how useful that build would be, since only one kind of armor worn as a set gives the player a full benefit of the skill - as it is now in Skyrim, and it's a good set up for choice designed level system.

It could be that players without heavy/light armor would get the rusty version, before leveling the armor to 40 or some other decent number - however adding such visual option ruins the trader characters that would buy armor just for profit and invest in other skills - a rich merchant could buy a great armor even without the mastery of it.


The damage and armor proficiency that grows thanks to perks grown on me. If player still gains something out of simple leveling it's good, but the perks enforce the choice and investment. Streamlining health and other stats to skill progress would make the perk damage/armor improvement even more reasonable.
There still is a problem of what to choose at level up if most perks are gained by quest and skill selection would be only perk choice as it is now without interaction with the environment. I think that branches within skill three should block each other too - don't know how much at that point though. Should the blockade be removed once the branch's been mastered, e.g. after mastering one handed sword the option to learn one handed benefits of mace would show up, and would it be possible to advance axe afterwards, or even the full mastering of two branches should happen.