Two characters, no perks in block.
A: Block skill 10, leather shield
B: Block skill 100, daedric shield.

Do you really think there won't be a huge difference in blocking power between those two characters? Do you really think that?

Blocking is damage reduction. Maybe it's a mix of raw reduction and percentage-based reduction. Say that a monster hits you for 100 damage. Your glass shield automatically blocks 20 points of damage, so now you only get hit for 80. Your block skill of 50 reduces damage by 30%. If that gets applied before the shield reduction, you get hit for 50. If it gets applied after, you get hit for 56. I'm pulling numbers out of my a-- here, but that leaves plenty of room for the Shield Wall skill to affect raw reduction or percentage-based reduction or both. The numbers are fake, the principle is not.

Just because there are perks that hugely increase blocking power doesn't mean that a character with 100 block and a high-level shield can't block for s---.

Maybe, but still, wasting 5 out of 50 perks on shield block value (which if it is needed in the game should be governed by skill) is a bad bad idea.
Ranked perks should not have more than 3 ranks. No matter what they did.

Ex. The boost to light armor perk from Oblivion.
By the same logic presented with the block perk tree it will make a return with 5 ranks 10% each instead of being one rank with 25% (the value OOO put it at) :flamethrower:

Beth is not going to over complicate this game. They might bring some features from morrowind for hardcoe fans (traveling) but they will keep the oblivion ones for newcomers (fast travel).. So until I see requirements for armor and weapons and guild ranks (probably would be shown in E3 inventory) I won't hold my breath.. Meaning your block lvl will have no impact on the type of shield you equip.

And shields already add armor rating which already does what you described.

But thats what I mean.
Perks are a poor substitute.

255 spells is in no way equal to the millions upon millions of possible spells that spellmaking had, nor does it provide the feeling of being a proper mage.

Doomstones are not birthsigns.

Classes are important customisation and roleplaying elements. Removing them makes no sense.

Apparel slots is very important. This is an RPG, not a hack n slash.
I dont care about clipping. Use Morrowind style models, Morrowind had better graphics than Oblivion anyway.

The invisble barriers notion comes from playing fallout: new vegas. It also sported one boringly slow run speed, and one useless jump height and the way the world was built made full use of that. Lazy world design using invisible barriers and insurmountable objects to give the illusion of a larger world while in reality only being annoying. Now that was Obsidian, so I might be wrong, but the removal of attributes does not bode well for a truly open world.

you sound just like cartman..a spoiled little [censored], if nothing ever changes, we would still play ugly ass paper like characters in a bland ugly world, just go away here, this gamer is obviously not for you..
Indeed, there is barely any point as I have made up my opinion and for now am sticking with it.
I am going to rent Skyrim when it comes out and give it an honest try.
And if I am wrong I will happily come on this forum, admit how wrong I was and eat humble pie.

Because I really truly hope I am wrong. I want this to be a good game.
I am just afraid it wont be, or at least, wont be an RPG.