They were alright, I felt they did not give you enough abilities from them though. I liked the marksman and mercantile ones, but I did not like the magic ones.

Nah, I like when everything is always available but with low chances for success at early levels.

If you're reloading a save to improve your chances, that's your own doing. It really isn't a problem with the game.

"You need a lockpick skill of at least fifty to even attempt this lock :bonk: ," is a problem with the game itself.

Seeing an Orc in heavy, full-Daedric armor doing a sudden backflip can be quite disconcerting. =)

So, I enjoy certain perks, and find others quite useless. Lockpicking as a whole was useless in Oblivion, as any moderately skilled player will never run out of picks. The addition of the Skeleton Key and unlock spells eventually made the mini-game obsolete (with the skeleton key, just keep randomly spamming it until it opens...). In general, I prefer stat-based security and speechcraft. The mini-games made the actual numerical value useless.

So, I'll say keep the perks around, as long as they're useful and make sense.

I liked them, but they should be trainable/purchasable, not unlocked at a certain level.

I liked them. Marksman is the only one that I could remember without the list and I enjoyed it.

I rather like Titan Quest's skill system. But, that's a more combat-heavy game than TES. Still, it could be an interesting possibility... depends if the devs want to stick with their traditional skill system, or go for something different.

I don't care what system is used, as long as it is good and it works. Like the Gothic 1 system was totally unlike anything I'd used before. But when I bought the first of two upgrades to my weapon skill, there was a REAL difference in how it felt using the weapon in combat, and also in the character's combat animations. Not many upgrades available, but the skills were actually useful and the upgrade was a definite improvement over the base skill.

I liked them. :shrug:

The perks mark certain points in my characters' development yet raising skills in between perk points still matter(damage dealt by weapons increases with points in their respective skill categories, spells decrease in cost as points in their respective skill categories increase, running speed and jumping height increase with point increases in their respective skills categories, etc.)

Heh. I was just going to say that it probably has a lot to do with them feeling the need to 'reinvent the wheel' with each new game. IMO, they really need to stick with what works, and just tweak it here and there to improve upon it.

I think peks should depend on skills, atributes, race and choises, not the"you get one every 25 lv"like oblivion.
som of the less advanced perks could of course be relaying on only one skill.

exampels:

Duelist
needs: x longblade z block and y agi. Gives a bonus to damage and block while carrying a 1h sword but no shield

Pureblood
needs: race=nord a end b str. Gives a boost to frost resistance.

Hunters gift
needs: complete Hircines shrine quest. Gives boosted damage against wild animals.

sorry if my english svcks

I agree with several previous posters about how OB's "Perks" all but replaced the skill system, and not for the better.

Perks COULD be a positive addition, if used to "specialize" a character, implemented gradually (or linked to a % of skill), and tied to quests or specialized training. Having every character automatically gain the benefit just for reaching the next 25-point boundary helped make every character more blatlantly generic and interchangable with the last one.

Some of them were very obviously "arcade" combat "power-ups", and felt totally out of place in a RPG-oriented series. A few others could be interesting, with a bit more work. If they were more "subtle", so you had to "stack" several to see any real benefit, you'd be able to produce more "specialized" characters, instead of having the same character master everything automatically.

- Edit: the poll required me to choose a perk that I "liked".

Thanks all for the input. I've been busy for several days working on a very nice job possibility. Anyways as of July 15th here are it appears the strongly dislike and like for the perks on the same while the like had more votes than dislike and those that didn't feel one way or the other have the most votes. Here are some ratios from specific perk votes dividing the likes by the dislike. So larger the number the more it was generally liked by the forum members.

# = like / dislike
Block 1.53
Armorer 1.83
Heavy Armor .86
Blunt .48
Blade 1.24
Athletics .8
Hand to Hand .65
Magic Cast .32
Alchemy 1.42
Security .81
Sneak 2.20
Acrobatics 2.21
Light Armor 2.00
Marksman 4.20
Mercantile .88
Speechcraft .17

Though the likes outnumbered the dislikes from the comments it seems like perks are generally welcomed, but could have been implemented much better in Oblivion. Some common thoughts were
1. Make the perks trainable or rewards for quest etc
2. If done through skill level the perks should be gradually introduced
3. Magic perks were thought to have limited effects and negatively affected the magic system as a whole.
4. Perks should enhance skills, but not make and brake them.

Nice input and a lot of good points and suggestions. Thanks

I would like it if perks disappeared from ES games. Having said that, if they implemented them in a way similar to Fallout's quest perks (e.g. the perk you get when you complete the task of getting irradiated for Moira, or the perk you receive during the "Those!" questline), I could live with them.

I'd rather "perks" be "ways to customize your character".

For example, Fallout 3's "Lady Killer" and "Child at Heart" perks affect how you interact with NPCs. You could also have ones that offer modifications not present in character creation. Ones that give you bonuses at night or in the day. Positive and negative effects based on weather, season, or day of the week. (Firdas the 13th, anyone?), Tattoos that modify disposition with certain members of certain races...

I don't want to see "Pyromaniac" and its ilk.

I'm sure the RP crowd will prefer they all be available at character creation, but it's a nice reward for the people who play TES games to "have adventures and fun" when they accomplish something, and it works for other games...

There are two perks I love the acrobatics one where you can roll in every direction and the armourer one where you can make you armour better.

Magic was poor and insufficient, combat felt too simple, speechcraft required little skill, but understanding instead, as did the lockpicking mini-game. Game mechanics need to allow the player to feel skilled, or at least experienced after working for perks (a system I find rather jarring for reasons aforementioned), and npc, player interaction should be a little more complex (I like that touch feature in Fable 3...dangerous words...though it could work if it isn't simply ripped off and adapted).

Alchemy got so confusing that I hated it and i like the marksman ones but it levels way too slow.

The last post in here besides this recent one was from July 17th... Just pointing that out.

I'd like there to be more unique "perks". Like if your skill in Acrobatics is high enough you can grab ledges, or if your armorer skill was high enough you could make your own armor if you had the supplies.

I like the concept, but many of the actual perks suxxed. I hate arcade stuff and when I see sth like "Water Jump" (in heavy armour!), "run while sneaking without any penalty", "blocking doesn't decrease weapon durability" or "use one hammer indefinitely", something is boiling inside me.

Perks should be made as realistic as possible and they shouldn't destroy the feeling of a given skill. If I use Light Armour, I don't want it to be the same as Heavy Armour with 100 skill. If I'm a sneaky character, why they make running while sneaking the same as moving really slowly and carefully? Why should I stop sneak-running then? Why they make boots weight unimportant at a given skill? If I'm an armorer, why they remove the whole point of the skill by allowing me to use ONE repair hammer indefinitely? And making potions out of ONE ingredient? Come on!

Perks should aid me in doing things properly, enable new moves, new possibilities or features. They should always be strongly connected with a given skill, though.

They should improve the feeling, not destroy it.