I hate the concept of armor and weapon quality being so linear, with items showing up depending on player level and basically increasing weight along with protection. If I like the look of leather armor, I want it to be a viable option throughout the game, especially in Skyrim where the "low fantasy" aesthetic is so predominant. There should be more creativity regarding the stats of weapons and armor. Perhaps leather can give a bonus to sneak or fur can give frost resistance, maybe Daedric can offer fire resistance but drains stamina or magic as a result of the bound souls. These are just off the top of my head. Of course, unique artifacts can still be vastly powerful, but I'd like to see a reason to choose any of the base weapons and armors.

Well since stats are gone we don't have to worry about arbitrary stat restrictions on weapons and armor.

I suppose they can put skill level restrictions (must have X points in One Handed in order to use Glass Dagger). I certainly hope they don't take that route. Its cheesy and reeks of "we couldn't find a way to make it difficult to get a glass dagger".

I think you should be able to get really good weapons all the time but it should be hard to get them. I don't like in Oblivion all the bad guys got really good armor when I did to but I can sell it for alot of money so that was cool.

I agree. This is one more thing that was better in Morrowind. But I think this problem will be solved in Skyrim because the Developers are now hand placing a lot of the items, so theoretically you should be able to find high level armour at an early level.

This :icecream:

Mmm... yeah. Good point. This is another reason why the high level stuff should be in the game from the beginning.

I still remember how impressed I was when my first Morrowind character first met Vedam Dren in his ebony and Divayth Fyr in his daedric. I just knew immediately that these were guys you didn't mess with.

You guys act like its in a pile in the middle of sedaneyn. The super loot was supremely hard to come by I dunno how many times umbra killed me on that damn hill.

I want good stuff to be available I still remember the blade of white woah! In that guard tower in bruma man when I saw that thing I grabed it and got layed out by the guards so then I got all stratigacle and finnaly I triumphed and had stolen it.

For me that was just as fun as leveling up 17 times to wear the same ebony armor that every damn bandit is wearing.

Could you even get a full set of Daedric armor in Morrowind without cheating, modding, or quest breaking?

You could always kill the dark elf wizard who's a part of the main quest after you don't need him anymore.He has the full set minus a helmet.

Other than that the pieces were very very rare.

edit: just went to uesp,apparently some of the pieces do require you kill the main quest wizard.I hope they find a balance between Morrowind and Oblivion,because both were just silly.

Shhhhhh! That guard's not supposed to find out about that!

Definitely - I love playing thief characters, and the Blade of White Woe in Balmora is a good example - exciting to find at a low level (and I didn't even know it was there until I'd played the game many times!) then plan how you were going to get it, watching where the guard stood and building up your stealth skill and when you managed to grab it undetected there was a real sense of achievement and pride!

Similarly there were places you could see great non-enchanted items (glass, ebony, daedric) right from the beginning of the game, and planning how you were going to get that item for yourself was really good fun, and provided a difficult challenge if you were at a low level. Or you could find an armorer selling the stuff with a high price tag and quest yourself silly saving up for it, again a real sense of achievement.

That was the thing I liked least about Oblivion - there were few challenges (apart from the rather dull one provided by rats and mudcrabs and goblins levelling with you and requiring loads of sword hits to kill), and no sense of achievement at getting a great reward that you had to actually work for. Levelled weapons/armour and quest rewards were awful.

There need to be some kind of mechanics in that drives forward the access and/or usability of higher class items. By use of level scaling is a quick and dirty but effective way of doing it. Other scenarios that I've played out in my head all have problems. Not varied enough during the progress of the game, exploitable, too complex rules, etc etc etc.

I'm ok with having everything (non rare) available, but only if there are mechanics that more than suggests that I would be better off using something simpler/lighter as long as I'm low level. I.e. I might be able to grab a really heavy armor from the beginning, but fighting in it would be ineffective, and swimming - forget it. How would this tie into the rules and make them work? I couldn't.

the problem I see with this is that every item worth obtaining at this point will either be locked in chests or on a "boss" or very powerful enemy. I like hidden items like in Morrowind where swords were hidden under beds and such. It's like an easter egg hunt to me.

I agree, however I predict that a favourite Skyrim exploit will be a way to access some high level dungeons at low level and kill some high level enemy and take their gear.
Yes a low level character can kill a high level enemy if he is smart and is willing to use time and resources, think killing Umbra in Oblivion.

And what's wrong with that? If the player worked for it, he should be rewarded accordingly. Unless you think it is wrong to be smart and use resources wisely?

It's not an exploit; it's a reward well earned.