A few days ago I started a topic saying classes didn't need to be removed, that simply removing the classification of skills into major / minor / misc (reffering to leveling speed bonus) was enough.
The topic got locked because two members got into an argument so plz don't let it happen here.

I'll start by saying that I hated athletics and acrobatics with passion. I always played characters that did not excel in those fields so I never took them as my majors.
If a class had them I skipped it or made a custom class where I replaced those with something more useful (think Nightblade with sneak and alchemy)..
So its natural when I heard of athletics and acrobatics being removed I was happy..

But thinking more about it, and thinking about classes in general, I think removing them all together is not the right way.
What makes athletics and acrobatics bad as skills I would not classify as "grinding".

When you look at any skill, and strip it down, it comes down to grinding..
Marksman? Fire x hundred arrows = grinding...
Weapon? Hit an enemy x hundred times = grinding...
Conjuration? Cast a spell X times = grinding...
Alchemy? Make X potions = grinding...

I think you understand.. But what makes those skills feel different is pace and control..
You level those skills by doing normal stuff. If you fight your fighting skills increase.. If you trade your crafting and trading increases.. Oh yea athletics levels by walking.. Walking man!!
Also if you decide to level a skill you can do so without feeling the grind..
Level blunt? Go fight someone... Level alchemy? Create something.. Level acrobatics? Jump around like your on steroids..

So we can agree athletics and acrobatics are boring and either require no action from player (athletics) or unnatural action (acrobatics).
And changing that is good. But removing them completely is not..

My suggestion is to include those skills into other skills, in this case athletics with armor skills into fitness and acrobatics with h2h into martial arts.
That would leave them in game but remove all those things we hate about them.

Fitness would include perks for wearing armor, wearing no armor (unarmored) and athletics perks (like fatigue regeneration and speed)
The idea for the skill comes from Bioware ME 1 where the fitness skill allowed classes to wear heavier armor.
It makes perfect sense when you think about it.. The more fit you are, the heavier armor you can wear, its a less of a burden and you can run faster and longer.

The other beautiful part would be leveling the skill.. You could still level the skill by running and swimming (at a slower pace compared to a single athletics skill) but you would have an incentive not to do that. Because the skill would level by being hit in combat (like old armor skills) you would never be forced to grind it to advance in it.. It would level the same way other combat related skills level.. By engaging in combat.

And martial arts would include h2h and acrobatics.. Same thing.. Perks for h2h combat, blocking and old acrobatics perks like dodging, jumping and falling.
Like the fitness the skill could be leveled by jumping around BUT it would be advised and encouraged to level the the same way you would level h2h..

In other words, the solution to athletics and acrobatics and any other skill that seems like a grind is to merge it with another skill.
In that union you could still level it the old way but would be encouraged to level it in a more engaging way that feels natural and not grindy..

So you're suggesting a single skill which governs all kinds of armour AND incorporate athletics?.. Sounds overpowered to me...

Anyways I think they're doing the right thing by removing them. I much more liked the way running speed was handled in FO3 and it seems to me like they're using the way it worked in FO3 rather than Oblivion/Morrowind way.

I never felt acrobatics and athletics were boring or strange. I just played normally, walking when I had to, jumped when there was an obstacle. I never felt the need to just jump around like an idiot. I would just level up when I did. I never understood why people would constantly jump around the place just to level up their character. Each to their own I guess. Though, I also don't mind so much that those skills are out, just waiting to find out how it'll work now.

I'm a huge martial art fan so even if they don't have various fighting styles in, wich I hope they do, jumping a decent height for a flying kick and being alot better at athletics than a mage shouldn't be to far fetched.but whatever bethesda is doing with skyrim, I'm sure it will rock.as much as I hear people complain about oblivion, at the time of purchase, it was the best rpg I ever played.

If I am an athlete, who can run, jump and tumble with the best of them, but have never worn armour, and always taken a dagger to a fight instead of using my fists, how would I be classified under the OP's system?

Acrobatics, unarmed, and atheltics would not be so bad if combined.. but armor too? N.I.M.E.S.

You could merge armor, athletics and acrobatics without making the skill overpowered as far as armor skill is only used to negate armor penalties. About merging hand to hand with those, I don't think it's apropiate; it could be merged with one handed attack (or mantain as a separate skill). Of course this is in my opinion.

Grindyness is basicaly things you do even tho you hate it so you can enjoy what you do like.

Like grinding alchemy so you can cast destruction spells... destruction doesnt give magicka after all.

Grinding a melee weapon to gain carry cap so you can play as an alchemist merchant character..

Grinding acrobatics just so you can drop down a small drop you should have been able to handle anyway.

Grinding athletics to get a reasonable runspeed instead of the stupid runspeed ob starts with...

And so on.

That means you are in good shape / fit (Fitness skill) and you could use armor if you wanted to. But you don't..
But it took you longer in Skyrim to level Fitness just by walking / running / swimming than by wearing armor in combat.

Let me ask you this: one person runs and another hikes..
Is doing one stopping them from doing the other? no.
Does one activity make you better just by doing it? no.

Both will increase your fitness level IRL. So why couldn't both "athletics" and "armor" increase your Fitness skill in the game?!

Similar to acrobatics.. Millions of people train martial arts in the world..
They all become more flexible and get in shape. But does that mean they can all fight in tournaments? That all of them can beat someone up?
No it doesn't..

To the rest, read the post:
Fitness = heavy armor + light armor + unarmed + athletics --> perks for combat casting, durability, fatigue regeneration, speed...
Martial arts = h2h + acrobatics --> perks for punching, kicking, falling, dodging...

I just hope there are perks that boost our speed and jumping ability.

You can hope


but since Athletics and Acrobatics are out there won't be perks for that

Weren't there 12 perks per Skill?
18 * 12 = 216

I believe they said there are around 250-280 perks.
So maybe there are several perks unrelated to skills?

Hopefully but the hard number is 280 across 18 Skills...


oh and the recent interview part 2 doesnt help either since it states there are 21 skills.


sometimes I wish the info would STOP since alot of it doesnt make any damn sense.

The only thing I will miss is the presence of a mechanic in the game that allows for a passive/constant increase to your speed and maneuverability. Of course part of the reason I would increase those is that balancing character movement across the normal range of possible speed/atheletics and agility/acrobatics values made my starting characters in Morrowind feel pretty sluggish compared to how they moved around towards the end of the game. In Morrowind it was incredibly easy to have it so your character moved like the Roadrunner and jumped like a http://youtu.be/g1BbNH_vXAM (obscure reference so link is included.) The correction for that in Oblivion appeared to have been to minimize the effect of those skills - which kind of begged the question even then "why have them in there ate all?"

Still, it would be nice to know if there will be ways to have your character run faster longer or jump farther. Maybe something simpler like max stamina having some effect on your sprint speed - or open a perk that halves the drain sprinting has on stamina.

I like to increase athletics in Oblivion so that my characters regenerate stamina faster, particularly in battle, and most particularly with those who use heavy weapons and/or lots of power attacks. It's perfect for a claymore fighter, since they often use a lot of power attacks rather than trying to whittle an opponent down. I like to increase the of any character who's going to be mobile in combat. It's not so important with tanks, but with lightly armored or unarmored characters, it's well worth it to be able to move in and out of melee range quickly and easily. And I've always increased athletics, and speed by extension, passively. That is - my characters get all the increases they need just from doing the stuff they do anyway. (And as a side note - that's the way I increase all skills and their related attributes - I sincerely have no idea why anybody believes that one ever needs to grind anything, but I tend to suspect that it's similar to the "need" to get 100 in every attribute or the "need" to finish everything in the game with one character, which are also things I don't do and don't understand).

Now - with both athletics and speed gone, I have no idea how I'm going to manage to play a lightly armored or unarmored character who relies on mobility to succeed. I'm not much interested in holding down a "sprint" key while I'm trying to fight - it's enough of a challenge getting the timing right to step out of reach, wait for the opponent to start to advance, step in, set up a power swing and have it connect exactly when they come into range - I shouldn't have to hold down an extra key while I'm doing that just because some other players have some obsessive issue with numbers. That doesn't even begin to make sense. Having the ability to play a character who moves notably fast is a basic gameplay mechanic, and not at all in conflict with reality - in which some people move faster than others. And being able to maneuver quickly and easily is crucial to playing lightly armored and unarmored characters. Without that ability, the game's going to favor tanks, and that's it for that "do what you want" business.

I guess all I can do is hope that the perk fairy's going to have a movement speed box my lightly armored and unarmored characters can tick. And hope that that box doesn't require armor skill to access. Because then, ironicallly enough, my only choice if I wanted to play a mobile and lightly armored character would be to grind armor skill first, just so I could tick that box......

I know I'm wrong, but for me, the word "Fitness" is assosiated with sporty gals with small dumbbels, not with the armor and running. But I wouldn't like the idea whatewer the name is. I'm absolutely OK with the acrobatics&athletics removal, they had to go, all they did was taking place in my main skill list because of influence on speed of the former and that they made levelling faster, because you have to do almost nothing to increase them. And I like armor skills, it' ok for roleplaying, and it's actually realistsic, because it takes special muscles to carry heavy armor on your shoulders and you have to be more agile to use light armour effectively. So keep it out.

And it's not gonna happen in any of upcoming TES games, cause as far as we know, there will be only three skills in the next TES :thumbsup:

EDIT: Oh, but the habit to jump while running got very deep into me, I do it even in shooters sometime :twirl:

Wuuut? Where did you get that, sause plz hmy:

EDIT: Ok, found it, looks like a misprint (hopefully, because I liked the probable skill set)

I'm fine with them being out. In MW I did tend to jump around while running from quest to quest or exploring just so I could raise my acrobatics skill and get the higher strength bonus at level up. But I never really did this in OB just because I was tired of it and it looked stupid. What a difference a few years makes (in playstyles).

I don't know if I would combine them with the skills the OP listed if they were to keep them in. Maybe something in a new skill like Maneuverability that could combine stealth, athletics, and acrobatics with stealth being the primary part of the skill with the others just passive. As your Maneuverability (stealth) gets higher you move faster (run speed) and can fall farther without damage as well as the normal stealth increase, but have perks that give the dodge ability or other perks that might effect the acro/athletic parts of that skill. Though that's probably too much so it's just better to leave them out. (bolded for emphasis)

To gpstr, I think I commented on this in another thread, but I don't know how well your tactics will work in Skyrim, even if they still had speed, athletics, or acrobatics, since they greatly reduced backpedalling speed. You might be able to dart in quickly to attack, but I don't think you will be able to back away to avoid incoming attacks as well in previous games. And I don't know if there will be a perk to remedy this.

Edit:


I don't know of it's a hard number, that 280. I thought Todd said they were at 280+ perks meaning there could be more.

Regardless of their removal, we need a way to jump high and run extremely fast if thats who are build is.

You spammed jump in MW to raise your skill :lmao: k...

if not...what is taking out athletics and acrobatics going to do from stopping you from doing that in Skyrim?

His rationals are so fing annoying, pure PR talk no substance behind it. :turned:

Not necessarily, there was a perk in New Vegas which allowed you to run faster if you were wearing no armor or LA. I know Bethesda didn't make the game but they were involved with it and I don't see why they wouldn't take cues from the development.

Immersion and natural evolution of your character. They want to keep certain aspects as the main focus to keep it exciting and keep you immersed. I think they are just trying to reduce how much time you spend looking at a character sheet and focus on more time actual gameplay. If they can balance that then I welcome it. Maybe that is partly why it is quicker to level up? Less time in menus? LOL

If they dont allow some characters to move faster and more agile than others it is dumbing down potential character concepts, plain an simple.

I don't care how they do it, but I should notice a considerable difference between an un-armoured acrobat and a brick in a tin can.