I shaped both questions around exactly what Bethesda has said would have been the result of either design choice. There is no bias.

This poll is supposed to be about asking everyone which way they would have handled armor in Skyrim if they were in Bethesda's shoes and had to decide between what Bethesda said they had to decide between in the fan Q&A. No bias, just info/facts stated directly by Bethesda.

How did 87 people vote for less detailed armor just so they can have greaves and pauldrons back... REALLY, REALLY PEOPLE?

Really.

More details we can always add with mods, so I don't mind if the game ships with lesser-detailed armours, to keep console users and others with similar low-end computers happy.

That's becausing they are showing off Oblivions armour

Biased math is biased.

lol GPS thinking he knows more than the actual developers, this is funny

The problem is this assumes that somehow, combining graves and cuirasses will lead to more gauntlets, boots and helmets as well. And shifting the numbers just a bit (15^5 vs 25^4, for example) leads to entirely different results.
Arguing about made-up numbers is just silly - Skyrim having "more armors than ever" could mean just 1 more. But for the record, Oblivion had 12 different basic cuirasses, Morrowind had 27. So I expect at least the assumed amount of 30.

What I'm going to miss most is actually searching for the separate pieces. In Morrowind, finding every piece of the armor you wanted was an accomplishment. In Oblivion you completed one set so fast it felt like no achievement at all. Add to that bandits with daedric armor, and you have no sense of progression whatsoever. I didn't care about armor in Oblivion at all because you basically got it for free everywhere.

+1

Of course the maths is fairly speculative. But by doing it more systematically we might be able to draw more plausible conclusions. I've tried to so here: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1207878-total-armour-combinations-with-combined-cuirass-greaves-and-crafting/

It is true that I assumed that for each armour slot there would be an armour piece of each type of armour material. As a starting point, that seems reasonable enough.

Morrowind (with all official expansions) actually had 40, not 27. We'll see in a few months if Skyrim can beat that.

I didn't count the expansions because I think that would be unfair, but you are right.

A little more math:
I counted the basic armors from Morrowind (without expansions), and came up with this:
27 cuirasses, 14 greaves, 34 helmets, 17 left and right pauldrons, 18 left and right gauntlets, 15 boots. This leads to 18.051.148.080 possible combinations. If Skyrim wants to beat this (Todd: 'number and variation types are more than we’ve ever had.') with only 4 armor slots, there'd have to be 367 different armor types for each slot (helmet, armor, gauntlets, boots). Good luck with that, Beth.

When you look at the images we have so far, that "variation" is just the same pieces of armor put together in different ways. Sure, you may have a dozen different leather armors, but if they're just different arrangements of the same four or so parts, they're really not.

I think the benefits of having armor pieces combined is greatly exaggerated, and that Bethesda's reasons for putting it the way they have is to somehow justify their decision to the fans... and it looks like they are succeeding.

I don't see why they couldn't have some armors be combined and others not, instead of merging all of them.

I'm very disappointed that I won't be able to combine more pieces of armor. I often had characters wearing mixes of different clothing and armor or not wearing a chestpiece.

Bethesda better overwhelm us with armor sets to make up for this.