So I'm still a bit confused about the info on soft caps and hard caps. The soft cap is what happens when you max out all your skills or is that the hard cap? What purpose does the soft cap serve if my above statement isn't correct?
Secondly, I've played Morrowind and Oblivion but am embarrassed to say that I don't remember what happens when your skills increase. Does the damage that they inflict, I.E 1hd sword, destruction, conjuration etc, increase? Does heavy armor protect your more? If this is the case is that still the same way that Skyrim is going to be implementing the skills? I know Skyrim changed a few things, I.E no attributes besides HSM and stuff like that but I wasn't sure what was changed about skills. Thanks.

Yes a softcap is when you maxed all skills and yes in OB it jus increased dmg.

Well, there's the two practical caps, regardless of what you label them as (soft, hard, whatever).... there's the point at which the game will stop scaling the difficulty (lv50), and there's the point where you can't level anymore (all skills maxed at 100, somewhere in the 70's)

I'm pretty sure they said you could still level up after reaching level 50, maybe in other ways than raising skills?

After level 50 it gets harder to raise skills and lvl 70 is when all your skills are 100.