The only thing I've not always like about TES is the way you start with low ranking armors such as leather or rusty iron and make your way up to the best armors such as glass or daedric. The problem I find is we all naturally end up wearing the same best armor unless degrading to a more rubbishy one.

I don't feel much freedom with regards to unique character design. Especially when making a second or third character where I find my self down suiting just to make them different.

With the newer way of armor as in Skyrim where we can actually make and improve our armor (which is a great addition to the game), it gave me an idea.

Would it not be better to have more armor types when we start as low level which are made with cheaper materials by lesser able blacksmiths but as we level up these same armor type become greatly improved when made with better more expensive material and with greater craftsmanship. That way an orsmer character who feels they naturally want their character to wear Orcish armor will start at low levels by having to make his Orcish armor design made by an amateur blacksmith with cheap rusty iron & cheap leather but eventually have an Orcish armor made with high craftsmanship and with a much more expensive material such as ebony. An imperial could do the same with an imperial style armor. A player who feels that a lighter amor such as Elven looks better or is more suited then they will the same type of choice but using with lighter materials.

Any one else think an idea like this could work or benefit future TES games?

Good idea. I'd certainly would like to be able to choose armour by appearence and certain additional benefits. Then upgrade them. :turned:

Essentially, you'd have materials and armor styles. You could make almost any of the armor types from almost any of the materials, with a few obvious exceptions (no plate armor from fur, etc.). You couldn't "upgrade" an iron helmet into a Glass one, you'd have to replace it. Being able to smelt items down for the raw materials to make other items or for repairs would be great.

Going one step farther, I'd like to see durability, weight, cost, and repairability all depend on material, so you could easily smith an iron band briastplate for relatively low cost, but making the same thing out of Ebony would require a lot more skill, cost a bundle more for the materials and tools, and weigh a lot more when completed, but have exceptional durability in comparison. The higher cost of repairs and better grade of tools required for progressively more effective armor and weapons could be used to make the more exotic and expensive items less useful for a low-level character, rather than having them not exist in the game world until you hit level X. FO3 did that to a degree, where the condition of armor and weapons was used nearly as much as availability as a limiting factor.

I haven't played any Skyrim yet, but does it still have the quirk of "one shape fits all", so male enemies drop armor that magically fits females as soon as it's picked up? If they haven't done so already, I'd like to see a change where any armor needs to be taken to a smith for "fitting" to the player before it can be used. Gender-changing should cost more than just resizing, but that works the same both ways.

Creating new armor from ram materials should also need a "pattern". I've played at least one game where clothing merchants could make those, but they needed to be taken to a smith (with the materials) to get it made up (except for leather armor, which is sewn together). Maybe a refit could need one too.

The lowest grade of armor is reinforced clothing. Add leather areas onto cloth to upgrade it at the tailor. Take all-leather armor and add plates/scales/chain at the smith. Take chain and add plates. There's a whole lot of logical upgrades that could be done by more than one merchant, and of course any of this can be enchanted too.

Upgrade paths also need to have dead ends. If you start with a clothing base, you can't turn it into all-leather; leather can't become plate; but you can produce a lot of hybrids that fall between the types.

At any stage you need a choice between upgrading and replacing that has pros and cons to each option.

P.S. bring back the asymmetry of separate pauldrons, but take it further. Give us specialized arm protection for archers' bow arms, the sword-arm Manica of the gladiators, and the shoulder plates of jousting armor.

the best armor idea is to quit combining armor pieces.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1242906-official-beyond-skyrim-tes-vi-3/