Skill trees are what differentiate one character from another. Basically the only means a player has outside of gear to personalize his/her character the way they desire. Why then are so many of these trees broken/imbalanced? Here is a few that need immediate attention. Feel free to add more, these are just the ones that were made immediately obvious after playing my first character.
Lockpicking:
What was your thought process behind making this a skill tree? Currently anyone with a 5 in lockpicking can pick a master lock with little/no effort. This entire tree is worthless. The only 2 mediocre perks in the entire tree are "Golden Touch" & "Treasure Hunter". Treasure hunter increases the chance the player will find "special treasure" (aka enchanted items) by 50%. So instead of having a 10% chance the player now has a whopping 15%. Waste of a perk. Golden touch is "ok". However, both of these perks are inferior to Haggling the first point in the speech tree. The player will net more gold over the course of the game from 1 point in Haggling than investing several points in a worthless tree to invest in 2 mediocre perks.
Pickpocket:
The only worthwhile perk in this entire tree is extra pockets which increases the players carry capacity by 100. Useful. However, the rest of the skill tree is again worthless. I have yet to encounter a single npc that has had notable loot that I could not acquire simply by killing.
Light Armor Vs Heavy Armor
I'm going to be blunt. Light armor in its current state is inferior to heavy armor. Here is why. Investing in the heavy armor tree gives you more armor/damage reduction (obviously), You take half damage from falling, ARMOR WEIGHS NOTHING (No sneak penalties!!!), Unarmed damage is increased provided you wear heavy gauntlets, 50% less stagger, 10% chance to reflect damage back to the enemy.
Now lets look at the benefits Light Armor provides over heavy armor. 50% stamina regen if in all light armor. Nice, however stamina has never been an issue. If your investing your attribute points wisely it never will be. In the rare, rare incident I run out of stamina I have 20+ stamina potions in my inventory that I have collected littered on the ground everywhere. 10% chance of avoiding a melee attack. Well, first of all its limited to melee. Secondly, its a 10% chance. Not reliable.
Conclusion: Heavy armor > Light Armor. How to fix? Well I thinking adding 10-15% movement speed increase to light armor would be a good start, as well as removing the weightless/no movement impairment perk in heavy armor.
Smithing:
Once again, favors heavy armor users. On once side you have light armors. On the other you have all heavy. Both of which lead up to dragon armor. HOWEVER, at the end of the heavy armor tree just before dragon armor, heavy armor users get access to daedric weapons/armor. The best items in the game. Light armor users on the other hand, have to invest in both sides if they want to create armor designed for their character & gain access to the best weapons in the game. How is this balanced?
Not sure where to begin.
Pickpocketing is very useful.
I stopped paying for training around lvl 10. I just pickpocket back my money. If you want to kill the trainers. Be my guest.
Try to do some thiefguild quests without pickpocketing. Good luck buddy boy.
Try to pickpocket someone with more then 1000 gold in their pocket without high skill and a few well spent perks.
Armor:
Heavy armor weight does not mean the stealth reduction is there.
It just means you can move faster and stamina will drain as if you wear no armor when sprinting.
Do you honestly think the 50% noise reductin perk in light armor would be nulified with the next perk in that tree, which is "no weight".
Have you even tried to use stealth in heavy armor with that perk?
I have. I can tell you, it does not work.
Heavy armor provides better armor yes.
But: You need to spend 3 perk points to get the no weight on heavy armor, where light armor not only get that for 1, but get very nice perks to it.
Unarmed damage and half damage from falls, is the pre reqs in heavy armor to get no weight. Thats 2 utterly useless perks that you must take to get it.
As a heavy armor wielding warrior, its much better to gake Stone of Steed, for +100 carry capacity AND your armor weights nothing. Saves you 3 perk points and you have more then you bargained for.
Light armor: 50% noise reduction, 50% stamina regeneration etc.
Even for melee combat builds light armor is better, if you spend perks to increase your armor level in it.
50% Stamina reg alone is incredibly useful, especially for those of us that is not abusing alchemy and running around with 100 stamina pots.
As an Archer, 50% stamina reg means I can zoom in and slow time for ALOT longer, as an example.
The noise reduction is apparent.
You must use muffled enchant to stealth in heavy armor.
But for me, playing with no enchants thats not an option, besides, why would I want to abuse the sytem to begin with and make an unrealistic character.
You can stealth and wield daggers in heavy armor if you want. Realistic? Not at all. Fun? If you like to be all powerful and use smithing, enchatning, alchemy etc, sure.
You have only made one point which everyone is aware of: Picklocking perks is absolutely useless and this tree definately needs to be reworked.
» Sun Dec 11, 2011 4:05 pm 
