Love that idea. I'm especially unhappy with Light Armor at the moment, because it simply misses its target audience. If I wanted more defense, I'd take Heavy Armor in the first place. Light Armor and Unarmored should enhance your movement and dodging abilites.

I think merging Heavy and Light armor into one would be the way to go, and then add a detailed perk tree to let people go light or heavy.

Every armor would then have to have more detailed stats such as:
Sharp weapon prot.
Blunt weapon prot.
Maneuverability rating (possibly as a result of weight)
Weight
Condition

All the actual armor stats and condition should be improved via smithing, not through your skill.

Perks could be things like:
Light armor specialization (Maneuverability bonus)
Heavy armor specialization (Maneuverability bonus)
Reduced critical (reduces chance of taking a crit hit)
Reduced stagger (reduces chance of staggering)
Reduced encumbrance (should only be in affect when you actual wear the armor. If it's in your inventory it weighs normal)

That's off the top of my head, but I definitely want the armors to be based on the material and skill they're made with, not how good you are at wearing them.

I hope Bethesda, and modders, are monitoring this thread. Because there are some excellent ideas here, in my opinion.

In particular the one quoted.

I really hope they don't merge even more skills, this would take all fun out of the game for me. I like complexity and options with more differences between the options. Light and heavy armor for example have different weights, wearing clothing that weighs less allows you to move faster.

Would be cool if the skills were not hard coded so people could mod in more skills or merge skills together so everyone can have something they like.

You know what would be taken away from you? Two numbers on the ol' character sheet. You could still, you know, choose to wear light armor, or heavy armor. The armor types would still have their differences, mainly weight to protection ratio.

Don't make a knee-jerk reaction at the thought of "losing" a skill. If you think about it, you wouldn't really be losing

Granted, there could still be armor-related perks. I'm personally of the opinion that the current system is illogical (wherein getting hit = increased skill = increased damage reduction), and unnecessary.

For those saying "you learn to maneuver in armor better, thus being able to deflect blows which explains the higher armor rating with your increased skill level"--that does make some sense, but the model of it is still illogical. If anything, that would be more akin to the old RPG "dodge" or "near miss" mechanic, which would be more of a percentage-based chance that increased, rather than going to your armor rating that is applied directly to every single attack. Armor rating should just dictate the protection the armor itself provides, and thus should not increase through character skill or experience. (Well, you can argue semantics about the definition of armor rating I guess...)

completely agree with this. along with heavy armor using more stamina and being very difficult to sneak in and NEVER weightless or as good for sneaking as light no matter what perks are picked. light armor should NEVER be able to reach the maximum damage threshold. that should only be achievable with heavy armor. boht armor types should have significant magic penatlies to them to encourage the use of robes and unarmored mages.

I had two skills, now I have one. Yes, I'm definitely losing something here.

You're acting like Bethesda right now - oh, character stats are kind of broken in Oblivion so let's remove them from the game.

Removing something is not fixing it. It never was and it never will be.

Fix the perks and make them actual perks instead of generic +x% increases -> make some meaningful differences between Light and Heavy, make armor damage reduction linear, nerf it, nerf the importance of upgrades but FFS, stop removing [censored] from the game or by the time we get to TESVIII it will look like Diablo 3. Without skill runes.

I hope Bethesda isnt paying attention. Modders, sure, let it be (potentially) optional. I for one am perfectly happy with my now 90 light armor skill the way it is.

I believe the AR is going up fairly reaonable in Skyrim, mainly because you need the extra AR perks for it to actually be worth it(IMO). Your playstyle also seem to favor no armor so that is where your problem is. Not sure how you would revamp the system, but if there are any solutions that makes sense(which includes that a melee character get it up faster since they get hit alot) I will support it.

Except it does have a benefit on the amount of protection it offers, in the same way that learning to put your weight behind a swing increases the amount of damage potential a weapon offers, and is best recognised in-game by a numerical value because the combat system is not deep enough for any other representation to be possible.

it would be even better if they had a better combat system. im actually very happy with skyrims minus the somewhat OP duel wielding which i now completely avoid but its still not as good as mount and blade warbands melee combat which i consider the best ive played to date. someone earlier posted a better stat for the "rolling and deflecting" you learn how to do would be dodge or evade. i actually agree with that and if i recall one of the perks in light armor has a dodge value associated with it, 10% or 20% so its in the game already it just needs to be utilized more effectively.

armor should be more akin to how fallout NV had it and i would even go further with different protections against different weapons. like the slash, blunt, pierce etc but that might be hoping for too much. simply having a DT/DR would be a huge improvement in itself. either way i like fallouts system of the armor being the main means of defense and not some esoteric skill that magically quadruples the effectiveness of anything you put on. skyrims is especially a bit silly because low end light armors offer me more "protection" than higher end ebony gear. that makes no sense at all.

You can buy light armor training.

Though I can see that maybe wearing light armor while doing things can increase light armor skill somewhat. You are getting used to light armor under combat situation and surely that must count for something.

But you cannot be a master of light armor that way. I propose that you can only increase light armor up to a certain point in this manner.

If the protection value of light armour did not scale equivalent to skill then essentially it would be useless in comparison to heavy armour.

Wearing leather against somebody wearing plate in a duel would be suicide unless you have some kind of supernatural reaction times, and so would never be hit.

i think you missed my point. at no point should leather or imperial light armor provide better protection than ebony armor. in skyrim it does if you have a big enough difference between your light and heavy armor skills. that is why i prefer fallouts system of what you wear is what you get which is how it is in real life. kevlar will stop pistol bullets but it will not stop rifle rounds. if you want to stop rifle rounds you have to get better body armor like the dragonskin or the carbon bouride plates that the military uses. if i have a suit that provide x amount of protection then that is what it should always provide. if you want to simulate getting better in armor then i would say reducing the stamina cost over time or reducing the movement penatlies over time is a far better approach than just jacking up the armors defense with no believable reason whatsoever.

also, as for light vs heavy i dont think that light armor should ever be as good as heavy armor no matter what. otherwise you penalize heavy armor users since they already would have a sneak and movement penalties. choosing to wear light armor should always leave you with a lower AR than heavy armor, even steel plate.

I think they should have nuked armor skills and kept athletics and give it a couple armor perks, jumping perks, falling perks. Getting hit would help increase athletics, running, jumping, falling would increase it. Perks could also include stamina bonuses, run speed, carry weight perks, etc.

To the OP: Your armor skill doesn't mean much, just invest into your base light armor perk and each one improves it by 20% which is HUGE. Once I got mine to about 60% I stopped taking serious damage. I mean you can perk that up to make fur quite impressive a lot faster than you can find elven or glass laying about anywhere and perked fur would blow away unperked glass. (probably anyway, haven't done the math) Obviously the perks mulitply all the armors to be better so as soon as you find something better if it's X60% it's tons better and 3 levels will get you that far.

imho, armor should have DT and DR like FONV.
DT should stay static and skill improvement SHOULD help for DR. e.g angling your body so that a sword glances off instead of biting in.

If you had raised your t-shirt skill enough, you could get the kevlar t-shirt perk that WILL deflect bullets. Ha everyone knows that.

Loosing another skill? The skills are down from 27 to 21 and now to 18. I never thought I'd say this but if it drops any lower I won't buy it. I know you don't care if I like it but I do.

While the games features associated with action and graphics have increased an amazing amount, my opinion is that other aspects of the game have equally decreased including less skills, absence of attributes, weapons from gods being less powerful than what the player can create or improve every day weapons to.

I can't speak of the political environment in Skyrim since I haven't completed the civil war yet.

The primary reason I started playing ES was to anolyze stats in a fantasy world and to make my char god-like in doing so.

You can have your opinion; however my opinion is that to many skills, features, and items have been removed. I'd like to see more perks but would rather see more skills!

I will say the slow motion critical kills in this game are awesome though