Think of it like real life.

Someone who's good at stealing people's wallets in a crowd isn't necessarily going to know how to pick locks, are they? The two should be separate.

It isn't overly confusing having them as separate skills, so what's there to gain from merging them? Nothing. What's there to lose? Specialisation. My thief character feels more unique if they're focusing on numerous skills instead of just one "thief" skill to cover all abilities. Sure, the end result will be the same - they become good at picking both locks and pockets.... but RPGs aren't really about the end result. The meat of the game should be in building / developing your character.

Merging those skills would just be oversimplification, pure and simple.

The main problem for me is that specialization doesen't really have place with current gameplay mechanics for most of those skills. For example, whatever you play, unless you keep yourself to a 10% of the content in a strict RP sense, you'll end up being a master of lockpicking.

Good luck trying to play an acrobat in Skyrim. Ignorant post is ignorant.

>2011
>Still playing an acrobat and not an athlete master race

1. Acrobat based classes are now completely gone.
2. I kinda agree that prices should be fixed.
3. Lore.
4. A LOT

I think they have the skills down to pretty much the perfect number except for one thing.

They should combine Lockpick and Pickpocket into one skill, and add a skill for mobility back into the game, that combines Acrobatics and Athletics and also includes perks for carry capacity and unarmored / unarmed fighting.

Well considering that we didn't really lose any skills from Oblivion to Skyrim, I'm guessing we won't be losing a whole lot.

Oh wait, I see what you did. You counted 18 skills, as opposed to 21, and failed to actually look at the actual game content. Okay, well let's actually look at the game, then, shall we:

Skills in Oblivion (* represents a skill that was "removed")

Block
Armorer*
Heavy Armor
Blunt*
Blade*
Athletics*
Hand to Hand*

Destruction
Alteration
Illusion
Conjuration
Mysticism*
Restoration
Alchemy

Security
Sneak
Acrobatics*
Light Armor
Marksman
Mercantile*
Speechcraft

Now lets take a closer look at the skills that were removed:

-Armorer
Wasn't actually removed. Instead, it was replaced with a superior, more in depth, full on crafting system that offers much more gameplay than Armorer ever did. Improvement

-Blunt / Blade
Wasn't actually removed. They were re-organized and re-classified as One Handed and Two Handed, and in the process added more combat styles than we had before. Improvement.

-Mysticism
Wasn't actually removed. The spell effects from the school of Mysticism are still in the game, they were just merged with the Alteration skill (and in the case of Soul Trap, merged with Conjuration).

-Mercantile
Wasn't actually removed. It was merged with the skill of Speechcraft, which is an appropriate choice.

So of the 8 skills that were removed, 5 of them actually weren't (Armorer, Blunt, Blade, Mysticism, Mercantile). They are all still in the game.

That leaves 3 skills actually "removed".

Acrobatics, Athletics, Hand to Hand.

One of those (Hand to Hand) can still be done in game, just without a skill. It even has a perk for it as well which means that technically, Hand to Hand can still be a part of your character build.

So we lost Acrobatics, and Athletics.

But on the flip side, it wasn't just all give and no take.

ADDED to the game were the returns of Enchanting and Pickpocketing, which add far more gameplay content and depth than the "run" and "jump" skills.

So in actuality, we lost only 2 skills, but those 2 skills were replaced by something better.

So what we actually have is no real loss of skills in the game. What was "lost" in number was actually replaced with something better than we had before, or simply merged with something else, but it's all still there. What was lost and not replaced directly, there are new skills that weren't in Oblivion that are far better than "running" and "jumping".

So no, nothing was really lost from Oblivion to Skyrim, and I have no worries of losing any significant skills in the future.

You are wrong.

1.) Attributes aren't "depth" or "complexity", and they didn't do anything that isn't currently done by Health / Magicka / Stamina and the perks system.
2.) There were no "real classes" in the series previously either, save for Arena. Character creation was nothing more than lumping a bunch of skills into a group, labeling them, calling it your "class", but having nothing stopping you from venturing outside of your "class" and becoming a master at anything and everything outside of your class as well. You could level any and all skills to 100 and become a master of them, whether they were a "class" skill or not. If anything, Skyrim is more of a "real class" system, because perks force you to specialize, and while you can still get 100 in any and every skill, you can only truly maximize and specialize in a select few skills.
3.) Degrading equipment isn't "depth" or "complexity", it's needless tedium, that while I'm not inherently against it's inclusion, I will take a fully fleshed out crafting system like we have over armor repair any day of the week. Smithing is deeper and more complex than Armorer, that is a fact, thus the game cannot be "dumbed down" when it became more complex than what we had in the past.

Add stuff back in - you mean like they have already done with Skyrim?

Except, Acrobatics and Athletics were forced on US, like another person said. Those were uncontrollable skills that leveled up whether we wanted them to or not, just by doing simple things like not fast traveling.

I hope they don't remove more! Sure you can add the content into different skill sets, but that defeats the purpose of removing it in the first place and kills play styles. Looking at hand to hand, why is it not a skill? There is no reason for that. Bethesda decided to include perks for them, BUT! You mean if I want perks for Hand to Hand in Skyrim I have to level heavy armor up? What if I want to play a ninja type character? Looks like I get no perks. There is a play style killed off. The Streamlining really needs to stop. Sure it removes "fluff" but it kills customization! One of the key points of TES series!

Dunno. They just better damn well put mysticism back in (its a huge part of the lore), climbing too, because its fun and I said so.

Actually, Mysticism being "Cut" is lore-friendly. It's always been the "Dump" school for magic effects - It's name even means "incomprehensible Magic", with a lot of discussion in prior books about how how hard it is to learn. Skyrim essentially (And correctly) posits that the reason "Mysticism" was so hard to "learn" was because pursuit of that "skill" was "barking up the wrong tree", or "Chasing a red herring". The schools themselves are artificial constructs established by Galerion's Mage's guild to allow magic effects to be classified and taught in a logical, orderly, predictable manner - but magic is inherently neither Logical, Orderly, nor Predictable.

Essentially, "Mysticism" is, according to lore, about as "real" a form of Magic as Alchemy is as "real" a form of Chemistry in the real world - Yeah, you might find a few things that actually work, but it's in spite of your efforts, not because of them.

Armorer was changed from a repair skill with no creation to a poorly balanced creation skill with no repair. Minor gain.

Blunt/Blade was already as far "dumbed down" from any of the pre-OB games as it could get and still call it a choice. It was changed to a 1-hand vs 2-hand system, where the perks are mostly similar anyway (aside from a few like "bleed" that should have been inherent in the weapon itself, not something you had to learn how to make it do). Again, Oblivion took away a whole list and Skyrim gave a tiny sliver of it back, but it's still miles behind DF and MW. At least the perks aren't manadtory, like they were in OB.

Mysticism was distributed among the other schools of magicka, and those schools were then pared down to have less spells and effects than before, so it's roughly a net result of one skill lost overall.

How do you call "Speechcraft" plus "Mercantile" being combined NOT being the loss of a skill? It was 2, now it's 1. My outgoing and endearing Imperial couldn't care less about buying and selling, but now he's a master merchant just because he tells a good story? The cut-throat merchant is now a smooth talker. Granted, there are more important things than seperate Speechcraft and Mercantile, but don't try to say that 2 - 1 = 2.

Enchanting was put back into a useable form similar to what it was in previous games, not introduced as something new. Spellmaking was removed instead, so we STILL have no improvement overall.

I concede that adding Pickpocketing back after the long lapse since DF was a positive move.

The loss of Athletics and Acrobatics does affect some character builds, although the process of levelling them in previous games was in need of an overhaul. As usual, instead of fixing the problem, the whole game mechanic was removed.

Overall, there was a lot less lost from OB to SR than there was from MW to OB, but it's still a loss.

I think they should really go back to how Morrowind had it's skills because it gave the player diversity. Swinging a sword is not the same as swinging an Axe, and swinging a dagger is not the same as swinging a claymore. Medium armor, light armor, heavy armor, or no armor, there's differences between each. Another big issue in my opinion is not only the removal of skills but also armor slots. Morrowind had 8 armor slots, while also allowing clothing underneath armor and robes over top of it. Oblivion had 5 armor slots and no clothing or robes allowed. Skyrim has 4 armor slots. Bethesda really is taking more and more content out of the games.

EDIT: I've noticed a deal of disputes concerning the removal of Acrobatics and Athletics. these two skills added a nice variety to the game in my opion, sure they were difficult to control in leveling, but if they weren't selected as majors, they really didn't do anything to harm the player and only helped the player. I mean it's actually common sense that the more one jumps the higher they get, or the more one runs the faster they become. This is a simple matter of muscle developement. so no, don't swing that crap saying "you had no choice" because it only effects your leveling if you actually have it as a major skill. Attributes DID offer variety and customization to the game, you could create a fast character, intelligent character, strong character or lucky character. these things did add to the uniqueness of a players character. Perks were a step in the right direction, but they should have been an addition, not a replacement. The key value of adding customization is to give as much diversity as possible, AKA Morrowind which had 8 different armor slots and 3 different layers, 28 different skills, plus attributes as opposed to Skyrim with 4 diffferent armor slots and like 18 skills? Clearly there's a lack of customization in Skyrim. Not to mention Enchanting is an overpowered skill. At least in Morrowind it added limits to how much you could enchant an item due to the items capacity to hold magical power, which makes sense, as opposed to using Alchemy to beef up your enchanting and then create impossibly God like armor and weapons.

Sorry, but the removal of options is not a good technique to the application of customization.

The next TES will be a FPS the way things are going... I cannot express my grief well enough.

Wouldn't surprise me. TES is already going the wrong way.

I agree with you, but isn't Speech a automatic skill as well? I mean, you raise it every time you talk to someone to persuade them or whatever, but you also raise it by selling items.

Weapon Degradation was just annoying, I'm glad that it's gone. May it never plague another elder scrolls game.

I agree. It was annoying. I just with the replacement (smithing) was deeper.

This.