You'll just obediently go along with whatever Bethesda chooses.

Plate (armor), mail, fur and leather (underarmor), unarmored

yeah, it was extremely baddass.


should be an artifact.

Unarmoured
Light
Medium
Heavy
having the unarmored again would be nice
Especially for when my armor breaks deep in a dungeon and i cant repair it

I'm assuming you're a fan of the green power ranger? Or maybe just a fan of WoW-style armor?

The only difference between light armor and heavy was mobility and storage capacity v. a few extra stat points from enchantment... there was virtually no benefit to heavy armor at high skill levels. Remove the 50% increase in protection at 100 skill and it will be balanced I think. Putting in a damage threshold + damage resistance system would also be nice so that you could have different armors that are more effective against light attacks or heavy ones. Say glass armor has a high damage threshold and low damage resistance and could make you immune to light attacks, but hit by a heavy weapon it would be virtually useless. Heavy armor out of a soft metal is more malleable and thus weaker against light attacks, but distributes the energy of impact over a larger area thus being great at reducing overall damage taken (damage resistance). Something like that... it is far from perfect but would be interesting. I do not think anyone wearing armor should have 100% mobility and speed even if skill reduces those penalties. A person with 100 athletics and acrobatics should always be more mobile than a person in armor doing the same activities.

I think having medium armor return would be good.

They way I always pictured it was that Light armor is most commonly the stuff thieves would wear, not much protection, but light and doesn't restrict movement, it's your stuff like leather and gambeson ect.

Medium is the hard, but flexible armors, the armor most average adventurer or warrior would wear. It's things like chainmail, lamelar, Scalemail. They're made of heavier, sturdy materials, but still allow a fair bit of flexibility

Heavy armor is your strong ridgid armors, so thats where your full plate ect come to play, it's heavy, it's hard to move in but most strikes should bounce off it. It takes alot of skill and stamina to use effectivly so is normaly only utilised by Knights and warriors trained in heavy melee combat.

I think it's a good system, because it has better transition from the lighter armors to the heavier ones. Also, I think armor should NOT get heavier just because it's better. Material should determine wieght. Iron should be heavier than steel, as steel can give strong protection while being a lighter construct than softer iron. Also, light armor should NEVER weigh more than a heavy armor. It's just silly (I'm looking at you Oblivion)


I think with a bit of rebalancing how armor works, it could make for an awesome system. The current settup of weight and armor value just doesn't quite work that well.
Like I said, light armors should afford only small protection, but let you keep a high mobility.

Medium should be the standard loss of mobility for decent protection

Heavy should make you a walking tank, able to take heaps of punishment, maybe even shrugging off some weaker attacks all together, but it should severly limit your mobility and dare I say, make you at least have trouble swimming (if not sinking altogether)

An unarmoured skill would be good if it gave you some kind of 'auto-dodge' but I wouldn't mind all that much if unarmored was left out.
The benifit of not wearing armor would be retaining full mobility and speed.

Thats what I think anyway.

:EDIT:

By 'mobility' I don't mean Oblivion's system of slowing you down a little. I mean more in the sense of recovering from stagger/knockdown, your acceleration, your ability to change direction when running full speed, the speed at wich you wield weapons, fire arrows, how far and high you can jump and such.

I'd say medium armor should return again, while this wouldn't necessarily add more srmor as Bethesda can still just put those armors trhat would be medium if the skill existed into light or heavy instead, depending on which catagory they lean towards, but returning medium armor would allow more customization in terms of what armor you wear. You could have light, less weight, more mobility, but less defense. Heavy, very strong defense, but much more encumbering, or something in between, in Oblivion, the light and heavy options are covered, but nothing for those who would prefer to have better defense than light armor without turning them into walking bricks, still, if Bethesda doesn't want to do medium armor in order to keep the amount of skills in the game at one that is easier to balance, I can understand that. But the lack of unarmored is harder to justify. Traditionally in RPGs mages are usually supposed to wear robes and not armor, and while I'm glad that the Elder Scrolls gives the player the choice to defy this stereotype, it should still give you the option to adhere to it if you so choose, not to mention other character types might not want to wear armor. In Morrowind, Bethesda at least tried to give us the option to wear no armor, the skill was broken and would not function properly without wearing at least one piece of armor, of course, but that's a flaw in game programming which can be avoided in a new game. And if you dealt with it, whether using one of the "unarmored bug workaround" type mods, just wearing one piece of armor, or using the Morrowind Code Patch to properly fix it, unarmored characters would still be underpowered compared to armored ones, which was not completely unreasonable, of course if you don't wear armor, you're going to be more vulnerable than one who does. The main real problem in this case was that unarmored characters always had less enchantment slots available than armored ones, which is why I can't agree with those who say the ability to wear armor over top of clothing should return. But still, Bethesda tried, they didn't even bother in Oblivion. Sure, since armored characters can't wear clothes with their armor, they don't get more enchantment slots than unarmored characters, or they wouldn't, in theory, if unarmored gloves still existed, and that's assuming that you're wearing shirts and pants, if you wear robes, they take up multiple equipment slots, meaning you can wear fewer items, thus fewer enchantments. But they still get a lot more defense, since unarmored players have ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to be protected at all, without using magic, and while it's true you can use shield spells and enchant your clothing with shield, armored characters can do that too, and get the benefit of defense from both armor and shield. So in the end, not wearing armor is simply not desirable. I don't expect unarmored characters to have as much defense as those wearing even light armor, of course, but I DO expect the game to give us a chance to make them a viable character type, which Oblivion doesn't. It wouldn't even be that much of a problem if unarmored characters could have benefits to make up for their lack of defense, but as it stands, the only benefits to not wearing armor are that clothes are lighter than armor, and if you use light armor, the difference is quite small. In conclusion, Bethesda needs to make unarmored characters viable, or there's really no point in allowing them at all.

Other than that, I'd say that the current basic framework for the armor system is fine, some modifications to ensure better balance would be fine, but I can't find too much to complain about with the basic setup. I would like to see more variety within individual armor types, of course. I'd also like to see armor have more of an impact on stealth, because in Oblivion I felt that the penalty to stealth for wearing heavy armor was not strong enough, and it also bothered me that it became irrelevant after a certain skill perk removed the effect of the weight of your boots on sneaking. Wearing armor should always add some penalty to sneaking, and while this penalty can of course reduce with increasing the appropriate skills,



The Elder Scrolls "glass" armor is not made out of window glass, it's a form of volcanic glass that is strong enough to make armor, in Morrowind, you could even see glass mines, which are pretty much what you'd think. I'd also point out that Morrowind's glass armor looked very different from Oblivion, and I'd say it looks better, maybe you'll agree, and maybe you won't, either way, you should probably see how the armor type looked in older games too before complaining about its very existence in the series.

Now, I might argue that if you don't want people to think that a material behaves like the glass in their windows, you probably shouldn't call it glass, but it's already part of the world now, and the only thing removing it will do is give players one more reason to complain about inconsistency in the setting.



Medium armor was "kind of pointless" in Morrowind because in theory, it's supposed to be between light armor and heavy armor. Lighter than heavy armor, but more protective than light armor, but it didn't really do the latter very well, while it was certainly lighter than heavy amor, you'd be hard pressed to find medium armor with better defense than glass, but that's a problem with game design, and using that as a justiication for not including it would be the same as saying unarmored should not be included because it was bugged in Morrowind.

Unarmoured, Light, Medium, Heavy.

The more skills, the more customisation.

The more customisation, the better.


Actually, it was a great armour class. I often use it.

Bonemold
Imperial
Orcish
Indoril
Bear
Helseth Guard
Stahlrim (I believe)
Adamantium

There were also a few incomplete sets, including Dragonbone, the medium set of Imperial armour, and Nordic Ringmail. There may be others I've forgot.


I also still use the others, dependingon the characters. I see no reason to cast it aside as a "useless skill", when it has great use. It successfully fills the "middle-ground" type that Bethesda was aiming for.

I belive there was Nordic Mail as well, from blood moon. different from the Nordic ringmail, was a complete set and one of my favorites (apart from the helm)

Armor needs to be completely reworked because it was tied into the level scaling, everything that was tied into level scaling needs to be redone in my opinion.

Heavy, actually.

Realy? I was certain it was medium. Gimme a second, I'll load up the morrowind cs.

EDIT

Yep, it most defiantly is medium armor. the cuirass ( BM_NordicMail_cuirass ) weighs 25.00 wich is within the constraints of medium armor =D
28.00 is where they scale up to heavy I believe.

I'm a sheep.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Maybe instead of skills it could the attributes that determine your ability to use certain armor.

Say if you wanted to wear leather armor you would need 30+ STR, for chain you'd need 45+ STR, and for plate you'd need 60+ STR. Then after that youe ability to move while in the armor would be influenced by your Agility. The higher your agility the greater the range of your movement will be, with higher level armors requiring greater agility to achieve the same level of freedom of movement that lower armors have with lower agility levels. Then after that your Endurance would affect your fatigue loss while wearing armor. The more Endurance you have the less strenuous your movements in armor will be, allowing for you to move for longer periods of time, with higher level armors requiring greater agility to achieve the same level of freedom of movement that lower armors have with Endurance levels.

The problem with that is that it hinders choice, and limits your character.

I mean, to be honest anyone reguardless of how strong or agile they are could wear a leather vest. and anyone could wear chainmail to varying effectivness. (that stuff is pretty heavy) also, reguardless of how strong or agile you are, wearing full plate armor would still hinder you. It has limited flexibility and the helmets often limit your field of view.

Stopping people from wearing what they want is a bad idea. if someone wants to play a sorceror in heavy armor they should be able to without having to take strength as a primary attribute.
Skill should always be the primary factor in armor effectivness with attributes having some effect.

But saying you can't even wear chainmail because you lack the strength is silly.
It would be better to inflict fatigue drain and limit movement than to outright say 'you can't use that item!'

edit

as a side note, that is something I hate in other RPGs and something I love about TES.
In morrowind I played a healer in heavy armor. my skill with the armor svcked, but the point was that my healer was trying to begin a new life and learn new things, and TES lets me do that.

Then you assume wrongly. I just happen to really like the glass armour. :shrug:

I'm with Shades on this one. I originally liked armor skills, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it inhibited gameplay rather than improved it.

We can't treat the reduction of skills like it's some kind of boogyman, hiding under our beds trying to get us. There's a stack of suggestions for skills to replace the slots of armor skills, so don't worry about having too few skills somehow.

Dodge there is the real skill that people think of when they say Unarmored or Light armor. Good catch!

Your second paragraph addressing the removal of armor skills is invalid if they use the system outlined in my post about armor attributes.

Essentially all four armor skills in Morrowind were passive and did the exact same thing: Increase your armor rating and determine your movement penalty. Do we need four skills that do the same thing? Except for block in Morrowind, armor skills were the only passive skills. To raise them, you had to let someone kick your ass. I want all TES skills to be something that the player does, not passive armor rating increases. Can't we use those four skill slots to do something interesting in the game?

Rock on, man. :mohawk:

Other: A reworked unarmored, Light, Heavy.

I voted for light, medium and heavy. I make the most sense to me. Leather is not like chanmail, which is not like plate armor, which is not like leather. The only problem with this is that it would require either more skills or less skills. The last thing they need to do is remove skills, but I don't see things like enchant and short blade coming back to balance things out. If no skill governs armor, then magic would have to lose a skill, or combat and stealth would have to gain one which, again, probably won't happen.

So we will probably see light and heavy again, which is fine with me.

I do like the idea of strength governing armor, but I think that Strength should decide how harsh the penalties applied to your character are. A strength of 60 could be required to use steel armor without any penalties. It could be based on the weight of the armor, which could keep puny level 1 characters from running around in Daedric armor and being nearly invincible.

I have a feeling I'm missing something...

I was going to post a lengthy bit about how you can get all the character customization from having 4 skills with just the dodge and armored skill and applying skill caps at 75 and 50 to minor and miscellaneous skills. It sort of worked out but it was complicated and didn't really achieve much.

In the end I agree with Shades, get rid of the armor skills but simulate most implications of wearing armor. Just wear whatever armor suits your playing style, if you're a tank, just wear massive armor, forsake maneuverability in battle and generally sneaky and fast movement for the ability to take tons of damage from multiple opponents. Wear medium, light or no armor at all depending on how mobile you want to be in and outside of battle. Mobility which you're going to have to use to prevent being surrounded.

Damage thresholds would also be great.

I want no armor skills at all. Armor should just give a fixed protection value like in Fallout 3.

I already explained myself in another thread:
- http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1149632-anyone-want-medium-armor/page__view__findpost__p__16814562
- http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1149632-anyone-want-medium-armor/page__view__findpost__p__16814649

Here's the tl;dr version of my posts: Armor skills create artificial limitations without offering a meaningful strategic choice in return.

I'm a sheep.