Should also add an easily accessible weapon that kills everything in one hit. Why not? And if people don't like it because it's an exploit, then just don't use it!

If that page is about constant skill degradation then no we are not.

But are you skillful in roofing houses or are you skillful in roofing Taj Mahals?

@draznin:
Ask yourself if you would be getting those XPs from a GM when casting "cheaply made only for exploiting the system" Detect Life spell. No sane GM would allow it, and accuse you of being a munchkin (I advice you to look it up if you don't know what it is). In the game such nonsense is only used for powergaming, note the use of the word "exploits" in the title. I know what you're saying wrt destruction spells, but in order to "get better", isn't "observing the effect" a major part of it? You don't learn to see how major areas spells affects inner organs by throwing cheap practice spells at walls at all. You don't learn to fix a gearbox by filling gasoline, no matter how often you do it.

About degration. Could be fun I guess Especially in the expert skills. Although I don't think it should drop below current perk level. It only means you have to be more focused when going for a new perk level, it doesn't render your character useless. We're only talking about a mere 24 skill points maximum, hardly a heavy hit. From a realism standpoint, it makes sense too; skills you don't maintain will drop to a certain level. I still know how to bicycle (I hope ), but I'm probably not the expert I may once have been.

Fair enough

No, not at all. I just want some fairness to it. In truth, I'm not a fan of the "gain skill by doing" dynamic, simply because, it's a game, and I don't want to have to "practice" an RPG skill in order to make it useful.

Example: I create a fighter and around level 6 decide to take up destruction magic. I now have to start "practicing" on things that are far below my "level," because if I attack anything at my "sword level" with my minor little fire spell, I'm going to die. This is how it would work in real life, except that I could learn the destruction spell in safety, use it in safety, get better at it, all while safe and away from monsters, then use it on something during a fight. Practice.
No, I don't want to be able to tape my buttons down and get there. I get that that's why they changed it, except, it's a single player game, so what difference does it make? Really, I just want some order to it. As I said, I would cast detect life ALL the time. So that area of magic would skyrocket for me, while destruction svcked. Why? It's magic. There's got to be some similarity between casting a fireball and casting detect life. I should be better at that than some novice is. I should be able to cast even complicated destruction magic if I can cast complicated restoration magic for instance. I might not be AS good, but I should be FAR better at it than a novice would be.

I don't know exactly how I'd like it to work, but I definitely don't like how it worked in Oblivion.
Again, I really don't want to "cheat" and hold the buttons down and leave. I'd like the system to be more consistent. If I cast detect life 100 times an hour, I'll be fantastic at it. But I only find SO many enemies. Really took away from my playing in destruction magic...

No, not really. You picked being a fighter, deal with it. Fireballs and detect life are different schools of magic. Unless you're a "magic user" by the class you picked at character generation, you just have to accept that life will be harder as a fighter dealing with magic.

Regarding skill degradation:
1) This should definitely be an option if it goes in. PC players can mod it in if they want it, but console players need to be able to ditch it if they hate it. I anticipate it will be fairly controversial.

2) It would be nice if they distinguish between learning and relearning. That is, skill XP that goes toward paying off your disuse penalty should be multiplied by a factor, ideally greater than one. Even if vanilla leaves that factor at 1, modders can then tweak it as they see fit.

3) With skill rust, they can be a little more lenient in giving skills to starting characters -- as they start to improve their primary skills, they'll also let the ones they don't care about drop, so there will be a little more variety in character stats regardless of starting ability.

4) This will make time much more of a concern to players -- for example, in past games, getting stuck in prison for a while caused your skills to atrophy a little (except thief skills). But you can spend the same amount of time sleeping all day every day without any penalty. Skill rust could create a little bit of pressure to treat your character's time like a valuable resource. This could make gameplay more interesting if they started to factor time more realistically into different processes, like repairing weapons, making potions, and so on. It would also introduce an inherent cost into fast travel -- if you go on foot, you're at a minimum working your athletics skill, and probably will use a few others on the way. Anyway, if they don't implement it themselves, I hope they make it easy for modders to put in, because it has the potential to be an interesting addition to gameplay.

For a time, in my youth, I dabbled in the martial arts. Once, at a tournament, I watched the most amazing black belt completely dominate the competition (some of whom were instructors) using only two moves: block and reverse punch. Seriously. Two moves any white belt knows completely obliterated all comers. Every true master knows that the fundamentals are what matters. So, no, role-playing should suffice. Besides, we are talking about a game here. It's supposed to be fun, not realistic. When was the last time you cast even a low-level fireball in real life? Come on. Seriously. Non-issue.