Hi there,

I'm new here so I'm not sure if this is the place to post ideas and suggestions for upcoming games. If it's not, please tell me. I posted this idea to a small subreddit over at /r/nextelderscrolls, but thought I'd put it here too and see what people think. I think it's a good idea and could add a signifficant amount of depth to the skill system without bloating it too much. So here is my initial post from reddit:

This, I think would be the best skill system I can imagine. It is a little hard to explain so bear with me.

Have HEAPS of skills. I mean heaps! For swords you could have one-handed, two-handed, long blade, short blade, medium blade, single edged, double edged, curved, straight, iron, steel, light, heavy etc. etc. each sword could have multiple points (the keyword system used for skyrim would make that easy). So you might have a one-handed, iron, single edged, curved, light, medium blade. Using that would put those points up so if you were to then use basically the same thing, but the heavy version, you'd be good, but would still take a little while to get used to the new weight. Those skills would slowly degrade over time, but would be re-learnt quicker. So at later levels, when you haven't used iron for a long time, you would be a little rusty (no pun intended) if you tried to use an iron weapon.

Furthermore, each weapon would have a familiarity factor, so you could have a favourite weapon to use, which would be better than an otherwise equal one, because you've used it for so long.

Now, that's just the start, the main point is weighted skills. Where going up one point in medium length blades would but you up .5 points in short and long, plus those skills would level slightly faster if you swapped to them.

In order to do it in a user-friendly way it would all have to be behind-the-scenes. Each item, when you look at it, could list off it's keywords (or at least some of them) and there would have to be a way for the player to see their skill level with each word, but most of it would be an effectiveness value which is unique to each weapon.

So here's an example, I'll stick to a sword, but I would hope it applies to every skill.

You use an one-handed, iron, single edged, curved, light, medium blade and go up a point. For the sake of simplicity in this example I'll assume all of them go up at the same time as if this is the first weapon you use, but in reality the progress bars for each keyword would be at different points.

So you get:

one-handed 1

iron 1

single edge 1

curved 1

light weight 1

medium blade 1

two-handed .5

steel .8

dwarven .5

ebony .3

daedric .1

double edge .6

straight .5

medium weight .7

heavy weight .5

short blade .5

long blade .5

axe .2

mace (blunt) .2

mace (spiked) .2

etc.

(I haven't really thought about the numbers, they're just to give you an idea of what I mean)

Of course that wouldn't have to be defined for every weapon, each skill would be weighted to every other skill, so you could just define the keywords and it would work the rest out.

The important thing is that raising one skill raises a very similar skill by quite a bit, and a less similar skill by a little bit. I imagine the algorithm for calculating the effectiveness of a given item wouldn't be straight forward which is why it would have to be hidden from the player, but I think it would be amazing. Effectiveness would govern damage (or for armour, damage absorbed and for magic things, perhaps mana cost) and well as attack speed. There would be other skills to determine how much it encumbered you.

By doing this system, you could have a world with thousands of different weapons, each with a unique feel, without limiting the player, or over-simplifying the skill system. The Morrowind way of having heaps of skills locked players too much, but the Skyrim system (all one-handed weapons being one skill) was too simple. I think my system finds a balance, as well as allowing for much more weapon types.

What do you think? And I hope a developer reads this and takes it on board