My guess is

1. Alchemy
2. Illusion
3. Conjuration
4. Restoration
5. Destruction
6. Alteration
7. Enchanting
8. Smithing
9. Crafting
10. Persuasion
11. Melee Weapons (swords, axes, short blades, blunt weapons, spears, pole arms)
12. Marksman
13. Dual Wielding
14. Athletic (Previous athletic, acrobatic, and climbing)
15. Stealth (sneak and security)
16. Unarmored
17. Light Armor
18. Heavy Armor

Shields divided between armor protection in armor skill and damage in melee skill. Most of the specialization will be done through perks so their is still massive amounts of differences, it is just the skills that are simplified.

Assuming one fewer skill from each of the 3 divisions (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Skills)...

I'd bet on Athletics and Acrobatics getting axed.

So long as we still have a speed attribute, the main bonuses from these could easily be integrated into perks.

Moreover, they were among the most exploitable skills with absurd results. Supers-speed walking and moon jumping are likely to go if, as Todd says, they want to make the world look more believable (he mentioned how dumb it looked that you backed up at the same speed you ran forward, and we all know these skills can result in some pretty dumb-looking antics when they reach higher levels).

Anyway, that leaves 3 more skills to be cut. I seriously hope Light and Heavy Armor are two of them, I think the game would be better off without them even if they don't give us anything in return. Then we only have one more skill to cut and my guess is that it's either Athletics or Mercantile. Both of them were support skills and couldn't really carry a character so I wouldn't really miss either. Static movement speed is acceptable to me and all the TES games I've played had a broken economy anyway. Okay, it would be better to have a non-broken economy than to cut the Mercantile skill, but I'm trying to be realistic and it would be kind of nice for Bethesda to acknowledge their limitations. smug

The 6 skills that were lost in transition from Morrowind to Oblivion are Medium Armor, Unarmored, Axe, Light Blade, Spear, and Enchant. The first two are armor skills and I'm actually glad they went the way of the dodo. Enchant is making a comeback and the remaining 3 are weapon skills. But my guess is that they'll be handling that with perks. The article specifically mentiones a perk that allows your maces to penetrate enemy armor. So having just One-handed Weapons and Two-handed Weapons skills is fine, if you augment them with perks. AoD will have a bunch of weapon skills, but it has the weapon "perks" built into the skills. If perks are not built into the skills themselves it's actually reasonable to have only a small number of weapon skills.

So overall, I'm really not bothered by there being only 18 skills.

Get rid of Luck (always been useless), and combine agility and speed (redundant).

Strength
Endurance
Willpower
Intelligence
Personality
Agility

I was skeptical at first, however Dragatus from another forum has made some good points:



Although I still wish there were some extra skills, like climbing. Hopefully the removed skills are the armour type ones, which never really made sense anyway.

I was skeptical at first, however Dragatus from another forum has made some good points:



Although I still wish there were some extra skills, like climbing. Hopefully the removed skills are the armour type ones, which never really made sense anyway.

I was skeptical at first, however Dragatus from another forum has made some good points:

We know Mysticism is gone, but as long as it's spell effects are still there I won't really miss the skill. Hopefully they used them to strengthen Alteration as I found both Alteration and Mysticism to be fairly lackluster in Oblivion. Destruction, Restoration, and Illusion were all fun, and Conjuration was really good if you maxed it early. But Alteration and Mysticism were both pretty weak.

I'm not just from another forum.