Continued from http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1533302-racial-stats-discussion/

I like racial stats and feel that they add a sense of culture and identity to the races. The way they were handled in Mw, Ob & Sk to me was right. The only thing that I disliked was the way racial equipment wasn't alligned to race stats. It was in Morrowind, but was not so much in Skyrim. It also makes better sense for gameplay purposes that races such as Nords and Orcs to have better armor and weapons aimed at them, but lack in magical items etc.

If they made a TES style game set in LOTR realm, i would expect to see wood elves armor to be light and agile, while dwarves and humans to be heavier to suit their build and fighting techniques. If every race was everything, to me it would loose flavours.

Not only does that make no sense in-universe, that's arbitrarily forcing niches on races just so you can't actually do certain caveats of gameplay with a certain race. Armor and weapon restrictions is silly, pointless, and immersion breaking. "Sure, you can be whatever and do whatever you want...except for that magic stuff with Nords. Ignore that some of the most powerful enchanters and Mages were Nords. They don't count." Just...no.

Didn't we beat this topic to death anyway?

I disagree completely. There should be no restrictions. There should only be predispositions to certain playstyles depending on race through traits and passive bonuses.

If you want to be the best swashbuckling spellsword in Tamriel go Redguard, but that in no way should limit the player from building a Redguard pure mage, thief, or warrior or any combination in between. The same applies to every race obvi, Redguards are just the most badass IMO so I use them as an example.

I think that the racial skill sets are designed to match the stereotypical adventure to arises mostly thanks to culture, some of which was explicitly described in game:

Dunmer: Together, they don't match any of Vvardenfell's Great House skill set that closely aside from the martial side of House Hlaalu, although they weren't that far off that of a typical Ashlander. Remember that any Dunmer PC was regarded as someone who grew up outside Morrowind. Perhaps many of the first generations outside Morrowind were Velothi and they'd get by with knives and magical fire.

Imperials: Education and light miltia training. Simple.

Khajiit: Aside from their different ideas (or lack of) about property, one of the books describes how Khajiiti warrior don't go in for heavy armour and throwing knives were also associated with them as I recall. Then there's the hand to hand martial arts

Nords: Acceptance of violence and industriousness needed to have plentiful access to most types of armour and weapons.

Orcs: Their focus on combat is more about self reliance and survival. As such, they make their own weapons, possibly have followed, refined and repurposed ancient Aldmeri techniques.

Redguards: I haven't really heard that much about exactly so many Redguards would good with combat, but based on several clues, I'm guessing that Hammerfell is a cutthroat meritocracy, where any responsible parents who aren't destitute will try to ensure that their children become reasonably competent at defending themselves in a sword fight, even in cases where that's unlikely to ever happen. There seems to be theme in Redguard culture of determining one's own destiny, and in theory being unable handle a sword would leave one at the mercy of anyone who can. So then it becomes a matter of pride. It doesn't look like the sort of culture that forbids peasants (if they have peasants in stricter senses of the word) from bearing arms.

Bosmer: Presumably most of them are hunters.

Magic biases appear to be more down to innate ability. That said we've had limited exposure to the cultures of those races. This doesn't include Morrowind of course, where we saw House Telvanni. The Psijic Order on the other hand, would be way too small and elite to reflect upon Altmer adventurers in general. And Daggerfall represented a fairly homogenous culture between the two sides of Iliac Bay and places mentioned in books anyway (same gods, same feudal structure). The women of Breton royalty seemed inclined to rely upon magic more than Sentinel's or even the Dunmer side of Wayrest's, but we didn't see that much else. Then again, we didn't see that many unique NPC's outside the royal courts and the faction quests were the same everywhere, so that doesn't necessarily mean that it's just the upper class, Mages Guild, clergy and witches practicing magic.

I think it is a fallacy to compare a fantasy world's inhabitants with the same stick as one does Earth and her Human Beings. Altmer are different from Orsimer are different from Nords are different from Argonians. It is not like humans where the only difference is the color of our skin.

In Tamriel, races are truly different. Or, they are said to be, though not always seen that way in game mechanics.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Shalidorand everything in the Lore would like a word with you.

Not particularly, since they all stem from the same quasi-mythical source regardless. They're different in-so much of the mythical sources that made some of them what they are, but metaphysics are an abstract that don't translate to gameplay well. The only one that this is true for is the Argonians, and their form is malleable to do whatever the Hist wants to do with them.

Ahzidal and the Dragon Priests too. And Gin-Wulm, and Alix Lencolia, and Oleta and any number of the other Master Trainers we've seen in the games too.