Of course, I know that absolutely nothing is confirmed and perks will be more akin to Fallout 3. At best, I just want to put out there what I don't want to see being repeated in Skyrim, as well as what I want to see reworked. Note that I'm purposely not making comparisons to Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas (which I both own). Instead, I'm making comparisons from Oblivion, which I feel is more appropriate.

1. Speechcraft - Speechcraft, in my opinion, is absolutely worthless. At best, it is only useful for getting extra information, extra information, that is generally worthless unless the information is needed for a quest (Though even this is few and far between). You can never really fail at Speechcraft because it's always possible to lower a NPCs disposition or raise a NPCs disposition to their respective min/max values. This would be fine though if there was some sort of incentive, which there isn't. No one gives you items for liking you or vice-versa. At the end, if you want to level Speechcraft, you need to just go around town talk to everyone, and spam the mini-game. Leveling the skill doesn't come naturally, (and it's not much fun) and you'll never really level it if you try to do it only when it's needed because it's needed so rarely. I say either make Speechcraft worth having, or just scrap it. Lastly, really? Mastery perk halves bribe costs? It already costs like...an average of 40 gold, which is far less than chump change. I think the problem is that the bribe costs didn't increase/decrease with the player's default disposition score towards a particular NPC.

2. Acrobatics - Acrobatics is another skill that I find worthless. Both in Morrowind and Oblivion, there's really no need to jump. I can see it more in Morrowind at least because often you have to traverse mountainous regions, but there's no excuse for Oblivion. I can see Bethesda at least tried to make it moderately useful with Dodge and Water Jumping, but even these are flawed. First, Dodge is useless against any Marksman or Mage because you can just dodge them by strafing easily. If you're a melee character, Dodging is useless if you're fighting another melee character. The only use Dodge has is Goron-Rolling. The only place that really has a lot of water that would even remotely justify Water Jumping is around the Imperial City. Even then, you can still water-walk or just plain swim if you don't want to fast travel to there, the decreased time it takes to get there through Water Jumping is very minimal. Also, what's the point of being able to jump while attacking? There's literally no benefit to doing so other than wasting your fatigue. It's not like you're going to both dodge an attack and be able to hit them at the same time.

3. Mercentile - Oh god, please, Bethesda, please make Mercentile faster to level across the board than in Morrowind and Oblivion. I'm sorry, but I think it was an absolute horrible decision on your part to not count stacked items individually towards Mercentile. (For example, 100 items in a stack counts as 1 point towards Mercentile as opposed to 100) I'm sure you could've done something to work around exploits like purchasing arrows then selling them back.

4. Sneak attacks with Hand to Hand - It really perplexed me when I first found out that Sneak attacks with Hand to Hand don't do extra damage to an opponent's fatigue. It makes Sneak attacks pretty much worthless with Hand to Hand (Really? 66 damage and 6.5 damage done to Fatigue? Hoo-ray.)

5. Personality - I think this really ties into Speechcraft. The only incentive is to avoid combat more often, but again, this is flawed. You need to fortify your Personality attribute above 100 in order to really avoid any enemies (UESP says 180 depending on factors such as Fame). Personality certainly isn't going to help for information-gathering since, again, it's very easy to maximize a NPCs disposition. Being a shrewd diplomat doesn't help if a blabbering idiot can get the same job done.

6. Two-Handed Weapons - In my opinion, two handed weapons are subpar in comparison to one handed weapons in Oblivion. The main reason being that the amount of extra damage they do over one-handed weapons is negligible, not worth the increase in fatigue-per-swing and weight. This is more apparent with Daedric-class weapons and more end-game. Secondly, I felt that two handed weapons never really had an advantage over one handed weapons. What was the point of staggering an enemy with a power attack if you couldn't react to the staggering since you were still recovering from the swing?

7. Power attacks - Think about this for a second - 2.5 (3 if standing) times more damage for five times the fatigue cost. How does that make sense? So, instead of me just doing 2-3 swings at 1 times the fatigue cost, you want me to "waste" two swings worth of a fatigue for marginal extra damage? You can make the argument that, "It's not about the damage, it's about the chance to disarm/knockdown/paralyze." However, in all those cases, it's a mere five percent chance for it to happen. It's just not worth it, especially not with two handed weapons. I can understand if the chance was 15%, not 5%. Even then, you'll be out of fatigue, or do a lot less damage, when the power attack actually triggers the disarm/knockdown/paralyze. Why didn't work like Marksman, where it was automatic and just have each level perk overtake the last?

Speechcraft and Mercentile - I agree, and that's why I believe the two will be merged.
Acrobatics - If they worked a bit on the dodging and also added at least grabbing on to ledges it would be worth it. Better yet, make it the "Tomb Raider" skill :biggrin: .
Sneak attacks with hand-to-hand - Well, I don't know, you wouldn't do much harm to an armored opponent or equivalent.
Personality - gone with the wind, along with the rest of attributes.
Two-handed weapons - can't say anything about them, never used one
Power attacks - actually there was a major benefit in power attacks when fighting an opponent with a shield. Since they had such a good defense, you had to make those rare openings count.

...you didn't jump up on stuff in Oblivion?

:blink:

Maybe he did, but what he's saying is that there was no real benefit game mechanics-wise. And I agree.

I mean, if something was in my way and I couldn't get around it, yeah, I jumped. But like the post below yours stated, Acrobatics (and jumping in general) has no purpose gameplay-wise. It's a useless skill.

If I had to pick the other two skills that are being scrapped (Mysticism was cut) in Skyrim, I would say that they are Acrobatics and Speechcraft.

I agree with pretty much everything you say here

I personally think that Speechcraft and Mercantile will be merged
The dodge I belive has been worked on and I'm sure this now involves rolling out of the way of attacks with a more fluid motion that allows from a no defensable strick once you come out of the roll.
After seeing the sneak attacks in the video, and the potential of them being a neck slicing one hit kill motion, I would suspect that something like a strangling motion would be used for this with it wiping out all of a NPC's fatigue in one go (or I hope anyway)
I think this maybe used in conjunction with the sword dropping in town comments, if NPC like you then they would return your sword etc, so I am sure there will be other small insignificant uses for this similar to this that make the game a little more immersive.
I think the Two Handed weapons are more for the look and Role Playing aspects rather than a significant advantage in combat, but this could be worth investing some time in to ensure the balance is more........well.......balanced
Power attacks are useful for a last attack when the enemy is low on health although after seeing the maths in the OP's post again this could be balanced more.

I don't think two handed weapons are made for role playing aspects. The whole purpose of two handed weapons is to give increase offensive power at the cost of defensive power. When a two handed weapon just barely beats out its one-handed counterpart, there's a problem.

Fun fact: Umbra ties the Daedric Warhammer (The hardest hitting two-handed weapon) in damage.

There's 9 one-handed Artifact weapons while there's only 2 two handed Artifact weapons. Not only that, but the 2 two handed Artifact weapons don't even do good damage. You can't count Volendrung (http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Volendrung) because you're never guaranteed to always be able to refill it whenever you want (Like if you're in a dungeon, etc)


Lastly, power attacks don't even make sense when the opponent is at low health. You're still wasting 2 swings worth of fatigue in a power attack for something that only does at most 3 times the damage. If you do 20 damage, would you rather do 5 swings that do a total of 100 damage, or 5 swings that do a total of 60 damage?