I imagine these perks will be a series of similar perks governing different areas, so for example you may get +10% damage in one perk, unlock another perk for the next level which grants + 15% damage, and so on.

If I had my way, there would be no armor skills. Each type of armor would still have benefits and penalties to differentiate them.

It wouldn't surprise me if there was only one armor skill this time around. I always thought it was redundant and limiting:

Oh, great, my Light Armor skill went up. I am a mage and my enchanted light armor is great for a mage. But, oh crap, my unique enchanted MAGE'S HELMET is heavy armor. Looks like I get no bonus for my armor. Fantastically logical.

Ahh well, you know what they say about opinions

I didn't vote - none of the choices were fair.

I care more that they allow modding in other skills via whatever creation kit they provide.

I feel your pain.

That's likely, and would make sense. Although, I do think they are given in too large amounts to allow for any significant individual meaning (dunno though), which makes me wonder why would it be so "fun" - as Todd noted in the GI article (iirc) - to pick them.

On a side note: Was it said that the higher ones skill, the more it contributes to the leveling? And if so, does that mean that A: The leveling gets faster, the higher you go (bigger contribution -> faster level up); or B: The leveling speed is pretty static, regardless of how high you are (lower skillraises come faster, so they pile up more quickly to produce a levelup; while higher skillraises come slower, but contribute more and thus pile up almost as fast for a levelup)? Neither of which would sound too good in my ear. Can't remember how it was put.

Armor use is a dumb skill anyway.

Point me to where armor use is as detailed and as tiered a training regiment as say sword fighting or even rhetoric. It is an RPG contrived invention that has little real world correlates. If your on the battlefield you will do your best to dodge and not get hit - armor just helps.

Dodging is a better skill to describe this.

Having armor use tied to a perk that is a one time investment is better - training on how to put it on and some basics - no need to get more detailed than that.

Plus all this moaning about skills when they have not even revealed the perks yet. just drama :violin:

With how the new leveling and combat system sound, having less skills isn't really a problem. It all depends on how well it's implemented into the game.

Well, I think skills should be anolysed considering the actual ingame actions they allow you to do. Does a single skill allow me to do one task, 2, 3...? If you look at weapon skills, they only served to bash ennemies head, nothing else. And we even had different skills to do this same action. Comparatively, wizard schools were a bit more diversified, considering the different spell effects they could activate.
Speechcraft, on the other hand, was supposed to cover all your social interactions, with nobles, priests, thieves... It was a bit wide. To finish, there were some actions that were not possible to do, while they could have been covered by existing skills, like climbing, or crafting weapons and armor (combo of armorer and weapon or armor skills).

What I want is to have even more possible actions to do with my character in Skyrim than in previous TES. If some actions are more or less related to each other, I have nothing against having a single skill cover them all. The balance problem is to have redundant skills and missing ones at the same time, as in Oblivion.

En then come the perks. The perks may be a good way to individualise the different actions covered by a same skill, like the different weapons used with a single melee weapon skill, for example. They introduce a potential layer of specialisation.

What I would like is to gain perks based on my character actions. As Oblivion kept track of each skill uses, the game may keep track of each perk related action uses. Then, when you level, you are proposed to get specialised in this area. For example, with the single melee weapon skill, if you always use a sword, you may be proposed the swordmanship perk. If you always do power attacks, no matter the weapon you use, you may be proposed a Berseker perk... If you have a specialised gaming style, the game may reflect it through your character specialisation by granting him the appropriate perks.

I agree. I feel like the tradeoffs for types of armor are movement, protection, and bag weight, not your skill level wearing them. Seems silly to have a skill for one, let alone both.

However we all want armor perks so I am pretty sure there will be a skill for Armor.

I can't believe we haven't seen any speculation yet. I'll bite. Through secret deductive sources I have guesstimated the 18 skills available in Oblivion:

One-Handed Weapons
Two-Handed Weapons
Marksman
Block
Athletics/Acrobatics

Destruction
Alteration
Conjuration
Restoration
Illusion

Smithing
Security
Sneak
Alchemy
Enchanting

Persuasion/Charisma
Perception/Awareness
Laboring/Trapping (yes, traps!?)

I still can't decide whether One-Handed Blades and One-Handed Blunt Weapons might end up being different skills. But I think with perks, there is no reason to make them separate skills, just like with Armor. You could have perks just for certain weapon, accessory, or armor types.

You also bring up a good point:

Perks.

What I read said Beth plans to include a LOT of perks, and they are supposed to be the main focus of character customization, making skills less important except for leveling up.

I thought you got new Dragon Shouts from getting Dragon Souls, how could you tie that to a skill you leveled up?

Your list is pretty good but I bet the mining/cooking/etc. and the dragon shouts don't have a governing skill.

The only reason I thought of that is because I was thinking about Perks. It seems reasonable to think they would try to include perks for the shouts, but what do I know? Probably the biggest question mark on there, but I didn't want to separate the skills they will most obviously combine to decrease the total skills. I'd speculate some other sort of skill that involves a game system they haven't announced yet, but I can't even imagine what they will add. If they added jobs, I would not be surprised by at least one more major skill that will add a lot to the game.

Maybe something related to discovering locations and being aware of surroundings that doesn't involve spells? Maybe some leadership? Something related to your resistances/endurance, so they can throw in some defense-related perks beyond block/armor? Maybe a healing system for injuries, broken bones, and diseases that spells can't fix with a little HP boost? I wouldn't be surprised by a few more survival-based additions to the game so a MGS3-esque system seems almost plausible.

Sorry but I think you will find that fighting in heavy armour is a skill that historically requires a great deal of training . Anyone can pick up a sword and swing it badly, but don a suit of platemail for the first time and you won't put one foot in front of the other. As for light armour skill the mastery perk where it's value increases obviosly implies you have learned to dodge and twist to minimise blows while so encumbered, rather than the armour itself somehow magically becoming more effective. Armour use should definitely be a learnable skill imho.

Well, maybe they will keep Athletics and Acrobatics separate then. I assume dodging would fall under one of those two.

18 is just fine - don't forget, we now have the perks system, which is essentially the ability to customize and refine each of your skills further - personally, I'd rather have more depth, than more choices

That's why I am starting to get convinced that there will be a skill for all of those jobs, I can't imagine not wanting perks to improve your performance at cooking, mining, skinning/cutting animals, woodcutting, or whatever else they put us up to.

I also really expect some sort of skill like Observation/Awareness/Perception, because we will definitely want perks for being more aware of enemies, navigating, noticing traps, etc. It would also back up losing Mysticism, and fit with the newly immersive environment that we are supposed to feel strongly tied to in a naturalistic, rugged way. Also, setting traps sounds interesting.

Big number of skills make the game too complex for the average Beth gamer .
You know you get what you deserve.

Now, don't get ahead of yourself.

The mysticism SCHOOL was removed; they didn't mention whether or not the spells have been. It sounds like they just rearranged what schools certain spells were in because "the magic school of mysticism" sounded redundant (Todd Howard's own words).

;)

Your poll options are scewed to your opinion. That doesn't make a good poll. Other than the middle ground option, you inject sarcastic opinion into the other choices. That creates a meaningless poll.

As to my answer, I'm sure it will be fine. Raw numbers of skills don't define a game for me. Mysticism for example being nothing more than a dumping ground for miscellaneous spells didn't add anything to the game, in my opinion. Mercantile and speechcraft being separate likewise didn't add anything more to the game, if they merged them. The same goes for acrobatics and athletics.

Does it *really* make sense that jumping all the time everywhere you go is a good habit?

Oh, but we have. So far we are sure about the magic skills, marksman and one-handed, pretty sure about smithing and two-handed.

I'll try a set that would work with attributes, and an idea how they still might be in the game.

Strength: One-Handed / Two-Handed / Hand-to-Hand
Endurance: Smithing / Block / Athletics
Agility: Sneak / Security / Marksman
Personality: Illusion / Speechcraft / Mercantile
Intelligence: Alchemy / Conjuration / Enchant
Willpower: Destruction / Alteration / Restoration

Speed has been removed, sadly. But it only made sense for Athletics in the first place, and when combined with Acrobatics, it could just as well be governed by endurance.

Now, how to raise your attributes?
This would happen automatically when you level up - the governing attributes of your 3 strongest skills would increase by 3 points (best skill), 2 points (2nd best) or 1 point (3rd best).
For example, if I have One-Handed at 21, Block at 17 and Restoration at 9, I would get +3 Strength, +2 Endurance and +1 Willpower.

- This makes sense because I get better in things I frequently use. I can't not increase my strength when I swing a heavy sword all the time.
- It goes well with the new leveling philosphy: Concentrating on a skill will get me to max level and max attributes faster. Being a jack of all trades slows my progress.
- Downside: Once I max out 3 skills and their governing attributes, my attributes won't increase anymore, no matter how further I level.

I don't care how they do attributes as long as you don't permanently lose out on stats by not leveling up your skills in a certain way. I despised that and modded it out as soon as I learned that I could. It was broken (in my opinion) that to get the most out of your character you had to set your true primary skills as secondary.

Ehh, my guess is that not only were some of the spells moved around, but some may have been redundant. Enchanting is it's own skill, my guess there will be a different mechanism than soul trap this time around. Would you really waste a hand on soul trap during combat? Detect life could still be in there as a spell but my guess is that the improvements to the environment, immersion, and combat mean that the way you interact and notice enemies will change with the increased draw distance and graphic fidelity. I'll leave the other spells alone but I think there is something to this.


I'm not even going to try to guess how the skills affect how we level up, but my guess is that either we will not be assigning points or there will be a system that works far differently than the +5 facepalm in Oblivion. You have a point about using the attributes, which I think are still in there somehow (maybe, as far as I know they haven't mentioned them and it almost makes me think they have been highly altered, removed, or are still a work in progress).

However the Speed thing makes a lot of sense, because Todd Howard said that the way you interact and move in the environment has changed a lot. With the addition of sprint, my guess is that the default movement speed and sprint speed might not even change much at all. That would keep the environment scale consistent instead of making it a game-long goal to be almost as fast as a horse. He also said that the environment is bigger in a very different way, which also supports the idea that the scale of the world and the way you move might have changed a lot, possibly meaning you'll walk more often and jog more slowly, and spend more time pausing and vigilantly scanning the environment to watch out for ambushes and creatures.

Keeping things like movement speed more stable allow the dev team to design more complex level designs due to less problematic scenery placements and more interesting environments, as well as insuring that the movement flow in combat stays realistic and balanced. If you can move extremely quickly in any direction by the end of the game, it's hard to imagine the back-and-forth update to the combat feeling smooth. So that also backs up more consistent movement, making speed irrelevant. I don't know what jumping will be like but I assume the same, they said every environment you see can be traversed and this backs that up as well.

I am not really sure about the attributes, but since I know perks exist, and thinking about their design application is the best window available right now to anticipating the skills. Due to the addition of the perks, I expect the skills to be a bit wider in application and as a result a lot of the names might change. My example is Sneak, which could be changed to Stalking or Concealment. I'd imagine that in the outdoors it would be better to move a bit quicker than traditional sneaking, while remaining silent and being able to pause, hide behind boulders, etc as described in the GI article. In fact, it might be better to carefully navigate the environment and watch out for enemies before setting up traps and getting enough distance and cover to take them out from afar. However, perks could range from a chameleon effect, to increased damage for attacks, silent running, to concealing your tracks when you run away. There's still a lot that could change with skills, so even close guesses could miss the point of the revised skills.

Here's my new version, throwing out Dragon Shouting because I expect a lot of the dragon words to be permanent boosts to the ones you have already (what would be the point of more than 10 or 15 ability shouts since you'd have to switch between them).

One-Handed Weapons
Two-Handed Weapons
Ranged Weapons
Armor
Block

Destruction
Conjuration
Alteration
Restoration
Illusion

Smithing
Enchanting
Alchemy
Security(w/Traps)
Crafting/Labor/MYSTERY

Perception
Sneak/Stalking
Persuasion
Acrobatics/Evasion