In the Light Armor skill tree, there are two perks. The first one adds a 25% bonus to your armor rating if you're wearing only light armor, and the second one adds a 50% bonus to your stamina regeneration rate if you're wearing only light armor. Note that important "ONLY" in there. Want to wear a robe, with light armor gauntlets, boots, and helmet? Sorry. You must forfeit the bonuses you have earned.

Just a random example of what happens when two different game design philosophies collide with eachother. One mindset is that the player is the player, and should do things which are mathematically superior regardless of insignificant considerations like appearance or preference or roleplay, in order to more efficiently beat the game. X is better, therefore if you don't do X you will have a harder time of things. The other mindset is that the player is the character, and should do whatever makes the most sense to the character, so if you want to wear a robe instead of a chestplate then by all means go for it.

Basically I feel like I am being punished if I don't toe the developer's line of what my character ought to be like. It's not a nice feeling. Not only do I take the logical and sensible penalty to armor from not wearing a chest plate, which is as far as it should have gone, but I also lose out on other bonuses which are completely arbitrary and aimed at mathematical efficiency rather than my character as an individual.

:(

Or you can just not buy that perk. :spotted owl:

You know why it's there? So you can't use only light gauntlets and the rest heavy armor and get a super armor rating while at the same time regenerate stamina 50% faster, have a 10% chance to dodge and a 10% chance to reflect damage.

The perks could have been done differently to begin with, but they were done like this and because of that, the system needs to make sure you aren't combining stuff. Wearing nothing, or clothing, could still count towards a full set of "light armor", so even if I don't wear a helmet, I'd get at least some benefit from the light armor perks that now require a full set. So yes I agree, but I also understand why it's the way it is right now.

This.

I make a very conscious roleplay choice to wear hoods instead of helms, so I don't buy any of the armor perks, except for the first "X% better armor protection" ranked perks.

I don't see why people have such a problem with the roleplay elements in this game. If you want to roleplay a character who wears robes, or doesn't wear a full set of armor, then DO IT and don't buy the armor perks that require a full set.

The ranked armor perks at the beginning of either tree still improve whatever armor pieces you wear of that skill, so you can still improve your boots and gauntlets while wearing robes.

Well why not have it require 2/4 armor slots to have light armor to be activated? I generally do that anyways on my battlemage character (gauntlets and boots). I can understand about the one adding 25% to the armor rating for only wearing light armor (or heavy armor in it's skill tree).

I'm sure there will be a mod in the near future to change all of this. So get in, sit tight, and take some arrows to your knees.

Because that would still mean it's possible to get the benefit from both heavy armor and light armor. 2/4th light, 2/4th heavy, all effects from everything stacked together into a huge 200% resistance addition. With the way the perks are right now, it just wouldn't work if it counted only 2 pieces. It'd need a limitaiton of 3 pieces, but even then you could equip daedric armor for a huge base rating into the armor and get the pwer from the light armor perks. A limitation of wearing lighter or no things should be introduced for it to work in a way that doesn't let you mix heavy armor and light armor for strange combos.

Oh, misread your post. Yeah if it'd still have a limitation of only light armor, then it'd work.

Like other people who have replied here, I don't see much wrong with it. It's a light armour perk, named that for a reason. If you specialise in light armour, and only light armour, you would expect a certain expertise to be apparent. In the game it's in the form of a perk. If you delve into something you're not an expert in, heavy armour for example, that impacts the constancey of the light armour, you're outside of your expertise.