From the QuakeCon Demo, its pretty evident that most perks ARE NOT active, meaning they affect stats like damage or percentage for crits, penetrate armor, etc. So what do you think is the REALISTIC number of active perks, not the passive perks.

Examples of ACTIVE perks:
-Shield bash
-Power Attacks
-Slow time for archers

Examples of PASSIVE perks:
-Increased Crit chance
-Increased Armor Penetration
-greater % to block an attack

I whole heartedly count passive and active perks equally, In fact I'm more inclined to think of anything "active" as a skill and anything "passive" as a perk. Like fire magic would be a skill, while +%10 fire damage would be a corresponding perk.

Active perk that actually add features or content to the game are probably pretty slim in number .. maybe 15 ...

We don't even know the actual number of perks. The 280 number included ranks within the perks, so for all we know there are only 50 perks that are upgradeable.

If there are 18 skills, I'd imagine roughly 2-3 active perks per skill would be average, so I voted 41-60.

I prefer passive perks over active perks. Just sayin'

This. Seriously, I wish they wouldn't include the upgrades in the number of total perks. If we assume that all of them upgrades 3 times, which is somewhat reasonable, then I believe there is roughly 93 total perks. 50/50 there will be more of one over the other, so I'll just split it down the middle making roughly 47 active perks. VERY broadly speaking. I guess I'll vote for 41-60. I guess that's reasonable, no?

Sadly the sheer amount of perks present means that the majority will be hidden modifiers. It is really sad to see TES come to this. I was expecting at least half of the perks to be unique and character defining. Oh well.

The amount of passive perks can still define a player, It doesn't have to be all flashy. As an example, a character who can take alot of damage, like a tank, is going to play very differently than someone who has to avoid attacks and get the upper hand, like a theif.

The real question becomes who many games have active perks?

Most do, okay next question. Which games have alot of active perks?

I will use fallout since it is quite easily Comparable to ES. Most perks in Fallout are passive, most perks in most games are passive.

So I dont see why ES fans moan and moan about how its dumb that we are getting passive perks.

Yeah. I am just disappointed they are taking a less creative route and copy pasting from other games. I would have at least enjoyed some flash onscreen for a passive perk up - I.E. bleed damage shows on enemy or fireball spell changes after ranking up.

I'd honestly like to hope that around 60% are active perks, if not more. Things like axes causing bleeding damage and maces ignoring armor is great, and I wouldn't want to get rid of that, but perks have the potential to be really special. They could really change gameplay and your character. For example, Fallout had the "Cannibalism" perk. That perk alone was enough to base an entire character around. Certainly not every one of them are going to have that much potential, but I'd like a few of them, and, in general, there's a lot of other cool things that could be done, like engaging special sword techniques or the ability to change stance.

That is the direction that should have been taken. Stances would have been awesome and added another layer of strategy.

Again I'm not sure exactly what your all expecting. This is exactly what a linear skill tree does vs Fallout's perks. This is no surprise.

This is how linear skill trees have been for decades. Why would Skyrim do any different.