Euhrrr... I can really survive without being able to speak Orc or Spriggan...

I started with morrowind,that too had more skills than oblivion,but at the same time i did'nt mind that oblivion had less.
Some skills needed looking at or needed merging.
Bethesda are trying to give people more options not less,while making it more accessable and unique.
I have no problem with it at all,infact it was needed in my view.

Fine, however it was a welcomed plus. So let's say, without counting language skills, that there are 12/13 skill less. The point is the same.

Platemail is indeed different, it can be dented, and pierced through by arrows. Chainmail is best suited against slashing attacks ~not piercing stabs, but you get hit with a sledge, and its like getting hit with a chain-covered sledge. :shrug:

That is what the perk trees under each skill are for, there may be less skills in Skyrim but there is now more diversity within skills. "sub skills" if you will.

Also with a limit on how many parks can be chosen in Skyrim you won't have the issue of all high level characters being basically the same with same stats (100 in every skill and attribute) as you did in previous elder scrolls games. The decisions you make in Oblivion and Morrowind are less significant as you can always level up other skills afterwards.



See above regarding perks as more like sub Skills

Oh, it's good to learn something, them.

I'm not saying that the Skyrim system will be a completely fail. It's something a la Diablo (that hadn't skills). And I don't dislike Diablo system. Suming it up, we could say that we'll have starting chjaracters who will be less uniques each other, with a chance to have a good personalization as we developed them.

But sisnce we know almost nothing about perks, it is difficult too say if this will be a better or worse step forward.

Infact if you think about it ,they haven't taken three skills at all,even though it's 18.
Mysticism is still there,just spread out in other magics.
If atheltics is gone,thats still there in the form of sprint/more stamina.
They have either been moved or replaced,so it's not really less,wouldn't you agree?
Also armourer,you could repair weapons,thats it.
Now it's called smithing = repair and making weapons.
So that two skills in one skill,which is more not less,which is improved.
Surely people can see the benefits of gthe new way.

Well first you need to make the decision to learn how to spell decision.

But as for this thread, with the new perks system and leveling system, 18 skills in Skyrim could very well be 50 skills in the other games. You make even more important decisions in Skyrim than you did in Morrowind. You raise your one handed skill and you can get good at using them but you specialize beyond blunt or blade. You can specialize by weapon instead of the old skills, that's more decisions then you did before. You need to learn that removing skills doesn't ruin anything, your just angry because you think that the skills belonged to you and they are "taking" them away from you. Less skills doesn't mean less freedom to customize or less RP-ability. If you look at DF and you think that a lot of the skills in DF felt more like they were put in to make a ton of skills rather than to be useful skills. I mean come on, swimming a skill, really? People need to see it for what it really is, they are trying to whittle down the skills to their basic parts, to the skills where they all belong in and then the can add in new skills once the skill system we have is perfected. Having more skills for the sake of having more skills does not give you more meaningful choices or make the gameplay better. If you just start cramming skills into the game, chances are really good that you will get skills no one ever picks or skills were people sink their levels into and then you find out later in the game that they are struggling or can't get anywhere because they aren't strong enough to move forward in the game, which happened often in Daggerfall to some people.

yes, let's have morrowind again because there already isn't a morrowind.

Morrowind morrowind morrowind.

Why not? Some areas were denied to the player without a good swimming rate. It was part of the gameplay, and it was part of character abilities. You choose to be a bad swimmer? your choice. It's not so bad from my point of view. And this can be applied to other possible character abilities.

Umm because Swimming = Athletics. If you really want your character to be a bad swimmer then imagine that he can't swim and don't go into the water. This just points out skills for the sake of skills. If someone maxes out their swimming and then go up into a high level area, then that person is screwed unless they grind for hours or may be completely screwed if they leveled only swimming and so acrobatics and athletics and sneak. So yay, you've leveled three skills that basically are the same thing and sneak. Yep, your totally not going to get owned....

athletics's is very redundant skill. It just seems silly you can level up by just running around. I could easily see this getting replaced with a speed perk set.

I agree with ^, and I think a good balance can be found. For an ES game I expect for the plot, the detail of the world, buildings, weapons, and skills to be much more on the 'fatty' side of things ... and hope that continues. But I don't think it's too much to ask that some time be put into making the different elements of a varied aka fatty combat skill system work well and have unique advantages and strategies.

I dunno about most people... but I would appreciate more skills (lots more). If my latest character just happened to have learned to read Goblin signs in his travels, and I found that while replaying a goblin's lair area (familiar to me from the dozen times I'd played it before), that the chicken scratch graffiti and drawings in the cave dirt made sense to him, I'd consider it a skill well chosen, and would appreciate the detail crafted into the game by the devs.

(Incidentally... This actually happened for me in a different RPG; pretty much just as I described.)

No, Swimming =!= Athletics, my character may run fast, but it may be a bad swimmer. Do you think that all "flaws" could be avoided by immagination?

They have already found the balance...read my above post.
Can you honestly not see what they are trying to do?

The skill / perk structure proposed for Skyrim makes more sense the that of Morrowind. In Morrowind it didn't make sense that you could be a master of long blade and not know how to use a short blade. One handed / two handed with perk specialization makes way more sense.

A more athletic person, who got so just by running, would be able to win a swimming race against a less athletic person who does no physical activity. Swimmers can be just as athletic as runners, but not as fast, we get that. But I can not see a reason for swimming to have its own skill. I'd like to see a reason just because or it increases the number of skills. Not very good reasons.

A person may be a olympic champion of 100 metres dash, but not have learnt how to swim in all his/her life. I see it as a good reason to have this differentiation.

True swimming =!= Athletics

However, from what I've gathered even though they are reducing skills it's the perks that are essentially going to decide what you specialize in. For example if you choose perks for swimming (if they have them and if they don't you can totally ignore this post come November ) and ignore perks for running then you will be better at swimming.

How many people in the world can't swim? (enough to make it plausible that some characters can't swim?)

Edit: I understand that you (probably) mean that gameplay-wise a PC that can't swim is crippled by that and should never happen ~its detrimental to gameplay... But gameplay can incorporate disadvantages. :shrug:... The game could have a background trait where your PC grew up in a desert caravan, and spent his life traveling a circular merchant route between settlements, spent his days setting up tents, hauling boxes and pounding tent stakes... And it could mean that he's a good deal stronger than usual, but has never seen water deeper than his chest. :shrug:

**Something else... good characters often have character flaws.

The point of an RPG is not one of assured success, when it becomes so, I'll give them up. Still... a well designed RPG will at least try to anticipate the less obvious/popular paths to success. In Fallout the bruiser PC/player can barge in and kill the main villain ~maybe; but there are ways to talk your way into an audience, and even attempt to talk him out of his mad plan... Previous play-style weights the odds that he will believe, or be convinced.

Agree with you here, makes more sense than in Oblivion and I don't think Morrowind loads of combat skills was very realistic, you are a master with swords, but if you pick up a dagger you are unable to hit a mudcrab. Far better with perks, yes you can pick up an axe and hit hard but are unable to do any fancy stuff.
Athletic was also pretty pointless as you could only increase it with running and swimming, I however hope that they keep something like acrobatic as it's actual useful.

That's fantastic for real life, but this the game world. Every one of our characters all ready knows how to swim. Even if it was added as a skill, we'd start at level 1, not 0. So being able to swim or not is not a good argument, because its' all ready a given that we will be able to. Unless the Olympic's are coming to skyrim, I don't see a reason to give it its own skill.

Why not argue for getting it a perk tree of its own? That makes more sense than a skill. You wouldn't know how to swim till your athletics was at say 25, and then you could choose to take a perk that allows for you to swim and not drownd. And the the perks would branch out, helping you swim faster or more eficient. That makes more sense to me than giving it its own skill.

There were 9 language skills, and a number of other dumb skills. MW had the most legit skills.

I disagree with the OP premise, I think this is the most complex system yet. Its somewhat Ironic that with classes gone, Skyrim has the best class like differentiation yet in a TES game. Now you really have to think about your character build based on using perks, instead of in OB or MW, well I can just get good at everything anyway nonsense . I think this is a much deeper system than past games.