It seems like as Elder Scrolls series went on, there were less and less skills. Daggerfall had languages, and climbing, etc,pick pocketing. Morrowind got rid of most of those and combined some. Oblivion also combined them and got rid of some. I think Oblivion did a good job of refining the skills set. I hope they don't combine anymore though. How do you want to see skills in TES 5 be? Daggerfall style? Morrowind Style? Oblivion style? Do you think making armor not a skill like in Daggerfall would be a good idea for TES 5? Or something completely new all together?

I think I'd like it more like Morrowind.
I think Bethesda received enough complaints about Oblivions skill system, and I think they'll make it more similar to Morrowinds.

I don't care, but I think they should now attempt to add back skills while keeping the balance maintainted in Oblivion's skills.

We need more skills but we need all of them to still be useful. I thought morrowind did a good job of that.

I want thirty-one skills, and they follow as such.

Strength: Greatsword (2 handers), Mauls, Large Mauls (2 handers), Marksman (with crossbow), Polearms

Agility: Sword, Acrobatics, Stealth, Concealed Weapons (daggers and thrown small weapons), Theft (lockpicking, pickpocket, and theft off shelves), Chain Weapons

Endurance: Hand to Hand, Equestrian, Shield, Outdoorsman, Climbing, Athletics

Personality: Streetwise, Etiquette, Mercantile, Diplomacy

Willpower: Illusion, Enchanting, Dynamism (replaces alteration, includes force type powers like telekinesis), Destruction, Thaumaturgy (religious magic)

Intelligence: Mysticism, Daedric, Necromancy, Alchemy, Medical

I took Luck and Speed off the attributes roster, Luck should be something you set at the beginning of the game and don't get the option to change. Speed, as defined by the items that used it be in its category, is the same thing as luck. Just muddying up the pool. With these six attributes and thirty one skills, we're down to the core of the gameplay we want. I like the idea of getting rid of the armor and armorer skills, as well as reforming some of the skills.

I would definitely like to see axe separated from blunt and short blade separated from long blade.

Short blade was pretty useless. So was spear. I remember a Bethesda dev saying specifically that one of the reasons why they didn't some of the weapons and skills they had in Morrowind was because the majority of players didn't make use of them. So players are whining about something they didn't use.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1149761-skills/

Morrowind had some I didn't think deserved to be, whereas Oblivion definitely got rid of too many.

First off I want to see all of the skills in the game to be implemented successfully (not buggy). So I do understand their reasoning for cutting skills in each game. But I really think Oblivion might be the turning point. I recall Todd saying in an interview that they want all of their skills to be something people would pick as a major skill. In other words if there is a skill nobody will want to use as a major skill than it gets the axe. Oblivion seems to have done that successfully, so I'm hoping their at the point to where they can try and add a few more skill and really just work on them.

I would like to see much more variety in the weapon skills if I had to choose. Something similar to Morrowind's classification.

We didn't use them BECAUSE Bethesda failed to make them USEFUL.

That's like saying people didn't drive motor vehicles when they first came out because a single horse could go faster. It was the failure of the creator to ensure it had more use than everything else, or at least equal use. Spears svcked because there wasn't a good spear in the game and their increased range was negligible.

If they actually put the effort into making the skills useful...then they'd be useful!

You know, I tried writing a skill system once. It's hard to keep in balanced, especially when you have to have them effect an equal number of Attributes like Strength, Intelligence, etc.

So, the fewer you have, the easier is to make a balanced system. BUT that limits what you can do in game. The solution I decide on would be that in addition to Skills, there would be "Abilities." Abilities are like Skills, except that Skills can be improved with training, Abilities are based more on your general Attributes. For instance, you don't need a "knot tying" skill, but the ability for how well your character ties a knot (think setting a trap, working on a ship, making a rope to climb a building) depends on both your Intelligence and Agility, and is raised from that base depending on how much you use it.

I dudn't use em, but Spears seem pretty popular around these parts, and are used heavily in Skyrim (according to lore) so I wouldn't be surprised if they got put back in.

Yup. Give Oblivion's Sneak bonus ONLY to shortblades, and suddenly shortblades become very relevant.

This is true. If they can make all weapons and skills relevant, then I'm for a Morrowind style skill system again.

Exactly. There's got to be a reason to use spears over swords. They've got longer reach, which I did notice in MW, but it was less than it should have been. Most spears of that length would be held one handed with a shield, and that would actually increase the range because you grip the middle of the shaft rather than having to hands on it 1/2 and 3/4 of the way towards the spearhead.

I'd always enjoyed other ways as well, such as having weapons that were both melee AND able to be thrown (through a simple button combo of grab + attack). Daggers, of course, would be best balanced for this purpose. This would allow short blade users more versatility in combat as compared to other combat skills.

I would definitely like to see some from MW and DF back.

If they implemented a climbing system similar to Assassin's Creed, we could see Climbing back.
Short blade should definitely be separate from long blade (though maybe they could call them blade and dagger, as shortswords are more similar to longswords than they are daggers).
Axe should be separate from Blunt, end of story, especially with it being Skyrim. Axes are not blunt, they are very very sharp.
Hand to hand --> Martial Arts, include kicks and such things and allow you to engage in non-lethal fights and brawls
Spear / Polearm. Yes please, just figure out how to make the combat work (this skill could perhaps be used for ranged attacks with javelins as well. javelins would be sick)
Survivalism? Since we're going to be out in the elements, maybe some sort of skill to prevent/slow fatigue/health loss due to the cold?

Going back to spears, they are also the perfect melee/ranged weapon. In fact, they probably do more damage. But you know what that's countered by? The spear's fragility and it's size. You can't sneak a spear into a bar, and it will most likely break early in the combat.

Morrowind style - it struck a good balance, and all of the skills (with the possible exception of enchanting, which was really tricky even with a high skill level) were useful within the game, but the range of skills allowed for good RPG style specialisation.

Even if nothing else, there are 2 skills from Morrowind that need to see a return - Unarmoured, and Spear. Unarmoured because you should be able to increase your skill to evade enemy attacks without armour (especially if playing a bard or spellcasting rogue type character), and Spear because it's a weapon that has much longer reach than most blades and blunts, and there should be some sort of development of that advantage as your skill level rises.

I think Morrowinds skill system was good, especially we need more then just blade and blunt, we need axe and spear too. And unamoured and medium armour add to the diversity, and enchanting should be readded.

Climbing would be good to have back even without the Assassin's Creed system.

Sounds good.

Yeah, they're sharp and they have a blade on them. Axe should be under the blade skill.

Yay Daggerfall.

Yes, and thrown weapons should be according to the weapon type.

I'd call it outdoorsman, but I like the idea.

I'd like to see the MW skillset return, with a few select ones from DF brought back as well. OB just didn't give enough character options, in my opinion. Worse, a lot of the OB skills were rendered useless by the changes in game mechanics and mini-games. How many people do you know who "specialized" in Lockpicking or Speechcraft. The only reason to take them was to slow your advance to higher levels, because the actual skill value was irrelevant to the game mechanics when your dexterity with the mini-game was all that really mattered. Several other skills were only useful as a means of triggering "perks" at 25 point intervals. Just bringing back the skills isn't enough; they need to be properly integrated into the game.

Enchant was also rendered moot, since even a barbarian Orc could enchant items using a Sigil Stone, and the other aspects of Enchanting were watered down to where there was no real reason to use them. My second favorite character in MW was an Enchanter, but the skill was so "broken" in OB that I quickly gave up on the idea.

Just because there was a shortage of decent Spears in MW didn't mean that nobody used them, or that they weren't "liked", only that there were a lot of complaints about how they weren't competitive with the other choices. That's a call for a balance adjustment, NOT removing them. Unarmored had a bug which made it useless unless you wore "some" armor, so you really couldn't use it properly even if you tried. That doesn't mean that nobody wanted it, only that it was "broken". Removing skills like those "because they weren't being used" felt more like a feeble excuse for not having to fix the problems, or program for them. If Bethesda removed every skill that had complaints about it, there wouldn't be a game left.

I've played a large number of characters who used Spear and Shortblade as "secondary" weapons, and a few characters who used one or the other as a primary weapon, although neither was a great choice as a primary due to the way the game handled them. Both definitely had their uses in spite of them not getting decent treatment in the game, and I was highly disappointed when I loaded up OB for the first time, and they were gone.

I don't think we'll be losing skills. It was one of Oblivion's biggest gripes. The reason no one complained about Morrowind's skill reductions was (and I hate to say it), Daggerfall wasn't very popular, until Morrowind let in a horde of fans.