I don't think bows and knives and axes are very similar in how they are thrown/fired. I would instead make thrown daggers and ninja stars fall under the Daggers skill, which covers their melee and thrown uses. A throwing axe would be thrown in accordance with the Mauls skill.

They generally need to separate the skills by the skill and not what the weapon looks like. Just because a dagger and a claymore both have blades, it doesn't mean you use them the same. Just because an axe has a blade on it, it doesn't mean it's a sword.

There's more than one skill I'd like to see returned. Short list being critical strike and/or backstab, spear, axe, unarmored and shortblade. However, the other skill I'd really like to see implemented, is climbing. To be able to climb walls to get to high perches and snipe, or to cat burgler, get to a high up window that has been left open and last, why wouldn't you be able to climb the side of a mountain, if your skill was high enough? Running around in Oblivion trying to find a way to the top of a peak could have been solved if your climb skill was high enough. Granted, there weren't many second story windows/doors to break into, but if there were, climbing would have been a nice addition. I honestly think they should bring back as many of their old skills as possible, wtih the exception of the language skills, which were never implemented properly. Let folks play around with several skills. As long as you are doing that, bring back the major, minor and misc skills format. Give 3 or 4 major and 5 or 6 minor...or something along those lines. I think a thief might be real good at lock picking, might be lousy at heavy armor but his/her skill at alchemy might fall somewhere inbetween.

I find it ridiculous that these days the only chain weapons in games are the silly God of War swords. The last TES game to have them was Daggerfall, and they were somehow thrown in with blunt? Lets get real. I don't particularly want to see them physics based, just make a good animation for them. No two handed flails. Nor should they weigh more than three pounds total. They should have a special animation for going over and around shields.

Nunchucks, meteor hammers, and slungshots could be included in this category. Chain Weapons would be a great skill.

In all honesty, I feel like it behooves the designers to NOT refer to previous games as a starting point for the next skill tree/list.

They should not include ANY skills from the previous games, just because it was in the previous games... lol

Same goes for the attributes.

I think character stats and the numbers that define your character should be designed from the ground up.

I personally would love to see flails, but I doubt they'd be done well.

I think it was Daniel_Kay who had a lot of great ideas for skills. I'd like to see skills from Daggerfall like Climbing, languages such as Dragonish, Harpy, Nymph, etc... but I'd also like to see other mundane skills like music, art, pottery, crafting, fishing, woodcarving.... okay, instead of that, I'd like the construction set to be so lucrative that we would have the ability to create new skill slots and assign them their own calculations and attributes and animations. That way, anybody could have any skill they wanted if they knew what to do. And I've suggested that in the Suggestions thread before, too.

Spear
Axe
Long/Short Blade

The inclusion or exclusion of weapon skills is rather tricky. Primary concern is obviously peeps (love this word) finding some awesome loot i.e. eviscerating sword of gut wrenching pain, but CAN'T use it effectively because they've specialized in something else, such as short blade. Presumably Beth's response is to narrow down the number of weapon skills to make such a situation rarer. But that's just putting a band-aid over a gaping wound. When it happens, it's still gonna happen - peeps are still going to feel a little hollow inside. I think the key is to make different weapons with corresponding weapon skills more unique. I think about 70% of the reason why people are upset that their loot is useless is because all of the melee weapons in the game are essentially interchangeable. If, on the other hand, different weapon types had different properties, enchantments, special attacks, strengths & weaknesses etc. people would be a lot more game about their weapon skill choice. The other 30% has probably something to do with the fact that selling the stuff is useless (since money is useless) - so make it useful OR implement some kind of saluaging system. Or maybe you can give it to a companion? Though of course there are no companions in Morro/Oblivion. Hmm.

So basically what i'm saying is that the problem is not an intrinsic one. Make the weapon types/skills less barebones and it should be possible to have polearms, spears, axes and all kinds of blades back.


Medium Armor

Never really understood the significance of an "armor skill". It even sounds weird when you say it; it's a completely passive skill (read: wear and get hit) that raises without having to do anything. And then for some reason, you get MORE protection for being a "better" wearer. Not even fashion models can do that sort of stuff. Seems like a relic of the old Elderscroll games. Might want to implement various additional modes of increasing weapon skill as well as different benefits. Or maybe just remove medium/light and only include heavy, and give heavy armor skill various perks upon skill-up.

Unarmored

This would make sense only if we greaves that can block swings from a weapon. Also, damage should be prevented (dodged) rather than reduced.


Enchant

Would require a revamp of the Enchant system. Firstly Enchant should always be 100%. Secondly, low enchant skill should probably only allow you enchant x amount of points. Eventually somebody with high enchant might even be able to beat the Spellmaker!

EDIT:
Just noticed the topic mentions "removal". Please remove the "speed" stat. It's worthless (no monster outpaces the NPC from what I recall - intentionally) and really something I take for granted anyway. Fill it in with something like "dexerity". I dunno maybe it allows you to attack faster or something, like weapon skills. Oh wait weapon skills don't do that in Morro/Oblivion? Hmm.

Would really like to see Climbing return. As someone who plays a thief based character primarily, it could be used to bring it a lot of unique or different ways to approaching quests for thieves. Giving thieves a chance to scale walls and climb to certain areas that others might not be able to reach.

Enchant was a very powerful skill in MW if you focused on it, but not all that useful as a "Minor" skill. Several characters of mine have made BASIC enchantments (well under 0.5 enchantment points) at Level 1, with Enchanting as a Minor skill, at about a 50% success rate, without resorting to alchemy abuse. It's not difficult IF you limit yourself to what's within your abilities. I created one MW enchanter-based character who cast no spells from his own magicka, but became "overpowered" by about L20-25. OB's enchantment system was a complete disappointment.

Armor could be removed as a skill, and replaced by Dodge and Block. With heavier armor, dodging could be less effective, so Dodge would essentially become the "reverse" of an armor skill. I'd much rather see more armor diversity, with different types of materials and designs for specific applications, rather than an overall "this is better than that". This could be done by using tradeoffs between protection, weight, durability, repairability, price, and flexibility. As it stands now, almost all of the stats are just "better" as the new armor types appear at higher levels, which is highly annoying from a "realism" perspective.

Weapons could be defined by the way they're used, not by how they're made. That could break up into Polearms, Swords, Axes (including Maces), and Daggers. There could be "specializations" within each category (thrown daggers, parrying daggers, poignards - to slip between armor plates, etc.), which would give you a 1.25X rate of skill increase with that specific weapon type and only a 0.75X boost to other weapons of the same class. Only ONE specialty would be allowed, to prevent characters from becoming "master of everything at once" too quickly. If you specialized in Shortswords, using one would raise your "specialization" at 25% faster than the standard rate, and also increase your overall "swords" skill at somethng like half speed. It would make you better at using related weapons, but not nearly as much as if you hadn't specialized.

That sounds very good.

I never understood the armor skills idea either, it svcks. It was actually introduced in Morrowind, and has been a waste of space since then.

Dodge instead of Unarmored is a great idea.

Agreed.

I totally agree that Speed needs to be removed. Maybe not replaced though.


I think a way to help this is to have non-permanent enchantments that you cast on yourself and items.

I love it. Could you list all the things you want to see as stats for the armor types? Elemental resistance and stuff?

Very much agree.

Someone already brought up the fact that you do not move the same way wearing full plate as you do a leather jacket as a reason for armor "skills" so I'm not going to go there. I am, however, going to play devil's advocate for "Unarmored"...

I'm a martial artist. While I was training with my instructors one of the first things they taught us was how to minimize the damage we took in a fight. I distinctly remember one time where my teacher asked the whole class to - and yes I'm serious - punch him in the gut as hard as we could. He shrugged it off like it was nothing, not because he was some big guy built like a tank (he wasn't), but because he knew the proper way to adjust his body so it wouldn't hurt him. This is probably what Bethesda was going for with the Unarmored skill.

I think it should be returned. It's really gimping the mage and thief classes to not have it there, especially if armor skills are going to be included. (Armored thieves? Seems a bit strange.) If it needs to be renamed so people won't be stupid about it by all means please do it.

Does he know the proper way to adjust himself to take an axe in the chest?

No, but he does know how to take the axe from you and bury it in your skull.

So unarmored doesn't work is what you're saying.

I consider dodging to fall under Unarmored, so yes, it works. I was trying to make a joke, y so srs?

I voted for Spear, Medium Armor, and "New Skill". The new skill should be Instrument...for the love of god how can you play a Bard without using an instrument. They dont even have to be functional, I'll settle for swinging a Mandolin at an enemy.

Surely I am joking as well if I'm talking about planting axes in chests. Now, the problem you have with your statement is that you think dodging is part of unarmored. It isn't, as people wearing armor can dodge. So, unarmored is under a form of dodge, and dodge is the real skill in this case.

So rename it? I really don't care what moniker it's under as long as there's some alternative for people who don't like running around in a tin can.

So as a skill measuring the ability to evade attacks, Unarmored/Dodge is a fairly passive/reflexive skill. There would be no way to purposefully train the skill in the same way you train the other skills (hit with swords increase Blade, getting hit increases Armor, etc).

Armor skill are also fairly passive, but you at least know that getting hit makes you better. The unarmored skill would increase at the whim of whatever random resolution system is going on behind the scene.

Unless there is some button you hold to perform a dodge (as there is with block), I feel like Unarmored would increase at rate quite different from any other.

I do hope that too. My sticking to the dodge name is so the skill still applies while wearing armor, where calling it unarmored implies that it wouldn't. Of course wearing armor would make you less successful at dodging.

I would make the block button become the dodge/block/parry button depending on your fighting style. If you're a knife fighter, you'd probably never want to block with your knife or try to parry a spear with it, so you'd set it to dodge. If you were using a shortsword and you wanted to parry, you'd hold down the attack and dodge button at the same time.

If you were using a setup that would benefit more from a block, like a sword and shield user, you'd toggle the button to block/parry. Dodge in that case would work passively if you don't use the block when someone attacks you, but would act as a low stat. There would be a range of dodge successes, from no damage taken to full damage taken, based on a ratio of your dodge skill and the situation vs the enemy's attack ability.

I'm not in favor of an armor skill, I think armor should just have a list of advantages/disadvantages, with a "getting used to it" period during which you have larger penalties from the armor.

I tend to agree.

Armor should protect a novice as well as it does an expert.

Armor should include stats like
-Damage Resistance
-Durability
-Fatigue penalty (which also affects concentration and focus)
-Speed/Agility penalty

Getting 'used to' a particular armor type should be manifested as a reduction in penalties, not an increase in damage resistance.

I'd also consider becoming more specific with damage types as well:
1) Crushing damage = blunt force trauma, falling/gravity damage,
2) Penetrating damage = anything designed to sink into the flesh and lacerate (arrows, blades, spear tips, etc)
3) Fire/Cold/Shock/Toxic damage

Becoming more specific with types of damage would definitely increase the variety and strategy of different kinds of armor...

Examples (note: I am no expert of weapons or armor, but I think you'll see the point) -
1) Plate Armor = +2 DR vs Crushing, +1 DR vs Piercing
2) Leather = +2 vs Piercing, +0 vs Crushing

I hope that came across the way I'm imagining...


For the Block skill, I feel like it is more realistic to use the weapon skills as the measure of parry/block.
Blocking with a sword ought to be based on Blades skill, not some universal/catch-all blocking skill
Blocking with an axe would be based on the Axe skill

etc, etc.

I would like to see a return of bone armor that stuff rocked man it was awsome looking, also levitation spells and longpoles/spears and add a vats type system like fallout has so sweet with cinimatic

I'd like to see a new skill, not sure if might be called botany, or biology, or agriculture.

Basically, a skill that improves yield rates for alchemy ingredients.

Now, on the one hand, Elder Scrolls games usually provide a lot of plants, so plant-based alchemy ingredients, if you have the patience, are usually easy to find. In Morrowind, if you had the cash, you could buy almost unlimited amounts from vendors, but that seemed a bit unrealistic too.

For alchemy ingredients which only defeating creatures can yield, or for plants which have a high failure rate (I swear the Cairn Bolete in Oblivion seemed to have about a 75% failure rate), it would be nice to have a skill which could eventually improve yield rates. Maybe when you kill an animal, instead of getting one unit, as your skill goes up, maybe you get up to 5 units (there'd still be randomness to the yield rates, the way I envision it, but higher skill would increase your chance of getting larger yields). For plants and similar sources where you don't really have to defeat an enemy to get an ingredient, the skill would mostly just reduce the frequency which you fail at - this could be scaled for different 'rarities' of ingredient. That is, maybe there are some plants which are common, and give good yield rates even at low levels of skill (so that low-level players can get ingredients to make some potions), but maybe some of the more 'valuable' spell effects tend to only be available from plants with higher failure rates which require higher skill levels to be able to reliably harvest.

Now, add in one modification to alchemy - allow ingredients to be 'concentrated' by higher level characters, to get more potent effects, while the effect of equipment upgrade is reduced somewhat. What I mean is, in both Morrowind and Oblivion (I confess I've not played the earlier Elder Scrolls - I tried playing Arena a few months back from the free download on the website, and it just about made my eyes bleed - low rez graphics modes look far worse on a modern LCD than they did 20 years ago on CRTs, and 20 years ago they didn't look all that great), increasing your skill in Alchemy had far less effect on increasing the potency of potions than did upgrading your mortar/pestle, retort, etc. Upgrading equipment should still be worthwhile, but as players get higher level in skill, instead of the same two ingredients you used 30 levels ago giving 10-20x more effect, make it a bit more plausible by saying that at higher levels, instead of using, say, one Deadra Heart and one Mushroom to create a very powerful potion, you can create the powerful potion, but it takes maybe 3 of each.

I dunno, just thoughts, but it seems like they could do more with Alchemy.

Good stuff! Absinthe has something like this called Herbalism.

On the Alchemy front, I think a further means of differentiation is different potencies between different ingredients. Currently (I think) ingredients with the same effect have identical potencies - the magnitude of potions made from the effects are dependent only on the Alchemy skill and Apparatus used. It would also be nice if alchemical ingredients were balanced so that value was related to utility and rarity. So maybe a Minotaur horn has a very potent Fortify Strength effect, versus a Kwama egg that has a very weak one.

Also, please remove yield rates. % failure in any system simply encourages save/loading, and in the event that save/loading is prohibited, it harbors feelings of prejudice and resentment. Please use expected values for all numbers.

Edit: and as suggested by a poster earlier, maybe include effects unique only to ingredients?