I understand that everyone uses these Athletics and Acrobatics to some extent, but is that really a reason to drop them from the skill sets? Doesn't it stand to reason that, whether you are a warrior or a wizard, if you run, jump, swim, and scale very often, you will be better developed athetically than someone who slowly walks or rides a carraige everywhere? And how will your abiltiy to jump, to swim, to run etc. improve, if you cannot improve upon these skills?

Im more concerned about someone who runs, swimps and jumps all the time having less stamina than one who sits on their asses all day just because the former didnt choose to raise stamina at level up while the latter does. Which is the way it seems to me will happen with this whole (apparently attribute-less)"choose to raise health, mana or stamina at level up" system

agreed. I think they might have needed some tweaking to give them more utility. For example, acrobatics could involve more than just jumping. It could involve balance, rolling, dodging, and parkour (which could be mixed in to combat). Athletics used to affect running (fatigue and speed) and swimming (breath meter). It could also relate to "being atheltic" - dexterity, the ability to dodge, sprinting, and endurance running. It could also affect movement speed during combat, as well as interact with the encumbrance system.

I would make it a skill that a character can "live without" but that, if selected, would provide combat and non-combat benefits on-par with the other skills.

I suppose the sticking point is that in the past, the way the skills were increased was primarily the act of jumping and the act of making the character run or swim. Thus, even if these were not Major skills, they would level up relatively quickly because of constant usage. Having other actions (context sensitive or assigned to a specific key/button) increase the skills would make it so that you would have to actually decide to use the skill. For instance, you are only going to increase short blade if you choose to equip a dagger. Some examples for athletics: a toggle for endurance running mode, an active control for dodging during combat. Perhaps under-water swimming (and swimming without the "water breathing" spell) would also increase the athletics skill. For acrobatics, this would be the deliberate attempt to improve parkour maneuvers, perform a rolling action, and taking risks by choosing paths that are more treacherous (assuming a balance system is used in-game).

Those are just some ideas of how to revamp the skills.

I wouldn't object to the two being combined together, as they are similar. Being athletics would include the muscular strength to jump and stuff, right?

I always liked athletics and acrobatics. The speed and jump height boosts + easy major skills to level up.

Missing a third poll: Did you find it stupid and/or immeriosn breaking that you usually went around running/jumping 24-7?

Didn't they just combine these into one skill? If that's what is being asked, then I am happy they did that.

I don't know whether or not they have removed them officially, but if they have it's a big deal for me. In every single character I've played, one of the first skills I level up all the way is acrobatics. There's just something satisfying about being able to jump on top of a 1-story building from a stand-still.

I always liked them, and they could have provided real benefits.
I think they should still be a skill, but it wouldn't upset me if they didn't help level you.

Everyone I know who played Morrowind has some of the same funny quirks while playing it (including myself), and one of them is jumping a lot, and I jumped everywhere until my acrobatics was 100.

I think that removing them as skills is a good thing.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I wouldn't like to see them as skills in the current system they have implemented (where every skill contributes to your level), but another post in this thread reminded me of the possibility of having skills that don't contribute experience. I am not against a plethora of different skills, and seeing skills (like cooking as a skill) such as acrobatics isn't a bad idea to me.

Can I get a link to the information source? I don't see anything official in google so far.

While I do appreciate the way the skills affected my stamina, speed, etc, I really didn't like how they were leveled. You want to raise you acrobatics? Then you go around jumping everywhere. Raise your athletics? Nothing you could do but run and swim everywhere. It actually strongly discouraged me from using any other available form of transportation. For that reason, I'm not going to miss them.

they fused them together

I agree. It would actually make more sense to see something like acrobatics take on the role of an attribute in the background that increases per level regardless of whether you are swimming running or jumping.

Yet it was logical. A person who runs, swims and jumps all the time will logically be in better shape than a person who does none of these things. To deny that seems to detract a certain amount of continuity in the games.

Now I'm glad Acrobatics and possibly Athletics are gone. (Athletics hasn't been offically confirmed gone but it's likely) The reason why I say that is those skills are easy to abuse and are random in leveling. That will probably screw up the leveling system and the fact that we don't need a character jumping 10 feet in the air or running at 100 mph. Fallout 3 got it right wit the speed and I hope something similar is in place for Skyrim.

Combining them seems like the best idea. They are all so closely related as it is.

Agreed

I think if they still have attributes, (which haven't been confirmed in or out) it could be goverened by your speed and agility, or if not have the skills merged. Either way I'm fine with.

Now, I hear a lot about people saying they've been confirmed out or confirmed merged. I'd like to see a source for this. The only thing I remember was a foreign magazine saying something like "athletics has been removed so there's no more bunny hopping to gain skill". Now, that doesn't make sense, since jumping to gain skill is acrobatics, so there must be some confusion, and the only thing confirmed by that is that at least one of the skills is gone, probably acrobatics, but no confirmation for both.

The perks will help distinguish this out, and it see probably. It seems like a good guess to put the two together, what will it be called though? Just athletics?

Assuming this is speculation and not fact, I wouldn't mind if they were combined. There at least needs to be some way to gain speed and height. Maybe not so drastically, but to a realistic extent.

Athletics is a good general term to describe somebody who is proficiently agile and strong. I can't think of a better term actually.

EDIT:
Just to add, acrobatics was a poor term for the skill that governed jump height anyways. Agility fits the definition better (increasing jump height essentially, to be nimble).

i just wish so bad that i can jump unhumanly high like in morrowind. i think one of the things i'm most upset about is getting rid of all these skills. hell, i didn't like how they got rid of medium armour.

Why the heck not?

Fallout doesnt have acrobatics nor does it have athletics and to be blunt its 10000x better then ob in those gameplay aspects as a result.

I hope, and expect, them to just increase your speed, jumping, and swimming to rise as you level up. But I think they dropped the skills because people would set one of those as a major skill and boost but putting a rubber band or weight on their controller/keyboard to keep their character running against a wall for hourse. Which obviously cause you to level up very fast without having you to do anything.

This i love this THIS IS WIN. Basically if you try running 10 miles eventually your character will stop and sit for 10 minutes and go i need a break (or something similar) also the pace of jogging will slow and if you're in that negative fatigue state and have to enter combat you'll get increased motionblur some epic head bob and a crosshair that doesnt want to stay put. With really high athletics you'll be able to super sprint keep up a long jog for some time ect and so on.

Also high acrobatics in dark brohood armor in oblivion made me feel like a ninja jumping off of roof tops ect. Bethesda simply needs to implement the skills better into the game.