Ok, something some of you don't seem to realize about the "more detail" part, is that when they were separate, the cuirass was forced to stay within the limits of the upper body. the greaves, basically armored pants. But now, with full sets, they can create something that looks like a basic shirt with plating over it, covered in belts that go down to mid-thigh, while it also has a chainmail pants covered by a black skirt, that looks like it interracts with the belts from the armored shirt! ok, maybe a bad artistic design, but it still goes to show that now armor can be a LOT more detailled, and look like it doesn't actually ignore the other pieces.
It also allows then to make MUCH longer shirts/cuiracces/armored robes, because then clipping won't be an issue

wow this poll isn't biased at all

LONGER RENDER TIMESSSSSS

Yeah on the damn xbox. Learn2graphicscard

The gods forbid they let a chest piece extend down into the legs and vice versa.

Well, according to their answer from the Q&A, they're doing quality and quantity over individual player choice... Which along with the better performance they mention, they have more than enough reasons for me to support their decision.

They could've done that with certain pieces of armour while leaving others, along with clothing, separate.

Biased poll.

If your on PC, you can mod armours in. You can't mod armour types.

If someone told you that he can run twice as fast after cutting off a strand of hair from his head, would you believe it? Of course only the person who claims this truly knows it, but...

Just look at the facts and you know this is nonsense. Unless an engine programmer can give me an exact technical explanation why removing a few polygons from a mesh and combining two triangle strips into one will make a game render noticeably faster where a single scene holds many thousands of triangle strips and hundreds of thousands of polygons. So much faster that it can suddenly render a few fully animated and textured multi-thousand polygon NPCs more than before (and it even magically decreases CPU load apparently since if the game can render more NPCs the CPU needs to handle more AI, otherwise there wouldn't be any advantage to it).

Answers like these are what makes me suspicious about the rest of their answers as well.

Hardly, only your silly knee pant thingy mabobs. Greaves. :goodjob: Most games mix them with boots anyhow. They simply chose every other benefit over the benefit of pleasing a small group of people including yourself who liked doing what you do, relying heavily on greaves. it isnt "streamlining" simply a choice to cut out limited content for the rest of their audience to benefit. Sorry about your loss, honestly :sadvaultboy: , but in the long run I doubt this game is turning into Dragon Age 2 or anything of the sort. You should be happy for the good things this game will improve over Oblivion :yes:

Gpstr is right. The arithmetic can not be disputed. If there are X armour materials, then there are X^2 combinations of cuirass and greaves. If instead we get more armour materials, then we have X + Y armour materials. The problem is that X^2 increases much faster than X + Y. Indeed, X^2 = X + Y just when Y = X * (X - 1).

Another way of putting this is that having more armour materials for combined cuirass + greaves only yields as many armour combinations as having separate cuirass and greaves is if the amount of added armour materials is almost as large as the amount of the existing armour materials squared.

Nevertheless, you might think that the arithmetic is a little misleading in one sense. What more armour materials might give you is greater aesthetic variety. Or, perhaps because that is a tendentious way of putting it, I should say that having more armour materials gives more aesthetic variety along a different dimension to having separate combinations.

(You might say: why not have both. But that's not the argument we're having. The question is: given these two choices, what counts in favour, or against, either of them?).

Do you realize what you've just said?

It would cause longer rendering times regardless of the platform. Just because you're playing the game on the PC doesn't mean that is isn't affected by the same things the Xbox version is... Not every single person intending to play Skyrim on the PC has a super-computer capable of playing Skyrim with maxed everything. You do realize this, right? (I don't, and I intend to play Skyrim on the PC for the mods)

The separate armor pieces will affect rendering times for everyone, including people playing on the PC. I would rather not have to get a new graphics card to play Skyrim with good visuals on the PC. I don't have hundreds of dollars just lying around my house waiting to be spent on a single game. If I have to upgrade my graphics card that means I won't be getting Deus Ex: HR, Dark Souls, Uncharted 3, or RAGE... And that would be pretty upsetting.

This is 'no' biggie if you ask me due to smithing and if it REALY does mean we can have more than 3 ppl on screen at once I'm happy. Actully pleased really I'm happy to give this one a try. The base run maybe even fully static run worrys me...could really destroy some play styles, this just changes your approach to may wearing different armour more often due to more sets and less pieces for you to get sentimental over and never take off/change. Even tho I'll miss leather pants I'll take comfort in my custom axes and modified armour.

More armor is always a good thing.

I picked the second option. My computer won't have issues with rendering times...

In truth though I don't really care about the greaves + cuirass combination. If it makes things simpler for the devs, great. If it means they add more armor variations, even better.

If they made every armor a single suit? Then you might see me a little upset.

People reaaally need to read again. They said that with faster rendering they can put more characters at once on screen.

"We get much better visual results combining those pieces, and it renders a lot faster too, so we can put more people on screen, so that was an easy tradeoff for us."

Am I the only person who liked separate armor pieces for the progression and bit-by-bit collecting associated with them rather than for customization purposes? I never mixed armor sets, but I liked finding my armor one piece at a time, but some of the new advantages to the one-piece system make my thoughts a bit tame and questioning. Which would I prefer? I... don't know.

I'm with the devs on this one. One less armor piece(from OB) traded for more and more detailed armor is something I can live with. And it worked well enough in Dragon Age: Origins.
While I love mixing armor sets(currently wearing steel cuirass and greaves, iron boots and leather gauntlets in OB) I think the increased amount of different sets will allow more mixing and matching than less armor and 1 more slot.

I find it hard to believe that only a small group of people mixed clothing and armour around a bit instead of wearing full sets. I'm also not convinced at all by the so-called benefits that justify this change. But whatever. I've complained enough about this for one day.


I'm happy about the improved character models and the new levelling system - both of which were vital improvements, along with a few other things. The problem is all the poor / unnecessary changes they're making. If it were just one or two things, like the merging of armour, I could probably learn to live with it... but there's a whole host of things. :confused:

Masque of Clavicus Vile, Her Hand's Pauldrons, Lord's Mail, Daedric Greaves, Wraithguard, Her Hands gauntlet, Her Hand's Boots - Morrowind

Daedric Armor/Madness Armor - Oblivion (in this game, mixing and matching really does look stupid as you have to have the entire torso and arms covered by one set and greaves were essentially pants. Not piecemeal enough to work with. Same problem in Skryim from the Q&A and screens thus far.

I will never get it why people try to defend bethesda in every choice they make, if they would cut out races i bet there were still enough here to say its the right choice better framerates i never played an orc, or bosmer either. Come on we have to try to keep our TES Customisation and have to fight for it and not only say YES its the right decission. If TES 6 gets armors like fallout it wouldnt even bother me because i can say i knew it since Skyrim release they will do it! :facepalm:

Seperate, I like having armour serve different purposes through enchantment. It gives me more stat options/customisation.

I'm not entirely convinced that the number of armor sets will make up for this simplification.
If they truly added a lot more armor, then fine, I suppose it's not a big deal. What I have an issue with is removing feature after feature, and not properly making up for those removals.
Games aren't supposed to get less complex over time, they're supposed too grow in depth and complexity. The one place in Bethesda's history were this rule didn't apply however was the transition from Daggerfall too Morrowind. Ironically making the game world smaller for the third installment but doing it in such a way that added depth and complexity made the world feel just as big for me. If they can pull of something like that again, removing features but -balancing- those removals, then I'll be a happy camper.
Somehow I doubt it though, Bethesda has never disappointed me per-say but Oblivion was certainly a near-miss because although the world grew it felt emptier than Morrowind. It was bigger but devoid of character and complexity, I really hope they tackle that issue in Skyrim.
Better stop now before I ramble anymore..

I liked separate armour pieces for the same reason. It added to the feeling of trying to survive in an unforgiving wilderness - you have to make do with what you find. But, I also really only got that feeling in the early parts of the game. Once you get to a certain point, you're usually tough enough to survive, even if you don't have the best gear.

Yes, and my laundry detergent said that it would make my colors brighter and my whites whiter.

There's a difference between arguing for things that REALLY matter (races), and things that actually have advantages in the game, but are pretty much a question of preference., that are more than technical. I totally love the armor in Fallout because even for the same kind there were variations, and the styles fit together and made things look awesome. Cutting races would be just effin dumb though

And actually, I DID mix and match in Oblivion. Only, I'll still be able to do whatever I did back then, because usually I only mixed clothing with gloves and boots... Hell, I'll probably make the same ranger type again, with monk robes (or similar robes), and leather gloves ans boots




I've yet to read a post from you that doesn't imply that Bethesda are brain-dead evil sellouts that only know how to lie and tortue people


and BTW, I do some 3D art, on a svckish comp that can barely render a simple scene in under an hour, and believe me, single-piece objects, for the same poly count, render really faster.