After reading the fan Q&A and thinking about Bethesda's reasoning for combining the cuirass and greaves in Skyrim, I'm now ok with the two being combined into one piece. Personally, I'd rather have more armor to look forward to, and have that armor be more detailed, than have the armor split into separate pieces. And with faster rendering times as an added bonus, (allowing them to put more NPCs on screen) it seems like they had more than enough beneficial reasons to justify combining the two pieces of armor.

It would be nice if we could all have our cake and eat it too, but it seems like they had to decide between one or another in this scenario, and I think they made the right choice.

Definitely the first poll option.
Also... keep in mind clipping issues which would otherwise be more severe if armor wasn't combined. I'm guessing that's what Gstaff partly meant with "we get much better visual results".

Seems like a biased poll/thread, but umm really it doesn't matter to me long as I can make my character look different and also since it's not an MMORPG the choices wouldn't matter far as customizing clothes.

When I mean look different I mean facial,size, and etc.

As long as by more you mean 3x or 4x as many, I will be ok with it

First option. I virtually never mixed and matched armors anyway in OB (or other games for that matter, like DA O) since the combinations look awful...99.99% of the time I just use pieces from the same set :shrug:

I like the changes, more armor please.

Separate pieces = far more customisation options.

They'd need to include hundreds upon hundreds of armour sets (far more than we've seen in previous TES games) to convince me otherwise.

I ALWAYS mixed and matched armour and clothing in previous TES games as I thought my character looked awful, bland and generic wearing full armour sets.

Poll is biased. More customization and separate pieces does not necessary equate to "slower rendering times "

It's not biased in the slightest. It's an exact breakdown of the advantages and disadvantages of each side of the argument, and the only reason it may seem biased is because of how much more beneficial choosing the one side would be in the grand scheme of things. Nothing in either poll choice is being exaggerated at all. I'm going directly from what Bethesda themselves has stated.

If it could be done, I would prefer to have the armor split into separate pieces with everything highly detailed along with faster rendering times. But unfortunately, that's not possible.

Beth stated as one of the main reasons they merged cuirasses and greaves, faster rendering tiems.

Yes, according to the people who are actually making the game, it does.

It does. Beth said that one of the advantages in joining armour pieces together is increased rendering time speed..... Therefore logically the opposite must be true also

Oh look.... a biased poll on the Skyrim forum. I haven't seen one of those in... five minutes or so.

Here's a bit of math for this "more sets" "less sets" idea.

Imagine the choice is between 30 sets of combined armor and a mere 10 sets of separated armor.

How many combinations are possible with the first? 30.
How many are possible with the second? 100

Let's imagine they get generous. Instead of 10 sets of separate armor, they do 15. How many possible combinations is that? 225

Now - what if they get generous on the other side. Instead of 30 sets of combined armor, there are 40. How many possible combinations is that? 40.

Which one is actually the "smaller number?"

I for one would like to see what they're actually defining as "more detail".

... And which one has clipping and 3/4 of the combinations probably look like [censored]?

Don't care. Just give me some interesting and worthwhile stuff to do outside of combat, when armour slots and types won't matter, because my character won't be wearing any.

The difference is, this also means there will be more armor sets using all of the armor slots, as opposed to, say, things in Oblivon like http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Brotherhood_armor

I would sincerely hope that Beth's devs aren't so terribly unskilled that they couldn't put together a mere 10 or 15 sets of armor that don't clip and don't look like [censored].

Maybe I've got more faith in them than you do though.

Ironic, isn't it?

No, because you're right.

No kidding...I'm surprised so many people actually mixed and matched armor. Most, and by most I mean almost all, combinations usually look terrible :confused:

I'd rather have 30 awesome than 225, where only 15 look good - the full sets :shrug:

And the reason is [censored].

You graphic card renders two items 25k triangles apiece with the same speed as one item with 50k triangles, or as 500 items with 100 triangles each. It's still just the same 50k triangles to render (roughly half of them being skipped since they are facing "backwards") either way.

I'd also love to know how seperating an Armor...increases rendering time when the work for both seperate matching greaves and full armor sets are equal...


and since when is More armor slots = less detailed armor.......

i let it go and decided that the 1 part armor sounds a good idea now

I never said more combinations. I said more sets. Try to read what I've typed before you start to claim that I'm biased. I've already stated I wish it could be both ways, it's just that the pros of combining the cuirass and greaves seem to outweigh the cons.

Also, your numbers would only be true if every single piece of an armor set was combined into one piece, which it isn't, and only if people were actually planning to wear a pauldron from one set of armor, another pauldron from a different set, greaves from a 3rd set, a cuirass from a 4th set, a boot from a 5th set, another boot from a 6th set, a gauntlet from a 7th set, another gauntlet from an 8th set, a shield from a 9th set, and a helmet from a 10th set --- which realistically, no one would ever do this (not to mention pauldrons are most likely not even going to be in Skyrim, so take away those and you're number of combinations become even smaller).

what a lame excuse faster rendering.... who cares then loading zones will take 1second less to load ^^ :brokencomputer:

we will get more armors then previous games but less armor mods now for sure the most armor mods for fallout were only retuxered stuff but wow we can choose boots and gauntlets and a helmet what a customisation^^ everyone who believe this bs of faster rendering and a lot more detailed armor does believe on santa claus too :thumbsdown: