COMBAT:
-Archery
-Block
-Heavy Armor
-One-Handed
-Two-Handed
-Smithing

MAGIC:
-Alteration
-Conjuration
-Destruction
-Illusion
-Restoration
-Enchanting

STEALTH:
-Alchemy
-Light Armor
-Lockpicking
-Pickpocketing
-Sneak
-Speechcraft

So what is of note here (along with my thoughts, of course)?

1. Alchemy has been moved to Stealth specialization, with Enchanting and Smithing in Magic and Combat, respectively. This gives each specialization its own "crafting" skill. Warriors make weapons, mages enchant weapons, and rogues make potions and poisons. Makes sense to me.

2. Archery has been moved to Combat. I'm not too sure of why this was done, as now Stealth is the only specialization without a native means of defense, but I've never done pure characters, myself, so I see no harm from this.

3. Mysticism is indeed gone. I never used it all that much anyways.

4. Pickpocketing has been separated from Sneak. Well, I'm always a fan of new skills, so I'm interested to see how this will work out.

5. Athletics is gone (wasn't really much of a skill anyways), as is Acrobatics (likely integrated into Light Armor, as rogues really do need that ability to dodge).

6. Mercantile is gone (good riddance), likely integrated into Speechcraft. Makes sense, after all, Mercantile is a form of Speechcraft, is it not? Anything to make that skill more useful, because in Oblivion, Speechcraft was a joke.

7. Blade and Blunt are now redefined as one-handed and two-handed. This is really the only change I see up there I disagree with, as fighting styles are very different between hilts and hafts and neither weapon type can be interchanged smoothly. You just don't fight the same way with a sword as you do with an axe, and being proficient in one does not automatically make you proficient in the other. Still, at least the player will be permitted to make that differentiation.

8. Hand-to-Hand is gone, as well. Likely merged into Two-Handed combat. Again, doesn't make much sense, as again martial arts is a very different combat medium from fighting with weapons, but the player can still make the choice, or choose not to if he wants.

The way I understand it, they will differentiate between blade and blunt is through perks.

They did away with all the skills that I thought were silly except Mysticism. The spells in that set have found new homes however, so I'm fine with that as well.

It looks pretty good to me. Eager to try them out.

*Looks at list*

*Vomits*

That is all.

If you hate Skyrim so much, why bother posting your hate? Isn't such a waste of time, moaning and groaning and whining about 'how Skyrim sucks, now woe is me!' 'Skyrim sucks, I must hate at it just because I had my hope dashed about a Morrowind remake!' "Skyrim sucks and I must bash it just because I CAN!'

Yeah. We get you the first time. Some people actually LIKE the direction Skyrim is taking. And they are bound to take offence at this ridiculous notion of yours of 'hate Skyrim because ..etc'. If you hate what the direction the ES is taking, why don't you go to the other classical RPG games like Baldur's Gate or something? Sure, maybe the Elder Scrolls IS going mainstream action-RPG with more focus on action, but what can you or I or anybody can do? One thing for sure; hating/moaning/crying won't bring what you want. I really think that you should direct your troll-y-ness elsewhere because you're really offending some people here. Or at the least live with what ES has become.

-----------------------

The only thing I frown upon is the combat techniques for melee weapons. TK said it all, it should be different. But I guess I can live with the changes, particulary to Mercantile and Athletics. I'm fairly neutral at what they did to Mystiscism and also Athletics.

Now I'm excited about the crafting skills! Nothing like making a weapon and have it broken by the end of the day!

Archery makes more sense to me in Combat, since it’s for killing things. I look forward to finding out how One-Handed and Two-Handed will work. There has to be a LOT more to it that I just don’t know about.

I’m glad that Lockpicking, Sneak, and Pickpocketing are separate. It never made sense to sneak up and pickpocket someone. That would be more about misdirection, right? I mean, it’s high noon, they see you.

I like that Alchemy is moved to a non-magical specialization. That makes more sense, too.

I’m thinking there’s something I don’t know about how Athletics and Acrobatics will be worked in, unless everyone comes over the border able to run and jump like a bunny.

Thanks for posting this, TK!

It's been heavily implied that everyone will have the same run speed and jump height, with modifications on those being solely based on whether or not you are wearing heavy armor.

However, I see this as more of a problem with the removal of attributes. I really do think Bethesda is missing a huge opportunity with attributes, as you can do so much with those to help flesh out characters and make them unique. I really do not think Bethesda's approach to making every single Elder Scrolls game simpler and simpler with every release is going to hold up for much longer. Skyrim is about as simple as you can get for an RPG; any further, and we're in Action-Adventure territory.

Getting rid of mysticism seems like a good idea to me. It seemed like the category they put the leftover spells in that did not fit anywhere else.

One-handed and two-handed is a surprise, but seems like a decent idea. I say that because if I am playing a melee fighter, it is either a sword and board (or axe and board) type, or a two-handed sword type. I have never had a character who started out with one, and went to the other. So it strikes me as something that will serve the gameplay well.

It is good to see enchanting back. I always hated how in Oblivion you could only enchant something with one of those silly altars. You should do it with your own innate magical power. Or hire someone else who has the mojo to do it for you. That was one thing I liked better about Morrowind. It is just too bad constant effect enchantments were so hard to come by there.

I can see why archery got thrown in combat, as it is about killing people. However, it seems like archer characters are always stealth-based. At least in Oblivion. But they said that bows will do more damage in Skyrim, so perhaps a Skyrim archer will not have to rely upon that extra damage from making sneak shots? Then they could just be a tank in heavy armor carrying a big bow.

The absence of hand-to-hand seems odd. Maybe they figure that very few people play hand-to-hand characters? It seems like a surprise since those characters worked so well in FO3 though. I would have expected Bethesda would have learned from that, and tried to make it more viable, rather than just completely discarding it. Plus The Monk is pretty standard in RPGs.

I see they still kept Speechcraft. I wonder why? Oblivion showed how useless that is as a skill. Perhaps they are going to completely change how it works, and do something more like FO3 or the KOTOR games, where you simply have a percentage chance of succeeding based on your skill? That would make it viable.

I could live without separating armor into light and heavy. I choose armor for appearance. It is always a pain in the rear to have to mod every piece of armor in the game or in mods that I like to make it match the skill of my character at that time. Armored and Unarmored would be more interesting, I think. Especially given how much this game leans toward unarmored spellcasters.

Alchemy seems out of place as a stealth skill to me. Depending on your viewpoint, it is either like herbology/chemisty, and is just a matter of a person with the training mixing the right elements together. Or it is an intensely magical discipline, where the practitioner draws forth both the dormant magicka and the effect residing within the ingredients, and shapes them into a working form. Neither of those are things I associate with someone who picks locks or lifts wallets. But I can see that they had a definite plan going on with the crafting skills, and wanted to have one per each of the 3 categories.

Like TK, I do think the removal of attributes is a loss. There really is an industry-wide trend toward over-simplifying games these days. I thought Mass Effect was dumbed down, until I saw Mass Effect 2! By making a game so simple that even a 3-year old can play it, they also lose out on a lot of what makes characters, and gameplay, unique.

I'll reserve judgment on that until I see the perks. In Fallout 3 we learned that perks can go a long way toward character customization. With the reported number of perks in Skyrim being well over a hundred (what, triple the number you get in Fallout 3?), I can see there being perks that will enable certain characters to jump higher or run faster. I can see perks that will augment those stealth skills to make your character a true shadow and/or acrobat if he/she chooses to be . . . or a true tank if he/she chooses to be that.

The only thing I see missing from this new direction with Skyrim is the need to mindlessly grind skills that you never use in order to get a modifier to an attribute that doesn't really matter. Could they have changed attributes to make them more important to gameplay? Sure. Absolutely. But the fact that they didn't doesn't necessarily mean that they've gimped your customization options. Sorry if it seems like I'm always busting your b@ll$ on this point, TK. Truth told you are far more open-minded than a lot of people who lament Bethesda's choices. I just don't understand why there are so many who can find nothing exciting about the continuation of a series we've all come to know and love.

I never praised Bethesda's handling of attributes, but they really should have looked to the mods that addressed things there rather than ditch the concept completely. GCD for Morrowind and nGCD for Oblivion, to be precise, they are mainstays in my LO because they handle all the attribute increases for me.

Basically, there are two forms of progression in my game: short-term (skill increases) and long-term (attribute increases). The truth of the matter is that attributes did a whole lot more than determine health, magicka, and stamina. Bethesda may think they are eliminating a middleman, but in reality, they are actually eliminating much more than that; they are eliminating the opportunity to expand and make better the things that didn't work previously. Why eliminate something when you can just change the way it gets handled? Bethesda just can't continue nuking things from their games that they didn't do very well, or they are going to hurt the series in the long run.

Yes, attributes were not handled very well in Oblivion, but that was no reason to toss them out, as they work wonders for defining characters. All they needed to do was automate their increases like GCD and nGCD did and they would have been fine. You customize your character based on your choice of race and skills, and attributes are there in the background to help reinforce your choice and make it worth more over the long run.

Simple solution for a simple problem. My only problem is that Bethesda is not being very open-minded themselves with the gameplay changes. There are other ways to streamline your games than just removing things.

And thanks for your thoughts. I'm with you when you say you don't want Skyrim to be Oblivion 2.0 or Morrowind 2.0, I just don't really like Bethesda's mindset of removing features being streamlining, especially since they've been doing this with every single release since Daggerfall. You can only go so far.

There you go, perks. I think that’s the element I’m expecting to replace what’s taken out.

When I hear words like streamline and simplify, I think of elegance and clarity. Perhaps attributes will be rendered unnecessary by the new way of progressing through the game?

When I look at what my favorite franchise has become, I want to cry. No attributes, fewer/merged skills, no classes, perks, health regeneration, cheesy blood spatter on screen, sprinting, and magical yelling have ruined the series for me.

Most of those seem to just be resistance to change rather than heartfelt concern over Bethesda making a potential bad design decision. If I may take some time to give my thoughts?

No attributes: I tend to agree here, because I feel Bethesda is throwing away an excellent way to define characters, but there are other ways to do that, as well.

Fewer/merged skills: Most of the skills eliminated contributed almost nothing to the game in the first place, and if they kept attributes, I felt would do better being merged with them. I see no logical reason to oppose, say, Mercantile being merged with speechcraft, because what is bartering if not a form of eloquence (which speechcraft dictates). There is indeed method to the madness here, even if you refuse to see it, and with the exception of the one-handed and two-handed skills, I can find no fault in what Bethesda are doing here.

No classes: I tend to agree here, as well, because it gives a method for players to create non-standard characters by allowing for them to apply skill bonuses to skills the race normally doesn't use (like an Orc mage or a Bosmer barbarian). Classes add more flexibility to the game than I think Bethesda realises, as the way they have it now tends to encourage safer choices to make it easier starting out or just not making any choice at all. Yes, Oblivion did require one to over-think their level-ups, but that was due to the bulls$%t balancing more than the level-up method being broken. And I don't feel that going from "too much thinking" to "no thinking required" is the right approach to character creation.

Perks: Why exactly? Because Morrowind didn't have them? Oblivion had them, Fallout 3 had them, and both of them were better for it.

Health regen: Yes, it does sorta defeat the purpose of having restoration magic, doesn't it? Might work if they restrict health to only regenerating out of combat and not giving the players a starting healing spell (because that would just be taking the piss). Nevertheless, if this is true, it will be one of the first things to go in my install. I can think of no better way to define "dumbing down" than "see regenerating health."

Blood splatter: Agreed. I don't want jam popping up on my monitor when I'm trying to aim my arrows at that bandit over there. What was wrong with the screen edges flashing red? By the way, I don't normally make generalizations, but anyone who might come in honking about this being "more realistic" is wrong. Blood does not EVER stick to peoples eyes in the way games make out, if it does find a way in, you blink it away instantly. Yes, I really do hate this effect, it's just stupid bloodlust, because we all know blood sells.

Sprinting: What's wrong with giving people a way to run away from battles they cannot win? Or giving barbarians a better means to close the distance with that troublesome archer? If you want a more realistic game, it seems fairly self-contradictory to oppose sprinting. Of course, being able to sprint when decked out in platemail would be pretty silly, but for lightly armored and unarmored fighters, absolutely nothing wrong with this.

Magical yelling: You oppose skills being removed, and yet you also oppose new stuff being added into the game? This seems fairly backward logic.

My final point: If I want to play Morrowind, I'll play it. Lots of developers fall into the trap of releasing the exact same game repackaged a sequel with nothing more than a minor engine update and some new toys (Call of Duty, I'm looking at you right now). I do not want Bethesda to make that mistake, and am quite glad that they are so bold as to make drastic changes to their games that they know will be taken badly by the fans. Not many are willing to do that. And yes, I am praising Bethesda for making decisions with what to do with their games that I don't like. If worst comes to worst, I'll just add what I want back in through the SDK.

1. I liked Oblivion's perks because as you advanced a skill you became better at whatever that skill was. In Skyrim the skills have been condensed to the point where blades and blunt are in the same category. Perks as far as I have seen so far are incredibly shallow and don't allow much differentiation.

2. The way to run away faster from battles before Skyrim was improving the Atheletics skill. In Skyrim there is no atheletics skill and we have lost another way to keep our characters varied. Now everyone will run at the same rate and jump at the same height. ES games aren't about equality, exactly the opposite actually. The idea that working on something makes it better and therefore makes you a step ahead of other in game characters has been one of the important parts of the series since it was created.

3. The magical yelling that I've heard of thus far consists of things like "fire breath" and "lightning" as well as other thoughtless elemental things that could have just as easily been spells. Also the fact that you can no longer make your own spells is total crap.

Bethesda still deserves a chance for us to see how well their new tweaks turn out, though. I know I don't like a lot of things, but I'm still interested in seeing how things turn out.

Just because Skyrim is ruined forever doesn't mean it actually is.

I agree with this. Its kinda like cake (forgive my gastronomical comparisons, guys and gals). Would all of you complain how the cake tastes when its STILL being baked in the oven? Best to remain neutral and reserve judgement until you are served with it.

When the cake/Skyrim is presented to you and you eat it/play it, go Rambo-with-a-machinegun with your opinions and THEN we could discuss if the cake/Skyrim sucked or not.


Ummm... Chocolate cake. Gastronomical suggestions and comparisons does make me hungry! Excuse me while I go eat some. *vanishes with a hungry expression*

Here’s the info I found on the Skyrim Perks. If you know more than this, please tell me. The way I am reading them they sound almost exactly like the perks you say you liked in Oblivion . . . only with improvements:

Allowing your mace to ignore armor - In Oblivion a high level Blunt skill meant that you could use any blunt weapon, one or two handed. A perk like this gives clear incentive to specialize.

Allowing greater critical hits with a sword – Were there critical hits in Oblivion? I honestly can't remember. If there were they would have been handled by raising your Blade skill. In Skyrim you still need to raise your Blade/Blunt skill enough to qualify for this perk.

Allowing bleeding damage for axes – Is an improvement over Oblivion if you ask me. Players can decide for themselves the amount of gore they wish to see as a result of their attacks. It also is another perk that encourages specialization.

Causing your dagger to deal greater damage during sneak attacks – This one was done in Oblivion. There it was governed by the Sneak skill. In Skyrim I am assuming that it will be governed by either Sneak, or One Handed.

Allowing you to zoom in when aiming a bow – I’m sure this one is familiar.

Allowing you to hold your breath to steady your aim – This one is a definite improvement! The implication is that, without this perk, aiming a bow will be more difficult (which should appease all of us crying for more realism). This is another perk which I’m sure will require a substantial investment in the Archery skill in order to unlock.

Perks like Shield Wall make Blocking 25% more effective but require a block skill of 20 to access. Shield Charge presumably allows you to use your shield as a weapon but requires a Block skill of 50. Bash Disarm and Elemental Protection are other confirmed perks in the Block line. Combined with a high level Block skill, the perks should serve to make you a true master with the shield.

With 280 confirmed perks dismissing all of them as 'shallow and without differentiation' is extremely near-sighted IMHO. Only a handful have been confirmed, and I'm sure that Bethesda is keeping the 'good stuff' under raps until right before the game's release. I am thinking that character customization options will expand rather than suffer from the limitations that some on this board are worried about.

Ah, I hadn't heard the exact number of perks in the game. That does seem like a hefty amount. All of my other complaints still stand though.