The Skills:, 18 in total, these are the lot. Options

[Thomas Kaira]

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.

This post has been edited by Thomas Kaira: Aug 8 2011, 05:35 PM

[Thomas Kaira]

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.

This post has been edited by Thomas Kaira: Aug 17 2011, 12:46 AM