This just means that you actually have to specialize in a class, giving the game more replay value. you can no longer be a JoaT God, which was a major complaint in both Oblivion and FO3. Cudos Beth for addressing fans concerns.

That must be why perks are perks.

The way I see it, the way this particular game works is that skill points are like money.
you may have a hundred dollars in your pocket to spend. But it is just sitting there until you do spend it.

Op is right. Damage Contribution from Skilllevel should be higher and the Bonus Perks should be lowered. If i would write an Overhaul then Basedamage Difference between Materials would be higher. In combination with the other Change this would make pacing and scaling alot better troughout the Game. Smithing is also adding way to much Damage and Armor.

I don't see what is bad about a system where you get better by doing, and get even better by special training. That's what this method is.

Yes, perks should provide advantages to your skill, but not complety inlfluence it too much!

I like it because you can''t be an everything player, I think there are some things that could be tweaked like dragon priest masks not being armored, and destruction damage scaling a bit more, or having the perks do 50/100 more damage for X rather than 25/50

It's an incredible bad idea because by buffing the skill they make the perks meaningless. Now to become good at one thing you have to use perks, debuff the perks and you will be able to make a jack of all trades without using perks. In my opinion it's a perfect balance that perks improve one skill more then having 100 in the skill alone. Simply as it add a meaning to choose perks in the first place, I don't want to become as every other TES game has been a jack of all trades character at max level. At max level in skyrim you can become a jack of all trades if you choose too, but you can also specialize into specific classes by choosing perks that fit that "class".

Consider perks like natural talent, while getting mastery of a skill is experience. It sounds like the example given in the opening post isn't right, 1 perk shouldn't overpower mastery. But perks being powerful is a good thing, perhaps they're just too powerful as of now

I pretty much 100% agree with this. Nothing more to add.

...Exactly as I described?

The Knack were an alright band, i guess. but i dont want them replacing my perks.

heyooo.

Not really, though. You don't get much better by doing, you are just enabled to pick perks by doing.

Frankly, I think the skill/perk relation is totally screwed up. You can become a master mage without any skillpoint or perk in the magic schools, all you need is enchanting to reduce magicka cost to 0. The weapon and armor skills are basically maxed out at skillevel 80; That's when you get the last +20% perk.
Because skillevel contributes so little, you don't have real sense of progression. You only get stronger by picking perks or getting new gear, and those give you such a high jump in power that you go from "I can't even scratch that guy" to "Well that was way too easy" in a single step.

Perks should be used as a bonus, not as the bread and butter. They should actually provide you with new abilites, like the zoom for bows and such, and not just add a flat bonus to your effectiveness. That is the job of the skilllevel.
Plus, perk trees should be real trees. There is no real choice involved once I decide to use a skill. That's why every Enchanter, Smith, One-Handed warrior, light armor user, etc is basically the same again. And because we lost some skills and so unspeakably many spells again, I feel there's actually a lot less replay value in Skyrim than in previous games.

/edit
Also, I find it quite sad that they could only make perks viable by removing the effectiveness of skills. Obviously they didn't come up with enough interesting perks to make them valuable on their own.

Nope. Perks help us differentiate the characters. You are arguing for the old system. 100 skills in everything and everyone becomes identical is boring, and characters are not really different from one another. Go play oblivion and earlier if you want that again.

Personally I find effect upgrader perks quite boring. I look at stuff like barbrian and go... meh... ok it sounds good but it just a tad boring. While stuff like poisoner for pickpocket, or silent roll, or the dual casting perks actually are way more fun cuz they add new stuff to do.

Skill should take care of the effect upgrading, while perks should be only about adding new stuff or abilities to your skill.

Just my 2 cents.

Personally, I think it changed in such a way where Perks are still ahead, but not by as much.

That is, have a character with One-Handed to 50 and all the perks up to that point be equal to one with One-Handed at 100.

Double post, but, I think you're right. To a point.

Gave me an idea, even, take out the skill perks and redistribute the % into the other perks, so that the perks give X% bonus to the skill ALONG with their original ability.

You can cook Ramen noodles every day and have enough "experience" time wise to get your cooking to 100. But that doesnt make you a chef.

Skill is the muscle memory, but perks are the knowledge.

A 100 skill batter has good hand-eye coordination, but he swings at everything. A batter with perks knows how to recognize a curve (or when to push/pull, or when to lay off on a 3-0 count). Do you want the guy who makes contact on bad pitches or the guy who strikes out a little more but slugs doubles and homeruns (and has a higher OPS)?

A 100 skill 1H swordsman has swung his sword a lot, but a perked swordsman has "studied his Agrippa," learned how to identify weak points in an opponent's armor and recognize vulnerabilities in their defense.

This just highlights a different problem with the leveling system: That one can master a skill without ever actually progressing beyond amateur applications. This isn't a defense for perks being overly influential, it's an argument for fixing a different part of character progression.

True... But... What making ramen all day every day would do would give you the experience to eventually make a much better ramen without any excess water, seasoning, etc. <-- Skill 100.

Adding eggs, special seasonings, veggies, bits of meat, to make your ramen truly something special.. <---Perks

Skill + Perks <-- Ramen any chef would be envious of.

How does one meaningfully separate those aspects of improvement? How is it even possible for one person to become a master at sword swinging (specifically within the context of combat) without learning how to identify opponent weak points and openings in their attacks? How does one suddenly gain this "knowledge" abruptly rather than slowly improve over time?

All they've done is implemented a modified experience system here. You gain experience in a skill and then manually select how you apply it. It's really not that different from how Fallout approaches skill point application beyond forcing a greater degree of specificity. They've marginalized the improve-through-use system and removed a good deal of the organic, fluid leveling that used to be a part of the series.

Way too much power was put into perks. I want my skill level to be the definitive measure of my power, with perks as a nice little bonus. Skill level is now borderline useless, and if you don't perk a skill, that skill isn't effective at all.

@Arghun
i find the ramen example very delicious.

I like the current system and hope they don't change too much. maybe the crafting could be a little bit more challenging, but overall the new charactersystem is realy good in my opinion. i hated the system in daggerfall, morrowind and oblivion (but still love those games). this is not starcraft, where balance matters or WoW where balance seems to matter. in anycase they should cap crafting uber items with pushing smithing and enchanting way behind 100, but that is not my personal requirement.

The problems with the MW and OB character advancement model was that the "optimal" way to level your character and gain power was completely counter-intuitive. You essentially gimped your overall development by playing the class you chose. Wanna be uber?... Pick Warrior and play as a mage or thief... by the time your level increased by doing warrior stuff you would be stupid powerful in all other areas. Not doing that would about make your character too limited and often ineffective.

Sure the system Skyrim is using needs a bit of massage, but I think overall it is a better system.. you truly are what you play as opposed to saying you want to be one thing and playing as something else so you don't hurt yourself.

The guardian stones take care of the "class" thing in part.. but I wonder if that was the best solution. Maybe picking a class and having certain things advance easier than others would be better.. but keep the 10 points aggregate to make a level the same... not just your "primary" skills. Might have been a better solution.

For me.. ideally.. they should do some of the following.

1. Rebalance crafting so that you can't make the simplest craft items a thousand times and become a master. Make it so you have to use the knowledge you unlock to continue advancement. If you want to make Daedric or Dragon armor, you need to make steel, then Dwarvish, Ebony, etc in ascending difficulty to continue smooth progression. If you make items from too low a difficulty you get less and less xp for doing so. Otherwise what is the point really?

2. Combat/ Interactive skills.. you get a modest extra effectiveness per level.. enough so that it is noticable even without perks. A guy with 100 skill should do more damage than the guy with 20... by a noticable amount. Having bonuses to skills for things like speech should get you a noticable improvement in sale prices or persuasion, etc. Perks should augment or give extra abilities to these, not be the end all.