ebony armor is sick, cannot wait to get dragon and i hope its not overdone like daedric. i really dont like daedric, i love the steel armor, the ancient nord armor is awesome, except for the horrible clipping issues where you can see your ass in 3rd person. Iron is sweet, so is fur. I like it how you can upgrade then now so they are as good as daedric too. Elven is sick as, reminds me of lotr. The only gripe i have is with daedric being way to over the top, but it always is. dwemer is... different, but its still very dwemer and i like it.

Because it's made by magic. Oblivion is a magical realm of Deadric lords. Where as Nords are merely human.

i disagree with your statement about dwemer armor sure its ornate but they did that because they could and it intimidates sentient foes. but dwemer made armor looks sturdy reliable and easy to move in for a plate armor.

same a good mix of ornate and functional just like dwemer armor

its a matter of preference; i like the crazy ceremonial look of high-end armor, but i can definitely understand those who dont. when it comes down to it, TES is more of a classic fantasy game, so armor will and should lean towards the fantastical. something like the witcher series is where you go for a more realistic aesthetic.

of course, the great thing about TES games is that mods will surely come along to satisfy your preference, or even if they dont you can easily go into the creation kit yourself (once its out) and make some iron or steel armor with comparable stats to daedric/ dragonbone.

100% agree OP.

I still wear the conjurer robe you find in prison cell in the tutorial cos its the only ranger looking outfit I can find, and at level 11 im still using the iron sword and basic long bow. But like oblivion I find you dont need uber armour and weapons to manage. The game is easy to begin with... I find the game boring if Im 1-shotting everything with uber weapons.

I'm sorry to inform that fantasy armor in fantasy games will, in fact, be fantasy.

Whilst I think the endgame armors do look totally badass, apart from Ebony which was an incredible let down, I gotta agree for the following reason:

It's plain wierd to trott around in full Daedric on a demonic horse feeling like a TOTAL FRIGGIN BADASS only to have a guard mutter "hand's to yourself, sneak thief" or "disrespect the law and you disrespect me" like he just doesn't give a [censored]; like he's an angry grandparent scalding his utterly disapointing yet artistically gifted emo grandson. I mean come on, I've ripped the heart from a daedra and forged it into ebony armor, I've got a sword that would 2 shot him and he just doesn't give a [censored].

though I hate to use the term, it's immersion killing at it's best, so I stick to plain old armor, it just feels more natural to have a trailer esque sword-and-board-Dova-nord rather than, say, a fireball wielding Altmer demi-god who laughs at dragons.

The dragonbone plate however was bang on, good job Beth. Now fix your shadows and indoor performance.

Agree with the OP.

I won't wear anything above steel but mostly I run around in leathers and fur.

However, they have their place and I can see why they're in the game.

Haha.

Yeah, 99% of armor mods are far, far worse than vanilla armors in Oblivion. I don't expect anything to change here.

The bottom line is this is a fantasy game (I mean, c'mon, there's dragons). The developers are going to make the higher tier armor and weapons appeal to those that like the fantasy style. It has nothing to do with making sense or realism.

And they give players like you Ebony armor (There are other armors aren't to fantastical as well).

I think it also has a bit to do with the culture of each armor? Like... the fact that you need to go towards for example Dwemer armor at some point... The moment i changed my steel armor to Dwemer i felt like i lost what my character was.
So i went back to Steel, its like its so different it almost looks alien and it just didn't look nice roaming in the woods with a Robot looking armor. I don't dislike its style, it looks interesting because it represents Dwemer culture pretty well.. but why must i have to use it to become better? Same problem with elven armor, i just feel disconnected if my Nord is using elvish armor because its totally off the culture of my character. Now i do agree that dragon armor and daedric do look pretty horrid.
I think the best way would be to have multiple tiers of armor within each Tamriel culture. Like i totally looked to see the Red Guards running around with their own armor, that was pretty awesome. I guess making those tiers would mean designing more armors but isn't that how games upgrade? Surely Bethesda could invest a bit more on their armor designing and make a lot more stuff

Love the Dwemer armor. Makes me feel like a Solar Exalt walking around Skyrim.

I dont think making the armor look that way is bad.

I definitely agree with this. There could be so much more armor content .

I agree with the OP for the most part; yeah, the Daedric armor in the first game looked kinda cool and creepy in a sense, but it's a little over the top. And how many characters wanna wear [censored] weird demon-armor anyway? While cautioning about the level of realism present in most in-game objects - the Vikings did not wear horned helmets in real life - I still agree that the lower-level armors do indeed fit the popular image of Scandinavian warriors, and the Imperial armor does give a good Roman legionary-like feel. The Dwarven and Elven armor don't look too bad in this game, just perhaps a bit too fantastic. After all, while yes, people are correct to say Skyrim isn't a simulation of medieval Earth but rather a work of fantasy, they should remember it's a work of contemporary fantasy that does have roots in Tolkien, which had its own roots in medieval European myth.

So while I would actually find it interesting to see armor that has a flavor related to some other real-world ancient culture, like medieval Japan or China, maybe even armor that looks like it came from a Greek hoplite, some of the more fantastic armor is just too outlandish for most people's tastes. I think the best way to express the complaint is that it's not that outlandish and ornate and even brightly-colored armor can't work, it's just that it's more interesting if it doesn't look like it was designed to conform to a fourteen year old boy's idea of what looks badass.

Case in point, look up some full plate jousting armor from maybe the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; some of that stuff was pretty garish with elaborate headdresses; remember what Ysgramor's helm looked like! But too much modern fantasy armor makes you think the artist looked at Sauron's armor from the film version of LOTR and said "You know what this needs? It needs more blades, some spikes, and it should be all black and red. That's what it needs."

There's just no substitute for actual reference photos and study with this stuff. Take a look at the design of spaceships in movies and television over the past half century. Within the Star Trek franchise, they went from the original NCC-1701 Enterprise, a classic design, to that awful monstrosity in the last Next Generation film with the Romulans and Remans or whatever. Then there was the most recent movie, which was far better but still the Romulan ship was an indecipherable mess of spikes and whatnot. My opinion is that this is because spaceships in sci fi movies and television shows used to be designed by engineers or at least artists with experience in technical drafting, who were familiar with real-world vehicles and mechanical objects, but that now they're largely produced by artists who have no such experience, and just draw [censored] that looks cool without any real interest in making it look functional in any sense. "Oh, it's science fiction. I don't need to be tied down to reality." Really? What's the more interesting, long-lasting ship design? The old Enterprise or some forgettable mess of spikes and blades?

Same with armor. Reference photos, reference photos, reference photos - and study.



But I gotta disagree with all those folks hatin' on the chainmail bikini. The proof:

[IMG]http://i836.photobucket.com/albums/zz281/andccas/rebecca_romijn_stamos_010_aa.jpg[/IMG]

Out of all the heavy armors, I liked Ebony the most. Daedric seems to extravagent and non-symmetrical to me, and Dragon armor just made me look like was I was trying way to hard to be a Diablo 2 Necromancer, too much just plain bone. However, I did keep the dragon helmet and switched out my ebony one. Didn't like the ebony as it you couldn't see any part of your face under it. I was a nord, with a grand beard. I want that **** to show for crying out loud. xD Turns out that it fits pretty well for me.

As for the light armor side, I haven't gotten very far. Started a new thief/assassin/hunter type character, and I'm really liking the scaled horned armor with a novice mage hood and scaled boots and gloves. Really gives you a mysterious aloof look, while still looking badass.

I agree, I like Iron and Steel armor also a lot more, but i still wear and like the dragon armor set right now... i mean its bassicaly just teeths and bones from dragon itched together with some patex, its supposed to have spikes

IMO, everyone who thinks the dragon armors look bad, needs to have their eyes examined because they look dope.

I don't care if I am gimping myself wearing Dragonplate over Daedric; [censored] looks so cash.

You guys are saying.. "Oh but its a fantasy game". Well for those of you who are talking about Lotr, I don't recall seeing any over the top looking armor there. Everything in Lord of the Rings seemed to fit perfectly into what it was suppose to be. I didn't see any humans running around in Spiked armor or whatever.
Sure Sauron had the gigantic armor with spikes and all that but it fit the character since he was suppose to be this evil being right?

While I'm planning on giving up my armour upgrades to satisfy my aesthetics, yes, the later armour styles are kind of silly, in my opinion. But the problem with taste is that not everyone has it.

Oddly enough, one of the benefits of the broken crafting system with its positive feedback loop (fortify enchanting potions, fortify alchemy enchantments, etc) is that you can make almost any weapon into something amazing. You're really only limited by your own standards and creativity. If you want your Dwemer weapons to be roughly equal to Daedric weapons in terms of power, you can certainly do this. If you want your Elven weapons to be capable of one-shotting Elder Dragons, you can do that too.

Doesn't help me very much since I use bound weapons, but it might be the fix that the OP is looking for.

I think everyone would prefer to have something that wouldn't involve abusing the something that obviously Bethesda overlooked

I agree with this topic. I hate the ostentation and tackyiness of the high-level weapons and armor in TES series.

In oblivion, I'd often stop leveling at level 6-7 to avoid seeing those ridiculous armor sets. It was lame when you reached a certain level and every bandit you see wielded glass armor.

Overly-stylized armor and weapons detract from my level of immersion in the gameworld.

Heavy armor tends to be uglier than their lighter counterpart. That's one of the reasons (besides combat monotony) why I rarely play warrior archetypes in TES games. Can't stand the look of heavy armor. Looks more ridiculous than WoW's impractical armor (which is designed to appeal to 13 year olds).

At least Bethesda improved the look/variety of robes for Skyrim.

Personally I stopped at Steel Plate. I LOVE the way that armor looks. Like it would actually protect me without being over the top with demonic spikes, twisted horns and other ridiculous protrusions. It just reminds me too much of WoW *shudders*. Once the CK is out we'll probably see more realistic armors appearing.