Yeah, but what about the armor found in the Dwemer living quarters and Armories?

I can actually understand your gripe on this one. Never ran into it with TES, but I used to hate some of the ridiculous looking armor choices for WoW characters back when I used to play it.

Yes but the character models display them in the appropriate equipment types but then has Armor that is better than others.
It's essentially showing how good you're character can look but only if you don't use the better statistical equipment

There is a variety to appeal to differing tastes. Most of the armor looks awful to me, but some of it I love. I think that’s appropriate.

I almost always hate "epic" armor in any game, from MMOs (typically the most egregious offenders) to single-player RPGs. All of them should allow you to transmute stats of like armor (IE, heavy to heavy) to get the look you want imo.

My only gripe is that almost all the armor is big and clunky, there are way too few light armor choices.

Dwemer translates to "The Deep Elves."

It has also been specified time and again that Bethesda's TES is not a Tolkien rip off

Then you must also have problems with the other 98% of RPGs out there that have a progression of armor and weapons of increasing strength, that they mostly expect you to upgrade throughout the game.

(A system which has existed back into the depths of tabletop RPG history, with original D&D having better armor & weaponss become more and more expensive & rare, but you'd need to improve them in order to fight the tougher monsters you fought at higher levels.)

LOL

You really have no idea what you are talking about. Glass armor is made with a special volcanic glass that is insanely hard and razer sharp - not your average glass.

Here's what I am wondering:

When did elderscrolls start getting a bunch of historical warfare snobs as a part of their demographic? As someone who enjoys fantasy, I've always loved the special touches that tend to go into Elderscrolls armor sets. There is purpose, reasoning, and lore behind each piece. It's very comprensive and each style of armor appeals to specific types of characters and styles. It is well thought out High-Fantasy design, that follows a specific style established since the very first game of the series.

Skyrim is released, and not only do they have multiple types of armor for the same thing for the first time in forever (i.e. more than one type of steel, fur, leather, etc), but they also have armor designs that are much more interesting and visually better than Oblivion, and in some cases Morrowind. Yet one month after release, suddenly a small vocal minority complains that the armor looks too... "fantasy"? In a game about FIGHTING DRAGONS THAT BREATH FIRE and where you DO THE BIDDING OF DAEDRIC PRINCES TO RECIEVE ANCIENT ARTIFACTS?

Are you joking? Please tell me all the people seriously hating against the armor as a whole, are a joke. And then afterwards, please return to Mount and Blade or Total War series. Elder Scrolls is not and will never be based 100% off real-world mid-evil or Renascence timeperiod. At least I certainly hope not.

Okay okay people lets take a deep breath here. Now listen boys and girls.

The height of Dwemer is irrelevant here. In fact the fit of any armor is irrelevant. Armor has to be made individually to fit a person properly. So in this game anyone can pick up a piece of armor and it fits like magic. Lets accept the fact that in a game the rules of nature can bend a bit.

Now, OP, you state how you hate some armor sets because it doesn't look good on a Nord. Okay, fine. Personal opinion. Only problem is that you only said Nord. None of the other races.

So sure, I wouldn't expect Elvish armor to look good on an Orc either, I wouldn't go on a rant about it though. I would maybe think since Elvish armor is well...Elvish, that it looks more fitting on Elves? Just going out on a limb here.

Maybe Orcish armor looks best on an Orc.

Just saying, maybe I'm shooting into the wind here but who knows. Just an opinion right?

Honestly, raving about how something doesn't look good on your character is asinine. Characters can so wildly vary in apperance. A healthy choice of races, the multitude of characteristic sliders and both genders leads to such a insane number of possibilities. One would only think Beth, or any dev, would be incapable of making items look so 'koolz' for everyone.

So how about you calm down sir. Maybe deal with reality and just enjoy the game.

This is the real issue with skyrim:

The game designers had no idea what they were doing when they implemented such systems. It breaks immersion, continutity, and cheapens the whole experience the user has. It's the same reason why you get a constant barrage of [censored] quests, why the pacing of quests is terrible, and why things like werewolf totems are totally useless.

I feel like Bethesda hired an army of excellent world designers and level designers for Skyrim, but still kept the same exact game design/RPG design team, and never learned from the root of their mistakes (only fixing specific "issues", instead of the systems that ran them).

As far as I am aware, gameplay mechanics that are poorly implemented like Smithing are not "cannon" to the actual established lore.

No, you SHOULDN'T be able to craft dwarven armor. Bethesda didn't bother to actually implement a good way to get this though. They thought it would be a good idea to let players "give it out" like candy.

No, you SHOULDN'T be able to simply craft Daedric. They got this half right though - there is an arcane conjuration machine in the Mage College that can make Daedric armor, and requires a quest to get some special items to do so. This is a rather lore-freiendly (if shallow) way to get the armor... and then they go and make it so you can just spawn any armor anyways. Stupid? Yes.

....lol.

I have extensively modded both Morrowind and Oblivion, and put in well over 1000 hours into each game respectively. I started modding MW in 2003. That's probably before you born.

Once again, you speak with some self-taught authority yet have no factual proof behind anything you type. Please, just stop. Ask on the official lore forums how tall Dwemer are. Please.

Although, there's nothing wrong with crafting armor and weapons from Dwarven metal..... which, because of the way there's just one design of armor for each material, means that you end up making weapons & armor that look like stuff from ancient ruins.


(Come to think of it, that would be an interesting mod. Change the crafting system so that you can craft any of several types of armor - chain, half plate, full plate, scale, etc - from whatever materials you've learned enough about Smithing to use. So, make Imperial Plate armor.... with Iron, or Steel, or Ebony, or Glass. And come up with a set of basic stats for each of those combinations.)

Yeah, I'd wear the mage robes even on my warriors if I could get away with it. (You can eventually get somewhat decent with that, by wearing heavy bracers and boots, and enchanting everything possible with +Heavy and relying on blocking in the meantime).

Leather and the 3 steel variants always looked the best to me. Orc isn't too bad if you ignore the ugly helmet. Dragon, Ebony and Glass look alright enough, though Ebonys a bit dark.

Dwemer looks odd, and seems to scale its texture poorly (possibly a PS3 issue). Elven seems incredibly bulky for a light armor.

In tangentially related oddities.

Orcs are the berserker warriors. Dwemer built armor plated robot guards.
Dwemer weapons are better then orcs. Orc armor is better than Dwemer.
Shoudn't that be the other way around?

Someone is actually making that, called Crafting 300

It's a great idea, though in its current form it is way too simple/basic for me to want to try out just yet (as of now you can only make basic "iron swords" made with different materials - the weapons will look exactly the same except be green/red/etc.). But once its more full featured it'll be a great replacement for smithing.

You can hit the armor limit using steal with the right skill and perks. It is actually more efficient to do so due to less perks needed.

You claim most armor looks disgusting. That is entirely your opinion which I disagree, unless you can provide specific examples of armor which looks better and fits the name better.

i dotn mind the look of the armours...that said nightingale is all i wear....nananananananan batman!

Oh great, back to the complaining of crafting.

Holy crap, great lighting bolts of Zeus. You don't like it fine, think its against game cannon, okay.

Its optional people, to an absurd degree. Daedric shouldn't be able to be crafted, if you say so. I won't argue the mythos. I will say as far as gameplay wise, it doesn't break anything unless you choose to use it. So if your complaining about how it diminishes your experience, then stay away from it. Take the perk, make something else until you reach Dragon Armor.

Given Daedric's unnatural nature, I can see a gripe for lore sake. By level 90 your practically the second best smith in Skyrim, a near Master of the art. If Daedric is supernatural I think the Arcane perk should also be a prerequisite then to satisfy the magical nature of the armor set.

Otherwise the progression of materials makes sense. The only way it could get any more realistic would be to force you to attempt to craft with the material ahead of you. Making you craft shoddy works until you mastered the material and then could make 'normal' items and enhance them.

dwemer and daedric should not be craftable period.......by anyone. even ebony should be severely restricted because as i understand it most ebony came from the varvenfeld sp? region and that was destroyed by the volcano. daedric is supposed to be produced by daedra and not mortals and dwemer stuff is supposed to be mysterious.........they even hint at its raritiy in the quest you get when you buy your first dwemer armor piece.

skyrim just took any lore they had and took a nasty dump all over it. same with calling everything "dwarven"

chill ....

when are they gonna release the CK I WANT MY MODZ NOAW

It's not important how tall they are - it was you who had lots of passion in that issue. It's good to hear that you have modded TES as long as I have. Anyway the way you speak is very rude. Try to learn little respect towards other people or the kind of attitude you have will cause you a lot of problems in the future.

I don't wear daedric because I'm a fan of Oblivion, The helmet is ugly and the armor is all black. Make it look like it did in Oblivion and I'll use it.

I agree with a lot of what the op said. I tend to go with looks over function with armor almost all the time. I have never liked the look of the higher end stuff. In Oblivion I used either a city guard armor, iron, or just enchanted clothing. So far in Skyrim I've been sticking with Imperial armor or Achient nord armor. Sure it's harder to max out your armor stat but oh well. I'd rather like the look of my character and knock the difficulty down a bit than have to suit up and look like a demon to get through a cave.

I am not a big fan of the Skyrim armors either. So, I investigated it a bit to see if this a problem with the armors or their design or that it was simply me.

In an ideal game I want more armor types designed for specific classes, more armor pieces and more unique variations to have state of the art customization.

I wasn't charmed by Skyrim's setting, but the armors, especially the leather ones, did fit the setting, although I didn't like it. I think the horns on the helmets was what put me off. These reminded me too much about the Nordic stereotypes: The link that it is cold there so put horns on their helmets like Vikings was a bit too easy for my taste. But that has probably more to do with me than with a general problem, because I don't see many people making that point.

I see that the number of armor pieces and the types of armor decrease with each new title. On the other hand we expect the new games to look better than the old ones. And that requires more complex models, better textures and less symmetry. So, obviously Beth needs to cut some corners here and there. One can argue that graphics hardware improves and that video memory has been increased over the years, and thus that decline is not needed, but console tech does not keep up unless a new console generation shows up and a lot of PC gamers don't have the latest hardware either. Skyrim has become a huge game and not only armors have to look good, but also clothing, weapons, environments, etc. That further limits what can be done with armor. Within those restraints I think that Beth did well.

What I like about the armors and what has been improved compared to the ones in earlier TES games was that the Skyrim armors were more asymmetric in design. For an example: The Oblivion glass armor suffered from this the most. It had "butterfly patters" all over. Even in the glass shield. That is a side effect of trying to reduce texture usage, but in the case of Oblivion it was poorly done. In Skyrim that symmetry is not that obvious anymore. Well done.

Then there is the lore and consistency. Somehow these designs need to fit those. To stay with the glass armor: The one in Morrowind and the one in Oblivion didn't look much alike. The one in Skyrim certainly didn't look like Oblivion's glass armor, but it was closer to Morrowind's. Of course one can argue that times change and thus designs change over time and that there would also be regional influcences in the design and thus glass armor in Morrowind, Cyrodil and Skyrim would look different, especially because they were also set in different time periods.

So, whatever it is about the armors I don't like, it makes sense that they turned out the way they were. It certainly isn't a problem of Beth not wanting to improve those, nor does it seems to be a problem what some call dumbing down. If in the end I don't like those armors than it is more my problem and my taste than one of Beth.

That doesn't mean I don't want to push Beth to create something better, but I think, even though I am a PC gamer, that requires the next generation of consoles.