If it is, what is the most useless skill?

Speech is very rarely any use. I never use perks on it, and the game has few times when you use it in conversation.

Lockpicking is a great skill but it doesn't need much leveling and no perks, because once you understand the mechanics of it anyone can open a
Master lock at level 1.
(with patience and a few lockpicks)

Not especially. And most speech challenges seemed to be placed early enough in the game that few characters will actually have the skill to pass them.

I also think it's goofy that the reason given for dropping things like the Athletics skill was, "Everyone ends up using it anyways," and then the turn right around and change the Speech skill so it's something that everyone ends up developing. Some of the design decisions seem really schizophrenic.

It's useful for buying and selling stuff. Formerly what Mercantile was for.

I do like being able to sell anything to anyone though.

I don't think I've ever used an Alteration perk...

Sadly, no. It had so much potential though, especially if it could influence different outcomes to quests. Hopefully it will be implemented better in TES VI rather than completely eliminated like Athletics/Acrobatics

detail: if you can get your speech to 100. literally everything will have value. which means: if you ant to rank smithing and do nothing but make iron arrows, get 100 speech. 11 gold for the ingot turning it into 24 gold for the arrows. constant profit and training.

I call it a "convenience" perk....makes things easier, especially at lower lvls, but not necessary

Speech is pretty useful at higher levels because vendors just won't be able to accept many, if any items, for what it's worth considering a lot have low amounts of gold. It's main function is to be Mercantile/Barter rather than Speech?persuasion sadly.

The problem with Alteration is that its only real use is Armor spells... which are only useful to pure mages who aren't weraing any physical armor (not even light armor). All armor-flesh spells short of Dragonskin is easily surpassed by a combo of armor skill/perks and smithing improvements.

Where's the water-walking? Where's the burden (which could be repurposed to slow since that's now an affectable actor value)? Where's the feather? Where's the slowfall? Where's the elemental resists? If Alteration is meant to be a utility purview, then give it some freakin' utility spells!

Depends on your definition of "useless".

For me, my game is making tons of money via thieving. Speech is absolutely IMPERATIVE for this!

Now, you could say that after a certain point that "money is useless". And to that I say "I'm a PS3 owner, and I STILL find nabbing money fun! - and imagine how much fun it is to enter THREE expansions with over 6 million gold at your disposal!?"

I perk it mostly out for roleplay reasons, but I don't view it as particularly useful.

The only perk I think is actually useful is Merchant, since it increases the inventory of merchants and allows you to get some rare items that are pretty much otherwise unavailable.

Edit: I think Alteration has some useful perks, like the magic resistance and Atronach, but the magic school's spell selection is lacking.

Same... I've actually never used ANY magic perks. Being a thief... why should i? Screw the invisibility - I'm sneaky enough as-is!

And I can just enchant enough gear to get my alteration costs down to ZERO - and the only spell I'll use is transmute to convert iron to gold. Useful for manufacturing all those Diamond necklaces (+100 profit for each) via (spoiler incoming) The powler's profit perk.

I perk it for RP and fun.

I was REALLY worried when I first got that last perk for adding 1,000g to all vendors - fearing I just wasted a limited point. Man, I can't tell you how convenient that is! It actually even converted most of those useless inkeeers and fruit vendors into viable loot-dumps! So nice to see them with 1,100g instead of 100g! And seeing the fences with 5k instead of 4k helps too for higher ticket items to sell!

((Note, not ALL of the vendors get 1k for some reason. The food vendor in Riften, Greymane's wife in Whiterun and a few select inkeepers don't get the boost for some buggy reason. >_<))

You bring up good points. I've only ever used Telekinesis on a rare occasion and armor spells for mages. Candlelight too, but that's it.

Yeah, it is nice to have vendors actually have money, but after a certain point I stop selling, or even picking up the loot I find in dungeons because I'm brushing my teeth with Septims anyway.

Next skill to be removed?

With the removal of NPC disposition there isnt really much left that speech does.
There arent that many dialogue options for speech either.

I want more skills, not less.
I want attributes back so that NPC's can have disposition apart from this ridiculous "I dont like you" -gives potato- "Now I like you, go empty my house" system that Skyrim has.

I agree with you. I hope that Bethesda increases the number of skills, if not in DLCs then in the next game.

Well speech is important depending on your character build. I like the first couple of points in that tree. Early on gold can be hard to come across but later on as the game progresses it gets better.

Its not like you can't do without them, but it helps a small bit.

But most usually take it for convenience sake. It doesn't change anything but being able to sell stolen goods to any merchant and merchants having a gold stack saves you from travelling city to city trying to find a buyer. I frequently travel through multiple cities only cause most vendors don't have enough gold on them.

I imagine the next game will only have 3 skills, but you'll be able to get a dog.