Looking at skyrim. I haven't actualy seen any armour that looks so complex to warrant a joining of the slot. (their excuse for removing greaves/trousers/skirts was that it added enough effort to slow them down) It would have been easy for developers to cut armours apart for seperate slots. Especialy if bethesda added cloth physics (but still doable without)



As a sidenote.. The pauldrons didn't need to be joined to the armour either.

These are the ones that have minor/major problems
Fur- Seperate skirt/top would have been easy. One fur variant would have disallowed Shoulder pieces.
Leather- Seperate shoulder pieces would have been very easy. Seperate skirt would have required a little more work
hide, Scaled and studded- Would have been Very, Very easy to seperate leg from torso. Shoulder piece removal would require a small ammount of work in fixing
Dragonscale- Wouldn't work.
Stormcloak/guard- Probably intended to be one piece. Still- All shaulders would require is a removal of that bit of chainmail.
Orcish- Would need a redesign of the waist and shoulders
Imperial leather- Might be best to be one piece.
Steel and daedric- Would need some alterations on pauldron size and the waist.
Ebony- Without Cloth physics the loincloth might clip if it were a torso part
Glass- is an ugly armour and should have never become such. >

Since at least Morrowind, gamesas have been cutting down on what one player has been able to wear at any given time in the Elder Scrolls series. Observe-

Morrowind: 17 items (Two Pauldrons (left and right), Two Gauntlets (left and right), boots, cuirass, greaves, helmet, shield, 1h weapon, shirt, pants, skirt, robe, amulet, and two rings)

Oblivion: 10 Items (Gloves, Cuirass, Greaves, Boots, Helmet, Shield, 1h weapon, amulet, and two rings)

Skyrim: 8 items (Gloves, Armor, Boots, Shield, Helmet, 1h weapon, amulet, and ONE ring)

I think the devs are caving to time pressures by the Exes and adding less armor as time goes on. Looking into the CS editors, Oblivion has far more slots available to play around with than just the 10, same goes for Skyrim. In fact, the limiting factor in these games is incompatability if two armors share a same slot. In Morrowind, it was far more rigid. A bracer and a gauntlet took up one wrist/hand slot. You couldn't wear a small glove with a bracer because the game wouldn't allow two peices to occupy the wrist/hand area, even though the glove affects only the hand and the bracer only affects the wrist. In Oblivion, theoretically, you could since the armor is based on what is currently occupied where, instead of the type of armor/clothing it is. You could wear two cuirasses if one was slotted to the "head' and the other to the "torso"!

It may just be a way to cut down on the number of enchantments a player can have now that there's an enchantment perk tree.

There are far better ways of accomplishing this than by arbitrarily limiting equipment slots.

I just want to wear pants under Savior's Hide.

Your completely ignoring how the armor could clip in different combinations even in your examples HALF of them have problems if leg armour was separate. If you add in clothing to the mix it gets even worse.

Having enchantments be pathetically weak so we can wear 20 items isn't a solution.

Additionally spawning NPC's with more items uses up more processing power. The game needs to track every item on every active NPC in the cell.

It's a fantastic thing I never suggested that then. There are like literally a billion possible solutions. I can name a few if you'd like:

-Have a set number of enchantments than can be active at any given time. If you wear ten rings and a shirt and a coat and a briastplate and pants and boots and whatever, it won't matter because you're still limited to X number of enchantments.

-Each part of the character's body can only "absorb" a single enchantment. That means you can wear five rings on a hand, but only one of them will have any effect. Enchanted pants under enchanted greaves? Pick one to use.

-Rather than number of enchantments, each character has an enchantment limit of, say, 100 points. A minor health boost enchantment might cost ten points, a fifteen point skill boost enchantment might cost 45. You can then mix and match, taking two or three strong enchantments or several smaller ones. You could even tie your enchantment limit into a skill, allowing for certain characters to employ more enchantments than others.

It has nothing to do with enchantments.

The reason for less individual armor pieces is simply the size of the game. As the complexity of the world and NPC's etc has gotten bigger. It's harder to render all those individual pieces.

Although I must say I miss wearing just one bone mold pauldron with the 2 spikes..

There seems to be a philosophy at gamesas that streamlining makes a better game. We see this with magic, weapons, armor, skills, attributes, dialog, quest options, and even the inventory. Is it laziness? Lack of imagination? I don't know.

Todd Howard was quoted as asking, "What if Apple made a video game?" Well, if they did, it would be Skyrim. Skyrim looks fantastic in the ads just like Apple products. It's sleek and shiny just like an Apple product. It's over marketed and over hyped at the expense of depth and user interaction, just like an Apple product.

All of those sound worse in some way to the current system. Either being vastly more complicated to program.(especially for NPC's) or simply more irritating. Still does not address the rendering issues which can only be solved by limited the number of NPC's in a cell or limiting the number of item slots available.

Um, the second option is exactly the same as the current system. It simply allows for a larger number of wearable items.

No its not because you need a way to pick which are active and which aren't. Which would not only be complicated for the player but for how NPC's would handle it. It also doesn't solve the rendering issues from having large numbers of NPC's at the same time.

Catch my edit, I misread the order I had written things. In any case...
You already do this by selecting what equipment you equip. If I have an enchanted shirt and an enchanted briastplate I can, in Skyrim's system, wear one or the other. In the alternative system, I can wear both and select one enchantment or the other. You're still making a choice as to which effect is active. The latter simply allows for a greater degree of aesthetic customization.

How do NPCs handle the equipment? how does the game manage that decision and rendering for a dozen or more NPC's existing in the same cell. How do you handle the clipping that is bound to come up for having all those different possible equipment combinations.

If they did do that altering system you'd just be here *&*)&)*$@ that all the enchantments don't work together and you never find more then five NPC's in the cell at the same time. (due to the rendering issues your system would cause).

Um, the same way they handled clipping in Morrowind and Oblivion. It's not like Skyrim is devoid of clipping itself. NPCs would obviously equip the best equipment unless specifically instructed not to, the same way they do now.
Why would there only be five NPCs? Has anyone actually done a test to see how much of a load is put on a system from adding a dozen new pieces of clothing in any given city?

Anyways, you've changed your argument. First it was about enchantment balance, an argument that I really don't care for because it's so clearly wrong. Now you're talking about performance, which is something I don't really have enough knowledge of to comment on personally.

Leg armor was as unsixy as the poo.

That's my guess.

Laziness. Laziness and only laziness.

All excuses are dishonest rationalizations. The performance argument was the most hilarious bull-[censored] I have ever heard.

Or rather, I should say 'priorities.' They did not see it as a good use of their resources.

The rendering is a lame excuse. How many npc's can be on screen without crashing? Its not even that much more that what Oblivion could.

Game performance has nothing to do with why armor/clothing has been streamlined. The performance hit from NPC's is the scripts running on them. Not the items they have equipped.

I agree with the OP. This really is lame, especially with certain armors. I kinda want to wear pants with both hide and leather, imperial sets (Both light and heavy), and Saviors Hide. Would have been remedied by allowing us to equip torso and greaves as separate but nope instead its all one single piece which leaves me looking a tad bit silly wearing no leg warming attire in the middle of an arctic tundra. I dont even care much for enchantments myself as I play without them, but what kinda irks me is that my clothing options are limited to what combination the artist thought would suit the material yet never truly expanded upon the fact that maybe the player in this case me would want to wear something else included with the current outfit. Like maybe a leather armor that has pants for example.

It could have been done, iirc the excuse was that with less armor pieces they could fit more npc's in an area at once. I do agree with you though.

But do take into account how much better skyrim looks, the people, the landscape, the weapons, everything looks better. To the extent that you can't even compare oblivion to skyrim aesthetically (IMO).

With Skyrim's enchanting system, you're allowed 12 (14 for shields, 16 if you include weapon which have different enchantments) enchanting slots if you perk enchanting, which is more than Oblivion. So I think it's obvious why we're only allowed one ring and one necklace. I'd prefer if they made enchantments on rings half as strong, but allowed two rings at once.

Yes, it's just depressing to watch what this game has come to, compared to what it came from.

People can [censored] about how much the graphics have improved all they want, "OMGZZZZ!1!! Ther grafics r so much beterz!1!!11" I don't care about the graphics, yes they are better, but so what? I still play [censored] MUDs. I don't care about graphics, I care about how many choices I can make in the game.

Weapon selection? Decreased.
Spells? Decreased.
Armour Selection? Decreased.
Skills? Decreased.
Attributes? GONE.

Graphics? Better.
Voice Actors? Ok.

Look at everything I lose compared to what I gain.

I mean for crying out loud, I hated Oblivion. It felt bland, and boring. It had no personality what so ever. But I would much rather play Oblivion than Skyrim right now, because at least there I still have SOME impact on the character I created.

Bethesda obviously doesn't care about what we want, They have gone from making epic scale games, to this. All for money. They don't care about what the consumer wants. They keep trying to connect with players from different genres and pull them to the game, just to sell another copy. I highly doubt they care how [censored] their game has become.

I'm willing to bet that TES: Skyrim was the most sold-back-to-gamestop game in the months of November and December of last year.

How many TES Veterans are still around? Those who started with Arena or Daggerfall? Our numbers are dwindling I'd say.

I'll stick around for TESVI: but if it's just the same lowblow and steal your money as Skyrim, then I'm definitely finished with this series.

Edit* It's my belief that Morrowind was the pinnacle of this series. My hand wasn't held throughout the game, I still had tons of options on what my character could be, could wear, and could do. If I want better graphics, I can just download a graphics mod that someone else made. And it's graphics could damn near be on par with skyrim, maybe even better in some certain cases.

And another thing that really grinds me are these morons who need realism in a game to really connect with it. "Oh it's not realistic to punch a dragon to death, or jump onto the roof of a second story building, or run like a cheetah." Ok, yea, Because I can really walk outside my house and fight a dragon to the death with lightning that shoots out of my fists, or my replica Gladius from the movie Gladiator!

The way these people talk, they won't be happy until TES: VIII The Office. "Hey, tell Fred down in accounting, you know, the argonian? I need that Arrow report on my desk by Turdas."

It is odd.

Other games manage to put trousers and lower armour on with no problem.
Slow it down, brahmindung.
It's a excuse to do less work. The engine could handle it no problem, it handles everything else.

If other new games like Kingdoms Of Amalur can put a seperate top and bottom on, Skyrim can.
There are some things I would want to wear trousers with. The Saviours Hide for one.

The older system sounds good, seperate pauldrons etc

Nearly every game I have or play, the top and bottom are seperate.

You are forgetting that some of the slots are unusable, like the teeth and tongue slots. The only one Oblivion had that we could really play around with was the tail slot. Skyrim has about 10 slots unused for us modders. It has over double the number of slots from Oblivion.

Each game used a model replacement method. When you equip a cuirass that it tied to the torso slot, it literally removed the torso mesh and loads up the cuirass. Wehn you equip a curiass tied to the helmet slot, it will remove the helmet mesh and load up the cuirass mesh. This is how its been done since morrowind.

Skyrim has the potential for a more complex armor system then morrowind. Its just the design choice by Bethesda was to make the armor sets all one mesh to get more detail and not have the huge skirt looking things to keep mesh clipping to a minimum like Oblivion had.

I beg to differ. Look at this sixyness. http://images.uesp.net/6/63/MW-npc-Galos_Farethi.jpg