hypothetically could I use a skill, let's say Soul Trap, over and over and over and over etc., ad naseum to lvl it up? or are will my skills level up as my character levels up? could I potentially be a lvl 5 character and max out my Soul Trap (or any skill) by using it ala other ES games? or will I have to wait til im a certain lvl to advance my skills further?

Good question. I never really "got" the skills / level thing in Skyrim and other TES games. As I recall, there, you could raise your blacksmithing skill by crafting iron daggers over and over and over and over and you'd have like 100 blacksmithing skill, which is all well and good... but your COMBAT skills would be level 1 - 3 or whatever they were just from the few fights you'd have to do in the opening parts of the game. Your LEVEL would also be increased because your SKILL increased. So you --- and more importantly, your foes! ---- would be higher level but your combat skills would still be very very very low. So you'd have a very hard time of it.

I'm reasonably sure that leveling-xp is tracked separately from skill-advancement-ranks so that you could have a high rank in a given skill and yet not have a high LEVEL, although there may be some kind of cap, like you can't have a skill greater than, say, 2x your level or something. I Dunno (obviously).

Main reason I'd like some clarification on leveling xp / skill "xp".... is that I wonder if it would be advantageous to level up multiple skills at the same time, or if that would somehow increase your raw level, and yet your skill in any one weapon would be LESS than if you had focused on one weapon exclusively. And if you DID focus on one weapon exclusively, and then wanted to change to a different weapon, your skill with that weapon would be WAY lower than your "main" weapon.

Not really sure having a low / high weapon skill factors in, anyway. I mean, obviously you have to have a given skill rank in order to unlock a particular skill "power" / ability that you put on your hotkey bar. But if you have only class/race skills slotted on your hotkey bar, and don't use any weapon skills in the hotkey bar... then what does your skill rank in that weapon DO, really? Does it increase your damage? Your chance to hit (behind the scenes, since we know you have to 'aim' to some extent to hit).

you use a skills enough times and it raises your skill level with that particular skill set. I.e a Templar that heals a lot will increase his healing light tree and be able to get more healing light abilities iirc

In the solo games the skills are the backbone of everything. In fact experience level for the character is a derived level that is based off calculations of skill levels. Some would argue that the solo games took a wrong turn by having the skills be player skills and character skills, but this I liked very much. It is a video game after all and so the skills were things the player did - as they got better then the character would level and the world provides more challenge.

With this game the player skill takes more of a back seat like in other MMO games and other than lockpicking it seems that most skills are not reliant on the player also being good at what they do. So just having a weapon or spell or ability will level because your character is doing it.

But then on top of that with the classes there will also be a point buy system for more specialized abilities.

I don't think the actual ratios have been released for the skill building and the relationship to level as is well mapped out for the solo games:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Level

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Leveling

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Leveling

If the progress of skill and level are independent surely the amount of experience needed to further raise a skill beyond your current level would in turn level you up to some extent. That is unless you gain experience for skills similar to Elder Scrolls III.

i dont know if you can get a solid answer on this. i am not sure what info has been released. i figure any real info would be breaking the nda

its all in their http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU07krDtruw

cool. i am always worried about what i can and cant say now lol. i tend to play it safe