Yes, naturals if armor consist of lots of parts and nobody wears the same this will increase system demand, however:
In the civil war it was four outfits except yourself and follower, the soldiers and officers on both sides.
Unused equipment slots don't use resources, both you and npc has around 8 extra equipment slots who are used by moders for stuff like bandoleers, capes and earrings.
Except for the civil war, Riften marketplace is probably the busiest place in Skyrim but it has fewer people than before the battle for Bruma, both the soldiers in diffident uniforms and the civilians inside the city.
If outfits is an so large restriction why did they not made the civil war uniforms fallout style and non lootable? two less items, far more soldiers.
And because non used equipment slot don't use resources they could kept pants.

Main explanation is that the designers was lazy. But yes we got four types of fur armor, note they are based on the same model, add and remove some features.

YES.
The armor piece simplification was a good move. I don't care about epaullettes, shin guards, etc....
Also, the simple light-heavy division was a good move as well. Don't see a need for medium.

Overall, I'm quite happy with the selection. I would make some modifications to armor, though:
1. When you max out your smithing and it's perks, you shouldn't be able to get max protection from a low level armor set. In other words, there always needs to be a tradeoff between weight and protection. Thus, a 100 smithed set of fur armor should NOT reach an armor cap and provide equivalent protection to a 100 smithed set of ebony or daedric.
2. I'd make the armor choices a bit less linear. Example: Ebony is superior to Orcish and Dwarven. In a new system, I'd give Ebony a great rating, but I might want to see Orcish afford the exact same protection, but perhaps weigh more.
3. THere should be 'hidden' bonuses for matched sets that give them value above and beyond their armor rating and/or weight. For instance - glass armor should give you inherently better protection against Lightning (which makes perfect sense when you think about it.) Or perhaps Iron armor gives you bonuses against undead, vamps and werecreatures, dwarven gives you bonuses against all magic attacks, leather gives stealth bonuses, and fur & hide armors give camouflage bonuses. In this way, players don't simply race to get to dragon or daedric, but can make interesting tradeoffs that reflect player style or roleplaying choices.
4. Adding items like cloaks, or being able to customize colors and patterns/decorations would be very, very cool. Yes, I'm vain that way.

Them's my two cents.

Main reason to few npc in Oblivion cities was usually just one npc living in each of the large houses giving an low population, add that it was few natural meeting places except the marked area in the IC and the only ones working outside was farmers who worked outside the city anyway. Skyrim has more people working outside, more people living in houses and natural meeting places.

Would not be surprised, this is why it's important to nag about this all the time.

I'd prefer being able to toggle between different looks of greaves/pauldrons/cuirass on the armor model in your inventory, That way it keeps the current system and lets you customize somewhat.

A cuirass and greaves thread?

What is this, July 2011?

First if you like to have helmet or not is not relevant here.
Also pretty boring if you wanted boots of increased carrying weight and the DB gloves with you favorite armor

I prefer the separate armor slots from Morrowind. I want to be able to customize the looks of my character in the finest detail. If I fancy wearing just the left pauldron, let me do it. If I want to paint my leg armor in blue, let me do it.

Why is a chest-plate armor and a greaves piece acceptable to merge, but combining gauntlets and boots as well to it is unacceptable? The current customization means that quite a few boots and gauntlets are out-of-place with a torso armor. They are too different in shape or color to match at all. Greaves would blend this ground and make more armor combinations look better, even if they'd have the same amount and same armor in the game.
Skyrim doesn't have more NPCs on screen though, at least not a revolutionally high number compared to oblivion.

Also, if you believe AC3 interviews, they can have 2000 NPCs on screen at one time.

Eek. This topic went pretty sour. It you're console or pc, who cares? Your personal preference doesn't have an affect on anyone else, and companies are still going to limit their games some to go multi-platform. Get over it and be happy with what you've got! Sheesh.
Anyway. I'm mixed on the original topic. I like the idea or more customization but mixing greaves and plates from different Armor sets was never appealing to me. Maybe if they offered various styles for each set then I think it'd be great. Maybe my female warrior wants full iron manly greaves, and not some frumpy skirt looking pair?
Maybe we'll see this more in future titles (with color customization!) . For now we've got mods and imagination, respectively.

yes, less to carry, less weight, less to worry about

Thing is, armor + clothing combination is the main appeal. Matching silver plate armor with orcish green and dwarven orange doesn't mean it'll look great, just because you can do so. But in Skyrim, you have exactly the same possibility to F the look of your armor up, by combining some boots and gauntlets with a torso piece that doesn't match them at all. Putting pants to the game world, as well as greaves, can only do good in terms of customization.
As for the imagination part... That's definitely all we need, and the answer to everything! I'm playing TES 6 Elsweyr as we speak btw. Just using my imagination.

Have you ever played a character who didn't use a full set of armor? If you have, you'd understand why stealing everyone's pants is a bad idea.

Just.. wow.. Less weight isn't necessarily true, less to worry about is just another way of saying you want to smash in bandit skulls and not play an RPG, and less to carry is essentially the same thing as less to worry about.

The number of NPCs Skyrim has relative to Oblivion is irrelevant. The question is whether Skyrim with jumpsuit armor allows more than Skyrim with separate armor components would.

Indeed, however if you look at the post I quoted when I wrote it you'll see what I was replying to.

Thing is, the so-called "performance gain" from merged armor doesn't show more than once (that I could count) in the entire game: during the civil war. I'd say it's entirely possible that the visual effects from spells slow down the performance much more than merged armor. Which brings the question, is it an acceptable loss to have visually less impressive spells, for a performance boost? Is it an acceptable loss to have static grass instead of moving, for a performance boost? Is it an acceptable loss to make the entire outerior of Skyrim be a series of loading-screens, for a performance boost?

I agree completly

I think Beth should go back to the way armor slots were done in Morrowind, it was way easier to customize your character's armor. Oblivion began the process of removing armor slots when they combined the armor and pauldrons. With the rate at which TES is losing separate sections of armor the next game will only feature a helmet, a shield and a single piece of armor.

Nope. And the performance issue is [censored], it's smells of laziness on the developers part.


I would really like to be able to remove the greaves, my favourite character in OB was a two-handed swordsman http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100101225602/ageofempires/images/b/b9/Two_handed.jpgthat wore a cuirass, gauntlets and greaves. This is one thing that both Morrowind and Oblivion did way better than Skyrim.