OK, so I got this idea after seeing the Ebony Mail, if you don't know, the Ebony Mail is pretty much the regular Ebony armor, but it no longer has pauldrons, its chest piece is smaller, and the cloth is replaced by chainmail. It reminded me of a light version of Ebony armor, even though it's heavy, never really got that, it has effects that would most benefit a thief/assassin, but back on topic. I thought, what if, through use of smithing, you could take any armor and change it from heavy to light, or vice versa. The result would be something like "Light Daedric Armor" or "Heavy Glass Armor" and they would look visually different and have different stats. As an example, if you turned regualr Daedric in to Light Daedric, the big, pointy shoulder pauldrons would become less pronounced and only be small spikes an the shoulders, and the chest piece would become smaller and less pronounced. "Heavy Glass" armor would have larger pauldrons, a larger chest piece, and the parts of the armor that were chainmail, would be replaced with the glass/metal that makes up the rest of the armor. Doing this to an armor would drop or raise its defense and add or subtract from its weight. This would allow people to use whatever armor they want, but still use the armor type they want, provided they had a high enough smithing skill, something like 10 points over what you need to craft the normal version of the armor, and the relevant smithing perk, of course.

I don't know about changing between heavy and light but I agree there should be two armor versions for most materials. Plus, you should be able to melt gear down to recover materials, even at a loss. Then the perk tree could be redone to just be heavy/light.

I agree for the "matriel" armor, but for armor like the Stromcloack officer should stay an exsclusive to light, it keep's some balance. Also like before stated I would like heavy Nightingale armor, it doesn't suit the style of a theif.

A heavy/light tree with a combination cross over...

Thankfully there are mods that lets you make light/heavy armor versions of most armour, but I agree, that should have been in the Vanilla game, as should the ability to melt weapons and armour down to ingots.

Would love for something like this to happen. It won't though.