Memory usage, each type of armor needs a different lightmap, transform matrice per body area thereby causing each combination of armor pieces to occupy an oufit slot and thereby using more memory which reduces available memory for greater quantities of NPC's unless they are similarly dressed (the memory usage tends to increase exponantially - reducing the number of variables/body areas typically reduces the rate of memory usage increase, ex. reducing the number of NPC races would have even greater affect because they are the Base but doing that would basically impair the Lore/story/style of the TES world signicificantly - Creatures and custom races aren't generally a factor as they rarely spawn in variety - usually multiples of the same type which is much easier on memory usage than NPC's)

Aye, truer words were never spoken.

A true warrior meets the world bare-chested, axe in hand, and be-skirted in his or her finest battle kilt. Only ne'er do wells and lawyerly types hide behind trousers.

And I never liked that decision. Ya know Morrowind wasn't deserted and you had separate pieces. I find it absolutely ridiculous, you have games like the Sims 3 [which isn't really grand] who can have separate pieces and have a room filled of partying Sims. Or even Saints Row with their seperate pieces and yet for some [censored] reason Bethseda cannot learn from other games and somehow make it work. Becuase I don't want my woman to wear skirts and dresses in the middle of battle. I want to be able to take a shirt and put pants with it, with armored boots.

You know what's even worse is the fact that Fable 3 also has separate pieces for the character and they have lots of people in town.

It's ridiculous for Bethseda to even go with that phony ass excuse.

Light armor pants

Cloth shirt

Armored shoes

It's not that hard to ask. Or at least give the woman a few item clothing with pants. Btw, why are all the clothes dirty in Skyrim? You buy clothes from Radiant Raiment and they are patched or the hammerfell garb the pants are dirty.

Might as well call it Dirty Raimant, we sell you used clothes.

Memory usage from the models stops being an issue with Geometry Instancing. If they aren't using it with the massive amount of duplicate models laying around, shame on them. If having the armor split up somehow means more texture memory being used they are being horribly inefficient with texture space. A single 1024*1024 texture uses the same memory as 4 512*512 textures. There isn't suddenly more geometry there because it's broken up either.

Majority of the reasoning for these changes is absolutely mindless. Anyone with a remote amount of knowledge of 3d API's would know about these things. The game is still crashing as much as Oblivion because of awful garbage collection and unloading unused assets/areas.

In America we say pants. Deal with it, move on.

Number of Americans > # of Canadians + Brits + Aussies and NZers, I believe. But in true internets form, I'm too lazy to Google up the answers.

There is no reasonable explanation for why they didn't seperate the pieces other than 1. making it easier on console users and 2. to save time in asset creation.

While I loath to say it because Bethesda should be the ones to do it, I'm sure the Modding community will seperate things out when the Construction Kit is released (hopefully this coming patch)
I know at the very least I will be doing that myself if no one picks up the ball. As well as adding stats and spell creation.



Doesn't matter because your actual formula is Americans + Canadians + Australians + New Zealanders > British

No sorry, New Zealand here.

The English have it completely wrong, and are the only ones who call underwear pants.

Pants comes from the word pantaloons, and means the same thing as trousers. Pants as a slang term for underwear comes from the word underpants, for under-pantaloons, which makes absolutely no sense at all.

Beth is American. . . deal w/ it

Besides, as the guy pointed out, you calling underwear "pants" is slang. Ur doing it wrong. get mauled.

Occupy Skyrim! We are the 99%! WE DESERVE PANTS!!

Oh and for this whole thing about England calling it trousers? Well you can call it whatever you want. In the U.S, we call it pants and it's a connotation. Language evolves and if there are synonyms or one country calls it one thing and another country calls it another, just keep that in mind and continue to say how you want to say it. You are entitled to the option of how you can say a word.

That concludes my rant for the day...

to be fair, most of the male clothing has some form of skirt as well. there arent that many pants in skyrim to begin with. still, it not as though more customization would be bad. bethesda's excuses for combining them just mask the fact that they just didnt want to bother with it; too much work.

OP its just easier to have less things to equip. Also armor in history consisted of the bottom and top of your body (Torso, Legs) its modern game that don't combine the two. Armor is bottom and top protection.

I loved the mix and match outfits of Oblivion too.

P.S. You can't really call it what you want, we invented the language and you chose to speak our language, its not up to any American to change the language, also in the English/American dictionary Pants is NOT the synonym of trousers. On topic...Besides Skyrim is based of Vikings who were traditional English/Latin speaking, so technically they are/should be called Trousers in the land of Skyrim. Drop the whole Patriot act please. For the love of Skyrim? In England we also say Kekks and Trou, but we don't claim that its an evolution of the English language, its just slang, where in retrospect, You calling trousers pants could be seen as slang and not correct.

Morrowind had the most gear management of any of the last three TES games. They had leggings, boots, Left Pauldron, Right Pauldron, Left glove, Right Glove, Gaunlets, Helmet, 2 fingers, a neckpiece, and Chestpiece. This being said, I'm actually glad they've reduced the number of armor slots of your character. While the micro-managing was often very fun, I am much more happy to have the extreme increase in bag-space which comes with carrying 4 less items that need to be in slots. The reduction in customization is cosmetic IMO, and probalby also to reduce enchantment min-maxing.

They are speaking it wrong.......

OT: I also don't understand why they couldn't just add more pants. There are pants in the game, (for women) bu not enough. Would it really be that hard?

It prevents you from having to deal with ants. Ants in your pants.

im againts pants on women......

That's like saying Japan should learn the full Chinese pronunciations of Kanji. Just no.

Back on topic: PANTS. I WANT THEM. SO BADLY

You should not have to wear pants if you don't want to.

FREEEDOOMMMM!!!

There is no such thing as mutated version of English. Languages evolve all the time, especially when it exposed to different cultures. For example, Aussies, Americans, South Africans, and Ghanaian live nowhere near England, you think they are not going to have their own little changes when it comes to the Language?

Might as well say Modern UK English is a mutated version of medieval English.

I believe that the current system with chest and pants are due to design choices. In Oblivion some combinations made the characters glitches where the pants and chest piece didn't connect properly and the graphical glitch were visual. Some of these armors makes the total armor looking good while they prevent certain combinations not glitch. Of course they could have designed each pant/chest to fit but that would probably make some of these armorpieces impossible.

I'm sure there will be a mod to separate armour into upper and lower and to add more pants... chill.

True actually. It depends which age of language Skyrim is based on then.

Mods will save us...just wait.