How are you going prevent characters from being godlike in every aspect if you remove or diminish the effects of those perks?

Do you want to mask them in some "cool" effect that is in the end a flat DPS increase, or do want to have a character that has 100 skill in everything and dual wields 2h weapons while shooting firebolts at the same time?

Props to the Extra Credit video. Their coverage is almost without exception consistently insightful.

Using that methodology, the skill trees that correspond to specializations should be emphasized (i.e. the fire/frost/shock category), while at the same time merging in the perks related to base damage/armor into the skill itself. That I feel is probably the easiest way to make a significant improvement to the skill system without totally destroying the current system, and also reduces the # of perk points wasted on those "base" perks. Also probably taboo but could work in a restricted way is some sort of re-speccing system (maybe a Daedric Shrine quest reward) that allows perk points to be directly transferred between combat and magic skills (not accessory skills like smithing, for a couple of reasons).

A respeccing system is very cool. =] It feels like it should need some 'atonement' or indeed some Deadric vows to pull it off.

And about integrating base damage perks into more interesting perks: That would be cool and balanced. However, they are now 'filler' perks in every tree without any interesting side-effects. Maybe add like Fall-out 3 strange powers/curses (exploding enemies, more stamina at night, better damage versus spiders) and make those filler perks interesting in that way.

Thats part of the challenge. I feel like major things that tie into the actual skill should be primarily governed by the skill. This means that getting an 80% boost in 2handed damage because you spent 5 perk points on that tree and not because of the fact that your skill is at 80 or so, would be removed in favor of something more deep that enhances/augments the pillars that make up that skill.

Cool effects are nice, but that's not exactly the goal here. There's plenty of helpful ways to make it so perks enhance your character's ability within a skill without making it so the actual hard-stats of the skill have a major influence from the perks (hard-stats such as damage, protection, etc). The key is thinking up some that are balanced and useful, while also making sure the balance of the hard-stat scales nicely with the game. If this can be achieved, then we'll have a nice perk system that not only plays nicely with a large variety of character builds but makes it so it actually feels deeper, more interesting, and more fun to use than the current system where half the perks just take over what the skill should have been governing in the first place.

For example, there are a slew of status effects that many different things can cause in the game, it shouldn't be too difficult to implement them in some way here. Maybe replacing the first 2handed perk from 20% damage bonus to 20% fatigue damage on the enemy per power-strike (just an example, this might end up being either useless or unbalanced).

Hey all, thought I'd update you on some design progress I've had. I've written up a design "doc" on what the "pillars" of each skill are, and various quick notes on how the progression of the skill would work, and what kind of perks would be for each skill.


PILLARS:What are pillars?
Pillars are the driving forces behind the skill. In other words, the boundaries, and adjectives that describe what a skill is all about. It includes usage and how far you can take the skill. All perks and skill changes MUST conform to their "pillars" that make the skill what it is. For example, a perk that makes Heavy Armor "weightless" would be removed and instead replaced with a perk that accents and builds upon the "pillar" of what makes a skill unique from other skills.

Combat Skills:

• Heavy Armor - High Protection, Low agility. Protection is diverse, and complex. Becoming defensive is the name of the game here. Heavy armor is always heavy as a "cost" to being protected more, and always more expensive.
  
• Light Armor - Low Protection - High Agility. The idea behind Light Armor is simple protection, but at no cost to speed, weight or agility. Unarmored would be a good "skill" to have a presense here as well, in the same sense that unarmed has a home in One-Handed. Light armor will always involve better manuverability compaired to heavy, and could offer bonuses to how your character interacts with the world and what he can hold.
  
• One-Handed - Low to Medium damaging weapons, with high speed, and attack accuracy. Perks involved here would focus on the specilization of one-handed weapon types, including hand to hand. A high skill in one-handed will give players primarily bonuses in damage and attack speed. An "easy to use" skill early on, that upon mastery gives more diverse options within the skill's strengths (i.e. parry?).
  
• Two-Handed - Medium to High damaging weapons, with low speed, low accuracy. Perks involved would focus on the specilization of two handed weapons. A high skill in two handed will primarily involve boosts to damage, accuracy of attacks, and smoothness of using a twohanded weapon. Two handed starts off very "damaging" early on but is sluggish and hard to use. As players level up the usage of two handed weapons will be easier to use and have less of a fatigue drain. Mastery will have a similar level of damage being exerted for the level, but the usage makes dealing said damage much more fluid and consistant.
  
• Block - The blocking of damage that happens to a player who "readies" themselves. Players who block will always move more catiously and slowly than those who do not block. Perks could specilize in what types of things the player wishes to block more... perhaps an arcane blocking tree, a weapon blocking tree, and a shield blocking tree? Or perks that give bonuses to status effects when blocked in a certain time? Skill affects damage absorbed, and how much a player reacts to getting hit while blocking. Low level blockers will negate a small amount of damage and may stumble after each hit. High level players will have better "reaction" time, be able to let the shield absorb more damage, and be able to active use their shield or blocking weapon against the enemy.
  
• Smithing - The act of creating new weapons and armor, maintaining weapons and armor, and giving permanent enhancements to weapons and armors. Ideally, smithing's primary purpose would be to maintain the condition of gear the player has. Such as, say after 100 uses a weapon degrades to a lower level that can be maintained with the smithing skill. The skill should affect the amount of materials needed to repair, craft or enhance weapons and armor, as well as the chance of succcessful smithing attempts. Perks should focus on giving bonuses to smithed armor in value, defense, etc, as well as bonuses to what you can and cannot repair and improve. This may or may not be a focus of a perk rebalance mod, because smithing (in my opinion) needs so many changes to warrent usage of a full mod all together.

Stealth Skills:

• Sneak/Acrobatics(perhaps?) - The act of moving around fluidly/silently and getting out of trouble. The higher your skills in sneak, the easier it will be to get out of trouble in more situations, and the easier it will be to avoid enemies. Perks could focus on specilizing in sneak-attacks, abilities while stealthed, and abilities to get "out" of situations (that could involve certain boosts to jumping, or sprinting perhaps?).
  
• Looter (changed from "Pickpocket"?) - The act of stealing, treasure hunting, and aquiring items of value. I want to change this from just "Pickpocket", as the general concepts behind the skill apply to more than just stealing out of NPC's pockets. Perks could involve specilizing in a pickpocet tree, a treasure hunter tree, and using "treasure" found perhaps (i.e. ability to wear more than one ring or amulet, etc)? A higher skill in this directly relates to bonuses in pickpocket chance, bonuses to stealing and finding better loot.
  
• Security (changed from "Lockpicking"?) - Picking locks, locking locks, and the maintainence of locks. The change to "security" is to reflect an ability to also lock things or set traps, ideally in order to add more utility to the skill. The primary force behind lockpicking though would be to provide boosts to picking locks. Ideally the "set" lock position would change every time you attempted a lock, but this effect would be lessened the higher skill you have. So the skill directly relates to the durability of lock picks, general "difficulty" of locks depending on their level, and how much varation locks will have when you fail an attempt. A high level security player will be able to consistently open locks, often without losing a lockpick while a low level might have to go through a lot of lockpicks to open any lock higher than adept. Perks would focus on increasing durability of lockpicks, locking doors, and other such features. If I can't implement some of this stuff, then the perk tree will probably look a lot like it does now.
  
• Speechcraft (changed from speech?) - The act of interacting with NPC's to get what you want. There's not much I can really do here without completely redoing the speech system, so I'd probably leave this alone as the current perks work well within the pillars... for the most part. There is too heavy of a focus on bartering though. There are a lot of things needed to change to really redo this system - i.e. making it so you can barter for better prices again, giving a LOT more options to pursuade someone or increase relations, etc. A higher skill would involve people having a naturally higher disposition to you, doign better with prices and buying, generally being a trader and passing speech checks better. I'd like to see more perks involved with the actual speech part of this skill versus it being pretty much "Mercantalism" though. Such as, woudln't it be cool if there were perks that gave you more opportunities to use the speech-check? Such as, maybe letting you have the chance to pursuade bandits to not attack, or to get better rewards from quests, or to let someone in their home, etc.
  
• Alchemy - The act of gathering ingredients to make potions or poisons. I honestly haven't used this skill enough to know if it is balanced or works well, but ideally I would imagine a higher skill would involve better potency of potions, how many ingredients you can use, etc. I feel like it might be a good idea to further expand the abilities of alchemy to also involve the creation of "traps" or fletching (arrowcraft)? Though this might be suited to a completely seperate mod, and it isn't exactly alchemy.
  
• Marksman - Involves anything with range attacks with a bow. Pretty simple here, the default "pillars" are already well established I think. Perks would focus on adding more utility with the usage of bows, and give bonuses to specilizing with certain types (i.e. Hunting bows deal extra damage to creatures?). Bow usage starts out slower and more fatiguing, but as players gain more skill, they will be able to ready arrows faster and with less fatigue. Bows with higher damage can give a larger fatigue drain. Arrows with higher damage will not affect this however.

Magic Skills:
NOTES ON MAGIC FOR ALL SCHOOLS:
Here is the concept I've come up with, using the "Destruction" skill as an example. Those who have a low skill in destruction would take a longer time to cast spells, as well as drain more magicka attempting to cast. Higher level Destruction users can cast spells faster, and drain less magicka to do so. I think ideally the best route to go would be to allow users to use any spell at any level, but obviously have a huge drain on their magicka at lower levels. This means if you try and charge to cast a blizzard at low level, the charge time might be 5-10 seconds, with a magicka drain of 30 or so per second. In effect, this replicates the "Failed to cast!" mechanic Morrowind had if you tried to use high level spells early on. Using potions that temporarily boost your magic reserves, or your skill in destruction could "overcome" this barrier temporary, but would obviously be costly. Of course if you are high level, a spell like blizzard might only take 3 seconds to charge and have less of a magic impact per second of charging (such as 10-15 magic per second). There could also be a system where magic use slowly depletes stamina, and at zero stamina spells you cast will "magicka-burn" and be less efficent. Perks could offset this.

• Destruction - The ability to cast damaging spells, or spells intended for an offsnsive purpose. Higher skills follow the above "magic" guidelines. Perks would focus on specilization within destruction spells, to give bonuses to elements, or add new abilities to existing spells perhaps (if possible). Could also have perks that improve stamina usage when casting, if I decide that is something that would be good to have. Maybe a high level "ice" elemental perk would being able to instantly cast ice-spike spells without charge, for example?
  
• Alteration - Proficency of casting all manners of spells that alter the physical world. I don't have enough experience with this school of magic to really have an informed opinion of perks and balancing,but as far as skill progression goes it would ideally follow the above written guide.
  
• Restoration - Proficency of casting all spells that involve restorative buffs and "angelic" properties. Skill progression will follow the above guideline, while perks will focus on specilizing within passive restorative abilities, active buffs to restoration (perhaps area of effect abilities when using normal spells?) and "angelic" type spells.
  
• Illusion - Proficency of casting Illusion spells. One thing is for sure, I really would like to have it so Illusion spells no longer have hard level-locks determining if something is successful. Illusion is a really weak magic school because the majority of effects are very all-or-nothing. Instead, I propose the higher level an enemy is, the shorter the effect will be and the more chances there will be for absolute failure. Perhaps the longer you "charge" an illusion spell, the more effective it will be? If you have a high level illusion spell, it might take longer to hypothetically "charge" to full power but will be much more powerful at shorter charges. Something along those lines? Anyways, assuming the above isn't possible, I think a good way to handle perks in illusion would be to have it so players can specilize in areas such as passive illusion abilities (i.e. silent casting), active ones (i.e. invisibility), and offensive ones (like fear, etc). The actual skill progression will work under the above guidelines - the better a player is at Illusion, the cheaper and faster they can cast spells they learn.
  
• Conjuration - Proficency in casting spells that conjure. Again, not much experience with this school so I don't know how much actually needs changed other than getting rid of the "Master level is X cheaper" (since the skill would have that role now). I think a cool ability would be maybe a perk that lets you continue to summon more creatures the longer you charge. For things like atronochs, it would be almost impossible to do more than one without burning off your magicka unless you are a high level, while things like conjure familiar would be able to easly continue to summon. Maybe make it so perks are split into several categories of conjuration boosts - one to focus on specilizing in "power" summons (daedra, atronochs), one to focus on boosting numbers/targets (i.e. being able to hypothetically charge-summon 10 familiars for example at master), and one to focus on using bound weapons/armors/etc? I guess I can't forget the necromancy aspect either. I might not make any changes beyond minor ones as it seems like the perks aren't all that bad for this skill (even if the total number of things you can summon is paltry, but that is outside of the scope of the mod).
  
• Enchanting - The ability to craft and maintain enchantments, and interact with enchanted items. See Smithing, pretty much. I have zero experience using this skill but I do know how overpowered it can be. I'm not sure what I can do here without it being so many changes to warrent a seperate mod. Perhaps there could be some perks that involve boosts to using enchanted items, or giving them more versatility?

I like this thread! I haven't read through all of the discussion, admittedly, but if these changes are implemented to optimize perks/skills as a more useful system, I'd definitely love it.

Crafting system idea:

Each crafting skill doesn't increase your level, but can't be increased beyond your current maximum skill, or a similar limitation e.g. levelx2 + base skill or in 25point increments every 10 levels.

Alchemy: I think alchemy is pretty well done, but the potion values should be rebalanced. Experimenting to discover ingredient properties is interesting, but some potions are priced strangely. Also, potion strength could be normalized based on the closest alchemy skill- crafting a restore health potion at lvl 10 skill would always produce a 25hp potion effect like Minor Healing Potion. The Perks that aren't just "potions are 25% better" could be purchased or given from an alchemist after completing a quest for one.

Smithing: You can only level smithing by purchasing training, (gold sink,) from a blacksmith, (maybe a week passes as well.) Most blacksmiths can train you in iron and steel, but each other training requires a specific blacksmith- Orc Smithing from an orc blacksmith in an encampment after you've earned admittance. Ebony smithing from the blacksmith outside the ebony mine, (after it's cleared.) Skyforged Steel from greymane, etc
When you reach the appropriate level you'd get a quest directing you to the blacksmith- maybe a seperate quest series for heavy/light armor.

Enchanting: Possibly implement the purchase skill system from the Smithing description, the player would be able to purchase training from court mages after completing their quest. (get the dragonstone for Ferengar, collect the missing items for the mage in Riften, etc) Also, only allow gems to be used based on your current enchanting skill level. e.g. when you buy 50skill you can use common gems or lower. Enchantment would be normalized based on the magic world item equivalent- using a common gem to produce a Fortify Two-Handed enchant on a ring would create a "Ring of Major Sure Grip" enchantment. I think another rank would have to be implemented though - 0=Petty Gem=of Minor Stamina, 25=Lesser Gem=of Stamina, 50=Common Gem=of Major Stamina, 75=Greater Gem=of Eminent Stamina, 100=Grand Gem=of Extreme Stamina, 125=Black Gem=of Peerless Stamina

Some perks for Enchanting could be given to the player automatically after purchasing a skill level from a court mage. Perks that only increase the effectiveness of Enchanting wouldn't be necessary. (Ferengar gives Soul Squeezer, etc)

I think this system would considerably reduce the overpoweredness and boringness of crafting. (see: craft 10000000 iron daggers and enchant them 100000000 times with petty gem absorb health)

Speechcraft idea: Perk(s) which add a Lesser Power that mimics Calm, Frenzy, and/or Fear on Humanoids (ONLY Humanoids, as they're the only ones who'd understand you).

Being a Lesser Power it should have a suitably high cooldown, but not like "24 hours" per the Greater Powers (Racial Abilities, mostly).

It could be multiple lesser powers, or a "roulette" type of power that uses a script to assess the situation, check your Speech skill, and roll for something that makes sense (Frenzy on a Non-Hostile NPC, Calm on a Hostile) to something that doesn't (Calm on a Non-Hostile NPC, Fear on a Hostile) to total failure (Non-Hostile becomes Hostile to you, Hostile gets Courage effect, etc.)

It wouldn't conflict with Illusion as you can make it work on almost anything with perks, and obviously cast the Illusion spell a lot more. This version would also have a chance of failure, further distancing it from the Illusion spells.

For the cooldown, I was thinking ~5 minutes.

If we want to go even further we could add a unique "Mesmerize" effect (Cult of Personality) that allows you to temporarily make any non-essential no-name NPC your temporary follower (in addition to all other followers), where duration and chance to for this temporary follower to abandon/turn on you is determined by Speech skill.

There are lots of good ideas in this thread, and (I hate to say it) lots of really bad ones. I'll try to be brief, since there's a lot here, but I wanted to add my two cents.

I heartily agree that Armsman/Barbarian/etc are terribly implemented, because they are so extreme. A maximum of +100% damage means that the game becomes extremely polarized -- either you take the perks and win with no challenge, or you don't take the perks and lose constantly. Perks shouldn't have such an extreme effect in any circumstance.

I also agree with a lot of your core principles such as perks should not replace skills, etc. Lockpicking is an especially horrible offender in this regard (the final perk is essentially, "your lockpicking skill doesn't matter anymore!")

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I have to vehemently disagree regarding Smithing. Adding animation times and/or failure chance adds nothing to the game, and does not make it more fun in any way. Instead, leveling Smithing should depend on the value of the components you use, so that creating Iron Daggers is less important than practicing with, say, Orcish Swords.

Also, not all items should be available for smithing at the beginning of the game. This is overwhelming to newcomers and is poor design to frontload all the information. It creates a much more satisfying sense of progression to unlock new options. The quest/recipe idea is a fairly good one.

I agree that the Smthing perks are lame and could use better subsitutes. I like the Knight Tekton's ideas most so far.


In vanilla Skyrim, this would be quite broken. Smithing is as powerful as any combat skill, if not more so. You can more than double your damage potential by investing a few perks into Smthing. Similarly, Pickpocket, Alchemy, and Speech all directly or indirectly affect character power. Being able to create better potions, being able to buy better items, and being able to steal enemy weapons before combat are all direct buffs to combat prowess. Lockpicking, not so much, because it's a useless skill

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Regarding Speech, I'd like to suggest tying Speech to the character's ability to use Shouts. I've already created a mod to implement it, and it works quite well.

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2318

It lets you raise Speech in a less boring/necessary way, and also gives Speech a more versatile use without being overpowered.

I kinda skimmed through this after the first few posts. It's interesting, and I agree, for the most part - your abilities (how much damage you do with weapons/spells, armor protection, damage reduction) should be defined by your skills, with perks adding bonuses or specific abilities, like feats from D&D.

A few random comments: Why should light weapons be more accurate, or heavy weapons be less so? Let them be equally accurate - they're already balanced by speed and damage.

As for heavy armor being weightless: I can see what Bethesda wanted to do, but they did it wrong. They wanted heavy armor to be less cumbersome (as far as encumbrabce/weight) - i.e., you can move more easily while wearing it. You can still do that; just make it weigh half as much. It's a shame that armor doesn't reduce your speed (on its own, not adding toward your encumbrance); otherwise, you could easily add the perk the way it was envisioned.

Crafting: As I mentioned before, let skills govern what you can do, and let the perks add bonuses. If you have, say, Smithing 50, you can do elven (or whatever it is); then add perks for improving craftsmanship, bonuses to weapons/armor (as has been suggested by others), etc. Once you've learned all the other metals, you have to spend a perk to get Dragonscale/bone.

Maybe you could add people who can teach specific perks (for a price, of course... though the price could be a small quest).

Just did a quick read. One thing I agree absolutely is to remove direct enhance perks (e.g. barbarian for 2h) and shift the role of damage enhancement to skill point.

This will free up quite a lot of perk points, and ideally we can add new perks to create more versatile game play.

I will bring some of my throughts about craft skills from my thread: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1324653-thoughts-on-balancing-skillperk-system/

- Fortify smithing/enchanting/alchemy should be completely taken out from potions and gears.
- The only way to gain experience should be crafting items from players' current and previous tier of the skill. (e.g. if you are adept blacksmith, only crafting items from apprentice and adept tier should grant experience)
- Smithing: no vendors should sell any ores/ignots, the only means to obtain them should through questing/mining
- Alchemy: crafted potions should sell for a lot less gold, especially those with significant negative effects
- Alchemy: Potion drinking needs to have a cooldown... shotgun style drinking ruins the game play
- Alchemy: Vendors perhaps should have a lot fewer ingredients on sale each time, and they should increase the price of the ingredients, alot

I'm taking a cue from Dark Souls in reguards to melee - One handed would be more accurate early on because the wieght of the weapons would be lighter than that of two-handed, making it easier to land strikes. Two-handed would trade off speed and attack accuracy (early on) for pure strength in swings. As players would level up their two-handed skill, they would become more and more accurate and make less sluggish swings. To balance this out, the damage multiplier for two handed weapons would likely be increased at early levels. In a way it could potentually be similar to Morrowind - in that for "two handed", the weapon's base stats are the #1 contributing factor to damage, with the skill determining accuracy of hits (and speed/smoothness of swings, which as it gets better will also cause a higher DPS to be achieved). Of course something like that might deviate too far from the point of the mod.

The effect is that two handed weapons would be huge damage dealing power houses, but be harder to use early on compaired to one-handed, which would be much more efficent weapon wise early on and level up more laterally (in the sense that a high level one handed player would be able to "do more", like parry, while a high level two handed player will always have the highest DPS).

This is all pie-in-the-sky of course. Stuff that I wouldn't mind doing, but depends on how possible it is, and if it ends up being balanced/fun anyways in conjunction with the perks and game.

We could make unarmored a new branch in Light armor, and unarmed a new branch in 1h, assuming we can create branches with the CK~~

I'm hoping we can, because that's what I wanted to do

I definitely agree with the notion that every perk tree should have its pillars. I also would like to interject that one of the things about alchemy, smithing and enchanting is that they are crafts but not in the traditional MMO style of craft where coupled with a real time in game economy one can eek out a profitable business. ( It rarely works out this way in most MMOs but its the general idea that drives the need to even have crafting in an RPG )

Its a misnomer to think of alchemy, smithing and enchanting as anything other than generalized stat boosts. There is currently very little actually separating the concept of putting points into one handed weapons vs putting points into smithing right now. In practice they are almost identical aside from the need to grind a crafting skill requires more side activities. That being the only fundamental difference about them. If I do these side activities my time investment garners me more resources to better my characters combat strength. However the game is built as such that this side activity can be a pitfall.

• In World of Warcraft they made it so that you can only pick up to two crafting skills and they follow a completely separate progression. ( The concept of gathering as a skill is none existent in Skyrim )
  
• In Skyrim they allow you to make a character who masters alchemy, smithing and enchanting and as a result become a level 50 incapable of wielding your own creations to any real extent.

Crafting and combat skills should not be treated the same way under just one system. Crafting skills should involve side tasks that do not effect main progression. When you level up you should gain a point to spend in combat skills and one point to spend in a crafting skill. There are any number of considerations to make when you think about just how fundamentally different crafting in an RPG really is.

Agree. But to me the biggest issue with crafting skills is the gears you get from crafts are more than enough to substitute questing/dungeon crawling. Gear rewards should be: epic quest lines > dungeon boss > dungeon loot >= crafts. But in our current system is crafts >> everything else.

I agree for the most part. There's a few asides:


Smithing at it's heart is already about improving the bonuses of armor and weapons. And does so to the extend of breaking their respective skills (investing in one handed damage can be kept to a minimum when I can smith those weapons to do a lot more damage). Perks that improve this just make it easier to, for example, hit the armor cap.
Not to mention that there is no mention of crafting stacking with potions and enchantable gear. Which is what truly seems to break this skill. A hard cap on how much your alchemy and enchanting could effect skills could be quite useful here.
In the end crafting is better of being rebalanced completely, before it's perks are reworked.

Also I'd like to throw my support on the idea that you would need to train under a smith to learn a certain smithing style. And that perks would serve partially as they do now improving equipment and partially add some utilities.

Marksman - Involves anything with range attacks with a bow. Pretty simple here, the default "pillars" are already well established I think. Perks would focus on adding more utility with the usage of bows, and give bonuses to specilizing with certain types (i.e. Hunting bows deal extra damage to creatures?). Bow usage starts out slower and more fatiguing, but as players gain more skill, they will be able to ready arrows faster and with less fatigue. Bows with higher damage can give a larger fatigue drain. Arrows with higher damage will not affect this however.

Why is this categorized under Thief skills?

How would that work in relation to insta-casting beam spells?
Also for destruction it doesn't change the lack of overall Damage compared to other direct damage skill.
Most magic skills seem to need more effectiveness in power than in casting time and magicka drain.

My take is: if you think that a skill is useless, for resolving combat situations, that means you are not aware of how to use that skill.

Similarly, if you are not aware of how leveling up the skill helps you, that mostly means that you do not understand how the skill works.

Speech, and lockpicking, for example, give you access to plentiful supplies of gear -- weapons, potions, armor, and so on. If you have leveled speech you are going to need to enjoy shopping and you are going to need to do a good job at shopping. If you do not enjoy shopping, you are not going to level this skill very much.

That said, lockpicking perks (like many perks) seem to be designed to help people that really are not very good in that area. But I think also that if you take the perks lockpicking becomes a lot faster for you.

Also, I think a lot of the complaints I have seen about the game have to do with pacing. And pacing is a hard thing to get right, for everyone, especially in an open world game.

Anyways, let's take the heavy armor "weightless" perk...

By the time you get that perk, you are going to be high enough level that you are going to have a lot of enchanted armors available to you. This means that gear swapping characters are going to be more powerful than non-gear swapping characters. Meanwhile, the "heavy armor is weightless" perk only applies to gear that you wear. So if you have an alternate set of gear that you wear -- even if it was all nearly weightless clothing -- you are still going to have to carry your heavy armor when you use it, and it's going to wear a lot.

And this is even semi-realistic. If anyone has ever carried heavy loads, they will have probably noticed that how the loads are distributed matters a lot of how much effort you need to carry it. Of course, it's not completely realistic... but it's surprisingly close to realistic.

Also, heavy armor does slow you down, when you move. It does not slow you down very much (maybe 5%-10% movement speed?) but I notice it.

Also, some of the best looking armor in the game is heavy armor. I'm just working on my modding skills so I can make other armors look like iron armor (especially the helmets).

(That said, I can't help shake the feeling that light armor is just outright better than heavy armor (it's faster to move in, easier to gear swap, you can move away from attackers easier, later on you can regain stamina faster in it, and it has the same armor cap that heavy has, and a light armored character can carry larger loads which gets back to issues like shopping and supplies and preparing for battles...). Nevertheless... I am sticking with heavy armor, for now.)

Sorry, I just categorized it as theif as I had forgotten the category and put it down under there as a spur of the moment

The smith training thing sounds great, but it's also something that may be outside of the scope of what I want to achieve. Which is why when I get around to working on this, everything crafting related I'll leave for last.

And in reguards to the spells that already insta-cast, they would work pretty much the same as they do now. I thought about making it so their damage output is better, but to balance out against the charge spells they might have a high fatigue drain, but an average magic drain. Combined with my idea of making it so you do X less damage when you run out of fatigue, it might balance out the higher damage quite nicely.

And as far as destruction goes overall, ideally I'd like spells in that school to be very powerful overall, but costly. Kind of like the "two handed powerattack" of the magicka world, with only the "streams of fire/ice/shock/etc" type spells that are always insta-cast being the middle ground. I also think a cool high level perk to have would be maybe something like "Ice Spikes become insta-cast". And keep in mind, with my idea the frequency of being able to cast spells will get better as you level up, perhaps exponentually. So, if you are level 100 in destruction you can bet your ass that blizzard spell won't take 5+ seconds to charge per attack, though I mgiht keep the magicka drain the same seeing as you'd also be able to ideally do more damage per use than you currently do.

Basically, the feeling that would be ideal would be to make it so being a mage early on feels like you have incredible power that you just can't use very long or all that well. As you progress to get higher and higher in level, you'll start being able to use that power more consistently.

Right now I'm working on a mod that allows Conjuration to scale much higher by adding lots of new Bound Weapon spells (also looking into Bound Armor spells), as well as new perks. I think this will go well with changes to the crafting skills as well as changes to leveled lists (PISE) to make high-level equipment rarer.

Edit: One of the things I'm taking into consideration here is a build that basically ignores crafting for most of the game. It's pretty darn easy to ignore them for most builds for most of the game, even when you tweak the leveled lists.

When balancing the crafting skills you need to take into builds that will ignore them. People shouldn't be forced to become a part-time Blacksmith like all Melee characters were forced to become a part-time Armorer to upkeep their weapons. Ideally, things like item durability should revolve around Smithing improvements. An improved weapon should go back to base quality fairly quickly due to durability loss, while a weapon at base quality should take a much longer time to lose even 1 point of effectiveness.

Repairing equipment should be available from all NPC Blacksmiths as a service for the cost of gold.

In other words, no more needing to carry around Repair Hammers and needing to repair like every other fight. Realism and balance are often on opposite sides.

I'm looking forward to a perk overhaul. If well done, it could really make a huge positive impact on the game. I apologize for being long-winded.

Leveling
Leveling has less to do with your character progression, and more to do with the progression of the world around you. You also gain health, stamina, or magic, but even these are mostly about combat.

I agree with the idea of dividing skills into combat/non-combat (I've argued this in other threads). Maybe even 3 categories, combat/non-combat/misc. Certain skills, like lockpicking, speech, or pickpocketing, have nothing to do with combat. Making the world a tougher place when you increase these skills doesn't make sense. Either pull them out of the leveling mechanic entirely, or weight them so they have little influence on character level. If you level in 1H or Destruction, yes, these should make a difference. And you shouldn't level faster increasing Lockpicking from 60 to 61 than from leveling 1H 40 to 41. That's broken.

Smithing
I love the idea of schematics/blueprints. I'd suggest a varied approach to smithing:

Metallurgy should be learned from an experienced smith.
Blueprints can be learned from either training with a smith, or finding them. Maybe you can learn a blueprint earlier if you pay to have a smith teach you, or you need to take a perk to be able to learn from blueprints. Another option would be to train with blacksmiths for metallurgy, and buy schematics (like recipes) for items from blacksmiths.

Number of Perks Per Level (@ItsToBeXpected)
How about 1 perk per level, with bonus perks at each threshold Apprentice, Adept, Expert, Master? The idea is that you cross a certain threshold and have an AHA moment where the knowledge that you've gained is suddenly integrated in a way that wasn't there before. What I like about this idea is that it gives benefits/goals for continuing to level skills in a way that 2+ perks every level doesn't. Another option is that when you cross a threshold you get one general perk and one perk specifically for that skill.

Magic
I'd suggest anybody who's thinking about magic balance should at least look at Balanced Magic (http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2275) and Tejon's TSSS (http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2585). Balanced Magic has already covered a lot of ground, and at least to me, feels much more correct than vanilla. It does a lot more than just buff destruction (it reduces stun chance, paralysis time, and much more.) I did an entire playthrough as a pure mage on master with Balanced Magic.

General Thoughts on Armor
I've played a spellsword/battlemage, a pure fighter, a pure thief, and a pure mage. So far, I've yet to go far into the armor perks, and have never had more than 60 or 65 in light armor skill. There's been no need, even playing on master.

I'd like to see:
heavy, light armor, and ideally unarmored permanently differentiated (speed/dodging/stealth differences, etc.)
either lower bonuses/improvement in general for armor (give a reason to get skill up and take perks), or changes to delay reaching a huge armor rating

I recommend Better Magic (http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4374) over Balanced Magic. It plays a lot better with other simple solutions like tSSSS, and both together really make a big difference despite not changing very much. It's also far more modular than Balanced Magic (which is only a little bit modular). Remember there's two types of mods that can contain balancing: Balance and Overhaul. A Balancing mod should always be highly modular as "balance" is highly subjective, where as an Overhaul mod doesn't have to be. "Balanced Magic" is more an "overhaul".

Among the 1,000,000 options of http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1320907-relz-xso-customize-your-game-completely/ is "Non Combat Skills Don't Add to Leveling (on/off)" I highly recommend it.

That looks like a good mod. Yet one more thing to download and evaluate. We don't even have the CK yet, and I'm close to mod overload.

@wiz0floyd - I've been sitting on XSO for a couple of weeks, now I'll have to set that up, too.

Great advice, thanks to both of you.

Yes. Part of the reason why I am most likely not going to touch crafting skills any time soon - one, because it would require an overhaul to really get to a point that I'd love (and I know other people are already doing this), and secondly because you can totally ignore crafting if you wanted to.

I do want this mod to be geared more twoards a rebalance and addition rather than an overhaul. This is partly because I don't want to get in over my head, as I'm not sure what I am getting into already. I can only hope things like perks and balance tables behind game mechanics are things that can be changed without having to hack solutions in