That's only a reason to wear armor if you make it your reason. As I said above, I don't wear "found" armor, no matter how pretty it is, except at the beginning of the game when I have little real choice and will take whatever I can get. As soon as I have the opportunity to start forging my own, I wear the best armor that I can make myself which is completely dependent on which perks I've taken which is dependent on how much smithing experience I have and how quickly I'm willing to invest perks in higher level materials. Taking the perks or not is completely up to me.

All I'm saying is even if you minor in smithing but major in an armour type your armour will probably pass the armour rating cap making AR pointless when chosing your armours. So It comes down to looks, what I'm saying is it'd be nice if they added (abilites/perks/buffs whatever) to armours, I enjoyed the fallout series as when I found new armour DT Wasn't the only thing on my mind.

Honestly I've played around 500 hours on different characters and done things differently and the only quest that hasn't worked was the 2nd last Nightengale quest as I stole the plans from mercer's via a glitch.

I like your idea. It is a nice spine on smithing. I've rolled a char that can only live off what he finds. It can only be what I find or can buy.

My biggest problem with Smithing is making jewelry. There is no way someone skilled in making armors and weapons can also make delicate jewelry. Add to that the fact you can't make all the jewelry types as there is no copper ore, etc. and it doesn't make sense to even have it since you can find the stuff everywhere anyway, and you can't 'upgrade' it.

It was easy enough to ignore before, but since the last patch made it so much harder to raise Smithing I find my characters stocking up on Gold, Silver and gems so they can Smith amulets to raise my Smithing skill ... ... so I can make better armor and weapons.

I think that adding Jewelry was a cute idea, that did little harm to the game mechanics until the last patch. Now it just really needs to be removed.

Thank you for pointing out jewlery is clearly a quick way to level up smithing now due to its price, and it gave me a giggle thinking about my orc making the nobles "elegant" jewlery

As I said there will always be a fast and easier way to level up smithing therefore it doesn't bother me too much.

Noooo I love making jewelry. That way I can have what I want, not what I find that is enchanted with what I want but ugly or pretty but has enchantments I don't need.

Besides which Eorlund Grey-Mane is the the finest smith in Skyrim, and he makes jewelry. I know cuz his wife told me so, and she's a nice old lady who likes me and wouldn't lie about it.

I use a mod that lets me makes tons of "extra" stuff using almost all the available smithing materials, so I'm bit biased on the subject. Plus a lot of it is tied into the other smithing perks, so if I can't make armor out of something I can't make jewelry out of it either. But even then I can still work with silver and gold right from the start, which I will grant you is a bit odd in terms of realism.

Using armor doesn't mean you know how to make it or improve it.

You use video games, do you know how to develop one?

You can hit the armour cap with steel - that's the most protection the game will allow and so it equals any other armour. You can do the same with light armours. So at the end of the day you're probably better off wearing armour that weighs less and protects you as much once you're skilled enough to improve it to the level of the armour cap.

I take it you've never said "Hey it'd be better if this was like that" Well if you have you've clearly contradicted yourself and proven my point, if not you must like everything the way it is.. but you know.. whatever

Which is what I've said a couple times the armour cap can be reached quite easily so factoring the armour you wear off stats doesn't work (as they're all maxed) So it comes down to the looks of your armour which is pretty lame for an rpg I must say. Which is why I propose you should be able to attain armour specific perks to sway your choices on armour. Fallout for example has multipul armours with 1 DT yet I still wear them over a 30 DT armour because of the special abilities it gives me.

To me, armor is for cosmetic reasons, not for stats.

But that's just me.

That's what it's turned into to for me as the cap is hit so easily.

That's assuming you've maxed out smithing and it's contingent on the way you play. I don't find it easy to reach the armour cap because I deliberately do not grind any skill and only use one crafting skill per character, maybe diversifying into one other if I take them to a high level. I actively try to avoid maxing out skills because I find the game starts to get boring when a character's key skills hit their limit. That is what's actually good about the current system - you can do whatever you like with it.

Personally I also prefer the way you can feasibly stick to lower tier armour that fits your character through the whole game without it being inevitable it's going to become totally redundant as opposed to being pushed into using the top tier stuff. Particularly as IMHO the top tier sets tend to look a bit too ornamental. The top tier stuff gives a higher base protection that can be useful if you want that protection and you're not focusing on smithing, which not everybody does. It's all about flexibility and I think they've done a fair job of achieving that flexibility.

I'd say it's less lame that an RPG facilitates 'staying in character' through the whole game than trying to force them to 'upgrade' along a linear armour progression. It might not fit your character to be wearing ebony, dragon or daedric.

That's what I'm saying... if you can wear your iron from the beginning and have all these perks and bonuses for it maybe you might not just want to hop onto the shiny pretty looking armour.

So what you're saying is that after wearing, say for example, elven armour for a few months (in game) I would start to notice things about said armour that I could tailor to MY SPECIFIC character, and then make those changes so they would benifit MY PARTICULAR playstyle and add things that would help with THAT SPECIFIC armour type? And this is all due to getting experience with it through use? Preposterous!

I know right.. it's just inconceivable, how dare I think such a thing! I ought to be ashamed of myself!
I have to admit I wasn't expecting such a "Smithing is perfect" Responce

And the problem there is...?

I think that's great. If wearing iron armour suits your character, carry on wearing iron armour and sell the shiny stuff for a good price. If you like the new shiny stuff, wear it.

But you can't really do that due to lower level armours having nothing special about them that you aren't going to say "**** it I want the max armour rating! I've been one shot enough by arrows! "
It'd be nice if armour gained special bonuses and perks buffs whatever so that you might have some reason you want to use the iron you found at the start of the game opposed to whatever else..

He's not just talking aesthetics, do you customise how your computer runs so it suits how you use it? (ie. fan settings, internal cooling, adding RAM or video cards) so it runs how YOU use it? Like he stated, after using something or working with something a long time, you start to change it a little so it's perfectly YOU. Say you have a car and the seat's set too far forward, do you change cars completely? Or do you move the seat back to where it suits you? (customise, in the loosest sense)

Yeah I've always thought that was kinda weird.

On the flipside, my wife makes jewellry but she's no idea how to make armour.

Though I did once unsuccessfully try to talk her into the mammoth task of making me a chainmail vest as I thought it would be a fun thing to have

Personally I think this game already has quite enough perks, special bonuses and superpowers in it already. I don't see a problem with your character simply wearing whatever armour you think they should be wearing - I don't see any need for special rewards just for wearing it. Plenty of people manage fine just wearing robes.

And on one hand you're acknowledging you can hit the armour cap with something like iron, on the other you're saying people are automatically going to want higher tier armour because it's better.
The whole point is lower tier armour can be just as good as top tier armour if you invest in the skills to make it as good. The one thing I'd say is missing is the ability to pay blacksmiths to do it for you.

Okay I'll try to put this really simply.

Lets say all armour protects you the same (It ends up doing exactly that), You're left with the only deciding factor on choosing your armour to be looks. This is one of the silliest things in any game I've ever played, so it'd be nice if they maybe even just put in armours with custom abilites Ex: Ebony mail.

Azrael has summed up "personalization" pretty well.

I can only start fiddling with my computer if I know how to fiddle with my computer - the ability to do that doesn't happen simply by sitting at my computer using it in a generic way. In fact, I've used computers for many years, but I'm still crap at messing with things like fan settings.
I can change my car seat because there's a convenient little handle a chimpanzee could easily master. If I want to customise my car, I need to go to a garage because I know nothing about mechanics or bodywork, despite having driven extensively for many years.

Why is it silly? All the game is doing is giving you the ability to customise your character.

You already get the heavy/light armour skill trees with perks that are based on nothing more than people hitting you. Why do you want even more on top of that? Is the game not easy enough already or something? Why do you feel the need to be rewarded just for wearing an armnour set?