Sad really. Speech is largely useless, as it generally tends to be in TES.
This was the ONE game where it could have had awesome voice control perks enhancing Shout effects cooldowns etc.

I disagree. Shouts are an entirely different skill that involves a form of magic. What the speech skill should have done is give you more ways to interact and solve quests like in FNV.

Agree with Alio. Speech is more about being persuasive, knowing how to charm people, not focusing the essence of your voice into precise power.

I think that is actually a great idea. Fo shot specific characters, lol.
THat should have been a given, obviously bethesda dropped the ball on that,but the idea is a good one.

FUS RO DARFUR!

Instead of crossing two completely different skills, a seperate skill tree for Thu'ums would be perfect.

True, and then Shouting would have to increase speech.

The expert and master speech trainers are bards for a reason. Although the speech skill does have a negotiation side, it is very much linked to voice training as well.
There should have been at least on shout-based perk in the speech tree.

That would be a huge plus, assuming they compensated by slightly reducing the amount it levels through selling.

I'd rather have special trees associated with the different kinds of special kinds of stuff you can do in the game, rather than hook it up with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speechcraft, which I think of solely as a charismatic based skill. The "speech" that pours when I miss with a hammer and hit my thumb, has nothing to do with speechcraft. Neither has shouts.

The only reason not to include it, that I can think of, is that it is something unique to the player. There should have been more "shouters" in the world, and the lore adjusted to suit that idea. But it's too late for that now I guess.

There IS a mod which modifies the speech tree to aid better shouting!

..and it's called http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=5452

I also use Eldirans' http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=2318 which 'spoons' nicely with it.

I agree. And I like speech perks just fine.

Speech, Lockpicking, and Pickpocketing Perks have a lot left to be desired. This is mostly how these 3 skills are handled in the game more than anything. If there was a reputation system and you could solve many more things through diplomacy rather than combat, that would be great. How dialog works in Skyrim is incredibly limited. Granted it is a big game, but I would wager that without VA they could have used those resources and time writing better dialog and giving players more options. Lockpicking, is almost entirely useless due to the fact that any lock can be opened with a skill of 1. You take into account also loot doesn't matter after a certain point and neither does gold, so...Pickpocketing, well save and load makes those Perks worthless. You can put poisons on people or remove equipment if you really want to invest that many points for subpar returns I guess though..

I hope they keep shouts and speech seperate. If they start doing that then they'll make your speech skill go up whenever you use shouts, and shouts are about the only thing in the game you can do without raising a skill.

So, that amulet of Dibella would boost you shout ability? Come again? Generally shouting at people is a bad idea, if you want to talk them into things.

Speech is not related to thuum in any way. Might as well have "pick pockets" improve your spellcasting, since both involve wiggling your fingers.