I wonder, why did they change the little indicator of effects?

If you don't know what I'm talking about, well, do you remember in oblivion when you drink X potion there was an indicator in the right top corner indicating how much time you had left in your potion effect? example: You take a resist frost potion for 60 seconds, in Oblivion you could know how much time you had left because of the indicator but I dont see that in Skyrim.

Is it me or they removed that?

yep they removed that, I have no idea why but they did.

It does not make too much sense for me.

I mean, if I take X potion I wont know when the effect will end....I cant understand why they removed that...

You can check active effects under Magic > Active effects. It also lists durations.

Why we don't have the buff/debuff bar in a corner of the screen is beyond me however.

Bothered me a tiny bit too. Less visual information on the screen isn't always a good thing.

At least we have bars for our health and 'stamina' instead of relying solely on the edges of the screen going red and the sound of our character panting from exhaustion.

It makes no sense at all...

I'm all for the reduction in timers. For one, having a spell timer simply negates the attention you must have to your character. If you know you have 5 seconds left on Oakflesh, you simply reapply it.

When it wears off, you actually see a flash of light around your character indicating your spell has gone away. This makes for better involvement in the gameplay and having to actually pay attention to what you're doing, instead of simply having a countdown tell you when you need to reapply something. Same with poisons on weapons. Granted, you can go into the item management screen and hover over your poisoned weapon and see the indicator, which is similar to actually holding a weapon in your hand and looking down at the slime-covered blade knowing that there is still something coating it.

TL;DR - The elimination of timers has granted more realism in the game world - Would you know in real life how much longer Oakflesh is going to stick around, or would it simply disappear?

Yeah but that's completely unpractical.

I have to be checking every 15 seconds to see if I still have the effect or not instead of having the practical indicator which was really tiny and almost undetectable.

Now if I'm fighting a frost dragon and I take a resist frost potion I have to be checking and stopping the fight (and experience) every few seconds to see if I still have the effect or not...

Well, would your life regenerate in real life?

I don't think is about realism, specially with the HUGE message that appears when one of your skills increase. It Is about having a practical way to know when your effect will end and be aware of that, that little indicator was great in many ways, now I wont know how much time left and that will affect my gameplay.

I'm not complaining, I was just wondering why they removed it.

I meant no disrespect to your question in any way, and I understand your sentiment of the health bar and skill increase indicator being flashed across the screen. It may be simply due to the realism aspect of the game in general, which was basically the notion I was trying to get at in my previous post.

I do apologize, sometimes my posts can come across as being a bit condescending.

No offense was taken ^^.

It is just that you know, I can't find a reason of why this was removed if it was so practical and nobody complained about it. I guess realism is a "decent" reason, yet it is a contradiction since a lot of the Skyrim components are highly unrealistic. I'm pretty sure there should be a mod, sadly, I play in a PS3. A option to enable/disable this would be fantastic tho.

None of us know why because we didn't design the game.
Why don't you send them an e-mail?

Most likely part of their misguided attempt to make the UI more "transparent"/less "intrusive". Personally, I'm all for a UI actually doing it's job and providing you with the information you need to play / manage your character / make decisions. (Meanwhile, the die-hard "immersion" crowd thinks that what little they did give us is way too much and utterly ruins their experience. Yay, opinions! )

Mmm...I really don't think they are gonna reply back to me xD I don't mean to say they don't pay attention to their fans but I think they are pretty busy

I think I had read that Bethesda was at first going to do away with the health bar in favor of the bloodied screen effect when your low on health thus taking away the indicators that some feel distract when your playing. If they wanted to get rid of the visible health bar in the HUD then maybe they got rid of that indicator for the same reason and when they brought back the health bar, they decided to leave the indicator off anyway.

Just a theory. I may be mistaken.

That's a good question actually.

Mmm so they just forget to add it back xD?

Well, that's kinda unprofessional and Bethesda being such a professional company I don't think they just "forget" to add it back xD

Good theory tho.