One of Skyrims greatest flaws is the perk tree. You gain a perk every time you level and you are able to put the point into any tree. But the amount of perks you have are limited, 81 being the highest level. This means that although you can become a master at every art it wont be effective because of the perk limitations. In previous TeS games this was not true, attributes and ranking up to apprentice, adept, expert, and master made you better in that skill along with leveling up the skill normally. In skyrim this isn't the case you only get a minor benefit from leveling the skills up, the main customization are the perks which you are limited to.

The perking system was a bad choice for a good game. Without the attributes and a good leveling system skyrim was really held back from being an even better game.

What does everyone else think?

I like it. I feel that limited perks encourages a degree of specialization. And that degree of specialization makes each of my characters feel and play differently from the others.

In previous Elder Scrolls games I sometimes couldn't tell two characters apart at level 50 because they had so many of the same Attributes and skills maxed out.

Yep. Belive it or not, most people do not want overpowered/master of everything characters. It actually hinders replayablitiy- if someone is a master mage/warrior/thief all at once, why should they replay again focusing on only one of those aspects?

Many perks are useless and should have been simply automatic ties to skills rather than having to spend something to make something happen.

interesting you made this post.

i have recently made a hybrid character with only the best skills and perks. this character is, by far, my most powerful character i've ever created.

why? because so many of the perks do not actually add true power to your character.

in fact, having planned this build (with the help of some others) i will basically be at max around level 60 or so and still have about 20 perks left to round out my character. but, this will mostly be for preference and aesthetics and unique gameplay. NOT for actual power building.

edit: btw, i've made many of the typical gaming archetypes.

I can be a perfectionist sometimes. In Oblivion because it was possible to master every skill I had to. I had to get 100 in every skill and max out all attributes. I did the same with Fallout 3/NV. In Skyrim I am limited so I find it slightly easier and I'm trying to role-play and enjoy the character instead of focusing on efficiency or mastering a character. It's real fun. I've made an assassin and now I'm thinking of role-playing a warrior (similar to trailer dragonborn).

Now that I am limited I can focus on certain aspects which fit the role-play. Instead of playing a character in a game that's a master of everything like my Oblivion and Fallout characters.

I have a few problems with perks.

First off, some are just useless, like Lockpicking.

Second, there is a lot of emphasis on choosing perks than actully leveling your skills. For example, look at the Armsman perk for One-Handed. Why not change the desccription to "Increases your melee damage." and include two ranks, one that increases it by 25% at 40 One-Handed and a duplicate at 80 One-Handed. The other 50% should come from leveling your skill. Perks should have unique effects and allow you to do different things. Perks should act more like Savage Strike does. Archery is a very unique perk tree, the other trees should've been more like it.

The only issue I have with perks are the ones that make skills 20%, 40%, ect. easier/more powerful. This means the main boost to those skills come from perks instead how strong your skills are, which makes it feel less about the more you use a skill the stronger you become. It seems like a lazy perk, that should have been handled by skill level.

In response to the OP, I like the fact that I fit under a certain class now more than I did in previous games where there were actually classes.

Concept of perks is awesome, but they are just badly executed.
I'm currently playing FO1 and think that that game did a much better job when it comes to perks (they should not be just copy/pasted though).
For now, I find lack of attributes to be a main flaw in Skyrim system.
Also, I find it stupid that you reach max level in Skyrim when you increase all the skills to 100.
There should be a hard level cap instead.

I have to disagree with the OP. I will agree that the current perk system is flawed but it's much better then the previous system. I still would've liked the attributes back but the current system works so much better then the previous system, no more worrying about not getting the full amount of points for Strength.

The Leveling is fine, don't see any reason to change the Elder Scrolls way of leveling for a crappy EXP type leveling system that wouldn't work at all.

I agree with this post. Those kind of perks are fine for min/max mmorpgs because you don't get better with a skill by using it in many of those. But here they definitely seem lazy.

To the OP: Be glad you have what you have. It was originally going to cap at 50:

https://twitter.com/#!/DCDeacon/status/36644224258539520

I agree with this. The perks should be unique skills and abilities, not stupid stuff like more basic damage with ____ weapon. I find that I waste perks a lot on increasing damage with my weapons than actually gaining new abilities.

Not to mention, say you reach level 81 and you've used a sword the whole game, and you put all your remaining points into using swords (hack and slash). Then you decide "Hey, swords are old, I wan't to try something else. So I'll use a mace!" Well, now you can't do as much damage because all your perks went into swords, not maces. So if you want to use a weapon to it's full power, it'd better be a sword. So then you'll have to make a mace-specialized character. There should be sub classes in one and two handed weapons, that determine weapon type effectiveness, not perks.

While easily the best character development system The Elder Scrolls has produced, I have to agree that it failed in execution in several ways. Many of the perks simply seem like "Well, we don't have any clever ideas, let's make something that simply multiplies the effect of the skill, and then make that perk in a position where you have to take it anyway!"

And then some of the clever perks are pretty useless because they weren't properly integrated.

The Weapon-specialization perks come to mind but for reasons I'll list, they come off very weak, when in reality, they should be very strong (Stronger than even the basic Armsman-Barbarian perk before gear adjustments)

Bladesman/Deep Wounds: Critical Attack too weak, based only on the floor-base of weapon damage, resulting in a net gain of around 4 damage per hit with a Daedric Sword.

Hack And Slash/Limbsplitter: Strongest of the Specialization perks, but still too weak to impact battle in a meaningful way.

Bonebreaker/Skull Crusher: No enemies have appropriate armor ratings.

This is completely ignoring the fact that the One-handed/Two-Handed perks are just copypasta, but whatever, in this context it makes sense.

I agree, i also think that smithing and enchanting should not be skills, because the perk system doesn't compliment them properly. A master smither without perks would be useless thus forcing points into its tree. Even though both of these skills can contribute the same way without being skills bethesda decides to make them skills with stupid perks.

I wish the perks were more limited, but also more unique, and unchained from individual trees.

I like the new levleing system better then the one from oblivion. To start with it was severly flawed and to make the most powerfull charecter you had to keep track of everthing you did. The limit on perks in my opinion is a good thing it makes the choices of what perks to get more meaningful. I dont want to be the exspert sword fighter who can cast the best spells who is also a deadly assasin. I understand some people would want to do all those things with one charecter but I prefer to make multiple charecters for multiple uses.

actually, you CAN be an expert swordsman, deadly assassin and powerful mage with one character. the incremental power increases are inconsequential and very minimal with the added high-level perks.

my most powerful character is my hybrid of the best perks and skills. i've made all the specialized archetypes and even when they were at max level they're paling to my LOW-LEVEL hybrid.

the reason why? so many of the perks and skills are useless and don't actually add meaningful power to any character.

i guess you can make a character like that, without the use of all the skills to its full potential though because you wouldn't be able to get all of the good magic types, the good weapon + armor type perks, and all of the good crafting perks. The perks shouldn't be responsible for what the skill can do. Thats why skyrim did the perking system wrong. Most perks are either useless or shouldn't be perks.

I agree you could have a good mage, a good warrior and a good assasin in one charecter. However the charecter who goes into one field will be better in that field. Also in combat you probally can have a good hybrid but it is simply not possible to be a master of every skill in the game. Even if you do skip all of the bad perks. I do agree that the perk system did not turn out very good because of lots of bad perks. I just think it is better then oblivions leveling sytem. Bethesda still needs to change alot for the next elder scrolls to make the leveling system good.

my point is what you're saying isn't true. i've tried the specialized approach with lots of multiple characters. with the proper skills and perks it is quite easy to make an expert blade, stealth and magic character. the only area that is limited in scope is the mage, but, in that case, you ARE specializing and therefore are supremely powerful in less skills.

have you actually made a lot of specialized characters and then tried a hybrid with only the best skills and perks?

I am saying that one charecter who gets all of the good perks and okay perks for a warrior for example will be better then a hybrid who gets only the good perks for a warrior. Yes I have made a hybrid and he was a good charecter probally better then my specialized charecters because he was more diverse. However in each individual area he was not as good as the specialized charecter.

This so much. I love the perks and while there are a few I don't quite understand (the wax key one) overall I think they are a great addition to the TES series and I hope they return in some form or other for the next game. Specializing with perks allows you to create truly unique characters and without them I feel my characters would be too alike.

Indeed. I think this is why they added perk trees in the first place.

Speech is useless really. I hardly even leveled up my speech, i think it was at 18.. and i never had a problem persuading anyone, or intimidating anyone. Not to mention, there is hardly any situations that you can use speech. I'm not saying get rid of speech, just make dialogue so we can all actually use the persuasion, or intimidation.

That's my playstyle now. I've grown tired of not having enough perks worth putting points into in any given standard archetype build, and so I opted for the Jack of all Trades kind of build instead.