You chunky Man why did you get so negative all of a sudden

I wouldn't call it negativity, I just want Bethesda to improve features in the game that are a bit lacking.

Edit: My title is very negative, but that's just so I get more views lol.

A reputation system would have been great. It would add immersion to your shopping experience at the very least.

I also think the haggling should be back in the game but I think you should haggle your amount during each trade and not have it locked in place like in Oblivion and not having a haggling option in Skyrim.

I also agree that speech is mainly mercantile as thats all it really effects.

Oh boy, here we go with the negetive thing again. lol can we just think of things that would make speechcraft better? I mean if you like it as it is now Kudos? is it gonna hurt if its made better? no. His OP wasn't even negetive, he stated what he thought was wrong and gave solutions, please can we not go there.

i agree, but graphics do play an important role skyrim without its graphics would be nothing, and im glad the combat is improved, it wil be way better in ES 6

As far as usefulness goes, speech is probably the same as athletics.
They said they were going to get rid of these types of things. Speech sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the other skills, because it's very situational and doesn't really contribute to a specific play-style the way others do.
Surprised they didn't just ditch it

Speechcraft could have a few added functionalities.

When an enemy yields you should be able to speak with them, and use persuasion or intimidation on them to convince them to leave the area, join you briefly, or give you extra loot.

Speechcraft could contain a skill that allows you to have two followers, sort of like Conjuration has a skill that allows two summons.

In general it could have stuff that buffs followers, since you can rally them to your cause better.



As for ditching the skill, I think they need to stop doing that. I mean Athletics/Acrobatics would be far from useless in the context of Skyrim, since now they have the perk system. Before that, yea, those were pretty stupid skills given the fact that all they really did was increase your movement speed and jump hight very very gradually as you played through the game. In Skyrim it would have been a brilliant skill though, with the perks you could have bought stuff like rolling out of the way of an attack, higher jumps, casting while jumping, lower fall damage... They could have done so much with it, instead we get Lockpick and Pickpocket as seperate skills.

Speechcraft is another thing that they could have done a lot with if they hadn't been so hellbent on removing every last intricacy from the conversation system. Also if they had simply allowed us to use the companion controls without first having to talk to them companions would be much more useful, and that would have been a great angle for making speechcraft more useful.

Never even thought of that. Good suggestion.

Also, disposition was really creative. I would have preferred if they added it to Skyrim

But but,I suggested the first one D:

pickpocket and lockpick says hey.

Hey! Give up on the Gameplay/Graphics/Story trinty... the new deal is Context/Challenge/Gratification.



Pickpocket's f'in awesome! I don't even need to use weapons to kill my foes. And, combined with Stealth, I'm a breeze - I crouch, and my foes are naked and disarmed in a split second!

Pickpocket is good, but there was no need to make it a skill. It worked just fine being affected by factors such as sneak, line of sight etc. Yet they removed skills such as Hand to hand for that? Pickpocket perks could have went into Sneak as a branch or something. Not doubting its power.

Pickpocket and Lockpick should have been one skill, and Athletics should have been in with a variety of perks that give you mobility stuff, like rolling on the floor, or passing through enemies during a fight so that they can't block you in.

Would have been better if merged with Lockpicking.

Hand-to-hand should have been merged into one-handed, not dropped entirely. The Skill that's missing in the Thief skills would be Acrobatics.

Just as a side note, anyone feel archery should have went into The Thief? Thieves have zero combat skills. Mages have Conjuration,Destruction and Illusion to get the job done, and Warrior has One Handed and Two Handed.

Why are they fail? Am a thief, i like my pickpocket skill and lockpick skill? I like my heist's go smooth and such..

No fail skills.. its.. all.. what.. you.. enjoy... playing..

Or everything is a fail skill..

Block? Why block when i can chug potions in paused mode?
Alchemy? Why? I can buy potions..
Destruction? Why? I have followers with destruction spells
One handed? Why there are two handed
two handed? Why? There are one handed
Enchanting? Why? There are magical gear out there
Blacksmith? Why? There is no must have your forged weapons.. Repair is not required in this game. And the armor is out there (Not sure of daedric but daedric is no must have anyway to do well in this game.. I still have steel on my non-magical-items warrior and he still do well at level 40)

i can go on but dont see the use of it..

My point is that it all comes down to what you like, your playstyle, how smooth you want your character to succeed with things.. (Such as lockpicking master locks for example, or steal that awesome weapon your target has in its hilt)

Pickpocket is actually quite useful, but does run into severe diminishing returns in the late game. As a result most folks don't bother with it, since they'd rather put their perks into skills which will be useful no matter what. Lockpick, on the other hand, needs a total overhaul, starting with complete removal of the mini-game as it negates the skill entirely.

I think you guys are missing the point people are making about pickpocket and lockpicking, they never said those things should be dropped from the game, just that they could have easily been combined into one skill, like a skill called "Thievery" for example.

I'm not quite sure if anyone has really brought this up or not but. Couldn't speech be used for shouts too. Call me crazy but I think it would be bad ass if they had perks in speech that lowered the CD on some shouts or made some shouts better etc. Obviously these would be higher up in the tier of perks but that would be bad ass.

Back when they announced this game I remember watching a clip where Todd Howard said something along the lines of how bad ass it will feel to be having these shout battles with dragons.
It made me think of how bad ass that really would be but really the way it is now is you usually only get in 1-2 good shouts in a fight depending on your play style.

Don't get me wrong I know there are some balance issues already so maybe they could of made a perk that made it so shouts were 20 or even 50% shorter if they were used on a dragon?
I just imagine my character standing on this mountain and this dragon swirling around me as we exchange our negative words at each other.

Example of perks

20% less CD on shouts

X shout does y amount more damage or lasts z amount more time

shouts CD are halved if used on a dovah

they could of even added perks that change the ways some shouts work mechanic wise such as become ethereal no longer makes you immortal but instead cuts damage in half and allows you to do 50% of your normal damage ( this probably isn't the best of examples because that would be OP as hell )

Or maybe even make one of the speech perk directions lead to a special shout that you can actually USE on people to maybe get them to sell stuff to you for cheaper
or increase the chance of a speech check succeeding. Like a whisper that works similar to throw voice or w/e but instead it makes people do things for you etc etc
of course I don't think they would have to use so many of these kinds of things but just add a few.


I think this would probably be a better way for them to make speech effective. Lets face it, they aren't going to go back and redesign the entire game quests etc to work with a speech system like FA:NV. It would be just too much work for them to do now.

Reputation system in NV I thought didn't really contribute a hell of lot to my experience. And the trading system is not as complex as Skyrim as there are no mechanics that determine prices, except few perks. The Skyrim system seems more realistic to me, as one does get better at selling and buying as one become more exprienced at it. There just isn't the UI or a mechaninc to make it a more interactive with the merchants yet. And please I don't believe Oblivion should be involved in any more games from Betheseda. I thought the NV story was rather lame & failed short of the big picture/immersive post-apocalyptic environment of the Fallout series by trying to do too much.

There are a few quests where you can use speech, but not very many, certainly not enough to make it worth while.

The only time you really can use it is with random npc encounters like the mercenaries on the road who you can persuade to tell you where they are heading.

I liked Dragon Age: Origins system where you had a four-stage skill to boost your persuasiveness, and for example high Strength (and Cunning, I think) played a factor in Persuade/Intimidate checks.


Skyrim's speech skill is mostly for flavor. It serves little more than RP purpose.

Your list is very far-fetched if not ridiculous and doesn't change the fact that there are skills that are underpowered to a critical state, what some people call "fail". With your argument there could be a skill named "Badassitude" that does absolutely nothing, you would say it's a good skill because you like to take it for your badass characters. That's RP yaddi yadda... Roleplaying isn't about skills, it's about narration.


Skyrim's Speech is a problem because its perks can be useful in some situations, but it levels really slow when you need it and too fast when you don't want it.

It's clearly a mercantile skill only, as the dialogue choices aren't choices. 99% of the time, you have one bland answer, one persuasion and one intimidation. You try persuasion, if it doesn't work you try intimidation. Those can be little shortcuts in the quest, but when you fail both and don't want to Tab out, put on some Speech bonus equipment and try again (yes it works), then you just choose the bland answer and at worse you have an additional "go fetch me [item]" and that's all.

As a mercantile skill, it costs a lot to raise through Training, thus failing at its own goal : making more money. Also it's dependant to your other activities : without dungeon sweeping or massive stealing (through the Thieves Guild, as Fence perk is very high), you can't use it. There's no way to buy low, sell high by travelling from place to place, there's no market. So basically, if you want more money, you don't invest in Speech, you do one more dungeon, one more bounty, you rob one more character.


So there's really a problem with Speech currently, and we can only hope for mods and expansion with quests developped with Speech in mind. If a team develops a New Vegas-like mod for Skyrim, Speech will have its place.

Yes it might be ridiculous.. But i dont believe its underpowered since, for certain characters (Like my thief) its a really good skill.. Bribery, better sell prices, sell anything to anybody and so on..

You don't need to pay a trainer to raise your skills Speak is easy.. sell and buy stuff and it raises itself.. Besides Lockpicking i find "Speech" be one of the easiest to level up.

Is it? (Really i only use it for mercantile) but the higher skill the higher Persuation / Intimidation success? (Or am i wrong on this?)

Anyway all i want.. This is regarding MANY skills is; That it is not underpowered compared to what you use it for.. Are you a badass, heavy plated, dual enchanted, daedric equipment one-shotting anything that moves, then yes its a useless skill.. For us thieves; I find it really REALLY good..