And you start the game with 100 points in enchanting,5 in enchanter and double effect, right?? Oh wait, you didnt.

I think the perk trees are a nice improvement over previous versons of TES. I miss the attribute and missing skills though.

I can't see any filler perks that no one ever uses. Each one improves something or gives you another ability.

Some are moe useful than others, but none are a waste.



I'm curious which perks are worthless?

It's not as simple as "going up the left side is light armor and going up the right is heavy". Also, dragon is either light or heavy depending on the direction you took. With the light side, you start off with steel (a heavy armor material). You also end up with advanced which gives you scale (light) but also gives you plate (heavy). Smithing, is smithing and it's a bogus excuse to say that someone who works with mats that are considered light, shouldn't be able to learn mats that are considered heavy. While each mat would require it's own techniques, there is a foundation that exists that would be common among all. The smithing perk tree should go full circle and it's up to you to choose which direction you go, although there is still nothing stopping you from going the other way from steel at any time.

Really, that doesnt make sense? I have completely mastered my entire smithing tree both paths.

A couple of things:

1.) Yes, we get the "smith 1,000,000 iron daggers and become a master smith" argument. I would have preferred the skill to work more like Alchemy - the more expensive the item you create, the more progress towards the next level. Also, it would have made sense if cheaper items provided less and less progress as you leveled up the skill. It would have at least forced me to make some better gear, and to spend more time/money on leveling the skill.

2.) You can make the argument of "to break the game or not to break the game." I started out playing a thief/assassin and decided early on that I wasn't going to use any ranged weapons. I liked the idea of sneaking into a place and taking out enemies one-by-one without being detected, Metal Gear Solid style. For a while, it worked. But, as I leveled, those dragons got stronger and stronger, and they didn't seem to care that I wanted to try to sneak behind them and sneak attack them. I hit a wall with my roleplay style, to the point where those elder dragons would give me the one-two punch of breath attack, bite, then fling my corpse into the air.

This is one of my main points. Skyrim is a combat game, seasoned with roleplaying. You can argue that nobody held a bow to my knee and demanded that I max my smithing and enchanting, but I argue the opposite. I decided that my blades needed to be deadlier so I could kill the dragons BEFORE they two-hit me.

"But why didn't you just pick up Archery or an offensive spellcasting tree?" So first you tell me not to break the game and to just roleplay, but now I should break my roleplay so I can play the game?

Keep in mind, I haven't even dipped into the tribunal of alchemy/smithing/enchanting to make godlike weapons and armor. My weapons have all been crafted and improved simply by having 100 smithing. The enchantments applied are of similar fashion - I didn't use any potions to enhance the effects.

With these points out of the way, I want to get back to my original subject and the point I attempted to make initially: useless perks are useless, useless skills are useless. I'm not trying to make a jack-of-all-trades character, but I would like to have more use out of the roleplay skills provided, without feeling the need to dump points into combat skills just to survive the game, based on the playstyle I've chosen. The dragons don't care that you want to be a lightly armored rogue who uses nothing but daggers, and the game makes you need to fight them should you wish to see the conclusion of the main story.

I wouldn't have minded a speech mini-game if it meant I would have had a reliable way level up the speech skill. As it is, I have nothing but the occasional persuade/intimidate/bribe option in dialogue, and even then, I've had to opt for combat and crafting perks so I can fight the dragons.

I personally like one idea that was proposed in this thread - broader skill trees. Instead of having a tree for each individual perk, why not have a tree for each of the three skillsets (stealth, combat, magic), perks that affect all of those skills generally, and spread out the perk points further.

Who says there are four different playstyles?

Like most "it's unbalanced" arguments, yours falls apart if you don't assume people are grinding the craft skills. Doesn't anyone play this game naturally? No? Bueller?

You failed to convince me on any of your points.

I agree with most of this, but would say they may as well not have perk trees at all, just prerequisites(skills or other perks or minimum base health/magicka/stamina). One pool of perks for combat, a pool of perks for non-combat. 1 perk for each every level. Trees based on skills are very limiting, they could get really creative without them and have skill synergy perks. For example:

• Summons cast while armor spells are active gain 25% of your armor rating
  
• You deal 20% more melee damage while cloak spells are active

Those wouldn't belong in any particular skill tree right now.

I kind of went into this in more detail in a topic I made awhile back.
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1321295-game-has-potential-for-decent-strategy-over-specialization-ruins-it-completely/page__fromsearch__1

By this logic, you shouldn't really be able to level up on just using a 1hander, since a master warrior should be able to block, use 2 hands, be adept in armor, and probably should have some function with a bow. And in fact, YOU CAN'T.

This was the point made by another poster above. You only have 100 ranks in a skill. You can only get so much level progression (and thus stat increases and perk points) by leveling only that skill. To get more, you branch out. The more you branch, the more you get (to certain point). That's intended.

That's why earlier it was stated a warrior can finish the game with typically far fewer perks than a mage. Its not really that a mage can't, but that they won't by nature of the system. Mages use more various trees typically. A warrior can get through the game using 1 type of armor, 1 type of weapon and you can buy the potions. You will by nature, have a lower level at the end if you did just that. Similarly, If all you did were smith and then run through the game with beefy weapons and armor, you'd probably finish at a similar level. You wouldn't have to swing or absorb as much, because beefy weapons are beefy.

Now if you start adding in other stuff, of course that level goes up. That's the point of Skyrim scaling. In past games, the scaling was bad. No this system isn't perfect, but it is an improvement.

Believe me when i say you're worrying about nothing. Beth don't know how to fix broken stuff and they sure as hell don't know how to add more variety. All they do seem to know how to do is fix unbroken stuff by adding broken stuff and remove other unbroken stuff to disguise the fact they added broken stuff.

It doesn't take a genius to see the innovation pool is stagnant. Too long has a spindoctor sat at the helm.

That's true and when you master the light armor smithing you are also able to do Dragon Bone and Steel Plate armors which are heavy armor - it's weird that you have knowledge to forge them when you can't even upgrade well other heavy armors.

how about u gain a perk in any tree when u don't use everything
how the hell my melee fighter get better damage with bow?
hes never shot a bow
but magically i found a better way to 1 shot people by getting blood and guts all over my shoes

You can come up with similar complaints regarding the TES skill system.

Why do I get more skilled at magic by casting one low level spell over and over? Why can I get 100 smithing just by crafting iron daggers? Why does getting hit by mudcrabs for an hour increase my armor rating? etc. etc. It's not all that logical either. I think people just fear change, an experience system would be better for TES.

I think it all works fairly well myself. Certainly you can spam your way to things but it takes enough fooling around to at least cause you to work at it a bit. There is your experience.

To spam Restoration and Heavy Armor simultaniously just go upset some Mammoths and Dual Cast Heal while fully armored. You need to be fairly tough/armor leveled a bit to do this but it's quick and fun. You can fill up some Grand Soul gems afterwards as well.

Bunch of horsecrap. You had either maxed out the skills you use, and decided to go smithing, or you just wanted some cheap and easy levels.

Don't whinge about it now you've done it. man up and take responsibility for your actions.

Yes, actually. Just smithing with materials you find "in the wild", or to improve upon items you wish to use or are currently using, and doing so religiously, in natural gameplay, took me to level 50 odd to get to 100 smtihing. Slightly less for enchanting, via unenchanting found items, and enchanting found/looted items to make some coin.

People who grind for a couple of hours, then come and whinge about it typify all of what's wrong with the worthless "it's not my fault generation". Seeing their posts makes me want to yak.

The only problem a great blacksmith faces is:

"Why should I create anything?"

For one, unlike Oblivion, everything stays at their top shape, so you don't have any reason to tamper with the hammer

Second, the only experience you get for smithing is by forging something. You don't get any experience by upgrading

Third, once you DO make something, do you even need to make anything else? For example, let's say that you want to equip yourself and 3 other companions with a full set of armor and weapons, which includes:
1. Helm
2. Armor
3. Gauntlets
4. Boots
5. Shield
6. One Handed Weapon
7. A Bow for good measure

For all that, you get to create 28 items. Now, how many levels do all that take you?
Let's say you want to make the set for other 5 companions, you'll get to create 35 extra gears (for a total of 63 crafts). How far does it take you?

Not very far, that's for certain. The only way to improve smithing is by forging things, but once you forge things that you need, you don't need to forge anything else, which effectively caps your ability to move forward. Forging more to allow you to get better is nothing better than power leveling

What asgard so very eloquently said.

Actually you do get experience for upgrading equipment. I know for a fact you do because I leveled my smithing to 100 on my current character WHILE upgrading my armor. I got to 100 by simply crafting all the animal skins I had to leather and forging leather gear to sell. Crafting to sell is a money stream that many characters who dont go overboard enchanting items with banish can require when playing the game. I have got to level 40 by only doing the thieves guild missions and questlines. As I have been investing in training, property and buying arrows I need a cash income to afford it. Smithing and thieving is my income.

Really? My mistake then. How much does it provide you?

Argument 2: was pretty easy for me, buy mats, create potions/gear, sell back, move to next city rinse repeat.

I rather like the perk system. If you want 100 in smithing, you gotta work at it (and yes, making hundreds of iron daggers does feel like work). But only one of my characters (a warrior) ever achieved 100 smithing, and the rest simply don't need it.

I also like how most of the more appealing perks are behind less exciting ones. It means you need to invest a bit in order to reap the benefits.

No idea tbh, I havent paid attention to it. But as I said I was at 99 and popped to 100 when upgrading my nightingale armor set so I know it does give experience.

it shoudn't be allowed for ppl to abuse

To me that isn't really fun. Leveling armor and restoration skill is extremely boring and repetitive to me, not to mention it's just purely unintuitive to intentionally upset mammoths and let them hit you - at least for me. Kind of ruins my RPing of a character that isn't a total moron or suicidal.

Speech was better in FO3, awesome in FO:NV and a step backwards in TESV. The number of speech checks in FO:NV made me love TAGing Speech and talking my way to better rewards or past difficult encounters. Skyrim could have done with something similar.