Majority of mods are not up to the level of quality and polish that the devs (or even the whiners) would require

Who cares about the majority? It only takes one good mod to make a difference. A majority of mods usually don't even focus on game mechanics, and are just retextures, or aesthetic stuff (and their level of quality is better than Bethesda's, since that's what those mods set out to achieve, making it look better than vanilla). If SC like it was in Morrowind or even Oblivion came back the "whiners" would have nothing to "whine" about. We'd be content. Content with magic at least.

I'd like to start off by saying that I don't think Skyrim is better off without Spellmaking. I am not a proponent of removing options from Elder Scrolls. Ultimately, that is why I felt Oblivion was not as good of a game as Morrowind, because it did offer less choice. I wouldn't be against the inclusion of Spellmaking in Skyrim - if it were done right. As it stands, I don't feel that Spellmaking can be done right in Skyrim (and I have explained why in the past, and will do so again later in this post). I'd also like to give an early warning that this thread will probably end up being a TL;DR, so if you're not that type of forum reader, I'm sorry, I'm not doing to "dumb down" my post for you (tee hee, you see what I did there?)

First of all, I think I disagree more with all of the melodrama regarding the exclusion of Spellmaking more than I do the argument that Spellmaking should be in Skyrim. Melodrama meaning all of the "Magic revolved around Spellmaking", "TES is 'dumbed down for the masses'", "I will never buy another Bethesda game until Spellmaking is put back in", "Spellmaking was a cornerstone of TES", "Spellmaking allowed for infinitely new character builds and playstyles" etc.

Spellmaking is -not- a cornerstone of TES. The appeal of TES is "live another life, in another world". That's the motto of TES - the appeal, the cornerstone. Not "create new spells in a virtual spreadsheet". Spellmaking is more like a nice bonus, the icing on the cake, that is an ever living world that allows you to be anything you want to be, and interact with that world however you see fit.

Spellmaking does not allow for some unique playstyles and builds that didn't exist without it. Whatever spell effects you can apply in Spellmaking are -still available to you- without it. You can still cast those spells, and you can still utilize those effects, without Spellmaking. You can still play that style of character without Spellmaking.

The melodrama that surrounds the exclusion of Spellmaking (and the overall melodrama of every complaint about Skyrim on these forums) is absolutely ridiculous, and that's what I take issue with more than anything.

There is also a huge difference of overall philosophy in regards to magic in The Elder Scrolls:



^^^ I totally, 100% disagree with that. I do not see the new magic casting system as a "gimmick", in fact, I see the magic system in general as superior in every way to the previous incarnations. Between the Skyrim casting system, and Spellmaking, I would choose Spellmaking as the gimmick, over an overall gameplay design.

Where I would agree that magic suffers in Skyrim is from the lack of effects. Just for myself alone, and the style of character that I like to play, I am missing all of the different types of summons (specifically: Skeletons, Ghosts, Wraiths, and Liches, as I like to play a Summoner that specializes in supernatural spirits. I have little to no interest in summoning Daedra and Atronaches - tho I will admit that I love my Dremora Lord, and Conjure Dremora Lord is easily the favorite spell of my current character) as well as Command spells. However, missing spell effects isn't the fault of the current magic system, it was just a choice that they made.

Also, here's the difference between the melodrama of "OMG BETHESDA IS DUMBING DOWN TO THE COD KIDS" and a rational, constructive criticism: I am disappointed with the removal of certain spell effects from Skyrim that were present in previous Elder Scrolls games. I do believe that the magic system suffers for it, and could be better if these spell effects were brought back.

^ That's constructive. That's not melodramatic. That's not whining. That's stating an opinion of a certain aspect of the game (disappointment), and stating what could be done to improve it (return of specific spell effects).

Instead, what most of this forum resorts to in their "criticisms" is "Bethesda is just marketing towards the COD kids who have a short attention span, TES is dumbed down for the masses, and console gamers and their ADD short attention spans are to blame for ruining PC gaming"

^ That is not constructive. That's whining, and it's insulting.

Now, back to the original point: I would take a vastly improved casting system over Spellmaking any day of the week. And I find the current system to be completely superior to Morrowind or Oblivion. I feel that it is absolutely worth sacrificing Spellmaking if it means getting improved gameplay, over keeping the same lacking gameplay in favor of Spellmaking, which of the two I see as more of a gimmick.

Now, why can't those two co-exist? Perhaps they can. Perhaps Bethesda, as we speak, is working out a way to make them work together, and will release it in a DLC or expansion. But personally, I do not believe they can co-exist, and here's why:



^ This is just one example, and I will provide more, but just to start off with. each spell is so individualized, I believe it would cause way too many problems technically for it to work (and I'm not talking about graphically)

First off, each elemental type of damage has a different effect: Fire is a DOT that "burns" your opponents; Ice damages Stamina and also slows your opponents movement; Shock damage also does Magicka damage. oblivifaller already expressed the issue with damage spells, I don't need to repeat it.

Secondly, there are different types of casting styles. In Destruction alone, there are instant cast spells, there are constant cast stream spells, there are runes, then in other schools of magic there are constant cast spells (such as Wards, or Detect Life) and there are instant cast spells (such as Conjure , or Shield spells). There are even spells that have different casting durations (for example, Command Daedra has a longer casting time than most instant cast spells). So how do these all work together?

Things would start to conflict with each other in a Spellmaking screen that would cause issues between spells that have different casting styles, and combining them together. Ward spells would not be compatible with Conjure spells, Command Daedra wouldn't be compatible with Healing, rune spells wouldn't be compatible with Shield spells, and so on and so forth.

And if you start to put limitations on what effects can and cannot be combined together, well then you lose all of that magic about Spellmaking that the proponents are so melodramatic about in the first place ("Spellmaking is so unique and allows for so many unique and custom playstyles and builds that are impossible without Spellmaking because of all the ways you can combine effects together to make creative spells").

Thirdly, there is the matter of dual casting. As it stands, you can take perks to dual cast specific schools. But what happens if you mix together spells of 2 different schools? Lets say for example: Frenzy and Fireball. You have created a spell that casts both Frenzy and Fireball. But, your character only has the Illusion double cast perk, not the Destruction. This creates 2 options:

1. You cannot dual cast the spell, because you don't have both required perks - Okay, but then this begins to negate the dual casting system with Spellmaking, and negates the dual casting perks you HAVE invested in, because hey, you DID invest in the Illusion dual cast perk, you should be able to benefit from it, right?

2. The spell works off of it's "highest" school, allowing you to dual cast using the Illusion perk - And this goes to one of the issues I have with Spellmaking from the get go - it allows you to gain the benefits of a school of magic (In this case, Destruction) without actually investing in it. As such, you'd be able to dual cast a Destruction spell, and get the added damage bonus from it, without ever needing to invest in the Destruction school. This was an issue with the Spellmaking system in Oblivion (and I'm sure in Morrowind as well) where all you had to do was keep the effects of your untrained school slightly lower in magnitude than the effects of your trained school, and the spell would go off the skill of the highest magnitude, essentially allowing you to cast an Expert level Destruction spell as a Novice in Destruction, because hey, you combined it with a Master level Illusion effect and you are a master of Illusion. People are already complaining about skills like Smithing and Enchanting being broken, but hey, in that situation, at least players are putting in both a time investment, as well as a perk investment, into developing those skills. Spellmaking allows you to "exploit" the system without putting any kind of investment in. Hell, with Spellmaking, you could conceivable master ONE school of magic, and become a master of them ALL simply by learning the spreadsheety nature of Spellmaking and how to game it. It's a broken system.

I am a supporter of the IDEA of Spellmaking, but as I've gotten older, and delved deeper and deeper into it, I've realized how broken of a system it actually is. Just because we have elements of the game now that are perceived to be broken (Smithing and Enchanting - and I do not share those sentiments that those skills are broken) doesn't make it valid to incorporate yet another broken game mechanic.

Morrowind it fit, because lets be honest, that game had [censored] for limits, and was pretty much "broken" and exploitable on every level, whether it was Spellmaking, or Enchant, or Alchemy, or even just knowing the location of the uber gear and getting the best equipment at level 1. Morrowind didn't have limits, and was totally exploitable, and hell, that was part of the charm, and I'm not going to lie, is part of the reason why I love Morrowind so much. Morrowind always has, and I venture to guess, always will, have a different "feel" to it than most other games, Elder Scrolls and otherwise, simply due to the fact that there were NO limits, and the game mechanics allowed you to break it in nearly any way imaginable.

The walls and limits have come up in Oblivion and Skyrim (and I don't believe that to be an inherently wrong choice, and I certainly don't consider it to be "dumbing down", it's simply taking the series in a direction to where the game doesn't encourage you to break the game), and the -attempt- is to remove the game breaking mechanics, such as killing essential NPC's, or becoming an uber god by gaming the system and learning how to min / max. Quite frankly, as much charm as Morrowind has for allowing you (and even encouraging you) to break it's very foundation, there is something that is inherently off about a game mechanic that encourages you to -NOT- level up, and -NOT- select your "major skills" as the skills that define your character, because in order to be the best character you can be, you need to "control" leveling by leveling up your -minors-, thus, making your class dependent skills the ones that DON'T define your character. <--- And I know that sentence might have just become an incoherent mess of words, hopefully you'll understand the point I'm trying to make and forgive the questionable English skills.

But essentially, that very system doesn't enhance RP, it actually breaks it. Because instead of playing your character as a character, you're playing your character as a bunch of numbers and stats, and trying to maximize that. And now, writing that, I think I finally understand just what Todd Howard meant when he spoke about that so much throughout the Skyrim production process. That's exactly what Morrowind and Oblivion were. Skyrim takes that out of the equation, and becomes fully roleplaying.

And speaking of roleplaying, I know this is venturing off the Spellmaking topic a little bit, but I also find it a little bit funny, all the people who complain about the "RPG elements" being removed from the game, because there are no numbers that tell you what your character is supposed to be, but these people are complaining about RPG elements being removed "for the casual gamer who needs their hand held every step of the way"...

I just find it funny, the people complaining about an aspect of the game NO LONGER TELLING YOU WHAT YOUR CHARACTER IS (instead, forcing YOU to use your BRAIN and IMAGINATION to define what your character is) making the accusation that it is being done for those who "need their hand held" (the implication being that the numbers are too complicated for mere mortals, and that without a quest marker telling us where to go, our heads would explode and we would die of confusion)

And speaking of the quest marker, I also find people complaining about that to be funny too. Morrowind did the same thing. You have a compass in the bottom corner that told you where you were and which way you were going, and when an NPC told you "Go to Balmora", what happened? A big old yellow square popped up on your map telling you where Balmora was. The difference between Morrowind and Oblivion / Skyrim? Oblivion / Skyrim put a quest marker on your compass for you, eliminating the need to constantly open up your map to get your bearings in relation to the big yellow quest marker, where as Morrowind made you constantly open up your world map to figure it out. So somewhere along the line, needless tedium of opening a map became "complexity" and "depth", while the removal of said needless tedious activity became "hand holding".

The quest marker didn't tell you how to get to the location, only where it was. It only seems as "easy" as it was because Oblivion hardly had anything for difficult terrain. It was all valleys and rolling hills. Not much in the way of impassible, or even difficult to traverse terrain - and when there was, it was typically towards the edges of the map. Oblivion was, for all intents and purposes, wide open valleys and fields with no obstacles between points A and B, thus making the trek from your current location to the quest marker a rather straight line with minimal obstacles.

However with Skyrim, while my quest marker may tell me that I need to head south east, it certainly isn't quite that simple when I need to run from Whiterun to Ivarsgread, and from Ivarsgread up the sides of the Throat of The World. I still have to figure out how to get from Whiterun to Ivarsgread, and let me tell you, I have gotten myself lost on more than one occasion on that journey. When my compass marker pops up telling me there is a word wall at the top of the mountain I am running alongside, that compass marker doesn't tell me how to get up to the top of that mountain. I still have to run around searching for the path.

So what am I trying to say? The claim that Skyrim is "dumbed down" is absolutely bogus, it's false, and it is insulting. It is not "constructive criticism" in the least bit. Quite the opposite in fact. It is nothing more than an elitist attitude, and an accusation that anyone who prefers it this way is "simple minded", when that couldn't be further from the truth.

How does this all relate to Spellmaking? Well, for one, the magic system isn't "dumbed down". I have explained why I believe Spellmaking wouldn't work with the current system. I may be right, I may be wrong, it is simply my interpretation of the situation. I don't particularly see Spellmaking really working well with the current system, and with that train of thought, I'm glad it was removed, or cut. I wouldn't want a poorly implemented game mechanic just to appease a niche audience.

I'm not inherently against Spellmaking, and I'm not inherently for the removal of choice, unless I don't see it working out with the game design. In that regard, I don't really see Spellmaking, Athletics, or Acrobatics working with the current game design, and as such, I am glad they were removed.

And I certainly don't feel that Spellmaking, Athletics, Acrobatics, or really anything that was removed from the previous games, was a big enough of a gameplay feature to justify scrapping the current gameplay design in favor of. I feel that the current gameplay design offers way more for both fun, as well as character design, customization, and development, than the removed features, and thus, I am happy with the choices made, and happy with the result that is Skyrim.

If the removed elements, in this case, Spellmaking, can be proven to work with the current game design, then I would be in favor of it's inclusion.

However - nobody on these forums is a game designer, and thus they cannot convince me that it -can- work, just as I am not a game designer and I cannot (nor should I) convince you that it -can't- work. You feel it can, I feel it can't, and we can have those disagreements.

But going back to the very top of my post (and bringing this TL;DR full circle), the melodrama is not going to win you any credibility in my eyes. The melodrama is not going to make me sympathetic to your points, nor your cause. The melodrama is going to do nothing but make me disregard you as nothing more than a whiner, because the posts of "TES IS DUMBED DOWN FOR THE CASUAL CONSOLE GAMERS!!!", "SPELLMAKING WAS THE BACKBONE OF MAGIC AND I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER BETHESDA GAME UNTIL IT'S RETURNED" and "SPELLMAKING WAS THE CORNERSTONE OF TES AND MADE FOR INFINITE NEW BUILDS AND PLAYSTYLES THAT I JUST CAN'T PLAY WITHOUT IT" are nothing more than melodramatic whining, and often times even completely inaccurate to the reality of the situation.

A negative comment about Bethesda can be made, I don't aim to blindly defend Bethesda. They are my favorite game developer, and from my first experience with them (Morrowind) until now, as far as I'm concerned are 4/4 in "best game of all time" candidates, and my top 4 games are all Bethesda games (1. Skyrim 2. Morrowind 3. Oblivion 4. Fallout 3 - in that order), but they certainly have missteps along the way. Not one of those 4 installments is "flawless", I have gripes with those games myself, including Skyrim.

Whining about how awful Bethesda is, and casual gamer this, and dumbing down that, is not constructive. Stating "I am disappointed that Spellmaking was removed, here is how I feel it could work" is constructive, while "Spellmaking being removed is just dumbing down the game for the masses, Bethesda is getting lazy and I could do it better" is not.

That's how I feel about the subject of Spellmaking, which is related to, and bled into, how I feel about this forum as a whole as of late. Like I said earlier, my post is totally TL;DR status, and I expect a bunch of those responses, but I'm not dumbing down my post for the masses. Read it, or don't.

I agree with you 1000%. Its a breath of fresh air to read a post from an intelligent and rational poster. Im surprised so few people see the depth in this game for what it really is. They give us dragon encounters, but people complain about not being able to water walk...??

IMO they only dropped spell making because of their own screw up in Oblivion, where you couldn't delete spells. They blew off trying to figure out how to make it work on the gameplay engine. So they just removed it altogether, no matter what excuse they hand us.

A big "yea" here from me. I'm against the removal of any aspect of the game.

What makes me angry is the fact that, obviously, the Dragonbrn is the only person in whole Tamriel who can't create spells. even some of the less... intellectual people in the academy, again, obviously, do it on daily basis.

Also, to haters, just because something exists, doesn't mean you have to use it if you dislike it. It's like "The smithing iz zooo OP!", looking back on Oblivion, all those people "Omgz Chameleon is so stupid, it's so op, it's so bad, it breaks the game..." ...so why the hell did you enchent your gear to 100% chameleoon and wore it the whole gameplay at the first place?

This will sound like trolling, but... Anyone else thinks people who played only Skyrim and Oblivion should not talk about how Skyrim is the deepest and most complex game ever?

I agree as well, in no small part due to knowing from experience how ridiculous things could get with crafted spells. With certain magic overhauls in place it could get even sillier (I found out the hard way with the one I made myself), although if you ran Midas in Oblivion it did tend to put the brakes on, at least a bit, due to relative scarcity of some gems.

And that was with single-casting, with dual it could get really insane given that you get a boost for doing so.

Spell creation added build types and new effects. Dual casting doesn't. That's the difference. Dual casting is a gimmick that doesn't add anything to the game. Especially not at the expense of spell creation. Dual wielding weapons does however, but I specifically say in regards to casting. As for the limitation on spells equipped and weapons, item equipped, thats not dual casting and doesn't apply to the post you quoted.

It's even more galling when a fellow apprentice - the Khajit - asks you to test one of his crafted spells. Apparently the almighty archmage isn't capable of doing what a petty apprentice does in his spare time.

Indeed

anyone have toyed wil the walls spells yet, I had a lot of fun with wall of frost, but its verry dangerouus if there are peoples arround
it feels like being rand all thor and painting with ice. amazing !

Good points and excellent ideas on how spellmaking should have been implemented in Skyrim. I've started my first hybrid Assassin-Mage using Illusion and Alteration, and am starting to see some of the flaws you mentioned.

The spells may be somewhat "unique", but there are so few spells to be learned in each school. Illusion I've found has basically around 6 or 7 effects and the spells are just variations of those. Alteration's spell list is remarkably short as well, with only a few effects being of real use + the upgraded versions once those become outdated. With illusion, it feels as if I'm working with just charm, rage, and fear with just variant upgrades at higher levels.

Can't wait to see spell creation back once modders can put it together, it was a poor design choice to take it out, especially if spells don't even scale!

Voted no, sorry. And I don't want "all effects" back to magic either. That being said, I haven't tried a mage build yet, and pretty much avoid anything magic except basic healing magic. Do something about additive stacking overpowering anything, then maybe I'd consider it as long as it didn't force "regular spells" to become weak enough to be used in a spell making system.

We now have smithing, enchanting, and alchemy, and sadly I think those are kind of broken as well. Smithing for its rather insane leveling speed by grinding iron daggers to top level, which just doesn't make sense. And enchanting and alchemy for suffering additive stacking. Also I'm not a fan of 100% anything, which is why I prefer limit based stacking. Here the max effect possible is twice as much as the most powerful item you have, but you can never reach it, only get close to it. A racial bonus (nord frost resistance) would be counted as "an item".

Say you have 5 items of 50% chameleon (1/n^2 * effect):
1/1*50% + 1/2*50% + 1/4*50% + 1/8*50% + 1/16*50% = 96.875
Add a floor operator to the result, and we can never get to 100%.
96% chameleon sounds a lot better in my ears than 250% chameleon!
Of course some additional rebalancing would have to be done, it would probably fail on its own.

What about someone who goes all the way back to Morrowind. Does that make an opinion more credible to you? Or are you still too elitist to accept anyone's opinion who differs from you?

No, you are wrong, plain and simple.

Spellmaking allowed you to combine effects that were already in the game. It didn't allow you to create brand new spell effects.

You can still roll all those types of builds by using the spell effects that are still in the game with or without Spellmaking.

No.

The only way I want spell making back is if existing spells are an actual, viable option. They weren't in OB.

Anything you could create was automatically better than anything you could get elsewhere. It's not just a balance thing, but something that makes sense - NPCs are around to put months, even years of work into magic and the PC can whip something up in ten seconds that will beat anything you'll find anywhere. So add things to the world that make default spells a viable alternative - hidden or ancient lore, quest rewards, etc. Even with unique effects.

Think Finger of the Mountain, but in this case not inferior to the PC's own cooked up Shock spell.

Yes, you could get unintended effects from Spell Creation. That were not vanilla effects. This has been proven ad nauseum by Xarnac. No, you cant still make a lot of builds that spell creation, let alone other gone mechanics allowed. Just because you didnt get creative, doesn't mean others didnt either. So I am right, plain and simple.

Xarnac has told me of his concoctions. They were not some unique, creative effects that weren't already in the game. They may have been some semi creative uses of said effects, but they were not new unintended effects, and they weren't anything that you can't do with the already existing effects.

Also, you are taking after Xarnac a bit too closely, borderline insulting me by insinuating that I'm simply "not creative" because I don't agree that Spellmaking has the depth and complexity that you claim.

Theres a ton of effects that are not even in the game anymore, much less what spell creation could do over vanilla spells. Don't try to sit here and say that you can still do what you could in previous games through spell creation. Absolutely nothing like some of the out of the box stuff that's been mentioned in every spell creation thread. Look at the outside the box build thread. My post in there on builds would be twice as long if spell creation were still in. and plenty more that cant even be fathomed since we don't now how a SC system would interact with every variable, like we've deciphered in previous SC systems. In the end its only as limited as your imagination.

Magic as is gets old after 2-3 builds, give or take. With spell creation it was almost limitless.

And yes there were unintended effects with spell creation. Like being able to cast a hostile spell, getting an NPC aggro, but the guards see that person as the aggressor. Or the unique animation mix up of the heart attack spell, which cant even be replicated.

I've already included 99% of the "answers" in the OP for the things i see in this thread... I included them because i hoped i wouldn't have to repeat myself. Please read the OP if you are going to say something, thanks.

@Nell2Thalzzay



Do you think the OP contains melodrama? Do you dismiss all these posts as melodrama? If you do, think for a while, who is more melodramatic about the whole thing? People make points (except some trolls) and have views. You must understand that their views are different. Don't dismiss them as melodrama, just argue against them - unfortunately we have a lot of characterizing already. Maybe the reason a good debate can't be made in these forums is because most spend more time characterizing instead of just replying with their own arguments.

-Rping/playing for numbers is your own choice. It is not an argument to why spell making would be a bad asset to the game. Numbers are everywhere you can play for the numbers atm, or you can just RP, it is your choice. You see spreadsheets and numbers when making spells? I see RP, immersion and spell experimenting.

-I made this long OP for people to read it. You present certain problems with the implementation of spell making which i already explain on the OP. The things i mention are obviously not the solutions, they are examples and the only reason i made these examples was because of silly questions people asked (no offence) like "how will it work with dual casting"? I made them so people can start answering these questions themselves. I don't even consider these as problems since their solution can be amazingly simple. And yes the solution usually comes with limitations, but considering the options one can already have with spell making, even strict limitations seem like nothing.



As long one presents his opinion in a constructive manner you should accept it as another point of view, different that yours.



I 100% disagree on this. I would easily banish this entire system for the previous ones. I found their magic system way better because of variety, choices, playstyles etc than the one in Skyrim which just seems dull in my eyes (dual casting for example seems completely superficial - a "flashy" version of a damage upgrade with a perk that chain-stuns). I believe i don't have to explain why, since you have played all 3 games and experienced their magic systems yourself. Maybe it's because we appreciate different things.

(and don't double post plx :toughninja: )

Good post in which with most anything I have to agree. I really feel that in Skyrim I can at most make perhaps 2 - 3 different types of pure mages, where in Oblivion or Morrowind I could make many different types of pure mages. Here you're perhaps a "master of destruction & restoration who dabbles in conjuration" or a "master illusionist & alteration mage with a bit of skill in another tree" and if you make yet another mage you're just playing the same one as last. But in the former games you'd be able to make many different types of conjurer for example with spells to complement that. You could master Conjuration & Restoration and use those skills to heal and buff the stats (gone in Skyrim...) of your summon, or you'd take Alteration instead of Restoration and throw shield spells on your conjuration while pinning enemies down for it with burden (well in theory at least, didn't work so well in Oblivion, but that could have been fixed in Skyrim) and if you took destruction that didn't mean you just threw fireballs past your summon, no, you'd perhaps summon a flame atronach and you'd cast "weakness to fire" on your foes, or "damage strength" so they wouldn't damage your atronach so much.

SO many good things are gone, basically Bethesda spend ALL their time to create a huge open world.
Guilds quests are a joke, caracter development too.
Main quests is so boring and short, i dont know what to say.
Good story line and caracter development is a KEY component to any RPG.
If you dont know how to write, ask Obsidian, i think they will gladly help you.
And replay DA:O, ME2, Deus Ex HR , Fallout New Vegas.
TES series "degenerates" since Morrowind, i dont want any NPC to have his own voice,because they have like 5 lines of text to tell me lol. In Morrowind any NPC had like 100 lines minimum. And actually after 20 days in Skyrim i think in game we have like 4-6 actors max lol.
I dont care if i become overpowered if i get cool daedric artifact on a lvl 5, it is a single game, we dont need any balance here. (leveled chests and some NPCs ala draugr death lord). But no, when you hit 20 lvl some courier will run to you and tells about a museum in Dawnstar :facepalm:

Yes, because anyone who doesnt like simplification and the removal of options is an elitist.
Seriously, its beginning to get old.

So to make spellmaking work in the current system it needs to be limited otherwise it's chaotic, hard if not impossible to use inside the game or overall unbalanced.

Thing is with limitations this would literally become the "bigger fireball" style of spellmaking where you don't really make spells, instead you just tweak already existing ones. This might fix the "destruction is useless after level 40" problem, but so would scaling spell effectiveness with skill and that wouldn't cause that many problems.

Sure I am, I'm just saying that people who haven't played at least Oblivion and Morrowind should refrain from using terms such as " Skyrim is the X of TES series " and "Skyrim is X compared to the rest of TES series ", because Oblivion does not equal TES series, is all.

But the fact stays that noone forces anyone else to use Alchemy, Enchanting and Smithing and if there was Spellmaking, noone would be forced to use that either, so I see no reason why would anyone be "No way, never!".