I liked Levitation in Morrowind. I needed Levitation in Morrowind.

However, since Oblivion, I have not needed Levitation to get to anywhere I need to go, so I do not need the spell anymore. So, I don't miss it.

Saying that levitation breaks the drawbridge mechanic is the same thing as saying a lock picking spell breaks the lockpick mechanic. Yeah... it does. That's the point. If you want to be a magic user, take that route. If you don't, use the conventional method.

You do realize this is a circular argument? Designing a world, where levitate exists, while completely ignoring the fact that levitate exists will give you.....a design that does not require levitate.

It still completely kills any builds that might focus on levitating characters....it also kills any need to prepare to fight against any NPC mage that might come attacking from above..... but who cares about doing what you want or interacting in the TES world as it really is.... beyond being given a few superficial choices between different sticks to carry to bash people with..... and kill cams.... kill cams will carry the story....

A point that seems to be lost on some.

yes, let's design the whole game for levitation then. Flying castles, unreachable cliffsides, secret stash atop of dungeon, all the good stuff.

Hmm... It seems like we're forgetting something. Oh who cares nobody plays pure fighters and rouges in a TES game, that's just silly, they don't deserve this kind of freedom.

But nevermind that, we cannot have Levitation either way because of killcams.

Yyyyup, sounds perfectly reasonable

The game is unbalanced in such a way that anyone who wishes it to be a challenge must take steps to avoid what was included in the core product as game-breaking mechanics in the first place. This isn't anything new with TES I-IV, either. Zomg they bypassed my favorite part of the dungeon! The entire game was supposedly designed around the ability for anyone to play whatever game they want.

We've made good games before. Now, let's pay the bills.

so mage should be easy, thief should be medium, fighter should be hard mode?

You just failed game design 101

And Todd Howard was valedictorian.

i rather have whats in that one Guide to Lock picking book then noclip levitation..

Whatever spell or functions that you implement in TES you must keep in mind that you make this available for ALL characters, it's not like levitation, or open lock or any other spell is limited to mages alone. There is no categorization of mages, warriors or rogues, because I can easily build a character that is all three.

Levitation has obvious advantages both offensively and defensively for any style of character, so the only ones who wouldn't go for it are roleplayers who do the self-imposed limitation thing, and then we have yet another skill or feature that we need to avoid in order to keep the game fun. So next generation of super-characters will simply add alteration to the smithing/enchanting combo so now we have helicopter gunships...fun...

The last masters of Levitation were killed in an epic battle many eons ago!

They flew into the sky, as they had seen what they believed to be a shooting star, however, they were all killed when it turned out that the star was infact a TIE Fighter lost, taking the close flight of the Levitators to be an attack.

Anyone who wants a challenge must self-impose countless restrictions already. The addition of a spell to a broken game doesn't make the game more broken. It either is or it isn't. We're talking about Skyrim, you know, the game where you pause combat before you die, eat 600 kilograms of cheese, drink 15 potions, change weapons and spells, and then resume combat; the game where you walk in front of people and one shot them because they can't see you; the game where you have console commands [pc] and a selection of difficulties.

Levitation... who cares about it being op; vanilla is garbage either way.

Yeah, they could add levitation as a master spell that you needed and a master level perk (branching from the expert perk) in Alteration to use. Maybe the spell would only give you slow fall without the perk and you need the perk to make it work for levitation. That would be available to all characters, but likely taken more by mages since it would require a substantial investment into Alteration perks to get there.

That would also solve the issues raised by earlier posters regarding the potential game breaking nature of the spell (sailing over drawbridges and up impassible cliffs), since by the time you get to Master level in just about any skill you are way overpowered in Skyrim, so being able to sail over drawbridges or hover over melee opponents and safely attack them with ranged weapons or spells would not be that much more OP than what you already have in the game with Shadow Warrior (with free sneak attack), high level Illusionists (muffle+invisibility) or plain old warriors with overpowered enchanted/smithed weapons.

As long as the spell was Master level and really hard to get (i.e., substantial perk investment required), those issues with it being overpowered are not really issues in a game like Skyrim where every high level character is overpowered in one way or another.

The issue about walled cities could be solved with an invisible loading zone that you pass through on your way into the city that loads the city.

Seems like it could work well enough without a major world redesign.

Levitation, like Mysticism, is a victim of the current times.

Coding games to the lowest hardware denominator (consoles), simplifying stories so that the cast of Jersey Shore can play them without straining their collective remaining 5oz. of brain matter.

Welcome to the fabulous 2000s.

Welcome to the fabolus "I don't know what I'm talking about" crowd.

Yes they also mention werebears, winterhold being a glorious rival of Solitude, the Voikharr, spears, crossbows, and Dragons. (And only one thing out of these is present, can you guess?)

It is not a circular argument, it is a statement of fact and then my opinion.

Fact: There is no place in Oblivion or Skyrim that you can not get to without Levitating.

Opinion: I don't miss the spell or need the spell in the game.

My opinion matters not to anyone but me, however the fact remains.

Well, I might dispute that, just a little. There are places in Oblivion you cannot get to without either levitation or using spell making to fortify your acrobatics to insanely high levels. I have an Oblivion character with a natural acrobatics of 245 though the use of a self made drain acrobatics spell/enchantments coupled with training. With that level of acrobatics I can easily "jump" in and out of City walls, which of course necessitates a reload. But I can also scale the highest rooftops in the land and go places no one else can go, like high ledges in Aylied ruins and some caves, where I can hide and reign down magic on my foes. You can get Acrobatics much higher by adding some custom made fortify Acrobatics spells. If you fortify Acrobatics high enough in Oblivion, you can jump in and out of the Arena from the stands.

I suspect there are similar places in Skyrim that you could not go without levitation. Now those places may be limited and you may not want to go there, but there are probably a few places you could go in Skyrim that you could not get to without levitation.

Oh, and some other poster in this thread said that the cities would not look good from above. I would have to disagree with that because Oblivion cities look absolutely stunning from the highest rooftop in the city. It is an amazing view and for thsoe who appreciate the artwork in these games it is almost worthwhile to fortify yoru acrobatics in Oblivion just for the view you get.

Name one place in Oblivion that is related to a Quest in any way that requires Levitation or Super Jumping to get to in order to resolve the quest.

I already know the answer as I completed every quest in that game, but I just want to see what you offer up.

Levitation was overpowered anyway, I'm glad it's gone. Even if your character is the unholy lovechild of Merlin and Gandalf it's still ridicolous for them to be able to levitate over everything. It was like brining up the console panel and using an "I WIN" type of cheatcode. Maybe a really, really small levitation like hoovering above the ground as Mannimarco did to avoid ground traps but that's it.

So.. the areas of the game where players weren't meant to go is your example of Oblivion having areas you cannot reach without Levitation? You'll have to try harder for me to bite.

Obviously in a game that did not have a levitation spell it would have to be areas you weren't "supposed to go" that you cannot reach without levitation. It would be a game development faux paus to create a game with areas you are supposed to go but not provide a way to get there.

Hold on, now your are qualifying your prior statement. You previously stated rather boldly: "Fact: There is no place in Oblivion or Skyrim that you can not get to without Levitating." I pointed out that was not entirely true.

Now you want to insert the qualification of "that is related to a Quest in any way that requires Levitation or Super Jumping to get to in order to resolve the quest."

If you had just said that in the first place I would not have responded to your post cause obviously that is true.

If they did not have it free casting through enchant, they could have solved this problem by making it so that levitation was such a huge magicka drain that you could not keep it up for long during combat . They already have reduced magicka regen during combat so somethign like that might work but for the free casting issue. Still, there must be ways they could balance it out so that it would not be more overpowered than everything else in Skyrim, which is all very OP by the time you reach level 50 or so.

We'll see how Levitation works in Dragon's Dogma, then I'll give my answer as to how it would work in Skyrim. Right now it's a no but I could change my mind, I did it with Spell Creation.