Let's just pretend that I'm an idiot, since you're already headed down that road.

Share your brilliant solution again.

As I said to the previous poster, reading comprehension is your friend. At no time do I argue that consoles can handle open cities. In a previous post I scoffed at the Beth talking point using the celled cities as the excuse for excluding levitate as lame [censored]. I went on to speculate that, imo, the scripting behaviors of NPCs using levitate would be something that is harder to address. I also pointed out, through ar esponse to a comment of the previous poster, that there are things that could have been implemented in game that could have prevented all but the most determined players from flying into the cities the wrong way.

There is an endless combination of things devs could have implemented to make it anywhere from challenging to next to impossible for the player to fly over a city wall. The existence of wards, spells, and enchantments alone are enough to concoct city size blockades in the air. Enchantments (or maybe naturally occurring elements in certain areas) that gimp levitate (or all alteration spells) are another avenue that can be used. Edit add: you also have spell balancing that can be taken into account.

A few seconds thought pokes giant holes in the lame talking points that the celled cities are the reason for levitates exclusion.

Not suggesting you're an idiot. Just suggesting that you should not be so close-minded about this. Don't take corporate pr talking points at face value.

That makes no sense whatsoever. Morrowind and Skyrim share one major thing in common: A large part of their game map is dominated by mountains. So trying to say that Levitation was understandable in Morrowind but not in Skyrim, is a complete cop-out and has the secondary effect of making me wonder if you ever even PLAYED morrowind.

The truth of the matter is, is that gamesas and the TES team have been steadily headed down a road that caters to a completely different crowd then they initially did. It started as far back as Morrowind itself. Skills and options have been slowly edited out and removed since Daggerfall(more or less the Epitome of the TES games). Morrowind was still a great game, with lots of choices, but many people felt it was dumbed down from Daggerfall, and in reality, it kind of was. Oblivion is where the real major changes started to happen, with the elimination of Spears, Levitation, and other options. Skyrim is a continuance of that trend. I don't fault gamesas entirely, they aren't the same, considerably smaller studio that they used to be when they first released Arena and Daggerfall. They have a large amount of overhead that they need to cover, and it is fairly unlikely they would be able to cover it if they continued to make TES games the way they used to be. That does not however, mean that older TES fans don't have a right to complain and voice their opinions about these major changes to such a beloved franchise. Sadly, some of the things eliminated are things that could have been kept in and still catered to the more casual crowd, but as time goes on, streamlining things seems to be the "Thing" to do, and anyone who wants something different has to resort to mods to do it. It is indeed an upsetting thing.

On the other hand, all the people(like myself) who dislike the major amount of streamlining and the constant removal of skills and spells and other things, have a tendency to call a game complete crap, when really it isn't. Do I like all the changes gamesas has made over the last decade and a half? No, most certainly not. Do I think that Oblivion and Skyrim were the devil and should be burned at the stake, and that the devs should be crucified mercilessly until they repent their wicked ways? No. I still enjoy the TES games, even though they are missing certain elements that drew me to the series in the first place. They are still fun, and still manage to svck up a lot of my time.

TL:DR Faults on both sides, people need to stop throwing blanket statements around, some complaints are relevant and fine, some complaints need to be kept to yourself.

Not even sure if that all made sense, I think I may have lost my way somewhere. I'm just so tired of people [censored]ing at us old-timers for voicing relevant complaints about the game, and I'm also tired of us Old-timers whining about every single little thing, and acting like the game isn't fit to be played at all. If you really think it's so damn bad, DON'T BUY IT!!!!!!!!!

Yes but It all depends how powerful the devs make the spell. In morrowind because of the extensive freedom it offered, you could make levitation spells that were INCREDIBLY powerful. Even if skyrim had levitation, with the lack of spellmaking and the fact that the most powerful spell would probably be levitation for 30 seconds. There would be no flying up to the top of high hrothgar

As admoni has said, is isn't really because of this. Although I can see where you are coming from, especially with the walled cities. But there is no denying that they just didn't want to put it in anyway

Removed.

"Dev's wanted a simple game" is as a lame excuse as "Walled Cities".

Really? They "simplified" the game with the removal of Levitation? How was that even complicated to begin with?
If you blamed them of "cutting content" or something like that (Even if that isn't the case, as the content never was there to be cut) I possibly could agree with you... But "simplification"? No.

Also, how many of you know about game development? We as costumer have all the rights to complain with Bethesda and etc... But we could at least think a little before doing bandwagon mindless complains.


TES fanbase contradicts itself. They (We) complain about unbalanced OPTIONAL things, them complain even more when Bethesda removes the so-called "Extremely Unbalanced Thing!"

I agree that they should balance them instead of removing them. But it's a fun behavior in this forums nevertheless.

Apparently a good number of people on this thread not only know about gaming development, but are intimately familiar with Bethesda's processes and how flawed they are.

Yes but the point still remains that they have simplified it to make it more appealing to the general public. Don't get me wrong I am in no way saying your post is incorrect or that I don't like Skyrim. But older elder scrolls games are definitely more complicated content wise, maybe not environment wise, but content wise.

No, that's okay. I can agree with that, they indeed are simpler now than then. What I was talking about is that "Levitation" isn't a good example of "simplification". After all, what "casual player" wouldn't like to levitate in Skyrim?

The whole "dumbed down", "streamlized", "simplified" thing turned into a bandwagon for cut content complains.

Removal of Attributes" can be seem as a simplification. It makes the game easier.
Removal of Spell Making may be seem as a simplification. It can make the game easier.
Levitation... A cut feature, not a "simplification". It makes... No difference.

Yeah I can see where your coming from . Although I do think that magic in general has been simplified.

We have been though this before.

1. Levitation needs special consideration into game design, a huge effort for an extremely small effect.

2. Supporting Levitation in game will result in areas that can only be accessible via levitation (as in Morrowind) and thus imposes on every other archetype who does not use magic.

3. Magic barriers in Nord cities maintained by a single Jarls's wizard??? Well. We don't need the dragonborn then, Farengar should be able to beat Alduin with his little pinky.

Levitation is one of the fun things to use but was really unbalanced and over-powering. You can easily use to escape from melee enemies so they no get you and you can use it to pass through traps/puzzles/etc. So it more of a bad thing then a good thing. This was a problem for me when I mod Morrowind because I made some very awesome puzzles, but sadly, Levitation ruined them and couldn't keep them since they were easy to pass because of that spell.

Teleportation Spells is needed but not Mark and Recall. Mark and Recall can cause huge issues.

Slowfall is helpful, not totally needed but very helpful for sure. So I'll accept that.

Yeah, it would totally foul up pvp. There are ways to balance it. The issue is whether or not one spell is worth all that effort, especially when it's fairly useless.
Yeah, there are a lot of spells/skills I miss, but some of them would be a pain to add. Levitation would be cool. Maybe if it had a longer cast time... like the scrolls. And you can't attack, because you're focused on levitating. Some would probably complain about not being able to attack.

The separate cells would be an issue. Maybe if you couldn't cast it from within the city and each walled city has an invisible wall around the top.. It can be done, but it's a lot of hassle to add a spell that doesn't have a lot of practical applications. Acrobatics however was always a staple in my thief/assassin builds.

That is no excuse. All they needed to do was to have an "invisible" loading zone around the cities so when you passed in or out of a City with levitation, slowfall or jump you would hit an invisible loading zone to load the where ever it is that you are going. Kind of like the loading zones you hit when you enter caves. They even have such a loading zone in Solitude, where you can leave the City through a passage going down toward the river without ever having to "open" a door.

Still have problems with levitating to get pass traps and puzzles.

Lame response #N.

Your argument is more of a gripe on balance than one for or against levitate. Considering a good number of years have passed since MW the devs have had ample time to figure out how to balance it a little better.

You know, kind of how they "balanced" acrobatics by gutting it and making all characters uniformly jump no more than 4-in off the ground.

I don't care much for balance but if you can use a simple spell to pass something of mine, that took awhile to make and was made to be hard, then I do care. I do miss Levitation, a lot, but it'll cause more issues for Skyrim and prolly a lot of new script changes so you can only use Levitation at certain points in the game.

~Edit~
Acrobatics doesn't bother me at all. I am just fine with or without it.

So?

Well, I don't really care for Skyrim's puzzles. I mean... what puzzles do they have other than spinning the whale, wolf, snake, etc. stones to open gates... In those cases, levitate wouldn't help.

And you can run through traps, as is..

I'm mainly talking about my own that I make and those are not the only puzzles. There are many more things you have to do and not even puzzle related. I would name them but this is NOT the spoiler section.

So you want to cut out a part of the whole game world so you can make traps and puzzles without having to actually take the game world into account or taking a few extra minutes to think of ways to make levitate not possible at certain points.

That is one of the reasons. Not all of my reasons. Other are because of:
Easy to pass stuff that Bethesda had added, which happened a lot back in Daggerfall and Morrowind.
The cities (Which I hate actually. I miss opened cities)
Easier to avoid melee fighters. Too easy.

Those are the main 3 reasons.

Hmm... Play the game with TCL, Levitation would be something better than that.

Also, I think that dispell, unlock, etc... Are better requests than Levitation. You don't need to think much about those spells when making the game as much as you need to thing about Levitation. I mean, you would need to explain why Levitation doesn't work here, why it doesn't work there, how to balance it, how to make enemies recognize it, etc...

Says more about poor design skills on the Bethesda staff if they cannot design in a world that they themselves created.

As I've said previously. This is a cop out. Devs had more than enough time to build defenses around cities to block levitating characters from flying over the walls. My gosh, the country is in a state of civil war. Why are the cities not defended properly?

How do melee fighters react to flying dragons? Do they roll over and play dead? Should all characters be forced to fight all types of characters? Is it a bad thing to have a character build that hard counters other builds? Is there anything a dev can do that would make it very risky for a mage that is buzzing around in combat?