This is not true. With 100 enchanting, and the perks you get 25% cost reduction enchants and can apply one to each: ring, necklace, helm and chest. This causes 100% cost reduction without looping or exploits or anything fancy.


Removing can be the best option. Such is the case of the following: Alchemy enchants, Smithing enchants, Enchanting potions and Smithing Potions. It's virtually impossible to keep these balanced because they feed each other and the only thing keeping them in line right now is that the game always rounds down(which the resto potion trick gets around). Other things can be fixed and typically trying to ensure more choice is a good idea but there is a difference between unbalanced and broken. Unbalanced is fixable with small number tweaks. Broken is an inherently bad design that needs to be redesigned or removed as it cannot be balanced in it's current form.



Here is are some examples with some arbitrary numbers that could help fix some of the problems with mages:
-Limit what impact can stagger(bosses or close to it should not be staggered). Limit duration on illusion control spells, especially on boss types.
-Lower mana cost on spells by 50% (spell costs right now without the perks or enchants is just obscene...)
-Change fortify from cost reduction to increased damage/duration
-Change perks from cost reduction to increase damage/duration
-Lower base spell damage and add increased damage to the base skill (more damage as you level up destruction)
-Ensure each spell would fill a niche and is viable throughout the game: novice spells for efficiency, apprentice for everyday use, adept for area of effect spells, expert for inefficient but very high damage spells
-Add +magicka to ALL cloth(in lieu of armor) and still allow additional enchants
-Increase magicka regen in combat to 50%
-Add perks to allow further magicka regen in combat(perhaps alteration tree?)
-Modify enchant power: full effect on cloth, 85% effect on light armor and 75% effect on heavy armor
-Remove increased mana cost for dual casting
-Alteration flesh spells should last a long time(~5 minutes base up to say ~15 minutes with stability + dual cast)
-Master spells need: reduced magicka cost, dual cast bonus and increased effect(or reduced cast time)
-Introduction and heavy encouragement of enchanting while doing college quest line.
-Introduction of enchanting NPCs that can add enchants to your gear for a price(less effective than fully level and perked custom enchants)

(I'm not too sure on how to deal with conjuration very well yet)

At the end of the day unless you were previously using 100% cost reduction enchants this will make you much more powerful. For those that were using the 100% cost reduction it makes the game much more challenging but fixes many of the common complaints like spell scaling or the shady enchants and it would make things much more intuitive and encourage a more "standard" mage like those at the college while not removing other options. While it may seem like a lot of changes it's not really that big a deal but it does cut off that upper most limit of power that is just way to ridiculous(100% cost reduction to endlessly spam dual casted spells to proc impact) and also ensures that magicka matters and is manageable and more intuitive. This effectively lays the groundwork for being able to properly balance enemies to fight against you since the range of power you'll face from a player that's a mage is much smaller unlike now where on one end you have borderline worthless to gamebreakingly powerful.

Of course mods will fix this for people on PC(like myself) but as I've said before I can't just sit around and continue to let developers set the precedent that it is ok to rely on modders to correct glaring design failures. That's not right.

MMO's have their own special brand of [censored]ers and moaners though.

Back in the day, I'd play DoTA and do wacky builds and if I totally BLEW the game, sure, I'd get [censored]ed out.

But nowadays, if my build deviates 1 [censored] iota from the "pro build" a bunch of WoWfags start flaming me and crying to their mommies that I'm not Min/maxing right, even if I'm pulling in my kills/assists than they are. Maybe I don't want to do the "pro build". . . maybe in my three years of playing this game, I've put a personal touch on my builds?

It's so God damned annoying.

I still use magicka, so clearly I haven't taken it to that extreme then. 90% is all I've been able to achieve, then again, I only do what makes sense for my character, he's an enchanter, but he'd never touch a smith and alchemy only comes when the ingredients are in hand from questing, so you might be right there, but I've never had a problem with accidentally 100%.


But hardly anyone ever says what they want to remove or why. They will claim 100% spell reduction is unbalanced so it should be removed. That's about as vague as saying melee can be overpowered it needs to be removed. You could balance those simply by lowering the amount they boost, or capping the amount possible, so it no longer makes it possible to master all three professions for triple loop boosting. That's not that complicated. I like those potions that add to smithing or crafting, etc. But I don't use them because they go overboard a bit. I'm sure there's a way somewhere to leave them in game, giving someone who wants to master all three crafting skills more boost than someone who only wants one or two, yet not making other parts of the game redundant.



Yes, the bottom line is I would like my mage to be a god killer, which means if take or lower magicka cost, then you have to do something else for it. I think we both agree on that. Your ideas are better that other topics here.

Aside from the crafting issue, fixing mages should really just be tweaking things. As long as my mage can be powerful with his spells, then the magicka reduction limit isn't that important. The only reason 90-100% is even useful now is because at master level without it, the amount of spells to kill some enemies is terrible, but it's doable right now because of that reduction. It's also fun for me. But I wouldn't complain if the methods of killing were changed to make my spells more powerful or useful.



No, it's not. At some point they will feel like they can half ass a game because we'll just fix it ourselves. I understand that completely. But if anyone really wants to do anything, then developers need to be presented with real advice, or real questions. Not what's been the typical posts in these kind of threads. "It's unbalanced, remove it, fix it. I'm not playing anymore." Does about as much good as if anyone hadn't said anything at all.

Facing a computer always becomes boring when you figure out how the NPC will react, that is when it becomes a metagaming problem. This is part of the reason why I actually like the ability to do the things you don't like; a way to make the fight funny rather than just another fight. I think the ability to do those things should stay (within reason). It would actually be better if the NPC cast "Find Life" (or whatever that spell was) if you're invisible rather than simply shrugging off his buddy getting sniped right next to him. Scaling in skill, not just in level, as well as the intelligence to counter what we throw at them. But we might be a bit too far from the level of TES being a game where the computer is a challenge despite having a "nothing off-limits" playstyle. So far, I've only noticed challenge in the sense of higher HP, me taking more damage, and them taking less.


Just because it isn't fun for you doesn't mean it isn't fun for someone else. Doing the 100% Chameleon also isn't tweaking, as you would need 5 filled Grand Soul Gems, 5 pieces of clothing, and access to the Arcane University's enchantment podium. The most you can do per article was 20% Chameleon. While it is breaking the game, that is entirely your choice and your playstyle. However, the glitch where you can use the Bound Weapon/Armor spells to get free, weightless daedric armor and weapons? That certainly should have been gotten rid of because it was not at all meant to be done.

Gosh, Skyrim was so dumbed down from oblivion, now we have complex perk trees instead of 4 freebie perks per skill given at 25/50/75/100 skill rank. That they added shield bashing and charges to melee combat, and even a bow-bash, that stamina can be used to fund sprinting and spells now have channeled and ritual versions and dual-casting voercharges.

God they dumbed they simplified the game too much!


/sarcasm

once you go mmo you never go back.

Playing on Master is hell... but... by the love of Talos, it is amazing!

I started to be bored with Skyrim....then I decided to change to Master...And it is so fast paced, so hard, and so dangerous that I can't just stop playing this ?_?

Skyrim is good.

Sometimes I feel that way when I'm playing LOTRO. Amazing mmorpg that game is.

I have no idea what your talking about....

*puts away wood cutting axe*

*puts away mining pick*

*puts away newly crafted armor*

MMO's put new content on that is just old content with just a different look. Its like licking the frosting off an old doughnut and calling it a bagel.

Then putting a different colored frosting back on and calling it a new donut.

exactly, the only thing remotely addictive is the social interaction, and sometimes that svcks.

Pretty sure it goes back to old DnD. I remember the term from before my MUD days.

I remember playing EQ and thinking, "wow, this is a mud with graphics".

Yeah, there were times I'd get on for hours and not move from the middle of the town at all, just sit there chatting with people, haha. and now here I am in the forums doing the same thing.

Well said.

I couldn't agree more.
To me it's not even just a balance issue with those things .. it's just a mechanic, which rather takes fun away than giving it.
Besides the fact, that it's totally not needed, because those three things are already strong enough, it takes away the meaning of their skills/perks. Also it feels just stupid.
But the most important thing: It's not fun!

If you're not using it, you always feel a bit like "Even though I have smithing on 100, my weapon could still be much stronger. Hell, even an iron dagger could be stronger than my deadric sword, if I'd use potions and enchanting."
If you are using it, it's like a constraint. "Ok, now I have to use the enchanting-potion, then fastly make my mega smithing and alchemy gear. Then I have to use the alchemy gear to make mega smithing potions, and now I can do mega smithing with gear + potions."
Or you are indeed not power-gaming and still using those things. Then you might do a smithing turn (using the smithing potion you've found), and after 15 minutes you figure you should have made 2 swords, because you want to enchant one with fire. But now you don't have the potion anymore, and making a new sword, which is weaker than the other one feels really stupid now, and you think about reloading.

They should really take those things out. They never made sense, they never were fun, they're just annoying.

Balance isn't even the problem here!
The problem is, that perks and skills become meaningless with stuff like that. Mechanics like that actually take the fun out of some of the core-concepts of this game. They "break" them.
I'm not against gear, which reduces spell-costs, but it shouldn't stack up like that. It would be much better, if it would be -for example- like that:
- strongest reduction counts full
- next lesser reduction only uses its percentaged reduction on the rest
So let's say you have 3 items with 40%, 30% and 15% reduction, then you don't get 40+30+15=85, but you get 40+(30% of 60%)=58+(15% of 42%)=64.
It's an easy concept, which is a lot more convincing. You will never be able to reach 100% reduction.

And then the perks in for example the destruction tree (and the skill itself) should be more for "higher damage" then "cost reduction". A mage should always need a lot of Magicka, but he should also be able to do a lot of damage with destruction (much more than a non-mage).
- Note: I'm not saying here, mages should get stronger, or they would be underpowered (or overpowered with 100% cost reduction). I'm just for a more convincing system, where every part has it's use, and not one concept is canceling out the meaning of another one. The actual damage, magicka cost, etc. of that new system should be adjusted accordingly.-
Also it would be cool, if robes would make more sense. Maybe just make spell-cost-reduction enchanting much less stronger on armor then on robes, or just give a mage a penalty, if he's wearing armor instead of a robe.
At this moment, it makes no real sense to wear a robe other than for roleplaying.

No, SOME MMOs do that. Not all. Furthermore, good MMOs have 100x more content than 99% of single player games.

Elder Scrolls is a very rare exception for single player RPGs in terms of content size.

Excellent points. reducing spell cost so much on heavy armor is just total cheese and hurts the real "mage" build type. I can use 1Handed, and spam spells in heavy armor. Why would I drop armor in Skyrim right now?

If skyrim is so much deeper than the other TES games, why is everyone the same?

If they play within the limits of the game as intended they have a right to complain, the game should be set up to cater for things the devs themselves put in, i started leveling smithing alch and ench before i even joined these forums and found out you could use them together to push your crafting to the max, dont know if its intended or not but i would think so since it was easy to see what would happen and so the game should scale accordingly. Ofcourse it could go the other way since its an rpg, in that if your make yourself an unkillable god then you shouldnt expect things to be a challenge, depends if its intended or a flaw.

As for the length on my first and only playthrough after 40 hours i had completed the main quest,companions,civil war, killed the dark brotherhood and was level 39 about to go 40, i did alot of exploring and mining and walked everywhere untill i unlocked the place for fast travel, i honestly dont see how anyone could go any slower without just standing there looking at stuff, i serverly doubt the game will last 100 hours worth of play there wont be anything left to do, although to be fair thats still not a bad amount of entertainment for the cash.

It's why there is an achievement/trophy for level 50. they figured most people would play to about that level and move on. Quit fast traveling and trying to plow through quests and it will get more interesting.

Without being sarcastic i fail to see how, i have explored and apart from the odd random dragon,assasin etc theres nothing out there, do alot of werewolf running back to whiterun if im overweight from a good dungeon trawl to and nothing ever comes of it and im up over mountains and all sorts, honestly its only the story keeping me going once the quests dry up i will be gone till dlc arrives.

I don't agree with people complaining about things being "underpowered", as in most of the mage threads (why play on master if it is too hard?), though I have sympathy for those who just think the mechanic isn't well done. I am receptive to the idea that there should be spells and perks that are more powerful (things like damage bonuses akin to melee weapons) and the like, with proper cost of course for the gameplay aspect of it. I just have little sympathy for the people complaining of being underpowered because they want to play pure destro-mage on master. This attitude is silly because there is point playing a difficulty level that makes you unhappy just to brag. I also have no sympathy for people who really do try to exploit mechanics and then complain about the game being broken.

HOWEVER. I think people take the bashing too far when they say that anyone with difficulty complaints just doesn't know how to play. I think you should be able to find a difficulty setting that challenges you without being forced to purposefully gimp your character (if my character finds a good weapon, would he really choose to forego it? if not, why should I be forced to gimp him). Making the world challenging can really add to immersion, RPGs don't have to be cakewalks in difficulty. When I play, I like feeling like I am constantly exercised, because it forces me to use the various mechanics at my disposal. This makes the game more fun. For this reason, I DO NOT accept the common line "its too powerful? Then just don't use it". I shouldn't feel like a system is broken unless I consciously choose to break it (use it as it was not intended). Playing normally should not make you overpowered. Why? Because you can always lower difficulty if its too difficult, but not when its too easy. When you are forced to play God with your game, changing the rules of the gameworld, you are forced to exit the gameworld. For some, this may only break immersion for a second. For me, it is quite noticeable. Freedom to play the way you want ALSO means the freedom to have fun choosing whatever skills you think would be fun, not a prepicked list just so you can keep it challenging.

Err, wrong wrong wrong.

You cannot get an amulet with - spell cost mod except a very crappy 3% one. You can get a couple gloves with up to 17% but I think those are a mistake that Bethesda forgot to delete once they decided to limit enchants according to item type (you cannot put that enchant on gloves). Also those gloves are of light armor or heavy armor type.