Enchanting is an aspect that's been part of Elder Scrolls since the beginning, and should definitely continue to be that way. In Morrowind, it was a skill, with many possibilities. The flaw of it was that it made magic skills rather pointless, as you could cast all (most?) types of spells by enchanting items. In addition, you could cast them faster and nearly for free. I remember creating a crazy shield of some minor healing, which I was able to spam so quickly and so much that I couldn't be killed. If I was injured, all I needed to do was spam some of it. But, the different things you could do with enchanting was great, there was huge diversity. Not always balanced, but still very open for crafters to experiment with.

Then came Oblivion. Enchanting was now removed as a skill (why is not known to me) and was generally toned down in terms of power, quite a lot. But it also removed the possibility to add castable enchantments on items, thus making magic skills useful again. If you wanted to be a mage, create some magicka fortify things. If you want to be a warrior, boost your armor and health. Be a ranger, boost your speed to insane levels! All of these things could be done in Morrowind too, but now enchanting was limited to mages guild members only, in addition to making it more balanced. You could enchant items with powerful enchantments, but generally what you found in the game world would be better, both in terms of how long you could use them and in terms of power.

And then came Skyrim. It took from Morrowind and Oblivion very different things, combining them together. If this was a successful mix or not is what the topic is about. Here's how I look at enchanting in Skyrim:
It once again is a skill, like it was in Morrowind. It took the power-level of Morrowind and applied it in a more direct way. It's not as balanced as in Oblivion, as enchanted items bought and found are no-where near as good as a great enchanter's items. It continued the same path as Oblivion, by removing options: Things possible in Morrowind weren't possible in Oblivion, and then further things done in Oblivion weren't possible in Skyrim. But a huge mistake, that shouldn't have returned, was that enchanting made many skills pointless, just like enchanting in Morrowind had made the magic-skills pointless. (by allowing 0 cost spells to be possible).


I feel enchanting should be a diverse, fun and experimental type of skill, that can add small balanced boosts to the player character's skills and attributes. Morrowind had the right idea in a very basic aspect, which was "You can do pretty much anything." But it also meant, "You can do nearly as powerful things as you can ever imagine", which wasn't so great. Oblivion has a bit less of the "Do what you want" aspect, but a lot of the balance-aspect, which was good and bad. Mostly good, if you ask me, as it didn't completely overshadow other aspects of the game. Skyrim has even less of the "Do what you want" aspect and returned to morrowind's power-source by making it a huge boost for anyone using it. Which I feel is bad, as it took an undesirable aspect of morrowind's enchanting and combined it with an undesirable aspect of oblivion's enchanting.

Rather than being an extremely straight-forward damage and health boosting system, enchanting could be so much more. I feel a too simple and too direct-power-adding enchanting system just doesn't add much to the game. It makes the game easier in a very direct way, nearly as direct as the difficulty setting itself, rather than being an entirely separate system with a huge number of possiblities. Such a system would, imo, have been Morrowind's do-what-you-want approach, combined with Oblivion's balance approach. But Skyrim went the other way.


What do you feel about enchanting in Skyrim? What did Skyrim do right, what did it do wrong? What's your ideal enchanting system? What is the role of enchanting in a fantasy universe? Should we be able to enchant our swords with an effect that can, much in the same way as mehrune's razor, turn opponents into bits of cheese?





TL;DR version: I think Skyrim took what was bad in Morrowind's enchanting system and combined it with what was wrong about Oblivion's system. Cheese?