And there we go again, limiting freedom.
Levitatiotn was taken out when the game was placed in difefrent worldspaces.

If you have ever played a mage in a typical board and dice RPG, they are often easely the most overpowered and powerful classes/careers. But it is a hell of a time being one.
Take Warhammer RPG for example, a Wizard Lord of the College of Fire was probably the best battlemage (not counting Daemons of Tzeentch or Nekrash Vampires) and could easely take down most opponents (not counting Greater Daemons), but needed 12 Grimoires and like 4 Magic Items, and had to go through Apprentice, Journeyman and Master Wizard first.
They are also feared and discriminated.

If the game had the possibilities I wanted, mages could do almost anything.
I want the possibility to be OP, even if I never do it anyway.

In Warhammer I guess the designers wanted it that way, but I doubt that designers of the magic system in Morrowind wanted to have mages become overpowered by combining burden with levitation...that just doesn't seem like the grand conclusion to an epic story of a mage...

Limiting freedom...yes, exactly. If you create and define a world with a set of parameters, you want the player to stay within those parameters, otherwise you could just include the mini-nuke and let people have the "freedom" of chosing whether it's fun or not...

Well, of course it is different gameworlds and the gameplay is based on another world, so magic functions differently.
But removing spellcrafting altogether?
Stupid move, as to cast these OP spells you need to burn 300-500 Magicka in one go, unless you exploit Enchanting to make Magicka cost 0.
And there, the game can balance it, as if someone makes Magicka redundent, they broke their own game.

I believe it was removed to fit all the casuals they tried to adjust the game to.

"balance" should stay in multiplayer games. that way its fair so anyone can kill anyone. balance is overrated in single player games.

This is true IMO
Although I'd have liked spellmaking in the game aand think with work it could be made compatible its certainly not a major issue for me
The biggest issue I have is the gradual (ie over several games) loss of spell effects but thats a whole different debate

TES series is all about fredom. Do what you want, how you want it. To say the designers never intended certain things is, I believe, wrong. I think they definately intended people to experiment and try things they might not have thought of. If you prefer limited freedom, that goes against the main objective of this game.

Uggg, I hate this discussion because people start treating it as a game-defining mechanic of the Elder Scrolls series and now that Skyrim is without spell making that makes it a game breaking issue. The entire lot of people screaming that Skyrim is ruined without spell making can now take a seat right next to the people that scream about there being no spears. Hell, I think the no-spears crowd has a little more to go on than the people crying about spell making.

I've never played MW but I played OB and I will give to you that, yes, spell making was necessary at higher difficulties granted that was because of OB's horrible game difficulty settings. If you're angry that you can't make over powered spells anymore then you are somewhat wrong in using that argument. Yes, you can't make those spells in Skyrim but instead of making over powered spells you now have the ability to make two schools of magic have 100% cost reduction allowing you to be overpowered.

I know my post has a rather hard hitting stance, however, I think it's warranted considering those for spell making take a hard hitting stance at Bethesda by calling them lazy, ignorant, stupid, terrible, horrible, ashamed, and fun ruiners. And, no, I'm not some Bethesda really devoted fan. It's just I would much rather Bethesda add in more spells, either different spells or the ones they removed, such as some of the bound: armor/weapons or the touch spells from destruction instead of focusing on trying to balance spell making.

Who is angry about missing overpowered spells?
I hate that spellmaking gets pigeonholed like that by people who dont like it, while if one would read anything the defenders of spellmaking have to say knows that that is the least of our interests.

Its time to put the magic back into magic.
Yes to spellmaking.

I certainly don't consider it game-breaking. I just miss it is all.

Had to come
I agree on this.

The few in this thread claiming that Elder Scrolls is about freedom and that freedom should include having the ability to make any spell they want, no matter how (over) powerful those spells may be. This seems to be the focus of their argument. Game balance is necessary other wise at the end of the character creation there would simply be an I win button then game over.

Understand that I wouldn't mind seeing spell creation make a comeback in Skyrim, however, I would want it to be balanced. I'm all for elements being added, spears and spell making, just balanced elements.

Spellmaking always had its limits, though in Oblivion the cost could have been higher there were more restrictions than in any other TES title.
Its just not true that spellmaking is only good for making overpowered spells.
And even still, I dont really care what other people do in their single player games, so I dont give a flying ratchet if Johhny on twitter thinks something is 'OP', this is not Halo, that word has no place here.
I care about options and replayability and spellmaking was a major conributor to both these things.

Agreed.

Spellmaking was never forced on anyone. You weren't forced to activate any alter at any time so why all the hate towards spellmaking? Even if it was unbalanced, who gives a hoot?

Smithing is broken beyond belief and I don't see any threads about removing that particular feature anywhere.

simple, have the spell look like the first effect when that is plausible, or if it is something like a fireball and lightning (the stream one) spell simply shoot a ball of fire out of the stream of lightning, or even make it where something jsut cannot be used together, or even better make it look somethign like this

cast: decideds how you cast it (on touch, stream, range, ect)
effects: decideds what the effects are and the durations for said effects
duration (if not in the effects section): the duration, plain and simple
area of effect (if not in the effects section): the area the effect, well, effects
name: the name of the spell, duh!

and the game could generate a gold cost (to make the spell) and magicka cost (to cast the spell), the spell would look like the cast and the first effect (a spell with fury and calm with the cast stream would look like a streaming fury spell)

it does not have to be as complicated as all that, simply make it like i posted above, and no need to make effects mutually exclusive, sometiems it is fun making a calm 100 seconds and fury for 100s across 100ft spell (makes everyone beat the crap out of the calm guy and each other) or just spell that would not mix well


the exact same thing you did with oblivion, i did not have oblivion for pc but i assume you could not remake the spell in the midas magic mod

There is one other option. Somebody [maybe even Bethesda themselves] could offer a mod porting over Oblivion's magic system and just preserving runes and dual-wield since DW is only good for when the same spell is in both hands so it should be non-issue, that way the perk trees remain functional in their current form.

I would install an Oblivion magic system mod and never look back. Sure it's less pretty, but it's also less [censored].

[...ooh! I made a rhyme]

we can agree with this, magic in skyrim is all flash no fury

Hello:)

meh bones never tell me wrong

Spellmaking is apparently the process through which NPCs can experiment with magic and create new spells, but the player can't.

Doh.

I have not encountered any issues in Skyrim, combined or isolated, that justify a year's pushback.

While I do miss a select few spell effects from Oblivion, on the whole I find Skyrim's magic system vastly superior to Oblivion's. Not only would I not want them to implement Oblivion's system, I certainly wouldn't want to have to wait an extra year for them to do it.

Sorry that you got bored of Skyrim - Skyrim is my favorite Elder Scrolls yet, and whatever areas it is lacking wasn't worth a pushback of even a month, let alone a full year.

This sounds an awful lot like something a pure mage specializing in destruction would use.

Spell-crafting definition= crafting spells

I was wondering if anyone could answer this as well. [I didn't see an answer]

Does that mean spells are scripted like in "scripted events", an "NPC coming in a room and another NPC turning into a a werewolf" kind of scripted event? When I heard that there were glitches, I was just thinking the visual kind.


Two more questions:

Is it possible to mirror the current system in hard coded form and is that impossible, hard, or just time consuming?

Can Oblivion's hard coded magic system be ported to Skyrim and would that be impossible, hard, or just time consuming?

Y'know what would be awesome?

Holding up a Ward that is linked with a Cloak spell to make Ward both offensive and defensive at the same time. Without having to cast a separate spell.

Or, raising a Zombie and them having Mage Light already attached to them so you could use them as "torches" and scouts.

Or... Ward + Healing so I can protect myself while I heal.

A scripted event is anything in the game that is controlled by a script. This can be quests, spells, anything. They are much more versatile, as they can include other scripted effects or hardcoded effects. A hardcoded effect would be something like Fire Damage. It has some set parameters like the ways it can be cast, the default damage, and stuff like that. Some things can be modified, but it will always look and perform the same way, more or less.

For the other questions:
1. I'm not quite sure what you mean here, as most of the magic effects in Skyrim are hard coded, just like Oblivion. They have a certain effect or effects that you cannot change without changing every spell that relies on it.

2. Several spells would not be able to transfer from Oblivion easily, as there is no base effect for them in Skyrim. You could always add the spell effects, but some might not work at all and others might rely on scripts.

That's because when the 'smithing is op' threads were happening enough people jumped up and down about the complainers that eventually they stopped complaining or went away. Same thing happened with the 'magic is broken', 'destruction is broken', 'enchanting is op', 'I can't kill a dragon with telekinesis and a spoon' topics.

This brings up another point...

Yes I understand that it's a single player game, but regardless, there does still need to be a level of "balance".

(For the record, Enchanting and Smithing -are- balanced if you don't power level them, and instead use them naturally. I use both skills regularly on my characters, and have never been overpowered for it - because I don't spam iron daggers all the way to 100)

With dual casting, just how overpowered would mages be, being able to cast up to 4 or more effects at a time (2 multiple effects spells equipped, one in each hand), it would give magic users huge advantages to non magic users, even more so than Spellmaking did in past games.

Spellmaking would be a mess with this current system.

I too was originally disappointed when I heard that it wasn't in, but once I sat and looked at it, I just don't see how it will work with the current mechanics.

How much Magicka would you need to cast those four-effect spells?
Probably either all or most of your Magicka.
If you burn everything on one amazing spell, you're screwed if someone survive and you have focused only on magic.

This is, of course, if you have not exploited Enchanting to make Magicka useless.

I definitely miss the spell crafting that was in Oblivion.

It allowed you to personalize your magic.