Yeah i dunno why they did that. Seems kinda stupid, however it's not game-breaking and since there is a greater power version of it, it doesn't really bother me that much.

Like with a lot of other effects that got the ax, just more cutting. Effectively taking the magic out of magic, one poor decision at a time.

You are hilarious, good sir. It is a rare gift to be able to contradict every single point in one's own post.

Once again, allowing magic to do everything made other options trivial in the other games, pretty sure that's why they removed it!

No. Its about choice. Magic did everything, because thats what magic is. It is powerful by nature, it does allow a mage to do most anything anyone else can do. That's how its always been, thats the lore. If people want to just min/max, do whats practical, and not RP, then they dont matter. No choice, no matter how similar, makes another similar choice redundant.

The huge outcries and multiple threads on the relative weakness of the destruction school shows that even in a single player game, a lot of people care about balance and effectiveness between skills.

Lol, whatever. That's ridiculous, and has nothing to do with lore, rather with the function of the game. It's as if you're trying to say that it WASN'T a design plaw in Morrowind that magic was as ludicrous as it was..pretty sure that my side won out on that one, and they will not being going back to that setup..thank god, it was moronic. I love it when obtuse and over complicated design gets equated with "RP", when clearly it's the former.


So basically your reasoning is "it's no redundant because I like it that way".

Awesome.

Which has nothing to do with what Im talking about.

i distinctnly remember the lore stating that magic was dangerous to use and often could harm the caster as well. they clearly arent following the lore in that regards because i would love to see spell failure from morrowind brought back. there were many times that casting a high level spell saved my life jsut like i died many times when it failed and i was out of mana potions. skyrims magic is lightyears better than oblivions but it still needs some risk added to it.

Nope, know more about lore. and less about trying to be a JOAT at every turn.

Balance is incredibly important, I do agree with that.

No, magic in skyrim a joke. It got prettier, thats it. We lost a handful of effects, and spell creation.

Also many of us ROLEPLAY which means even if magic could do everything some of us choose never to use it as I as a warrior never do. I choose the Conan way of attitude with wielding magic.

It`s not like it`s a multiplayer game which might affect others, i`s purely a single player choice, just as some choose to FT while others never do.

i have alot more fun using flames or the flame wall (even if they need power adjustments) than i did casting the same spells over and over again in oblvion. all oblivion had was different shaders for each effect. dark messiah, bioshock and skyrim have much more variety in their spells than previous TES games. where i DO agree with you though is conjuration. they completely ruined that school. i want my clannfear and daedroths back. it used to be my favorite school but now its in distant third place. thankfully im on PC.

No, its not redundant because its a [censored] choice. How hard is that to understand? Redundant is having wait heal and auto health regen and it NOT being a choice.

Just another way that they've made it harder to play a pure mage. While thieves should be the best at opening locks (lockpicking), fighters should be able to do a bash (based on strength, skill, and weapon), and mages should have unlock and lock effects.

It was to farther desecrate the magic system.

Yeah, definitely need to bring lock back as an effect.

Except mages will be best at picklock because he bypasses the minigame entirely and opens the master chest in 1 second without lockpicks (tool) at almost no cost since magicka regenerates easily out of combat.

Or look at it this way, who is better at breaking out of jail, the theif with one lockpick or the mage with unlimited?

Such are the benefits of MAGIC! He also leveled his alteration to the point he could open that master lock. shouldnt a whole school of magic be more powerful than a non magical skill as niche as picking locks? Although from lore, we know that magic indirectly does effect lock picking, specifically luck, through Nocturnal's influence on such things. but then again, magic indirectly effects everything in the ES universe.

The minigame doesnt belong in an RPG anyway, as it is player skill instead of character skill.

And even if, so what?
If you wanna twiddle with lockpicks, fine. If you want to cast a spell, equally fine.
It does not make anything 'redundant' because this is an RPG, not halo, and choices are a good thing.

Mages have spent years to own their craft, an alteration mage should be able to open a lock. Open it with a lockpick, we should have the choice to choose what we want to do.

They could put a barrier up for mages.

Long gone are the days of magical locks and lock bashing.

Player choice in Skyrim too.

Why should magic users be able to do everything else? Denying it to magic users make the thief arch class seem more valuable. Afaik, opening locks are no longer even required to progress the game, so it isn't a "must have".

Magic has been made so consequence-less in the past it wasn't even fun to play it. With the introduction of regen there is no apparent "cost" of "performing magic". You pay like a one time fee of 200 gold to learn an unlock spell, in a game where you can make gazillions and the rest of your choices doesn't matter at all.

Currently, I feel it balances out quite nicely. If the game was better in other areas, I wouldn't object. Like:
1) Reduced regen potential over time (casting wrt magicka), but you regain max potential ONLY from sleep or maybe just a few "magical outlets" (2-5 in Skyrim total).
2) Potions take time (quite a bit) to work, and doesn't stack.
3) Potions (all equipment, really) are harder to come by in dungeons and stores, especially on higher difficulties or some hardcoe mode.
4) More random distribution wrt what content are found in loot. Just about everywhere I find the same stuff. Why are there no dungeons at all with no potions at all, but rather a big surplus of picks?

If it can make you think twice before doing it, that's when I enjoy the game. Your actions have both positives and negative outcomes, making you more conscious about what you do. Think mages from Realms of Arkania; they could only cast like 5-10 spells per day.

The same goes equally for lockpicks and that area of the game. I'm level 30 something with a huge stockpile of lockpicks and can open anything with no thought or consideration whatsoever. The skill climb everytime I struggle a bit with a lock, but I haven't spent a single perk in it. I want to be forced to make a choice - "do I really want to try to open this novice lock at this stage of the dungeon when I only have 2-5 picks left"? Somewhere in the lockpicking tree there should be a perk that enables you to find and buy more picks, and have lockpicking fairly difficult unless you specifically chose that path (just like magic is pretty difficult unless you perk it up). I didn't choose that path by putting perks in it, but I still want to enjoy that part of the game - and yet I rock in the skill. What happened to "auto attempt" where at least I could break some picks depending on character skill? Am I actually required, in computer age, to rely on own dices to see how many picks I have to deliberately break to make some sense of it all?

If you're a "modern player", then some of this may sound like some "tedious chore" type of thing. But at least that tediousness is part of the penalty when you go "I absolutely must do this". Do you do it and face the tediousness, or do you skip it as a counterweight? Now the cost is that your choice have a felt consequence.