The op is right. When people start designing games with balance and dps in mind it stops been about players enjoying the game and more about work ethics.

Guys if destruction isn't powerful enough put the game on easy. Just do it because master setting isn't for you. It's not designed for you, it's designed for people who want to multi task or use faster reflexes.

this is a horrible statement, if something is broken, it needs to be fixed.

Hell ya! Spell-crafting made you feel like a real mage! As long as you have the materials/gold and the ability, you could damned near make anything you could imagine within the boundaries of the game! The word "balance" keeps rearing it's ugly head whenever it's mentioned but with the ability to possibly mod it in or for Beth to add it as a dlc if you want it on your console, it wouldn't be "affecting" those who don't want it.

lmao...what "faster reflexes" makes destro stop doing bad damage and taking an entire magicka bar to kill 1 mob in a room of 5 mobs?

All while a conjuration, illusion, sneak, DW, 2H, or bow focused character can just roflstomp. Without "multi-tasking"

I wanted to post a picture to indicate how much I agree with the OP, but I do not have that picture uploaded to my photobucket, nor do I have it on my computer, and I do not want to search for it.

So instead, I will just actually state how much I agree with the OP.

And that is 100%.

Elder Scrolls games simply cannot be fully balanced, because what exactly is Bethesda balancing?

Despite the seeming obsession with playing a pure "mage", "warrior", "thief" or "battle mage", "night blade" hybrid, there are no real archetypes in Elder Scrolls games.

I can don heavy armor, and sneak around dungeons picking people off with my bow and arrow. I can go completely unarmored, and take out enemies with my heavy 2 handed warhammer. I can go heavy armor and beat people in the face with my armored fists. I can forgo combat, and work my way through dungeons by calming and frenzying my enemies, and turning myself invisible when even those tactics don't work. I can forgo combat even further by taking up a bunch of trade skills, and make my way through the world as a traveling merchant, trading and working for the resources I need, to make weapons and armor to sell to make money.

What is there to balance with the playstyles and skill combinations are virtually infinite? I can perk up my one handed blade and mace skills, and run around with a mace in one hand and a sword in the other. I can have a Destruction spell in one hand, and an axe in the other. I can have 2 Destruction spells. I can have a big 2 handed warhammer. And I can combine any of those together, along with more. I can be a "pure mage", unarmored, relying on only my spells to get me through. Or I can rely on Destruction for offense, with Heavy Armor and a sword. Or a bow and arrow. The choices go on and on and on.

There's nothing to balance, because there are no defined ways to play the game. How you play the game is completely up to the player. And if you totally max out certain skills early, and pwn face against anything that so much as looks at you cross eyed, well, that was the CHOICE you made. If you choose to focus on one skill, and one skill only with no support behind it to maximize that skill, and you aren't at your full potential, well, again that was the CHOICE you made. You can't blame the game for the choice that YOU made.

Zombies are ok but they do have some draw backs, you need to take the perks, and you need to roll through a dungeon to keep fresh material available. you can use atronachs to create the first zombie, and once you get the permanent ones, they can be quite effective. 2x ancient vampires as thralls can be interesting. But generally speaking, 2xdremoras is all you need, and you can just sit back in the shaddows re-summoning till the dungeon is cleared.

Yeah, it is bullhockey though.
Try playing an elementalist, not that that style is supported now that destruction is a hollow shell of itself.

Try playing a mystic, a healer, a paladin, a ranger.
You will run into the same malarky, Skyrim does not accomodate your playstyle.

You are pigeonholed into melee/ rogue/ mage and your choices are severly limited if you wish to succeed in any one role.

Be who you want to be?
Bullhockey.
Be one of three. With that melee is best.

Yes, its true you could make very powerful one hit spells. Or something to control anything in the game. But you had the option to limit this. In this game you are basically forced in restraints. Mages have always been an extremely flexible way to play in this series. We was the most fun to play when we was not confined behind a system stripped of everything that has made it great. The first and most important thing, the thing I think of when I play TES is player choice.

It's broken? You know we disagree right? I've been using destruction magic throughout the whole game. I thought it was useless the first 20 levels but now I'm enjoying it. Perks + clothing make it brilliant.

I think people make a bigger deal out of it than it is. Destruction school is pure pwnage until lv30+, speaking from personal experience. Expert and Master spells aren't very useful and I think this is where people call foul.

My point of view is that by the time you hit lv30+, you should have more than enough perk points to fill up the entire Destruction tree and then some other trees. There is really no way Destruction can "gimp" your character.

No, you cannot one shot mobs after lv30+. Is this wrong? Not really. I was breezing through the game in my first 20 levels first by dual casting fireballs. Dragons drop like nothing. It's funny nobody talks about that part because I guess we all expect magic to be invincible-one-shot-pwnage.

All I have to say is, different games, different rules. Skyrim doesn't care about pure builds and you don't have impose that onto yourself.

and if you really insist on one-shotting every single mobs with Destruction only no matter what, mod the game and lower the difficulty. Problem solved.

what this isnt starcraft.... destruction mages should be able to do it on master as should summoners and 1 hand warrior tanks by you logic what "multi tasking" should a sword and shield warrior do... what drink potions.

Certain skills are considerably worse than others, and near pointless on high levels due to no scaling. This severely hinders many builds.

Definitely need to bring back spell creation. Then make destruction spells level with you, like they do the NPCs. It definitely needs some balance.

yep mages are fine i love the fact that bound bow a spell i got at level 20 does more damage then an expert destruction spell of Incinerate with a few perks in archery ohh but i can enchant a regular bow and add poison to it and do even more damage can even do one hit kills with it, but nope i can spam cast incinerate 15 times cause enchanted gear that makes destruction spells take zero magic................... yep sounds about right to me..............................

Hey are you level 55 yet?
AE ALTADOON SHARMAT
And that is the end of that.

The problem is simple, from Arena all the way to Oblivion, every class type was completely, 100% viable from start to finish.

You want to be a Thief that wears heavy armor? Go for it.
You want to be a Warrior that casts spells rather than use weapons? Go for it.
You want to be a Mage that relies solely on summons to do the work for them? Go for it.

So on, so forth. If you can imagine it, you could do it, and it would work. Why? Because that's what TES games are, be who you want to be and play the way YOU want to play with everything being completely viable and effective in the end.

Now then, Skyrim comes along and what happens?

You want to play a Destruction Mage and blow crap up? You're playing the game wrong, you have to do this, this, and that to be effective. Don't like it? Don't play a mage because you're doing it wrong.

So let's see, we go from complete freedom to having play-styles forced down our throats.

Sure, Magic was overpowered before Skyrim with spell-making. But, unlike Skyrim, without abusing Spell-Making everything was balanced and equally effective. This is not the case with Skyrim, throw out Enchanting/Smithing/Alchemy and Destruction is still not balanced with Melee/Archery.

I am sick of all these people defending this stupid magic system when they all know, that in all the other TES games you could focus on a single school of magic (minus Restoration for all the wiseguys) and be completely effective from start to finish.

Also, the whole balance in single-player games not being important. I hate to burst your bubbles but balance has been important in single-player games, namely RPGs before your precious MMORPGs where even thought of. But, the one thing that is completely laughable about the MMORPG argument? Everyone and their mother points to WoW, quite ironically as it is one of the most unbalanced MMORPGs ever made. Yet, you have it on a little pedestal as if it's the epitome of MMORPG balance.

Yeah, this reminds me. Old-School AD&D was built in such a way that at 1st level a magic-user was considerably less powerful in combat than a fighter, but get up to the higher levels and magic-users got some very powerful spells.

And there was no way you were gonna have a magic-user, particularly a low-level one, be the guy that ran into the middle of the melee.

All this says to me is "Anything I come up with should be equally effective" which is absurd.

This thread makes me sad. People bring up legitimate complaints about destruction magic, hell, magic in general, and people actually have the audacity to say, "shut it." We...there were so many spells in Oblivion, even more in Morrowind, and look at what we have left. We can't even make our own spells anymore, you know, the thing you used to keep your magic up to date in relation to the enemies you would fight? The people who keep saying destruction magic is fine always say "it shouldn't be balanced". Well fine, but it sure isn't on the over powered side of "balance". In fact, your the only ones talking about balance AT ALL.

So lets not talk about balance, lets talk about fairness. Melee needs one (1) damage dealing skill and one (1) armor skill. That is all. Everyone agrees that is viable. Mages need, apparently from some of these posters, EVERY DAMN SCHOOL. Are you pulling these perks out your rear or what? And if you even look at the "perks" for the magic side, you'll notice that most of them are not perks, but rather REQUIREMENTS. Halved magicka consumption isn't a perk, its a mandatory requirement on top of obscene amounts of fortify (school of magic here) enchants. Completely fair my [censored].

For gods sake, just read what you guys and the developers both have said, "Play any way you want." And then you turned around and said, "If you want to use destruction, here is what you must do, and because it works this ONE way, its fine."

Bull.

Its broken in the context of a game that uses 'The Elder Scrolls' in its title. You guys have proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt. So why can't this be fixed?

One minor reason that makes destruction magic mostly useless, centers around the base damage, and damage bonuses.

Weapons: Weapon Damage + Smithing Upgrade + Weapon Enchantment (Fire, Shock, etc.) + Enchanted Armor + Perks

Destruction: Spell Damage + Perks

Also, as someone said, in TES lore, magic was supposed to be more powerful than weapons, unless it is an enchanted weapon. Plus, casting a spell uses magicka, while regularly swinging a weapon costs nothing.

And you can't get a sneak bonus when using magic.

I wonder why it works from Arena through Oblivion then. I also wonder why "Be who you want and play the way you want" has been the mainstay slogan for TES. But no, you're right. It's completely absurd.

Do you want some logic with my sarcasm? Oh wait...

Well tell that to bethesda who says "play it the way you want to play it" or "you are who you play"
This is not diablo where every one needs to be a hoto,enigma using Hdin to play the game all the way through to higher levels....
Tod howard talked up freedom to play the way you wan't but you can't. go back to diablo and wow if you wan't every one to use specific builds.

Have you played with the spell creation in any other game. Right now the magic system is just a shell a foundation to something and that is it.

Spell creation gave you options to create whatever combination you wanted. You did not have to craft everything to one shot kill status, it was about customization. Now we have lost that thanks to the whole thing, oh magic is so overpowered. You do not have to have the best spells, gear, or weapons on you all the time these games are about making who you want.

I want a mage that unravel the very fiber of magic, I want to manipulate it the way I see fit, Skyrim fails to give us wizards this option.

We have had spell creation sense the beginning of this series for crying out load.

I honestly don't understand why people say destruction is bad, those runes and saved my life more than once. Level 41 now on my mage and have yet to have any of the "underpowered" problems that many people have been talking about. Just enchanted some apparel, get some buffs and I'm good to go.
People are probably just mad that they can't one shot everything, or just don't know how to play mages.

Playing the game in the way that you WANT to play it should be the case but is not the case for pure casters on consoles at least. There are already mods addressing this for the pc version. That is the crux of the argument for them. As a caster, you will be hard pressed not to take conjuration after reaching master level destruction. Better not level it up too fast! You will also HAVE to take enchanting whether you want to or not if you actually want to be able to cast more than 3 or four of the high end spells that don't scale...