Not having played a magic-oriented character yet, I'm not going to really address the arguments about the magic system as a whole, but I will say this: As pleased as I am that somebody around here besides me remembers the classic Master of Magic, I don't believe that it at all makes sense to compare a real-time RPG game like Skyrim to a 17 year old turn-based strategy 4X game like Master of Magic.

Or..
People keep repeating the same thing because people keep running into the same difficulty?
It really isnt hard.

When 100 people go: this quest is broken because I cannot finish it.
Do you then go: Quit whining.
Or do you go fix that bloomin quest.

Replies like yours grind my gears because they are so ill thought out.

Edit, to poster above: Very True.
Its just an example of diverse and utalitarian magic.
Wholly unlike what Skyrim offers which is.. bland factory.

Edit2: I do really like the 'transmute' spell.

dont need balance --- yes
want more options, freedom---yes

hence we want destruction to be at least viable in high level is a legit concern. viable, as in without needing to constantly drink potion and/or rely on some other tree to do damage.

nobody is asking to make desteuction as powerful as melee combat genius.

I, and I think most of us, still believe that it would make more sense if spells have higher/longer effects as your skills level up, and your own level goes up.

It's not about balance, it just makes more sense.

Most of what op says is truth though, these forums are plagued with World of WarCraft elitists.

You were doing well until this bit. What if, for roleplaying reasons or just for the fun of it, I WANT to be a blacksmithing enchanting alchemist? What if I WANT to play a sneaky assassin? What if I WANT to be a dual-wielding zerker? What if I WANT to be a sneaky blacksmithing enchanting alchemist dual-wielding assassin? Well, I cannot, not if I want any semblance of challenge in my game that is, even on master difficulty. And all for what? So some kids can one-shot monsters over and over again, which they could do anyway by setting the difficulty to novice or abusing console commands? These people are not worth taking options away from me.

It's pretty awesome how you can quote 1/3 of a post and act like it was the only thing stated. Once is understandable because it was being edited while you replied, but twice is just sheer laziness. Good job.

I don't understand why people complain that their mage can't be as good at dealing toe-to-toe damage as a warrior. If you want to play a warrior then create one, but it makes no sense to build a magic-oriented character and complain you can't run into the middle of a slugfest and win. Slugfests require heavy weapons and armor. If you want to fight a slugfest then master the appropriate skills, get the necessary equipment and use the required perks. It's like my axe-wielding Nord warrior complaining that he can't heal himself as fast as a mage can. That's because I've only chosen one perk in Restoration and I am not concentrating on my Restoration skill. Neither can I deal a lot of damage with my one puny fire spell.

No-one is saying mages are not viable.

We are saying Skyrim's magic is not Elder Scrolls level.
It is, in fact, worse than the competition.

Thats cause mages are balanced around their magic schools.

Just like a warrior will have: Light or Heavy armor, One handed or two handed, restoration, Smithing & enchanting, ATLEAST, to become powerful. Add in Block as a 2h user or 1h+shield warrior.
For thiefs: Light armor, Sneak, Onehanded or Bow, (pick pocketing, not required but you will want it), Alchemy, Smithing and Enchantment, ATLEAST, to become bad ass.

Now lets look at mages thats complaining. They want: Destruction, Restoration and Enchantment. Posslby Alchemy.

Now, compare above for just a second. So for melee to become the all mighty powerful class they can become, they need twice as many skills as mages that believe they are underpowered when going destruction.

I say this: Mages equivalent to heavy armor: Alteration and or Conjuration. All you need.

Mages need the least skills to become maybe the most powerful of all the classes. If they add in conjuration to their mix they just swish past. But they dont want that, cause they want to deal all the damage themself.
Well, you can do this but you wont do it as good, far away, as good as a thief or warrior. Why?: Cause IF Destruction would be as good as you want it to be, then what if you mix in some conjuration and some illusion to that?
You can already become utterly overpowered in this game, why would you like to break that?

They are not going to rebalance the complete game just for you, when its already perfectly balanced for mages that take the schools they must take in order to become as powerful as their warrior or thief counterparts.
Why should mages need less skills then others. Actually, you already need 2 or more skills less then warriors or thiefs to become powerful.

Thiefs can get away with the least if they just focus on stealth and daggers or bows.. But then they must get 90-100 stealth AND use muffled enchant on their boots or they will be detected extremly fast.

Again, why do you even want to play the game as an all over the top powerful monster? Whats the charm in no challenges? Thats atleast my question mark.

I rerolled with a wood elf, Im now lvl 31. Stealth and bow, using 2h for melee. light armor ofc. My highest skill is pick pocketing. And I do have smithing to 60, but only iron and magic weapon perk. I can increase the damage of bows with roughly 25%. Thats ok, I dont want more.

At lvl 30 I managed to find a glass bow...finally. Most players at 30 us running around with daedric bows, self smithed with enchants.
Me....
I really enjoy this and playing it hard. I mix play between Adept and Expert, since Expert with my current character that have no enchants or alchemy, makes so poor damage with his bow that unless I get in double sneak attacks with atleast 1 crit on a bandit boss, he will have more then half health left. Im almost never one shotting enemies with my opener, but taking out half. Thats on Adept by the way. Expert.....

I love how I need to tactically withdraw, stealth in a corner or run the heck away, and come back after running a cirkle to fight again.
Sure, i have ranged and its easier but I opt for low damage to the fights are much harder and more interesting.
I have had encounters with gangs of bandits I had to reload 15 times before I managed to beat them............on Adept. At lvl 25-30.
With my orc that I shelfed. he would have run in, killed them all before they could say hallelulja and I would feel powerful. Some players like that. I dont.

Anyway, Destruction is very well balanced. Actually its too powerful for Adept until very late game. You are forced to play on expert or master as mage most of the time due to your insane damage if you want a challenge.

The main problem with the complainers is that they are complaining that they cant steam roll with their destruction ONLY spec, on Master difficulty. And thats just.......I have no words.

Its a single player game, and Mages are balanced. Maybe the most powerful class if you use your magic schools. Bethesda imo overdid the mage and it should be nerfd. But thats me.

The way I see things, people on the forums expect to be able to blast through stuff with destruction magic, but that's a lot like a warrior class character eschewing armor solely for weapon damage. It just doesn't work. Each of the three archetypes of character must focus on a variety of skills to be successful.

You clearly misunderstood what argument I am talking about.

Bullhockey

The only thing you are advocating is pigeonholing me into a singualr playstyle, which proves 'magic isnt bad'

Well if there is only one way to make it good then it is bad as this is an RPG and not halo.
And that is the end of that.

To poster above: Or did I cut through the heart of the matter?

No one who actually understands the game picks up Restoration to "become powerful". No Warrior "needs" Smithing + Enchanting period. Even on Master difficulty it trivializes the game. The only time Smithing itself should even be a factor is Master difficulty. The game provides more than enough to do very well with as a physical class on Expert or below. The ONLY thing a Warrior "needs" is one armor proficiency and one melee weapon proficiency. Adding Archery is not needed, but can make life simpler in a handful of situations.

Destruction should be anologous to a weapon specialization, but instead ends up being more akin to lockpicking.

OP, sorry, but your post is a straw man, and you clearly don't understand the issues, which seems to be a given when someone tries to claim that balance doesn't matter.

It's an rpg (kinda), and skills and perks make a difference in the game world. It's really that simple.

Lockpicking and speech, for example, are useless. Any lock in the game can be picked with no skill or perk investment. Speech only provides gold, which is ridiculously easy to acquire anyway. Any perks or effort put into these skills are thrown in the trash. Destruction is similar, except it's viable for the first 35 or so levels. After that you have to switch to weapons or summoning.

If the game was even mildly balanced, these issues wouldn't exist (or they'd be annoying rather than pointless). If a game has skills or character progression, it really needs balance. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it requires a little work from the devs.

I didn't edit your posts at all, if you fel the need to edit your own post then I just hope it wasn't for spelling errors.

Well, as I say, there may be something to that; I haven't used much magic with my first character. Frankly, I would think people would be complaining more about the non-combat aspects of the magic system if the support spells are really lacking. It's the guys who complain that they want to run around as a mage who's really a warrior, except with a [censored] heavy-duty flame spell instead of a sword and "magic fire armor" or whatever instead of just armor that utterly confuse me. If you want to stand toe-to-toe with a guy in heavy armor swinging a six foot long warhammer, then you probably need to be in heavy armor and swing a big damn weapon yourself, and quit insisting that there should be a magic spell to deal just as much damage as quickly as the warrior's sword, and a spell to protect your fragile wizard bones as well as the warrior's heavy plate armor. Insisting that you want to play a mage but you're pissed that the way magic works doesn't allow you to charge into a mass of nasty pointy swords is just absurd.

at the end of the day, Magic damage should scale in a similar manner to how combat weapons scale in damage.

If magic effectivness improved with skill increase then magic would actualy seem powerful at higher levels like it should.
Mages should be weak in melee yes, and shouldn't be able to take hits like a warrior clad in heavy armor can, but magic should also dish out high levels of damage. After all it IS magic. It is ment to be impressive and fear inducing.

Ya right Look at necromancy it's broken to pieces... it's down right useless compaired to atronaches, I don't use destruction so I don't realy know. But seriously go play a necromancer charecter using frost spells and zombies impossible, What I loath is when people say something like oh well you shouldnt try to use a Conjuration only class but then it's like well i can play and win using one hand,two hand,archery,Destruction(well your supossed to, once again never tried it) why not only conjuration and be a summoner it was possible in oblivion. It's actually some what possible with atros because there so [censored] tastic over powerd compaired to necromancy, zombies are complete abject failure. to bad you can't have two summons in the begining I want to roleplay a necromancer but you get plowed T-T. I thought skyrim was supossed to make all classes viable Like for summoner you would need alot of mana so can't take a hit and no real offence because you have to relly on summons. cant wait for the creation kit!!!

P.s. don't insult me over my grammer thats what trolls do when they have nothing better to bring to a agrument.

Well, you might not think they aren't viable, and I expect you're right, but I do see quite a few threads of people complaining that mages aren't viable in combat. While I can comprehend the idea of a combat-oriented mage, sticking almost exclusively with Destruction to the detriment of Restoration for healing and whatever school gives you a protective spell makes about as much sense as a warrior that insisted on putting all his perks in two-handed and ignoring heavy armor.

In a good game like Morrowind, a mage deals with this a whole lot fifferent than a rogue or warrior might.

My mages sometimes walked up invisibly to an antagonist to hear what they had to say. Remember taht Dagoths talked?
My warrior would bash their brains in.
My mage would stand behind them and go: talk to me.

That is gone.

There is now this stupid sense of 'balance' like this is an MMO.

And to all you 'balanced' monkeys out there. Do remember that there are laws of gaming that govern that a mage is weak at first but god-like endgame.
Skyrim goes against that.

Another horrible thread where the OP tells people they shouldn't be able to play a certain way. Sigh.

Okay, let me make sure I understand this correctly. Are people complaining that they can't feasibly play a Necromancer and only use Necromancy spells, and that they can't reliably play a Destruction mage who only uses Destruction spells? Is it the necessity of using spells from multiple schools, increasing multiple magic skills and spreading perks out in multiple schools that pisses people off?

And if one would read before one posts I would not be forced to make acerbic comments like this, now would I?

Well, as I say, I never played Morrowind. And I agree that mages should be viable characters. My second character in Oblivion was a mage class, and I was effective even in combat - but I had to use spells from multiple schools to do it. I couldn't just stick with Summoning, or Destruction and expect to be feasible. Since I avoided all armor to keep my spell effectiveness high, I had to cast shield spells and frequently heal, and summoned creatures to keep the enemy focused on them instead of getting my fragile Mage body broken. Chameleon sometimes, although Illusion was not my forte.

I think my sig summarises my response more eloquently than I personally could.