Yeah, imagine that. An arch-mage needing to use a bow as delivery for his "curse" spells, which is a pre-requisite for his damage spells actually doing much of anything. Totally not a buzzkill, is it? Totally helps that immersion into feeling like a mage that isn't just fresh out of the academy, no?

not really a rune, that's more like an ice storm trap. The whole idea of runes is that they trigger when stepped on/read/insulted in the proper tone of voice. What you've described is more like your average AoE spell aimed at the ground where people are gonna walk, which then hits everyone that goes in it

No, I wasn't. My created spells effects had tangible, in game effects. Again, imagination and creativity was in thinking up the spell and getting it to work with said effects and mechanical limitations. If I want to just imagine [censored], Ill play a tabletop. I however want the mechanic that's been in every ES ever made, except Skyrim.

Hence why I said trap first, and put rune in parentheses. Only a handful of people even knew you could do that though. Why? Because I wrote the [censored] book.

I agree, I think health regen is dumb. But I also see why its necessary, maybe its because I play perma death on master difficulty and I tend to play pure classes with very little splashing. Im an experienced gamer, im damn good too. I finished Fallout NV on the hardest settings and with perma death, no stimpaks and I only used doctors to heal any wounds I had. So, I feel like I can safely call you out on this one. There is no way you can finish Skyrim on master difficulty without using regen or wait due to the way its designed. Bosses in this game are MUCH harder than they were in Morrowind or Oblivion. Forts in Skyrim are filled with 8-10 enemies that all attack you at the same time and are nearly impossible to clean out without outside healing (if playing a pure warrior) or by cheating and using a follower.

I have spent 200+ hours in this game and I can tell you the game simply wasn't designed to be played without health regen, though I wish it was because I too find health regen to be a very unimmersive feature. Im a simulation guy though, so take it for what it is.

You really think first person horse riding is immersive?

Are you sure? I was training alteration the other day by throwing mage light around, I'm pretty sure it stuck to the NPC I threw it on.

I don't know if burden as a spell effect is still in the game or not, but cut spell effects aren't what I'm arguing here.

You may have a point with small DoT spells, though.

Edit: Erandur, what were the other spells actual effects in game, then?

My point is, alot of the things you would create spells for you can already do (sans removed spell effects, of course, but that's not this argument) by having a spell in each hand

Yeah, because casual gamers can't wrap their mind around the idea of separate pants.

Its not dumbing down, its just convenient.

I was actually mainly reffering to transforming your horse into a snake and teleporting people.

For you it's convenient for me its a unnecessary nuisance that ill fix by using mods.

Actually regarding magelight, maybe it does stick on the NPC, I've yet to try it myself.
well since youasked for it, here's a spell with three spell effects (OH NOES, SKYRIM ONLY HAS TWO HANDS!)

-summon dremora on self , invisibility on self, frenzy on target AOE
and this was rather simple and unimaginative, just trying to make a point

You know what else is convenient? God mode. So easy, so little stuff to worry about. That should just be the default.

Regarding fewer skills:

Medium Armor -
What's the point? With the perks available to Heavy and Light Armor you can easily get any advantage that medium armor once offered. Notice that a some of the "heavy" and "light" armors are more like a "medium" armor in weight and protection anyway (like Scaled for example). They're just classified differently.

Mysticism -
Most of the important mysticism spells are still in, just in different schools. And who says the College of Winterhold has to follow the same school classification as the former Mage's Guild? I do miss Dispell and Reflect though.

Athletics and Acrobatics -
Thank God these are gone. I no longer feel compelled to jump around like an idiot while wandering the woods. If you ask me, the new sprint mechanic is far more realistic.

Armorer -
Smithing is way better. Besides, repairing weapons all the time was annoying. You can argue that having a weapon degrade was realistic. But all things considered repairing equipment wasn't very realistic anyway. "Okay, I'm gonna sit down in the middle of a dungeon and use a freakin' hammer to make my leather armor more effective."

Mercantile -
Um... Isn't having Speechcraft and Mercantile a bit redundant?

Blade and Blunt (also Axe, Short Blade, and Long Blade) -
One-Handed and Two-Handed just make more sense. Are you telling me that a master swordsman would be totally clueless if you handed him an axe or mace? I think the perk trees for these skills more than makes up for the fact that blade and blunt are no longer specific skills.

Security -
This was just renamed "Lockpicking" and Pickpocketing is a separate skill altogether.

Hand-to-Hand -
Okay, I miss this a little bit. But it was always more of a novelty than a skill most people actually used. Besides, the Fists of Steel perk is there if you want to beef up your punches.

Unarmored -
Miss this one a little bit too. But it's kinda from the "dice-roll" era of TES anyway, and was only really good for saving throws. Graphics and animations are a LOT better now, so it's pretty immersion breaking to see an enemy's sword clearly nail you in the face and have the game say it "missed." Also, the Mage Armor perk in Alteration, and the bonus to sneaking are great ways to reward unarmored players.

Spear -
Spears would have been cool, but I really think they were taken out for game balance purposes. Face it, a medium-long range thrusting weapon is virtual invincibility when facing any opponent without a ranged attack.


Regarding Attributes

Lets be honest. The old attribute system was a total D&D rip off, and unnecessarily complicated. Upgrading attributes in Oblivion and Morrowind had two purposes: A- increase Health, Stamina, or Magicka. And B- increase the effectiveness (or reduce the cost) of certain skills. You can still do exactly that by spending perk points, and increasing attributes directly. Seriously, why be complex simply for the sake of being complex? The new system is just better.


Regarding... Um... everything else

Bugs -
Hardly new to Bethesda games.

Spellmaking -
Totally agree with you here. Spellmaking needs to be back. Or at least something like http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1313799-mages-dlc-wish-list/page__p__19754521__fromsearch__1#entry19754521

Armor pieces -
The problem with this is enchantment stacking. It was super easy to make your character into a god with NINE enchantable items. However, I would like the ability to have more options in the creation of armor - such as adding or removing those beloved pauldrons.

Arena -
Actually I miss this. But, I don't think it has anything to do with "dumbing down" the game. Maybe we'll see it in a DLC.

Smaller cities -
Skyrim is just different than Cyrodill or Morrowind. It's like comparing Alaska to New York or Florida. And if you really want to get down to brass tacks - has ANY city in a TES game really been a city? The Imperial City in Oblivion had about 150 residents. Would you seriously call a community with 150 residents a city? At least in Skyrim the people are actually doing stuff.

Could you even make that in Oblivion? Since it's both on self and on target.

Edit: Plus most spells with three effects made via spellmaking would cost so much they'd be impractical unless you broke the game and had a massive pool of magicka or were cheating

TES VI will be called "TES 6" because people are too stupid to understand Roman Numerals.

Oh, hahaha.

Water walk+fortify speed+ invisibility+Shock Aura on target (that's proprietary). Maomer serpent for your "Maomer" build. I'm talking about telepathic feeding (not teleporting), similar to a vampire. In fact, it was created for my Vampire playboy build exclusively. The latter had an interesting side effect for the AI. Making the targeted NPC seem hostile to guards, while keeping them 'calm'. Feeding on essential NPCs was never so much fun.

Then there was the Heart Attack spell...

Yes.

Wrong. We have Health, Magicka, Stamina, 18 skills, with each skill tree having its own set of perks, to define our characters. More than in previous games.

What about the "transferring heretics to the divinator steps for execution" which is what I was reffering to by "teleporting", assuming this is what you actually mean? it's a little unclear to me. That maormer serpent one is interesting although wouldn't actually make it look like a serpent.

Doom and gloom thread alert...As it was stated before if you want a deep RPG, play effin' Realms of Arkania...Then get back to us..In comparison none of the tes series were hardcoe RPGs, Torment, FO1-3, Arcanum, THOSE were deep RPGs. I believe like most who starts these threads, that you simply have Morrowind nostalgia clouding your judgement, I remember these same doom & gloom threads chanted the same angst-ridden yammerings of the death of RPGs, Lore, and console paranoia with Morrowind, imagine that!

Yup, character customization is more elaborate in Skyrim than in previous titles. Though, its the numbers and stats and dice rolls that make an RPG to some people. Personally, I like making a unique character that actually requires real thought and planning vs the old system where you could be a master of everything and obtain 100 in every stat except luck.

Well, aside from the potential magicka cost of those (that makes me think up another point, too), you do have got me there. You can only have two effects at a time.

But, another factor contributing to spellmakings removal was enchanting.

How broken would spellmaking have been with the 100% magicka cost reduction enchants?

100% magicka cost is an exploit at best, Beth probably just overlooked it. And besides, it only works for one skill, say 0% cost for Destruction, but the other two spell effects would still use magicka.

Oh, lol, I'm all messed up. OK, that didnt teleport, it put them into my Inquisitors "custody". That builds entire play style was going out into the wilds to bring back heretics and such. First Vycio The Pious would 'sense' them with holy intervention (a custom Detect life spell, with a few more tricks in there). Then Battled them until they were near death, with his Bastard Sword Veredictum. Then he put them into custody with a (Command humanoid+shield spell+a light chameleon effect, this spell also had a few tricks in it as well). Id actually have to load up Oblivion to list them verbatim.

And the Aura is believe it or not, actually rather serpent-y, especially in first person.

'Spiralling out of control'?

Melodramatic, much?

One'd think your world is falling apart.