burden, drain fatigue and fire damage in order to just hit a button and walk away (no strategy there)

Casting a bunch of effects at once on an NPC to move it into a desired location instead of just casting effects as needed to get the job done. (hit one button and walk away)

Combining a bunch of elements into one spell. (no need to think about what will effect my target)

Do you catch a theme here? It is all about hitting one button to do everything.

Supposedly you will learn an effect and then be able to manipulate it as necessary. How is that the same as buying a static spell?

the only learned spells are from Dragon shouts, and I know for sure in one of the interviews you still buy spells.....OXM march ed not the podcast. the only manipulation is see is some context sensitive IMO garbage thats just telling my char how hard and how big I want my fireball to be, shaving off critcal seconds where I could be killed several times over, not to mention that now I have to hotkey and preset loudouts or die

Wow. Um.

Okay, changing the poll after the results did not agree with what you were saying is some beautiful Stalinist style maneuvering. Kudos on that.

Personally I can take or leave spell-crafting. Not having spell-crafting doesn't make Skyrim a linear action RPG. Claiming that's what I want because I don't care about spellcrafting is extremely childish and approaches the dreaded Strawman argument.

I think that I would prefer the developers to spend the limited time they have on other features that matter more (in my opinion). If they can include spellcrafting, great, HOWEVER if the magic system is so different than the old one then we might not even need spell-crafting, or it might be just too hard to implement.

I really dislike when people create a huge issue over a non issue. They get so wound up in one small detail that it changes your whole view of the situation; it's a common human reaction and is why our political sphere is so screwed up. You can't look past your own biases. Not having this makes this game horrible for some reason. I just don't get it.

I also hate that new people = bad to some of the people arguing for spellcrafting. New people aren't bad. New people are good! New people are the lifeblood of our favorite series. Bring them into the fold, don't act like a jerk-off and leave them thinking the old fans are mean dike heads.

I just think a lot of people are out of line in this thread, being far too aggressive and down right mean. And I mean on both sides of the argument. This issue should not be that important, and putting this much emotional energy into this is pathetic when you consider some of the horrendous things happening in the world right now. [censored], I'm thankful I have a computer to play the game on.

Basically, I haven't played an ES game I haven't liked (even you, Redguard), and they've never disapointed me. So if Todd says spellcrafting has to be out, I trust him and the Bethesda team in their decision.

I'd say from the examples you gave you are quite clearly confirming what Gurkog stated, the only one of the spells you listed that could be considered somewhat unique is the armor summon one causing a fire effect on self, and that's not really anything major, just some extra flavour to make it look cool.

Spell making is a Core aspect, its not some flighty feature that one can just toss aside like the ability to stack coins ontop of each other an make coin castles, its effectively neutering mages, Mages don't all equally know the same spells. in TES LORE Magic is an evolving thing to be studied, this wouldn't be the case if magick was static as they are making it sound for Skyrim. 5 mages one in highrock,Morrowind, summerset, Elswyre and valenwood wouldn't all know the same fire ball spell...

Er, no it didnt. None of the 'off the top of my head' spells I listed were Oped and only half had to do with destruction. I make spells that go with my characters play style. Since Gurkok doesnt know what those are, then he has no idea how I play my game so he need not assume. There's no reason to get rid of spell creation and every reason to keep it. Dont like it, dont use it.

There are things like casting camouflage, healing, and fortifying on others which BGS were too lazy to make available on vendors. I think spell making was included to fill in the gaps for stuff like that.

EDIT: I neglected to mention how the spells in Oblivion do not scale with your skill level like almost every other RPG. This made it necessary for the spreadsheets as well.

I changed the poll slightly at the request of others. Does that make me a jerk?

At the risk of sounding like an ass, I'm afraid that yes, the new fans are "bad" when it comes to certain aspects. I have nothing personal against them, however the majority of newer ES fans get all of their impressions of what is Elder Scrolls from one source, and that source is Oblivion. Older ES fans know that Oblivion... might not be the best overall representation of what it classically means to be Elder Scrolls. I'm fine with the new fans most of the time, but when they get involved in arguments they have no place in, it angers me. If they weren't there for Morrowind, they didn't lose anything. Like I said nothing against them, but it a fact that they can't understand. And you know what? It's fine even if they don't understand, as long as they don't act like they do.

Edit: What's wrong with a little aggression? Are we not allowed any emotion at all when talking about issues we feel strongly about? Just remember that this is a big deal, and I am willing to shed blood over Elder Scrolls. It's all in good spirits though.

I didn't say they necessarily had to be OP, they are just other spells being combined out of convenience/lazyness though, and could just as easily have been done by casting 2-3 times instead of one, so not really proof of anything creative of game-changing strategy wise. I guess what you mean by your playstyle is "casting all your spells in one spell", that's kind of boring gameplay in my opinion though, but of course we all play the game differently. Adding spellmaking just for the sake of making the game somewhat more convenient and easy for a few players even though it might take loads of work to get to work properly is probably not worth it though, and it looks like beth agrees on this point.

I think I see your point, and I think you're right. I can't think of anything in the spell creation tool that allowed you to make anything unique that would change strategy that you couldn't just do with casting a few other spells not created in the tool. Was there spell effects that you could only get in the spell crafting menu?

You cannot cast the curse or heart attack spells effects individually and get them to work, same thing with a lot of the crazy illusion spells I made, which I didnt post. Its most definitely not laziness, its customization, role playing and strategy.

The only stuff like that I can remember off the top of my head were a few magnitudes of certain spells having to be created by oneself, but seeing as they seem to have that built into skills levelling up now it shoudln't really matter much in skyrim.

Damage fatique + Drain Fatique in each hand cast simultanously, then hotkey swap to Damage health + Drain health then cast = Same effect?

Edit: Sorry for double-posting btw :S

Dragon Shouts seem too far-fetched for me, or atleast overpowered. I don't want to be able to send zombies flying with my 'voice', for example. It seems unrealistic that I can kill things by talking.

I like that it's lore-friendly, myself. Thu'um is supposed to be so powerful that the masters of it's practice wouldn't talk for fear of knocking stuff down.

No, wont work, not to mention thats not a custom spell my witch doctor would cast. He would cast his own spell with its own name(yes,naming the spell is a big part of it). I think your getting too hung up on the examples I posted though. I had intricate spells that would drain all of my mana, Id have spells that damaged me as a sacrifice for casting them. I would transform into other creatures with summon+invisibility= some other stuff and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

My Necromancer had all types of spells he cast that did some sort of damage to himself, while damaging or hindering an enemy. Without custom spells, we definitely wont be able to do anything like this again.

I would make custom spells for role-play purposes exclusively. Things you would never think of and stuff too expansive for me to sit here and type out.

Bush Jr. killed braincells every time he opened his mouth.

holy crap....in all 5 years....I have NEVER thought of that........

And Im sure theres plenty of custom spells that other people made that would totally shock me and make me go "Wow, never thought of that". Isn't that what spell creation is about? Imagination and creativity? Thats what its always been to me, that and a great RP tool.

Well, thank you for giving some better example then at least, and yeah I agree, those things would possibly not be possible any more depending on how creative beth has been with their pre-made spells. Personally I'd love to see some stuff like that in perks, say a perk that increases the effect of your charged spells but damages you the more you charge it etc. I guess we'll know better when we get some more info as well as after release, I admit I might be having too much confidence in beth implementing stuff like this by themselves but I'll keep my hopes up. At the moment though there's still too many uncertainties to say anything for sure really, and like some have stated they haven't really confirmed spellmaking is out either, rather that they were working on more in-depth blending of spells which hopefully will make it into the finished game. Time will tell ^^

Not to mention Im a console gamer, so there's no hope for mods etc. if there were all types of magic mods then maybe I wouldnt be so hard up on spell creation, but there isn't. I dont want my characters to be anything like anyone else's. spell creation helped alleviate this problem. Even if my custom spell had all the same components as yours, the fact mine is named Sarkis' Treachery, for example and yours is named 'OMFG Bomb' means they are different if only in semantics. Not to mention just because I used X, X, and X effect doesn't mean thats what the spell is doing in my head.

I gotta say, that is a pretty damn cool idea. Kudos!

You really can't compare mere mortal spells to DRAGON MAGIC!!!!!

Plus they will probably have long cooldowns and be useful or powerful for non magic users.