I don't like it. It basicly makes you waste a hand to cast and maintain it. Hell you can't even cast it then take the enemy down with a bow. Which is my only reason to use it in the first place.


Boo

Which is where potions come in

There will likely be buff versions of the spell anyway.

Because the demo had a calculated number of spell casts.

I have pants that increase my Charisma.
Take that, Old Navy!

Huh??

During the demo while Todd was flipping through spells you can see one for Bound Axe that lasts 300 seconds. If the bound weapon spells have duration effects I'm sure there will be several others that don't require you to "channel" like Detect life.

Not sure how I feel about constantly draining magic, but to be honest with you, whichever way they do handle magic, it's probably not gonna be a huge hindrance on my gameplay. I do plan on being a magicka heavy character, as long as that's viable, I'll be happy.

P.S.: Is there a video of how Detect Life works in Skyrim?

I was also very pleased to see that while I was attending Quakecon and seeing the demo legitimately. :teehee:

I never liked how things like Light spells, Detect Life, Night-Eye, etc. would be on for X amount of time. I would always hotkey a Dispel spell to undo those effects when I didn't want them anymore. It sounds nice to have them only in affect while I want them to be.

It also makes perfect sense for Bound Armor spells to still have that over-time effect. Not exactly reasonable to expect the player to keep a hand occupied with summoning armor during a fight.

In general, it seems like magic got a very nice overhaul. You could even see Todd using different levels of power with the Chain Lightning spell when he had the spell in both hands. Magic is looking to be even more fun than it was in past games.

Ugh I hope that's not how it works. I agree with you, my use for Detect Life was to get the drop on enemies as I come around corners, or from a higher level than them, and pick them off with a bow or a spell before they knew I was there.

Edit out stuff, I'm being a jerk just because you are.

I would not like to see such spells with such minor effects drain magicka constantly. There are more important uses for my magicka, such as my skeleton army...

I laugh at those scoffing at the new magicka system. It seems they're just unhappy they'll have to use magic the way it works in the lore, instead of how it works in game. I love the way Skyrim is handling magic, and can't wait to try it out

It should be really fun

Does any have a problem that he is an adept in alteration (50) yet it cause 30 pps to keep the spell up.

Even with 500 magic you can only maintain detect life(really detect life :blink:) for less then 17 sec.

It's not even a powerful spell.

:stare:

For those of you who want magic to be exceedingly more cumbersome to wield, okay.

For all the rest of you, if constant hold and drain is the way all spells are managed now, YOUR MAGIC WIELDING CHARACTER WILL BE AT A SEVERE DISADVANTAGE COMPARED TO HIS/HER OBLIVION AND MORROWIND COUNTERPART.

In the case of all spells aside from those in the school of destruction, it is generally MUCH better to have a spell consume a pre-alloted amount of magicka and function until the energy from that casting expires, than to have to sacrifice the casting hand for the entire duration of the spell.

Casting something as simple as a light spell would handicap you. YOU WOULD NO LONGER BE ABLE TO CAST AND TURN YOUR EFFORTS TO OTHER THINGS UNTIL THE SPELL ELAPSED.

It would severly handicap the way even simple spells are handled. Unless you don't like efficient magic and want it to be less managable and far more tedious, across the board implementation of a feature like this won't do your mage any favours. He would probably curse both you and Bethesda for burdening him with such an albatros if he could.

@RevolverZarriel:
Not really. Instant "one time" effect (if you want to maintain magicka for other uses) sounds much better balanced than the ultimate in convenientness it used to be. And if constant effect, it could be tied to some insanely expensive unique item/artifact.

Personally I'm all for making some of the power of magic return, at the cost of reducing the convenientness.

Detect life is useless anyway.

It does NOT work that way in the lore for all spells. In the LORE you can DEFINITELY cast spells like light, or summon a Daedra without having remain in constant casting mode.

Yea, this system is much better, only one critisism though, it looked like it was draining his magic bar way to much for a level 34, suspose he was a warrior though mainly.

This system is terrrible.
Its an FPS system, not RPG.
Its all flash and no substance.
Its all action and no strategy.
I will not even rent the game if the majority of the spells are like this and magic has become gimped, dumb and unusable.
Ill simply never touch a Bethesda game again.
This is going too far.

It's the epitome of RPG strategy. You can no longer have a 10 mile radius spell detecting all enemies in the area (with a duration that allows your magicka to completely recover before it runs out), and instead have to be more conservative with its use... you have to be more careful and consider if it's safe to expend the magicka that you may need if you run into something. In previous games, you could just cast a powerful, long-duration spell, take some magicka potions to refill your magicka, then head out with full health/magicka/stamina with the spell still active. All the benefits of using a powerful spell without the drawback of drained magicka. With the charging method, you now have to weigh the advantage of a stronger spell, with the cost of more drained magicka.

It's not much different than using weak attacks for limited stamina drain, compared to power attacks with more stamina drain. Or jogging with no stamina drain,compared sprinting with stamina drain. Stronger effect for more cost, so you have to be careful and consider if the added cost isn't going to put you in a worse position than a weaker effect.

Careful, you are falling into "Insane Troll Logic" territory.

Is all flash and no substance.
Its removing the magic from magicka.
Spellmaking being gone is already horrible beyond belief, I simply cannot fathom why such a core feature needs to be removed, but now all thought and planning is removed as well.
Only usuable and useful in the heat of battle, looking pretty but with no content.
No different from psi powers or mutant powers or any other thing like that a million other games already have.

Wasn't okay with them taking away spellmaking, but now we can't even chain multiple spells together...

This games a rental for me. (Just to know for sure and my love for Daggerfall prevents me from passing on a TES title)
I'll stick around these forums to see if BGS changes it tunes, but they won't.

Well, possbily im saying things too strongly :/
It comes from me being upset.