I'm not one for liking threads based solely of criticism as not one of us are capable of producing anything better than Bethesda. At the moment they are the top of their league and as much as people try and invent degrading terms like "dumbing down" to make a game sound infantile just because a game lost some (arguably unnecessary) features to enable the team to work harder and develop in other areas, Skyrim is to me is one of the best if not the best ever games to be made (minus the bugs!!!)

So this isn't meant to be a flame topic full of negative criticism against a team who are presently top of their league but rather a productive discussion.

Something in Skyrim I personally did not like was dual casting to make a spell stronger. I personally would have preferred spellmaking to have stayed where you are able to craft your own spell to have on one hand whilst casting a defensive spell on the other. Dual casting I felt forced me to keep opening up the menu to change to a certain spell then have to change back.

I guess the equivalent to a warrior is dual wielding one handed weapons to get one-handed higher attack. Which technically does happen. One-handed with a shield is not as strong as dual one-handed attack. What do you think?

Discussion

I'd like to see Spellmaking and dual-casting. Choice is good.

Maybe if they added a higher end perk that enabled dual casting effect can be achieved on one hand. That way a top end powerful wizard can do the same on one hand that normal mages need two. Meaning a powerful wizard could throw powerful fire from one and be summoning atronauts with the other.

Another idea is to bring a staff to be more use. By having a staff it could increase the spell effect meaning all would be through the staff and not the hands. As though a staff is used to channel energies. Something I have often felt in fantasy RPG is the lack of requirement of a staff for a mage. Over the time of reading through the forums for Skyrim, it seems there are mostly mages carrying a weapon like a sword and few real mages. I don't think I've ever seen a mention of a mage using staffs. It as though a staff has no real central role to a mage other than a backup to be carried in your backpack. This is especially so if you are more powerful with your hands. To encourage robes and clothes I always thought armor makes spellcasting weaker (possibly caused by the metal having an effect on magic) and a staff in many fantasy and folklore was to make magic stronger (i think it originally stems from druids and their belief in spiritual energy from grand oaks etc)

I tend to view the dual-casting as unnecessary, and seemingly only existing to try and make Magic scale competitively. There were far better,far easier ways to acheove the same result, be they simply using Perks to increase a spells power or having it scale off of skill. The only other justification I can see for it I is an attempt to make an Element-Focused Mage character seem more viable, but I think that would be better achieved using combinations of spells (Fireball and some kind of Flame-wave for instance). Either way, it's not really useful, characterful or efficient.

I think the hand-linked spells have a lot of potental (imagine using a Frost spell to freeze someone's feet, and following in quick succession with a Lightning bolt to the head) but the dual-cast mechanic (if I am assuming we mean compining 2 identicle spells for a stronger effect) serves no purpose.