In Morrowind, I would pass time by casting fireball at buildings in Balmora...and bam...I had some Destruction skill...but in Oblivion if I weren't casting it at an actual something...I got nothing...

How would you like it done?

it makes more sense to just use it and it level ups but its more convenient to make it actually hit something to level up

More like MW I hope, but I also hope we don't have to grind skills this time around(restoration anyone?)

I think there can be a happy medium, like a training area.
There were so many training dummies in the OB guilds, and I was disappointed that they didn't raise my weapon skills.

Standard training spell in Oblivion was drain fatigue or some skill on self. However destruction gained skill slowly as a mage who mostly used destruction in combat would use it a lot.

I'd prefer it if you could only improve skills including magic skills when their use actually mattered. It beggars belief that you could become a master of destruction by repeatedly casting the same spell over and over again.

Destruction is almost a different case to the rest of the schools, gaining skill by casting destruction on self is just stupid, actually harming enemies in combat should be the only way to improve. As to the rest, if conjuration etc. were as hard to advance as restoration, wouldn't see a problem, if you really want to spend half an hour staring at a screen casting 500 shield spells, work away.

Well, the Mage guilds do have practice rooms, so technically that's what happens.

I wouldn't mind the destruction skill increase slower while practising and get faster increases if you actually try to kill something.

It is my choice to rig the keyboard with weights so my character would raise magic skills while I sleep. You can call it cheating if you want, but I am not affecting anyone else's fun.

This is what I'd like to see.

maybe spells should only get stronger as you get perks related to them? and didn't todd say the power is in the perks this time around?

I didn't call it cheating. As far as I'm concerned cheating is a pretty irrelevant term in a single-player game.
But for me in a game where time is irrelevant (you don't age, quests don't progress, no living costs etc) doing what you do takes all the challange out of it.

I don't consider it a challenge to manually hold a button down while studying pharmacology at the same time. So why should I use a finger at all?

When I want a challenge, I would go to the hardest available dungeon to kill something. Levelling my skills is just a way to work towards that. And since Bethesda insist that there would still be some level scaling left in Skyrim, the only way to make sure all my dudgeons are as high level as possible is to level up in my bedroom beforehand.

The day Bethesda remove level scaling all together is the day I will stop artificially increase my skills. It's their call.

While certainly useful for enabling skill in dealing with unforseen variables in the weave of magika, solid skill gain in any school of magika is not through practical application alone.

Any master of magika would tell you that you gain expertise at spell schools through study, practice and practical application.

You also need to push your boundaries, because obviously casting the same shock cantrip for 20 years on your apprentice, while amusing, will not a master of destruction make.

The process to level up magical skills in both Morrowind and Oblivion was completely broken. If you want to be able to cast certain important journeyman, expert or master level spells, you will eventually have to sit around spending some time mashing the same button repeatedly on your keyboard.

Hanging out in an inn repeatedly casting restoration spells on yourself while you are in no danger was just as lame as hopping around like an idiot to increase Acrobatics.

This is not a good system. I know some people have the patience not to do that at all, but it should really be completely revamped and fixed for Skyrim.

One solution could be to make spells only count toward level up if cast during combat.

There needs to be some kind of reason why I would not tape down the cast button on my keyboard and cast "Bound Dagger" repeatedly to level up conjuration, for example, especially when it results in getting perks, because most of us will end up doing it. That is not how I want to spend my time playing the game.

I hope the devs have found a creative way to fix this, the same way they have eliminated hopping around to increase Acrobatics and running to increase speed. Maybe there is some other way to fix it, but the only one I can think of is to make casting outside of combat not count towards level up.

I prefer the whole game to be challanging and get as much pleasure out of struggling through an early game dungeon with minimal equipment and ability. What you seem to dislike is the whole process of starting out weak and gradually developing. I can't imagine bethesda getting rid of that since many players enjoy that sense of progression and like to feel their eventual godlike status was earned. You could just as easily console your level and skills up if all you enjoy is the high-powered endgame.

I really cannot stand the immersion-breaking process of levelling up magic skills by using them over and over and over again. I would rather gain points at level up and spend them on my favoured attribute or skills.

What sense of progression? Level-scaling isn't progression at all, it's designed to slow the player down as long as possible in getting new content. I earn my god-like status by charging into dungeons that are too hard for me in order to raid the chest at the end without dying. But since Bethesda tells me II can't get the best items in the chest without levelling up first, that's what I will do. I level up.

If you want me to level up by dungeon crawling, don't tell me that I am not allowed to get the best possible items until I am at a certain level. Because then it is a complete waste of my time to dungeon crawl when I get a sub-par reward. Yes, Skyrim will wind down the scaling compared to Oblivion, but the problem is still there and I will act accordingly.

One possibility (for conjuration):

- Summoned creatures stay until they die. Bound equipment stays until it breaks, but it breaks significantly easier than regular equipment.
- Once you've summoned a creature (or once you've reached the summon limit if they let us do multiple summons), you can't summon another until the current one is dead.
- Once you've bound a piece of equipment, you can't summon another one that fills the same armor/weapon slot until the current one breaks.
- Summons turn hostile if you attack them (can't remember if they did this in Oblivion or not)
- The more powerful the summon or bound equipment spell, the more it counts toward leveling up the skill.

Seems like it would help with the grinding problem without putting in an arbitrary "only improves skill if in combat" limitation. Of course you could still grind by summoning a creature, binding a weapon, killing the creature, and repeating. But this is imo a better form of grinding than mindlessly casting a summon spell over and over. Another way that I guess it could work is by having conjuration increase only when summoned creatures/equipment do damage (or take damage for armor), but that doesn't seem like it would actually improve your conjuring ability.

Other skills would probably require different solutions, but unless I'm missing something this should work for conjuration.

These are some interesting ideas.

Maybe the devs have come up with something really ingenious to fix this broken "mash button repeatedly to level up magic skills" problem.

However, the only thing I can think of, especially for Restoration, Illusion, Alteration, Destruction, is to only allow casting to count during combat. Otherwise we will all find some spell that does not harm somebody and cast it repeatedly outside of combat on a friendly NPC, or cast healing on ourselves until our fingers bleed.

I can't think of any other way to limit this other than to limit it to spells cast during combat. Maybe the dev team has something else in mind.

If your combat difficulty setting is set to an appropriately challenging level, you should not have time to sit around casting pointless spells to grind levels while you are in the middle of combat.

I think in Oblivion every spell gave you the same amount of skill experience as any other in that school, regardless of power. So one way to help address the problem would be to make the spell give you an amount of skill experience based on its magicka cost. Sure, you could grind by repeatedly casting a weak cure spell on yourself, but its low magicka cost would mean it barely raises your skill at all. It would be more efficient to use a powerful heal spell, but that has a high magicka cost and you don't want to waste potions or wait around for your magicka to refill.

This also really applies to mercantile, if it's still in. I'm pretty sure in Oblivion every successful transaction at the same haggle level gave you the same amount of skill experience for mercantile. This meant that selling 100 arrows one by one raised your merc skill 100x more than selling the whole stack at once.

I don't see how mashing buttons repeatedly to level up magic is a problem.
In the old days of RPG you only get EXP by killing things. The whole point with TES is to move away from that. To restrict skill gain to combat situations is to go backwards into the war simulator roots of RPGs.

The fact is, to level up passively is a deliberate player choice. Just give me a decreased rate of skill increase as "punishment", if you insist, but let me do things that way and leave me alone.

As I say, I would go back to "playing properly" if I am not penalised for not being at a high enough level when entering a dungeon.

Did you ever find yourself needing to grind your mercantile skill in Oblivion? I found that all of the prices were too cheap and it was too easy to become wealthy. Even after installing Enhanced Economy, I still tried to let my Mercantile skill develop naturally to keep prices as high as possible. (I believe the game becomes boring if you get rich too easily)

I play with a few overhaul mods and I only really needed to grind some of the magical skills, primarily because I had several spells that I purchased but could not cast until I got to Journeyman, or Expert, etc.

I think since there are no major and minor skills in Skyrim, the progression will hopefully be more organic to whatever skills we want our character to use, and whatever skill has the perks that we really want to get. We can only hope that the devs have removed all opportunities for the player to grind skill points from repeatedly mashing buttons.

I think the real problem is that the game rewards you for "playing" in a way that was not intended.

I get that you don't like level scaling, but it's only a punishment if you can permanently miss out on high level equipment if you enter a dungeon too early. Hopefully they won't let this happen.

I respect your opinion but I cannot fathom it.

When I start a new character in Oblivion, there are a few important Restoration, Illusion, Destruction, etc. spells that character needs to learn pretty quickly in order to survive, especially when playing on a high difficulty setting with OOO, MMM, Frans, Duke Patrick's and FCOM installed. Every battle is a major struggle, and I die frequently.

I cannot cast most of these relatively basic spells unless I mash a button repeatedly for several hours to get some of these skills to Journeyman.

Anyone who cannot see the insanity of this is seeing things from a point of view in a sort of parallel universe from what I understand.

I've been looking forward to Skyrim for years. I don't want to spend my time in game mashing a button repeatedly in a meaningless way when there are villagers to meet, cool quests to undertake, fascinating factions to join and terrifying dragons to vanquish.

I would love to go right into the game too.
But Bethesda made it clear that I can't see all of what the game has to offer until I reach a certain level. Until they change their mind, I would not change mine.