When I first played Oblivion, I played a warrior file and it took a pretty long time to start getting those skills to Master and whatnot. But later, when I started to focus on magic skills and even created other magic-user files, it took considerably less time to level up. All I had to do was sit in a room for maybe an hour and keep casting a few select spells. I'm worried it will be this way in Skyrim because I'm making a mage file and don't want the experience to be ruined by extremely easy levelling. And before you say "just don't level that way", it seemed like I had to at times because to cast any useful spells, (especially in destruction) I had to be at least an Expert. Do you think they will find a way around this?

In Oblivion it was too easy. I would stand round for ages just casting Light over and over again in order to raise my Illusion skill to the necessary level in order to have a decent Chameleon spell. I abused the system because it was possible although I felt dirty for doing it.

Problem with mage things is you can just cast in the air to increase your power. I think spells should actually do something before they add to the XP of a skill, meaning healing spells that don't heal anything wouldn't could towards restoration experience. Clayvoyance that shows no new path wouldn't count towards XP, soul trap that doesn't capture a soul would add to XP, etc.

I think they said somewhere that casting more powerful spells increased your skill more quickly than weaker spell spamming.

This is a good idea. They should also make some spells stronger and a little bit easier to get. By the teime you could get any decent destruction spells, you'd be draining your magic bar to take out a quarter of the health of any of the enemies of your level.

You could train sneak that way too. Find a hidden spot, like behind a closet and autowalk with sneak into the wall. Go watch a movie of something and when you returned your sneaklevel was at 75.

I never knew that one and I wish you hadn't told me, I think I may have too try that out now.

I will be super Assassin at level 1 and no one can stop me :ninja:

That was already the case for restoration and destruction. With other spells it's harder to control.
You can summon a skeleton all the time, or cast charm spells on random people what reason is there to not grant you xp for that?

I think they should inherit a system where you can only increase a skill by a maximum of one point every 24 hours.
It would still be 'possible' to grind your skills up by loitering after every skill increase, but that would be so time consuming and lame that exploiting it is really not worth it.

No it was not the case, you could increase restoration by casting the beginning healing spell all the time, even with full HP. destruction spells can also be cast in the same way all the time, if you do a on-self type custom made destruction spell, such as weakness to shock 3 % for 1 sec on self. No spell-making removes that problem.

As for summoning, you shouldn't be able to summon the same creature again instantly, removing the last effect simply by spamming cast, but either wait for it to go away or kill it, limiting the spam of XP. Charm spell is also able to be limited with no spell-making, if they make it so that if you charm a charmed NPC you gain no XP, that means the charm spell would have to be waited to end, which further removes spamming of XP.′


I also think that casting powerful, magicka consuming spells should add more to the skill that a small one.

Since Todd has confirmed in the interview with Norwegian magazine Gamer.no that they have tried to eliminate most of the repetitive leveling activities, such as "casting Unlock on a door fifty times to raise Alteration," I'm hoping this means a lot less grinding spells to boost magic skill levels, in the same way that there is no more hopping around for acrobatics and running for athletics.

Taking this information into consideration together with the fact that there are no major or minor skills suggests they might have arrived at a more elegant leveling system where the player just goes out into the world and performs the activities he wants to do, without worrying about increasing this skill over that skill, etc.




Hopefully, as a result, your character's skills will improve in the areas you use most (in a meaningful, active way, rather than grinding repetitive activities); however, I think it's unlikely the devs have managed to close every single magic skill boosting loophole.

In Morrowind, for example, you could cast fireball on a bush 100s of times to level up your Destruction.

In Oblivion, they closed this loophole to some extent so that you have to cast it on a living creature, who probably isn't going to be too happy about that.

In Skyrim what kind of solutions do you think will the devs present us with to close other loopholes for Conjuration, Restoration, Alteration, Illusion magic, etc?


/I'm thinking the "unlock" spell loophole could easily be closed simply by requiring the PC to cast it on something that is actually locked :rock:

As someone said, they are planning on making you gain more EXP for bigger more powerful spells. So sitting there with your 3% weakness to fire on self is going to do nothing after a while, and you will have to move on to those powerful fire blasts, which require a target I think that's how it will work at least.

:shrug:

I always made a custom summon spell with a 1 second duration. The critter disappeared naturally before the next spellcast went off.

(The other approach, of course, was to crouch, summon a Skeleton..... and sneak attack kill it with one hit. Gained Conjuration and weapon skill at the same time.)




...of course, with the new leveling system, the need to "train" skills (to either get your stat bonuses to +5, or to force your next level gain when you finally had three +5 stat mods) should be less. Also, if there's no "custom" spellcrafting, making efficient training spells (3pt Resto heal, 1 second of Light, 1 second of Skeleton, 1 second of self-targeted Weakness to Fire, 1 second of Detect Life) also won't be possible, reducing the ability to powerlevel as well.

if easy u mean brain dead easy

then I hope not cause I used to level magic by putting weights on my mouse and just let the character cast idiotic spells (low values) for a few hours and tada 100 alteration and

When i first started playing MW I made myself cantrips for training purposes. Spells like Heal Flesh Wound, Make Undead Nervous, Cross Small Puddle Without Getting Your Feet Wet but Rabidnid and Dogsbody convinced me this was exploiting the game mechanics so I stopped doing it. The big problem in TES III & IV was that all spells contributed equally to increasing your skill giving you a powerful disincentive to use better spells. Since they have changed that I'm hopeful that magic skills will increase fast enough that using exploits will be less tempting.

You could use exploits to increase your armour and block skills in MW too. Just let a rat or a slaughterfish chew on you for a while, heal yourself, repeat. I doubt they can bar every possible exploit but if they make the basic system rewarding enough most of us won't be tempted to use them.

The bigger problem with leveling was how you actually got the XP to level. There was no point in making powerful spells because it would be much more difficult to level. I think that instead of the amount of spells cast, it should be the amount of effect it has had. For example to say go from level 10-11 in restoration, you'd need to heal 1000 points worth of damage. Deal the same amount for destruction. That sort of thing.

:lmao: I love your creativity in coming up with a way to role play the grinding

Personally, unhelpfully, I sort of hope they use a magic and leveling system much like Oblivion's, just because it amuses me when people do things like weight down the cast key and cast a low level spell over and over, then complain about it.

Just make sure to periodically check up on it though, because at level 25,50, and 75 the perk thing shows up until you close it manually.

You know what, I have a different opinion on the whole skill progression process. I didn't have a problem with a person "spamming" a particular skill in order to progress. That's how life is. You want to get better at something, you do it over and over again. Wants to get better at it faster? Do it more frequently. That was the point. If someone wanted to go do through the monotonous task of doing something over and over for hours just to level up, that's fine, because the boredom correlates with real life.

My only problem is how there are ways to put the task on "auto-pilot" and leave the computer/console. That's exploitation. I just want the developers to think of ways to stop players from being able to do that. That's all.

This. I've wedged my keyboard and clamped my mouse- the difference is I'm not making threads begging Bethesda to save me from my own lack of self-control. Sometimes I cast lots of 3-second light spells, sometimes I don't. :thumbsup:



Do tell. So at what point should the game stop accepting input from the player on the assumption that they're "exploiting," and how then do you determine the maximum allowable battle size/enemy health to prevent people from having that shutdown occur in combat because their spamming of spells to kill opponents is "obviously" them exploiting?

Well, the devs have already closed a few of these loopholes.

I doubt they will be able to close all of them, let's hope they get rid of most of them.
.

I agree with you that its a difficult task, but according to past interviews, Bethesda has tried to deal with some of these issues in Skyrim's development. So while I can't immediately come up with some suggestion, this appears to lend to it being at least possible for some of the skills.

There is a very simple way to clarify this problem:

Fighting enemies is fun.

Sitting in the mage's guild casting Open Lock on a door for 1 hour to raise Alteration so you can use the Journeyman Alteration spell you just bought is...not fun.

The devs took a look at that, realized it was a broken game mechanic and fixed it. No more open lock repetition in Skyrim. Whether that means the devs altered the XP calculation for casting Open Lock, or whether it means they simply limited it to doors that are actually locked, they have not yet revealed.

I'm really not clear on why it's necessary for the devs to do something to make it impossible for players to voluntarily choose to do something that's not fun. I could see it if it was something that the game forced people to do, but it's not. It's just something that it allowed people to do.

I mean.... if I sit in a corner and hit myself in the head repeatedly with a hammer, is that the hammer's fault?

Because criticisms of the system will show up in forums and professional reviews, thus limiting the possibility of getting good review scores. If its too easy to circumvent the entire system by not even playing the game, but by placing a heavy object on your button and walking out the door, then its a flawed system design and needs to be fixed.

The fact of the matter is that Bethesda has an intended experience that they have planned for the player, and they don't want it to be screwed up by a badly designed leveling system.

Regarding having the right to do non-fun things, I'm sure you'll have plenty of options in the game to do something that you don't like.