Magic being overpowered?

Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 6:28 pm

In Oblivion its safe to say that with magic, you could do anything that anyone else could.
Magic was WAYYYY overpowered and after playing a mage it svcked playing a thief, becose a mage could do it much faster, easier and undetected using illusion.
So do you think that spells that makes the game too easy, such as INVICIBILITY CHAMELEON CHARM (you could charm a guard trying to catch you and he would pay your fines)
FRENZY (oh come on you could murder anyone with this spell, and the guards would help you) PARALYZE (good bye battles...)
OPEN LOCK (Why should a person train lockpicking?) should be remowed in any way? Or atleast made more expensive.

NOTE: If i understood correctly some have mistaken what i mean by my question. I dont want every spell to be scrolld etc. i simply want those overpowered spells that i listed above to be less powerful.
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Cedric Pearson
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 7:03 am

Magic was especially overpowered in Oblivion due to the extremely fast magicka regeneration.

I think that magic should be very powerful, allowing you to deal with higher lever opponents with relative ease, until your magicka reserves are empty. Than you are screwed.
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Maeva
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 7:50 am

Didnt think it that way, good one!
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Ricky Rayner
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 7:49 am

Doesn't matter to me. Only magic I used in Oblivion was Lesser Restore Health.
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El Khatiri
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 6:57 pm

Well, with this, you open the floodgates for the "should they bother balancing" argument. People go and assume that it takes up massive developer time and vote against it, but really all they're doing is inputting numbers in and out of the machine. It's stuff you do on the side when you've hit a roadblock, not something you devote hours to. Those who worry so much about balancing taking away from fun or consuming extra time from working on the game really need to just calm down and remember what it actually is...

Anyways, that was a little tirade. I, personally, agree they would do well to balance the magic down to a reasonable level and by the end have the Morrowind equivalent. Magic really does need to be relegated to magic sorts else there's really no reason to play pure in any respect. Maybe some of the new combat mechanics will fix this, but I don't know how well they are at this sorts. They don't really like making combat make entire sense.
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Hussnein Amin
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 11:42 am

Overpowered? Compared to what. Were warriors overpowered because they could become tremendously strong, and take hundreds of blows from a puny common NPC or a thief, while killing that same person in one blow? Were thieves overpowered because they could come to within inches of an enemy without being detected and land a high powered blow ?

As Bilbo kept in mind when he made a point of being polite in closing the door on Gandalf, not wanting to seem in any way offensive, "Wizards, after all, are Wizards." They have vast supernatural powers, and the really powerful ones are SUPPOSED TO HAVE RARE AND PHENOMENAL ABILITIES! They can. . . wait for it. . . do MAGIC. If their powers don't give them an advantage, don't set them apart, don't impress or intimidate they average lay person, if they don't, in short, allow them to do things that your regular fella cannot. . . well what the hell is the purpose of being a magician???
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Lexy Corpsey
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 2:36 pm

other. Improve upon the system to make it better than before, no one can rightly critcize a system for being the same system if its vastly improved, rather than just making a new one that is just as good or bad as the old but is arbitarily new so they can just make it seem as if the series is progressing even though its really becoming stagnant.

no to the scrolls idea, that would make it impossible to do a pure mage. the only context in which magic is over powered is once you have gotten your character up to the levels capable of using the best spells in conjuncture to having enough willpower and magicka to use them. but once your at the best you can get in the game why is it wrong to be over powered, by then you've earned it.
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michael flanigan
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 2:35 pm

OPEN LOCK (Why should a person train lockpicking?)

Because they're playing a Warrior or Thief and not a Mage.
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Ria dell
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 7:00 am

What they need to do is bring back multiple summoning. None of this only one at a time nonsense. Yes, summons svcked it Morrowind compared to Oblivion (where one summon storm atronach spell can beat 95% of the game), but using Aryon's Helper to summon all three atronaches at once was epic. I loved doing a custom spell summoning a skeletal minion, ancestor ghost, bonewalker, greater bonewalker, and bonelord at all once. They always lost to any single well-equiped opponent, but it was always a blast watching the chaos of my necro army.

They should keep magic regen from Oblivion (but slowwww it down). They should also bring back item magic regen from Morrowind. Nothing worse then using a magic sword ten times and having to recharge it.
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Nikki Morse
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 12:08 pm

Overpowered? Compared to what. Were warriors overpowered because they could become tremendously strong, and take hundreds of blows from a puny common NPC or a thief, while killing that same person in one blow? Were thieves overpowered because they could come to within inches of an enemy without being detected and land a high powered blow ?

As Bilbo kept in mind when he made a point of being polite in closing the door on Gandalf, not wanting to seem in any way offensive, "Wizards, after all, are Wizards." They have vast supernatural powers, and the really powerful ones are SUPPOSED TO HAVE RARE AND PHENOMENAL ABILITIES! They can. . . wait for it. . . do MAGIC. If their powers don't give them an advantage, don't set them apart, don't impress or intimidate they average lay person, if they don't, in short, allow them to do things that your regular fella cannot. . . well what the hell is the purpose of being a magician???

Thieves werent overpowered becose mages could go running with invicibility and do THE EXACT SAME THING ONLY 10000 TIMES EASIER!
Warriors werent overpowered becose mages could go and paralyze their opponents without taking a strike AND KILL THE SAME GUY 1000000000 TIMES EASIER
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Sista Sila
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 8:38 am

Come back to me when warriors aren't wielding 100+ damage daedric dai-katanas that do 100 fire damage for 10 seconds on strike.
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anna ley
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 4:50 pm

100% Chameleon is OK. The magicka cost per effect for the spell was just right in Oblivion. For Skyrim, just add "Detect Life" spells on NPC AI, and it's no longer invinciblity. When attacked, they'd cast Detect Life and find the PC instead of standing still like an idiot.
Open Lock was a rather an waste of time since Skeleton Key was available for everyone over lv10. I'd imagine it won't be there in Skyrim, and the spell should be more expensive.
Frenzy or Charm isn't exactly OP, since it's only useful in certain situations.
Paralyze was extremely expensive. Usually you'd get better results with different spells of same cost in combat. Only moment it becomes OP would be when it's on an weapon. Shouldn't be there.
Reflect Damage or Spell shouldn't be available as enchanted items. It should be only available as spells and scrolls, and just as expensive as it was in OB.

Magicka regeneration rate was just right in Oblivion. If you lower it, you'd force mages to pick up some physical combat ability. That was the reason they beefed it from MW.
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Samantha Wood
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 3:20 pm

No one is forcing you to use magic, you can completely ignore that aspect of the game. And if you think magic will ruin Skyrim for you, then don't use it in the first place.
And it's not like things like lockpicking are that hard to begin with. If you can't pick a very hard lock with level 1 security with less than 10 lockpicks, then there's a problem with your reflexes, not the game mechanics.

And it's not like Skyrim is an mmorpg where you can be affected by other people choosing to use the overpowered class. Even if a NPC uses magic against you, all you need to do is silence them.
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naomi
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 7:51 am

Actually, as a whole, I'd say magic was VERY underpowered in Oblivion, you can't call magic overpowered when you need 15 fireballs to be able to kill the average enemy at higher levels, but there were a few spells that were kind of overpowered, chameleon, most notably, due 100% chameleon, invisibility though, I wouldn't say it's that overpowered, because it dissappears as soon as you interact with an object or attack someone, which is a pretty big problem if you want to use it for say, stealing objects in plain sight without being caught. And charm? All it does is make people like you, how is THAT overpowered? It's not like people will fight for you just because they like you or anything, of course, it probably helps that Persuasion Overhaul is one of my essential mods, and it makes persuasion much harder (No longer can someone with level 5 in the persuasion skill raise a character's disposition to 70 just by playing the minigame a few times.) and anything that can help me raise their disposition is a few times. And frenzy? I guess you could sort of argue that's overpowered since it can allow you to kill anyone without needing to worry about getting a bounty, still, in Morrowind, there was a taunt option in persuasion that could do that without even taking into account their level, frenzy, I seem to recall, has a limitation to level upon it. And I don't see how you can say open lock is overpowered, all it does is OPEN LOCKS, you know, something you can do just as well as a thief, in fact, lockpicking was a better option for opening locks than the spell in Oblivion, because with lockpicking, you can open any lock no matter what your skill level if you're good at the minigame, with unlock spells, you need a higher level spell to open more difficult locks, which requires a higher skill level, if anything, the SECURITY SKILL is overpowered in Oblivion, but you're right, you don't need to train lockpicking in Oblivion, because even if you don't, you can still pick locks. Or is it that by your definition, anything that lets one class do something another class can do is automatically overpowered? Should we remove destruction spells then since they can allow mages to fight? After all, why train weapon skills? And paralyze? What, should anything that *gasp* let's players use tactics to gain an advantage in combat rather than just clicking away and hoping that their mindless hacking away at a target proves stronger than their enemies? Because paralyze is above all a tactical spell., and it's not like you can just use it on every enemy you see and never have to fight again, most paralyze spells have a short duration, and I seem to recall, a high magicka cost and skill requirement, not to mention it's possible to resist them, sounds like enough of a limitation to me. And what about silence? It renders any mage hit by hit COMPLETELY helpless, but I guess that's fine because mages are "overpowered" anyway.

And how is it that you didn't even mention the resistence spells, reflect spell or absorb spells, or reflect damage, which could potentially make you COMPLETELY IMMUNE to damage of a certain type?

But I don't want ANY of those spells to be removed, whether they're legitimately overpowered or not, nor should they be made into scrolls, because that's removing features to fix balance issues, whether real ones or percieved, and usually, the preferable solution is usually to make changes to the overpowered features rather than removing them. If you say chameleon is overpowered, than just cap it so it's impossible to get 100% chameleon, the same goes for resistence, absorbtion and reflection spells.

Thieves werent overpowered becose mages could go running with invicibility and do THE EXACT SAME THING ONLY 10000 TIMES EASIER!
Warriors werent overpowered becose mages could go and paralyze their opponents without taking a strike AND KILL THE SAME GUY 1000000000 TIMES EASIER


Right, I don't recall killing enemies with magic ever being even 2 times easier than with weapons in Oblivion, if I didn't use any mods that brought mages up to the power level they SHOULD have, in fact, it was harder, a good sword or mace killed enemies better than magic, and didn't have limited ammunition, not to mention armor only reduced the damage of weapons, unlike magic resistence, it didn't make enemies COMPLETELY immune to all mundane damage, reflect damage could make you immune to melee damage, of course, but high levels of reflect damage were a lot less common than resist magic or elements. And mages shouldn't be so much weaker than other character types, because why would anyone use magic if using mundane means is a lot more effective? I agree with the post you quoted, mages have powerful supernatural abilities, and these should be shown as something impressive, which they were not at all in past Elder Scrolls games, now, for the sake of game balance, you can't make mages TOO powerful, but making them WEAKER than the already are is not the solution.
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Vicki Blondie
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 6:18 am

Overpowered? Compared to what. Were warriors overpowered because they could become tremendously strong, and take hundreds of blows from a puny common NPC or a thief, while killing that same person in one blow? Were thieves overpowered because they could come to within inches of an enemy without being detected and land a high powered blow ?

As Bilbo kept in mind when he made a point of being polite in closing the door on Gandalf, not wanting to seem in any way offensive, "Wizards, after all, are Wizards." They have vast supernatural powers, and the really powerful ones are SUPPOSED TO HAVE RARE AND PHENOMENAL ABILITIES! They can. . . wait for it. . . do MAGIC. If their powers don't give them an advantage, don't set them apart, don't impress or intimidate they average lay person, if they don't, in short, allow them to do things that your regular fella cannot. . . well what the hell is the purpose of being a magician???


haha very nice. i totally agree. perhaps it should be more difficult to attain these skills, but they certainly shouldn't be taken out. every character type has advantages and disadvantages, and whenever they are used properly (whether you are a thief, warrior, or mage) you become pretty invincible. mages are powerful in one way, warriors in another, etc.
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Darlene Delk
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 2:22 pm

I thought it was fine as is.



You probably won't like Skyrim by this though. Being able to equip 2 spells, magic is becoming all that more powerful.



Don't really care since I like to play High Elf pure mage :P
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Britney Lopez
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 10:42 am

Btw, I've never heard of an invincibility spell.
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megan gleeson
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 3:25 pm

Btw, I've never heard of an invincibility spell.


That would be invicibility. Invisibility with a 'C'. I could sure use an invincibility spell at times, though.



The hardest thing to figure about this thread is how my using one of these 'overpowered' spells affects the game for other players.

I could certainly care less if you use the hentai blaster that does 1000 points of electrical damage and makes the enemy 100% vulnerable to electricity when you play. It's your game and I'm sure you will play it your way. By the same token I want to be able to play it my way and not have to worry that I can't because someone thinks that my way isn't their way.
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Sharra Llenos
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 7:20 am

this is something that bugged me to no end. magic had an answer for every single skill there was. why bother with alchemy when you can just use spells that cost you nothing to cast and you dont have to buy and mix ingredients. why bother with security skill when you can just pick alteration and not only be able to open locks but also get access to all the other alteration spells. whats the point of sneak if you can just cast invisie and chameleon. there was literally no reason to pick security, stealth or alchemy as skills without deliberately handicapping yourself. TES has one of the worst magic systems ive ever seen because its so unbalanced.

i dont mind them having these spells for normal locks and normal diseases but there should be some locks that can only be opened by someone with a high security skill and some diseases should only be curable by specific potions. id also like to see more enemies take advantage of silence spells. it amazed me that one of the most effective counters to mages are simple silence spells and almost no npcs or monsters used them at all. stupid game design.
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Shannon Marie Jones
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 11:28 pm

Some aspects of magic were underpowered, but a lot of it was hugely overpowered and exploitable. For example, open lock was so much easier than getting your security up. Charm was a much better replacement for speechcraft, paralyse was pretty much a win button, especially when used for 1 second.

Magic should not be as powerful in battle as weapons or as good at stealth as stealth skills. Magic's strengths should be in it's versatility and variety. Sure, let someone do anything with magic, but DON'T let it do them as good or better than the other archetypes which have a much more limited range.
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Lloyd Muldowney
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 9:05 am

Magic was especially overpowered in Oblivion due to the extremely fast magicka regeneration.

I think that magic should be very powerful, allowing you to deal with higher lever opponents with relative ease, until your magicka reserves are empty. Than you are screwed.

Magic restoration rate vas petty unimportant, the magic pool was enough to fight a small fight. For a large one you used potions. Only effect it with fast magic regeneration was that you was ready for the nest fight 30 seconds after the first, nice as it kept the pace up but had little tactical impact. If you was out of magic and an enemy attacked you, you could not wait until it refilled.

Yes high level magic was powerful as it should be, illusion was weak at lower levels, at 75 it was a killer. Command creature/ humanoid was a nice way to create havoc.
Destruction required weakness effects to be real powerful, conjugation was a slow way to kill enemies, was more useful as meat shield and distractions.

Without spell making I assume magic will be pretty weak as you will be unable to tune the spells, you will probably also get other issues where spells is to weak to be useful or waste magic and empty your pool.
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Hayley Bristow
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 5:51 pm

As Bilbo kept in mind when he made a point of being polite in closing the door on Gandalf, not wanting to seem in any way offensive, "Wizards, after all, are Wizards." They have vast supernatural powers, and the really powerful ones are SUPPOSED TO HAVE RARE AND PHENOMENAL ABILITIES! They can. . . wait for it. . . do MAGIC. If their powers don't give them an advantage, don't set them apart, don't impress or intimidate they average lay person, if they don't, in short, allow them to do things that your regular fella cannot. . . well what the hell is the purpose of being a magician???

Elder Scrolls mages are not Gods above all men. They are one of 3 playstyles that are meant to be EQUALLY beneficial but work in different ways. This isn't the "be a mage or svck" game.
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james reed
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 11:44 am

I believe the perk system will help tremendously. The problem with mages is that there is a solution to everything. There are practically no limit to the convenientness they get. You never get to go "oh damit I wish I was something else" while playing a mage. Being a fighter, *now* how do you open locks? It's inconvenient as hell. Using magic and invisibility, you can do the "Aid for Bruma" quests without a single kill. But a thief doesn't stand a chance, even if he is a better stealth user.

At the same time, being extremely high on the convenient factor, it felt quite weak on the powerfulness factor. Probably because of regenerative magicka, power had to be scaled down to achieve balance.
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Motionsharp
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 11:03 am

I don't think anyone needs to worry about balance at all, Personally I trust bethesda to make the greatest RPG experience possible
There seem to be a steadily growing number of threads involving people which have issues with their trust in Bethesda, and although there games may age now you need to remember they have created arguably the best RPG's ever relative to the time they were released, and oblivion is still played to this day as well as there other titles. Chill people, Chill
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Robert Bindley
 
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Post » Fri Nov 12, 2010 11:08 am

If you know what you're doing (and don't deliberately gimp your character) ANY style is overpowered in a TES game.

I've got a light armor fighter who one-shotted every ogre in Redguard Valley Cave when she went through it. She never came out of sneak the whole time - just snuck up behind each one and laid him out. I've got a claymore fighter who doesn't wear armor because he never gets hit - nothing can even get close enough to him to hit him without him killing it. I've got another claymore fighter (this one in armor) who recently fought and killed a land dreugh, a minotaur lord and a brown bear simultaneously (well - mostly one at a time, by circling so that the one she was fighting was always between her and the rest). I've got a marksman who kills everything he sees with a single shot and some extraordinarily powerful poisons. And yes - I've got a mage who goes through Oblivion gates standing up and just fights whatever comes his way - daedra, dremora, whatever - it doesn't matter. He kills them all.

And for every one of those characters, I've got two or three who just struggle to get by, just because I find uber characters to be boring, so I generally avoid making them, or I stop playing them when they reach that point. That's my preference, so that's what I do, and I really couldn't care less how anybody else plays the game, nor do I understand why anyone else does.

This is a sort of a balance issue. Beth has to make the game so that it's possible to make uber characters because there are so many people who want to play them. If it wasn't possible, then that would frustrate those players. So they make it possible. That's just a sound business decision. And that means that if you don't want to make an uber character, then it's up to you not to.

Did you know that if you enchant a weapon with 1 second each of max level command creature and command humanoid, it makes every fight like the battle with the Grey Prince? Whatever you're fighting just stands there and lets you kill it. That's no fun, so I don't do it. Did you know that if you enchant a bow with 1 second of drain speed 100, whatever you hit with it will lose track of you, so you can take endless sneak shots? That's no fun, so I don't do it. Did you know that if you switch from a bow to a melee weapon while an arrow's in flight you get a x6 sneak bonus instead of x3? That's no fun, so I don't do it. 100% chameleon is no fun, so I don't do it. 100% magicka resistance or reflect or absorb is no fun, so I don't do it. And so on.

The game's not going to change dramatically in that sense. There will always be people who want to play uber characters and if Beth wants to keep selling games, they have no choice but to make it possible for them to do so. And that just means that anyone who doesn't want to play an uber character has to make a few decisions along the way in order to not do it. And really - that's just the way it goes.
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Jack Bryan
 
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