Lmao. Weapons are tools like spells, mages have never been able to make up their own combat. Enchanting is NOT as much an execise in crafting as smithing. Spell crafting was the only way for mages to smith their own weapons, now they cannot. Your comparison does not work.

The majority of my characters in TES seem to be drawn to the appeal of magicka...

The spell-making in Oblivion, for some, was fun. I do have some empathy for those who will miss it.


I also think that the new Skyrim magic system will be fun.

I like the idea of the various spell powers increasing as my characters knowledge of the arcane is increased.

Short burst vs long burst flamethrower and other such spells sound interesting.

Further, I am looking forward to experimenting with the magical traps, etc.

The devs have a new idea for a new game.

I am willing to give the new system a try before I provide my judgement.

As soon as people glance over the the word 'spell creation' they cough up the old 'the old spell creation system was to spreadsheety and useless' argument.

People then suddenly tend to forget that this is the newest installment of the elder scrolls serie and that for all their arguments about what new features have been added and improved, they also appear to automatically think that spell creation could not have been improved, thus deserved to be axed.

Enchanting staves.

Besides just like alchemist test their ingredients for effects, smiths mine for ore, enchanters break down magical items to learn new effects, their 'ingredients'. All the crafting skills can be useful to any type of character but it makes sense mages need them most to enchant their robes and boost their magic potential (increase max magicka for example, or add protection to robes), just as a warrior upgrades his weapons and armour.

So enchanting fortify magicka items or shield items, which increase your combat effectiveness, doesn't count as crafting in the same way as improving weapons and armour in order to increase your combat effectiveness? Right. If you make a ring of fortify destruction, that reduces magicka usage, so I can cast more spells before running out. No it doesn't make the spells do more damage, and is therefore not identical in effect to an improved sword, but it allows you to inflict more damage in a different way, with a similar end result. Effectively, you have made a weapon for your mage. I would respectfully suggest thinking through arguments before laughing at people.

I compleatly agree, but Beth havent been able to make on which they feel is right so I'll be happy with just the new improved system.



What exactly is crafting then?
Material + Armor = Better Armor
Soulgem + Armor = Better Armor

Or do you have to make something from scratch to consider it crafting, but in alchemy you dont make it from scratch you just combine ingredients, you didn't make those ingredients from scratch you where only combinding them to make their effect stronger.

1/ Pen and Paper RPG's were not spreadsheets, those that think they are/were must have been playing them wrong. I can name many RPG's that don't even have attributes, classes or even dice rolls. People seem to only know of Dungeons and Dragons, and base every RPG off that. And to be fair to Dungeons and Dragons, it wasn't a spreadsheet, it was about charcter development. If you really had the sort of person on your group that treated the game as a min/maxing spreadsheet you should have kicked them out ASAP so you can start actually having fun.

To use your metaphor, your wizard was always an apprentice. In order to make a fire spell with spellmaking you had to already know one. It wasn't so much creating as modifying. I am well aware that that may be a bit semantical. I will save us the trouble of an arguement on semantics by saying that what something is, at the most basic, is something that exists. Therefore, what we call things is actually very important.

No, seriously, let's not get into that.

As far as math is concerned, two plus two can equal five because things may be greater than the sum of their parts. :tongue: End direct response.

Spellmaking was not removed because of "streamling", "dumbing down", or it's "spreadsheetoscity". They dropped it becasue they couldn't get it to work with the new magic system.
Spellmaking was not a philosophical issue but a practical one.

It's not like, when the started work on Skyrim, Todd Howard walked into the office and said "Everybody listen up! [Censored] spellmaking. I don't know how magic's going to work this time around but [censored] it. No Bob, I don't care if we can make it work, it's not goin' in." (For best results, us your best [censored] voice when reading.)

That's the impression I get sometimes. Hyperbole? Perhaps, but damned if that wasn't fun to write.

oblivion had bar none one of the most boring magic systems around. it had no interactivity and didnt change anything except shaders. games like dark messiah, vampire bloodlines, my fave arx fatalis and yes even bioshocks plasmids were better than oblivions system. at least in morrowind they had spell chance failure and you had to actually take a casting stance to use magic.......as it should be.

a great example is to compare vanilla oblivion spells to spells from midas magic. even though i couldnt adjust any of midas magic spells i had far more fun with that mod than oblivions default spell system. oblivions spellmaking system was about as creative as my homework assignments in excel. yeah i can do nifty little things with the numbers and get the columns to go all wonky and crazy but it doesnt make it any more fun or interesting.

one reason im not overly upset that it was removed is that it violated my golden rule of versimillitude sp? if some doofus who was incapable of tying his own shoes or holding a simple dagger is capable of making spells that do 30,000 points of damage or charm spells that that work on anyone for 1 second after only a few weeks in game then why doesnt anyone else use those same spells? if i can do it then a similar npc should also be able to do it. thats also why i wasnt bothered about levitation being removed because no one else in morrowind every used it besides me.

what i wish had been done was being able to mix and match existing spells such as fire and ice in either hand but bethesda for whatever reason couldnt figure it out. hopefully modders can do that at some point. it might be that it was just to OP in which case im glad they left it out.

Well obviously it isn't ALL about the numbers otherwise Microsoft Excel would be the best selling RPG of all time, but I haven't seen a rpg that doesn't have a basis in numbers of some sort to measure character development (skill wise), unless you mean text RPGs like Zork and choose your own adventure books?

You can't craft and combine spells simply because you can do it now when using two hands. You can "create" whatever spell you want by combining them. You can't do it at a spell altar because of the different effects they fire/shock/frost spells cause. You can't make a triple combo to weild in one hand that slows, drains magicka and does damage. That doesn't even make sense, if anything, the frost and fire effects would cancel each other out. So its been removed in my opinion because when you're given two hands to combine whatever you want, you can't make ridiculous spells for each hand and combine them producing possibly 6 or more effects with seperate one handed spells combined and cast with two hands.

Did you even play Oblivion? When did you ever use existing armor to make new armor? Like, never? Yes. In Oblivion and now in Skyrim, smithing is crafting something from their most raw materials, not simply "upgrading" existing armor. Spell making was smithing for mages, taking raw effects and crafting spells with them. Enchanting simply allows you to apply magic to an existing object, not even close to crafting a spell.

can't w8 to see the new system hope its as intuitive as it looks

You can use materials to add to armour to upgrade it, just as you can add enchantments to armour to upgrade it. It's crafting for mages as it is much more useful for them because they cannot 'upgrade' their robes and staves using smithing. Sure smiths can create weapons from scratch, but enchanters are the only ones who can craft magical items, with the effects of your choosing.

Indeed.

The game is targeting an audience that doesn't wanna walk to go in places, doesn't wanna search to find quest taggets, , likes magically enchnced enemies to keep the game challenging, feels okay with th merge of earings and socks , makes 300 threads on looks and marriages, you think that any of the axed features will be a great loss for them? i think not .

Show me where you could upgrade armor in Oblivion. Enchanting is not crafting for mages, it's not even a supplement for crafting.

You do know there are RPG element sneaking into COD allready, the idea of leveling up unlocking perks and weapons in multiplayer. Don't see every cod fan getting pissed about that. But I think a better point would that TES player complain about losing part of the game, not that action element gets included, i mean having the combat look and feel better isn't something tes players would complain about. Cod fans might complain about aim assist and stuff like that which is more similar to the dumbing down argument.

COD wont become a D&D style shooter any more then D&D will become a COD style RPG.

It depends on how good enchanting actualy is FOR THE BLEEPING MAGE. If all it can do is enchant stupid armor and stupid weaponry and cant make staves or mage robes or mage hoods or amulets and rings... then todd realy blew it. So far all it says is we cant enhance armor and weapons.... If thats all it does they are bleeping morons.

... I wasn't on about Oblivion lol. Enchanting is crafting for mages as it lets them create magical items. I really don't see how it isn't crafting.

Can you please stop letting logic enter the arguement, If we all suddenly started being logical no-one would actually have anything to talk about on these forums, and then where would we be?

Mages are not actually "creating" any magical items, they are merely adding magical attributes to weapons/clothing/armor that were already there. It's not [censored] crafting, it's enchanting.

In Oblivion you couldn't make new armor, infact all forms of "crafting" there was in the game where a part of magic (enchanting, spellmaking and alchemy) Armorer could techicly make "better armor" by repairning beyond 100% but that was even dull compared to encahnting, armorer increased damage or defence a little while enchanting left you an almost limitless possibility to make different kinds of armor or weapons.

Well allmost limitless was kind of pushing it, but compared to the 1 way you could improve weapons and armor in Oblivion with Armorer it is alot more versitile.

Beside I stroongly doubt you can create any kind of weapon/armor you want, crafting from scratch probably will mean Iron/Steel/Silver/Elven.... so on, IT might be possible there is an armor you can't find besides from making it from scratch. but you will always have to make a preset armor. Then after that you can modify it using materials to change its look and effectiveness.


Item+Magic=Magical Item
Iron+Smithing=Iron Armor

You are making a magical item just as much a smith is making the iron armor. Yes the item existed before you enchanted it but so did the iron, the smith didnt make the iron so it's not really creating it.

Just like spell crafting was adding pre-existing spell effects to pre-existing cast types?

Just stop. None of you make remotely compelling arguments. Have fun playing in denial of your new craftless magic system.