The one true downside to Oblivion was all the restrictions it made being a mage not fun and just when you finally come up with some kind of spell or enchantment to make you learn it cant be done unlike in morrowind everything was possible if you had the creative will to make it so :dance::mage:

Oh this is not gonna end well!

We'll have to wait and see how the new system works.

I'd rather it was completely revamped, it wasn't that great in Morrowind that I'd want it again.

I think it is fairly revamped, with more visual feedback than numbers. I also think some power is brought back into magic due to the restrictions. You can't have both and retain balance.

Spell making is no longer an option, if that answers your question. So in a way it's kind of less than both. We're just going to have to wait and see how Skyrim does it before hard conclusions are relevant.

It will be more magical than either of them.

http://profilebrand.com/graphics/category/st-patricks-day/magically-delicious.gif

The answer to your question is very simple.
Yes, more restricted.

Now there is no difference at all anymore between TES magic, bioshock plasmids, marvels mutant powers or any other generic bolts of light.

With the removal of spellmaking, the magic has been removed from TES.

What he said.

Funny, because now circinate spells are actually useful, and used in various ways other than varying degrees of duration or magnitude, I think the game is plenty more magical.

This.

How much did you use of the previous magic system? Just wait until you are 100+ hours into a mage playthrough, and the amusemant of the pretty new system is long worn, you will wish you had a way to craft spells or you will roll another class. Although, I doubt you ever planned on a mage for Skyrim anyway, your excuses seem very uninspired and driven only by your desire to see mages gimped. As long as you got your armor and weapons smithing and mages are left with no [censored] crafting whatsoever everything's just fine isn't it.

I may not get my arenas or fighting pits so I feel your pain. It's easy to try to support a removed feature if you're not in any way attached to it.

I believe that is a wrong attitude and I do not endulge myself in it.
For example, I have never in any TES game used bow and arrows. They do not appeal to me.
Does that mean I would not care if they were removed?
No, I would care deeply.
First of all for all the people who very much enjoyed the feature, this is called empathy.
And secondly because I feel that a game that has lots and lots of things is better than a game with very few features.
Even if some of those features I never use, the removal would be indicative of a trend I am not fond of.

A trend we saw with Oblivion and now continued into the extreme with Skyrim, where it seems they went on a berserker rampage of removal.

" First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me."

(M. Niemoller)

I would've liked to have seen spell crafting with the new system, but I think it's going to be deep and fun enough to make up for the loss of it. I like that it's dynamic now and spells get stronger as you level that skill, rather than buying/making new spells all the time.

Not this.

Skyrim's magic is going to feel more magical than Morrowind/Oblivion's spread sheety, magic by numbers approach in my opinion. Sure, some people are understandably upset over the removal of spell making, but based on what little we know the magic system will be better overall.

Now, before any of the usual suspects (you know who you are) jump on their high horse, I do not believe that Skyrim's magic will be better because spellmaking was removed, I believe it will be better despite spellmaking being removed.

To be perfectly honest, spellmaking gets pretty boring after 1000+ hours of playing Altmer and bretons. I got creative after a few playthroughs, but ended up automatically making efficient heal over time spells and the like without even thinking about it. I don't care who gets up in arms about this, I find myself agreeing with Todd about the 'spreadsheetiness' of it all. It ended up not being deep or meaningful, just an excercise in efficiency. I never used weakness stacking, just pure damage, and I still had to push the difficulty slider up to feel at all challenged as a mage.
Removing spellmaking might remove the magic for some, but definitely not for me, been there, seen it, done it, just hoping I am forced to make tactical choices during combat to succeed now, not prepare efficient spells in comfort, then spam them in combat.

meh maybe they will implement spell making in the expansion who knows

Oh right, back to that lameass excuse. Take all the weapons and armor in the game, beside them list their weight and damage and value and condition. Zomg [censored] weapons and armor take them out they are too spreadsheety!

Actually, Skyrim has me interested in rolling a pure Wizard through and through because it actually looks 1) Viable this time around instead of being forced to hybrid your build and 2) Fun.

As much as I love PnP, Daggerfall, etc, the Spellcrafting was archaic, stale, abusable, and made stock spells irrelevant. I'll totally take being able to cast a fireball, a flamethrower, and a flame rune trap over the ability to slightly tweak how much damage I do, or how long it lasts.

Still, I like that argument. You realize in pretty much ANY medium where magic is used, spells tend to be quite static right?

The funny thing is that no-one ever complained about 'spread-sheetyness' (and I still dont know what it even means) before Todd uttered that soundbite.
The sheer nonsense of it is that if you want to have a spellmaking system, if you want to have a RPG even, you have to deal with numbers.
So in fact when people say it was 'too spreadsheety' what I hear is: I dont like RPG's.

Never, ever have I seen someone complain about the plethora of options and customisation that spellmaking offered, before this ridiculous statement.

For me, making spells was being a wizard. I study the arcane, devise a new spell and put it in my book.
Now I can only cast pre-made spells.
I am no longer a wizard.
I am an apprentice.

I seriously have trouble grasping that people find the sheer freedom of spellmaking boring.
What is boring to me is spells that are spells in name only, and otherwise hard-capped and boxed-in flashes of light with absolutely no difference with a poisoned arrow or an enchanted blade.
Bland, boring, repetitive, restricted, linear.
Those are the words that well up in me when I think about the horreur of the new magic system.

Here, I think you dropped http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8nsxLaUXYKQ/TO0whzilslI/AAAAAAAAEk8/yVv3d3bf2YQ/s1600/2102dummy.jpg

If you took all the spreadsheets out of D&D, what do you have? A fantasy book

If you took all the spreadsheets out of TES, what do you have? A fantasy film

Because applying sense to where it matters = REMOVE IT ALL.

Seriously. Stop with these laughable fallacies if you want to actually make your argument seem valid about spellcrafting.