I'm Coming in late here, but spell crafting was pretty tied and based on many other factors that bogged down the magic system.
It bore almost no relation to your actual skill or level in game, you could create an uber spell that controlled an army of npc's that could be cast with a magicka cost of 40'ish.
That required no more than 50 in skill.
All this required was coin and an alter, plus a low level spell.

If the system's been rejigged and features perks, then it more likely is focus on giving the player a choice of what to play with.
Without faffing around with a system open to too many loop holes and one that lacks power in certain schools later on.

Spell creation>linearity...even if it was 'broken'. A third of my role plays go out the window without spell creation. Praying to god that spell effect are not tied to perks.

It's more frustration. (The last part)

To answer your question, if a mage has the option to choose either a frost perk that increases the slowing effect of his frost spells or a fire perk that increases the amount of damage dealt by fire spells, it would effectively decrease the amount of magicka he has to spend on his chosen type of spell, which plays into developing a set combat style. A mage with amped up speed may benefit by ignoring frost perks and focusing in pure damage, relying on his speed to evade his enemies, while an archer/mage combo would want cheap frost spells to slow a target while pumping it with arrows. While both mages could decrease their spell's costs across the board by raising destruction (or increase the spell's power by creating or buying stronger spells), the perks are a part of the overarching playstyle of the character.

And that's the most basic of what can be done with perks.

The goal is to make mages different, even if they have the same skills.

And all I'm saying, is that spell creation allows more options than if it was strictly based on perks. Want frost to make an enemy move slower? Adjust it in spell creation. Want fire to spread in X radius? Do it at the alter. I would only want perks to change how X effect works entirely. Im just worried that magic will be too linear. My Necromancer and Scholar had the exact same skills in Oblivion, yet didnt even come close to having overlapping spells. Hell, I have 12 characters in New Vegas, most of which use guns, yet none of them use the same ones. does it involve a little self limiting? Sure, but so does not changing the difficulty down to one hit everything.

Where the hell do you keep getting this "strictly"? We're both in agreement that the game needs spell customization. I'm talking about an additional layer of depth ON TOP of spell customizing, which you seem to believe precludes the altar.

It doesn't.

But I cant imagine a customization that could come from a perk and not an alter (unless it changed the effect significantly, but logically). We have an example of a lot of other skills perks, Id wish they would give us one for Magic, so we can know where their heads at.

Im not arguing or saying you don't want spell making, I just cant think of anything that a perk could do, but an alter couldn't.

You're telling me you could create a "decrease the magicka costs of all fire spells by 20%" spell at the altar?

No, I would just raise my Destruction. Plus I wouldn't want a bland perk like that. Is it a useful perk? Yes. Would it help out if you were role-playing a 'Fire Mage'? Sure, I guess, but I just wouldn't want perks like that. Those were easily the most boring perks in the Fallout series. Which kind of goes against their new 'less spreadsheet' formula. Im not sure what exactly Id want from magic perks. I really wont care what the perks do as long as we have spell creation.

Of course it's bland, it's a simple off the top of my head example perk. The idea isn't necessarily to create effects that couldn't be replicated with spell creation, but to grant effects that can be used without the additional costs that come with a more powerful spell, i.e. heavier magicka cost for equally powerful fire spells.

I really don't know what you're arguing here. This isn't rocket science. Not having perks would horribly [censored] up the game's depth and variety.

Perks > Skills

Face it. It's better, more customazation and personification.

Brofist.

Yes it was fun creating unique spells to fit the role, it was what made a necro build different from a conjurer build.. only just though.

If we look at what effects they had.

Spell effects X level or under of npc or beast.. leveling is just awfull when it comes to spell effects.
A level 1 spell cast by a level 30 mage was still a level 1 spell, and in TeS became useless quickly even without oblivions 1 for 1 scaling.

Spell does X damage for Y magicka.. again not based on level or even skill really.
With the current system from either Oblivion or Morrowind a low level caster chaining low level spells does more damae and chaper than a high level caster casting a high level spell.

AoE, this was the one of the only unique function of the alter and should be included as part of spell making.

Summons, No leveling of these apart in cost it is ridiculous how bad and uneven the summoning was, the perk system could only improve this.

Duration, most spells like command, invisibilty, weakness, damage, dispel were any use at higher levels or even mid ones with this ability..
Then only because you could jiggle its AI loopholes to make them last 1 - 5 seconds for practically free.
Length of spells above 40 seconds for shields was a joke, by the time you cast one you're either dead or recasting it again.

Combining effects.. this is the main and really only reason to keep alters, for this you can get rid of everything else about the system and bring in perks.

You and I together cant even fathom what these magic perks might be, yet not having them would ruin the games depth and variety? Like it did with Morrowind and Oblivion right? Do I not want perks? No, I just cant figure out what they would be. Not to mention whenever someone brings this or spell making up, it always revolves around Destruction. What about the other schools, they obviously have perks. What could an Alteration perk be? Im not arguing Im serious. when I first heard about magic perks, I thought great...but what could they be?

Man, it's almost not worth it. Brick wall. I can think of half a dozen perks tied to the other magic schools, from a high illusion perk granting a permanent 25% resistance to paralyze effects to a restoration perk that gives heals with a magnitude above a certain point a chance of demoralizing evil enemies in the area. It's not my job, I'm not on a team getting paid to develop the perks for Skyrim, but I don't doubt they're going to have a kickass selection, because honestly? they have a great track record when it comes to creative perks.

Yet with the 'less spreadsheet' gist I got, it seems like they wont have a lot of these stat modifying perks. Im not against perks like you said, but it seems that perks are more about spell dynamics. Like; you can now shoot fire like a flamethrower. Having 50+ perks like that would make me worry about the inclusion of spell making.

From http://www.gameinformer.com/games/the_elder_scrolls_v_skyrim/b/xbox360/archive/2011/01/28/skyrim-menu-system-overhaul.aspx
"Three prominent nebulae dominate the Skyrim heavens – the thief, the warrior, and the mage. Each of these represents one of the three master skill sets. Each nebula houses six constellations, each of which represents a skill."
...
"Every time players rank up their overall level, they can choose a supplemental perk ability for one of the 18 skills. For instance, if you fight most of your battles with a mace, you may want to choose the perk that allows you to ignore armor while using the weapon. As in Fallout 3, several of the perks have their own leveling system as well, allowing you to choose them multiple times."

School of Fire - You're now able to use Fire Spray (otherwise unavailable unless you specialize) and gain 10% resistance to Fire.

Fire Adept - All your fire spells do additional 10% damage with the first point in this perk. With the second, all your fire projectile spells explode on impact, affecting a greater radius.

Fire Lore - All your spells now have a chance to ignite the target. With 2 points, the chance of igniting the target raises 30%.

Fire aura - You naturally have a burning aura, your resistance to Cold is permanently raised and enemies take 2 DPS standing near you.

Combust - All your fire spells have a critical chance to combust the target and kill them immediately.

Fire Master - You now have a 90% chance to resist fire damage.


This system is FAR more flexible than spellmaking in the way it can affect gameplay. What you lose is the ability to combine different spell effects to create uber effects, like freezing, paralyzing and shocking at the same time. I agree with Todd that was very tacky and took away from the notion that magic is not something you can shop for.

You can have perks for all elemental schools, perks for the Battlemage (like giving you benefits for wearing armor and using spells), perks for every other school, and essencially accomplishes what Spellcrafting did in the same way. You lose a degree of customization, but you also get to play with advantadges the spellmaking window can't possibly offer. And it's still very versatile if you combine perks from different schools/trees.

Yes, you can't choose if spell has 20 or 35 damage, but the whole design direction for this game is less about numbers and formulas. Call it streamlining if you will, but in this case, I think it's a far more intuitive and visual way to approach magic than acessing a window that belongs in the Construction set.

I'm seriously doubting there even will be spell making in Skyrym.

I simply can't imagine the stuff i heard about the magic system to work along side spell making.

Like a fire spell, you can either use it as a flamethrower like effect or hod the button in and releasing for a large fireball that explodes on impact with the same fire spell. Now imagine you make a "Fire Damage+ charm + restore health on self + summon deadra spell" You're going to be able to throw out several charming and burning deadras with replenishing health in a flamethrower fashion? Or charge the magic up and send out a massive ball filled with that? That doesn't sound very likely to me.

This is just what I imagine it being kind of like. I remember reading that they said there was 85+ spells in the game and thats actually like nothing, i counted it to be like 111 different spell effects in oblivion and thats counted with "Drain skill" or "Damage attribute" as a single spell effect. That being said like that, I can really see it like its going to be something like a "Fire spell" "Frost spell" and a "Shock Spell" that you can use in various fashions and the damage output will depend of your skill and possibly the perks. Think they might cut alot of the spell effects if its going to fit in 85 spells aswell as removing the upgraded versions of a spell. If you can charge up a fire ball to do alot more damage for more magica cost, then what differance would it do to have a weak fire ball spell and a strong fire ball spell?

Altho 85 spells doesnt have to be horrible if they can be used in different fassions. Imagine something as a fire spell could be used as a, flame thrower, huge fire ball, fire trap and so on. That gives like 3 different effects in 1 single spell and flame thrower could for example be used anything from 1 second to 20 seconds while you could charge up fire ball to be huge or just use a small one.

And if by having 2 different spells in each hand you can combine a few of them gives even more variety.

Perks would provide boosts to spell effects, im sure they can come up with intresting perks that isnt all just "boost magica damage of shock" and so on.

Also wanna add that if you know a fire ball spell, it kind of makes sense you could just push a bit more magica into it and make it stronger, without having to buy a spell that does the exact same effect for the exact same magica. and even if you got like 1 point away from using it you can't even try, would make more sense if you could only it beeing weaker and simply drain your magica for using it. I kind of like where the magic is going. Altho spell making could still make it into the game, but would see it being more limited to not making some weird spell like I mentioned earlier. But kind of requires that flamethrower and fireball will be 2 seperate spells. And not being able to use a general fire spell in multiple ways.