Using Oblivion as an example on armour you had no choice, it was always constant effect. On weapon you had no choice, it was always on strike.
Oblivion is a poor example for spellcrafting and enchanting.
What people are talking about is Arena to Morrowind.

Go look at the UESP on Arena and Daggerfall spellcrafting. Such joy as you may only dream of. How about adding a negative effect to self that allows the damage on target to be more powerful?
If only they could do that with the tech today, instead of every time it looks prettier there is less you can do.

Would it help if I added a link to the UESP page on spell creation in Arena?

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Arena:Magic

The effects were not pre-made in the sense that you described: duration, target, etc.

Let me give you a good example: Let's say you want to enchant a piece of armor with multiple enchantments to resist fire, resist shock, feather, etc. Why should we not be able to manage the ratio of each effect in the way we want to with the numbers? What if we want more resist fire than resist shock, or more feather than resist fire? The way in which we choose to balance the effects gives us the freedom to have exactly what we want. With the game forcing us to have pre-set effect numbers, we do not achieve exactly what we want for the item we are enchanting.

Who said we can't do that anymore?

The optimal way to do this is through choosing a number between 1 and 100 for each effect. Each item has a certain capacity for enchantment effects and balancing the ratio of the effects you want on the item with the numbers of your choosing is the way to go.

We couldnt in Oblivion. The way magic was handled there and all the nonsense about 'spreadsheety' does indicate even less customisation.
Its a logical though not happy conclusion to make that Skyrim will follow all that was awful about Oblivion and make it even moreso under the nomers "streamline" and "accessible".

You know what?
I dont give a flying mudcrab about the game being inaccesible to the new player. That is exactly what got me to love Morrowind. The fact that I had to work to understand the game.
The more and more I hear about Skyrim the more it seems to me like Oblivion: Disney.
Oo choice is bad. Oo taking the time to get to know the game is bad. Playing it through in 20 hrs and then be done forever a la mass effect, apparently thats good.

Ok I gotcha. Well hopefully Enchanting will be tweaked in a way where it'll be very flexible to allow that.

@Merari To be fair, they are still saying it's a 100+ hour game. I get the not wanting it to be too accessible stuff, but there will still be plenty of depth and stuff to do.

There's nothing inaccessible about having to choose a number between 1 and 100 for the effects you want on your enchanted item. It's just apparently too "spread-sheety".


Really, having damage numbers, durability numbers, and price values for melee weapons and bows is "spread-sheety" when comparing it with spellcrafting. If Bethesda wants to do away with that, why not just change the entire combat system and the entire RPG backbone while they're at it since it's all just fluctuating numbers?? They can get rid of all the "spread-sheetyness" and just have a pure action game.

/rant.

Anyone who thinks magic is too "spread-sheety" must not have done any real spreedsheets.

Because, believe me, real spreadsheets svck hard.

But............spellcrafting might end up being in the game?

Yes, and I'm fine with that. I just don't want enchanting to end up being overly simplified when it does not have to be.

It should be left in because its optional. So someone who likes it can use the feature while someone who doesn't can just leave it alone. All the pros, none of the cons.

Why do so many of you seem to be operating on the assumption that everyone who used and wants spellmaking is going to make 100000000 damage 500000 ft area effect one-hit-kill spells? If I wanted to oneshot everything I would be playing a warrior.


*reads* Why on earth did they ever get rid of those options? Those sound awesome. :glare: Bad Bethesda, no biscuit. :slap:


It's not like it was even THAT difficult to understand, you just had to play around for a bit. It's not like Yu-Gi-Oh: Forbidden Memories where the learning curve actually was from hell. (I still liked that game, by the way.) Are the newer generations really getting so stupid that every aspect of the game that required people to have at least one brain cell needs to be cut?


Padding out the game's travel time to get you more hours does not mean more content. It means you've wasted that time trying to climb a mountain while getting bitten to death by five thousand wolves.


Also this. So much this.

I thought you quietly left this thread 4 pages ago?

Could say something similar about you. Only if I recall it was in a frustrated rage, not quiet.

"Disgust" is the word you're looking for, but I lurked a bit and hypocritically called him out due to boredom more than anything else.

I never got the point of spellcrafting anyway.

Seriously, you bought hopelessly useless spells just to get the effect so you could craft useful spells with this effect.

It would have made sense if you would have had two lists - a list of spell effects and a second list of spells.

Instead it was all over the place.

Worse, in Oblivion they somehow figured spell deletion is overrated anyway, lets make the player create a perfect chaos of spells instead. So no spell deletion at all !

Additionally, of course spell renaming was never supported at all, neither in Morrowind nor in Oblivion, so even trying to put any order into this chaos wasnt supported anyway.

And while we're at it, I would like to point out that TES always had a primitive spell system in the first place. Very few spell effects.

:rock: :yes:

i usually never play a MAGE so magic's not too important to me. in two worlds 2 they had a spell crafting system and all it did was FRUSTRATE me, so it seems i must be a TERRIBLE spell maker.
i however do like to have a fire spell / force push / heal spells.

I think force push would be a nice change from telekinesis

I'd rather not have that, it would make the Dragon Shout Force Push feel less unique.

There is no good reason to remove any kind of customisation.

lots of people enjoyed making their own spells..

what if they removed alchemy and gave the excuse that 'well if you want an ingredient go and pick it and eat it'

As I said in the other thread.
1. That is true, but something will end up being forgotten. Such as a heal speed on other spell which I needed when some idiot banit poisoned my horse and not me. Remember, not everyone plays on the PC.
2. That is called a delete spell option.
3. This will always be true so long as enchantment is also around. Few if any NPCs will run around with fully enchanted sets of gear. Also, who will teach the NPCs how to abuse their spells? The problem was the spell chains that people created to get huge boosts either to onse stats, or to the damage done to the opponent. Even if the NPCs had the same spells available, they would not know how to use them. If broken combinations are found again, the problem will still be there.
4. This is a good point, but I would think that it could still be done even with user created spells. Instead of creating by exact value, create based on a range from minimum possible, to maximum possible at that time (percentage points perhaps).

You have a good point, and I agree.