I have no problem with having enchantments, in terms of game-play, work by putting a spell effect on a weapon or armor. However, when I do this I don't feel like I'm making anything significant, just another boring enchanted sword with 20 fire damage on hit. Enchantments need to feel cool, so that once I max the enchantment skill I'm really making legendary creations, weapons that will stay with me forever and not be replaced when I find something just slightly stronger (The Diablo effect)

What I want is for enchantment of a weapon or armor to actually somehow modify the armor visually, not by just adding a shiny magic look, but by warping the metal, adding runes, etc., especially in a way that I can customize.


Here's an example. I think that adding enchantments should be a process of placing the appropriate runes where you want, and the material would naturally change as a result. Low-power enchantments would make minor changes to the weapon, maybe placing a single rune and not bending the metal at all), while higher-level enchantments would warp the steel of a sword, add spikes to my gloves, etc.

Here's something I envision.

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/2346/weaponenchantments.png

{EDIT}
I just saw this thread: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1291091-all-bow-before-my-crafted-weapon/

and it gave me another idea. when you get to level 100, the weapons you enchant should include really epic effects, like having thunder boom when you score a critical hit with a sword, or having arrows leave a trail of ice behind them as they fly.

After a drop to the second page with 0 views, I'm going to bump. I wouldn't do this normally until a second day, but I think it was honestly just missed and pushed down rather quickly

same with smithing

Yeah I agree, once you become a master crafter, you should be able to make legendary weapons, enchants, etc... that might require you to gather a bunch of very rare ingredients or maybe to find each pattern in a random dungeon chest. Even though theres a lot of variation with the weapons and armor due to the various number of enchantments, it still feels like not a lot of variety. I'm actually sort of disappointed that unique/legendary items in the game are in pre-set locations or on pre-set npcs. part of the joy for me, is finding legendary items that have a very small chance of dropping in random dungeons. I feel like Bethesda didn't fully appreciate the item variance that came about through mods such as FCOM in oblivion. Oh well, we'll have to wait for the mods again to improve item variance. sigh