You know, TES isn't some constant thing - the game grows and progresses and adopts new technologies, attitudes, and ways of thinking.
The future of the game is allowed to do more, to be more, than it's predecessors.
Half the criticisms to my suggestions amounted to: well, you can do
something like what you want, but it requires special gear, a high level, or perks in trees that you wouldn't otherwise want to tech into.
- I don't want to do something like my idea, I want to do it. I don't care if Frost does stamina damage and Lightening does magick damage - I want to inflict weariness on enemy warriors and I want to feedback enemy wizards. Why not?
- You can't rapidly cycle between Shouts - those abilities really need a spell equivalent. Maybe those abilities shouldn't be Shouts, maybe they should be spells.
- I don't want to wear armor to look like something, why can't I change my form to become it?
- I don't want to only be an elementalist - I don't want cloak of fire/ice/thunder. I want a death shroud. I want plants to wither and die at my approach.
What I'm asking for, the game can perform in a half-assed fashion, but that's not good enough. Change the color and sound of a Lightening Bolt and you have your Death Ray spell. What I'm asking for should be easy for Bethesda to implement. Why are you arguing against more spells and more player options? Who cares if it's cosmetic and petty - I'm the player, this game is based on wandering about fooling around - let me do what I want.
The other half were along the lines of: That isn't what TES is about.
Listen, I was making the point that judging the game from the perspective of being the ultimate Wizard, Skyrim is lacking in a lot of spells and features that role-players and fantasy enthusiasts would consider "standard." The player is a Dragonborn and can Shout - but none of the Wizards in Skyrim or in Tamriel never wanted those same powers? None of them ever thought of the utility that Shouts provide and decided that figuring out a magical alternative was worth the effort? I imagined that these spells were absent in previous TES games because the technology wasn't there - computer games hadn't arrived there yet.
It would be foolish to think that any of my above ideas are beyond the means of Skyrim's game engine. And if they are, why? Other games are doing it. You have more magical latitude in
Defense of the Ancients than you do in Skyrim - and that's a disgrace.
You can't believe that Skyrim is the only game on the block. Surely the Bethesda developers have played Dungeons and Dragons. Surely they know what players want to do and what they expect to do.
And even if Bethesda intended on holding firm on the idea of magic as some unexplored frontier, shunned and labeled taboo by mainstream Tamriel society, so what?
The player will want to do it. It's silly to make a game where so much of the entertainment is premised on emergent gameplay if you're going to place down invisible walls on the game design.
Are you seriously arguing
against choice?