In terms of spells, Skyrim is missing a huge amount of spells.

Silence, Feather, Touch Spells, Open Lock to name a few. Open Lock is by far the worst spell omitted in Skyrim. It basically forces Mages to be a locksmith instead of a mage using magic to open chests.

If there's any spell out there that I would put back into Skyrim in a heartbeat, it would be open lock. It boggles my mind how Open Lock didn't make it into Skyrim. I would've thought the DLC's would've bought it back but we only get Waterwalking back and that's as a pair of enchanted Ancient Nord Boots (Ebony level strength) and Potion of Waterwalking, not as a spell. I definitely blame some of it on the date but the rest I blame on incompetence.

Huh, really? I've loved the Beth games I've played since MW, but there's absolutely nothing about the Souls games that has ever caught my eye. Obnoxious trial-and-error memorize-boss-pattern action/combat gameplay (I've never enjoyed that genre), ugly graphics, no real sense of exploration gameplay (at least not in the TES sense, but more in the platformer/action-game way.), etc. Really, they seem like a completely different genre from TES - more like DMC/GoW with "rpg elements".

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Personally, I think that the Reflect/Absorb/Weakness To X spells were removed as a totally brute-force unsubtle attempt to keep things from getting "unbalanced". Of course, without spell creation, it's a bit harder to min-max those abilities to the absurd levels that Oblivion had (particularly Weakness).

As for Feather - if it was more effective, I'd totally use that enchantment. But it's not worth it when you can barely get any amount of weight boost even with a Grand soul. (I always went with enchanted Feather rather than cast, in Oblivion. Much more useful.)

Why would Beth need competition? They should keep doing their own thing and keep selling out in order to get the COD crowd. No need for Dark Souls to seek the TES of Duty crowd. It has their own following and highly devoted fans. They certainly don't need this crowd. And by the looks of it, Dark Souls 2 is nerfing a lot of things, so it doesn't look like they are dumbing down the game any time soon. And it doesn't really qualify as competition since it's likely that DS 2 will be the last one.

"Personally, I think that the Reflect/Absorb/Weakness To X spells were removed as a totally brute-force unsubtle attempt to keep things from getting "unbalanced"."

That is exactly WHY and HOW they were removed. Reflect has slightly more balance due to difficulty modifier, but then again the Difficulty modifier is also unbalanced in itself though hence why people generally exploit smithing, enchanting, and alchemy for insane values to keep on par with Legendary difficulty. If they add Spell Reflect, it needs to have a very low magnitude. If it even reaches 50%, that is pretty broken. And Spell Absorb needs to actually have a flaw otherwise it is broken in its current state in Skyrim, the magicka regen penalty is too forgiving for what the Absorb does. I would like to see Reflect Damage, but as stated only one perk gives it which is to Heavy Armor and the only spells remotely close to it are the Elemental Cloak spells.

I am disappointed that they gutted the Absorb attribute SPELLS, the enchantments are fine. Only Vampiric Drain as already stated is available and only available as a Vampire, but it's even weaker than the Flame spell.

What is DSII nerfing?

I agree and am similarly disappointed.

The only thing Call of Dragon Gears: Duty of Age 3 will compete with is whatever other formless gray sludge EA churns out.

Because they don't want us to be overpowered. Even though they didn't patch the Oghma Infinium glitch until recently.

Also because 11.11.11.

Crafting abuse takes the bottom out of that argument.

Sometimes their sequel machine glitches and something with originality is accidentally created. Like Dead Space. But they sure fixed that in the sequels

Sarcasm meter a bit off today, Doesn't the game encourage you to be overpowered and makes you overpowered without effort?

Right, then why let us learn shouts?

Perhaps they have something bigger in store for the next game? In order to accomodate it they need to get rid of the magic schools/spells that can afforded to be cut.

Dragon Shouts are cool man, just look at the 20,000 FUS RO DAH parodies which are right up there in comedic value with arrow in the knee jokes and disease.

Or the general enchanting/smithing system.

My Elven armour which common foot soldiers wear can reach the maximum armour cap in the game.

It's a thing called sarcasm.

I thought it was quite obvious that we were seriously overpowered already.

And shouts are pretty underpowered to be honest except for unrelenting force.

Actually only Thalmor wear Elven armor as far as radiant npcs go, but yes you can reach the armor cap with essentially anything armor in the game.