I personally found combat with NPC's in Oblivion very frustrating mainly because it was very difficult for me to heal them, the convalescence spells were like "orbs" and the NPC's could easily move out of the way or an enemy could get in the way. This made it especially frustrating for me cause well I am a bit of a perfectionist and I don't like to have my friends killed, but anyways what do you think the solution for this problem could be? I am personally not totally against a chance of missing your friend or healing an enemy, but I think the spell should act differently than let's say a fire ball, ranged magic should be able to be cast in different ways than just an "orb" that just shoots in a straight line, it is "magic" after all. I have hope that something along these lines will be implemented because they have talked about their refinements to the magic system a bit.

P.S. I don't think this will change anything but FYI I played on the console (I find it very difficult and less fun to play/aim with a mouse).

Sure, but make it so that the enemy can dodge if they see it coming.

Healing should be a beam and once it hits a friendly character it will autolock onto them and deliver a constant stream of healing until you stop the beam.

*toggleable* auto lock. oblivion held my hand enough.

No.

What's with all this auto lock trash? This is the third time I've heard it mentioned.

Target-Healing spells should have instant travel time - or atleast be much faster than damage spells.


No auto-lock for either.

Nah, I like a bit of aiming.

Well an auto lock with rolls to hit would be old shcool RPG maybe with auto hit heals, though elder scrolls always had some aiming built in.

From a player controlled spells perspective, auto lock takes away the challenge.
however, from a traditional RPG perspective (including table top), it makes sense to have your spell connect. Although, many spells (like healing) could also be touch based only, making it even more difficult.

it's a toss up for me.

It seems silly to me that healing was reduced to a glorified projectile. I agree with this, though Oblivion's problem was that your ally NPCs were like speed bumps for enemies if you leveled up before doing the main quest.

If friendly NPCs move as quickly and erratically as they did in Oblivion, I could see it being worth implementing. However I'm hoping movement is improved and it should be a lot easier to target NPCs with spells if so, in which case it wouldn't be necessary.

They can be weaker and heal slower, obviously, to balance out the fact that they don't require much aiming.
Unguided bolts would be stronger and heal faster, but you need the skill to land them.


Gameplay options are obviously a very "bad thing" around these parts.

for the love of God.........no. aim assist for spells seriously. oblivion wasnt watered down enough now we want auto-aim for are spells.

Well, it isn't necessarily that I want "aim assist", it's just that I don't think if you were a magic user in real life it would be so hard to heal your ally, even if healing was some sort of projectile. I think it would make more sense and be even more believable if a sort of auto-lock for healing spells did exist, because magic at least I think it essentially making your thoughts become reality, so it shouldn't be so difficult, at least in a video game. And magic being a "thought" sort of speak, I don't think a magic user is thinking "I'm gonna send a magic healing orb out of my hands," they are thinking "I'm gonna heal my ally with a magic healing orb", so the target being there is the reason you cast the spell. Hope that makes sense.

Eh, just make projectile spells a little faster, not even all of them necessarily.