Oftentimes people complain about levitation as a spell being cut, and while it's a cool spell and all, I can understand how it'd be a coding nightmare for the devs and thus much easier for them to cut.

But only now (for some reason) I just realized Skyrim is missing http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Silence: a spell to prevent enemy mages from casting any spells.

Likewise, while present as an enchant, the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Feather spell is completely absent.

There's also an absense of Reflect spell and Reflect Damage, which, while I could understand fully if they didn't want these to exist to the extent they existed in Oblivion (100% of both possible), they're quite fair in small doses. Hell, even Absorb spell doesn't exist as a spell and is limited solely to enchants and the Atronach sign.

Finally, in what was probably a horrendous balance decision on behalf of a fear of how strong it could potentially be, "Weakness to _____" spells are gone. This spell type was the type that singlehandedly made destruction magic viable in Oblivion.

So why? I don't get why it was at all neccesary to cut any of these. Effects like Feather, Absorb spell and Reflect damage exist in code form, but their uses are highly limited, found only as enchants or spell/perk effects. With spellmaking cut, there's no fear of the player making a broken 100% spell with these, and thus the devs were free to choose the exact effect and magicka cost they desired for these. Instead, they opted to just not include them. And Silence, a highly practical spell for any mage dungeons, is just COMPLETELY gone.

I just don't understand why magic got cut down to size so much, especially given how horrendously awful mages in Skyrim are in end-game compared to the other two. (Warrior just piledrives everything, Thief oneshots from the shadows, Mages spam spells all day and have to kite a bit)

11,11,11
Because it's Skyrim
On Oblivion, mages had too much stuff compared to warriors and stealthy characters so Bethesda wanted to give the Warriors, Mages and Stealthy characters an equal amount of stuff.
Bethesda want newcomers (or casuals as some say) to hate magic and elves so they buy TES 6 Alinor and kill the Thalmor

So many reasons.

The only one I miss is the Open lock spells. Everything else in the game is damage focused, since killing everything is the main objective of the game. Feather is not important nor required since the game was dumbed down in the aspect of carry weight. The weight was raised to 300 and everything's weight was lowered a lot. In Oblivion, you had somewhere close to 200 in carry weight and every armor and weapons weights an average of 40 so feather potions or spells are needed. Could be that they ran out of time, who knows? Plus Uncle Todd wanted to make the game less "spreadsheety", whatever that means.

Because "streamlining".

I predict that Alteration will be the next on the chopping block in TES6, like Mysticism.

Shield spells? Put 'em in Restoration.

Light spells? Back to Illusion.

Detect spells? Conjuration.

Telekinesis? Axed.

Water breathing? Axed.

Paralyze? Back to Illusion.

Thalmor's plan to unmake the world is causing magic to decline. Which is why only one enchanted ring can be worn anymore, school of mysticism disappeared along with many spells from the other schools.

Yes, that's bull [censored], but it sounds better then Beth believing that anything but straight damage spells are too complex for the modern gamer

Alteration is doomed. Why use Mage Armour in Robes when you can look like a total 'bad***' in that EPicLolomgz FUS RO DAH arrow in the knee Daedric Armour you can upgrade to 9000 or whatever (completely ignoring 567 AC)?

Go on to any Mage walkthrough on Youtube and you'll see people saying "why aren't u using Amr and Wepons you Milk drinking nOOb?!!!1" Hopefully we don't lose another school in it's entirety by the next TES game, that's all you can hope for at this point

That actually sounds like a good idea. We don't need all of these spell schools. I hope they continue to trim the fat.

I don't buy the date excuse as dlc was added with new spells. I would argue they wanted you to use the stones instead ( isnt there a encounter with a failed levitation spell). I would argue that's its streamlining due to lack of resources/lack of desire. They added 2 new trees through dlc so its not console related
Hopefully the other competition forces them to make the next game even better. If they cut corners on the next game it could take 10+ years (it takes 4-5 for next game its safe to assume another 4-5+)years for us to get a better experience (far past my ability to care)

My thoughts exactly. For all the complaints people voice about Skyrim and say "release date is guilty," I have to ask: do you see your complaints addressed and fixed in the DLCs? I certainly don't see better storywriting, and I see a rather failed attempt to make destruction magic more viable in Dragonborn....

I get the sense they just didn't feel they were worth having period, which just makes absolutely no sense to me and it's a real shame if such an attitude is truly the case.

As for next gen, the only franchise that's outright challenging and coming after TES is Dark Souls, so yeah if you feel competition is what TES needs, pray Dark Souls II is good.

Because stupid design decisions.

Lol what? Witcher 3 is more of a direct competitor than DSII.

I kinda agree on that

Kinda.

personally I don't think there is any real competition to TES.

Only thing that the DLC's really improved upon were perhaps... umm... hmm...

Well other than the people who you saved actually giving a damn about you and your accomplishments (after you saved Solstheim's economy) and better followers/NPCS with personality I can't think of much else. Some of the Armour and weapons were cool but those weren't really fundamental problems with the original game.

Named Dark Souls because it's developers have directly stated that they hope to compete with TES with Dark Souls II. That's what I meant: a developer seeking to challenge the series and try to cut into it's fanbase.

The DLCs are really more of the same rather than attempts to fix existing shortcomings, sadly....

What's odd though is that they bothered to create the wind-type destruction spells for Dragonborn, but didn't think to re-add one of the cut ones.

Like I said, it's just really odd, especially considering that the perks I named were incredibly useful and practical, and didn't disturb balance in the slightest (someone named Open Lock, that could disturb with lockpicking's balance; Reflect damage/spell or absorb spell are effectively not OP when spell-making is cut and the devs get to actively decide what the cap on them is; and FFS you can hit the absorb spell cap of 80% with enchants and perks alone, yet no such spell for the effect exists...)

I'm more upset by the removal of spells than the removal of schools. All the schools but mysticism occupy a particular niche: Destruction is straight offense, conjuration summons pets, restoration is protective and defensive, illusion manipulates enemies, and alteration is supportive. But mysticism has always been the hodgepodge school, with defensive spells in the form of reflect, dispel and spell absorption, offensive in the form of absorb stats, environmental spells like detect, transportation spells like mark/recall and intervention, and soul trap.

That being said, they removed a lot of those mysticism spells entirely between Morrowind and Skyrim. But I don't think Bethesda is fixated on a straight process of "streamlining" - that ever-dreaded word which is inevitably translated into "dumbing-down." We lost two weapon skills from Morrowind to Oblivion, but the change from blade/blunt to one-handed/two-handed between Oblivion and Skyrim was a good call. And if endless "streamlining" between iterations of TES was Bethesda's goal, then we wouldn't have seen the creation of pickpocketing as a completely new, unprecedented, and extraordinarily niche skill tree.

Konrad (Witcher 3 lead dev) has said the same a few times as well.

Ok, so a few things.

Silence was removed because Magicka Damage was created. Honestly, silence was unbalanced with zero counter play while Magicka Damage is more flexible.

Strangely Paralyze on the other hand has become unbalanced, with absolutely nothing to counter it now.

Aside from the spell Feather, they actually do have it. It's called Carry Weight unless you are referring to the speed boost part of it, but that isn't even why we used Feather in Oblivion. Besides that, as stated, weight has become more or less negligible, especially with the perk and raising up Stamina when you level up. I like it this way actually.

Underwater gameplay has been almost completely removed, aside from "picking up" passive fish and looting [censored], there isn't a point to waterbreathing. You can't even cast waterbreathing underwater either. This makes the enchantment overpowered while the spell is impractical.

Magic damage doesn't scale outside of potions and the Orc Berserker Rage. While I already realize the potency of Magic, especially with certain perks, late game it does lose significance. Master spells though are what really grind my gears as far as magic. They are massive noob traps.

Absorb comes in two different forms. Spell absorb and attribute absorb are very different things. Spell absorb is actually very unbalanced, with the perk and Atronarch Stone you can almost effectively invalidate magic, shouts, poison, and disease (80% chance to absorb any of these). Attribute absorb is fairly balanced though, except in the case of Vampiric Drain which is unfortunately the only absorb spell which only vampires get. Vampiric drain is trash tier.

Reflect damage is only available through a heavy armor perk and it is pretty negligible at adept or less difficulty, non-existent essentially above that. Reflect spell was removed which I'm ok with.

I think the OP has a good point.

I could see why levitation was removed from Oblivion due to technical reasons. Also I could see removing some of the oblivion spells to prevent over poweredness, like 100% damage reflection or 100% chameleon. But with spell making gone there will be control.

I guess I'm just repeating what the OP said. It's not clear why the spells were removed.

Which misses the entire point I was making: why bother to code half of these effects into the game, then remove them from a mage's casting arsenal? Why do they exist only as enchants and not as spells?

Casting feather is x1000 times more practical than enchanting it because it allows you to keep an enchant slot open. Reflect damage/spell? There's absolutely no reason these shouldn't be available in spell form. Same with Absorb spell. Specific amounts of them can be unbalanced, but the devs freely passed up on an opportunity to DIRECTLY determine what those amounts are. They could've easily given each of them a 25% effect spell and that spell is the only one that exists, thus making it impossible to stack. Instead? Instead they just don't exist as spells, and yet Absorb spell can STILL be capped with enchants and perks alone...

And magicka damage better than silence? Please. I've never had an enemy caster stop using spells because I used shock. Ever. You want a counter play? Let wards block the silence (or paralyze) spell. Instead of thinking up solutions, they simply cut EVERYTHING, the messy way.

Perhaps, but why should feather honestly matter if you can just have your followers carry your [censored] regardless of whether you use enchantments or just a ride a horse while outside to fast travel when over encumbered? Plus as stated, it is unnecessary with the extra pockets perk and simply leveling up stamina. I don't see a point to using feather at all in Skyrim.

Spell Reflect was broken, chameleon tier broken to be exact. Absorb Magicka in Skyrim is almost as broken, but 100% is not possible without being a Breton using his racial power so there is more wiggle room. But atleast in Oblivion there was a hard con to using Atronarch to get 50% spell absorb, aka no magicka regen. In Skyrim, it is just 50% magicka regen reduction which doesn't make up for 50% spell absorb. Damage reflect I would've liked to see, yet it is only seen in one case in the game.

True, you can use wards against Paralyze, but not everything has wards. And the problem with Magicka Damage is the fact you do way more damage to Health than Magicka with Shock spells, therefore you actually kill them faster than you lower their Magica pool to zero. For some reason it was made half instead of full value like Frost Damage does with Health and Stamina damage. That is the design problem, but Magicka Damage has more balance than straight up Silence. Silence is just a weaker form of Paralyze which is incredibly OP.

Those spells didn't pay their union dues, so they were cut.

I'd go with the game's release date as being a significant factor. Dropping spell casting and re-working the spell system probably meant a few things didn't/couldn't get tested in time for the release.

But there's good news. The next TES/FO game doesn't have a gimmicky date coming up.

Nope, none at all. Not a 12/13/14 or anything like that.

So breathe easy.

12/13/14 is possible for Fallout 4.

Yep.

But don't worry. Look how well Skyrim turned out.

I'm going to predict DA3 will contend with the other titles mentioned based on game footage so far

I don't buy the fancy date. It is, however, a stupid way to go 'let's release the game on 11.11.11 'cause it's so cool'. A game should be released when it's done, simple. But seeing as the DLCs presented the same case of poor writing and the usual bugs clearly shows how the company is in a dumbing down state. To me they might as well have all the time in the world and still cut more content to make everything 'push button repeatedly, acquire demigodness' kinda thing.