I don't understand how spears are difficult to balance? Why is it that almost any other fantasy game has no problem with them? Spears are one of the most widely used weapons throughout history, often chosen over swords for their reach, light weight and versatility.

If somebody can explain to me how they are difficult to balance I would really appreciate it. I don't understand how you can buff and balance bows, but then come out and say "oh no spears, way too hard to balance, but you can dual wield daggers!" Easy, two handed weapon and a pretty ineffective block, you have to keep them back, if the enemy gets up close the spear is no good. There, balance.

Damnit Bethesda, you make for a hard studio to defend sometimes...

You can't really compare it to other games with other combat systems. That said I do think it's a bit of a bad excuse if that is indeed their reasoning. I believe an issue COULD be that spears can be used to keep enemies as a distance and therefore enabling certain exploits. But honestly, I don't believe for one second that such issues could not be fixed... Sometimes I feel Beth intentionally choses not to include specific things because so many are asking for it, so as to not appear as if we get to design the game.

Longer cooldown between strikes, allowing faster enemies to close the distance. Boom, fixed.

yup. balance is a very poor excuse and one i dont believe for a moment. lots of things in previous beth games were unbalanced and that didnt stop them from putting it in.

Isn't that the purpose of spears!?

If you'd read my whole post you'd see that I don't actually accept this as an excuse?I just said that this may be the cause of some exploits, just like the running back and firing thing in OB

I mean they have said that spears weren't in at this stage. Here's hoping they do in fact make it in.

Todd Howard said spears didnt "make the cut", not that they were not added due to balancing problems.

Yeah I know how you feel man, i was so pissed when I heard that once again the spears was cut out of an elder scrolls game. I mean even Fallout NV had throwing spears!!! I want throwing spears to kill a mammoth!!! and regular spears to impale anything in my way. Bethesda made dual wielding possible and yet spears is a problem to balance???? :S

Yeah we know they didn't make the cut, your post doesn't explain why, balance was the reason they used with Oblivion though.

It's actually a fairly strange idea that a post nuclear war game has more spears than a TES game

If you want to know why, http://www.gameinformer.com/b/podcasts/archive/2011/02/03/toddhowardse.aspx.
I dont get it why so many people whine about this...

YES, spears would be nice.
YES, spears totally have a place in the world.
NO, they aren't in the game as of now, but chances are either DLCs will add it or, if not, then modders will do it.

I don't think balance has anything to do with it, spears certainly can be balanced, I never felt they were overpowered in Morrowind, if anything, people seemed to feel they were rather useless, which probably explained why they weren't included in Oblivion. But that's not really an excuse in Skyrim anymore because people complained about their absence, thus showing that people do, in fact, want spears, besides, we supposdly have polearms, presumably things like halberds and such, which as far as game balance is concerned would have pretty much the same advantages as spears. So if those can be balanced, there's no reason spears can't. My suspicion is that the issue has more to do with the fact that when you get down to it, spears aren't good for much besides stabbing, that's kind of the way they're designed. This was reflected in Morrowind too, as the only attacks that really did good damage when you used a spear were thrusts, everything else had pretty pathetic damage, and using a spear to slash or chop also looked pretty awkward. The problem here is that, let's face it, constantly thrusting with a weapon, and thrusting, and thrusting will get pretty repetitive after a while, and with the more dynamic combat system Bethesda seems to be going for in Skyrim, such repetitive attack animations are likely something Bethesda wants to avoid. This might explain why they'd do non-spear polearms but not spears as they'd have the main advantage of spears, but could allow for more variety in attack animations. At least, that's my guess, I really don't know because Todd Howard never told us why spears weren't in, he only said that at the time, they did not have them in the game "In the traditional sense".

Honestly, though, the absence of spears is probably one of the worse pieces of news I've heard about Skyrim so far, and that's actually a good sign because spears are really not a "make or break" type feature to me, it would be nice to have them, certainly, it would even make sense to see them, but my game experience won't actually be ruined by the fact that I can't hold a spear.

Yep because spears were so easy to add to Oblivion as well...

Oh wait...

Oh please. Bethesda have far more information than us at their disposal. Sure, you might be able to balance spears on paper, but who knows how hard it would be if you actually tried to do it. Beth hasn't even mentioned the word balance with respect to spears and Skyrim, and yet none of you seem to doubt the veracity of the OPs assertion; any opportunity to jump at them for their wicked deeds. As for Beth intentionally disregarding our ideas purely because we suggested them... God, how pretentious can you get? I mean, why on earth would a developer want to make us feel as though we don't matter? No, if an idea of ours isn't used by Bethesda, either they never came across it, or it's a bad idea.

And knowing how much people have whined about it, they have come across the idea and have chosen to use their precious time to add/fix other things that are more relevant to the game experience.

Exactly.

All I got from that wall of text was "I attack other posters on the internet with walls of text and don't contribute anything to the conversation."

As I said in the OP, if you can tell me why they can't be balanced I will be happy, but as it stands I don't see any reason for there not to be spears, but allowing me to wield fiery stabby death...

I mean, this is a game where you defeat dragons by yelling at them. I really want to know why it is that spears can't be balanced...




Give me the mocap studio Bethesda have and half an afternoon and I will give you spears, time and resources are not issues here. As far as relevance goes, I think a nordic, lo-fi fantasy world demands spears. But hey, you're right, dual-wielding is way more important because you know we were all requesting that...

There would never be a DLC for spears only...
If Bethesda would make spears, they would be in the game from the start.
And modders tried to add spears for Oblivion, but they all svcked pretty badly and was just like 1-handed animations with a long stick, and they were never placed accordingly in the world or made different kinds of spears.

So if spears aren't in the game by default, don't expect spears to ever be in the game. Because they probably won't.

Spears would be very nice and they have a place in the world as you say. To balance them... yeah, lower the damage done a bit, make them easier to break if used poorly, longer cooldowns to be able to attack. Most likely the latter one.
Still, I wouldn't be very sad if spears are not in the game. They would be nice, sure, but there are so many other things I'd like in the game more.

I'm sorry you feel that way. My post was really only a few lines long, and it certainly wasn't intended as an attack on you or anyone else.



This I did mention in my earlier post. As I said, discussing whether something will or will not balance in theory tells you very little about whether something will or will not balance in practice. You simply can't draw any conclusions when you deal with this sort of issue on paper. You have to actually test it. So whilst it might seem that spears would be far easier to balance than dual-wielding or dragon shouts, there's no saying whether this is actually the case.

Of course, I don't necessarily believe that spears aren't balanced; only that there's probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for their absence. Maybe Beth just didn't consider them vital to the gameplay experience, and chose to spend their time working on other additions instead (as Shish suggested). Or perhaps we will see spears (in some form) in the final game after all - the point is that we know far too little at this stage to be flinging these baseless accusations around.

'Not to mention that Beth cannot rely on modders to add stuff that should belong in the game from the get go. If Beth feels something COULD be in the game, they should add it themselves and not expect us to do it.

Which is why Im placing my trust in the modding community.
And just FYI, we nords never used spears much more than anyone else, or even less. The axe and then the sword were the weapons of choice.

Yea, I'm pretty sure vikings mainly used swords crafted to give a heavy punch

Never understood such fascination and fury surrounding spears... just don't get it.

(Sorry, I don't have anything more profound to add.)

Tell that to all the dead mammoths.

Spears were not unique to any part of the world and no, you nords did not prefers swords and axes. Spears are a universal thing, but don't tell hollywood.