http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mABmZETHaRE

Well I mean, I'm kind of indifferent to it. It's just that Arena had the spell maker for crying out loud! And you could argue that its spells were pretty specific and Skyrim-esque. Arena spells' magnitude scaled to your level and attributes as well, which is how we assume Skyrim's spells will increase in potency. So again it just seems kind of redundant considering I'm sure they could pull custom ones off with a bit of effort, if they managed it in 1994. :shrug:

Yeah I just wanted to see how it was written in the mag (I can understand some Italian - I am maltese after all!). Thanks.

You're determined to see the bottle of flin half empty aren't you? Just because something has been in every game doesn't make it perfect. The obvious answer to your question is to implement a new system that gives you more depth.

Let's take a look at what we know: (examples)
It appears instead of having multiple fire damage spells, touch, target, area. That's all now in one spell. Cast it up close it's touch, Far away it's target, hold button it's a flametrower that also cause the area to set on fire. That is more depth.
Want to create a spell that summons a imp and casts invisibility? No longer necessary. You can do that on the fly by having each equipped.

I really don't see what you could do with Spell Making that you cannot do with this new system other than a spell that does fire/frost/lightning damage at the same time :shrug: I think these effects actually doing more than just causing damage is a fine trade off.

Ever since 1e D&D names spells were cool. Floating Disk is okay, Tenser's Floating Disk is awesome. Same damn spell, but the little detail that a mages mark on the world is through his creations is freaking cool. I haven't abused spell making for so many yearsI just am not concerned with that issue. I want it in for the coolness of creating your own spells and naming them. It is a role playing thing, and I do not want it to go. Though I suspect the article was more talking about dual wielding and how you can't create or combine spell effects through that. Given how many translations could be happening here I don't think people should worry yet. It is kind of like that thing where you whisper something to someone who whispers it to the next person and once you get through the chain of people you see check to see how much it changed from the original phrase. A Italian guy speaks in English to an American, who answers in English, which then gets translated to Italian but shortened to fit the article instead of being word for word and then translated back to English. Yeah, nothing could go wrong there.

It is, but it also means I won't have to carry as many spells in my spell book. I don't want the game to feel like Oblivion where even melee-oriented characters could still finish off stray targets with the same Flare spell over and over.

I don't think anyone is saying the new system is bad. I like it. I want to do that and make my own spells.
I want to know why they removed it, so I can then at least understand it, or propose an alternative that a few of us will read and will be buried deep within the texts of a ranting madman.

There is no excuse that I can think of for removing it other than laziness.
Balance? There are better ways to balance it.
Technical issues such as combining effects like fire and frost? Don't allow that, or effects negate eachother.
Technical issues of spells changing, such as elemental traps and flamethrowers? Give us control of each of the states.
The graphics can't handle it? What?

This is why I've been complaining, it can be done. I want it in, but they think its redundant, or so I assume.
It hurts a lot of fans, it was far more than, "Now I can make exploitz!"

I'm pretty sure none of us can say "That's just laziness" until we have spent 3-5 years of our lives making AAA games that sell millions of copies. :shrug: I'm sure they have good reasons for why it's not in, and I'm even more certain they are trying to figure out how to make it work. You can completely figure out how to implement something on paper. But that doesn't mean it's going to work when you actually try it in a game. Not to mention that the people who work at BGS are fans of the series. They play it. I'm sure a lot of them like playing pure mages and are trying to ensure it's awesome.

How can you have a Role Playing Game and then remove things that add to the Role Playing experience, like making your own spells? What kind of Mage is that? I'll say it again, they are removing something that has been in every single TES game, not including Redguard and Battlespire. You don't remove the things that are part of the series, you make them better.

It's not something that's going to go over well, I can tell you that for sure.

In some ways it makes sense. Teach someone how to use a fire spell and it should grow with them. But it seems to be a shift from how things have worked in the last couple of games where spells had to be created ahead of time instead of adjusted as you use them. I guess in 200 years techniquies could have changed, but I will really miss the oddball spells that don't make any sense outside the specific circumstance that requires them. I would really like to see both, perhaps with some sort of minor penalty (such as a misfire chance or lower effiiciency) to the precreated (what I mean is spells that have a set effect(s) and costs such as the Enemies Explode spell out of Oblivion, or the various specific Open Hard Lock, Open Easy Lock and so on spells) to both encourage and justify the switch to the new spellcasting techniques.

Awesome isn't the same. Some people can argue magic in fable was awesome. A lot of people say magic in Dark Messiah was awesome. Thats not the same.
In TES you actually have the power to roleplay, something you never really have the power to do in most other games. Limiting spell options is limiting roleplaying options.

Maybe I want to roleplay a lunatic wizard who uses spells with shock and healing. Maybe I want to combine frost damage, paralyze, and healing to create a frozen body to roll down a hill.
Just because they give us a number of spells for each effect, presumably they have a varied number of magnitudes, doesn't mean we get the options we need to roleplay.

You're welcome
Malta! sei fortunato a vivere in un posto così bello. Il mare è davvero qualcosa di stupendo!

But I still think that it is possible that they are leaving spellmaking out of the initial release so that maybe they could add it back in in DLC, similar to the mage's tower in Oblivion. This makes more sense to me anyway, because we do not exactly know what the new mage factions are able to do, or not. So it could be in lore that the art of spellmaking was lost or forgotten, and you need to find it again. That is my thoughts.

Yeah lore is about the only thing that makes sense, but then they can just implement it another way...
Personally I always got sick of relying on either a spellmaking altar or someone else to make a spell...

Yes, but LionHead is not developing Skyrim and neither are Arkane Studios. As for your second example spell that frozen body wouldn't actually be frozen in past games though. It's just a number with a blue effect. Limiting roleplaying you say? Perhaps so, perhaps not. That was also the knee-jerk everyone had when they said they were removing classes and replacing that with perks. Well, guess what? Now we have all realized that actually gives us more options to roleplay than creating a class.
Don't jump to conclusions until we have more information or you've played the game. I'm just trying to stay positive here.

Edit* my point with the LionHead and Arkane comment was what they, and what people think is awesome in their games does not reflect what BGS thinks is awesome in their games. Obviously. As all three games spell systems are very different.

They didn't replace classes with perks...

But back on topic, removing the ability to create spells that they will not have in game is reducing roleplaying options.
And I still think that perks should not replace skills, but should compliment them.

For instance, they could only have 2-3 perks for 1 handed blunt weapons. So after 2-3 levels you could have effectively specialized in maces. With that logic you could specialize in everything very quickly.

*sigh* I was saying now instead of just going "Okay, I'm a assassin. These are my skills." Now, we just use the assassin-esque skills and choose perks that actually make you more like a assassin.
I never said perks replace skills, and they do compliment them. That's their purpose.

The point remains that if they removed spellmaking they reduced roleplaying options.
Can you not think of a spell that you could make that will not be included in the game?
There are plenty, and I want to be able to actually roleplay.

Grazie.

Under the assumption the new system is not complex at all yes. But like I've said, we just don't know.

The whole concept of spellmaking never interested me as I could always buy or find items/gears with the spells I wanted enchanted onto them. The whole concept of combining spells shouldn't be brought into this discussion yet. I look at it this way, as many people have stated it never offered anything great besides more powerful versions of existing spells which to me is pointless hence why I think their is a spell leveling system for the usage of a certain spell. The loss of this doesn't bother me and Yes i can understand many of the peoples opinions, but this isn't game changing and besides they have many months to implement it later or they could patch it into the code you never know or introduce it into an expansion or merely just MOD it if your a PC gamer.

Well, it has already been stated that combining spell effects is something they are working on but have so far been unable to implement due to technical reasons. And all other variations of spells seems to be covered by the new mechanics of charging spells in different ways as well as them scaling with your magic skill. So unless beth actually manages to get combined spell effects to work to their liking and implement that there's not really any reasons for spell making as all possible spells would already be available in the game aprat from possibly wanting to create spells with different names.

i'm honestly pretty heartbroken that we can't create our own spells. I mean, why?
Streamlining FTW.

Even if the system is complex, which it is, there will be options lost.
I like the new system. 1 fire spell should serve multiple roles. But that is the new system, 1 spell can serve a number of roles.
That doesn't negate the desire, it may negate the need in combat but not the desire for custom spells. And if I wanted to play a game that was only about combat, I wouldn't play TES.

Now I am all for this being some meaning lost in translation. Todd meant to say that you couldn't combine to spells to create a 3rd effect, and it sounded like no spellmaking and that is what the magazine heard. I am argueing that losing spellmaking is losing a lot. And I for one am sick of the, "just trust us" mentality. With such a mentality we have lost a lot in TES.

I usually hate removing stuff from games but this is really good

I was sweating bullets thinking we will have the same lame ass spell system from OB and MW but it seems Mr. Todd wants to make 85 unique awesome spells instead of lame ball of this and ball of that

frankly ES games greatest weakness was always the unbalanced combat/magic/stealth system and I see that Beth team are definitely solving that problem, along with the animation, this game is gonna be great.

now my only single gripe is the GPS compass but I can live with 5% bad 95% good.

Please point out to me the part besides "lame ass" and "unbalanced" (it wasn't. Mana regen was) where this is good.

Oh wow, EIGHTY FIVE WHOLE SPELLS! Who'd have thought you could make THOUSANDS (6400 with only 2 spell combinations) of spells in Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion?

I'm SO glad they're balancing the game now. Multiplayer will be so much more fun!

Just because you didn't use it doesn't mean others don't.