You press the trigger to shoot a fireball. You hold it to shoot a fire stream. On touch is accomplished through context (if they're close enough to you, and you simply press the trigger, you will do an on touch spell).

I hate the word "balance" in terms of a Bethesda game. Why? For two reasons.

Spells could use a % of your total magicka and the power of the spell is based on how much it turns out being. You have 100 magicka and cast a 10% weak fireball it does 20 damage, but when you have 1000 magicka that 10% fireball does 200 damage.... if magicka regeneration is also based on a % of your total magicka you will not see any apparent difference in the spell mechanism but you will see the difference in spell effect.

EDIT: I am all for allowing console commands that can edit spells so players can have them as overpowered as they want. I just don't like unbalanced features in the vanilla game.

Broken is when the game glitches, drops you through the floor, freezes and can no longer be played. :wink_smile:

Seriously, broken versus poweful in a game is going to be a matter of opinion.

Some people, evidently, will deem an RPG game broken if it is possible for their character to, without resorting to cheats, reach a level at which few if any enemies and NPCs in the game cannot beat their character in a duel or fair fight. By contrast, many others deem an RPG game broken if it DOES NOT allow their chararacter to reach a level where, without resorting to cheats, he or she cannot himself/herself defeat virtually any foe in the game in a fair fight/duel.

If it is the goal of the devs to allow your character to become anything from a hedge magician of minor skill and power to a master wizard whose name, power and skills would be worthy to set alongside the likes of Morian Zenas, Zurin Arctus, Dyvayath Fyr and Jaggar Tharn, then the game has failed if either of those options are not reasonably achieveable. If the game is set up in such a way that, barring cheats, it is virtually impossible for your mage to become a mighty archmage whose name makes liches tremble rather than the other way around, then they have failed a huge portion of their audience, and therefore, for those people, the game is broken.

What you are essentially doing is saying that anyone who doesn't want to play the game in the way you yourself may favour or deem best, is somehow not playing the game the way it is supposed to be played. It is a very subjective and subjegating view.

Sans cheats, Oblivion's spell options, with the POSSIBLE exception of 100 chameleon, was not broken in the overpowered sense. Consider how much easier it was for a warrior to kill a lich by whacking it to death, than for a wizard to kill it. For a mage at a High Level, it was a good Idea to have a 100% reflect spell enchantment on hand (or at least in mind) when fighting Liches, because there was a good chance of one of your uber powered spells being ridirected against you. Often.

Spell crafting was NOT a cheat. Indeed, it allowed many pure mages to balance a game in which they might otherwise have been hard pressed if not completely unable to meet Goblin Warlords, Liches and Ogres on equall footing in the same way that a warrior with 100 strength and 100 skill level in blade, blunt, and armour would be able to do.

Spellmaking would have been broken IF and only IF, a novice mage could walk up to a spell alter and create and use invisibility, 100pt damage destruction spells, and full spell reflecting wards.

As it was, aside from some spamming of luck which I did not know about and had no desire to try, the player had to earn those abilities. They had to master schools of magic, and as a result of mastering them they gained access to POWERFUL magic.

What is broken or exploitative about a powerful mage being able to wield powerful spells?

What would you say if you read some Potter related book in which Dumbledore couldn't cast an invisibility spell? It would be WTF time, n'est pas?:

If you were listening to a Lord of The Rings related story, and got to a scene in which Gandalf was presented as being as helpless in the face of a Ringwraith or Balrog as Bilbo or even Bard would be in the same position, you would likely ask the person telling the story what Gandalf they were talking about. . . as it certainly couldn't be the one you know.

Likewise, if you have a character who is a master of Alteration, Illusion and Destruction, but he cannot cast an enormous 100pt fireball, or an invisibility spell that holds up well against the scrutiny of a novice necomancer. . . well you sir have what I and legions of others would call a broken game. Also your mage maybe needs to stop reffering to himself as a master of anything. . . except, perhaps, of ineffectuality.

If the choice is between a game that isn't perfectly balanced, and one that is suffocatingly restrictive and offers no means of breaking out of the stranglehold, I will go with option A. The one that still has options in it.

^^I'm not the only person who read that thread

H5.



Well let's see.

I could make an awesomely powerful master level destruction spell, and then cast destruction spells on various targets three thousand, eight hundred and thirty two times. Assuming that I have destruction as a major skill and magic as a specialization. The number goes up and up from there.

Or, I can level up my character to level 30, then pick up the most powerful blade in the world after casting invisibility many times to make my way through the dungeon, go outside, swing the blade and kill a rat, to see that my "Blade skill increased to 7".


By the way, what grueling dungeon are you talking about? None of the vanilla game or DLC oblivion dungeons I can think of would fit that description.

The_Ugly_Guy_At_The_Store, spell making was nowhere near approaching anything like the "Airdrop" glitch. After using that example, I sincerely doubt that you ever played Oblivion without excessive use of god mode.

How come whenever a person makes a poll, they can't just put simple "yes" or "no" options? They always have to add their own little implications... Example: "Yes, I want spell crafting because I'm used to it", as if we just can't handle change. Some of us like spell crafting, not because it's what we're used to, but because we like the opportunity to be creative and make our own unique spells. I don't mean to call this poll out in particular, but I feel like every poll on here does that, and it produces biased results.

How come you don't just accurately quote the poll "Yes, i'm used to having it and like making spells." It very clearly mentions liking the spell crafting. This option allows those who want it because it has been in TES, and for those who flat out enjoy it.

Dynamic spellcasting seems to mean a fancy hotkey system. But hey throw around buzzwords on the internet and people will eat out of your hand.

After some thought, I think the poll could use a fourth option "I want spellmaking, but want it improved from the previous games".

Would any of you guys who are against spellmaking feel better if it was simply more expensive to make more powerful spells? I seem to remember paying gold for spells. Gold that was hard for me to come by because my character never invested in mercantile, limiting the spells I could create. It's probably not what you guys are looking for, but it is a start.

Last two guys responding to my Post blew it out of context or just ignored what I was saying.


Charging spells is a gimmick, theres nothing varied or increased options when the same spell I have becomes 3 different kinds of doing the same damn thing, its 85 -SPELLS- not spell effects, if that were the case there would be no up in the air about spell creation, and since all the Fortify/Drain spells are gone except health/Magicka/Fatigue(stamina) because attributes kicked the bucket, + Atheltics/Acrobatics thats less than 60 -spell effects- from Oblivion right there and as far as we're concerned Fire Damage is still Fire Damage regardless if its AOE,touch, or Streamed as in Previous games method of delivery is not considered an effect Fire damage is an effect..... yeah I once believed it was spell effects that was me in particular thinking Beth can do no wrong, ever but things started adding up, 85 Spells 17 for each school for 5 schools sounds much more plausible then 85 effects who would simply be tethered into custom spells and wouldnt be a problem



I don't want Spell creation from Past games, I want it Improved and done better, I don't want tediously hold a Key for a charge while getting pelted by Kodiaks, if I have a charge spell I'd like that to be -seperate- from my Fireball spell that blinds enemies in 10 feet

Todd said you could charge up a fireball, so that may mean that both tapping the trigger and holding it would perform the same fireball, but in different magnitudes. That would eliminate the possibility of being able to use the flamethrower with the same spell.

For NPCs and Monsters? Absolutely. Stronger spells for stronger enemies is a grand idea. I would still prefer customizing not only spells, but weapons, enchantments and potions to my personal preferences. :sorcerer:

I can see both sides of the argument, really. Since I personally don't use magic that much in the games ( from time to time but not enough to obsess about it ) I'm going to go with Neutral on this one. I like the general concept behind what the OP is saying, but I'm a little apprehensive about completely removing the crafting system all together...

This talk of spellcrafting also brings up the issue of enchanting. Because enchanting and spellcrafting basically work in the same exact format (as they did in past ES games), enchanting will most likely no longer be "spread-sheety". Because of this, we will not be able to manipulate numbers of the desired effects for the items we want to enchant. The numbers of the effects will be pre-determined.

I hope this is not the case.

It only worked like that in Oblivion.
Please, I wish people would stop taking Oblivion as the prime example for how things went as in many, many ways it is the worst example of the series.
Was it a great game for its time? For sure, no rivals. Was it the worst and least thought out game in the TES series? Absolutely, no doubt about it. Its just a bad example for almost everything.
The best and most freeform spellmaking was in Arena. It went downhill from there.
I would love a Daggerfall style magic with bonuses and maluses.

Do you mind explaining the spellmaking system in those games for a new fan who has only played Oblivion so far?

Summed up in two words...annoying...and...expensive.

I still remain convinced that custom spells allow for RP immersion

As for "overpowered combinations" a little balancing can fix that.

As with many other things the weirdly implemented level scaling meant that all became useless in five levels.
Some other things like the inability to use certain effects at all for spellmaking, the strange insistance of having to use the spellmaking altars and certain hard caps.
Oblivion spellmaking was stunted and made a mage from Daggerfall feel like a hedgewizard in Oblivion.
Oh sheesh and the incomprehensible decision not to be able to delete spells. That was even hardwired and very difficult for modders to remove.

But for the best comparison, read up on the UESP, it has all the info.
Read all the possibilities the Arena system had and weep, because now 'they look cool'..

Well... logically - yes - either enchanting will have to also work with premade versions of stock effects and only whatever combinations you might be able to put together "on the fly" in order to avoid "spreadsheety" customization, or the people who oppose spellmaking should oppose enchanting too, or there's a lot of cognitive dissonance in this thread.

I'll just leave it at that.......

The system of enchanting will work like the spell system, don't see a reason to dislike it.

Really?
I have this sneaky suspicion it will work like sigil stones.
Or as Sandal once said: En-chantment?

How do you know it will work like spellmaking. With Todd wanting to remove all customisation under the nomer of 'spreadsheety', I think sigil stones is the logical way to go.
You find em, you have some halfwit put em on your weapon.
En-chantment.

It's difficult for me to bear this form of enchanting which is simplified in an awful way. I'm afraid this is how it is though.

One of the great things about previous Elder Scrolls games was the sort of creativity you could have with enchanting. You could choose exactly what you wanted for the effects. Now you're going to have to let the game choose for you. Meh.

I liked the spell crafting, its annoying trying to find a certain spell that a vendor may or may not have. Simply acquiring a spell with a desired effect and altering it to suit whatever I needed it to do worked perfect. A mages worst nightmare is traveling ALL OVER to find ONE spell. It took me days to find an invisibility spell and days past that to be able to cast. Do I want to work for my spells? Yes, challenges are great and the rewards make up for time lost. Do I want to spend a whole week of real time trying to get it? No, not really.

Concerning the usefulness of certain spells... Yeah I'd say half should have been excluded outright. Sme spells are completely useless, there is no doubt about that. As mentioned before, the easiest way to de-clutter a spell book is to put a delete button. Thats a way easy fix. But I understand the whole 'npc's with weak spells' bit. Being able to roll in and nuke everything with one spell seems boring but thats why we have difficulty meters. Too easy? Go to the other side. Do I mind if NPC's have spells on par/slightly better then me? Of course not, I'd love challenge. Do I want NPC's to have spells that will always nuke me? No, not really.

If Bethesda is doing away with the spell-crafting completely, then they are leaving the mages out. If they're giving us a way to make our own weapons and armor, why would they get rid of the ability to make our own spells thats hypocrtical. Should Bethesda get rid of spell-crafting then they should get rid of everything remotely similar, in the effort of 'balance'. However, should Bethesda do away with spell-crafting and the spells aren't useless and level with me, I'd be able to live with it.

I want to play the game the way I want. I don't care for how others play. Don't like the spell crafting? Don't use it. Problem solved.

But revamping the entire way spells are cast and getting rid of spell crafting? I don't know... I may start playing an archer.

How so? Using Oblivion as an example, you still chose premade effects to apply to your item/armor, changed the duration and target and that was it. What's the problem?