It'll be in Skyrim as soon as the mods perform The Quickening.

It's an interesting way of looking at it but ultimately not really true. And really ultimately the justifications are less important than implementations.

No you are missing the point entirely.
What people complain about is as important as a rat drowning in orange juice.

The sheer fact is that Dragon Age one had a more varied, utalitarian, more interesting and diverse magic system than TES 5 does.
TES 5 magic blows from all directions.
Dragon Age didnt have spells that became obsolete, it had interesting variations and a decent RPG path of customisation.

You are saying: well people complained about it, that is not the point.

The point is that it had bite as opposed to.. this.. whatever, its not magic.. this.. generic!

Oo so it is 'balanced' well that just means its no fun, now doesnt it?

Indeed, but for me, it's not spellmaking, but the entire degradation of the series as an RPG in general.

As for magic, Skyrim can't touch Dragon Age: Origins. And I'm not talking of spells or enchanting. I mean that "sense of magic" you get from playing. Like going to Disney World as a child. I've felt very little if any from Skyrim. The same with Oblivion. Morrwind had that something special about it.

Stendarr help Bethesda if Bioware ever decides to make an open-world Dragon Age similar to Origins. Especially if it has a first-person aspect. I'd even love to see the results of a head-to-head release between TES VI and a new Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights.

I'm a "really devoted fan" of great games and progress in series development. Just because a game has a certain name in the title doesn't make it a good game. If anything, it just means there should be higher expectations for it to live up to. If it doesn't, it's a failure, plain and simple. If a company doesn't want such high expectations, then don't hype up your game! Yes, I'm looking at you, Peter Molyneux... and you're also guilty, Bethesda! Let me remind you about the "Radiant AI" demo videos you showed for Oblivion! Can someone please tell me where a character actually did something in the released game like set their own dog on fire because its barking got annoying?


EDIT: Hahaha, it censored the word... umm... "fan-young-male"

Certain spells were stronger, definitely. Given the general craptacular functionality of Destruction this is no surprise. A LOT of games fall into the category of better than Skyrim direction damage spells. Varied, utilitarian though...NO. DA1 falls into the same category of lots of crappy spells as much as Skyrim does. They both fail on that account.

The DA series for me is sufficiently different enough than TES for me to like them both for different reasons.

Ive always felt that an ES only contemporary was itself and other ES titles. As is, magic is worse than it was in Morrowind AND Oblivion. And Oblivion hardly got anything right. That's sad. Magic becomes boring after 2-3 builds and that's with even more RP limitation than ever before. A pure mage that wanted to get literally everything magic has to offer in Skyrim, over just one build, well, I don't even want to think about it. I'm rationing magic per build as is. Save me Mods.

We all want to pretend Oblivion never happened, that is true.

My stars and gathers the only things that horreur did right was destroyed by level scaling and now we get pinkertons espousing 'Im glad armour degradation is gone', just because they dont know any better.

Oh, and NPC's having schedules. It did that right too.

Yeah I'm pretty sure that the only thing that came out after Morrowind was TES:Electric Boogaloo.

If you really think I'm upset, then by all means, think so as much as it pleases you. I already know well enough that arguing on the internet is the same as winning the Special Olympics. I'm just finished with participating in this "debate" because it's gone on long enough as it has, and is just simply getting further away from the point of the thread being about people lamenting the loss of the option of spellmaking and more about nitpicking each other's points selectively. On top of that, I have drinking and Skyrim to be doing, and no offense to you, but it's far more interesting and entertaining a use of my time than seeing how close this can get to all becoming a circular argument.

And you can still notice that you're not given the same option to pursue such studies, only the option to benefit from that of others' studies into magic. I rather expected that there be an option at the end, and was surprised that no such option existed to pursue your own studies as Arch-Mage, which would have made sense in that manner of context. Make the barrier of entry to spellmaking high enough that only those who are truly serious about utilizing it would pursue it to that end. In Oblivion, you only had to complete a bunch of recommendation quests, and once you had entry to the University, you could forget the rest of the quests in that line if you wanted. The Frostcrag Spire DLC just removed that hurdle altogether, further on.

Will that be another line in the sand that you want to draw in this exchange? Your prerogative, to dragons and drinking I must attend.

Skyrim has a talking dog ergo your argument is invalid.

Please do make an effort.
If youre not even trying, well, why should I then?

On topic: You keep bringing up ways in which people critiqueted the DA spellsystem while that is entirely aside the point

People did the same for Morrowind and Oblivion magic and look where that landed us.
Yeah, with this generic mess.

The point is that it was more varied, utalitarian, RPG, useful, the point is that its a crying shame that TES got beat by Bioware, 3 years ago.

My bird is a hair, therefore your invalid is an argument.

I think.

Damnit foiled again!

Not to again play into the suspicious of some that the series is moving to being console oriented first I AM strangely optimistic that the next game will have spell making. Even if the system for it is horrible.

I agree that spell making should have to come with certain limitations and as you say, you would have to work hard to have access to it. Also there could be a bunch of other things making spell making far more interesting and balanced than it was in Oblivion. The only limitations would be imagination, technical limitations and developer resources. I believe the latter was the reason it was not implemented, but still, personally, i would even prefer that the game was delayed a little, in order to be polished or to add more features everyone loved like spell making.
Have a drink on me, will ya?



If we show we want it enough for them to implement it, i believe it will.

The lack of an unlocking spell is Mindboggling. I mean REALLY, shamefull and hard to believe. A wizard who cannot spell a lock into releasing? What would Gandalf say? Hell, what would first year, eleven year old Harry Potter say??! The game lets you morph iron into silver and silver into gold, but you cannot change a lock from fastened to unfastened? What the hell were they smoking when they decided that made sense? A wizard who cannot get into places hard for others to access is less of a mage, plain and simple.

Yeah, unlocking is only in a stone and it only unlocks expert locks. At least make it master if the only in game effect of it is in a stone. Mages don't pick locks on Nirn.

I don't mind spellcrafting gone (mostly because I rarely used it) but I miss all the cool utility spells like unlock, feather, detect life, night eye, etc.

And WTF is up with no underwater combat? Slaughterfish get to eat you, and you have zero defense? BS.

I love Skyrim as the good outweighs the bad and makes it blow away previous ES games... but wow, how game breaking is an unlock spell? Why take that out? You can't stack potions of a similar effect anymore either, that is crap. Like that regen health/magicka one won't stack at all. Sure you can take unlimited potions now, but what good is it if you can't stack them?

I dont think anyone is saying we do not want limits.
I think it would be great if certain powerful things were not usable on the spellmaker until a certain level, gives something to work towards.

However.
Daggerfall did it just fine, for an RPG.
This isnt Zelda, this isnt Mario.
And we shouldnt want to turn it into an adventure or platform either.
We need our choices, we need our customisation and we need our numbers.
This is an RPG.

The 'feel' I am getting from Skyrim is that it is a very superior 'Zelda", it is an action/ adventure.
This is not why I spend money on Elder Scrolls, I would spend money on Zelda if I wanted that.

The cure disease is what gets me. Well, that and the unlock spells. It is rather obvious that the devs were catering to the "spells and spellmaking are overpowered" crowd, and in the process, the made decisions that logic doesn't support. How can one call Restoration a legitimate school if it cannot cure a disease? What is more, why would restoration magic, powerful enough to heal what would otherwise be mortal wounds in mere seconds, be unable to purge the body of a toxin? It doesn't make sense. Unless you are taking the cheap road of making the game "harder" by removing the players options rather than improving game content.

Well said.

And the limitations as Kitty suggests aren't much anyway. You can go through the mages guild of any ES without actually mastering any one skill. The only limitation from previous games was the skill level. In Oblivion this was semi bypassed with the ability to use master effects from other schools that you hadn't masters as long as the dominant effect of the created spell was from a mastered school. Either way, that's more devotion and actual game play than running through any Mages quest line once or twice. People always glaze over the fact that you have to actually master these schools to utilize them in SC, unless your going out of your way to exploit magicka and weakness.

Apologetic.
You ignore the loss.
The loss is undeniable.

I am talking about how Skyrim is an action. adventure while I pay good money to support an RPG franchise.

If I wanted to play Zelda, I would buy Zelda.

"arent much" indeed.
Please go take a look at the UESP, at the number of skills in Daggerfall, at the spellmaking system Arena offered.
I would bet you a thousand shiny coins you would prefer Arena's spellsystem over this.. unimaginative shell of a spellsystem we have now.

AOA on target, AOA on self, with any strength you could cast.
Not this silly glyph that gets phased out of gameplay entirely by level 20.

Is this what we gave up spellmaking for?
A stream that is obsolete by level 10, a glyph that is obsolete by level 20 and a master spell that is never useful, ever?

For crying out loud.

Sometimes I wonder about unlock. I certainly want it in and I think the preferred method of fixing stealth complaints would have been to improve the skills like add trap making to security. But I wonder is the complaint that well currently 6 skills do what 12 skills do? Is it not so much you did what my thief did, but mundane characters need twice as many skills to get done what a mage does? And if so why not change the divide from warrior. thief, mage to mundane and magical skills, get the magical skills up to 12 like mysticism, thumaturgy, necromancy(I don;t think it really fits under conjuration unless you are actually conjuring undead), spellmaking and 2 others I can't think of.

... I was agreeing with you. I'm not apologetic. I'm arguing that going through any questline like Kitty suggested, isn't much of a "proof" of anything in regards to the ability to fully utilize SC. Or am I reading you wrong, because I KNOW that your not implying that I'm weak for the cause.

I'll drink to that!



And that, I encourage, especially eloquently.