You don't swing swords by clicking mouse buttons either, should they ditch that as well?

How do you buy a spell? I mean it's magic, it's not tangible, but they sell them like fruit at the market? I'd rather see spell buying removed, than spellmaking, it makes more sense.

One beef I have is with people who seem to think that spellmaking must automatically take the magic out of magic and make it feel like a spreadsheet. You don't have to have numbers and sliders! Imagine the spellmaking interface being more abstract. Like maybe you'd have a map of the stars, and you can add new stars to constellations, and it's brightness would determine magnitude while it's size would determine the duration. You could also pepper small stars near it to make it an area of effect spell.

Spell buying is a way worse offender to any point you've made than spellmaking will ever be, yet, it's the only means available in Skyrim for attaining spells(minus quest, etc,.)..

Hyperbole. We're not tlaking about getting rid of a fundamental interface mechanic that you rely on to play. RPGs can work without spellmaking.

Making spellmaking work on a game mechanics side is relatively easy. I have already suggested a balanced and easy to use method before, and won't do it again. Making it less spreadsheety is the problem, as Todd has said. I can think of a couple different ways to make spellmaking less spreadsheety:

• The night sky thing that NazzerDawk mentioned at the top of this page.
  
• In addition to merchant's having premade spells for sale, give them the ability to teach you custom spells. Just limit the strengths and types of effects available at each merchant. If you want to make awesome uber spells, you need to work for them, possible by working up through the Mage guild.
  
• Use the same type of altars as before, but make so you build the spell in real time so you have to cast the effects on the altar or near it or something.
  
• Or just say [censored] it and put it back how it was in Oblivion and Morrowind (aka: a perfectly fine system), then deal with the fact that this is a game and no matter how pretty you make a menu it is still a menu and that you have to use a menu eventually.

To me, it is a fundamental interface mechanic of the "TES" series.

See: Post below mine, option #3, for an example of what I'm talking about.

The question is, can all spells be used in all forms? Can you make a heal rune that heals you when it's triggered. Can you dual wield a healing spell? etc... On target stuff is easy as well as on self, we've had it in MW and OB. The flamethrower: do you have a choice of duration or is it just as long as you hold the button down? If you are doing constant damage as you hold down the button the only thing duration would do is unnecessarily increase the magicka cost per second. Assuming for sake of arguement, your flamethrower 3pts for 2 sec. would have a higher cost than just a 3pts. 1 sec (instant) effect just like in OB/MW. If a flamethrower spell just tics off damage/sec your higher cost effect with duration would just be wasteful. I don't know how the system works yet. Depending on how the game knows what form of spell you want to use (target, rune, flamethrower, two-handed, aoe) will affect how complicated spellmaking would be to use or implement in the game.

If certain spells are hardcoded to only be able to be used in certain forms this will also pose a problem for spellmaking. We just don't know how the devs have made it. If it is impossible, because of hardcoding, to cast Detect Life in any form, but "on self" with a duration and area/range trying to combine it with an on target, rune, etc... spell would cause conflicts that might effect gameplay/crashes.


I don't see the connection in spellmaking and enchantment. As far as I know, no matter how you enchant a weapon or armor or whatever, you don't have an option for flamethrower, two-handed, rune, on target effects like you can with spells. Thus there would be no conficts because most likely all weapons will be "on strike" and items would have constant effects like clothing, rings, etc...did in OB. Though I do agree with you on the one spreadsheety thing ok for one, but not the other.

I really do wish we have spellmaking. I'm just saying that with the information we have it is difficult to say if Bethesda is just being lazy on this subject (though I don't really think they are. they seem to be working really hard on making this game great) or if because of how the engine/code is designed there may be real conflicts that need to be addressed and other features that still need to be worked on makes it less likely for time to be put aside for spellmaking.

One thing I would find interesting if they do have spellmaking is an invisibility rune. would be a good way to lure a monster (if others are around that you don't want to aggro) to an advantageous area to fight. Lay down an invisiblity rune. let your magicka replenish, then fire at the monster. it runs to attack you, but triggers the invis right before it gets to you. It stands there like, "what the hell. he was right here". You move further back and do the same until you get the monster right where you want it to take it on, them BLAMO!

Or...it could be handled in real time via button holding or pressing or mashing. I'd like that a million times better than stars or anything else that isnt' in real time.

**The point is: if you can control what type of spell you're casting, and how powerful it is, then a number or slider is an efficient GUI representation for that. Dislike is an aesthetic, not a logical, choice.

I did like making my own spells, but it would be great if the spells actually all looked cooler and felt more "magicky". if they are in fact getting rid of spellmaking, here's hoping they get really creative with how the spells can work together/affect eachother.

Tap for your basic charm spell, hold for massive AoE charm spell. Your character throws glitter in the air yelling "Let's get this party started!" and suddenly the entire room becomes a ecstasy induced rave.

if they are in fact getting rid of spellmaking, here's hoping they get really creative with how the spells can work together/affect eachother.

Doesn't matter, one effect could be the primary one, just like when making a fire damage and paralyze spell is either illusion or destruction, not both. So if we have more fire damage than healing, it could be the primary effect.
Even if they didn't do that, they can slap a filter on it that only allows spells with like forms.

It can be solved.

Hard coded spells are an issue for spellmaking if they are hard coded, which is bad programming period. If they do that, we can't mod spellmaking back in, and maybe not even any custom spells. Thats a serious problem, meaning the "mods will fix it" solution isn't valid, thats the point there.

And enchanting is brought up not because of different states. They are taking spellmaking out because it is "spreadsheety". Enchanting is very similar to spellmaking, and it has the same spreadsheety quality. Removing spellmaking, but bringing back enchanting is stupid because it negates their reason. If spreadsheety spellmaking is bad, why is spreadsheety enchanting?

Game balance is more important than having like 100000+ spell combinations.

Clearly, you must be trolling. What if I want to combine more than 2 effects?

The only flaw in this system is without being able to custom make spells than mage combat becomes stale.

Still, I'm very sceptical about not being able to create my own spells. I like my summon x and invisibilty on self spell.

I don't mind the removal of spell creation really. Think about it like this: now we have a reason to learn new spells from NPCs. In Oblivion I pretty much used my custom spells and had almost no need to buy from NPCs. It made the guys who sell spells useless.