One thing that I think hasn't been given due attention is the negative aspect spellmaking has on the effects themselves. When Beth made spells and how they function in Oblivion, the fact that each effect had to be compatible with all others likely castrated the design process. Yes, you could combine all the spells in different durations, but in order to do so, Beth had to make all the spells basically the same. Your new spell was not some fantastically new thing, but just a standard animation that looked identical to other customized spells. The only difference was the precise effect it had on the enemies. But since you could combine any effect, the magic all had to behave the same way. Whether you electrocuted your enemy or used fire, it made no difference for how the spell performed. All that happened was a small blob moved through the air to your enemy. This is the spreadsheet element Todd complains about. The magic was no longer magic, as there was no feeling that you were wielding anything unique. Spells were basically reduced to their stat effects. My hope for the new system is that it kind of borrows from Bioshock's plasmids, which felt alive and worked well in combinations with one another. The classic example is shocking your opponent, which temporarily froze them, and then moving in with the wrench. Bioshock also gave spells different strengths and weaknesses (certain spells worked better against certain enemies), something Skyrim seems to be adopting. Spells working in tandem also seems more realistic, as you are harnessing some magical power, as opposed to having some ingredients that you can just mix together perfectly. You can still combine effects, but in a more lifelike way. Magic isn't alchemy...

That being said, I will likely miss it all the same. Feel free to accuse me of being in denial of my own personal torment.

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

Until I've seen how it all works for myself, I won't be able to say for sure how I feel about this change. But I think I like it, because it did seem to take some of the magic out of magic, being able to create my own spells that more or less made me too powerful and took away any form of a challenge. As long as we still have the option to enchant weapons/armor/clothes...I think I'll be satisfied.

I'm a bit confused as to how this magic system actually works.

Alot of people say "tap for fireball, hold for flame thrower, point at ground for rune" but it says clearly in the OP that you can charge a fire ball... negating this theory. So are all these effects seperate spells?

Back to the topic, I think new spell effects are great. Count how many fire spells there are in oblivion and theres only one damn effect. I hope its not just fire that they are experimenting with though, and we can fire ice spikes, spray to make ice walls, and shoot pure sith lightning out of our hands too. As for spell creation- I think they can make it work. Even if its just "choose spell effects, then adjust magicka drain for duriation/power". I agree with not making it spreadsheety, but its really robbing the RPG elements from the game to not let us make spells in some way shape or form...

Well you can't block with spells, so I'd imagine that key is used.

Hmm... whats to say you can't block with two spells? Could make an awsome defensive player if they leveled up block and hand to hand to block without weapons, then had a summon spell and a shield spell XD

I think you can charge up the fireball if you equip it in both hands and hold both buttons down.

The trailer shows a wizard charging up a spell with both of his hands.

I'm a huge supporter of the new system. The new system sounds like it'll be great. I think something like Combat/stealth/Magic isn't gonna get worse in this game with this new engine. They probably considered everything pretty well, and they decided that this way is best (sounds good to me to), and I'll believe it until i see otherwise.

I sincerely think it's PR swill. I don't buy any of this "mystery" stuff. The advantage, to Beth, of removing spellmaking is that it's one less thing the devs have to deal with. They won't need to include code to correctly represent any potential amount of damage of any potential effect cast any potential way. Instead they can just code that this spell does this and that spell does that and the game can just regurgitate the appropriate animations and figure the appropriate damage and be done with it. This "our main goal is to make magic feel like this arcane powerful thing" stuff is just contrived rhetoric to put a pretty face on the fact that Beth is, once again, cutting corners.

yeah, I was wondering about the two hand thing too. I think It's been confirmed you can put it in two hands for extra power... but in the video it seem to tranform it into an AOE.... so many questions!!!

This combining spells business is interesting. So I'm being attacked by a wild Boar in a farmers field and I launch a fireball from my right hand and a frost spell from my left, does that mean I end up with steamed pork in vegetables?

This is my feeling. I know they don't have to be mutually exclusive. From a technological standpoint it can be done and balanced appropriately.
The only reason I have heard justifies this is the "too spreadsheety" feeling, which can be fixed as well.

Honestly I feel that without spellmaking, no matter how cool the make the new system (which it seems good), there won't be any magic in magic...

I very much agree with you.
Spellmaking not being in is the single worst news so far.

link to where spell making being removed is confirmed please unless it was that italian magazine which i wont believe cause it could easily be a mistranslation

Todd pretty much said it wasn't in, at this time.

Nice :thumbsup:

I agree, but not quite so vigorously.

Removing an optional "crafting" system while they're proceeding to add new ones makes no sense. Removing an optional, non-intrusive crafting process makes the game more fun? Really?

Also, Bethesda has a history of not doing a good job with "spreadsheet numbers", which is why a ton of mods come out to fix or (greatly) improve their stats and game balance. In Morrowind there were mods from Wakim, Taddeus, BTB, etc. In Oblivion there was FCOM/OO and many others. So hiding the numbers, especially if they hardcode them or don't provide access in the Creation Kit is a bad, bad idea (though we don't know whether this will happen). In every TES game, Bethesda puts out spells that are useless because of bad design. Temporarily hiding this from players will just be frustrating, not fun.

Also, how about mods like Mighty Magic and Supreme Magicka? Or Morrowind mods like Scripted Spells, Elemental Magic, etc. These are extremely popular mods that made magic fun, and... useful. The fact that for every TES game magic is done better by modders than by Bethesda doesn't give me hopes for an overhaul that (potentially) limits the ability of modders to fix the overhaul.

Just sayin'.

If you have become a more skilled and powerful mage than they, why should you still need to rely on them for new spells? I felt one of the things that really set the player mage apart was his/her ability to create new and powerful spells that none of the other mages had the likes of. It highlighted you as a true master amongst masters of the craft.

It would seem to me that adding a completly new crafting system can be easier than overhauling an existing one and making the crafting part of it compatible. If they add spellmaking do you have the option to make it on target, rune, flamethrower, two handed? Will alteration spells follow the same procedure. Example, you make a fire destruction spell combined with alterations fire shield on self. Do you select a duration for both? Does both effects apply to on target spells, does it also apply to rune, flamethrower and two handed? If so and the destruction part has a 10 sec duration, does the damage from duration start at the beginning of flamethrower or after you stop. Or since it's more than 1 sec and costs more magicka does that extra cost in magicka for the 10 sec duration apply the entire time you flamethrow? or does it only kick in the extra magicka cost when you stop and the damage ticks off for another 10 sec? Can you do a two handed Fire Shield from alteration that you combined with your fire destruction spell? If you choose to use the custom fire destruction/fire shield spell two handed does it apply to both effects or only to the destruction part and the fire shield just fires like normal. What if you choose to lay down this custom spell as a rune, what happens to the fire shield part. Does the enemy that triggers this rune get the fire shield or does it apply to you once it is triggered or at the time of casting it? How would adding a weakness to fire or magicka work on a rune or two handed or charged or flamethrower combined with a damage spell?

We don't know enough about the new system to really say it would be easy or hard to have spellmaking. I think my questions above give an idea of how the new spell system might, at least in my mind, cause complications. If anyone knows the answers to the questions I have above about my example of a fire damage/fire shield spell (which I used for a fire themed mage in OB. I believe it was fire on target 5 damage for 3 sec. and fire shield 20 sec on self as I was lower level and not much magicka to make stronger) please let us know. Since we can use spells in multiple ways with the new system how will it work when you combine different effects. If it was only destruction (fire, frost, lightning) it would be simple and no reason not to have spellmaking.

Edit: By the way, I also had a "Healing Flame" custom spell that did fire damage on touch and restore health on self. Kind of like I was using fire to damage my enemy and transfer the damage in the form of health to myself. If you used that spell as a rune on who and when would the restore health part kick in?

The magic system in Skyrim is going to be different than in previous games. In previous games, you were just playing with numbers (magnitude, duration, area, etc) and effects (fire, ice, reflect, etc). In Skyrim, you're going to have a multitude of possibilities for a given effect, like a wall of fire, a bomb, etc. The old spellmaking system was removed because it simply doesn't fit. It would have to be redone to work.

So between the extra work needed to make spellmaking work again, and the general feeling that the degree of spellmaking in previous games cheapened the concept of magic... they just felt it wasn't worth it, and I'd agree. Besides, in its place, we get the enchanting skill back again. Warriors have smithing, thieves have alchemy, mages have enchanting. Having spellmaking in addition to those three would de-balance the system in favor of mages, who can already become rediculously powerful by end-game. Not to forget, we can dual-wield spells, so we can still make up combos.

Well if each spell effect has a list of effects, such as a flame spell having a trap, flamethrower, and fireball (maybe more) then we could have spellmaking if they gave us control of each effect.

So making one spell, we could modify the "spell effects" of each version of the spell. So if I want a spell with fire damage on enemy and healing on me, I could just alter each "state" of the spell.
So I could give the fire trap a 10pts fire damage for 5 seconds on target (exact "targets" might be different, but im going to use terminology we are common with) and heal 8pts for 4 seconds on self, self being caster, on target being the enemy to activate it (other terms will likely be developed, but whatever). Then I could make the flamethrower state to be fire damage 3 pts for 2 seconds on target and heal 2 pts for 2 seconds on self. It would be like 1 spell being a few spells combined, it also has a lot of freedom.

Its possible, they could give us all of the control (which I would prefer) or work out a default routine. It could be done, and thats what aggrivates me, it can be done and yet we might not get it.

Techincally, they haven't actually said that there is no spellmaking whatsoever. They've simply said that there is no spellmaking in the traditional sense. Tbh though, if Spellmaking is removed completely and the spellcasting system greatly improved, I don't see how this will be any worse than 90% of all other RPGs out there. The ES spellmaking was fairly unique and yet, neither the Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age, Might and Magic, Fable, Diablo or Final Fantasy series seemed to suffer alot from the lack of spellmaking.

Besides, what's there to stop Modders from designing their own Spellmaking or Semi-spellmaking mods or Bethesda from adding those in a DLC? Very little, I think.

Depends on if the spells are hardcoded. If spells are made without the idea of custom spells, then they will likely all be their own hard coded spell.
And if they are hard coded, modders are going to have a much more difficult time getting custom spells in game. Even then, why remove it from the console users?

And TES gameplay is very different from those games, and quite frankly a lot better. For good reason I might add.

Sorry - this might be a minor point, but that's simply wrong. Go into Oblivion right now. Make three spells - on-target, area-of-effect shock, fire and frost. Go out and cast them, then come back and tell us again that they're all "identical" and that "the only difference was the precise effect it had on the enemies."

In point of fact, an on-target, area-of-effect fire spell travels in a ball that explodes out to the area-of-effect when it comes in contact with a target. An on-target, area-of-effect shock spell travels in a bolt that hits any target within the area of effect, then jumps from that target to any other target within range and continues to jump from target to target, even turning corners if there's a target within range. And an on-target, area-of-effect frost spell travels in a cylinder the size of the area of effect and hits everything within that cylinder, regardless of range. Those are obviously different effects. And the effects can be combined with whichever one is the most magicka expensive determining the animation used and thus the way the spell works, so, for instance, you can cast a combined frost and shock spell that travels in the cylinder of a frost spell, or a combined fire and shock spell that travels as a bolt and jumps from target to target, or what-have-you.



This. So much this. I have no idea why anyone trusts the company that gave us Finger of the Mountain to put together practical and useful spells. In every game yet, spellmaking was not only an option but pretty much a requirement for any fairly serious mage, just because Beth's premade spells svck so badly.



So? Presuming that to be the case, they could simply redo it. Are we to expect them to eliminate everything that might need to be redone?


What "general feeling?" I've never heard this "general feeling" expressed before.


What is this? A negotiation? We're supposed to be pleased that Beth removes something so long as they give us something else "in its place?" What are we? Beggars holding out grubby palms, willing to settle for whatever Beth decides to grant us?


I stand by my earlier statement - presuming that spellmaking is indeed to be removed, it's simply in order to save time and money - in order to have one less thing that the devs have to concern themselves with. Instead of going to all the trouble of designing a system whereby we could make custom spells, they can just list a bunch of premade ones and cue up the prerecorded effects that go with them as necessary. This isn't the sort of decision that's made by game devs - it's the sort of decision that's made by some committee after a power point presentation from a team of accountants. All this stuff about mystery and making magic feel like some arcane power and eliminating this purported "spread-sheety" feeling (a complaint that I've NEVER heard anyone in the community make) is just PR fluff to try to divert attention from the fact that, once again, Beth is cutting corners and eliminating gameplay options.

Spellmaking had one big problem: It didn't had much variety. Sure, you could mix effects but they always took form of a touch, a ball, or an explosion. For example with fire you could do a fire touch, fire ball and a bigger fireball. What we're missing here are the more interesting elements like, how about a fire wall, a fire beam, a fire field, a flamethrower, a fire rain or even a meteor strike from the air?