If you've ever lived in the mountains you'd know there's no way skyrim's mountains are even close to life sized. That composite picture you posted gives no sense of scale. But compare these two pictures:

http://cms.elderscrolls.com/sites/default/files/tes/screenshots/DragonMountains_wLegal.jpg
http://www.citypictures.org/data/media/222/The_Dolomites_Alps_Italy.jpg

Notice that one of those pictures has a few dozen trees, while the other has thousands of trees at the base of the mountain. The mountains in Skyrim will look bigger than they actually are because Beth is using some creative fogging and DOF techniques. But there's a very good reason that the mountains aren't like real mountains - there's no way you could fit Skyrim with realistic mountains into a 16 square mile game world.

By that same train of thought, a Warrior shouldn't be able to move while fighting & should constantly lose health.

I really don't think removing athletics and acrobatics gets rid of the possibility of jump or haste spells.


No that's not the same train of thought at all. It makes sense that levitation should constantly drain magicka. But even if they could implement a better AI system than morrowind's when it comes to levitation, you'd still be invincible to non-ranged attacks.

They could make it so you cannot levitate in or near the major cities.
Like in mournhold.
I also like the idea of a loading screen above the city.

I hope levitation isnt out. It was the single thing in Morrowind that made the place truly 3d and open world.
You could travel in any direction you chose, no place on the map was out of bounds.
Oblivion not having levitation bled through into other aspects of the game. The dungeons were a prime example of that.
They were usually just one long winding flat path, just a to b to c over a flat surface.
Or in Oblivion gates it was also glaring that the world was flat and linear. How often did I not wish to levitate over a stupid barrier, but no, I have to run the same boring gauntlet for the 20th time.

Levitation not being in is a rumour that I do not care for at all.
The very last thing I want is Skyrim designed with us being stuck on a flat surface the entire time. Like barriers you cant jump, forcing you to take the longer path.
It will be boring, lame and annoying.

With spellmaking, attributes and classes being out I sure hope they do their best to keep the core RPG feel of TES.
As it stands I get the sneaky feeling more and more that they are designing an action adventure, and Im not happy with that.

Also: Levitation was never overpowered. It simply wasnt. Even in Morrowind vanilla there are some decent examples of NPC's dealing with a levitating foe in a quite deadly way.
And if a flying opponent cant be hit by a non ranging character, well, thats the entire point.
Im a mage and would rather stay away from those swords I have poor defence against.
Furthermore levitation has always been magicka expensive and slow.

It really is getting tiresome to read through all your pointless posts. Have a good day.

I really don't want areas of dungeons that are only accessible to mages using levitation. Unless they also put in some kinds of areas that are somehow only accessible using combat or stealth skills, I just don't like the idea of dungeon design that focuses on levitation.

It certainly adds to their necessity. Which doesn't make it any more likely that they'll be included.

It wouldn't have to be imbalanced if done properly. As long as all three basic archetypes have a method of completing a task or getting from point A to point B with a relatively equal challenge, I don't see the problem as being levitation.

Maybe levitating over a city's wall loads its world space. All we know about this is that walls load you.

Yeah i thought this might be the case. It svcks because levitation really gives you that badass-god feel that you just can't get from anything else and also adds some cool design possibilities. I think we will see a return in future TES. Have no fear

Still, every single puzzle, obstacle, and dungeon layout would have to be made with the consideration of "what if the player just levitates past this?" This limits what they can do with dungeon design, and the only way I see levitation adding to the dungeons is if they put in areas that are only accessible via levitation.

I would be very surprised if we can't jump anymore.

I was referring to the spell.

Well if you look at Morrowinds dungeons, the addition of levitation made them very complex and interesting. I agree though that levitation caters mainly to magic characters, even if there are potions and enchanted weapons. This would be fixed with a type of http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1163534-a-grappling-hook/. Then non-magic characters will have a means to get up to high places.

if there were such things, I would make levitation limited enough to where it wouldn't be able to go too far beyond how far a grappling hook can reach.

Geez, you made a thread for everything, didn't you?

No big loss. In Morrowind I thought it was pretty cool but could get along just fine without it. Perhaps an idea would be to allow it but cap it's duration to something pretty short, so it can be used to, say, levitate over a small chasm in a dungeon, but not to scale the walls of a city. I don't see the non-magic-user thing as an issue either, they could easily enough just add levitate scrolls to dungeons that require it, in a random container somewhere or something.

yeah i pretty much have. anything that interests me anyway. I haven't made a thread about dragon mounts, or sniper rifles.

I think this is a huge disappointment. there goes the hopes of dragon flying over cities and / or destroying city walls etc Forbidding levitation while this time around there are flying creature. Because the main issue with Oblivion was the lack of flying creatures.What's more what's the point of being dragonborn if you cant fly... I mean if you guys are content with playing a 3d Baldur Gate good for you. But if gameplay doesn't go beyond spot A to spot B no need to have a 3d engine. I suggest we make it a lego Elder scrolls for the guys who can only play it on consoles. Or better use the Morrowind engine so it can run on older consoles I dont see how the mountain gameplay is broken I thought they were just here to make the map looks bigger I dont know what difference there will be because whether you are walking up the stairs or flying above doesnt change much. Also it can be made into a shout made only available late in the game. similarly the spell can be made available only at this point in the game no big deal.

Personally, I think that the loss of levitation, jump, and slowfall was one of the largest disappointments of the otherwise quite good Oblivion.
Many here have seen a solution that was ignored when considering levitation and closed-cell cities: The idea of a "roof" to the city that causes a cell load.
As far as the unbalanced argument, levitation could, instead of having a solid cost, burn your magicka at a different rate depending on how fast you're moving.
Another person brought up the lack of a good animation, but that could be achieved by using an animation where the caster floats a little bit like the liches did in Oblivion.
If there was a constant magicka burn rate, it would make it much harder for a mage to throw spells at grounded warriors, but not impossible.
As far as the idea of equalising of skill types, there could be areas that you need use a warrior's strength to break a barrier or use a thief's dexterity to disarm a trap, or things like that.
The only limits are how far the game's designers are willing to go.

Am I the only one that sees fighting the agile, fast, flying dragon with a slow moving, clumsy levitation spell is an awful idea?

I say this!!

-You levitate to a certain altitude in a certain radius outside the city.

-The city will render and load up

-You have successfully flown over the city wall.

And then they'd have to fix a system where you loaded the new world space and entered it specifically where you were in the previous cell.
It CAN be done, ofc. But it's a lot of additional work for a spell that doesn't seem to fit very well with the new, more fast paced, combat system.
As for exploration, I couldn't care less but seems to me like it'd give mage classes a big advantage.

The new Warrior hack n' slash focused, screw those wimpy Mages combat system?
That's what I keep hearing from the non-Mage players.

Guys don't be mad about walled cities, and consequently no levitation. They initially said cities would be open. They clearly tried, but due to something (perhaps performance issues?) they had to wall them off and make them separate. Give them some recognition for attempting to have them open.

I said something like that earlier. I don't know why they wouldn't be able to do this.