Oblivion and Morrowind are NOT good examples to use as "balance"

Oblivion: Start leveling any non-combat skills, and getting less than x5 multipliers in Endurance = good luck to you trying to face down the scaling mobs. Want to be a thief who focuses on sneaking and lockpicking? You're boned.

Morrowind: Learn how to maximize Alchemy and Spellmaking = god mode.

Met a centurion master yet?
They are very boss on level 50.
Regardless.
The point of the thread is to show destruction is viable which is a fail.
Destruction is only and only viable with tricks and allowances, it is not viable at all with core gameplay in mind.

Sheer fact is simple.
The removal of spellmaking means no more magic in TES.

Further, you can do a power attack with a sliver of stamina. Casting a spell with a sliver of magicka? Not so much.

Yes this one big spell greatly drains your magic reserve, I've never seen it cost so much to cast anything in any Elder Scrolls game.

Charm in Daggerall.
But that is beside the point.

The point is that when we once had a beautiful box full of crayons we now have blue and only blue.
You cannot talk the magic in this game right. There is no way. It is a gimp, and a loss any way you look at it.
Anyone that says its an improvement has been proven wrong by the mechanics of the game.

Spellmaking has nothing to do with it. The loss of Spellmaking is way too overblown around here.

And before you say it - been playing since Morrowind. Not new to Elder Scrolls. Used Spellmaking plenty, especially in Morrowind. In fact, it's one of my favorite parts of that game. It's not missed in Skyrim.

Also, before you say it - I'm not saying Skyrim magic is perfect. There are aspects of Morrowind (and Oblivion) that I prefer with the magic system. That said, as a whole, I prefer Skyrim's magic system.

I think people generalize these arguments too much and get off track. They get too caught up with words like DPS and thinking it's their duty to defend a game when their argument completely misses the point. Destruction magic is well... it's [censored] DESTRUCTION magic. It should be able to do a fair amount of damage. That's it's only purpose, and it fails at that. When I wield destruction magic, I should feel like I can put out some damage. That isn't the case. This is what needs some tweaking. You can feel like force to be reckoned with any other damage source but DESTRUCTION magic (this is without even factoring all the ways to increase melee damage).

I don't really see why people bother trying to argue against this. The only way that you can even try to make a half coherent argument without sounding completely foolish is to over generalize and use the term "mage" instead of "destruction" like the OP did. In that case, you're completely missing the point.

Sure it is overblown when the one feature that ensured your economic survival is gutted.
Want everything dollars and cents?
Fine.
There never would have been a Daggerfall without spellmaking. Without spellmaking Arena is another dungeon crawler.
And that is the sheer truth.
No spellmaking, no Daggerfall.
No oblivion and no skyrim.

Spellmaking is the series.

They removed it, fine.
Better have a very, very, very good TES VII, cause 5 did not cut it.
Want to get lost in the generics? continue this path.

I am not in the habit of giving eternal chances.

It's harder? Hmmm...haven't noticed that. I do just fine on master difficulty.

Let me guess, you tried maxing out destro and then wondered why you can't stay alive, right?

If so, you might want to leave your min/max mindset back with the sparkle dragons in your MMO. You can put it on the shelf right next to that bottle of DPS.

Now I'm off to Skyrim with my dest/rest mage, who uses no weapons and wears robes. The mage who has no trouble staying alive.

Enjoy the cry-fest. I'll leave a box of tissues on the table.

Skyrim's magic system is great if you prefer flash over substance. I suppose it's adored by the Call of Duty fans. I cannot wrap my mind around how any Elder Scrolls fan could actually prefer Skyrim's hollow shell of a magic system to the previous games. The only area where it improves on the older games is the (graphical) spell effects.

Are you serious?
It has about one tenth of the effects Daggerfall had.
What is it, like ten per school?
Pitiful.

I found that Spellmaking made Oblivion less fun because I would just obsess over making uber-spells instead of simply enjoying the game. It's one thing to say "I think the destruction spells in Skyrim should scale like the weapon damage," which is probably a fair request, but I don't think it's fair to say "This game svcks because the thing I liked about the previous games in the series is gone."

How about varitey? It's nice to have spells that differ in something other than a number value. If you get off on numbers, go hump a calculator.

Pretty much. It was an apparent compromise (like a lot of things apparently). Id take the endless customization and RP potential of spell creation, over flash any day. And its not like they are mutually exclusive anyway. You can have 'flash' and substance with spell creation. Especially since a lot of SC advocates don't even care about 'flash', so give them generic animations of the first effect, or let us choose effect animation. The hardest part would be mixing the effects properly, and even that wouldn't be too hard. (apparent) Time and hardware limitations were the bane of SC. Mods are great and Im sure SC is on the top of the mods 'to do' list, but everybody should have the option in vanilla.

Sorry, I meant graphical effects.


Wait, what? Skyrim has a tiny handful of pre-fab spells, which don't scale, leaving a mage using 4 or 5 spells at most by the end of the game. Spellmaking in previous games had an endless variety of custom spells, built upon a far greater number of actual spell mechanics, which were removed from Skyrim.

Well, play Dagon Age one and you get a more customisable, more roleplaying, more useful, more utalitarian, and more thought out spell system than Skyrim.
Hey, you know, two spells can actually combine to give a third effect.
Hey, low level spells are not useless above level 15.

Skyrim magic svcks
It is bland
I do not think anyone can rightfully defend it without ulterior motives.

Playing Pure mage on master difficulty without overpowered enchanting and blacksmithing - Conjuration is amazing thing.

I find mage alot more fun to play then warrior

TW2 SC>DAO

Its sad when Two Worlds has a major mechanic that an ES doesn't.

I'm sorry but, what is your point? It's pretty well established that conjuration is powerful. The issue here is regarding Destruction.

You gotta ask, why are these people defending this?

Now there are two choices.
One they have not played a mage.
Two it does not matter what you say or what it is about, people will say the opposite to 'defend their turf' .

Indeed.
The removal of spellmaking is undefendable. Undefendable.

I just wish there were more spells to use honestly- I think Destruction magic is just fine and that magic as a whole is pretty okay. If anything I would
suggest that they make magic more "effective" versus enemies with weaknesses, as whenever I use Destruction I just spam flames and never
touch up on Frost or Lightning since it's the most effective damage wise in my experiences.

Skyrim could use more spells, it has a starving variety. Magic isn't broken to me, it's just a little bland.

:cryvaultboy:

Yes I agree with that. Its like a human with no skin. No detail a shell of your former self. A shadow or a shade of your former self. The magic system is a husk compared to what it was for decades. It was one of the best parts of Oblivion and I loved it in Morrowind. Yes they may be proven wrong by mechanics but they will not admit it with the newness of Skyrim lingering.

When you used the word weaknesses, it gave me an idea. Just bring back weakness spells. They are already alchemical effects (weakness to frost/fire/lightning), just make them spells again. Have them more balanced than they were in Oblivion and your set. Perhaps some sort of weakness scale, or something. That would give us more play style options, while fixing the problem until they find a way to scale destruction.

1. When you say "they have not played a mage," you should be more specific. "They have not played a level 50+ mage who completely forgoes other means of dealing damage besides destruction spells." And you're probably right; most of the people defending destruction have not tried to use it COMPLETELY EXCLUSIVELY. The only reason to do this would be to avoid leveling too fast (by not raising your other skills too much), or for role-playing reasons. Neither of these reasons is particularly compelling for me personally. Out of curiosity, why do you feel the need to make your way through the game with only destruction?
2. Spellmaking was never an essential part of the Oblivion (although clearly you disagree) and many players felt the need to avoid it because it was potentially unbalancing, similar to the enchanting+alchemy 'exploits' in skyrim. If the next Elder Scrolls game didn't have +alchemy enchantments or +enchantment potions, I'd be fine with it.
3. People are going to argue against you if they perceive that you are being pompous, closed-minded, or rude, even if there is truth to what you are saying. They do not need any 'ulterior motives.' (LOL, what could that really mean in this context anyway? We were bribed by the School of Destruction?)

1. Thats a lie. WE use other skills. Why does everyone assume they are only using destro?
2. Other skills can be used this way, so even if it wasn't a lie, it's still not fair. Conjuration and Illusion don't have the absolute skill dependency that Destro requires.


When we say destro svcks compared to all other damage skills, thats exactly what we mean. We never said "we only use destro", we are saying it scales like crap and you are better off using a bound bow as a conjurer or daggers as an illusions on Master. It helps NO build except for heavy enchant/alchemy exploiters, it only burdens on high lvls.