All I ever used Spellmaking for was to specify ranges for individual characters. My Orcish Spellsword obviously isn't quite as capable as an Altmer, so I adjust some base values to make some spells more user friendly to my character. I neve really got into multiple effects or anything like that. Given what I've read about the new magic system I doubt I will personally need the Spellmaking feature (unless they do it so that Orcs can't get a decent amount of Magicka), that being said I will miss it.

So just to clarify - you support the proposition that removing game depth to add graphical changes is a good thing.

Why not just go watch a movie if you want fancy special effects?

This is all of course presuming that they are creating a special effect for each and every spell...which according to the OP is nothing more than a hope. Can you answer why it will be a good thing that there is no spellmaking if the graphical effects are similar to those featured in Oblivion and Morrowind?

Not even that, there's no reason why fancy animations can't be done with the old system. Hell, you could even go the oblivion route and just use the strongest effect to define everything, but with those fancy havok animations, blending animations to create unique ones for each combination isn't actually far fetched at all.

The spellmaking in TES has always struck me as a system created by an engineer, not an artist. It is so incredibly bland and devoid of imagination that almost any other system would be superior.

Having said that, I think the idea that REALLY CREATIVE spellmaking is a proven concept. Proven where, you ask? In Magicka! Has anyone here played Magicka? If not, you owe it to yourself to try it out. The game's spellmaking/spellweaving whatever system is absolutely astonishing! But don't take it from me, check out this Youtube video to see some of the ridiculous combos that can be performed with such a system:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-Ght6YDytE

Now I'm not saying Skyrim should copy this system exactly, but it does highlight how creative a spellmaking system can be.

If all you did in the spell creator was adjust the numbers then I can see why you would not miss it, and in my opinion you should just not use it.
The fun of the spell creation system was not in adjusting the strength or duration, it was in the ability to combine multiple effects into one cast.

Without spell creation in past TES games you would never have been able to make spells like:

Frenzy + Invisibilty - start an all out brawl amounst enemies or even just for fun pub fights.
Elemental Resistance (self) + Elemental Damage (self) 10ft - PBAOE fun
Drain Strength + Damage Strength + Burden - lock down a melee and focus on his friends.
Drain fatigue + Damage Fatigue - watch your enemy suffer a bout of narcolepsy, and better yet you can repeat the process and watch them get-up/fall-down endlessly for hillarious fun.
Dispell + Silence - strip that caster of his buffs and shut him up to prevent his heals.
Fortify Strength + Feather - when you really really need to haul 5 briastplates back to town to satisfy your loot-whoring desires and dont want to make 5 seperate trips.
Disintegrate Weapon + Drain Unarmed - take the weapon out of the equation and make only weapon left ineffective.

These are just some examples of a basic system that could be used to make many many varied spells.
Given there are only going to be around 80 spell effects (confirmed and same number of effects as oblivion) without a spell creation system players would be getting seriously short changed in terms of variety.

Certainly glad your not the driving force behind game development then...

Well, the only real spellmaking I ever did was creating my own custom-tweaked gradations of the existing spells. Not something I can't live without, and if they indeed make the audiovisual experience of magic much better, I'd say it's worth it.

Your trying to compare the balancing of an RTS to a single player RPG? :facepalm: Out of context, you say; "an important part of what makes it enjoyable is that so many strategies are viable. This is exactly what spell creation allows in ES games.

Code 2501 is brushing the surface, I'm sure he has more complex creations, but I'll give you a few examples of mine. I had a Necromancer that used 'Ritual' spells that were powerful but would drain his Health, Magicka, Stamina, or some attribute, as a sacrifice. I had a spell that turned me into a Lich for thirty seconds, but drained my health. A spell that fortified a bunch of attributes, but drained stamina etc. Another one I had was a Witch Doctor that used 'Curse' spells, which were debuffs and attribute damages. He then followed up with a Grummite dagger dipped in an accompanying poison. He also used the Heart Attack spell as well. I had a playboy vampire that would rather be at the opera or racetrack than a dungeon and his spells consisted of personality modifiers that could enchant an entire castle. This is only a few of my builds that use some kind of magic. The game-play styles of these builds are vastly different from your usual fantasy character classes. That's what spell creation allows.

Most of those combinations are a massive waste of mana to just mess around with NPCs and/or could be done (more)effectively without a revamped spell system. For example Burden and Drain Strength are just flat out pointless compared to Damage Strength - and the actual goal of those effects(slowing down or stopping movement) will likely be achieved with Frost themed spells in Skyrim. And Drain Unarmed? Are you serious? You'd even be better off casting restore fatigue on yourself if NPCs using fists were ever an actual threat.

Nobody's saying the new system won't be effective, we're saying it kills the feel. You're not casting Hands of Stop Motion, you're casting damage strength and then burden. It also takes you longer to cast, putting more emphasis on large-damage single-shot spells. It's less flexible, and while you can still perform most of the same tasks, it's fiddlier and takes longer to perform.

Longer cast animations were needed in general really - although I would hope it will depend on the power/effect of the spell. Magic was overpowered in Oblivion so some toning down is to be expected - some people won't like it but that's a given whenever things change.

As for the difference between burden and damage strength vs. a spell that directly achieves the same goal, I'm also sure there will be a few other spells that inhibit movement from other schools if some players desperately need the color of it to be red and/or purple.

Morrowind and Oblivion's magic effects were so full of pointlessly redundant effects and burden was one of the worst since NPCs carried so few items it was pointless, I would be glad to see it go.

But this is the whole point. There is, or was, no rule saying everything must be ruthlessly efficient. There is, or was, no rule saying everything must have a practical purpose. NUF, to some of us it is all about NUF. With spell making there was NUF, with spell making removed there is, potentially and as yet we have no alternative, far less NUF.

Ah, yes. The word NUF doesn't actually exist does it?
OK, I admit it, NUF is a word I just made up. I did this because I'm sad, sick, amazed to see so many people arguing so incessantly against something that some find fun.

Ive noticed a trend, people who mainly play warrior/melee types dont give a care about spellmaking but those who play a mage do. Part of the fun of being a mage in TES is that you can interact with NPCs in a way different to just killing them with your axe. Only giving me new way to just kill, while welcome, does dumb the whole mage experience down.

Way to go reading a post, bro :rolleyes:. I was just making the point that it being a single player game doesn't mean that a well-balanced game shouldn't be an aim for the designers. No more comparison beyond that. Maybe you should have read the rest of the post to see what I was actually saying about the role of balancing in TES?

But anyway: I didn't mean to imply spell-making should be out because it was unbalanced or anything like that. I agree that it did allow for a lot of interesting strategies. Indeed, I've made this point in a bunch of places as well. And I'm yet to be convinced that what we've learned about "customisation by casting" will be an adequate replacement.

I play primarily magic based characters + stealth.

Spells to mess around with NPCs can be done with construction set if you only want them to be your puppets. I actually want combat to involve some actual challenge, and magic being so powerful and exploitable ruined that completely in Oblivion - it was practically impossible to die if you used magic right.

So I would argue that Oblivion's magic system "dumbed" combat in general down, and Skyrim sounds like a major improvement.

As long as there are powerfull spells ingame I won't care...

When you say "done right" do you mean exploited? In oblivion so much stuff could be exploited that it's not fair to pick on spell making. In a singleplayer game it comes down to the player restraining themselves rather then the developer. Like 100 chameleon and spell chaining were to me exploits so I didnt use them. People made overpowered spells and now are complaining about how its the fault of spellmaking.

Wait.
You are saying that walk on water is the same as drain health ? :shocking: :shakehead:

It was the fault of spell making as well as overpowered stacking enchants and simply overpowered spell effects. You can't blame players for using the tools given to them in the vanilla game, without using the console cheats or construction set.

Combat difficulty should not depend on players deciding how to limit themselves. There are plenty of single player games with fun and challenging combat that don't require you to handicap yourself.

There was different effects. Different textures, different animations.

Unique animations for every spell [effect] can be easy customisable as well.

I don't mind extremely powerful spells. 100 chameleon make things too easy? Well, of course - it would! Just make sure it's expensive to buy, requires a high skill level, chews up lots of mana. Make your character earn it.

I think the balancing spell-making needed was how it interacted with increasing magic skills - it was too easy to use spell-making to increase your magic skills at an artificially high rate. That was the immersion breaking exploit.

What do you expect the ai to do when it gets hit by two 100% weakness to fire spells (1000x total), then a fireball from a wizard with 100% chameleon? No i think I little bit of self control from players would help the situation way more then simply removing a unque toy like spell making.
If at the start of Skyrim there was a "I WIN" button put in my the dev, a tool as you say, would you press it? Youd win, but you would also take the fun out of the game. Thats what i'm trying to get across about how some people used spell making.

Spellmaking should definetly not be like in Oblivion, but I have to admit that the spellmaking done in Morrowind was superb. Since you had to visit different spellmakers to make different spells, it felt more rewarding than it did in Oblivion. The fact that you can have custom spells, makes a better roleplaying experience, since it makes it possible to play the game the way you want, and not necessarily the way the devs intended.

I did read your post, then I said out of context, what I highlighted is the reason for spell creation. I know what I quoted wasn't about what your point was. I was just using it to say thats what I like about the strategies spell creation allows. I just don't think Beth needs to go overboard with balancing if it means cutting things out. It takes as much restrain to turn the difficulty to 1, as it does to make an OPed spell.

If it has indeed been 'outed' I think it's an indication of how games are becoming more linear and starting to lack depth and complexity. I'm not complaining but It'll be interesting to see how it's reworked.