this thread is about why I think not being able to create spells in skyrim is, despite the claims of other's, a good thing.

spells in both morrowind and oblivion were all, essentially, the same effect; a different colour glow, with the exception of lighting and fire. Drain health, water walking, heal, all the same effect with maybe something like a colour being altered, or maybe the size of the glowing ball.
this essentially means that making a spell is easy, change the colour of the glow, the size, maybe a few other values like damage, are all easily customizable.

I'm not trying to bash any games, let's get that straight before I continue

anyway, my hope is that the reason they're taking out spell creation, is because they're creating unique effects and animations for each spell. A flame thrower effect, an icicle to throw, A lot of different things could be done than a different colour glow.

changing the damage of these effects would be redundant since you'll probably be able to buy different damages of the spell: weak flame thrower, strong, etc.

anyway, this is why I think taking out spell creation is a good thing, but I would like to hear everyone else's opinions :thumbsup:

You got some guts, I'll give ya that.

Ps: I'm still hoping spellmaking gets turned into enchanting paper and turning it into scrolls.

I agree, even if it's reluctantly. I will miss spellmaking in concept, but ultimately I think they wouldn't dispose of it unless they feel they've devised a more potent, usable magic system.

You can find my more detailed reasoning on the last page of the topic in my sig. Check it out if you wish.

I'm ok with it being out, but it needs to be replaced with something a lot better than some pretty visual effects, there should be gameplay possibilities to replace spellmaking. More spells to buy, the ability to manipulate magic through perks, and in-combat spellcasting being as good as the GI combat update claims would be a good start.

Do we KNOW it's out for sure? I surely hope not, I don't care about unqiue animations, I want to have fun and make my own stuff. It if really is out, the people saying it's going way way too casual may be right

I believe it will be a good thing too because in truth the old magic system altogether wasn't very deep. It lacked creativity and the spell creation system itself was really evidence of that fact. You had a handful of different types of spells that had limited variation that could be tweaked just a little. If the magic system is truly overhauled we will see creative spells like those featured in Midas Magic mod and other games where the amount of spells available to you were actually neat rather than "now I can make my fireball damage X, its aoe X" etc.

o thats an idea i havent seen before. that'd be so great...

If it is true, it'll be odd to have such a bedrock TES feature gone.

I disagree

I was wondering the same thing, I've seen people talking about how it is out but I seem to have missed the article or whatever it was that revealed spellmaking was out. Anyway the thing I am really going to miss is creative spells that I don't think will be possible without custom spellmaking. For instance my pure mage type character in Oblivion has a bound sword/fortify blade/fortify strength/ shield/reflect damage spell that turns her into a pretty powerful warrior for a brief period. I don't think this will be possible in Skyrim, which makes me kind of sad, but I'm really optimistic for Skyrim regardless.

God i can't stand to see this any more, the word casual is not a derogatory term in any way, shape or form.

A casual player is someone who plays when he has the chance, someone who structures playing time around their real life. A hardcoe player is someone who structures their life around their playing time. Neither term has anything to do with difficulty or with depth.

It needs to be in, but better implemented.

I agree with this.
Though i mostly played assassin types or paladin types.
I thought the spells and effects were'nt very good in oblivion.
I wasn't interested in spell making either,apart from naming them.
Same spell effect but with bigger numbers....i found it boring to be honest.
I think the new way may be better,with more effects and perks if they make a difference. It could be way better.

Creating spells should still be in the game, no matter how much deeper the spells are. Nothing you pointed out about spellmaking would make the game any less good.

I've read every page of that thread and I agree with ALL your points :foodndrink:


it's a bedrock feature?


care to explain why?


I agree with this also, oh and when people say mainstreaming is derogatory

Perhaps they made the spells to complex in coding that making new ones and mixing effects would be a coding nightmare and found it completely unfeasable?

I would like to point out that it is short sighted to believe that Todd or any of the other team members at Bethesda are against the idea of spell making. I would reckon they want it in the game as much as any of the fans. But they have constraints put upon them as designers. They are limited by both time and money available. They even said they want to implement a spell combination system, but may not have enough time to do it before release, so it is still up in the air.

Balancing a huge project like this can be difficult. They not only need to balance their resources but any smart developer will set aside resources for correcting errors. Time is spent to find unpredictable errors and problems. Remember when they needed to remove the AI system from Oblivion? Do you think that was planned? Of course not! They had already devoted a large (and who knows really how large) amount of time and resources just developing the system! Only to see it be taken out later in the project. I am sure it was disheartening to them as it was to any fan.

The spell creation system may really be too much of a gamble development project if they are really implementing a much deeper and richer magic system. They want to put it in as much as anyone, but right now they can't say "its in" without a doubt I would imagine.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Also to note:
Frost appears on the skin and slows enemies.
Fire keeps burning enemies.
Making a spell using these two effects does not make sense to me,not at the same time.
How can you burn and freeze someone at the same time....NO thanks. it doesn't make sense and it's overpowered too.

I agree. The qustom spells allowed for some exploits too. Like you could cast a charm spell for 2 seconds on a shopkeeper and fortify personality on yourself and you'd always great prices.

Oh instead of whinning over the usage of certain words , how about actually repsonding the opinions being made. Besides, I did not mentioned player s at any point, I was talking about the GAME being casual, a term I personally use to describe games that do not much support putting a lot of time and effort into deeper elements of the game, such as spellmaking and lore- But instead heavily relies on the content the devs have made, and doesn't let the player do things for himself, this also can apply to a armor system with less options, level scaling preventing hard battles ect ect

Yeah, so instead of improving upon the system, we remove it?

my thought is that with all these unique animations and effects. it would cost a lot of resources to make a spell making system that would likely end up sub-par with time constraints

to be fair it did make all the spells feel samey.


And then there were all the exploits.


Charm 100 on touch and Fortify Mercentile 100 on self for 1 sec. = loads a money

Weakness stacking, allowing you take out pretty much any enemy in a few spells.

Damage on enemy and invisibility on self, the enemy could not fight back

Feather stacking, rendering encumberence obsolete.

To name but few.

Maybe there will not be a multitude of spells with the same effect. Maybe you just do more damage with the same spell (or cast it for less magicka) as your skill increases?

Or, maybe the amount of magicka you pump into the spell is determined by how long you hold down a key/button. So you could just tap the key/button when you cast a fireball in order to roast a mudcrab, for example. Then you could hold the key/button for a long time in order to torch a village.

Could be.

When I first played Morrowind I thought spell creation was one of the coolest features around. If anything I would like to see a more advanced spell creation system but if they can't make it a lot better than oblivions then forget it.. waste of time. On a second note if there is 85 spells and you have the ability to combine spells to make up a diffrent effect... well that would be amazing I want fire in 1 hand Ice in another and casting them together would make http://www.livevideo.com/video/D5E50EFDB56C4378989F7B9DB729E346/water-style-water-dragon-juts.aspx

Ok maybe that's a little overpowered but you get my drift.