You know - playing as a mage i feel like "unfinished".
I really miss all the non-combat magic. In Skyrim you are more of a Battlemage rather then Wizard.
Where all the non-combat spells gone?
Levitate? what about freefall? what happend to jump spell? Open/Close Locks spell? Cats Eye's and Light spell that last for longer then a silly 60sec. Elementa Ressist Buffs.
I remember from P'n'P rpgs that my biggest passion for magic was not that i can blow up a whole village but that i can do common actions... but with magic, and enhanced. My fellow fried trying to light up a campfire or a torch in the middle of rain, and i just shot my fingers and kazaam - theres the light. Conjuring magical horse, walk on water, breath in water, lift objects with my magic, control the wather - summon blizzard, rain, sunny sky - just for the heck of it, because i can. Place magical forcefiel, make animals not run away from me...
sorry, been day dreaming again.
The point is - Skyrim lacks the "ambient" spells. Magic that doesnt benefits them directly in combat or game. Just make couple of things easier. Theres literaly one such spell in Skyrim. its that ore transmutation spell. I rarely use it - but i am very glad i can. Skyrim wizards looks more like a character from first person shooter and spells more like guns.
Argh, when the hell they finaly launch moddding tools??? >.<
I feel the exact same way. When I became archmage, I realized that I hadn't cast a single spell beyond "point at what you want to die". I hadn't advanced the study of magic in any way, or solved any mysteries or problems that would require magical expertise. Somehow, I had become the archmage not by proving that I could benefit the College, but because my superiors wanted to reward me for having a great aptitude for killing. Then I realized who I was.
So I equipped my character with the archmage's robe and necromancer's amulet and quit the game in the hall of elements. He will wait there until the Nerevarine returns from Akavir. When he does, the archmage will ask him to solve the disappearance of the PSJJJJ. After recovering ancient texts and conferring with wise scholars, he will return with an answer, at which point the archmage will challenge him with a duel. He will kill the archmage and take his stuff, ending the dark age that has fallen over magic in Tamriel.
As far as magic goes, I'd say I agree with most of it. It needs more utility spells. But a lot of those seem to have been rolled into shouts and are excluded because, duplicating features, 1 thing can do what another thing can do. THE HORROR.
Apart from Etheral Form and Hey Skeever Butt there doesn't seem to be much actual utility with shouts. I was expecting whirlwind sprint to at least add something to the game, but the shout and the level design conspire so that you can't use it to do anything interesting like you could with the mobility skills from Daggerfall, Morrowind, and even Oblivion. The others just feel like generic offensive magic.
Skyrim might be the least so out of all of them
Less unbalanced then Daggerfall?
There are few games out there that are
more unbalanced than Daggerfall. It can be broken on the character selection screen if you know what you're doing.
*edit: one of the quotes was incorrectly attributed