tl,dr

College of Winterhold: Good ideas, bad execution. Final grade C+.

Currently halfway through your RTF.  One thing you've stated a few times (and I hear repeatedly) is how useless magic is in Skyrim.

I have two playthroughs in progress.

R is lvl53 archer/mage who can one-shot dragons with dragonbone bow, has finished DG and DB and is now only vulnerable to Deviously Cursed Loot (neither Miraak or Lord Nobcheese from DG had a chance). 

F is a lvl41 mage with no weapon or amour skills, after some difficult times with lvls in the high teens magic is now as effective as the bow, although I do have to use a variety of spells (Conjuring buddies, Frenzy, Mayhem, Runes and direct attacks) to complete objectives and have worked with Alteration, Destruction, Restoration, Conjuration and Illusion whereas bow use (or melée) kind of equates to using only Destruction all the time.

I wonder if this is why this is oft stated of Skyrim magic.  The COW quest being so silly might add to the general opinion of it, I do remember Mages' Guild in Oblivion being better.

Currently halfway through your RTF.  One thing you've stated a few times (and I hear repeatedly) is how useless magic is in Skyrim.

 

I have two playthroughs in progress.

 

R is lvl53 archer/mage who can one-shot dragons with dragonbone bow, has finished DG and DB and is now only vulnerable to Deviously Cursed Loot (neither Miraak or Lord Nobcheese from DG had a chance). 

 

F is a lvl41 mage with no weapon or amour skills, after some difficult times with lvls in the high teens magic is now as effective as the bow, although I do have to use a variety of spells (Conjuring buddies, Frenzy, Mayhem, Runes and direct attacks) to complete objectives and have worked with Alteration, Destruction, Restoration, Conjuration and Illusion whereas bow use (or melée) kind of equates to using only Destruction all the time.

 

I wonder if this is why this is oft stated of Skyrim magic.  The COW quest being so silly might add to the general opinion of it, I do remember Mages' Guild in Oblivion being better.

So this comment made me try to analyze exactly what it is about Skyrim's magic that I particularly like, dislike, and the why of it. Unfortunately, I'm experiencing an extremely painful headache right now (in fact, the screen in front of me is very slightly blurry due to this) and I can't think worth a damn, so this may be... erratic. I'm sort of just thinking while writing here.

Your mention of the mage's guild in Oblivion makes me think that I'm probably operating under a veil of nostalgia - I played the previous games when I was younger, things were easier, and there were more birds singing in the sky.

In earlier games, there were lots and lots of magic effects (I'm not mentioning Daggerfall, because I never tried playing a mage seriously in that game so I have no basis for comparison). If I just compare the number of magic effects in Morrowind -> Oblivion -> Skyrim, not mentioning expansions like blood moon, tribunal, shivering isles, dawnguard, dragonborn, and obviously not talking about mods either, of which there were several that increased magic versatility and variety in all three games.

You know, really, magic isn't useless in Skyrim, not at all. It's just that most of the actions in the game entirely (not  just magic) revolve around:

1. Killing enemies

2. Healing self to avoid being killed

3. Sneaking around enemies to kill them or avoid being killed

Vanilla magic isn't quite as good at killing enemies as ranged or melee weapons, simply because magic uses a fuel source and a sword swing is basically free. Add that to the fact that magic can be integrated into weapons (via enchantments) but weapons cannot be integrated into magic (I'd have no idea even how to begin contemplating doing something that strange). There are many ways to defeat magic users (resistances, wards, drain magic potions, shock spells or enchantments or poisons, some specialized shouts, etc) but fewer ways to defeat weapons users (armor, poisons, some specialized shouts).

Considering that almost every quest or objective in the game involves defeating (killing) enemies along the way, it's easier to get to a high level using a simple weapon+armor combination than it is using destruction+restoration, or, Gods forbid, Illusion. If the Flames spell costs 8 mana per second and costs 14 mana per second, I can do about 56 damage to an enemy at level 1 before I'm out of mana and I have to switch to a weapon anyway, thus splitting skill increase (even if you don't split skill perks) to two separate trees. With a weapon to start, I never have to switch at all, and thus all my skill increases automatically go to my strengths rather than to something I ostensibly don't want to use. Think of it like this - all magic-using NPCs in the game carry a backup weapon, but you never see a weapon-carrying NPC use backup spells.

Magic is just fine - better, even, than other methods - at healing yourself, and a mid-level mage is often better at numbers 2 and 3 than a mid-level sneaker, I'd say (the Muffle spell is one of the most powerful spells in the game for me). But since so  much of the game revolves around killing enemies, the ability to do a high amount of DPS and long-term damage using weapons is more useful, in general, than a high amount of magic use. Leveling up as a mage means you're probably putting more into magicka than health, so you're at a disadvantage when the fuel runs dry.

I dunno, I haven't ever actually tried sitting down and calculating out exact numbers... it just seems that since a great deal of the game revolves around killing enemies, then concentrating on those skills necessary to kill enemies is more useful than other skills.

I talk a bit about time passage in the RTF above - about how ten seconds in the real world is fine, but ten seconds in a game is not fine. In retrospect, a lot of what I say is pretty self-contradictory, considering that some of my favorite mods on this site are those that use long time delay to very good advantage. For example, consider the Prison Overhaul mod... I always walk sedately behind the jailer, and never select the "fast forward" option unless he or I somehow get stuck. So obviously I don't have a problem with slow time... so what's my beef with wasting ten seconds in the rest of the game?

Seriously, I'm asking. What's the problem, here? Does anyone else suffer from that? Or is it just me?

You know, really, magic isn't useless in Skyrim, not at all. It's just that most of the actions in the game entirely (not  just magic) revolve around:

1. Killing enemies

2. Healing self to avoid being killed

3. Sneaking around enemies to kill them or avoid being killed

 

Vanilla magic isn't quite as good at killing enemies as ranged or melee weapons, simply because magic uses a fuel source and a sword swing is basically free. Add that to the fact that magic can be integrated into weapons (via enchantments) but weapons cannot be integrated into magic (I'd have no idea even how to begin contemplating doing something that strange). There are many ways to defeat magic users (resistances, wards, drain magic potions, shock spells or enchantments or poisons, some specialized shouts, etc) but fewer ways to defeat weapons users (armor, poisons, some specialized shouts).

 

Considering that almost every quest or objective in the game involves defeating (killing) enemies along the way, it's easier to get to a high level using a simple weapon+armor combination than it is using destruction+restoration, or, Gods forbid, Illusion. If the Flames spell costs 8 mana per second and costs 14 mana per second, I can do about 56 damage to an enemy at level 1 before I'm out of mana and I have to switch to a weapon anyway, thus splitting skill increase (even if you don't split skill perks) to two separate trees. With a weapon to start, I never have to switch at all, and thus all my skill increases automatically go to my strengths rather than to something I ostensibly don't want to use. Think of it like this - all magic-using NPCs in the game carry a backup weapon, but you never see a weapon-carrying NPC use backup spells.

 

Magic is just fine - better, even, than other methods - at healing yourself, and a mid-level mage is often better at numbers 2 and 3 than a mid-level sneaker, I'd say (the Muffle spell is one of the most powerful spells in the game for me). But since so  much of the game revolves around killing enemies, the ability to do a high amount of DPS and long-term damage using weapons is more useful, in general, than a high amount of magic use. Leveling up as a mage means you're probably putting more into magicka than health, so you're at a disadvantage when the fuel runs dry.

 

I dunno, I haven't ever actually tried sitting down and calculating out exact numbers... it just seems that since a great deal of the game revolves around killing enemies, then concentrating on those skills necessary to kill enemies is more useful than other skills.

As an archer the difficult times are early on, before you can run with the bow or draw quickly. As a mage the difficulty spike seemed to be later, around lvl 20 but now Destruction is nearly as good as my FABow so with a bit of perseverance it does seem to level out. Levelled enemies who have nearly killed me with a single large sword or battleaxe hit can be taken out with a single dual-cast f/f/s shot quite often.  Runes and Frenzy make up the very small difference as the bow now kills everything, straight away.  I wish I wasn't only lvl54 archer in the other game as Ebony Warrior doesn't turn up until lvl 80 and want to try it on him.

For an FPS player the bow is so much more satisfying. Walking up to a bandit who was nearly at draw distance when I shot them and finding my arrow in their nose, or eye is still excellent after 3 or 4 playthroughs.

Repeating myself...

I blame the booze.

 

As an archer the difficult times are early on, before you can run with the bow or draw quickly. As a mage the difficulty spike seemed to be later, around lvl 20 but now Destruction is nearly as good as my FABow so with a bit of perseverance it does seem to level out. 

Yeah, almost exactly the same for me. The most important perk in the game for an archer is the one that makes you draw faster. Combine that with the sneak perk that makes bows do 3x damage, and you've got yourself a 1-shot weapon for all but the most powerful of enemies.

But mages for me start out semi-hard and get harder as the game progresses. I suppose it's because I tend to put all my points into magicka, neglecting health (so I'm easier to kill by enemies who are leveling with me) and stamina (so I can't carry as much, including wearing heavier and thus more protective armor). Late-game mage strategies actually work out best for me, with the twin souls enchantment perk and the 25% spell cost reduction enchantments, I can, with four items, make my destruction and restoration spells free to cast. The problem is that by doing so I've completely invalidated all previous purchases of magicka!

I almost never use frenzy or calm type spells, but I get a lot of utility out of rune spells. I'm using a mod that I think is called "rune spell greater range and multiple cast" that allows me to use more than one rune spell at a time, so laying down four or five rune spells in a single spot makes for an insta-kill trap for enemies to walk over.

And I am now wary of fighting the Ebony Warrior... the last time I tried it, he one-shotted me and I ended up his slave via SD+. My poor little .95-scale and .99-height breton ended up in sexual servitude to the biggest guy in Skyrim. Thank gods they shrink to fit.

In Daggerfall and Morrowind, archery was not satisfying at all. I never felt a sense of connection between releasing an arrow and the target taking damage.

Oblivion really improved on it, made me really appreciate archery... and Skyrim makes it even more fun. The only problem I even have with archery in Skyrim is the fact that so many static items like walls or rocks have extra-large hit boxes... it's irritating to line up a sneak attack on a forsworn over a wooden barricade, and have my arrow stick in midair, alerting the entire camp to my presence.

I talk a bit about time passage in the RTF above - about how ten seconds in the real world is fine, but ten seconds in a game is not fine. In retrospect, a lot of what I say is pretty self-contradictory, considering that some of my favorite mods on this site are those that use long time delay to very good advantage. For example, consider the Prison Overhaul mod... I always walk sedately behind the jailer, and never select the "fast forward" option unless he or I somehow get stuck. So obviously I don't have a problem with slow time... so what's my beef with wasting ten seconds in the rest of the game?

 

Seriously, I'm asking. What's the problem, here? Does anyone else suffer from that? Or is it just me?

I don't fully have the words for what I mean but

life just happens, time is wasted or just passing whether you want it to or not. You choose to play a game and when you play you are doing it constantly but you can stop time when not doing it. 

I do know what you mean, I think, I can't just leave it unpaused, even for the sixty seconds it takes to roll a cigarette.

When your character has been SetVehicled you are still playing even if not directly controlling, so PO or similar is fine.

 

I talk a bit about time passage in the RTF above - about how ten seconds in the real world is fine, but ten seconds in a game is not fine. In retrospect, a lot of what I say is pretty self-contradictory, considering that some of my favorite mods on this site are those that use long time delay to very good advantage. For example, consider the Prison Overhaul mod... I always walk sedately behind the jailer, and never select the "fast forward" option unless he or I somehow get stuck. So obviously I don't have a problem with slow time... so what's my beef with wasting ten seconds in the rest of the game?

 

Seriously, I'm asking. What's the problem, here? Does anyone else suffer from that? Or is it just me?

 

I don't fully have the words for what I mean but

 

life just happens, time is wasted or just passing whether you want it to or not. You choose to play a game and when you play you are doing it constantly but you can stop time when not doing it. 

 

I do know what you mean, I think, I can't just leave it unpaused, even for the sixty seconds it takes to roll a cigarette.

When your character has been SetVehicled you are still playing even if not directly controlling, so PO or similar is fine.

 

Makes sense. Watching a video is fine, staring at the wall ain't.

Unless you're super stoned, in which case sometimes starting at a wall can engage you for hours.

Dawnguard it is. The masses (all 10 of you) have spoken!

Not like anyone's going to read this, considering it's a comment on a seven month old blog post about a four year old game in a blog on a website primarily dedicated to erotic or pornographic content and often not frequented by people who enjoy reading walls of unformatted, bland text. But I'm writing it anyway, because why the hell not?

Seth Godin recently wrote a post on vocabulary, and how an extensive vocabulary is correlated (it's actually a little ambiguous as to whether he's assuming a correlation or a causation) with the ability to fully understand new concepts. In general I agree, but it did remind me about my repeated complaint about the overuse of what he calls "needlessly fancy words" by authors and game devs. I'm not disagreeing with Godin's argument, but I have found many such authors tend to obfuscate otherwise simple statements, either deliberately in an attempt to give the impression of intellectual superiority, or accidentally. A good example is pretty much any book written by Alan Dean Foster - he's a good author, but he does tend to overuse esoteric adjectives where they are unnecessary and, sometimes, inappropriate. Another good example is any idiot using the word "obfuscate" with malice aforethought.

Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer goes just the other direction, deliberately, to make the reader laugh.

My problem is not with big words, nor with those authors who choose to use big words. My problem is with those authors who choose to use big words in an effort to confuse the reader or tout their own intellectual superiority. I have said before that an impressive vocabulary is not indicative of an impressive intellect (though it may be indicative of an impressive library ). Complicated syntax too is often an entertaining thing to encounter or construct, but it can be taken too far.

tl,dr: Big fancy words in technical reports or academic papers and the like is fine, expected, and desired. Big fancy words in an entertainment venue is also fine, and is also often a desired thing. But there's no need to overboard.

For example, the person who wrote this post is a real blowhard.

I love thing explainer, at least the examples that have been on XKCD. The book might be my Christmas present for everyone.

You should find some Will Self. I love his way with words but in any writing or speaking (even on-the-hoof in radio or tv debates) there's usually at least one word per paragraph that might reasonably require a thesaurus.

Would be interested to see if you'd put him in the obfuscating category.

Any particular game examples? How have I missed this complaint?

One person's epic poetry is another's doggerell. What might sound like a truly dire line might be a writer's favourite bit they did as they managed to shoehorn in "gallimaufry" or something. In general in a game I want the message to be just enough, more than "I'm your friend. go here, kill that" even if it boils down to just that. I remember with no fondness 8-bit RPGS for pages of utterly redundant conversation.

Badly-translated dialogue, euro versions of 90's Japanese games, particularly, has moronic, perfunctory English that could be just as confusing when working out what to do.

Or really immersion-breaking like the classic HouseOfTheDead2/TypingOfTheDead.

English, courtesy of Molesworth:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wpemeRoXIYg/TAKIvAoJp3I/AAAAAAAABsM/9ZJTDLJVFp8/s1600/gerund.JPG

Seven months and one day!

You should find some Will Self.

I'll look him up. Thanks!

 

Any particular game examples? How have I missed this complaint?

Eh, not really... actually I was more complaining about a specific book author, and couched my complaint in unnecessarily broad terms.

I do have a bit of a problem with some of the dialogue written in Skyrim (also Oblivion come to think of it), but that's mostly because it was intended to be really good but just turned out cheesy.

 

Also, after some experimentation I have determined that my state of mind at any given time hugely influences how I respond to writing. For example, it's just past midterms here, so I have had the terrible great fortune to read student papers. I know it's a popular and common complaint to decry the younger generation's intellectual and academic accomplishments, but I have noticed a sharp decline in the quality of student writing in recent years. This has not been a gradual decay, but a very sharp drop.

After having been forcefully subjected to these papers, I have come to the conclusion that the emphasis the NCLB put on rote testing is at fault.

 

One person's epic poetry is another's doggerell. What might sound like a truly dire line might be a writer's favourite bit they did as they managed to shoehorn in "gallimaufry" or something. In general in a game I want the message to be just enough, more than "I'm your friend. go here, kill that" even if it boils down to just that. I remember with no fondness 8-bit RPGS for pages of utterly redundant conversation.

 

Badly-translated dialogue, euro versions of 90's Japanese games, particularly, has moronic, perfunctory English that could be just as confusing when working out what to do.

I used to find badly translated dialogue hilarious. These past few years, though, it's just become annoying.

 

Or really immersion-breaking like the classic HouseOfTheDead2/TypingOfTheDead.

 

 

English, courtesy of Molesworth:

 

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wpemeRoXIYg/TAKIvAoJp3I/AAAAAAAABsM/9ZJTDLJVFp8/s1600/gerund.JPG

 

 

 

 

 

Seven months and one day!

Don't coffin-dodgers drive Cadillacs?

 

Don't coffin-dodgers drive Cadillacs?

 

You're right. I nearly made a serious mistake there.