User blog comment:Draevan13/Why the Elder Scrolls ISN'T being dumbed down...much./@comment-173.189.226.12-20130407044132/@comment-1.115.192.11-20130408235415

@contributor

That's a point certainly, but it's still poor design. At the end of the day, spellcrafting in Morrowind and Oblivion makes you your own mage, a self-made badass. No one uses the spells you use. You can add your own personal touch, even name everything, and really nail down what you want your character to be. I, for example, played an assassin with a paralyze/cold-damage on Touch spell for when I got in big brawls or just wanted someone to suffer slowly. Paralyze or cold damage alone just wouldn't have been the same. I disagree with Draevan here, Spellmaking to mages is FAR more than Smithing is to Warriors, because smithing still only allows you to make the same generic unnamed stuff you can buy or find elsewhere. A mage without her own spells is like any other class without enchantment or alchemy.

Using lore to remove it is still unjustifiable; even if magic was completely forgotten and mages are impossibly rare, you should still be allowed to restore them somehow and relearn how to craft spells just because you're that great at being a mage. It's just too fundamental a feature to a game that's all about customization. Using the game's *atmosphere* to justify removing it is just unacceptable.