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[Frank2368]

The lack of pole weapons in Skyrim is presumably because of the presence of magic. The Phalanx formation probably wouldn't work out too well when people are shooting fire at you. Spears are also poor weapons for small scale combat, so they're rarely used.

EVERY Elder Scrolls game has magic. Every. Single. One. Both magic and spears have been in that world since the dawn of time. The reason they didn't have spears in the game was because Todd Howard didn't see a way to make them sufficiently distinct from other weapons in terms of gameplay. I heard they're going to experiment with them in TESO to find a way to work them into TESVI, though.

Also, lore-wise, powerful destruction magic isn't something that just anybody can use. It requires lots of training and a bit of natural talent.

Strange. I would expect spears to be the most unique type of weapon since they are meant for stabbing as opposed to swinging like the others.

[Gamerlord]

Man I imagine war against a magick heavy empire would be brutal. Imagine issuing black soul shards to your elite soldiers so they can refuel their enchantments with the SOULS OF THE ENEMY

There are a few ingame books that describe such wars. I have to say, battlemages are really unimaginative.

[WillowLuman]

Man I imagine war against a magick heavy empire would be brutal. Imagine issuing black soul shards to your elite soldiers so they can refuel their enchantments with the SOULS OF THE ENEMY

There are a few ingame books that describe such wars. I have to say, battlemages are really unimaginative.

Well, in "The Last Year of the First Era," we have Imperial troops in heavy armor marching underneath a lake with waterbreathing to sneak up on a Dunmer encampment. That's pretty creative.

Many players might not realize this, but necromantic things like black soul gems are heavily frowned upon by most people, including the Legion.

A possible reason for spears being in Morrowind only might be because of the 'primitive' Ashlanders using them.

The first game took place all over the continent, including Morrowind and Black Marsh. They probably just overlooked them in the first two games, but couldn't think of anything to do with them in the 4th and 5th. Also, the ashlanders seemed to mainly use axes and bows for some reason. If spears were there just for the ashlanders, there would only be chitin spears.

Maybe the gimmick for the next game will be mounted combat, which would certainly give spears a use.

[Xantalos]

An unfortunate result of their training, I would think.
How so, though?

[umiman]

The moment you guys try to justify any sort of logic or thinking based on the rules of reality in a world where you can piss out rainbows and conjure a billion cheese wedges from your eyes, you'll find that all your arguments are going to end with sadness and stupidity.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

snip

There are a few ingame books that describe such wars. I have to say, battlemages are really unimaginative.

Yeah, they do seem like the stuffy type...

Man I imagine war against a magick heavy empire would be brutal. Imagine issuing black soul shards to your elite soldiers so they can refuel their enchantments with the SOULS OF THE ENEMY

There are a few ingame books that describe such wars. I have to say, battlemages are really unimaginative.

Well, in "The Last Year of the First Era," we have Imperial troops in heavy armor marching underneath a lake with waterbreathing to sneak up on a Dunmer encampment. That's pretty creative.

Hmm, Vivec called them alteration mages. And I have my doubts about who came up with the plan- the mages or the commanders.

snip

Here's that btw. Woo physics!

[LeoLeonardoIII]

If the devs can't come up with a reason why spears aren't sufficiently different from swords and axes, they need to learn more. I suspect they just wanted to hold something back to sell with DLC, such as they did with crossbows. Possibly also because they would have needed a whole new set of animations.

For a Viking-themed culture, they should have included spears because c'mon, Odin. Also spears are the most common weapon among all cultures besides a club or a rock.

Side note: how hard is it to code the ability to throw some one-handed weapons like spears, axes, hammers, daggers? They had that shit in Eye of the Beholder over 22 years ago.

[WillowLuman]

The moment you guys try to justify any sort of logic or thinking based on the rules of reality in a world where you can piss out rainbows and conjure a billion cheese wedges from your eyes, you'll find that all your arguments are going to end with sadness and stupidity.

I HATE when people pull out the anti-logic argument. Fantasy worlds may have different rules than our own, but more often than not they are consistent with their own rules. People think every single fictional setting is utterly unpredictable and illogical over the slightest difference. Well, they're not.

For instance:
1) Mods DO NOT COUNT. There is nowhere in vanilla in ANY game in this series where you can piss rainbows. There isn't even anywhere in the lore. Not even Sheogorath.
2) Console commands DO NOT COUNT. They are a violation of the rules of the setting, a non-canonical convention of pure gameyness.
3) Magic in the setting has it's own rules. People have a limited pool to call on at any time. There are set effects and discovering new ones requires innovation and skill.

Just because it has a different premise than reality, doesn't mean it violates all logic. Logic still works, the arguments just follow from a different series of premises. "If magic A is magic A, then...", not "magic, therefore AADaljfdalfajsfld" People don't cast a fireball spell becuase they're in violation of all comprehension, they cast a fireball because they have a target, they know the spell, and they have the resources to do so.

If the devs can't come up with a reason why spears aren't sufficiently different from swords and axes, they need to learn more. I suspect they just wanted to hold something back to sell with DLC, such as they did with crossbows. Possibly also because they would have needed a whole new set of animations.

Yes and yes. They just didn't get around to that DLC, unfortunately.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Yeah that's something that bugs me about monster movies. You set up your rules for the monster, and then you have to follow those rules. And you can change the rules if you make it clear that it's a plot twist - like the character in the movie says "so we thought the monster works this way, but it actually works that way" or even that he's describing that the monster is like X as a voiceover to the camera showing that he's wrong because the monster is actually doing Y. That's what's satisfying for the people watching the movie. It's unsatisfying to have the movie set up its monster rules and then just ignore them halfway through.

All this is to say that yes, you can expect an internally consistent logic for a movie or game. In support of HL's comment.

I think you would expect to see a lot of people trying to learn magic, but magic is problematic. You can only get so much done before you have to rest. The weapon fighter is going to be able to put out a steady, reliable combat result over time. Also we see not so many people in the game learning magic. Is it because magic is actually really difficult and the Protagonist is special? If you have the choice between spending 10 years learning fighting and becoming a really amazing fighter, vs. 10 years learning magic and being able to cast a spell that's just strong enough to knock a door off its hinges, I think it's questionable. But in the game your character's 10 years learning magic make him a LOT more powerful than that. If everyone is like the Protagonist, magic is a no-brainer. I think that's not the case, because of the proportion of people in the game using magic vs. those not using magic.

It's kinda the same argument as to archery vs. melee: if you can shoot a guy from a long way off why would you equip a sword instead and walk up to him? Possibly because a shield does an excellent job of stopping arrows, and once the guy gets up to you he'll make you look like a jigsaw puzzle with some of the pieces gone. Possibly because the energy output of an arrow striking is much less than a sword stabbing, considering mass and force of the sword vs. the arrow and problems caused by wind and air friction on the arrow. But if arrows do as much damage in the game and you can fire adequately while being stabbed in melee ... yeah there's no reason to use melee weapons.

[Sensei]

Spears were more of a thing in every ES game before Oblivion. In the first games, there was a combat system where you swiped the screen with your mouse to attack in a certain direction (mouse support was still a little novel in games). Weapons had a thrusting, lateral slashing, and overhand attack, and they would do different damage with each one- for example spears or foils would do the most damage thrusting, swords when slashing, and hammers/axes overhand. In Morrowind the attack you did was determined by the direction you were moving, but they must have thought it wasn't a very fun feature because there's a box you can tick in the options menu that just makes you use the weapon's most damaging attack no matter what direction you're moving in. In most Elder Scrolls games, Spears were underpowered and didn't get much love anyway, doubly so once their unique nature of doing lots of thrusting damage (in exchange for poor slashing) didn't really matter. Also, apparently nobody at Bethesda though spears made a cool weapon, so by Oblivion (which completely removed the whole weapon-attack-direction thing) they were cut.

Come Skyrim, where there's really only unique animations for one-handed, two-handed, and dual-wielding weapons, Spears didn't fit in at all. Besides, in all practicality, if spears had a realistic reach it would devolve into the player running backwards while stabbing anyway.

If you want a game that handles medieval weapons realistically (well, moreso than any other video game) I highly recommend playing Mount & Blade.

[forsaken1111]

Imma be honest and say I never would have used spears had they been put in, so I honestly don't care that they weren't.

[Leyic]

I heard they're going to experiment with [spears] in TESO to find a way to work them into TESVI, though.

Combat in TESO is so different with the addition of MMO skills, though; making a new weapon set feel distinct would mostly be a matter of giving it distinct skills. It wouldn't make sense to apply that to TES VI unless they adopt the TESO system more-or-less completely, and then it'd be less a case of experimenting to fit a new weapon into an existing system and more a case of adopting a new system that more-or-less changes everything. That said, I don't recall spears or polearms being a weapon set in TESO.

[WillowLuman]

Well, I've heard mention of the spears, but honestly I can't cite a source for it. They did say that they were going for TES combat rather than "click target then click ability in hotbar" RPG combat, so experiments would apply somewhat to single-player games.

BTW, just to be clear, Morrowind is the ONLY game that has spears usable by the player. Some enemy graphics in Daggerfall and Arena had them, but the player could never get them.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I kinda hate the way most MMOs do combat, with the "click target" "move up to target" "click special abilities while your character is doing his standard attack animations". DDO has you swing on every click (or if you hold down) but there's no meaningful blocking or combos. You basically just have to hold down the button to do your auto-attack. But for some reason that's a lot more satisfying. It feels like you're doing something, rather than giving commands to your character to do something. WASD+Mouselook makes a big difference as a control scheme with roots in FPS games, too, rather than "click ground to go there".

Then again, I've played games with complex combo systems and it's no fun to get into them again after a break, or to switch characters, because your timing goes out the window and you can't do anything anymore. Needs a happy medium for the best result, but even just a very basic active combat like DDO or Morrowind is so much more enjoyable.

[forsaken1111]

Age of Conan tried to innovate with the combat system and it didn't work so well.