All very true I'm afraid, and honestly it's a lot like that in many RPGs including paper and pencil ones. As a guy using the handle "Therumancer" I'll be one of the first people to tell you that when it comes to fantasy games the general consensus is that magic sucks unless your an NPC villain using it on the heroes. Exceptions of course exist, but for the most part a pure wizard tends to get robbed.
In Elder Scrolls I believe the justification by the designers is that your supposed to be a hybrid, basically they expect everyone to have melee skills and magic and use a combination of the two. When you look at purist characters though, yes melee does stand better on it's own.
Of course it can be argued that this is also true of the older versions of D&D which inspired everything. Mages at low levels were pitiful, having one spell a day, otherwise they were fairly useless. When they gained power and got access to those really awesome seeming high level spells, they still tended to suck because as a general rule when you level up anything your likely to meet that is worthy of say a "meteor swarm" is going to be so packed full of magic resistance that it's likely to bounce off anyway... and anything that allows a saving throw you might as well forget about because again, enemy saves tend to get ridiculously low by that point. Academically it can be argued that say a 20th level magic can destroy hundreds of 1 hit die orcs more or less with a gesture, but as a player character how often is your GM going to pit you at 20th level against 1 hit die orcs, it's not considered to be a "level worthy challenge", you don't get any experience points, and the loot is trivial. What's more if you generally tell the GM "you know I think I'm going to head out and vaporize every lizard man in the Swamp Of Doom for payback over how they terrorized me when I was 3rd level" your likely to be labeled a time waster at best, and a munchkin at worse, not to mention really... what do you gain from it?
In comparison whacking stuff with a sword works at pretty much all levels, you don't generally worry about magic resistance, there is no saving throw against "stabbed in the face" and in general a fighter has enough hit points where he doesn't have to worry about high level encounters where a major demon whips out "power word kill" or "symbol of death" and outright obliterates anyone below X number of hit points (the guy who had the 1d4 for hit points with constitution as a secondary thing on the other hand, he does have to worry).
Then in WoW of course I found it lovely how after a while all ranged DPS could do as much damage as a mage if played correctly, while still being allowed to wear heavier armor (no, it's not as good as plate, but it's not bloody tissue either), still retain their healing spells, shapeshifting, backup melee, or whatever else. I haven't played for a while and hear they have changed things around a lot more, but really it was another game where I felt the same thing applied. A Shaman or Druid played correctly could whip out as much ranged magic DPS as a mage in many cases and do other stuff too.
Really, it would be nice if more games put the effort into making mages considerably more viable. Of course I think a big part of it in video games is that magic tends to be ability based, where melee and fighting tends to be gear based. This leads to a problem where it's easy to reward melee by clearly giving things that are more powerful. With mages you wind up with a case where you either have to make things equivalent to top end gear (raising the question as to how to reward the mage) or turn mages into more of a support thing which is what Elder Scrolls seemed to do. +spelldamage as seen in some MMOs was a step in the right direction, but tends to fall apart because it's very difficult to balance that kind of damage increases with all of the things that apply to mages. Not to mention how that can lead to the flip side of the equasion where "if a mage can do as much damage from 10 miles away, why would anyone want to play a fighter?".
When it comes to robes, I've always felt art departments need to get a little more creative with how mages dress to be honest. After a while it becomes hard to make robes look good... I think Cranius said it best...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUacWmunG0
(A classic for a reason)
In Elder Scrolls I believe the justification by the designers is that your supposed to be a hybrid, basically they expect everyone to have melee skills and magic and use a combination of the two. When you look at purist characters though, yes melee does stand better on it's own.
Of course it can be argued that this is also true of the older versions of D&D which inspired everything. Mages at low levels were pitiful, having one spell a day, otherwise they were fairly useless. When they gained power and got access to those really awesome seeming high level spells, they still tended to suck because as a general rule when you level up anything your likely to meet that is worthy of say a "meteor swarm" is going to be so packed full of magic resistance that it's likely to bounce off anyway... and anything that allows a saving throw you might as well forget about because again, enemy saves tend to get ridiculously low by that point. Academically it can be argued that say a 20th level magic can destroy hundreds of 1 hit die orcs more or less with a gesture, but as a player character how often is your GM going to pit you at 20th level against 1 hit die orcs, it's not considered to be a "level worthy challenge", you don't get any experience points, and the loot is trivial. What's more if you generally tell the GM "you know I think I'm going to head out and vaporize every lizard man in the Swamp Of Doom for payback over how they terrorized me when I was 3rd level" your likely to be labeled a time waster at best, and a munchkin at worse, not to mention really... what do you gain from it?
In comparison whacking stuff with a sword works at pretty much all levels, you don't generally worry about magic resistance, there is no saving throw against "stabbed in the face" and in general a fighter has enough hit points where he doesn't have to worry about high level encounters where a major demon whips out "power word kill" or "symbol of death" and outright obliterates anyone below X number of hit points (the guy who had the 1d4 for hit points with constitution as a secondary thing on the other hand, he does have to worry).
Then in WoW of course I found it lovely how after a while all ranged DPS could do as much damage as a mage if played correctly, while still being allowed to wear heavier armor (no, it's not as good as plate, but it's not bloody tissue either), still retain their healing spells, shapeshifting, backup melee, or whatever else. I haven't played for a while and hear they have changed things around a lot more, but really it was another game where I felt the same thing applied. A Shaman or Druid played correctly could whip out as much ranged magic DPS as a mage in many cases and do other stuff too.
Really, it would be nice if more games put the effort into making mages considerably more viable. Of course I think a big part of it in video games is that magic tends to be ability based, where melee and fighting tends to be gear based. This leads to a problem where it's easy to reward melee by clearly giving things that are more powerful. With mages you wind up with a case where you either have to make things equivalent to top end gear (raising the question as to how to reward the mage) or turn mages into more of a support thing which is what Elder Scrolls seemed to do. +spelldamage as seen in some MMOs was a step in the right direction, but tends to fall apart because it's very difficult to balance that kind of damage increases with all of the things that apply to mages. Not to mention how that can lead to the flip side of the equasion where "if a mage can do as much damage from 10 miles away, why would anyone want to play a fighter?".
When it comes to robes, I've always felt art departments need to get a little more creative with how mages dress to be honest. After a while it becomes hard to make robes look good... I think Cranius said it best...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUacWmunG0
(A classic for a reason)
