It means that I need to keep track of which skills I've leveled since my last character level-up, and when the balance is about to tip I need to be very cautious doing silly things like attacking things, or being attacked by things, or casting spells, or running (lest I get an accidental skill-up in a skill I didn't intend), and get to a trainer post-haste.
My assumption is that the Elder Scrolls skill system is supposed to be more-or-less simulationist: you get better at the things you do over and over on a regular basis, so it makes sense that you would improve at them while your lesser-used skills stay where they are. I can even see the justification for the attribute bonuses: if you've spent the last N days doing Strength-related activities (as evidenced by your Strength-related skill-ups), then obviously you've been getting swole and pumping iron and it make sense to indicate that when you level up.
The problem is that at a certain point this simulationist system runs into the gamist system of discrete skill and character levels, discrete attribute values, gating mechanics that block off content unless your Strength is X+, and so on. One can either just throw up their hands in the air, play as they play, and let the attribute bonuses fall where they may (which is what I did), or they can stop playing the game in (what seems to me) the intended, simulationist way where they do the thing they want to do and are rewarded by becoming better able to do the thing they want to do and instead devote some amount of time to bookkeeping, metering out skill-ups through some combination of skill increases and training.
I feel like the training system runs, to some degree, counter to (what I think) is the intent of the skill system, and serves as a backdoor solution to patch over problems.
Dev 1: "Ah, some of the skills are trivial to level up, and some take a great deal of concerted and directed effort"
Dev 2: "That's fine, players can just pay to level up those skills."
Dev 1: "Also the attribute bonuses can vary wildly based on the skills characters have leveled up recently."
Dev 2: "That's fine, players can just pay to level up the exact skills they need."
It didn't destroy the game for me or anything, but - like the Cliff Racers - it's something that I found very annoying and detrimental to my experience in regular, everyday play, ignored or avoided for a while, and modded away eventually.
Delduwath on
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
There used to be a mod, Galsiah's Character Development, iirc that made leveling way better for Morrowind. Between that and mod that added rogue like random rewards for every quest, the game was way more interesting.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Given the direction Bethesda has been going in their recent games, the way I envision future Elder Scrolls games handling progression is by combining the series' traditional "improve by doing" philosophy with Fallout 4's "no skills, just perks" simplification.
Performing actions out in the world will increase your attributes directly. Increasing attributes will unlock "specialities" that essentially function like the perks in Fallout 4. Attributes will also have a more clear identity. For example, intelligence specialities will almost all be related to crafting and not spellcasting. Here's the sort of thing I expect:
holy shit man this really does highlight just how weird Morrowind is, as a place. I love it.
JUST HOOK IT TO MY VEINS!
GD, now I'm getting all these flashbacks of sleeping in the mage's quarters and running upstairs to train, the one vender in the upper stairwell that I would always buy soul gems from (iirc), oh so many memories.
I've been trying to stay away from this because the more I see the more I want it in my life. Gotta get me a tk spell so I can go steal from that clothier in Balmorra. And pick up the sword in the guard tower after saving, because GDI did that guard ALWAYS seem to resist my taunts.
“There are no happy endings, because nothing ends.” ... also, "Ah, turn blue!"
XBOne | LyrKing
* Spear!
* Holy crap that's a lot of dialogue options. Like, all the ones from Morrowind. Uh, did they get original VO for *all* of that ??? I won't be upset if they didn't, that's a LOT.
* Recall scroll! Good grief I missed Mark / Recall, even though Oblivion onward has fast travel. Because sometimes, you want to be able to teleport out of a dungeon. Or straight to a specific location. (This is also why I think whining about fast travel, or Wayshrines in ESO, is stupid. We've had teleportation spells since Arena guys! It's not a big deal!)
* Aw dammit we're back to carting around 100 lbs of alchemy equipment again instead of having a convenient table at the Mage's Guild? But this might mean potion cheese.
* Another spell scroll has what looks like a custom spell on it, eg, spellcrafting is a thing
GD, now I'm getting all these flashbacks of sleeping in the mage's quarters and running upstairs to train, the one vender in the upper stairwell that I would always buy soul gems from (iirc), oh so many memories.
I've been trying to stay away from this because the more I see the more I want it in my life. Gotta get me a tk spell so I can go steal from that clothier in Balmorra. And pick up the sword in the guard tower after saving, because GDI did that guard ALWAYS seem to resist my taunts.
Balmora is home to me. And I'm even pretty late to the series: I played Morrowind in 2014 (better late than never, ok?). But Balmora just... more than any other video game city, it's home. When I went there in ESO I was like yeah!!! Home! Wait there's no apartments for sale here? God damn it. But looking at it in Skywind... it's STILL Home. I'm still like yeah! I remember that place!
Yeah, Balmora was a one stop shop. After that first town and running through the nearby cave (whilst stopping to pick up Icarius Scrolls), I'd prolly spend 5-10+ hours maximizing everything I could in Balmora before doing anything at all else. Had just about everything you needed. You'd be back all the time too. The only place I'd end up going to more was the orc in the next town over that had the highest gold for selling. I definitely Marked the hell out of that location. I don't know how long it took me to find out about the crab.
My friend preferred to grab up as much sujanna (or whichever the might one was) and then high-tail it to an Ash guard tower to single hit kill a guard with glass armor, but I really loved running around and under the entire city in Balmora to get your new character's feet wet. Morrowind was definitely broken, like using 50 intelligence potions and whatnot to enchant gawd-gear. But that freedon in how you played made for a lot of varied combinations to really having fun.
Just, like, I LOVE Skyrim. It's polished, beautiful and the simplification of the game engine is still complex enough you can have some fun with different load-outs..
BUT!
GDI, Morrowind was a buggy, crazy, bloated mess of a game that let you have some AMAZING random interactions with a beautiful environment. I always loved spelunking in caves with underground lakes, then breaking for air and using my telekinesis to gnab diamonds in the ceiling. Building yourself up enough so you could Icarius travel across the island--usually into the middle of some hot mess that was fun to get out of.
My wife still shudders at this game, though. First played it when I lived with five people in college and we were all fascinated by it. One of the guys owned it, but had never played it. So I asked if I could (I didn't even own an xbox yet). I really fell in love with the experience, and all the guys took to watching me play it on the couch. Eventually ended up with all of us taking turns playing: the other guys pretending to do home-work until I had to go to class, then one of them grabbing the controller and loading their character. She felt the whole thing was bizarre and more than a little unhealthy...(I swear I NEVER doodled amulets or ring blueprints with sets of Spells I wanted to enchant to create my ultimate gear set in class).
Ahem. Yeah, That little gameplay tidbit really hit the nostalgia button.
“There are no happy endings, because nothing ends.” ... also, "Ah, turn blue!"
XBOne | LyrKing
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Ho-leeeee shiiiiiitt, that looks absolutely amazing. Playable build! Never thought I'd actually see that. And it looks good! Actually looks a LOT less janky than the original itself already and Skyrim's combat system may not blow any socks off, but it's a HUGE improvement over Morrowind's.
Really wondering if they're sticking with the "no fast travel" from the original. On the one hand, modern games really need features like that to cut out the headaches. On the other hand, it really does lend a better connection to the setting when you have to physically go anywhere you want to go.
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
edited August 2019
No fast travel didn't phase me at all in Morrowind, honestly. Between the tele scrolls for getting out of the wilderness and cheap strider rides/teleports I didn't have any trouble getting where I needed.
Edit: and I mean that as in, "started playing it a few months ago after years of playing Skyrim first", not in a nostalgia way.
Yeah. I used to be able to get to any settlement in about 5 minutes via the different forms of in-world fast travel. These days, I'd have to relearn which places can get you where, though.
Enderal has Mark/Recall spells (only for outdoor areas).
But holy shit yeah I hope Skywind comes out this year. That game-play looks great.
The lack of release info is borderline painful at this point. I am way excited about getting a real, functional Morrowind on at least a semi-modern engine. Nowadays when I play Skyrim, I kind of give up at the Dragonborn DLC because I like that island so much that I just don't feel like going back to Skyrim.
By the time Skywind is ready for any kind of actual release, TES6: Hammerfell will be released, and the Skywind folks will start all over with working on Hammerwind.
Skywind isn't coming out this year or the next or the next after that. The amount of time it will take to get volunteers to recreate the entire island at Skyrim quality is staggering. Unless they start releasing things piecemeal, expect at least a decade more.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
By the time Skywind is ready for any kind of actual release, TES6: Hammerfell will be released, and the Skywind folks will start all over with working on Hammerwind.
Skyhammerwindblivion more like.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
I agree with the above about release dates, and it's why I'm trying to not pay attention (despite the fact that every time I see movement in this thread my heart jumps a little).
My one hope is maybe we're all drastically underestimating the love and time a set of dedicated internet fans/nerds are willing to put into their hobbies. Because from such groups, 'great' feats have been accomplished before.
P.E: I mean, did none of you see "Lord of the Peeps" back when the internet and Jackson's Rings was still insanely popular? Hugely time-consuming and bizarre things have been done in record time before, this ... could be ... possible?!
Papagander on
“There are no happy endings, because nothing ends.” ... also, "Ah, turn blue!"
XBOne | LyrKing
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
Man, that Skywind video hits you right in the nostalgia bits, doesn't it? Running down the coast in the rain after hitting up an imperial mission. Heading home to Balmorra (which, yeah, that's HOME in a way Skyrim never quite duplicated). Getting out east to the Telvanni and seeing just how weird some of those wizard houses were. Just ridiculous that some folks are not only trying to update it, but look like they're doing a great job!
Has anyone played Enderal? It's a total conversion mod for Skyrim and wasn't popping up in the search thread. Not very far into the game, but the bespoke-ness of the game is really phenomenal, exactly what you would expect from a small-ish team with a specific focus and vision for their game. I mean the first town you come to actually feels like a town, instead of a single street with houses on either side. It makes an incredible first impression.
And the way things work in the game world makes actual sense. Items are arbitrarily slapped with a "I know you stole this" buff and you can dump stolen wares on anyone, because why wouldn't you be able to? Characters actually move about in the world (although I did see a kid running around at like 3AM which didn't make too much sense) and don't just have conversations out in the open. One quest you talk to this old man about a sensitive subject, and he asks you to come and sit with him while he recounts this "long" story.
It's just really all well done (so far) and I hear it gets even better. Folks should really try it out if they are looking to scratch that Skyrim itch.
Has anyone played Enderal? It's a total conversion mod for Skyrim and wasn't popping up in the search thread. Not very far into the game, but the bespoke-ness of the game is really phenomenal, exactly what you would expect from a small-ish team with a specific focus and vision for their game. I mean the first town you come to actually feels like a town, instead of a single street with houses on either side. It makes an incredible first impression.
And the way things work in the game world makes actual sense. Items are arbitrarily slapped with a "I know you stole this" buff and you can dump stolen wares on anyone, because why wouldn't you be able to? Characters actually move about in the world (although I did see a kid running around at like 3AM which didn't make too much sense) and don't just have conversations out in the open. One quest you talk to this old man about a sensitive subject, and he asks you to come and sit with him while he recounts this "long" story.
It's just really all well done (so far) and I hear it gets even better. Folks should really try it out if they are looking to scratch that Skyrim itch.
I have been meaning to try it, it’s on my list. I love the skyrim engine, one of the things I really liked about Fallout 76 was seeing a different, non-snow setting in the engine.
Has anyone played Enderal? It's a total conversion mod for Skyrim and wasn't popping up in the search thread. Not very far into the game, but the bespoke-ness of the game is really phenomenal, exactly what you would expect from a small-ish team with a specific focus and vision for their game. I mean the first town you come to actually feels like a town, instead of a single street with houses on either side. It makes an incredible first impression.
And the way things work in the game world makes actual sense. Items are arbitrarily slapped with a "I know you stole this" buff and you can dump stolen wares on anyone, because why wouldn't you be able to? Characters actually move about in the world (although I did see a kid running around at like 3AM which didn't make too much sense) and don't just have conversations out in the open. One quest you talk to this old man about a sensitive subject, and he asks you to come and sit with him while he recounts this "long" story.
It's just really all well done (so far) and I hear it gets even better. Folks should really try it out if they are looking to scratch that Skyrim itch.
Make sure to keep a save from just before finishing the main quest, as apparently it ends just like how Fallout 3 originally did (you can't back to the open world, etc).
I love it, it might just be the best TCM ever made, IMO.
Secondly, good news/bad news. Good news is that it looks like nexus may be implementing mod packs soon. Apparently there was a survey among mod authors recently, and it was 75% positive/very positive. So modding could soon become a LOT easier (people will make curated lists, patches and all, and you download that and it automatically downloads all the mods. Maybe even installs, not sure). Bad news is that not all mod authors are on-board and some have said they'll pull their mods from nexus if it's implemented.
So...uh...maybe download backups for installs you don't want to live without just in case they go away.
Secondly, good news/bad news. Good news is that it looks like nexus may be implementing mod packs soon. Apparently there was a survey among mod authors recently, and it was 75% positive/very positive. So modding could soon become a LOT easier (people will make curated lists, patches and all, and you download that and it automatically downloads all the mods. Maybe even installs, not sure). Bad news is that not all mod authors are on-board and some have said they'll pull their mods from nexus if it's implemented.
So...uh...maybe download backups for installs you don't want to live without just in case they go away.
Nexus should just make it so mod authors can opt out of the mod pack feature.
That seems like it should be a system that is entirely optional from both sides, so I don't get the opposition to it. Yeah if i'm forced to download a full mod pack to get one specific mod I actually want that's bad, and forcing a mod into a pack against the author's wishes is also bad, but those implementations would be asinine so I can't imagine that's how it would work.
That seems like it should be a system that is entirely optional from both sides, so I don't get the opposition to it. Yeah if i'm forced to download a full mod pack to get one specific mod I actually want that's bad, and forcing a mod into a pack against the author's wishes is also bad, but those implementations would be asinine so I can't imagine that's how it would work.
And looks like Wabbajack (it's a mod pack installer thing separate from Nexus) had its full release, and people are already getting pissy.
This was the YASH guide by mnikjom, which was one of the relatively popular ones, and mnikjom is also a user who took care of porting a large number of popular-ish mods from Skyrim to SSE, so if he decides to take down the mods too, that'd....well, suck.
On the one hand, I can understand mod authors removing their mods because they feel their work is being used in a way they don't like - they're putting in tremendous amounts of work for no or practically-no money, and the best compensation they can really hope to earn is recognition and esteem. From what I understand, the main concern mod authors have is that mod packs are going to obfuscate who the original mod creator is, denying them the credit and recognition. That's not nothin'.
On the other hand, I find it infuriating that the way mod authors protest this is by making their mods unavailable. My suspicion is that doing this will hurt rank-and-file mod users more than it will the people who create mod packs/mod pack tools. In theory, inconvenienced users can create pressure on mod pack/mod pack tool creators to make concessions to mod authors, but that only works if the mod pack creators care about the opinions of the incensed users. Taking down mods in protests is effective in that it creates strong emotions, but I'm just not sure it creates strong emotions in the people that can make a difference. Maybe I'm wrong! Maybe I'm just not seeing reason because I personally would be inconvenienced!
More broadly, I think that any tool that makes installing mods simpler is a good thing. I have an MS in computer science, I am very familiar with how files and filesystems and all that junk works, and I've been installing TES mods since Morrowind, but I still spend days sweating over some of the more complicated installs. Once you start installing mods that are more involved that asset packs, things start to get hairy. Mod A is incompatible with Mod B and can work with Mod C only if you install the compatibility patch from some third creator, and all of them need to be installed in the right order with the right overrides - and then an update comes out and there goes your weekend.
I despise mod packs/compilations/etc and have, in the past, aggressively defended my mods from ever being included in any.
Would you mind talking a bit more about why? I'm not a mod author, so I don't really have a perspective on what getting your mod put in a mod pack entails, and I'm really curious to understand why authors would be opposed to it.
(Sorry if you've talked about this before already, you certainly don't need to repeat yourself if you've already covered this.)
I despise mod packs/compilations/etc and have, in the past, aggressively defended my mods from ever being included in any.
Would you mind talking a bit more about why? I'm not a mod author, so I don't really have a perspective on what getting your mod put in a mod pack entails, and I'm really curious to understand why authors would be opposed to it.
(Sorry if you've talked about this before already, you certainly don't need to repeat yourself if you've already covered this.)
Briefly and in a nutshell:
Part of it is what you already said - if an end-user is just installing via modpack, then they aren't visiting my mod page. They aren't endorsing the mod, increasing its visibility, seeing what other possibly-related mods I've done, or clicking on any "donate" buttons. I mean, I don't mod for money, but is sure is nice getting that occasional "You've received a $3 donation!" email because someone appreciated one of my mods enough to buy me a cup of coffee. (and it's also super nice having your mod be "mod of the month" or in the "top 10" list, or something, which won't happen without visitors endorsing it)
The other part, which may now be irrelevant with the current implementation of modpacks, involved updates. The old way was Joe Dipshit would put a bunch of mods he liked into one big compilation for people to download from his site/page, and never actually support or update it, or rarely at best. So if I update my mod, suddenly there's multiple versions of it "live" out there and troubleshooting issues people have gets annoying. Or I might fix a bug, but the fix never finds its way to the compilation version on Joe Dipshit's page, so now I've got to deal with the buggy version still being live. It's basically a big support nuisance and takes control of my mod out of my hands. Now, assuming the current implementation is for a modpack to actually download the latest version of a mod from the mod page, then that part is less important (but not completely unimportant).
Edit: also, I've never seen a mod compilation done well. They're usually just collections of "things I like" with no actual work put in to make sure everything plays nice. On a personal level, I just would never use one. I install every mod I use one-by-one, opening each one in the construction set to see what they do and how they do it and manually sorting any conflicts/issues. As a result, my TES and Fallout games are rock solid and never crash despite having hundreds of mods installed. I have seen too many "I installed <x> compilation and now my game is broken" posts over the years...
Edit: also, I've never seen a mod compilation done well. They're usually just collections of "things I like" with no actual work put in to make sure everything plays nice. On a personal level, I just would never use one. I install every mod I use one-by-one, opening each one in the construction set to see what they do and how they do it and manually sorting any conflicts/issues. As a result, my TES and Fallout games are rock solid and never crash despite having hundreds of mods installed. I have seen too many "I installed <x> compilation and now my game is broken" posts over the years...
But it's quite involved and will take more than 20 hours to do, even following the GUIDE, so....yeah. It involves manual editing in xEdit, porting some stuff from LE to SE, generating LODs, cleaning mods, a bunch of post-tools to make stuff play well together....I don't follow it any more, but I learned a LOT about how stuff works under the hood just by following it.
Ah, thank you! That makes a lot of sense - but also it sounds to me like a lot of it is implementation details (which is what programmers say when they don't want to have a hard conversation now and would rather just let Future Them deal with it...) Like, a "modpack" shouldn't be implemented as "here's just a big ZIP with the assets from 30 mods inside of it", rather it should be "here is a set of instructions that Supported Mod Client can process to download specific versions of specific mods, and then install them in a specific configuration".
I'm not sure what would be an elegant solution to mod pack users bypassing your mod/author page, though. There are some hacks you can do for some of the stuff (endorsing the mod pack = endorsing every mod in the pack by default, etc), but that's not a complete solution.
Basically, I'm very sympathetic to all of these concerns, but also I think there needs to be a way for people to install complicated mods without, as you say, having to manually inspect and clean them in mod creation tools. It seems like one person putting in the work to get a bunch of things correctly configured and then letting other people install that solid configuration is an decent step in that direction - assuming, of course, that the person isn't just (as you said) haphazardly throwing a bunch of mods together without putting any effort into them. I'm not sure if there's a better safeguard for this than, like, mod pack curator reputation.
1060+ mods, 750 or so plugins. Out of an allowed 250 :V
And Legacy of the Dragonborn v5 went into beta this past weekend, so official release will PROBABLY drop next month.
So went playing around with that playthrough up to my character at level 15 or so. Delightfully stable, a few stuff which a compatibility patch would be needed for (for example, there was one lantern just floating in the sky), and a few things which just don't make a whole lot of SENSE together (let's remove most of the ebony in the world so it feels special when you find it, then have an added NPC who carries a bunch of ebony weapons and arrows, that's the ticket!), but that's the level of "perfection" when it comes to modding that I just can't be bothered with.
And judging from the fact that I actually opened up a fucking .nif editor to add lighting to an object to make things look cool when two different mods didn't interact in a way I wanted, that's a fucking threshold.
So, given it's been a long while since I talked about this stuff much, and I found going through mods was a good way to distract myself from *gestures at world* prior to getting in a medical place where I don't need it as much, I thought I'd give a quick rundown of some stuff I found which others might be interested in.
Generally speaking, SSE is now where a lot of the development seems to be going - the tools are there now where people are developing for it "first," and for larger stuff, that means back-porting is a pain because you're going from 64-bit memory addressing to 32-bit memory addressing. So it's still only just starting, but larger mods are starting to be SSE-only.
SKSE64 stuff can still be annoying because of when Bethesda updates the Creation Club, but that seems to be less of an issue lately. Not fully sure why, it just is.
ENB has come a long way. It's still not where LE got, but things like water parallax and per-weather settings, godrays, etc have been added, which helps a lot. There's also some new ENB lighting features which I'll get to in a sec.
I had mentioned this previously, but with the Creation Club thing, Light Masters were introduced to SSE, but people have found you can flag plugins as ESLs, which means they don't take up a traditional plugin space. This increases the total number of plugins/masters from 255 to 4350 (I think it is), provided 4096 of them are small enough (fewer than 2048 records), which a LOT of mods (mostly patches, but you'd be surprised) actually fall within, or can be compressed to fall within.
This is a lovely little guide to the process, but it really only requires one external tool which isn't hard to use, and REALLY opens up the ability to have a bunch more mods. Coupled with SSE's better stability, this might interest in a bunch of you.
Along with the above, Cathedral Assets Optimizer is an awesome little tool which will automate cleaning up any meshes and textures from LE for SE (and vice versa), as well as packing into .bsas to save on disk space, etc - it even automates converting animations now. If there's any must-have mod from LE you want in SE that hasn't been ported due to permissions or something, you have a good shot at being able to make it work just by pointing this thing at the appropriate folder and clicking ok.
Anyway, mods which may interest people:
Any of this user's SKSE plugins. There's just a ton of quality of life changes which I would hate to play without now. Remove prompts when quitting alchemy/enchanting to say that I'm sure. Be able to look at a history of my notifications. Quest items will say what quest they're for. There's a bunch of good stuff in there which might interest you.
Along with the above, More informative console is a godsend. It actually gives plugin names and a bunch of other info on items when clicked on.
More Immersive Activations - it's configurable, because some of the stuff doesn't work right (every container is "unlock door" I think I remember, or something), but this makes it such that the activation notifications are....generally, better. Additionally, NPCs won't have names until you talk to them the first time, and instead will just be (for example) "Male Nord." This makes it so you can never find out who dead characters are, for good or ill. This person made a few other mods some of which I'll mention, others I won't, so check out their user files if it interests you.
Bring Meeko to Lod lets you bring Meeko (the abandoned dog in the shack with the dead guy) to Lod (the person in Falkreath who asks you to find that dog which ends up being a daedric quest).
Cathedral Weathers and Seasons is the new successor to Obsidian and is a pretty great vanilla-plus weather system. Only problem I'd say is that it makes nights pretty light and the storms aren't quite as hard as they could be, but there's patchesfor those
Dynamic Immersive Seriously Dark Dungeons - this isn't a new mod, but it was new to ME. When entering a dungeon, it will make the screen go dark while it scans the loaded map, identifies every light source, and randomly will turn them off based off any local active actors (humans, vampires, etc). You can turn them back on if you have a torch equipped or with a fire spell, or with a lightning spell for dwemer ones. It works REALLY well for giving a sensation of descending into an unknown area.
ENB Light - due to some compatibility stuff I don't have this installed NOW, but calling it out because it's great. This makes ENB apply light to objects based off of flags on the mesh. So torches, fire spells, etc - all are treated as light sources, have shadows, whatnot. It's REALLY neat in motion. Problem is, because it's tied to the mesh, anything else which you want to use which interacts with that mesh can also cause problems. I ended up abandoning this one in favor of some individual things for flavor, which is the next bullet point.
Rudy HQ - More Lights for ENB - check user files. These are ones which add ENB light effects to different things. Specifically, Chaurus Eggs, Soul Gems, the green ichor barrels in Bthardamz, deathbells and nirnroot, and dwemer lights. These work GREAT with the dynamic immersively dark dungeons, because it makes there be other source of light which have a specific colored glow. The one problem with the dynamic lights is that it turns off the "light source" aspect of glowing mushrooms, so I took the glow from the chaurus eggs and applied it to the mushrooms which makes them always have that glow, provided by my ENB. It's super neat.
Landscapes - Cathedral - another cathedral mod. This one covers grasses, it's super lightweight, and I like it. Worth a look.
Elizabeth's Tower - another old one, makes Azura's Shrine by Winterhold utterly massive to where you can see it from a huge distance away if you make your own LOD. Silly fun. Along with the above, Megalophobia makes the moons huge.
FleshFX - MUCH better effects for those spells which improve defense.
Enhanced Solitude and Enhanced Solitude Docks - some crazy person went and got permissions for Solitude Reborn, Swinging Stained Glass Lanterns, Solitude Public Bathhouse, Books of Skyrim, Tower of the Wolf, The Divine Octavo, Barnacle Cottage, The Rookery, The Imperial Physician, Cake O Clock Bakery, The Golden Hen Restaurant, The Honey Spirit, Baus Pet Supplies, The Golden Crossroads, Dawn of Solitude, Blue Palace Nights, Better Looking Blue Palace Courtyard, Solitude Expansion, Solitude Docks District, and Solitude Docks and smashed them all together coherently, with support patches for basically everything. It REALLY makes Solitude feel like a bustling city.
All of this guy's skeletons. He's made a bunch of mods which tweak the skeletons to make creatures larger or more monstrous, and it's a subtle, but effective tweak. Original animations still work, no need to rebuild.
Frostbite and Vitality Mode make for a nice lightweight alternative to Frostfall and iNeed - lets you have survival mechanics without feeling like it's getting too in the way.
Achieve That - fun little thing for completionists, where you get some XP when accomplishing different things. Unfortunately, it's impossible to do all of them in a single run.
Ashes is a nice not-dark-souls-but-still-punishing death alterntive mod
Class Overhaul Re-imagined is a neat little character customization thing, but it's laid on top of existing mechanics, so it only does so much
I despise mod packs/compilations/etc and have, in the past, aggressively defended my mods from ever being included in any.
Would you mind talking a bit more about why? I'm not a mod author, so I don't really have a perspective on what getting your mod put in a mod pack entails, and I'm really curious to understand why authors would be opposed to it.
(Sorry if you've talked about this before already, you certainly don't need to repeat yourself if you've already covered this.)
Briefly and in a nutshell:
Part of it is what you already said - if an end-user is just installing via modpack, then they aren't visiting my mod page. They aren't endorsing the mod, increasing its visibility, seeing what other possibly-related mods I've done, or clicking on any "donate" buttons. I mean, I don't mod for money, but is sure is nice getting that occasional "You've received a $3 donation!" email because someone appreciated one of my mods enough to buy me a cup of coffee. (and it's also super nice having your mod be "mod of the month" or in the "top 10" list, or something, which won't happen without visitors endorsing it)
The other part, which may now be irrelevant with the current implementation of modpacks, involved updates. The old way was Joe Dipshit would put a bunch of mods he liked into one big compilation for people to download from his site/page, and never actually support or update it, or rarely at best. So if I update my mod, suddenly there's multiple versions of it "live" out there and troubleshooting issues people have gets annoying. Or I might fix a bug, but the fix never finds its way to the compilation version on Joe Dipshit's page, so now I've got to deal with the buggy version still being live. It's basically a big support nuisance and takes control of my mod out of my hands. Now, assuming the current implementation is for a modpack to actually download the latest version of a mod from the mod page, then that part is less important (but not completely unimportant).
Edit: also, I've never seen a mod compilation done well. They're usually just collections of "things I like" with no actual work put in to make sure everything plays nice. On a personal level, I just would never use one. I install every mod I use one-by-one, opening each one in the construction set to see what they do and how they do it and manually sorting any conflicts/issues. As a result, my TES and Fallout games are rock solid and never crash despite having hundreds of mods installed. I have seen too many "I installed <x> compilation and now my game is broken" posts over the years...
This. Not for ES on Nexus anyway, and not to the point where I would endorse one over, say, a list of mods in the "Hey, get these together, they work play very well," context. In the other direction, the closest thing to a good implementation is, I would argue, when a modder, having secured permission, takes it upon themselves to combine separate mods into a merged endeavor (which is less a "mod pack" and more an entirely new mod, albeit with a compilation intent), thereby taking on the responsibility. It's difficult and time consuming, but so is modding, so you see it more often then you might expect.
But I can only weigh in on this as someone who's just done small bug fixes and mod patches, typically for my own consumption.
Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch (which is a master for a LOT of things) is updated to be released as an .exe which requires manual installation, because they don't want to be included in modpacks.
So why the .exe installer you're wondering. I can see it in your eyes. You think I've lost my mind. Nope, not yet anyway!
There has been a lot of talk about mod packs and how great and convenient they'll be for the userbase. So with that in mind, why not do something that's truly convenient for the userbase. A run-and-done installer for USLEEP. All the greatness of USLEEP with no more of the hassles of being unable to install it properly. Surely if the supposed trend is what people want, this satisfies that and then some. No more fussing around with all those mod managers that can't get half your mods installed correctly anyway.
If this is the appeal of mod packs, then there should be no downsides here.
And in case it isn't obvious, posts that do nothing but spread lies or fail to remain civil will be deleted. Repeat offenses will result in being blocked, and your post will be reported for it.
(if you people thought I was kidding, I'm not, don't start of saying you're gonna be constructive when your first statement is a personal attack)
Wabbajack has already been updated to handle it, and doesn't even execute the .exe.
I'm half expecting Arthmoor to pull down all his mods at this point.
Posts
My assumption is that the Elder Scrolls skill system is supposed to be more-or-less simulationist: you get better at the things you do over and over on a regular basis, so it makes sense that you would improve at them while your lesser-used skills stay where they are. I can even see the justification for the attribute bonuses: if you've spent the last N days doing Strength-related activities (as evidenced by your Strength-related skill-ups), then obviously you've been getting swole and pumping iron and it make sense to indicate that when you level up.
The problem is that at a certain point this simulationist system runs into the gamist system of discrete skill and character levels, discrete attribute values, gating mechanics that block off content unless your Strength is X+, and so on. One can either just throw up their hands in the air, play as they play, and let the attribute bonuses fall where they may (which is what I did), or they can stop playing the game in (what seems to me) the intended, simulationist way where they do the thing they want to do and are rewarded by becoming better able to do the thing they want to do and instead devote some amount of time to bookkeeping, metering out skill-ups through some combination of skill increases and training.
I feel like the training system runs, to some degree, counter to (what I think) is the intent of the skill system, and serves as a backdoor solution to patch over problems.
Dev 1: "Ah, some of the skills are trivial to level up, and some take a great deal of concerted and directed effort"
Dev 2: "That's fine, players can just pay to level up those skills."
Dev 1: "Also the attribute bonuses can vary wildly based on the skills characters have leveled up recently."
Dev 2: "That's fine, players can just pay to level up the exact skills they need."
It didn't destroy the game for me or anything, but - like the Cliff Racers - it's something that I found very annoying and detrimental to my experience in regular, everyday play, ignored or avoided for a while, and modded away eventually.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Performing actions out in the world will increase your attributes directly. Increasing attributes will unlock "specialities" that essentially function like the perks in Fallout 4. Attributes will also have a more clear identity. For example, intelligence specialities will almost all be related to crafting and not spellcasting. Here's the sort of thing I expect:
Unarmed
Swords
Greatswords
War Axes
Battle Axes
Maces
Warhammers
Longbows
Crossbows
Daggers
Shield Bashing
Intelligence Specialties
Smithing
Leather Working
Fletching
Enchanting
Alchemy
Masonry (settlements)
Dwemer Automation
Willpower Specialties
Mage Armor
Bound Weaponry
Necromancy
Fire Magic
Frost Magic
Shock Magic
Restoration
Illusion
Agility Specialties
Stealth
Sneak Attacks
Lockpicking
Pickpocket
Extra Pockets
Speed Specialties
Ranger
Quick Shot
Steady Hand
Block Runner
Armor Conditioning
Flurry
Charge
Silent Roll
Climbing
Endurance Specialties
Unarmored
Heavy Armor
Light Armor
Magic Resistance
Shield Blocking
Personality Specialties
Diplomacy
Mercantilism
Allure
Leadership (followers)
Linguistics
Luck Specialties
Criticals
Hunter's Discipline
Bullseye
Reflect Blows
Deft Movement
Golden Touch
Treasure Hunter
A while later...
... how appropriate.
ACTUAL GAMEPLAY
NOT A DRILL
holy shit man this really does highlight just how weird Morrowind is, as a place. I love it.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
JUST HOOK IT TO MY VEINS!
GD, now I'm getting all these flashbacks of sleeping in the mage's quarters and running upstairs to train, the one vender in the upper stairwell that I would always buy soul gems from (iirc), oh so many memories.
I've been trying to stay away from this because the more I see the more I want it in my life. Gotta get me a tk spell so I can go steal from that clothier in Balmorra. And pick up the sword in the guard tower after saving, because GDI did that guard ALWAYS seem to resist my taunts.
XBOne | LyrKing
* Spear!
* Holy crap that's a lot of dialogue options. Like, all the ones from Morrowind. Uh, did they get original VO for *all* of that ??? I won't be upset if they didn't, that's a LOT.
* Recall scroll! Good grief I missed Mark / Recall, even though Oblivion onward has fast travel. Because sometimes, you want to be able to teleport out of a dungeon. Or straight to a specific location. (This is also why I think whining about fast travel, or Wayshrines in ESO, is stupid. We've had teleportation spells since Arena guys! It's not a big deal!)
* Aw dammit we're back to carting around 100 lbs of alchemy equipment again instead of having a convenient table at the Mage's Guild?
* Another spell scroll has what looks like a custom spell on it, eg, spellcrafting is a thing
Balmora is home to me. And I'm even pretty late to the series: I played Morrowind in 2014 (better late than never, ok?). But Balmora just... more than any other video game city, it's home. When I went there in ESO I was like yeah!!! Home! Wait there's no apartments for sale here? God damn it. But looking at it in Skywind... it's STILL Home. I'm still like yeah! I remember that place!
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
My friend preferred to grab up as much sujanna (or whichever the might one was) and then high-tail it to an Ash guard tower to single hit kill a guard with glass armor, but I really loved running around and under the entire city in Balmora to get your new character's feet wet. Morrowind was definitely broken, like using 50 intelligence potions and whatnot to enchant gawd-gear. But that freedon in how you played made for a lot of varied combinations to really having fun.
Just, like, I LOVE Skyrim. It's polished, beautiful and the simplification of the game engine is still complex enough you can have some fun with different load-outs..
BUT!
GDI, Morrowind was a buggy, crazy, bloated mess of a game that let you have some AMAZING random interactions with a beautiful environment. I always loved spelunking in caves with underground lakes, then breaking for air and using my telekinesis to gnab diamonds in the ceiling. Building yourself up enough so you could Icarius travel across the island--usually into the middle of some hot mess that was fun to get out of.
My wife still shudders at this game, though. First played it when I lived with five people in college and we were all fascinated by it. One of the guys owned it, but had never played it. So I asked if I could (I didn't even own an xbox yet). I really fell in love with the experience, and all the guys took to watching me play it on the couch. Eventually ended up with all of us taking turns playing: the other guys pretending to do home-work until I had to go to class, then one of them grabbing the controller and loading their character. She felt the whole thing was bizarre and more than a little unhealthy...(I swear I NEVER doodled amulets or ring blueprints with sets of Spells I wanted to enchant to create my ultimate gear set in class).
Ahem. Yeah, That little gameplay tidbit really hit the nostalgia button.
XBOne | LyrKing
Really wondering if they're sticking with the "no fast travel" from the original. On the one hand, modern games really need features like that to cut out the headaches. On the other hand, it really does lend a better connection to the setting when you have to physically go anywhere you want to go.
Edit: and I mean that as in, "started playing it a few months ago after years of playing Skyrim first", not in a nostalgia way.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
But holy shit yeah I hope Skywind comes out this year. That game-play looks great.
The lack of release info is borderline painful at this point. I am way excited about getting a real, functional Morrowind on at least a semi-modern engine. Nowadays when I play Skyrim, I kind of give up at the Dragonborn DLC because I like that island so much that I just don't feel like going back to Skyrim.
Skyhammerwindblivion more like.
My one hope is maybe we're all drastically underestimating the love and time a set of dedicated internet fans/nerds are willing to put into their hobbies. Because from such groups, 'great' feats have been accomplished before.
P.E: I mean, did none of you see "Lord of the Peeps" back when the internet and Jackson's Rings was still insanely popular? Hugely time-consuming and bizarre things have been done in record time before, this ... could be ... possible?!
XBOne | LyrKing
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
And the way things work in the game world makes actual sense. Items are arbitrarily slapped with a "I know you stole this" buff and you can dump stolen wares on anyone, because why wouldn't you be able to? Characters actually move about in the world (although I did see a kid running around at like 3AM which didn't make too much sense) and don't just have conversations out in the open. One quest you talk to this old man about a sensitive subject, and he asks you to come and sit with him while he recounts this "long" story.
It's just really all well done (so far) and I hear it gets even better. Folks should really try it out if they are looking to scratch that Skyrim itch.
I have been meaning to try it, it’s on my list. I love the skyrim engine, one of the things I really liked about Fallout 76 was seeing a different, non-snow setting in the engine.
Make sure to keep a save from just before finishing the main quest, as apparently it ends just like how Fallout 3 originally did (you can't back to the open world, etc).
I love it, it might just be the best TCM ever made, IMO.
First off, Beyond Reach is officially out of beta and released, looks like. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/3008
Secondly, good news/bad news. Good news is that it looks like nexus may be implementing mod packs soon. Apparently there was a survey among mod authors recently, and it was 75% positive/very positive. So modding could soon become a LOT easier (people will make curated lists, patches and all, and you download that and it automatically downloads all the mods. Maybe even installs, not sure). Bad news is that not all mod authors are on-board and some have said they'll pull their mods from nexus if it's implemented.
So...uh...maybe download backups for installs you don't want to live without just in case they go away.
Nexus should just make it so mod authors can opt out of the mod pack feature.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
And looks like Wabbajack (it's a mod pack installer thing separate from Nexus) had its full release, and people are already getting pissy.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/23894
This was the YASH guide by mnikjom, which was one of the relatively popular ones, and mnikjom is also a user who took care of porting a large number of popular-ish mods from Skyrim to SSE, so if he decides to take down the mods too, that'd....well, suck.
1060+ mods, 750 or so plugins. Out of an allowed 250 :V
And Legacy of the Dragonborn v5 went into beta this past weekend, so official release will PROBABLY drop next month.
On the other hand, I find it infuriating that the way mod authors protest this is by making their mods unavailable. My suspicion is that doing this will hurt rank-and-file mod users more than it will the people who create mod packs/mod pack tools. In theory, inconvenienced users can create pressure on mod pack/mod pack tool creators to make concessions to mod authors, but that only works if the mod pack creators care about the opinions of the incensed users. Taking down mods in protests is effective in that it creates strong emotions, but I'm just not sure it creates strong emotions in the people that can make a difference. Maybe I'm wrong! Maybe I'm just not seeing reason because I personally would be inconvenienced!
More broadly, I think that any tool that makes installing mods simpler is a good thing. I have an MS in computer science, I am very familiar with how files and filesystems and all that junk works, and I've been installing TES mods since Morrowind, but I still spend days sweating over some of the more complicated installs. Once you start installing mods that are more involved that asset packs, things start to get hairy. Mod A is incompatible with Mod B and can work with Mod C only if you install the compatibility patch from some third creator, and all of them need to be installed in the right order with the right overrides - and then an update comes out and there goes your weekend.
But I'd never pull my mods from Nexus, either.
It's just another sticky mod community situation. This, too, shall pass.
(Sorry if you've talked about this before already, you certainly don't need to repeat yourself if you've already covered this.)
Briefly and in a nutshell:
Part of it is what you already said - if an end-user is just installing via modpack, then they aren't visiting my mod page. They aren't endorsing the mod, increasing its visibility, seeing what other possibly-related mods I've done, or clicking on any "donate" buttons. I mean, I don't mod for money, but is sure is nice getting that occasional "You've received a $3 donation!" email because someone appreciated one of my mods enough to buy me a cup of coffee.
The other part, which may now be irrelevant with the current implementation of modpacks, involved updates. The old way was Joe Dipshit would put a bunch of mods he liked into one big compilation for people to download from his site/page, and never actually support or update it, or rarely at best. So if I update my mod, suddenly there's multiple versions of it "live" out there and troubleshooting issues people have gets annoying. Or I might fix a bug, but the fix never finds its way to the compilation version on Joe Dipshit's page, so now I've got to deal with the buggy version still being live. It's basically a big support nuisance and takes control of my mod out of my hands. Now, assuming the current implementation is for a modpack to actually download the latest version of a mod from the mod page, then that part is less important (but not completely unimportant).
Edit: also, I've never seen a mod compilation done well. They're usually just collections of "things I like" with no actual work put in to make sure everything plays nice. On a personal level, I just would never use one. I install every mod I use one-by-one, opening each one in the construction set to see what they do and how they do it and manually sorting any conflicts/issues. As a result, my TES and Fallout games are rock solid and never crash despite having hundreds of mods installed. I have seen too many "I installed <x> compilation and now my game is broken" posts over the years...
Probably worth tossing a link to this one again as one which is quite stable: https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/User:Darkladylexy/Lexys_LOTD_SE
But it's quite involved and will take more than 20 hours to do, even following the GUIDE, so....yeah. It involves manual editing in xEdit, porting some stuff from LE to SE, generating LODs, cleaning mods, a bunch of post-tools to make stuff play well together....I don't follow it any more, but I learned a LOT about how stuff works under the hood just by following it.
I'm not sure what would be an elegant solution to mod pack users bypassing your mod/author page, though. There are some hacks you can do for some of the stuff (endorsing the mod pack = endorsing every mod in the pack by default, etc), but that's not a complete solution.
Basically, I'm very sympathetic to all of these concerns, but also I think there needs to be a way for people to install complicated mods without, as you say, having to manually inspect and clean them in mod creation tools. It seems like one person putting in the work to get a bunch of things correctly configured and then letting other people install that solid configuration is an decent step in that direction - assuming, of course, that the person isn't just (as you said) haphazardly throwing a bunch of mods together without putting any effort into them. I'm not sure if there's a better safeguard for this than, like, mod pack curator reputation.
So went playing around with that playthrough up to my character at level 15 or so. Delightfully stable, a few stuff which a compatibility patch would be needed for (for example, there was one lantern just floating in the sky), and a few things which just don't make a whole lot of SENSE together (let's remove most of the ebony in the world so it feels special when you find it, then have an added NPC who carries a bunch of ebony weapons and arrows, that's the ticket!), but that's the level of "perfection" when it comes to modding that I just can't be bothered with.
And judging from the fact that I actually opened up a fucking .nif editor to add lighting to an object to make things look cool when two different mods didn't interact in a way I wanted, that's a fucking threshold.
So, given it's been a long while since I talked about this stuff much, and I found going through mods was a good way to distract myself from *gestures at world* prior to getting in a medical place where I don't need it as much, I thought I'd give a quick rundown of some stuff I found which others might be interested in.
Generally speaking, SSE is now where a lot of the development seems to be going - the tools are there now where people are developing for it "first," and for larger stuff, that means back-porting is a pain because you're going from 64-bit memory addressing to 32-bit memory addressing. So it's still only just starting, but larger mods are starting to be SSE-only.
SKSE64 stuff can still be annoying because of when Bethesda updates the Creation Club, but that seems to be less of an issue lately. Not fully sure why, it just is.
ENB has come a long way. It's still not where LE got, but things like water parallax and per-weather settings, godrays, etc have been added, which helps a lot. There's also some new ENB lighting features which I'll get to in a sec.
I had mentioned this previously, but with the Creation Club thing, Light Masters were introduced to SSE, but people have found you can flag plugins as ESLs, which means they don't take up a traditional plugin space. This increases the total number of plugins/masters from 255 to 4350 (I think it is), provided 4096 of them are small enough (fewer than 2048 records), which a LOT of mods (mostly patches, but you'd be surprised) actually fall within, or can be compressed to fall within.
This is a lovely little guide to the process, but it really only requires one external tool which isn't hard to use, and REALLY opens up the ability to have a bunch more mods. Coupled with SSE's better stability, this might interest in a bunch of you.
Along with the above, Cathedral Assets Optimizer is an awesome little tool which will automate cleaning up any meshes and textures from LE for SE (and vice versa), as well as packing into .bsas to save on disk space, etc - it even automates converting animations now. If there's any must-have mod from LE you want in SE that hasn't been ported due to permissions or something, you have a good shot at being able to make it work just by pointing this thing at the appropriate folder and clicking ok.
Anyway, mods which may interest people:
This. Not for ES on Nexus anyway, and not to the point where I would endorse one over, say, a list of mods in the "Hey, get these together, they work play very well," context. In the other direction, the closest thing to a good implementation is, I would argue, when a modder, having secured permission, takes it upon themselves to combine separate mods into a merged endeavor (which is less a "mod pack" and more an entirely new mod, albeit with a compilation intent), thereby taking on the responsibility. It's difficult and time consuming, but so is modding, so you see it more often then you might expect.
But I can only weigh in on this as someone who's just done small bug fixes and mod patches, typically for my own consumption.
https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/d8jhof/hey_why_todays_release_of_usleep_is_now_an/
Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch (which is a master for a LOT of things) is updated to be released as an .exe which requires manual installation, because they don't want to be included in modpacks.
Wabbajack has already been updated to handle it, and doesn't even execute the .exe.
I'm half expecting Arthmoor to pull down all his mods at this point.