The Elder Scrolls Megathread XVII: Paid Mods? Not in My Community. - Games

Are there any good Oblivion mods out there that fix the level scaling system in the game without overdoing it or somehow make it worse?

[QUOTE=cdr248;48287062]Just because a game can take house rules doesn't make it any less complex than other games. DnD/Pathfinder's rules are known to be heavy/tactical/overly-specific when compared to other games in the medium. Sure you can 'house rule' all the complex stuff away, but then you wouldn't be playing DnD.[/QUOTE] DnD 5th is in my opinion one of the best examples of streamlining done well, videogames should follow in it's footsteps. it managed to take out or fix all the dumb bullshit and still end up with a game that felt like a followup to the mechanics of the older games. Skyrim feels like they removed features and didn't replace them with anything, like SPELLMAKING.

No spellmaking was a symptom of the new way spells work, with spell tiers and everything having a different casting style or effect. I didn't miss it at all. The only real use it had to me in Oblivion was making a stupid OP fireball that killed everything in one hit, otherwise I just used vanilla spells. But that's just me. [editline]banana[/editline] And the tome system too probably.

[QUOTE=Pretty Obscure;48294460]No spellmaking was a symptom of the new way spells work, with spell tiers and everything having a different casting style or effect. I didn't miss it at all. The only real use it had to me in Oblivion was making a stupid OP fireball that killed everything in one hit, otherwise I just used vanilla spells. But that's just me. [editline]banana[/editline] And the tome system too probably.[/QUOTE] Yes, this is [I]why [/I]there is no spellmaking but it's hardly a good defense, I'm saying the loss of spellmaking is a massive blow. Tiered spells already existed in Oblivion next to spellmaking too, so that's not a good reason. The spell effects are one thing yes, but you could devise a system where you pick from some stock visual hand effects, chose from ranged and area of effect effects, and apply the mechanical effect, or do it like oblivion where the first effect determines the style of the spell FX. they didn't even try they just went "eh seems hard" and wholesale removed a feature that's existed since fucking Daggerfall.

[QUOTE=Rahkshi lord;48294627]Yes, this is [I]why [/I]there is no spellmaking but it's hardly a good defense, I'm saying the loss of spellmaking is a massive blow. Tiered spells already existed in Oblivion next to spellmaking too, so that's not a good reason. The spell effects are one thing yes, but you could devise a system where you pick from some stock visual hand effects, chose from ranged and area of effect effects, and apply the mechanical effect, or do it like oblivion where the first effect determines the style of the spell FX. they didn't even try they just went "eh seems hard" and wholesale removed a feature that's existed since fucking Daggerfall.[/QUOTE] Actually spellmaking has been in the game since Arena :v: I wouldn't say spellmaking is a massive blow, it's just an unnecessary one. It was never integral to the game and is completely optional, but there's not really any reason as to why it should have been taken out.

[QUOTE=cdr248;48294801]Actually spellmaking has been in the game since Arena :v: I wouldn't say spellmaking is a massive blow, it's just an unnecessary one. It was never integral to the game and is completely optional, but there's not really any reason as to why it should have been taken out.[/QUOTE] I've never made it out of the opening dungeon in arena because the controls are just awful. [editline]25th July 2015[/editline] I consider it a serious blow because without it mage playthroughs were just dull to me.

[QUOTE=coyote93;48293815]Even the assassin's creed series got believable cities.[/QUOTE] Kinda hard to freerun when you can't climb trees.

[QUOTE=cdr248;48294801]Actually spellmaking has been in the game since Arena :v: I wouldn't say spellmaking is a massive blow, it's just an unnecessary one. It was never integral to the game and is completely optional, but there's not really any reason as to why it should have been taken out.[/QUOTE] it's a pretty massive blow in the sense that it was super fun which is like the most important thing in a video game

The weapon modification in Fallout 4 is giving me hope for a return of spellcrafting. I really hope so anyways, with some polish it would be incredible.

[code][07/26/2015 - 12:53:54AM] Error: Array index 5 is out of range (0-4) stack: [DragonEngineFinderQuest (20006E8C)].DragonEngineFinderQuestScript.OnInit() - "DragonEngineFinderQuestScript.psc" Line ? [/code] This is the only bug I really get now, my logs are spammed with this, I mean, My game still crashes every 2~3 hours, but I have autosave on 5 minutes and it takes only 1 minute to reload the game, so, its not bad. I just want to fix this so my logs aren't filled it it.

[QUOTE=cdr248;48284554]I don't think that an open game is a better game, but that's the route Bethesda takes. Bethesda is more about making a world that's explorable, sure they want to make it somewhat believable too, but they never compromise gameplay for realism or writing. They'll probably never have a system in which by doing one thing you can completely lock yourself out of another, it's just against their philosophy. And while the books contribute to the exploring of the world, the attributes don't. Bethesda cares more about that sense of exploration than they do the actual story of the game. Which is why the stories you find hidden away in the caves of TES and Fallout 3 are much more charming then anything spoken. And by locking you out of a guild, they feel as if they actively harm the player's ability to explore, much like how they vow never to have their games have a 'definite end'. Even the game's leveling system is tied to the believe that there should be nothing the player [I]can't [/I]do. You can always reach the max in any attribute and any skill. Not to mention that console commands aren't available for consoles, and thus Bethesda has to cater to their needs. I'm not a fan of that approach to guilds, I personally think it's a little dumb too along with the whole 'our games won't have an ending' thing. But, seeing as I have learned to limit myself, I stopped caring and just avoided the guilds I don't think my characters should be joining. But answer this correctly and I'll back down: "What joinable guilds in Skyrim actively oppose one another? For what reasons would any of these guilds absolutely forbid you from joining another?" If two guilds had opposing philosophies then I could understand that the lack of consequences would be hella dumb, but other than the Civil War factions, there are no guilds that have any [I]absolute [/I]reason to stop you from joining another. And sure the attributes "do something", however what they do is very behind the scenes or can easily be simplified. Strength, Endurance, and Intelligence, the attributes that had the most noticeable effect on the game, were just cut down into Health, Magicka, and Stamina. Both systems provide the same effect but one serves that effect in a much more understandable and direct fashion. With Skyrim's system you can immediately see the effect that leveling up has on your stats as opposed to just "bigger number = better". The rest of the attributes and derived stats more or less still remain in the game but with more direct effects. ie 10% extra mana regen has a much clearer effect on your character than +10 to Willpower. Skyrim ditches the middle man and informs the player of his choices in a much more direct fashion. Does it technically make characters less varied? Absolutely, but only on a level where two characters don't have the same level in stats, but that doesn't mean they play completely differently. And that is why the change was made, sacrificing complexity for something a little bit more satisfying and clear. The speed attribute is a complete toss up. If it had a slight effect on your movement speed then it wouldn't matter at all, but if it had too much of an effect on your speed then it would cause you to move either too slow, or at uncontrollable speeds. Seeing this, Bethesda decided it actively harmed the game. And the same could be said for the athletics skill. Also you do know you can do that kind of play style in Skyrim. The game still allows for oddball or builds however the choices for those builds are a lot more clear and to the point, and probably even more varied due to perks. I'm a fan of Morrowind too and I do know what you mean between wanting a middleground, however the games are more of Action/Adventure games than they are RPGs, and by trying to strike that middle ground with Morrowind and Oblivion, they ran into some problems, lots of them actually. So they just scrapped all of it into something that "just works". It's not the best solution but it's the one they came up with and it's the one we have to put up with because Todd Howard has a pretty face that we can't say 'no' to.[/QUOTE] Okay I finally understand what you mean. However I am still inclined to disagree with you. I can't remember Skyrim all too well, but aren't the general population slightly against magic? I think I have it in my head that guards comment negatively when you cast spells in their presence. So my thought is, if you are as high as you can get in the mage's college, why are you still accepted into the other "legal" guilds. I think there is only one other, the one in Whiterun where the people are wolverines, or have I gotten it wrong? Anyway. If people generally frown upon magic why would you be allowed such a high rank within that society? It feels as it would raise some eyebrows since I think it would be pretty hard to hide that you're in the mage's college. It feels that people would doubt the society in Whiterun and investigate it more "they let a mage get a high rank in it, what else are they doing in there?". Then they should find out because that rock isn't particularly hidden where they do the blood stuff and it should become apparent that almost everyone in that society is a werewolf. I agree with what you say regarding books. They are a great way of enriching the world and I also agree that they are probably more important than the "useless" attributes. But it is still my opinion that the attributes served a purpose despite barely being used. At least to me they made more sense than having only HP, magicka and stamina. So I feel they added to the "realism" of the world. It would make sense that running a lot allowed you to increase your speed when you leveled up, instead of raising whatever you want the same amount as anything else. I don't think they couldn't have fixed it and I believe that TES games took the wrong turn after morrowind. Moving at hyper speed or incredibly slow should be possible in a game where magic exists and you can be a weak character trying to carry 8 or 9 swords. That also added to the fact that just because it seems "useless" going from being useless to kind of fast made you feel like you had developed a lot and made your character feel a lot stronger, like you actually had worked to get where he/you are today. You can play like that in Skyrim but it's dumbed down and the game will generally set you in the right direction by forcing you to get more hp/mag/stam every time you level up, instead of making you fast so you can at least run away from danger. If you feel there's something I have missed reply again because I felt in a rush when I typed this. Otherwise I am not sure how much further we can take this discussion. You believe the games took a more adventure style role and I believe they removed elements essential to an RPG. It's really a case of is the glass half full or half empty scenario.

[QUOTE=kibbleknight;48293719]Why cant we just get a single-player Elder Scrolls game like ESO where we can go everywhere in Tamriel? That would be a shot load of fun. ESO is fun and all, but not really worth the money, plus you can't really beat the classic bethesda single player experience of the older Elder Scrolls games.[/QUOTE] You can buy the PC version for about $10-15. I'd say it's worth it now theres no subscription fees.

[QUOTE=kibbleknight;48293719]Why cant we just get a single-player Elder Scrolls game like ESO where we can go everywhere in Tamriel? That would be a shot load of fun. ESO is fun and all, but not really worth the money, plus you can't really beat the classic bethesda single player experience of the older Elder Scrolls games.[/QUOTE] Because then people would be less excited for the next game.

[QUOTE=TheTalon;48293759]I think the scale is okay. Too big and it's hard to populate it with enough stuff, at least enough unique stuff, to make the huge open expanses non boring. Too small and it feels cramped I think Oblivion got the scale just right. It didn't feel claustrophobic, and it wasn't so big that there were stretches of nothing. Skyrim's scale isn't much different, but there's a lot of areas that are impassible, semi forcing you in a direction, except for the central area. Morrowind was too big, but it also had a lot of (If you weren't clever with acrobatics and shit) corridor type areas that directed you[/QUOTE] The scale in TES is always mediocre. Aside from the sheer lack of houses and interiors, the worldspace is distinctively too small in game in comparison to how big it is supposed to be in the lore. This causes large discrepancies such as Anvil in Oblivion supposedly being a large harbor town when in reality the town is disconnected from the sea entirely and the only bit of water linking the two is a tiny stream that couldn't contain a rowboat. Given, the world can get pretty monotonous if you double the scale (there was a mod that tried that for Oblivion) but the scale that's used for TES is just horrible. There's simply put not enough stuff in between. Hell, at this rate they might as well take the Witcher route and crop off all the inbetween shit that no one really cares about and instead focus on making "small" areas very detailed and lively. And if people really want to see the empty wilderness inbetween, just make gigantic empty areas that are nothing but hills and roads. In the case of Skyrim, this means the game would be divided in several holds with very large patches of wilderness between them, and each hold would be its own separate worldspace. If the player wants to pick up their things and travel from one hold to the next across mostly empty hills they can, but the game allows for fast travel anyway so that it can be avoided if you want to save time.

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;48297760]Hell, at this rate they might as well take the Witcher route and crop off all the inbetween shit that no one really cares about and instead focus on making "small" areas very detailed and lively. And if people really want to see the empty wilderness inbetween, just make gigantic empty areas that are nothing but hills and roads.[/QUOTE] ugh god no that would be awful part of what makes the elder scrolls feel like the elder scrolls is that it feels like one cohesive world, having arbitrary route cropping would ruin the experience of the game so badly

Then Bethesda needs to step up their game and actually put content in the worldspace instead of dungeons every so often and villages with three houses. Skyrim may feel like one cohesive world, but it's one cohesive world where a total of fifty people have houses and the rest live nowhere.

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;48297760]And if people really want to see the empty wilderness inbetween, just make gigantic empty areas that are nothing but hills and roads.[/QUOTE] Pretty sure they already did that in Oblivion and lots of people hated it.

But Oblivion also allowed you to fast travel directly between the cities to counteract the large expanses of land in-between. The issue with Oblivion is that the worldspace was ugly and the dungeons monotonous.

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;48297828]But Oblivion also allowed you to fast travel directly between the cities to counteract the large expanses of land in-between. The issue with Oblivion is that the worldspace was ugly and the dungeons monotonous.[/QUOTE] every single cave dungeon had that one room with the raised area and a chest on it

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;48297813]Then Bethesda needs to step up their game and actually put content in the worldspace instead of dungeons every so often and villages with three houses. Skyrim may feel like one cohesive world, but it's one cohesive world where a total of fifty people have houses and the rest live nowhere.[/QUOTE] i'm really into the lore of the elder scrolls and not even i want massive cities filled to the brim with NPCs and a million houses and shit like that. why? because it'll kill the gameplay. Skyrim went a little too far in the simple direction, but Oblivion hit the perfect balance between creating a large scale city and having it be small enough that you can actually wrap your hands around it. you could find NPCs that were actually relevant, it wasn't filled to the brim with filler npcs, and you could move around the towns relatively easily and generally enter every building in a city. if this balance is altered, suddenly either we fall into the stupid idea of "MAKE EVERY HOUSE ENTERABLE" with hundreds of houses (which face it - is boring - not every house is going to have something interesting and all it really does is serve to muddle up the world, keep focus away from important stuff, and make extra unnecessary work for the devs) OR we have to make some homes unenterable - which runs counter to what the elder scrolls plays like at its core. either that is focused in cities making them feel larger in scale or filtered throughout the world which will make the cities feel even smaller. i like lore and some sort of equivalence between the lore and the gameplay would be cool if it wouldn't make the gameplay complete garbage.

[QUOTE=Lordgeorge16;48297817]Pretty sure they already did that in Oblivion and lots of people hated it.[/QUOTE] Everyone complained about Oblivion's randomly generated dungeons/wilderness but it's not like Skyrim was all that much of an improvement. Both the dungeons and the wilderness are boring af it's just that one method takes more time.

How exactly would cities that are believable "kill gameplay" Solitude has a grand total of like five houses and the population of a countryside village, that's just lazy and dumb.

[QUOTE=IQ-Guldfisk;48297210]Okay I finally understand what you mean. However I am still inclined to disagree with you. I can't remember Skyrim all too well, but aren't the general population slightly against magic? I think I have it in my head that guards comment negatively when you cast spells in their presence. So my thought is, if you are as high as you can get in the mage's college, why are you still accepted into the other "legal" guilds. I think there is only one other, the one in Whiterun where the people are wolverines, or have I gotten it wrong? Anyway. If people generally frown upon magic why would you be allowed such a high rank within that society? It feels as it would raise some eyebrows since I think it would be pretty hard to hide that you're in the mage's college. It feels that people would doubt the society in Whiterun and investigate it more "they let a mage get a high rank in it, what else are they doing in there?". Then they should find out because that rock isn't particularly hidden where they do the blood stuff and it should become apparent that almost everyone in that society is a werewolf. I agree with what you say regarding books. They are a great way of enriching the world and I also agree that they are probably more important than the "useless" attributes. But it is still my opinion that the attributes served a purpose despite barely being used. At least to me they made more sense than having only HP, magicka and stamina. So I feel they added to the "realism" of the world. It would make sense that running a lot allowed you to increase your speed when you leveled up, instead of raising whatever you want the same amount as anything else. I don't think they couldn't have fixed it and I believe that TES games took the wrong turn after morrowind. Moving at hyper speed or incredibly slow should be possible in a game where magic exists and you can be a weak character trying to carry 8 or 9 swords. That also added to the fact that just because it seems "useless" going from being useless to kind of fast made you feel like you had developed a lot and made your character feel a lot stronger, like you actually had worked to get where he/you are today. You can play like that in Skyrim but it's dumbed down and the game will generally set you in the right direction by forcing you to get more hp/mag/stam every time you level up, instead of making you fast so you can at least run away from danger. If you feel there's something I have missed reply again because I felt in a rush when I typed this. Otherwise I am not sure how much further we can take this discussion. You believe the games took a more adventure style role and I believe they removed elements essential to an RPG. It's really a case of is the glass half full or half empty scenario.[/QUOTE] I can see where you are coming from but that's kind of a minor detail. It's not like any of the guilds are sworn enemies, sure they might begrudging let you join, but there's never been a clear 'no mages allowed' policy. Bethesda also makes the assumption that you do the main quest at some point (or perhaps the first thing you do considering the whole 'get to whiterun as fast as you can!' thing) so guilds probably stop giving a shit when the realize they're in the presence of the Dragonborn. And since the point of most of the guilds are on their last leg, they'll gladly take in some demi-god of martial and magical prowess. It's not like you're able to join both the Companions and the Silverhand at the same time (which now that i think about it you should totally be able to do that for sick double agent shit.) That whole paragraph about attributes you wrote can basically just be summed up by your last paragraph. Bethesda has just simply moved on to making action adventure games instead of RPGs, this is especially clear with Fallout 4. I'm usually supportive of this because I've come to the point in my life where I have found video game RPGs to be dull compared to tabletop. Computer games just lack the special bits that make rpgs fun to me. And since you can slow mo shoot dudes in a satisfying manner in tabletops, my tastes in games has begun to shift over to that side. Especially because I never felt that the TES games were particularly captivating RPGs, but more like a larger, westernized, medieval Zelda (w/ minor rpg elements) where you can do whatever the fuck you want. I love Morrowind and Oblivion, they'll always have a special place in my heart (even their dumb little attributes), but I've gotten to the point where I'm just so sick and tired of Bethesda's shit where I just wish they could make a game that doesn't feel fucking duct taped together for once. While Morrowind and Oblivion have deeper sub-systems, their base systems are clearly flawed. If it takes some dumbing down for the TES series to finally be proper-fucking-playable for once then hopefully I can just mod it to shit to fill the whole inside. Why get a hot hooker that ain't got any moves when you can just get an ugly hooker with the best moves and some decent makeup yknow? So yeah we're basically just gonna have to agree to disagree.

[QUOTE=cdr248;48298047]Everyone complained about Oblivion's randomly generated dungeons/wilderness but it's not like Skyrim was all that much of an improvement. Both the dungeons and the wilderness are boring af it's just that one method takes more time.[/QUOTE] Oblivion's dungeons and wilderness weren't randomly generated, though.

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;48298087]How exactly would cities that are believable "kill gameplay" Solitude has a grand total of like five houses and the population of a countryside village, that's just lazy and dumb.[/QUOTE] Because the TES games have almost always been about exploring a large province instead of a singular city. And since gamebryo is a shit, it probably won't be as fun as stuff like assassins creed. Plus, since Morrowind the whole series has been focused on focus. If you can't climb that mountain then Todd Howard will personally scrap all work on the game and redo it until you can climb that mountain. [editline]26th July 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=wat_am_i_doin;48298169]Oblivion's dungeons and wilderness weren't randomly generated, though.[/QUOTE] I'm not 100% sure on the dungeons but I'm fairly sure the wilderness was randomly generated. Not like procedural-y or anything but they had a system where it just placed random things of grass, trees, and rocks over a heightmap, then slapped a couple dungeon entranced around.

Well judging by how Skyrim had so many needless invisible walls and how most of the province was boring, their focus is either misguided or really half assed.

Where were there "pointless" invisible walls? The only places I found invisible walls were the expected places of around city walls and on border mountains and such.

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;48298258]Well judging by how Skyrim had so many needless invisible walls and how most of the province was boring, their focus is either misguided or really half assed.[/QUOTE] Which is exactly why you don't hand place every shrub in the whole damn province on that kind of scale. There isn't that big a difference between Oblivion's landscape and Skyrim's in terms of random clutter placement so why waste the time. The only problem is that random generation is much more noticable with cities. If the whole game just goes by city blocks where a building is randomly thrown in then it'll be boring as hell. But if every city block is like Deus Ex HR Detroit level of detail then it'd take forever. [editline]26th July 2015[/editline] Oblivion's artist on landscape design: [QUOTE]How does it all get there? Sure we can say the glaciers are responsible, and claim that the mushrooms just magically sprung up where they are, but in reality, the artists must place all of this content and detail…somehow. Ok, so what are we talking about, hundreds of thousands of references? Sure! No problem…we’ll be finished, oh, sometime in the next 10 years or so. I’m sure everyone patiently waiting would be thrilled about this notion, but surely we’d go collectively mad trying to micromanage detail on that scale. What we need is a way to place thousands of references in our world and have them be arranged in such a way as to look like they’ve always been there. Thanks again to our programmers and to expanded Construction Set functionality, an immensely intricate and dense landscape overflowing with detail is now within our grasp. With the addition of the Region Editor toolset, world artists are able to select a worldspace (in this case Cyrodiil) and define an abstract 2D region shape, which encompasses a smaller portion of the overall landscape. These region shapes are drawn with as much, or as little complexity as the user desires and will appropriately shade whichever areas are within range of the region boundary. [IMG]http://cms.elderscrolls.com/sites/default/files/community/images/devdiary_march_screen07B.jpg[/IMG] [url]http://www.elderscrolls.com/community/brief-history-cyrodiil/[/url] [/QUOTE] So like I said, they basically they just made a heightmap and had all the vegetation randomly placed. I'm not 100% sure on how they did the dungeons but I don't think it would be out of the realm of possibility of them going Dungeons of Dredmor on them and have the construction kit choose what tiles to put next to what tile. They did em for the caves in the actual realms of oblivion so it's totally possible.

Source for skyrim being handcrafted because tbh I wasn't entirely sure myself on how handcrafted it was: [QUOTE]“We found by doing Fallout 3 that making a completely hand-done world just looks a lot better; it's more interesting, it just feels better. So we ramped up the landscape team and worked on that from the beginning. “Every rock, every tree, every ingredient plant, was all placed by an artist or level designer to make sure the world was well-crafted.” [url]http://www.elderscrolls.com/community/reaching-new-heights-world-skyrim/[/url] [/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Pretty Obscure;48298268]Where were there "pointless" invisible walls? The only places I found invisible walls were the expected places of around city walls and on border mountains and such.[/QUOTE] Chunks of wilderness were blocked off by invisible walls, notably the throat of the world which Howard claimed you could climb, except it's not so much climbing as it is trotting along the predetermined path for a single quest. And while hand crafting the worldspace does look better, it can't fix boring visuals and it can't fix issues with scale. Hand placing every single rock and tree around Rorikstead sure helped with the landscape but it doesn't change the fact Rorikstead has literally two houses.