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Morrowind Stronghold

vendetta

Novice
Joined
Nov 27, 2005
Messages
37
POOPOO MCBUMFACE said:
Also, CK or whoever, fancy beta testing a mod for me? It's an Enhanced Edition of one I've already done, so shouldn't take long, but I've been waiting on my one tester to get back to me for... er... over a year now. And apparently he's passed it on to other people without telling me who they are, or something. Anyone up for it, toss me a PM.

I'm looking forward to this, Mr. Poopoo. :salute:

I can't beta-test for you, as I'm in the midst of final papers and exams. If you make this happen before age of decadence comes out, you will win a share of my gratitude.

As for LGNPC mods, well I don't see why you hate them so much, they seemed to me much better than vanilla dialogues. But knowing it's your first play-through apparently, vanilla dialogues are probably not as horrible and redundant as they seem to us.

for telvanni mods, well I have no idea, I haven't tried any of them. To be honest, I haven't played the game in years either.
 

hal900x

Augur
Joined
Jul 2, 2009
Messages
573
Location
A good place to own a gun.
I have yet to find any good LGNPC dialog. Please post some. Here, I will run my backup install of Morrowind, and pick the nearest available LGNPC. Here's the result of the first two dialog topics from that NPC:

"I do not know where they have gone or is they are in all truth, dead."

"There (sic) motives where quite unthought of by fellow pointed ears, and even feared".

As far as I can see, every written line breaks suspension of disbelief immediately. Every NPC has spelling errors, grammar so poor I actually flinch, exposition dump, etc. No vanilla NPC spews out 5 paragraphs in a row about some mundane flavor topic, and when they do it's immediately obvious that a 15 year old fanboy wrote it. That, to me, is awful. I mean, if you can't even take the time to proofread, then that says "bad" to me. Ymmv, I guess. I can see how someone for whom English is a second or third language would be more forgiving, because the entire thing smells of a fan translation from another language.

It's technically perfect, but that doesn't really factor in when the writing is pure shit, imo. One of the reasons I was so disappointed and thus critical is because, as has been repeatedly pointed out, the game needs something like this, because NPCs do indeed tend to the generic. That's what makes it such a shame that the writing is beyond amateurish. At least spell correctly, ffs.
 

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Can't become better without correction. If i were you i'd do a flame thread in their forums, give examples, an impassionate speech about the need of proofreading by a native speaker, flame a little more, and disappear.

Then watch the fireworks.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
SCO said:
Can't become better without correction. If i were you i'd do a flame thread in their forums, give examples, an impassionate speech about the need of proofreading by a native speaker, flame a little more, and disappear.

Then watch the fireworks.
That might be pretty cool.

Also, hal900x, you've cured me of my "wish LGNPC was translated into Polish, I bet trying to convert it on my own would be helluva mess" affliction. :salute:

Morrowind isn't much of a character-centric game, the existing dialogue, although really stiff most of the time, does the job. You're not interacting with characters for the sake of interaction (ok, barring Ahnassi :P ),you interact with them for specific purposes.
 

Topher

Cipher
Joined
Dec 5, 2007
Messages
1,860
DraQ said:
SCO said:
Can't become better without correction. If i were you i'd do a flame thread in their forums, give examples, an impassionate speech about the need of proofreading by a native speaker, flame a little more, and disappear.

Then watch the fireworks.
That might be pretty cool.

Also, hal900x, you've cured me of my "wish LGNPC was translated into Polish, I bet trying to convert it on my own would be helluva mess" affliction. :salute:

Morrowind isn't much of a character-centric game, the existing dialogue, although really stiff most of the time, does the job. You're not interacting with characters for the sake of interaction (ok, barring Ahnassi :P ),you interact with them for specific purposes.

Yeah, the Morrowind dialog never bothered me at all.
 

Sceptic

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 2, 2010
Messages
10,874
Divinity: Original Sin
DraQ said:
You're not interacting with characters for the sake of interaction (ok, barring Ahnassi :P )
:/

Oh right, scaly fetish.

personally I'd take Crassius any day :love:
 

hal900x

Augur
Joined
Jul 2, 2009
Messages
573
Location
A good place to own a gun.
SCO said:
Can't become better without correction. If i were you i'd do a flame thread in their forums, give examples, an impassionate speech about the need of proofreading by a native speaker, flame a little more, and disappear.

Then watch the fireworks.

True story, I had such a post composed and saved in notepad. It had my critiques and me volunteering to fix it. I have tons of free time and decent writing skills. But poking around in their forums I found where an admin said, for some reason or other, it wasn't feasible to give any additional people access to the content right now, so I just left it alone. Besides, the majority of posts were from slavering fanboys, and I figured their team was probably surrounded by that impenetrable field of smug that modders tend to have. Especially with that much brown-nosing evident.

Edit: And yes, Morrowind dialog is fine. The problem with it, and the reason why something like LGNPC was written, is because so many NPCs have the same responses to identical topics. Until you find one with a specific dialog trigger, at which point you get a bit of fresh text. The idea of LGNPC was (mostly) to add variety to the per-topic responses while still conveying the same general info. Which is a great idea, so it's really too bad the implementation is poor. The other thing is (gasp) scope creep. They started adding a bunch of quests and generally getting ambitious, and then it really starts going downhill.
 

Topher

Cipher
Joined
Dec 5, 2007
Messages
1,860
hal900x said:
SCO said:
Can't become better without correction. If i were you i'd do a flame thread in their forums, give examples, an impassionate speech about the need of proofreading by a native speaker, flame a little more, and disappear.

Then watch the fireworks.

True story, I had such a post composed and saved in notepad. It had my critiques and me volunteering to fix it. I have tons of free time and decent writing skills. But poking around in their forums I found where an admin said, for some reason or other, it wasn't feasible to give any additional people access to the content right now, so I just left it alone. Besides, the majority of posts were from slavering fanboys, and I figured their team was probably surrounded by that impenetrable field of smug that modders tend to have. Especially with that much brown-nosing evident.

Edit: And yes, Morrowind dialog is fine. The problem with it, and the reason why something like LGNPC was written, is because so many NPCs have the same responses to identical topics. Until you find one with a specific dialog trigger, at which point you get a bit of fresh text. The idea of LGNPC was (mostly) to add variety to the per-topic responses while still conveying the same general info. Which is a great idea, so it's really too bad the implementation is poor. The other thing is (gasp) scope creep. They started adding a bunch of quests and generally getting ambitious, and then it really starts going downhill.

Scope creep... I like that term. Anyway, I generally hate anything modders do because it too often seems unpolished and just generally not on par with the quality of the vanilla game. It seems that no matter how simple the mods is they've just got to try there hand at adding in some crappy content. I've yet to ever find a Morrowind mod that I like, even the one that added in a better crime system was rife with poor spelling and capitalization, it drove me nuts and I just couldn't go on using it.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
Sceptic said:
DraQ said:
You're not interacting with characters for the sake of interaction (ok, barring Ahnassi :P )
:/

Oh right, scaly fetish.
First, she's a Khajiit, so no.
Second, her questline is more or less a romance line, with little material rewards.
Third, would you prefer Aerie instead?
:smug:

Topher said:
Anyway, I generally hate anything modders do because it too often seems unpolished and just generally not on par with the quality of the vanilla game. It seems that no matter how simple the mods is they've just got to try there hand at adding in some crappy content. I've yet to ever find a Morrowind mod that I like, even the one that added in a better crime system was rife with poor spelling and capitalization, it drove me nuts and I just couldn't go on using it.
Well, small mechanics mods (like WGI) are usually ok. Then there is Hagge (PL only) which might have screwed up a bit with new models and certain gameplay elements (to be fixed in the next version IF it comes out), but got the atmosphere and lore-integration extremely right and I enjoyed it no less than official expansions. And then there is TR, which seems (I haven't explored it personally yet) to be on the official stuff level.
 

Topher

Cipher
Joined
Dec 5, 2007
Messages
1,860
You're right that most games have a few small mechanics mods that manage to keep it clean, the quick-start mod for Morrowind springs to mind, but typically anything more in-depth then that turn's me off.
 

bigcat

Novice
Joined
Jan 19, 2012
Messages
4
Forgive the necro-post, however I wrote the original LGNPC-Seyda Neen. Yeah it had some typos and was not perfect, but after Wrye (one of the best modders ever) fixed it up I defy you to call it shit. It was done to prove to Bethsoft that you could have interesting NPCs and without it you would not have the interesting characters you have in Skyrim today.
Oh btw it was downloaded over one million times in the first year of release, not bad for a shit mod written in two days.
 

The Ticktockman

Scholar
Joined
Nov 11, 2007
Messages
344
Location
Austin, TX
...and without it you would not have the interesting characters you have in Skyrim today.

Bullshit.

Oh btw it was downloaded over one million times in the first year of release, not bad for a shit mod written in two days.
Thanks for letting us know how little effort you put into it.

You're the very model of an egotistical, self-centered mod creator
 

bigcat

Novice
Joined
Jan 19, 2012
Messages
4
Ok maybe that did come of as arrogant, but something about seeing your work and the work of dozens of other people referred to as a steaming pile of shit tends to make you a bit defensive.
Morrowind and everything Bethsoft did before that had zero personality NPCs (but lots of lore), after that suddenly everyone in the games has a reason to exist and voiced dialog. I had some mild exchanges with them when I was trying to figure out how to do the modding (it was just about the first dialog mod if not the first) and they were not happy when they figured out what I was trying to do. Then the whole team, unrelated to me, came out and showed the world that Beth had just been lazy by working their butts of to make the world live. Believe what you want and flame on.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
In case you aren't drog, consider yourself warned that this place can be pretty abrasive at times*. If you lack distance and take everything to yourself I give you several minutes before you run out of here in excruciating butthurt never to return.




*) ALL times.
:smug:
 

wwsd

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jun 16, 2011
Messages
7,741
I do like LGNPC, but it is best enjoyed when you're not too concerned about instances of poor writing like the ones quoted above. To me, the entire Redoran story that LGNPC gives you, for instance, is more important than some punctuation errors in Seyda Neen (vanilla Morrowind also has quite a few typos, by the way). But I can sympathise with the idea that such errors remove a lot of immersion.

I don't think LGNPC makes significant changes to the way you interact with characters; it just adds more variety to that. With or without LGNPC, Morrowind will always be a game where you don't really have dialogue choices as such, except for a few exceptions where they help out with quests. LGNPC adds a few more instances of this and quite a bunch of quests, but it mainly just gives unique responses to all the topics in the list. Most of them are along the lines of "I'm just a peasant, how do you expect me to know everything about Daedric artifacts?" I can imagine that it would be very easy and tempting for the makers of LGNPC to make every character someone's long-lost son and add a quest with disproportional rewards to every single one of them, but I didn't see a lot of that.

That some of LGNPC is poorly-written is something that cannot be denied, but the same can be said for Morrowind in general at times. I think it's a good mod altogether.

Some criticisms, though:

I can understand why the guy who wrote LGNPC Seyda Neen answers his critics by pointing to the context and to the fixing of the mod, but I do absolutely think that LGNPC:SN is the worst one of the lot. At one point in the mod, you can help an adventurer fall in love with a village girl. One of them gives you a love letter for the other, and when you try to read it, it says: "This is a secret love note that you should not be reading you cad!" Derp.

Of course, Seyda Neen isn't very important, but one problem with a lot of LGNPC is that a lot of things you do just evidently don't matter. While I love all of the Redoran-related LGNPC, it's really a shame that everything is basically linear and predetermined. Everyone knows that nobody will ever give a shit if you bring potions and equipment to Marandus, that they aren't actually having an epic battle against the Sixth House while you are clearing out a cave, etc. And when you side with Bolvyn Venim against them, you just get expelled (I think). Of course, it would be strange to support the people who hate outlanders, and it is in character for Venim to screw you over like that, but it means that there is no real choice involved in helping out Sodres Nerethi. You only do it because that's the only way to get the plot along. Bear in mind that LGNPC promises:

PAX Redoran seeks to have the entire House Redoran experience be more interesting and less generic, making the House seem more like a House of honorable warriors that is suffering a decline of their honor and fortunes. The PC can begin to reverse that decline or increase it by their actions.

You can hardly do anything about that. Sure, you can tell characters to start rebuilding the walls of Ald-ruhn, and they will tell you that this will be done eventually, but you never really get anything to show for it. The Ald-ruhn mod promises that you can "search through the manor district for notes, letters, and threats, all written by our members, adding new depth to the storylines of the characters occupying the manor district, and triggering new quests", but how often does that actually happen?

A lot of this is related to the nature of Morrowind itself, of course.
 

bigcat

Novice
Joined
Jan 19, 2012
Messages
4
I'm not drog and thanks for the warning.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Thanks for trying the mod wwsd, sorry it didn't live up to your expectations. Glad it at least inspired the folks who did the big project and you enjoyed that.
Well off to the unappreciated modder retirement home to watch more Doctor Who.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
You can hardly do anything about that. Sure, you can tell characters to start rebuilding the walls of Ald-ruhn, and they will tell you that this will be done eventually, but you never really get anything to show for it.

(...)

A lot of this is related to the nature of Morrowind itself, of course.
I'm not a modder, but wouldn't placing repaired and WIP walls plus using scripts to selectively disable and enable the right variants allow for this without being exactly rocket science?
 

wwsd

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jun 16, 2011
Messages
7,741
I have no idea, I'm not a modder either. Just a player who notices how static the game world is and how some mods that I like a lot still don't change that much. In fairness, LGNPC is mostly a dialogue mod, but these are definitely some things on my wish list for the future.
 

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