Improving Skyrim / Recommended Mods thread (Mostly about Requiem)

[DraQ]

(...) or because there are more options and subtlety on those quests?

They're far less EPIC and MAJESTIC as frack and resemble Morrowind Guild quests more

Actually that's bullshit.

They are already linear "save the guild, get the title" bullshit. It's just that they are longer so it doesn't feel as jarring, but it's still jarring.
At least Skyrim guilds have some sort of competence test on entry.
It's a dummy in vanilla mechanics, but if you overhaul the mechanics, you automatically overhaul the test.

As for dungeon design, while its true that most dungeons are inexcusably linear and have derpy "other exit blocked from inside" gimmick, they present much more diverse environments and sometimes are found as part of a greater wholes - conglomerates of multiple dungeons connected to hostile exteriors or quasi exteriors, and those areas can be quite excellent, with multiple paths and rich structure.

Also DraQ, sometimes I wonder if Oblivion killed your parents in an alley in front of your eyes when you were 8 or something.

The game came out two years too late for that.

How subtle.


At least I started writing my cRPG design diatribes early, it seems.

Still doesn't change the fact that using magic was more enjoyable in vanilla Oblivion than in vanilla Skyrim, because while Oblivion cut like 1/10 of Morrowind's spell effects

I can cut off 1/10 of your body mass and you will still be dead depending on my choice of 1/10.

In Skyrim, you can heal yourself and put up a ward.

You can also cast anti-undead spells. Regaining stamina is IIRC side effect of healing if you have the right perk.
Fortifying shit would have been interesting if attributes weren't fucking redundant already due to game being full herpaderp.

In general the only genuinely interesting spells Skyrim dropped from Oblivion were dispel, disintegrate item and waterwalking.

Likewise, Skyrim's Destruction school dropped weakness to, damage health, disintegrate armor/weapon, only retaining the three elemental damages.

But you can do more with them than touch, projectile and AoE projectile. In additon to projectile and AoE projectile you can fire continuous elemental attack, inscribe a rune, set a wall of element, envelop yourself in elemental cloak damaging attackers, or fire a powerful spell centered around self.
Elements also differ more from each other, for example lightning in Oblivion was the same slow projectile as everything else, only with different visual effect. In Skyrim lightning is instant hit and elements in general require more consideration (not *much* more, mind you) than whatever encounters least resistance.

All the different casting types (ritual, channeled, charged etc.) were mostly a waste since you have just a few spell effects from every school to choose from.

There is a lot of difference between spraying enemy continuously with an element, bombarding him from far away with AoE, or setting up runes.

Therefore false.

Sure, this system should have been integrated with Morrowind style spellmaker, MW style attributes (with DF style speed) and extended choice of effects, because it would be perfectly compatible with that, but it's still way ahead Oblivion as it is.

Requiem's spells most likely kicks Oblivion's spells' ass

*Requiem's* high level spells nom Oblivion's spells' heads and shit them down their necks.

 

[circ]

Well I dunno how it works exactly. But, install SkyRe and ReProccer, start a new game, enable Frostfall and try to set it up and notice meters are all at maximum transparency and there's no way to change the effects. Maybe you're not using Frostfall 2.5? Or an old version of SkyRe and ReProccer. I dunno.

Well it's working now either way. Same ol' shitty Skyrim. Was interesting using a bow now though. Much longer drawtime and it drained stamina. Noice. Also people die faster so far, probably my two handed weapon being bullshit.

EDIT: ok... CROSSBOWS FUCKING HURT! Shit, guy with a shield and broadsword hurts too when running around with a shortbow. So far though the solution to enemy AI has been to be more aggressive and fuck shit up.

EDIT some mo: lul movement speed depends on stamina. that's awsum. Also ran into some random bandit patrol and kept getting raped. Apparently all you needed was last stand though. Oh well. But damn it's tough.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Oblivion killed DraQ's parents in an alley in front of him when he was a kid...then he saw a majestic Requiembird, which inspired him to become a Draq Knight.

By the way, I found a picture that more adequately represents the average casul's experience with Requiem.

Spoiler

 

[Delterius]

Are you saying that every casual player installs animu mods? I'm deeply offended sir.

Well I dunno how it works exactly. But, install SkyRe and ReProccer, start a new game, enable Frostfall and try to set it up and notice meters are all at maximum transparency and there's no way to change the effects. Maybe you're not using Frostfall 2.5? Or an old version of SkyRe and ReProccer. I dunno.

Nothing of the sort and I am using the latest version,

 

[Lhynn]

I still dont get why making magic power stronger makes the game better

 

[Bubbles]

They should just remove magic altogether and replace all the spell trees with identical unarmed combat moves that are hard capped at 2 damage per hit.

 

[dextermorgan]

Having read all 101 pages of this thread (not at once, of course), I feel blessed for not having tainted myself with anything shat out by Bethpizda in years.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I still dont get why making magic power stronger makes the game better

Mages in TES are described as badasses, but in practice they are shit compared to a warrior with enchanted gear. Make mages viable (and enemy mages more than minor nuisances), and you have more options to play the game, making it a bit better.

 

[Lhynn]

I still dont get why making magic power stronger makes the game better

Mages in TES are described as badasses, but in practice they are shit compared to a warrior with enchanted gear. Make mages viable (and enemy mages more than minor nuisances), and you have more options to play the game, making it a bit better.

They are badasses as long as the world doesnt scale to their level

 

[DeepOcean]

(...) or because there are more options and subtlety on those quests?

I asked that because I remember some people saying that The Dark Brotherhood quests were good and cocksucked Emil Pugliarulo for designing them , when the retard was responsible for Fallout 3 writing, I started questioning that... I honestly never had the curiosity of testing if Oblivion side quests had any merit to them. After the Emperor got down the dungeon and gave his amulet to a random prisioner, I already knew everything I needed to know, the game was made for mentally challenged people and when I gone to the Imperial city with it's bloom and potato heads and compared it with the Morrowind cities, I just gave up.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

That was 5 minutes into the game, so I don't think you had curiosity about anything. Which is cool, but...what's with the strong opinion about the game, then? It's like the boy that claims to not like a girl only to pull on her hair as soon as he gets a chance.

DB's quests are more interesting than the rest of the game, but that's not saying much. One thieves guild quest has you stealing a precious artifact from the mages guild only to give it back later, as a "don't mess with us" message. One would think this would piss them off beyond belief instead of getting them off your case...

One of my favorite quests was one in Anvil, one of the tests for entering the Mages Guild I think (another problem, I don't think any of those tests require magic power...). Men are being robbed, but they won't cooperate with the guards. It's basically an investigative quest where the victims don't want you to find out the culprit. Eventually you find out the victims are married men who were seduced by this beautiful (in theory, facegen in this game is a harsh mistress) woman, and are obviously robbed blind as soon as they're alone with her. Being married, they aren't interested in pressing charges. One of the couples turns out to be guards in disguise, but they obviously arrive too late on the scene, after you're done murdering the entire gang. Oh well. Players would get bored without a fight I guess.

Another quest in that same town had a woman ask you to protect the rats in her basement (her pets), which are being killed by mountain lions. After waiting in front of the house for a day, you find out her neighbor has been leaving a trail of meat to the basement to attract predators to get rid of the rats.

Wish the game had more of this silly stuff (instead of stuff that is unintentionally silly).

 

[DeepOcean]

That was 5 minutes into the game, so I don't think you had curiosity about anything. Which is cool, but...what's with the strong opinion about the game, then? It's like the boy that claims to not like a girl only to pull on her hair as soon as he gets a chance.

DB's quests are more interesting than the rest of the game, but that's not saying much. One thieves guild quest has you stealing a precious artifact from the mages guild only to give it back later, as a "don't mess with us" message. One would think this would piss them off beyond belief instead of getting them off your case...

I advanced more in the main quest and visited other cities. I just knew there was something wrong with the game and what I seen later didn't changed my opinion. Man, I came from a fresh playthrough of Morrowind and it was a shock to me at the time how Bethesda failed at so many levels. From a story envolving a lie that shaped an entire society and a tragic villain that paid the price for it to dragons protecting the world and generic big generic demon wanting to invade the world. From different factions with different views from religion to architecture to grey and samey European castles everywhere. From a alien world that surprised you each minute to a world that bored you each minute, without mentioning the retarded design decisions. I don't like Oblivion because it showed the first signs of beginning of the decline and the tendecy of developers treating people like fools and getting rewarded for it.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

That's okay, it's just the way you said it made it look like another of those "I played through the tutorial, here's my impressions" posts.

 

[circ]

So yeah.

I read a lot about how SkyRe redid perks and shit. And you know what. It just renamed most of them. Cheesy. Like entire Lockpick tree - same old shit, new name. And lockpicking is pretty retarded now. Fucking up noob locks on first try, uhuh. And making jewelry smithing its own perk. WUT? WHY? Who gives a shit about jewelry?

Sheet. How did renaming perks take years of editing? Well that's simplifying but hay. Think I'll try a mage now and see how that's changed. That or vampire. Hnnnnghh.

Oh yeah. Is there something wrong with bow aiming? Missing shots at really close range with a longbow, huhggh? Also why call it an Iron Longbow?? It has no iron requirements for smithing. Is it ironwood?? What the.

 

[Lhynn]

I always get jewelry smithing, super good perk. probably the best in smithing tree until you reach 100 besides smelting.

There are ton of new mage spells, all of them rebalanced, magic definitely packs a mean punch and has really destructive effects besides damage. Combat IA is the best so far, even better than ACE, bow tree has been redone, havent tried it that much.
Armor trees have also been redone and the game plays a lot different depending on if you wear light or heavy armor.
Weapon trees are completely different. New survival tree is pretty good.

 

[Lancehead]

The only thing worse than manually installing mods for a Bethesda game in this day and age is trying to use the Big World Setup for BG without knowing anything about its mods. Seriously, do you have some technical issue with mod managers?

I do everything manually--well, I run BOSS with custom rules--and spotting and avoiding conflicts has always been easy.

 

[AW8]

Oblivion killed DraQ's parents in an alley in front of him when he was a kid...then he saw a majestic Requiembird, which inspired him to become a Draq Knight.

Dovahbro, the Draq Knight, The World's Greatest Diatriber.

 

[DraQ]

I asked that because I remember some people saying that The Dark Brotherhood quests were good and cocksucked Emil Pugliarulo for designing them , when the retard was responsible for Fallout 3 writing, I started questioning that...

Well, on purely abstract level some DB quests aren't that bad - they often have *some* options, culminating in that Agata Christie rip-off quest where you can get partygoers to murder each other by messing with their heads, greatly reducing the work you need to do. Then you realize that if the faction that is composed of mental equivalent of edgy goth teens murdering people for lulz and misguided worship of setting's manifestation of entropy, has you stuck with an idiot ball for the entire later part of its questline, then doesn't even give you an option of switching sides and finishing the job of slaughtering the edgy retards out of sheer disgust is arguably the pinnacle of what game has to offer, then the game's quests are pretty fucking dire.

Alternatives to the merry band of murderous retards consist of:

1. Unambiguously good Fighter Guild that has you do random unfocused jobs (which would be fine if it wasn't a quest-LINE), then has you fighting EVIL competing mercenary guild that isn't just much less fussy when it comes to its choice of accepted jobs but also slaughters entire villages while hopped up on drugs because of, like, no reason at all. Of course you don't have any hope of alternative resolution.

2. Unambigously good Mages Guild, that first has you do a bunch of random jobs (that aren't at least organized in a questline) then has you fighting EVIL necromancers that apparently got so butthurt at their exclusion from the guild that they went to murderslaughter everyfuckingone. It culminates with killing a wimpy, potato-faced altmer that is apparently supposed to be Mannimarco - powerful lich ascended to God of Worms.

3. Arena, which isn't a real faction and has you repeatedly fight retarded NPCs on the same circle of sand. Might send you into coma out of sheer repetitiveness, then again, the rest of the game can too.

4. Thieves Guild which... isn't actually that bad (I actually managed to finish this one before barfing myself unconscious). It's reasonably selfish, although not devoid of certain Robin Hood streaks (which are actually subtler than in Morrowind - woo, I guess), has semi-logical questline and even accommodates a minor failure at the beginning. Overall its quest design isn't anything to write home about and later on it becomes pretty clear that devs ran out of both resources and ideas (hurr scaled up hourglass mesh because) by the end of the questline, but considering both the narrative, characterization and worldbuilding angles it's arguably the strongest questline. It's also the least epic one.

After the Emperor got down the dungeon and gave his amulet to a random prisioner, I already knew everything I needed to know, the game was made for mentally challenged people and when I gone to the Imperial city with it's bloom and potato heads and compared it with the Morrowind cities, I just gave up.

Lucky you.

DB's quests are more interesting than the rest of the game, but that's not saying much. One thieves guild quest has you stealing a precious artifact from the mages guild only to give it back later, as a "don't mess with us" message. One would think this would piss them off beyond belief instead of getting them off your case...

Actually it was more of a "city watch retards don't do their fucking job" message and was actually moderately fun to watch it work.

 

[Delterius]

Oblivion is hardly the first time a game series declined but from my perspective it sure was an achievement. I only got into PC gaming recently and for years I was just playing older games from the 90s so when I finally got to play newer games I would get into series like the Elder Scrolls by their latest release, meaning Oblivion.

Now, this isn't the only time this happened, the first Total War game I played was Empire and I loved it. Today though, I can see how much of a disappointment Empire must have been to the fans of Rome and Medieval. Hell, the second Shogun shows how much of a failure Empire and the second Rome are. And yet I still like Empire because the basic idea behind it (as well as the series) is enthralling. Its a bad game in terms of polish, but not always by design.

Here's the kicker: I simply got bored straight out of Oblivion. I have a high tolerance for things like generic High Fantasy or even dumbed down combat as long as something stands out. And nothing ever did. So I can't even sympathize with people whose first open world RPG was Oblivion. The only way, I think, why Oblivion might be interesting is if it is your first game ever.

 

[DraQ]

Here's the kicker: I simply got bored straight out of Oblivion. I have a high tolerance for things like generic High Fantasy or even dumbed down combat as long as something stands out. And nothing ever did. So I can't even sympathize with people whose first open world RPG was Oblivion. The only way, I think, why Oblivion might be interesting is if it is your first game ever.

 

[Delterius]

Assuming you knew the someone who's fairly stubborn and who wants to play Skyrim with Requiem, what tips would you give them so that they don't think the game's unfair?

 

[Lhynn]

Assuming you knew the someone who's fairly stubborn and who wants to play Skyrim with Requiem, what tips would you give them so that they don't think the game's unfair?

Dont go melee.

 

[DraQ]

Assuming you knew the someone who's fairly stubborn and who wants to play Skyrim with Requiem, what tips would you give them so that they don't think the game's unfair?

Man up?

Spoiler

This and git good.

 

[Delterius]

Assuming you knew the someone who's fairly stubborn and who wants to play Skyrim with Requiem, what tips would you give them so that they don't think the game's unfair?

Man up?

Spoiler

This and git good.

Sorry, I missed a part of that statement. This would be the person in question's first RPG. Almost her first game.

EDIT: I'm conflicted to report that a 15 year old girl whose only gaming experience so far were Korean MMOs is actually doing really at Requiem. I'm ashamed of all the codexians who whined in this thread. I'm also ashamed of myself because I think she's actually doing better than me.

 

[Lhynn]

Koreans being good gamers? Holy Shit.