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Elder Scrolls Project Tamriel: A Morrowind mod

Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
He has two more videos on this topic about Tamriel Rebuilt, which is affiliated with Project Tamriel.



Meant to be watched in the order I listed them btw.
 

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,328
Location
Flowery Land
I just find chitin, bonemold & even steel a bit too cool to have such a small window in the game. I think more ppl should wear netch with funky helmets and maybe mail or something. That's why I thought maybe different quality for various armor could be used to make these cool armors matter. Steel, after all, is very varied when it comes to quality when made by one armorsmith or another.
So is chitin I take it, as Indoril armor is some laminated bug stuff with gold and chain.
I usually keep steel the whole game if i'm heavy armor just for the aesthetic. It's not like you need the extra armor, and if you really suck you can get it in other ways.
Heavy and Light Armor have really bad progression in the base game, since Light goes straight from Chitin to Glass, and even though Heavy technically has Dwarven as a stopping off point between Steel and Ebony, it actually doesn't provide that much more AR (20 compared to 15) and is pretty rare compared to how strong it is. Medium is really the only one with decent granular progression, but those early game bits and pieces like Ringmail and Chain are pointless, so you're probably picking up Bonemold straight away and then upgrading to Orcish as soon as you kill some Malacath worshipers or whatever. Pick up Dreugh or even Indoril afterwards. The real problem is that very early game sets (Fur, Netch Leather, Iron, Chain) are so easy to pass over that no player will ever use them, meaning that they exist only as window dressing for NPCs. Even the heavily level-scaled Oblivion and Skyrim suffer from this, where Leather and Steel are easy to purchase or obtain even at Level 1, making Fur and Iron entirely pointless.

I'm of the opinion the pointlessness of first tier gear is intentional and it's there to outfit NPCs (who can make up for its low quality with inflated skill and numbers) without giving the player something of meaningful value on every NPC they kill. Medium armor actually does have a bit of progression itself (indeed, it's actually better than heavy armor till Ebony since Steel is so bad) even if you get bonemold relatively quick since Imperial Chain Greaves, dragonscale cuirass, Gah-Julan, and Armun-An all have slightly better defense while being non-unique. The problem is none of them are even remotely a complete set and without the expansions you have no real end-game sets. I actually like how Morrowind has common equipment be largely interchangable instead of a loot treadmill, and only rare and unusual items are worth swapping your trusty gear for. It just needs the gap between light/medium/heavy armor values be to larger, third tier armor noticeably better than second tier armor, and the economy not totally fucked up so money being spent largely on training (as the blades trainers halfway imply is intended) instead of shopkeeps having artifacts everywhere actually matters .
 

Funposter

Arcane
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
1,773
Location
Australia
I'm of the opinion the pointlessness of first tier gear is intentional and it's there to outfit NPCs (who can make up for its low quality with inflated skill and numbers) without giving the player something of meaningful value on every NPC they kill. Medium armor actually does have a bit of progression itself (indeed, it's actually better than heavy armor till Ebony since Steel is so bad) even if you get bonemold relatively quick since Imperial Chain Greaves, dragonscale cuirass, Gah-Julan, and Armun-An all have slightly better defense while being non-unique. The problem is none of them are even remotely a complete set and without the expansions you have no real end-game sets. I actually like how Morrowind has common equipment be largely interchangable instead of a loot treadmill, and only rare and unusual items are worth swapping your trusty gear for. It just needs the gap between light/medium/heavy armor values be to larger, third tier armor noticeably better than second tier armor, and the economy not totally fucked up so money being spent largely on training (as the blades trainers halfway imply is intended) instead of shopkeeps having artifacts everywhere actually matters .
I agree that it's probably intentional, but that doesn't mean I have to like it and that it isn't an inefficient use of resources. It's gear that 99% of players won't touch for more than thirty minutes due to how plentiful, cheap and easily available the next tier of equipment is, and it's a problem that continues into Oblivion and Skyrim. Medium Armor's endgame woes are somewhat overstated if you go from a purely powergaming perspective, since the Ebony Mail is available as an option for Medium Armor characters and it's easily the strongest cuirass in the game, making up for the problems with the rest of Medium Armor. The issue, of course, is that it's locked behind the Tribunal Temple questline which is relatively niche compared to the Great Houses or Imperial Guilds. I also agree that Morrowind's itemization of common sets with unique items/artifacts sprinkled in is incredible, and I wish that more games followed suit. It makes the world feel more "real".

The economy issues are largely fixed by MWSE Harder Barter, as I will stress to anyone willing to listen.

Some of the issues with progression could be fixed with a rebalance and reorganization of the armor types, although it's hard to work purely with what's on offer in vanilla Morrowind since there are unfinished/partial sets and you sometimes need to fill in the gaps with mods. There are also armor sets which sort of ignore the established in-universe logic of how the different armors are arranged, questions about what things are actually made of, etc. If you wanted to logically breakdown what sets belong where (including those from expansions, and for the sake of examples some materials from other TES games) and how they should be categorized, I'd suggest:

Light: Furs, Leathers, Chitinous material, supernaturally light chain and plate. This therefore would include Nordic Fur & Bearskin, Wolf, Bear, Netch Leather, Imperial Newtscale Chitin, Dreugh, Mithril, Glass.
Medium: Chainmail, Bone, supernatural scales, supernaturally light plate. This therefore would include Nordic Ringmail, Imperial Chain, Bonemold of all styles, Nordic Trollbone, Dragonscale, Indoril, Adamantium. I'd also include more basic Steel Chain and probably Ebony Chain styles to plug in gaps. I'm assuming that Indoril armour is just the ceremonial resin over the top of Ebony Chain (explaining its strength and price) but we don't actually know. Adamantium is constructed as western-style plate armor, but is light enough to be considered Medium.
Heavy: This is the easy part since it's just plate armor. Iron, Nordic Iron, Steel, Imperial Steel/Templar/Silver, Orcish, Dwarven, Ebony, Daedric. I never bought that Orcish armour is somehow Medium despite being Steel, unless the implication is that it's Medium on account of being worn over padded cloth instead of alongside a mail hauberk. Just say that it's Steel crafted to a higher standard. Dwarven materials are clearly supernatural in some way, and are said to be supernaturally durable in several sources, so have those be a cut above anything you can purchase in stores or that a normal person could request be crafted. Ebony is God's blood, Daedric is that with extra bits.

You probably need to overhaul the effectiveness of each armor type too, since 50 AR for Glass is way too high. Something like;

Fur (5 AR) -> Netch Leather -> (8 AR) -> Chitin (12 AR) -> Dreugh (18 AR) -> Glass (25 AR)
Imperial Chain (15 AR) -> Bonemold (20 AR) -> Dragonscale (25 AR) -> Indoril (35 AR) -> Adamantium (40 AR)
Iron (20 AR) -> Steel (25 AR) -> Orcish (30 AR) -> Dwarven (40 AR) -> Ebony (60 AR) -> Daedric (80 AR)

Fill in gaps as you please, etc. etc. Honestly if it were up to me, TES6 would have an armor system similar to Kingdom Come: Deliverance and so at least when it comes to chain and plate, all material would be represented and you'd be able to mix and match as required, and whether you're wearing heavy armour or not would be determined by the overall weight of your outfit possibly according to your character's Strength, too. Wearing a ceremonial steel breastplate over fine clothes isn't heavier than being clad in chainmail head-to-toe, but with the way TES categorizations work, it apparently is.
 

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