Each release seems to have bolstered it a whole lot though, and they just essentially realeased two at once, with another seemingly on the way (though who knows just how soon that will actually be).
Yeah, I'm in agreement. Development seems to be in a healthy place and the quality is high enough that even as the team experiences turnover, ether from people losing interest or just moving to a new stage in their life, I don't see their work getting canned. It's also important to note that a lot of the future plans have been properly conceptualized. Questioning the future of the project based on how it was organised a decade ago isn't legitimate, imo.
Agreed. They actually posted up an article about the history of the mod (all the drama, etc.), and it's a fairly interesting (if long) read. Seems in the beginning they made it with focus on making shit "cool" and fast, and it looked the part, but gradually, the perfectionist faction (one that also demanded things to stick to the lore as closely as possible) grew in power, and basically decided that most of the work done is shit and needs to be redone, which caused a schism in the project between the perfectionists and the others (who got angry and offended over their work getting scrapped). And this seems to have happened multiple times. The autistic perfectionalists have prevailed in the end, and seem to be content with the current quality of what they're putting out.
At least with the Mages Guild, Old Ebonheart is geared to a slightly lower level and then the Andothren and Firewatch stuff seems more difficult. Seems to me that you should quickly rush through early game content in Vvardenfell (up to say, Level 5 idk) before heading over. The new Ashlands area is definitely tougher than OE and the Thirr River area.
It is a passion project and passions run high at times, just as they did a decade ago. I'll be more specific this time: I'm referring to Vern getting banned (again), Gnomey disappearing, Atrayonis quitting, one of the more productive devs being an overworked tranny, Project Tamriel channels being closed off to public participation, public meetings aren't a thing anymore, etc. All I can say is it makes me worry that things will continue to become more insular and ad hoc, which means quality will certainly drop (no public input to sanity-check decisions) and the potential for pointless drama to derail things increases.
No need, actually. I went to Old Ebonheart right at level 1, and found it perfect for my level. There's so much content in there that you'll level up soon enough
It's what I thought the first time I heard of the project and its scope. This is simply too much to bite off for most modders.
It's certainly true when comparing early content to 2018-onwards, but I think that the releases over the last 4-5 years have been pretty tight and everyone seems to have a pretty good idea of what they want TR to be. The issue is now going to be updating or completely overhauling/replacing old content. They always say that the Telvannis rework is "in the far future", but I agree with Popiel that I can see it being pushed forward to be completed within the next year or two. There's just too much interest in the Telvanni as a faction, they've conceptualized some really fun ideas for the Telvanni questline on the mainland, and the old content is simply begging to be replaced at this point. A flyover of Boethiah's Spine and the Mephalan Vales is a stark contrast with Aanthirin or the new Armun Ashlands. There's just so much negative space, like the designers still wanted it to be a proper trek, even for players using the Boots of Blinding Speed or something.
It being closed off and private is a good thing and is how they're able to maintain any semblance of consistent quality. Early access and public developer discords and such have proven that leaving designer decisions up to public consensus is not a good idea, and in the end when you leave things open to the "public" it ends up being the most terminally online sycophants who end up calling the shots (who usually have shit opinions). Not sure how having public input would make things less ad hoc, anyway, since it's just more voices added to the mix. Gatekeep gatekeep gatekeep, keep the walls high. If you don't have the dedication to go through all the vetting processes and whatever trials they have to get on the team then you shouldn't be having any creative input on the project.
What releases of "consistent quality" coincided with TR being closed off and private? It has been relatively open since around the OE release iirc. I have no idea what other discords you are talking about and I do not find that to be relevant. Nor your point about terminally online sycophants: that is the core demographic when it comes to people who mod or are interested in a now 20 year old game, which is why having development be done in an open air forum is a good thing. Less meetings = less formal decision making, that should be obvious, as well as the potential repercussions. It is a public project filled with world-building obsessed nerds and keeping it open to the public helps drive interest and recruitment.
OpenMW is a textbook example of feature-creep dooming a project.
Better combat AI that takes advantage of their class and race abilities and actual pathfinding.
No it isn't.
That's me playing Morrowind in general, lol. After a couple days, I just burn out on it.
