RetroNutcase

The word you're looking for is "Revive" not "Review." Asking to review him makes no sense.

I'd be fine with a mod that disables the kanji entirely while keeping the audio warning, to be honest. The kanji itself is a major distraction, the audio cue alone is fine and would work better.

The reason I ask about this as a possible mod is because frankly, level ups in Fallout 4 feel so unrewarding compared to 3/NV. In those, we had a dual layer to level ups. You spent skill points, then got a perk. Because they got merged into a single system, level ups feel very unsatisfying as you have to pick one or the other now: Do you want to get a new perk like better crafting? Or do you want to do more damage with one of your guns? Since there's already level requirements for most perks, it would still be fairly balanced even if you got more than one perk point per level, as you couldn't instantly get Rifleman 5 after a couple levels. It would however give a better sense of character progression. A little lockpicking here and a little rifleman there in a single level up? Yes please.

So yeah, I'm one of those people that has ideas, but often lacks the ability to implement them. I figure at the least, if I share them...Who knows? Maybe someone will do something with the ideas. I'll try to break them down as best I can. While most are immersion based, there's a few balance ideas I've had as well. -Balance Changes- -How about redoing how the Radio Towers work? The game dialogue initially suggests you're doing this to make weapons available to buy. So why not make it like this? Rather than having all guns unlocked at the start to buy, or making it so you get them for free based on towers...How about having a limited inventory of buyable weapons that expands as you activate more radio towers, but they still have to be bought as you unlock them? It would give more incentive to explore and activate the towers. -Costs. Everyone does it, my two cents on it are as follows: Weapons are too cheap, maps are too expensive. The maps should be cheaper, the guns should cost more. Why on earth should I buy a map when I can make the money without it? The entire system is backwards and really needs to be changed. -Immersion ideas- -Darker, longer nights. Nights are not very impressive in Far Cry 3. They're short, and they're still deceptively well lit. If there's a good example of a game series that benefited from darker nights being modded in, it was STALKER, where the nights being darker made it scarier, more atmosphere, and a more tactical choice. Less visibility applied to both you and your enemies, so a night raid could actually be to your advantage if you knew how to operate in the dark. Toggleable Flashlight-If darker nights were done, this would be all but mandatory. You'd need a flashlight to see in the dark, and at the same time, it would be great if there was a way to turn it on/off for detection purposes. IE, keep it off when sticking to the shadows, so you can sneak effectively. Of course, this would be even better if enemies could also use their lights. Food, Sleep, Drink-This would be tougher, I admit, but it's one thing that really bugged me about Far Cry 3. You hunt for pelts. You never hunt for food. You never really hunt to survive, just to get by and improve your gear. An incentive to hunt for food would be an amazing game changer. Having to sleep and keep hydrated would only make things even more interesting. Admittedly, this would probably be a lot harder to implement.

If there's one thing I hated about Dark Souls, it was the Hollow Form. From a gameplay perspective I didn't mind it, but appearance wise, it looks ugly as sin. At least with Soul Form in Demon's Souls you still looked like yourself, just...A soul instead of a physical body. With Dark Souls, you look like an ugly, shriveled corpse. I could care less about the gameplay mechanics of Human vs Hollow. If anything I wouldn't want to change those, as it would ruin the game. However, a way to look human while Hollow would be nice, for those of us who like looking at our characters, but stay out of Human form to avoid invasions.

So yeah, most third person games these days, at least ones that rely on precise shooting mechanics, have this wonderful little feature. The idea is simple: Tap a button, and the view switches from over the right shoulder to over the left, and back when pressed again. Why is this nice? Because it lets you deal with the annoying blind spot issues one suffers when locked to a specific shoulder. It also keeps what's directly in front of you in view and unobscured, an issue that plagues having a centered third person view. The problem? I've seen no mods that do this. Dynamicamera comes close, but only lets you switch views based on your weapon/holster state. I basically just want to be able to change which shoulder I'm looking over at the touch of a button to make things like shooting and sneaking in third person easier. I've debated trying to make such a mod myself, but I'd need to figure how things like camera control via a hotkey work first.

I'm not sure how much it helps, but on occasion, changing my equipment generates a C++ Runtime Error before the usual CTD. This has, lately, been the primary cause of my crashes (And probably the most annoying, any time I change equipment I risk it!). Can anyone think of anything that might be causing this? I would assume that this means there's some kind of inventory/item conflict somewhere, but I can't really narrow it down...

Well, the culprit was Max Tael's weather mod. Taking it out and replacing it with All Natural fixed THAT problem, but now I have a new problem. CTDs occuring under the following conditions: -On fast travel -On removing equipped armor -On enchanting an item with a Sigil Stone while it's equipped -On loading a save after I've resumed my game (Never had a crash when loading a save from main menu) All of these are random, I've found no way to 100% re-create the crashes like with the Oblivion Plane crash. My revised load order is below. Oh yeah, something that has confused the heck out of me...The whole "Don't use UOP and such if you use OMOBS" thing. Are the UOP patches bundled with OMOBS? Or just MOBS? And what's this I hear about updated supplementals? Google has done nothing to help me in finding these, so I'm wanting to be sure I'm up to date on my unofficial patches. But more importantly, I also want these random crashes to go away. Whenever I'm travelling through a large dungeon, I seem to be fine. Towns...usually fine. The majority of the crashes are on the situations described above.

Well, topic says it all. I dunno what's causing it, but whenever I get a "Loading Area" message in an Oblivion Plane (the Kvatch one to be specific), CTD. It's basically gotten to the point I can't play, because if I take any number of steps in an Oblivion plane...CRASH. I can't get out, much less get further in. Here's my load order, and I'm running OBSE v20. If anyone can help, I'd appreciate it. I want to actually finish this game ONCE before Skyrim comes out. Oh yeah, I've removed a few files since I posted this as I found they were redundant and might have been causing problems. Unfortunately, the issue remains.

So yeah, I've been trying to get all these mods to play nice together, I've made a bashed patch and such, but I still can't seem to get the effects I want. What I'm basically trying to get is: -The rebalances of Supreme Magicka -The less annoying aspect of LAME (Not having to constantly re-cast buffs, your summons won't turn on you because of friendly fire, etc) -The new spells of both mods -A sense of balance (I'm told LAME makes spells too expensive to cast, while SM makes them too cheap) in magic cost if possible. -All of this playing nice with OOO Load order as of now is... So yeah, any help that could be offered would be appreciated.

Giving this a bump, I really need some second opinions on this idea, and possible help in making it happen if it gets enough support.

Well, it's a funny story. I played a game recently called Dead Island. My first thought was "Wow, Oblivion melee would be fun if it was this fast paced." Then it hit me: Why not try to do so? Admittedly, my experience with TES CS is limited, but I do have some, and I'm willing to learn...So what I'm basically here for is to ask for help, input, and soforth as I see if I can't turn a concept into reality. The concept? Twitch Combat. The goal? Bring fun into Oblivion's melee and make it a desirable combat type vs magic or archery, without making it overpower them. Unlike some of the mods out there however like Deadly Reflex and Duke Patrick's Combat Melee, this would attempt to change combat without straying excessively from Vanilla. This means no new attack functions/keys, no focus on making the combat system incredibly complicated and harder to learn, although it will change how melee works so some re-learning will be needed. Below is the concept document (incomplete) that I've been drafting up for this mod, and I'm looking for input on it, as well as possible help in making it possible through TES CS and OBSE. Tentative Mod Name: Twitch Combat. Terms to note: Player Skill means skill of the player at the controls, whereas Avatar Skill means the skill of the ingame character. -Blocking Mechanics- Blocking will now be an emphasis of both player and avatar skill. Blocking will use a timing system, where the longer you block, the less effective your block is. Your block's effectiveness will deteriorate in effectiveness to a minimal amount of 50% as you keep your guard up, and will return to full when you lower and re-raise your guard. Higher levels of Block will allow you to maintain a fully effective block for longer periods before deterioration kicks in. In addition, Block Recoil will now be a rare occurance, related to new systems being implemented with blocking. Timed Block: Similar to Doc Block's timed block mechanic. A Timed Block is a block that will use 100% of your Block stat. With a shield, the window is longer. The window also gets a bonus based on your Block skill. A Master will have a larger window to perform a Timed Block compared to a Novice. The most notable benefits of a timed Block are that you will have full Block effectiveness, and if your stats outperform the attacker's, you will have a chance to recoil them, or prevent being staggered if using a small shield/weapon to block a considerably stronger attack. However, a Timed Block is not a 100% ensured way to avoid being staggered or inflicting recoil, it merely provides better odds. A timed block using a Dagger to try and stop a powerful Orc with a Warhammer will still be likely to result in the blocker being staggered, unless the numbers end up being in their favor. Perfect Block: A second type of Timed Block with an even tighter window, a Perfect Block occurs when blocking within the moment of impact or close to it. The result of a Perfect Block is that all damage will be nullified, regardless of the means of blocking used, and the weapon blocked. In addition, the attacker will always be recoiled by a Perfect Block. Like Timed Blocks, higher mastery levels will increase the window, but it will always be a small fraction of the Timed Block window. Note that if the calculation for a Perfect Block window is less than 0.1 seconds (Due to penalties from not using a shield and having a low block skill simultaneously) it will not be possible to perform a Perfect Block until you either equip a shield or improve your block skill to compensate for penalties from not using a shield. Fatigue Loss: Fatigue will always be lost on Block now, even if you are at a higher Avatar Skill level. Instead, those with an experienced Block skill will have reduced Fatigue loss on block. This is to balance out other aspects of the new system. The amount of Fatigue lost is based on the defender's means of protection (Shield or weapon, and how effective said shield/weapon is) and the attacker's means of inflicting damage. A stronger defense will result in less fatigue lost per block, whereas a stronger offense will result in more fatigue lost per block. This basically means that a defender with a small weapon will not be able to effectively defend against a heavy weapon, but by the same token, a powerful shield will be more effective against most weapons. The reasoning behind this is that it is a bit immersion breaking to have a Mage deflect your Claymore using a dagger. Recoil: As stated before, Recoil will not be as common anymore. Recoil on Block will only occur under certain conditions. The first condition under which Recoil can occur is when there is a superior defense score vs the attack score (IE, a heavy shield blocking a small dagger with a Timed Block). Under most conditions, even a Timed Block will not cause recoil in normal fights, unless the difference in attack/defense is that large. The second condition is a Perfect Block, which will always cause recoil, but the conditions for a Perfect Block are much stricter. Guard Crush: A Guard Crush is when a defender is overwhelmed by the strength of the attacker, and the defender is forced into a stagger. Guard Crushes occur when attempting to guard an attack and not having the fatigue needed to do so. Guard Crushes are a much bigger danger when facing a heavier weapon that can drain more fatigue from a defender such as a Warhammer, whereas lighter, faster weapons like daggers drain far less per blocked hit. In addition, stronger shields can absorb more impact from weapons to lessen fatigue loss from blocking. The only way to avoid a Guard Crush while blocking is to use a Perfect Block, as even a Timed Block can be Guard Crushed if attempted with low Fatigue. Shields vs Parry Weapons: Shields will be the superior means of blocking, with one handed weapons having only a quarter of the effectiveness of a shield, and two handed having half the effectiveness. This means that using a dagger or shortsword to block against a heavier weapon class will not be as effective as using a matching weapon, or better yet, a shield. The penalties however can be offset by having a higher Block Skill, and using Timed/Perfect Blocks. -Weapon Mechanics- Heavy Weapons: This will play a much larger role than it did in Vanilla. Heavy Weapons will be slower, and have a much higher Fatigue cost than before, but in exchange they will hit hard, especially against blocks (Unless they have an exceptionally powerful means of blocking, such as a good shield and timed block.) Light Weapons: Light Weapons will be faster and use less Fatigue, though they will also be less effective at chipping away at an enemy's defense. In addition, using them against a means of defense that outclasses them will be more likely to result in a recoil on the attacker's part if the opponent performs a timed block and heavily outclasses the attacker. -Fatigue Mechanics- Fatigue will be a much more important factor in combat than it was before, and actions will for the most part, have a higher fatigue cost than they did in the past. However, to offset this, Fatigue will also regenerate faster, and get regen bonuses from Athletics/Endurance, but you will have to avoid spending any fatigue for a brief period (1 to 2 seconds) before any regen kicks in. In addition, Fatigue will have a chance to be damaged by normal attacks if they hit hard enough. Having a lower Fatigue makes it more likely to be staggered by taking damage, and if your Fatigue is critically low or empty, you will more than likely be knocked down from taking a hit. The idea here? Fatigue is being tweaked to increase the pace of combat, and also to offer advantages to those who can exploit weaknesses by lowering opponent fatigue. It also means heavier, slower types who focus more on their Endurance will be a much bigger threat than lightweights when it comes to their Fatigue totals. -The fun part: Math Formulas and Skill Level effects- Block Formula: Gonna probably need help coming up with this one. Basically, the idea is take the defender's attributes (Skills/stats) vs the attacker's. If the results are even or near even, there is a successful block but no recoil. If the results heavily favor the defender, they will deflect the blow and recoil the attacker. If the attacker is favored, they will likely cause a mild stagger on the defender, or a severe one if their Fatigue is low enough. Stagger Formula: This one also needs work, but the idea will be that if damage inflicted by an attacker exceeds a defender's threshhold, and they are not blocking, they can be staggered by being hit, or even knocked down if their Fatigue is low enough. Being Staggered would also inflict a Fatigue loss, so good evasion and defense becomes more important than ever against a heavy hitter. However, I need some input on what an ideal formula/stats for such a system would be. Timed Block and Perfect Block Windows: Base (Novice) windows are as follows (These assume you are using a shield). Timed Block: 0.25 Seconds Perfect Block: 0.1 Seconds 2 Handed Penalty: Divide by 2. Timed/Perfect Block is not possible if result < 0.1 1 Handed Penalty: Divide by 4. Timed/Perfect block is not possible if result < 0.1 Skill Level Bonus: +0.25 to Timed Window for each stage of mastery (Apprentice, Journeyman, etc...) and +0.1 to Perfect Window for each stage of mastery. This means the final windows for a Master w/Shield are Timed Block: 1.25 seconds Perfect Block: 0.5 Seconds -Adjusted Block Perks- With the way things change in this mod, so too will the perks one gets for Block. The new system works as such: A Novice is fatigued normally by blocking, and hand-to-hand blocking against weapons has no effect. A Timed or Perfect Block can be performed only with a Shield. An Apprentice is now fatigued less by blocking. It is now possible for them to perform a Timed/Perfect Block with weapons, though it is incredibly difficult. A Journeyman's shield or weapon is no longer damaged when he/she blocks, timing window for Timed/Perfect Blocks is improved, and it is now possible to use Unarmed Timed/Perfect Blocks, though they have the same penalty as a one handed weapon for calculation purposes. An Expert gets an even better timing window than before for the purpose of Timed/Perfect Blocks. Perfect Blocks now have a 5% chance to disarm opponents on top of the existing perks for a successful Perfect Block. A Master has an incredibly large window for Timed Blocks and Perfect Blocks, and now has a 10% chance to disarm opponents on a successful Perfect Block. So, that's the idea and what I've got down so far, how does it sound? Fair? Fun? Or broken and in need of changes? Again, I'm basically looking to make melee faster, and more fun, as well as rebalance a few aspects I found broken (Like a weak shield being able to recoil even the heaviest of weapons, or for that matter, a mage with a dagger deflecting a claymore).

Configurator? Got a link to some info on this and how it works?

I'm about at the end of my rope here. Something in the new patch for NV has apparently broken the game for me, as I cannot play for anything beyond an hour before the game will decide to completely freeze up at a loading screen (The kind you get when you fast travel or enter a new cell). I'm running a 3ghz dualcore, 4 gigs of DDR2 ram, and a GeForce 8800GTS, so hardware is not the issue. I'm also on the latest drivers, so that's not an issue. And I'm not using any mods, so that is certainly not the issue. That said, I can't figure out what's causing this, but it's like clockwork. After any extended play in New Vegas, the game will just decide to up and stop responding in the middle of a load screen, leaving me no choice but to kill the process via Task Manager. On top of this, even when it's NOT freezing up, it'll briefly go into periods of 'Not Responding' before finishing the load of a new cell/area. I'm almost certain I did not have this before the 1.4 patch. All I'm running is the vanilla version of FNV with the DLCs...So what on earth is making it so I can't play any more than an hour before a freeze? What am I missing? As far as specs go, here's a list of all the important stuff, hopefully. Nothing is overclocked either, for reference. -Win7 Professional 64-bit -AMD Althon X2 Dualcore clocked at 3ghz -G.Skill DDR2 SDRAM, 4 gigs -GeForce 8800 GTS -onboard Realtek HD Audio -Using Steam version (Kinda redundant I suppose, DOES the retail version use steam as well? I bought it when it was on sale Via steam...) -Currently using NO mods -Using latest patch and all DLCs -Currently NOT running NVSE (No reason to with Vanilla) Since the issue occurs even in a clean install, I'm certain it's an issue I need to fix before I go modding the game heavily again. I've noticed a lot of other people reporting that they've had issues since 1.4 came out...Could it be the patch broke more than it fixed?

Well, now I can't re-create the bug after redoing a BOSS, bash patch rebuild, and removing the Black Screen ESP in exchange for the built in Wryebash fog fix. ...Bizarre. Will have to see if it resurfaces at this point or not, but thanks for mentioning that more up to date mod to replace IWR! :)

Already tried the WryeBash tweak. As I said, it did not work.

Yeeeeeah. This is a new one for me, kinda. I, like many, got hit with what's called the nVidia Fog Bug, and for awhile, I had tamed it using an .esp designed to fix the issue. With my new mod setup, this .esp seems to no longer work, nor does the fix via WryeBash's tweaks... The only place I've seen it so far in my short experimenting is the Imperial Prison tutorial. In one of the narrow hallways, I get a black (well, more like dark blue) screen if I look in a certain direction while in first person mode. However, I know when this happened in other areas, it kept popping up all through my playthrough, which...Kinda ruins the game. Here's my load order, and I'm using all recommended tags from BOSS, which did the sorting...So, yeah, anyone have any idea what's going on here? I should note that I suspect it has something to do with All Natural, as I didn't have this problem resurface until I installed it.

First off, I'm not gonna lie, I'm no animator, I'm no modeller, I do know a few basic things about coding, but I'd probably need to learn more if I were to help on the coding front of a mod idea like this. Anyway, let's start with the basics, shall we? I have no idea what it'd be called, but the aim of this combat mod, were it possible, would be to give Oblivion's melee combat (and possibly other forms of combat) a much more action oriented feel that emphasizes things like timing, and fast paced battles. Overall, the aim would be to give the game more of an Action Game feel in combat, but without making the player too powerful or over the top. Admittedly, some of the inspiration from this is taken from over the top action games, but a good chunk of it is also taken from the action RPG Demon's Souls. -Desired Melee Attack Changes- This is where a lot of the big changes would be. Quick attacks would, if possible, have a limit on how many could be done in a row based on weapon type, skill level, and soforth. IE, even if you had the Fatigue to swing 20 times, you would be forced into a brief pause after, say, 5. They would more or less be like combo attacks in action games, and if possible, would be influenced by a direction key: IE, pressing forward with a sword and comboing would focus on narrower attacks aimed straight ahead, while moving left or right would instead do wider ranged attacks. They could also, as long as the enemy did not have enough defense (Through things like their armor, fatigue, blocking, etc) cause brief periods of stagger. Power Attacks would be heavily changed, in that they would be a lot more unique based on directional input, and would also be viable "Combo finishers" that can be used to deliver a powerful, heavy final hit to a quick flurry of normal ones. Their effects would vary, depending on weapon used, and the type of power attack. For example, with a 2h longsword... -Forward would perform a powerful overhead swing, the kind that would, if there was gore (not that I think it's necessary in THIS game) split the opponent in two. -Right or Left would perform a wide spin attack with the sword, effectively hitting multiple targets all around the player if surrounded. The fatigue and recovery time would be notable though, so it wouldn't be a move you'd spam. More like a panic button if you suddenly find five enemies surrounding you on all sides. -Back would perform a rising slash, going from low to high, with a chance to knock an enemy off their feet or even briefly send them in the air for a juggle opportunity: IE, you could then use another brief combo to land additional hits before they hit the ground. Power attacks would also be more likely to inflict heavier forms of stagger, which could then be used to open up for another combo, or put some distance between you and your attacker while you plan your next move. -Desired Melee Defense Changes- Defense would ideally get a lot of changes as well, due to faster paced nature of combat. The biggest change would be a timed guard system. While quite a few mods have done this, I'd be aiming to re-create Demon's Souls timed block system, which offered a very good risk vs reward setup. The idea is one must parry at the exact moment of impact. The timing window would be rather tight, but the payoff would be well worth it. A perfectly timed parry with a shield of parry weapon would put the opponent into a unique stagger, and prime the player for a Riposte. By attacking then, the player would deliver a devastating counter attack that inflicted critical damage on the enemy. The idea here is simple: If a player is good at timing their counter attacks, they can end a fight in one or two blows via Riposte. On the guarding front, guarding would be both beneficial and risky for various reasons. The first risk: defending would not be an end all way to prevent being hit, or punish a constant attacker. Simply defending would reduce damage, but not cause any recoil/knockback for the person attacking. Passive blocking would also still significantly lower damage, so timing blocks perfectly would not be required unless one was aiming for a Riposte or just wanted to fully block damage. The risk would come in the fact that one can only keep their defense up for so long, constantly defending against attacks would eventually result in what fighting/action games call a Guard Crush, where your defense is broken and you're put into a brief stun period. The less defensive attributes someone has (Weaker armor/shield/stats), the easier it is to eventually guard crush them. Tank characters would be able to endure quite a bit of punishment before suffering a guard crush, while lightweights would quickly find their defenses broken and end up punished with an easy combo attack. The overall idea behind blocking would be that timed blocks would inflict recoil (and allow Ripostes), whereas normal guarding would not require timing and would block a certain number of hits before your guard went down. -How various matchups would work- In this section, I'll talk about a few other mechanic ideas and how they would benefit/hurt various matchups, based on the type of fighter. Lightweights would have the biggest advantage in speed, as lighter armor or no armor gives them better movement speed, less fatigue spent on attacks, and thus makes them ideal for hit and run, or sneak attacks. Their downsides would be that they couldn't easily force an enemy into stagger without either parrying and riposting, or waiting for a proper opening to attack: IE, attacking a heavy hitter that's on defense or just starting to swing their warhammer would not be a viable tactic. However, dodging the opponent's swing, then attacking them before the swing fully ends (but the danger has passed) could force them into a stagger and allow a full combo to be landed. Lightweight weapons like daggers would not hit very hard, but would be able to hit several times quickly, and fast enough that they could punish heavier attackers by exploiting the speed difference between the two. Middle weight weapons would more or less be middle of the road, so I haven't given them much thought yet, aside from the fact they'd have decent speed and hitting power, but not an overwhelming amount of either. Heavyweights would rely on their defense and resistance to being recoiled/flinching to deal with foes, as well as the fact their attacks are slow but leave quite a mark when they land. They also would be designed around overpowering defenses of lighter opponents, often smashing through their defenses in a couple of swings. In exchange however, their attacks would be slow, and leave openings to counter-attack in the event they missed. Against lightweights, they would rely on mistakes they made, for example, attacking too early, at which point they could prime a Power Attack to break through the weaker attack (The idea here being that heavy weapons/armor would get a brief flinch resist during the initial part of a swing) and then punish their opponent with further hits. Heavier weapons, particularly blunt, would be more focused on causing staggers/stuns to allow further blows to land, though their fatigue drain would limit how many consecutive blows could be landed. So yeah, I admit this was mostly rambling, but I think you see the idea I have here: Give Oblivion's combat a more fast paced, action feel, and have a system that rewards well timed actions. I doubt this'll go anywhere, I have minimal knowledge of coding for Oblivion, and I can't animate, but...Thought I might toss the idea out and see if it could go anywhere.

Really? That's it? I've always felt that I'd be kinda taking out the challenge if I did that, but...Hrm. I'll consider that, though it still leaves a couple of the issues unaddressed. I've been using Attack and Hide for stealth, since it lets you actually hide after an attack, though if SDR does it better, I'd likely switch over to that. Combat archery however actually looks kinda cool, I like the idea of things like headshots actually dealing crits, and not having arrows feel like a way to just plink away at health.

Duke Patrick's stuff sounds like it makes the combat more complicated (Feints and whatnot) and apparently expects you to train up heavily before you go dungeon diving. If there's an INI tweak that can make this easier, I'd be all for it. I should mention I'm using Oblivion XP and not the standard levelling system, so building up weapon skills through use isn't really an option. As for SDR, does it actually let you evade enemies and shake them off once combat begins? And is it possible to land a sneak attack without being spotted in the process?

Deadly Reflex 5 seemed okay, but it had a few issues that irked me heavily: -Throat Slits constantly failing, even on non-combat NPCs (IE, bystanders I was trying to kill to gain entrance to the Dark Brotherhood) -Arrows would NEVER hit, because enemies would ALWAYS do the dodge animation when they should have been hit. This made archery all but worthless for me.

I'm hoping this is the right forum for this kinda topic. If it's not, I apologize in advance. Anyway, I'm trying to get back into Oblivion, as it's a game I've never finished for various reasons. Namely after awhile the combat gets...Kind of boring, due to a number of flaws in the game's combat as a whole. What I'm trying to find are mods that can help bring some excitement into Oblivion's combat, but not make overly dramatic changes to it. Deadly Reflex is kind of iffy for me right now, due to prior statement. But anyway, I'm hoping if I describe my issues with various aspects of combat, I might be able to find mods to help improve those areas and make fighting in Oblivion fun again. Overall, what I want is to be able to feel like a badass, whether I'm swinging a sword, shooting arrows from afar, being sneaky, or casting spells. I want to feel like I'm having an actual impact in fights, not just draining health until my opponent falls over dead. As far as melee goes, it seems like all you do is hold block, wait for an opening, and power attack. And blocking feels quite over and underpowered at times. If an enemy blocks a power attack, it seems like I'll ALWAYS recoil from it. If I'm physically tougher than my opponent, or using a weapon with enough oomph, I'd like to be able to actually break through a blockhappy enemy. So far, the only mod I've found that looks like it would improve the blocking aspect of melee is Block Parry and Cancel Attack, which adds a timing mechanic to blocking so you don't just hold it down all the time, and can cancel a power attack if you need to quickly go on defense. I tried Deadly Reflex 5, but just couldn't get into it, felt it made the combat TOO complex. I'm looking for something that improves the feel of melee without drastically changing it. Archery, well...Arrows just kinda suck. I'm looking at a rebalance mod that's supposed to add more oomph to archery by reducing gravity effects, making arrows hit harder, fly further, etc. Not sure if it's the best one though, so I'd like to know what some good archery mods are that make arrows feel more like a proper combat option. IE, one where I don't have to use 30+ arrows to bring ONE person down. Not looking to make them uber either, mind, I just want arrows to feel as valid of a threat as melee weapons. Stealth, oh man is this a big one. Sneak attacks never felt very great to me, due to the fact that once a single sneak attack is performed, EVERYONE magically knows where you are, even if it was a sneak arrow attack from a well hidden location. Are there any mods that make it so everyone doesn't instantly know where you are if you sneak attack while concealed? Mods that make stealth feel more realistic by having enemies have to actually locate you, and lose you if you break line of sight and hide yourself well enough? Being a stealth character isn't very fun when you get ONE chance to do stealth in a fight. So are there any good mods to make Stealth gameplay feel more...Well, stealthy? IE, being able to hide after an attack, or attack while well hidden to catch enemies off guard and get more than one surprise hit in? Magic...Well, magic I'm not too sure on because I've never been a magic heavy player. Trying to change that, though when I did try a magic focused character recently, magic felt rather bland..It seems like all you have are basic projectile spells, AoE, and Touch spells for combat. Are there any mods that add more combat variety to spells? For example, summon walls of flame, summon lightning from the skies to strike down my foes, etc. I should note I'm NOT looking for challenge. I've always felt mods like FCOM just make the game too frustratingly hard, and Vanilla at times feels the same way with the whole level scaling system and the existing combat. I'm just looking for a way to make these aspects of Oblivion feel better, more fun, more action-y. As said above, make my actions in combat have more oomph, and make me feel more like a badass all around. I'm not looking for god mode stuff either, I'm just looking for fun.

Well, I found the issue, it was the fact one of my mods changed the static object into an activator, and then pointed to a non existent mesh (or rather, it pointed to the wrong path for it, adding an MIS to the default path for the opencoffin02.nif mesh. In other words, the author screwed up). I've managed to fix it, thanks to some help from Vagrant0. Thanks Vagrant! That said, anyone using the More Immersive Sound mod? You will need to fix it up or else you will have a lot of missing coffins due to the author's mistake and lack of fixing it.

Okay, small update. I've confirmed the object that should be where all these !s is showing up is a static object called CoffinOpen02. Any way I could figure out which mod is causing an issue with it showing up?

As far as I can tell, the mesh/texture is for one of the types of wooden coffins, and I've been seeing it since I got to the Bloodworks portion of the Imperial Sewers. See screenshot. http://i55.tinypic.com/16lftra.png I looked at this exact same spot in the construction set, and indeed I've seen coffins that should be where these yellow diamonds are. Why aren't they showing up? Oh yeah, it's not listed since it wasn't really a mod file of any kind, but I'm also using Qarl's Texture Pack. Any chance this could be a case of a missing texture? And as far as Bash Patch goes, my Bash Patch imported everything on the import lists, and other than that I used whatever defaults were put in place by the Bash Tags. Though I'm a bit confused, shouldn't Bash Tags automatically set what gets imported when I rebuild the patch? I've had no luck finding info on the matter, and frankly my experience with Wrye Bash is minimal. Anyway, yeah, load order below. This is totally killing my immersion, seeing these damn !s everywhere, and as I said, this is a vanilla resource I'm pretty sure, so I have no idea WHY it's being shown as missing, unless Qarl's Texture Pack didn't have a suitable replacement or something. Other than this, I've had no missing meshes/textures.