BlackCompany

But would you still go back to a previous save, if you could earn your way back in? Maybe have to pull off a difficult heist, or a special job? Or even just steal so much gold worth of stuff, without ever getting caught, and you can earn your way back. Maybe pay the blood price in gold for the victim, and you get back in, too. Then a reload would not be needed, you learn from your mistake and pay for it and move on. And as for Wasteland 2, I kicked in $15. Ain't much, but its something, and I hear the Kickstarter is doing well. Also working on mods for Skyrim that make NPC's deadly. They get more perks, can stagger you when they catch you not blocking, will bash and block much more intelligently, and - this is key - will Bash far, far more often. Max percent chance of an NPC bashing in vanilla is about 20 - 30%. In my game - all tests good so far - its around 95% by default, and combat style tweaks make it more likely still that they will use it when you are blocking. My level 40 Dragonscale-armored Nord warrior got the crap kicked out of him not long ago by a Bandit Marauder with a sword and shield. No more waiting behind your shield, biding your time for openings. NPC's know how to handle that, now. And to top it off, you have between a 5% - 15% chance of getting one of several minor "wounds" from combat. These are diseases that can be cured using potions, a visit to shrine, or by crafting bandages using Linen/Leather, healing potions for salve and leather strips (to tie the bandage in place) but they only work outside of combat. Thanks for posting here. I like these thought-provoking discussions and would love to see more of them here.

Good point about intellectual achievement. Very important in games. More so than button clicking achievement, often times. Also a good point about getting kicked out factions based on performance. There was a time, recently, in both Skyrim and in Amalur, too, where I was sent on a faction-related mission. Companions and Warsworn, respectively. And on both occasions I came back alone despite having taken members of the factions along with me. Needless to say, they failed to survive. And there weren't even any consequences for me. None. They just took my word that I had not doubled crossed their now-deceased members and taken their crap for my own. No questions, no consequences. Why when I try and assassinate someone on a DB quest, and am caught by guards, am I not reprimanded by the DB? If I am caught by Guards on too many Sweeps, should not the Thieves Guild kick me out for failing? Moreover, when I am deep inside a dungeon, and am "killed" how about having my total health reduced by 25% (each time), maybe my stamina, too, and perhaps having my overall damage dealt lowered as a "wound" effect. Then, with those debilitating effects in place, I have to struggle back to my feet and try again. As opposed to, you know, reloading the quick save from 30 seconds before the fight and trying again with no penalty at all? Seeing my character killed is also an immersion killer, but hey. I would love for games to have consequences. I want to be able to play a "human" character who screws up and learns and does better next time. Please stop turning my RPG games into Medieval versions of the Truman Show. Please.

I see you, good sir, are familiar with the view from atop Mount Kolvir. Well played!

An idea - The Story: I no longer think humble assassination quests, isolated and of no consequence, will suffice for the DB this time round. I believe that, without heavily scripted "twists" assassination missions grow stale. This is especially true if they are but one-off, isolated missions without wider consequences in the world. For this reason, I believe the DB needs an enemy, this time round. A nemesis, if you will. Batman is nothing without Joker, or some arch-nemesis, to give him purpose. The DB in Oblivion had Phillida for much of the game. He was a common-cause rallying cry against which the entire DB could rally. Skyrim's DB seems to lack this touch, and as such they are little more than a band of over-acted killers with poor dialogue and voice acting living in a cave with a Werewolf who has hard on for Abraham Whistler from Blade. The DB needs a nemesis, an enemy. Someone who understands their incredibly fragile position and wants to crush them for good and all. Someone who can benefit from the annihilation of not only the DB, but perhaps of Sithis and the Night Mother themselves. This entity/organization/individual needs to be powerful in the extreme, dark and utterly without remorse. They must be dedicated to annihilating the DB, and yet be reasonable in their motivations, at least to themselves. Believable, in other words. And you must kill them. Not all at once, of course - their might is too great for that. No, you must destroy them in the manner to which you are best suited. One by one, from the shadows, you must take them apart - before they do the same to the Brotherhood. And they must try. That is key. They must hunt you, the player, and your family. They must attack you even as you attack them. At times this private war must risk spilling over into the "day time" world out of sheer ferocity and blood thirst. Perhaps the one who hunts you is a remoreseless captain of the Imperial Legion or Stormcloaks. Perhaps a Jarl with a bloated sense of justice. Perhaps its a powerful magus or Lich, looking to eliminate the Dark Brotherhood and drain the power from the Night Mother and thus draw Sithis himself out into confrontation. Perhaps...but I don't think so. No, I think that, in its most desperate hour, the greatest enemy the Dark Brotherhood has ever known has returned at long last. In their most desperate hour, the most dangerous enemy the Dark Brotherhood has ever known has finally returned. The one enemy who can match the DB stroke for stroke, kill for kill, is back at long last. outclassed and out-manned, the DB must struggle to eliminate the most dangerous foe they have ever known before their last remnant is destroyed forever - and Sithis and the Night Mother along with them... Behold: The return of Mephala and The Morag Tong. The Setup: Mephala is back. She's pissed. And she's been gathering steam - and a new following. The Morag Tong is angry over the split and the perceived betrayal by the DB so long ago. No, weak and on the bring, the Morag Tong sees a chance to eliminate the splinter group. Forever. One by one you must eliminate members of the Morag Tong. Some will be exposed and alone, searching the land of Skyrim for the last remnant of the DB. Find them in forts and ruins; camps and cities, as they search for safehold of their own and allies in their fight against you. Other will be safer, surrounded by guards in forts and dungeons. Even in cities, where they court the favor of Jarls and sleep in castle keeps, safe behind walls. Some will require speech checks just to reach them. Others, backdoor entraces (see fort Greymoor west of Whiterun.) During these quests Morag Tong hunters roam Skyrim. They can spawn on roads and even in dungeons, as they scour the land for the hidden remnants of the DB. Now and then upon returning to a Sanctuary during this "war" you will be attacked, or find dead DB/Morag Tong members in the aftermath of an attack. Don't make these random, however, as numbers need to be small, and carefully controlled, to remain believable. The quests and consequences: Choice is important here. Perhaps one of three finales: 1. Eliminate the Morag Tong 2. Join them - and destroy the DB forever (DB Radiant assassinations are just relabeled to Morag Tong, and so are the Sanctuaries.) 3. Reconcile the two. "Discover" the Night Mother legend was a misrepresentation of Mephala all along, and that Sithis was the name of the person who began this malpractice. The two "join forces" and Radiant assassinations continue for those interested. Just some ideas. I can do some basic cluttering, but scripting I am still learning. Obviously willing to write, as well, if anyone needs inspiration. I love the DB, but I think there are right and wrong ways to do these quests, and simply adding more empty, isolated, Radiant killings would I think be a let down in the end. Skyrim has so much of this already.

All games should be moddable. Period. We buy them and rumor has it we still own them, sort of. So why can we not change them to suit our purposes? There is no reason every game is not moddable. The industry has it wrong. They aren't making the things we want, by and large. We are buying what's there because there isn't anything else. Without a real RPG I will play Skyrim. With a real RPG, I would not give skyrim a second look, big Dragons or no. I make mods, right now, at least, because the vanilla magic system was under-developed, combat was not fun plain and simple and the perks-as-skill-tree system was Bethesda's worst disaster yet in a long line of things-we-could-have-done-better. I would consider accepting a job with a dev if they were a creative team willing to venture off the beaten path in terms of design. Also, I did actually complete the survey as well.

I didn't mind the darker take. This is Skyrim, and its a darker, harsher world. Though they failed to really convey it due to lack of contrast I think Skyrim was going to the 'no real good guys in this place' feel. Sort of like Payback (movie) or the much-mentioned Game of Thrones novels (the first three of which are pretty darn good.) Skyrim was meant to be dark and harsh and full of bloody-minded people. Kind of like a Joe Abercrombie book without the deep characters. What I do feel the Guild lacked was...finesse. The more brutish nature goes with the territory, I suppose. But the Gray Fox...man, he was smooth. Hiding in plain sight, so to speak. Protecting the meek. And the Elder Scroll heist...wow. Just...wow. He was Finesse personified and Skyrim's guild, though uniquely its own, lacks that. Just as the DB lacks the "believable" feel of the DB in Oblivion. Can't put my finger on why, it just does, to me. Its the finesse I miss, mostly. Cleverness. The sly heists and assassinations of the early DB from Oblivion even. These quests don't feel clever; they don't feel like they take serious smoothness or a crafty knack for Stealth to pull off. They feel...forced...somehow. Like they were shoved in last minute and not well thought out.

I read a lot of books. (This will be important to the topic shortly, I promise.) By "a lot" I mean hundreds. And more hundreds still. Across numerous genres from Historical Fiction - mostly Bernard Cornwells, and what do you mean you haven't - to Fantasy, Sci-fi and even a smattering of horror once upon a time. I read spiritual works and philosophy. But fiction is my first love and I always come back to it in the end. And do you know why? Because of the characters. They are characters like Roland of Gilead, Corwin of Amber, the Talion Justice Nolan (Talion: Revenant. Read it. Now). The Vampire Lestat is another, and Atticus, the Hounded, Hexed Druid. Even Sherlock Holmes made a mistake or two in his time (Irene Adler and Stephen King's phenomenal 'The Doctor's Case' come to mind.) I love each of these character as much - if not more - for their flaws and their mistakes - for their failures, if you will - than I do for their successes. I love them because in seeing them err, in seeing them make a mistake, we see them become, if just for a time, more human, more believable. We see them as we often see one another, and ourselves: As fallible creatures able to make a mistake, learn from it and better ourselves for having done so. As being able to get back up, when we fall. Gaming, I think, could take a lesson from this. Once upon a time a game allowed us to fail. Had a real game over screen and all. No more second chances; no more tries. You have to start over again. Period. Once upon a time a game allowed us to learn from out mistakes and improve because of them. It less us be human and still succeed. Modern games have robbed us of that. And they have robbed us of the feeling of accomplishment that comes with it. Which is the real reason for trophies and achievements now. Completing a game is not hard; you need patience, not skill. Time, but not to practice. So to replace that feeling of 'wow, I did it' developers have invented trophies and achievements to make us feel good about spending 100 hours clicking the same button sequences millions of others click. I guess it sounds strange to say I want to fail in a game. Odd, I know. But I do. I think it would allow me to bond with my character in a way I am currently unable to do, if that character could somehow fail to achieve something, then get back up and move on with their "life" having learned from their failure. Maybe you didn't get to the cave in time to rescue the hostages; maybe the boss was able to knock you unconscious (by getting you low on health) and take some of your possessions before running away and leaving you for dead; maybe you failed to find the clues in the dungeon and so cannot retrieve the final treasure (Hunted The Demon's Forge did this to great effect, and there was no going back for a second look.) And maybe, just maybe, you learned from those things. Maybe you got hit by that swinging log and woke up in a city, in the temple, minus a few hundred gold a "good samaritan" kept for their trouble. Be more careful next time. Perhaps its time for a "Dead is Dead" run through of Skyrim. Maybe with a weaker, flawed Stealth-oriented "adventurer" who has no interest in "Dragonborn" or prophecy and just wants to survive in Skyrim until he can afford a home or two, if possible. Its crazy, I know. Its nuts. But I want to fail. Or at least, I want to be able to fail, in a game. To make a mistake and pick myself back up and dust myself off and learn. I want to see the flawed, mistake-prone, human side of my character, and live to tell about it and move on and make amends. I want to forget the face of my father for just a moment, and when circumstance calls for it, make amends and shoot not with my hand, but with my heart, once more.

Sometimes, disabling mods does make things worse. Many mods make changes to your game that are stored in your save game, not in the mod. This includes changes to perks and spells, moving of doors and important objects, and player values. Disabling these mods does nothing in terms of stabilizing your game. In fact, it can worsen the situation, as now the value in your save game no longer matches what it should be in the game itself. Ditto for the location of objects. Some objects should never be moved, and in Oblivion, merchant containers and doorways were two big offenders. People moved doors and chests, and when these mods were removed, the location change in the save game did not match the location of the object in the game world, causing CTD. As for the patch itself...its crap. My FPS has slowed steadily since the first patch. Once, I played this game on Ultra with 50 - 60 fps. Now, I have an AMD Phenom Quad Core black ed. 8gb RAM. Nvidia GTX460 with 2GB RAM. 7200rpm HDD and a liquid cooled CPU. Pretty solid rig, Witcher 2 on Medium with some high settings, no FPS hit. But Skyrim...I have to run shadows on medium now. Medium. For skyrim. And that is without - yes, without, the high res pack. Pathetic, really. And worse yet, I know why this happened. See, when the game was released a legion of largely impatient people began adding things to their game prior to the release of proper tools. They began loading mods made with tools not intended for Skyrim. They used the console to change settings and actor values, kill actors, add items and progress quests when they got lazy. They played with god mode on when it was dangerous to do so. They introduced interior cells made with tools meant not only for other games, but other game engines to boot, and then "tweaked" with tools no one really fully understands to work in Skyrim. And their games began crashing. Now, this is not to say that some people did not have problems that are legitimately the developer's fault. I know they did. It happens, especially on PC given the absurd number of possible hardware combinations on this platform. But this many people, this often? I doubt it. I very seriously doubt it. Nonetheless, the outcry for patches began and Bethesda had to do something. So they did. And with every "fix" they broke something else. I find myself wondering for how much longer their game will remain playable at all, and whether its already broken beyond anyone's ability to truly fix it. When you add in the old Gamebryo bugs carried over to this engine - navmesh issues chief among them, with the ability to allot conflicting AI packs to a character a close second - when you add these things into fan-made troubles with mods and patches, well...its a recipe for disaster and I wonder whether it can even be fixed, more less what doing so might require.

Finally stopping back here, after a hiatus from Skyrim. I like the ideas of simple-to-add items using existing models, but with novel/new effects or even descriptions. Collectibles, like lost items from prior adventurers, are a great idea. Sheer novelty items would also add some humor to looting dungeons: Humorous Loot: Falmer Moonshine: Get blindingly drunk Ulfberth's Ear Plugs: Wonder why he would have needed these... Cloud District Poster: For those who just can't seem to get there in person.... Chipped Arrowhead: We know where that came from.... Ulfric's Gag: Always wondered where he dropped that.... Stormcloak Propaganda: Tattered...something about legitimate children Imperial Propaganda: I've never picked an Imperial ear before.... Blank Scroll: No one's drawn a treasure map on this one, yet Sabrecat Tooth: The Tooth Fairy really missed out on this one.... Spider legs: They taste like chicken.... Sabre Cat Flanks: They taste like chicken... Chaurus Steaks: They taste like chicken.... Chicken Nuggets: They taste like crap... Knee Joint (bones): Looks like it might have been chipped by an arrow... 'Precious': Plain gold band, with that simple inscription...strange... Serious Novelty Loot: Beastiary: I saw a mudcrab the other day...ok, maybe not completely serious, but contains tips to weaknesses of various critters Perk Scrolls: Extremely rare, but when used, they "teach" you a perk from the perk trees outright, so you can learn some new techniques through study as opposed to always "leveling" into skills. Because Augmented Destruction skills, Power Bash and Dual Fury should be things you can learn as well as "achieve" through levels. Custom Potions: How about potions with 2 or 3 effects? Potions that restore magicka and health, or fortify 2 skills? Rare and powerful...and maybe, if you have one, you can go to a campfire and learn to make them... Collectibles: -Imitation Dragon Priest mask: Excellent craftsmanship, and legit armor...but without the magic -Statues: not sure if there are mini statues in the game already, but if so, would consider adding more as collectibles -Dwemer Game Balls: metal balls once used by Centurions during games played for the entertainment of Dwemer -Sword and Dagger fragments and hilts: pieces of old, and maybe even famous, swords and other weapons wielded by adventurers less fortunate than yourself. Maybe even combine them into craftable custom weapons like balanced (faster) claymores, and custom pairs of daggers or swords.... -Replica Weapons: Lighter and far less deadly...these are intended for those who want to decorate their homes with weapons but cannot handle the carry weight of six Orcish implements at once Really just throwing ideas out. Looking to return to modding soon, and would like to implement some simple custom loot for fun and immersion. Sometimes you should find stuff just because its there, and was once useful for or carried by someone who dropped it, and not because its a weapon or armor or precious gem...For once, I would like to find something just because it would be in the world, and not because its particularly useful to a newfangled adventurer who's smart enough to wear armor that covers his knees.

As much as I respect Phenderix the modder, I quite respectfully have one problem with this opinion. Namely, the argument that this game is good because its won multiple awards. Lady Gaga and Britney Spears win awards, too, but I will never admit their music is anything except mind-killing bad. Right up there with Vogon Poetry and Dickinson. Skyrim is a good, solid open world adventure game. The things I love about it - freedom, exploration and believable dungeons and environments - are all things I love in a game. Just exploring, for no reason other than because I can, is a wonderful experience. But I also sympathize with those looking for a real role playing game (Which, to be fair, Bethesda promised.) Because Skyrim is not that game. Kingdoms of Amalur is more a role playing game than this. More choices and consequences. Play styles really matter. You can get locked out of factions and quest lines. Skyrim is good at what it does right. But what it does and what we were promised it would do, are radically different things.

Barring someone actually having been right about the Mayans and their damned calendar, this is probably a good guess.

Or, you can do this: -Create OnContact, Fire and Forget Magic Base Effects. As many as you need for your mod. -Place each effect in a spell of the same Time (fire and forget, contact delivery) -Create a new perk. -Use "Apply combat hit spell" as the entry point. For each entry point, specify the power attack type to be used. Also, choose which of your spells you want applied for each entry point. -Last step. Copy the Silver Sword script. Replace the perk with yours. Use this script to add you perk to the actor/player when they equip Dawnbringer and remove it when they unequip Dawnbringer. The net result: Depending on the power attack you use, you will apply a different spell effect to it when you hit the actor. For additional balance, I often choose to use an extra condition for the target. I like to use" isblocking == 0 before allowing my spell effect to trigger on the target. This means I actually need to land a SUCCESSFUL blow against the target, and not their shield, to get the desired effect. Hope this helps. Really reduces the need for scripting, that is for sure. For more on the Apply Combat Hit Spell/Apply Bashing spell, check Warmaster or TargeofhteBlooded Perks. They both use this, as do a couple of others. The Falmer perk that allows Falmer to deliver poison strikes every strike they land is another good example. Hope this simplifies things. No scripting needed, except to onequip/unequip perk delivery. And the game already has a template for that.

Hope you get this sorted out. One word of advice: be careful with mod "cleaning." Most edits in a mod are there on purpose. Start randomly deleting parts of an esp using outside tools, and you are liable to make matters worse instead of better. Know what you're taking out, and why. also, try and find some commonality between crashes. Is there a bookshelf of the sort that the mods changed inside every interior where you crash? Do you only crash indoors, outdoors or both? Open the toolset and check to make sure mods don't change the vanilla book shelf. Its ok to use it, but to change it? Bad idea, since so many areas use it already.

I agree, HandofBane. If indeed Bethesda has decided to venture out of the realm of single player - a realm where they are indeed the kings unopposed - and into the oversaturated MMO market, I can hope they have taken a hard look at the current MMO formula not as inspiration, but rather as a problem to be solved. The WoW clones are dying a slow and dreary, if inevitable, death. Even SWTOR has maintained little better than a 1:4 ratio of current players to initial subscribers. Terrible rates, especially given the years of development and budget spent on the game. But perhaps Bethesda suspects the time is ripe for a true AAA competitor in the market. Perhaps they see how tired folks are of the regular MMO formula. How badly they want something new and different in the MMO arena. I believe Bethesda sees the writing on the wall: That the time has come for something new to dethrone the once-mighty, that only a new formula, a new style of MMO game play can deliver the knockout blow. And they want to be the one to deliver that blow. If Bethesda can maintain their current graphic fidelity, their large, open, exploration-friendly worlds, and a real-time, action combat system with real weapon hits and aiming required, they will deliver something all but unprecedented in the MMO market. And they will do it while maintaining all of the more enjoyable aspects of a single player game. If Bethesda can do this, they have a chance to sweep WoW under the rug and even steal away a number of subscribers from other MMO's along the way. If, on the other hand, they developer another WoW clone, just in the TES universe, I think they might learn the hard way the same lessons companies like Bioware and Trion Worlds are just beginning to realize: Making a WoW clone is a good way to spend a lot of money in order for a short term gain and a longer-term loss of epic proportions. People are tired of the formula, they want something new and the first company to deliver that something, stands to make a lot of money. I have to think that Bethesda knows this, and are preparing themselves to deliver.

Sinderion has some good points here. Only so much the canned abilities can do. Health, resistance, combat style, etc. For truly epic stuff you do need a script. Good ideas.

Lets face it: Loot in Skyrim is hopelessly generic. Enchanted item of such and such seen a thousand times really just...turns me off in this game. If I wanted this, I would go play Torchlight or some random MMO. Skyrim's loot is sadly very unoriginal, and feels very much like the generic loot found in any generic dungeon crawler. This game and its fans - many of whom focus so heavily on an immersion-oriented experience - we deserve better than that. So I was trying to think of Unique, worthwhile loot for Skyrim. Not just more weapons and armor. I prefer a character to have "their armor and weapon" anyway. People don't run around trading in well-worn, familiar weapons and armor every chance they get. You learn the weight and heft of your sword, the fit of your leathers....you get the idea. I like to role play, and save for specific items (Dawnbringer against the Undead, for instance) my character has their preferred equipment. So lets brainstorm some immersive, unique types of loot for Skyrim. Things you would want to find in the dungeons other than just armor or weapons. This is tougher than I had thought it would be. Some ideas: -Dwemer Artifacts. Special spheres, metals, etc worth more than average Dwemer loot. -Potent Falmer poisons. Too dangerous to be use in the wilds, these sealed bottles are worth much too an experienced Alchemist. -Spider glands. Extremely rare drop from all spiders, and an Alchemists dream. Take these to a potion maker to sell for a handsome reward. -Perk Potions. These potions, when consumed, temporarily imbue the player with a new Perk. Suggestions include: -Poison Strike: Using this poison allows for poison damage on strike for 300 seconds, every attack. -Enhanced spell magnitude: Potions adds a perk which increases spell magnitude for 300 secs. -Stoneskin Mutagen: Adds a perk to reduce damage 10% for a limited time. Anyone else have any ideas for unique loot feel free to let me know. Might also consider "Perk Books" that when retrieved add some vanilla perks based on your "learning" them from the books. Like skill books...only better...and considerably more rare. Fire away!

I highly recommend new, unique combat styles for your bosses. Found under miscellaneous, combat styles govern the "odds" of your characters performing certain feats during combat. What I recommend is the following: -Up the odds of bashing dramatically -Balance the odds of power attacking. These are easily interrupted and avoided. Too many of them turns an otherwise powerful boss into a joke for melee fighters using shields. -Decrease the odds of the creature falling back and affording the player time. Being undead, it does not need to recover stamina by resting during fights. No reason for it to simulate doing this. also recommended (i know these are not AI, but still might be helpful): -Create a custom Draugr ability for additional damage resistance and give it to your bosses. Maybe also use it to buff health. -Give it Perks for extra damage. There are perks in the CK labaled CrExtraDamagePerk (or something very similar) that do this for numerous vanilla enemies, including many Draugr. Check them out.) -Find a high level boss and check his Shouts. Somewhere in the game - Ansilvund, I think, gods that was a nightmare - I found a Dragon Priest that could shout me across the room. His was the true 3rd tier Unrelenting Force. Might consider that for one or two bosses. -Give them some sort of magical resistance. This last is utterly imperative: -Give them detect life. It will not hamper their ability to fight, and the player will never know you did it. But it will make absolutely sure one-shot sneak attacks against your bosses simply do not work. Stealth players might hate you...but these guys didn't get to be bosses for nothing. I did this for enemy Werewolves in my game...and there is no sneaking up on them.

So....I had an idea for a custom race/class mod. Goes something like this: Copy each default race multiple times, making each copy a different "class." For instance, Nords could have Nord Warrior, Nod Barbarian and Nord Mage. Orcs could have a Shaman, Barbarian and Warrior "race/class." Bretons could have Cleric, Mage, Summoner. Dark Elves: Rogue, Nightblade, Battlemage. High Elf: Summoner, Magus, Wizard, Cleric. Each "Race" would have different starting spells and abilities, different health, stamina, and magicka and varied regeneration rates. This would really enhance role play, with you being able to start the game with a class-specific background. What I need to know, I guess, is this: -I read up on the "Race alias" affecting race-specific dialogue in the game. Wondering if anyone else has tried a custom race, and whether it worked. If so, how did you apply a "race alias" or was this simply part of copying the vanilla race? I looked and could find no such alias in the CK. Thanks for any info and/or suggestions for this mod.

This makes me feel like Skyrim, with its shallow, endlessly repetitive "Radiant Story" fetch quests...was more a test run for MMO development than any attempt at a real single player game. Let me give you some more tech reasons why I believe this might - and I only say might - be the case: -NPC's can use Perks. Not such a big deal, but never been done before. In this regard, NPC's are treated more like additional player characters than they are separate entities of a different nature. -The player can be set to Essential without breaking things. This makes the 'player character object' just another 'actor object' as far as governing scripts are concerned. More similarities between the player and other actors/objects in the world. -Radiant Story. This is the perfect MMO-Formula quest design tool. A million plug-n-play, shallow fetch quests with a system for tracking cleared dungeons and increasing their respawn timer. -Endgame Balance. Whether a mage, a rogue or a warrior type it seemed each class of character was extremely powerful late game. NPC mages are mot than capable of locking down a warrior and killing them with cloaks/walls and ranged spells. But warriors have sprint and bash. And rogues...well, their sneaking, potent poisons and sneak attack damage is insane. All they need is cloaking for multiplayer - and invisibility handles that. These facets of Skyrim's design have me thinking that what we got was more a tech demo for an upcoming MMO than a real game. Because really...vanilla Skyrim is quite shallow, not at all focused on or concerned with role playing, and is largely the reason I have mostly moved on to Witcher 2 - a very nice party to which I came somewhat late.

Ahh, this issue again. Not surprised. First thing: -Load new mods one at a time. I know, its annoying. But trust me, its worth it. If only one of them causes the crash, you likely have your culprit. But then, there was an issue not long ago where activating new mods crashed the game before the title screen/main menu. What you do this is: -Take the new mods out of your load order. Deactivate them or even cut and paste them outside your data folder -load to title screen -Exit game -Add the mods back again -Move them around where you want them in your load order. Make sure you manually move every mod -Now try loading. This should work, unless one mod is bugged or causing the crashes. Try these things. Should get you in.

Reworking my own combat mods now. Blocking 100% damage begins with a block skill of 25 in my new version. Below that, you will steel "feel" more of the hit. However, to balance this I also: -Let NPC's actually use Bashing (A LOT). This lets them break blocks and prevents sitting behind your shield all day -Let NPC's power attack while their targets are blocking much more often -Give NPC's the chance to stagger you when you are not blocking (depending on esp file used) I must set, the net results of my soon-to-be-released mods are a much tougher combat system where the player can be wounded (disease-like lasting effects), staggered, and have their blocks broken. But the player can also block all damage and stagger foes on hit when they are not blocking.

I still hold to what I said before: Bethesda listened to the wrong crowd when they began patching the PC version of the game. Numerous people began modding this game long before the proper tools were available. They installed mods using questionable tools. They also tried running the game without admin rights and on inferior systems which could not hack it. Then they complained. At great length they complained. I played this game for more than 100 hours of vanilla Skyrim with no crashes, no slow downs and no hiccups. Then I modded and played another 20+ hours without problems. Now, as of the latest patch....Khajiit merchants are missing from their camps. My FPS sucks. (And no, I did not add high res textures beyond those I had for the first 100 hours.) During the first 100 hours I played on High and Ultra. Now, I have shadows on f***ing medium just to play the game. For the record: AMD Phenom Quad Core Black Ed. 8GB RAM Nvidia GTX 460, 2GB RAM More than enough power to run this game. Far more than enough. And for 100 hours, I had no issues with it. Now....its a disaster, compared to its state at release. I wish Bethesda would listen to the players who take care of their games and their hardware. Many of their so-called patches have broken more than they have fixed. Between this and the lack of depth, safe to say Skyrim is my last Beth-developed game.

You might be right about their grounded animations. Frankly, I would love to see one of the many excellent animators here work on a leaning animation for flying dragons. Don't know whether this would be possible, but I would love to see Dragons banking into their aerial turns, as opposed to the 'flat' racetrack turn they make now.

Thanks everyone for this info. This is great. As for setting the player to essential, it does work in Skyrim. I first learned this by studying how hand to hand "bar brawls" work. You are Essential during that time. So II did some testing. If you do the following: setessential 7 1 This will set the player (whose base id is 7) to Essential. A "mod" (really, this instruction) on the Nexus pointed that out. When the player's health reaches 0, they drop out of combat. Better still, NPC's consider them defeated and give you some room. Also, the insult you nicely, too. Now, what will not happen...is the player getting back up on their own. Even if you use a health potion...no go. You have to actually do player.resethealth to get the player back up and going. This heals you and gets you back to fighting. What I thought to do was sure, refill the health bar. But Wound the player first. A drain health/stamina/regen rate wound, that gets progressively worse for each stage, based on the number of knocks outs you suffer. This to me is better than the old 'save and reload' system, for immersion, and more punishing, as well, since now you're still stuck dealing with the boss/dungeon/dragon, except now, you're wounded on top of that. Thanks again for this. Good stuff and I should be able to get where I am going now.

Thanks for this code. The whole idea here is to set the player to Essential (setessential 7 1) to avoid the annoying 'death and reload' problem...but then really make things hard if you get careless in combat. Hence, the monitoring health from a quest script. Sadly, while I caught right on to the former scripting language, this is not happening with Papyrus, for some reason. What I have so far is: Scriptname aaaBCScriptWounding extends Actor Event OnInit() player = Game.GetPlayer() RegisterForUpdate(1.0) endEvent Even OnUpdate If game.player.getav Health == 0 If game.getplayer.HasMagicEffect BCWoundability == 0 Game.getplayer().addspell BCWoundAbility endif endif endevent Quest Property aaaBCQuestWoundingControl Auto I know some of this is right (likely very little) and most wrong. But right now the Wiki is lacking too much information for me to be able to piece together syntax. Your code helps with that, however, and I will keep trying. Odd that Bethesda creates these Wiki's, then doesn't bother placing any info on them... Thanks again.