amoebae

No, you're not allowed, unfortunately. The press were allowed a limited lift to the NDA, so they could post 15 minutes of footage, 15 screenshots, and talk about anything up to level 15. We, as players, are allowed to talk about anything we have seen in press coverage. You could stretch that to say we can talk about anything we might be able to argue could be in press coverage. So effectively we could probably get away with talking about content up to level 15. But if you go and read the NDA that is currently still active, it prohibits everything like it always has done. We cannot post game content, which includes screenshots or streams. I don't know why twitch allowed those streams earlier. Maybe they hadn't been reported. I've been talking reasonably freely about the game. I'm holding onto my screenshots though. Do what you think is best, but do so at your own risk.

You get 12 in total at level 15. 10 standard and 2 ultimates. One sorcerer build makes it possible to have more.

No, I don't like the game because it's not Skyrim, I pretty much don't like the game because it's a MMO. All this blah blah "it's going to be different from other MMOs"...it's not. Zenimax, Bethesda, whatever you want to call them (The BSG logo is on the game client screen btw) are milking the cow and we all know what that does in the end to a series. I just hope they do a good job on Fallout 4 and TESVI... Well see, if you don't like MMOs then I don't understand why you'd be so surprised that you don't like this game. Because... it's an MMO >_> Even when companies attempt to make something different to other MMOs, it's still an MMO. That's not about to change.

You've hit the nail on the head. As someone relatively new to MMOs, I can attest to the fact that it's natural to want to get the content without paying a sub. A monthly fee is hard to justify, probably for most people, especially if you've got other household outgoings and maybe have a sub to netflix, or cable tv, or whatever. And of course for younger players or those who are unemployed, stumping up the box price once is possibly doable, but making an investment every month is less so. However, what I've come to realise is that you simply get a better quality game if there is a sub, and when it comes to MMOs you have to think in an entirely different way than you do about single player or even co-op games. Expecting to be delivered top notch content, have it maintained, have populated servers, and be allowed to access everything - but without paying for it... it's naive and it misunderstands how MMOs are made and sustained. I stopped playing SWTOR after a while, I couldn't justify the sub anymore because I didn't have the money to spend on something I wasn't playing that often. But now it's got to the freemium model I definitely won't be picking it back up. I hate that model. It's detrimental to the whole community, even if some people are happy they get to experience some of the content for free. The way they've chopped up the game so that you get an extremely pared down version for free, and have to keep paying a little bit here, a little bit there to access other features is 1) against my principles and not a model I want to support; and 2) not good for the game in the long run for the reasons you mention above. For a game like an MMO, if you want it to be successful, and if you want it to have polished content, regular in-depth updates, a healthy community etc., you have to be prepared to invest in that. It is, I'm afraid, a case where you don't get something for nothing. We expect different things these days because of the proliferation of freemium, f2p, cash stores etc.... but those games are cash grabs, they rarely have any depth or longevity. Stamping your feet and saying, "but I want the game to be what I want it to be, and I don't want to pay for it" is all well and good, but it's selfish, naive, and it entirely misunderstands what this game model is all about. ESO isn't intended to simply be Skyrim online, or the next installment in the TES universe. If you go into it expecting that, you're going to be disappointed, and you are wrong to expect it to be that in the first place. It's an MMO set in the Elder Scrolls universe. It's trying to bring TES and MMO gaming together in an interesting way that might appeal to players of both. It can't expect to please everyone, nor is it probably trying to. There's an element of, "but it's a TES game, it should appeal to me because I'm a TES fan, and I'm angry it doesn't" but that sort of thinking needs to stop. It's not TES VI. It was never intended to be. It's not an offline game, and it can't be (it's technically not possible to make it one). There will be a TES VI one day. This isn't it. It is a great game though.

So, the bandwidth issue. This is purely about people posting images in the descriptions that are already hosted on nexus yes? Because each view of that page then calls all of those images from nexus, yes? But when those images in the description are hosted at flickr, or photobucket, or imgur, then the bandwidth that is being used is flickr's, or photobucket's, or imgur's. Yes? Yes. So how will instituting a small gallery - where users have to upload their 10 series images directly to nexus, to be called up by nexus' servers, to be hosted by nexus - possibly save nexus bandwidth? You would be guaranteeing that those 10 images are hosted at nexus and using nexus bandwidth, whereas previously only 1 of them would be hosted at nexus and 9 of them would be hosted elsewhere. How does that make sense? Really, all that needs to happen is this: 1) any images posted in descriptions MUST be hosted off site: people may not link to pictures already hosted at nexus in the descriptions 1.1) with that in mind, it would be a great idea to create a 'favourites' system (instead of endorsements, which are more trouble than they are worth), whereby people can add other people's images to their favourites, and then they can link to their favourites in their description, thus bringing the exposure to other people's pictures that they really like - since the majority of the pictures in descriptions that are hosted on nexus are the ones where people say 'check out these pictures from my fellow screenarchers' 2) impose rules about how wide these images in the description that are hosted elsewhere can be: flickr, for example, automatically makes available an 800px version of your pictures when you upload their, and you can grab the bbcode for that size right from the photo page and paste it into the description, so no tiresome manual resizing is needed. That way, there aren't 'messy' streams of images being cut off the page littered everywhere. Not that they'd be costing you bandwidth if hosted elsewhere anyway... 3) impose a limit on the number of pictures allowed in one description. I'd say 10 is a decent compromise. I've seen posts with more than that that look just wonderful because they are part of a story, but as was posted as an example earlier, there can be the odd one or two times someone goes overboard where it looks like crap. Again, if it's not hosted on nexus, it's not costing you bandwidth anyway... -- I know that nexus is a modding site. And your bandwidth problems are because you are a victim of your own success, so they are a double edged sword - the more people you have here who have a great experience the more premium memberships you are likely to generate, thus being able to expand and sure up the services; the more people you have here who have a great experience, the more will keep coming back and using more bandwidth. So perhaps you have to decide once and for all what you want nexus to be. Do you want it to be a faceless, soulless site where people come to download a mod, then leave? Do you want it to be a thriving community of modders and players, who share their love for the game and consider nexus to be a valuable resource and somewhere they want to spend their time? If it's the latter, then you simply have to realise that communities grow up around many different things, and in terms of nexus the ability to share images is a huge, huge part of that. You have to realise that so much mod downloading is generated because of the image share, as people showcase new mods, people ask 'where's that armour from?' or 'wow, what enb are you using?' or 'I just have to know what skin texture you are using!' and then pootle off to download it themselves. It also drives mod creation - so many new mods have grown out of people who use the image share deciding that they want to do what the modders do, they think they can create a great enb preset too, or they think they can make a really great male skin mod... and so they start doing it, but while it's a work in progress they just post pictures to the image share, which generates interest, feedback, excitement, ideas, and then hopefully leads to a solid mod hosted on nexus for download once it's finished. Creating a series of images more often than not provides the exact opposite experience to a random pic dump of any old rubbish. The majority of people consider carefully which of their pictures work together, the message they want to get across, the aesthetic totality of what a series offers instead of just one picture on its own. Screenshot taking (or screenarching - although I don't care for that name) has for many become more than just 'I killed a bear today - look I took a picture of it. Did you kill anything?' It has become an art form. Like any artist, the ability to curate your work and show it in ways that make thematic and aesthetic sense is crucial. Recognising how important the different parts of the community are might involve a paradigm shift on your part, but please don't for a second underestimate it. Just because nexus wasn't originally intended to be an image sharing site doesn't mean it hasn't evolved from where it began. Communities appear in surprising ways, and they are crucial in the way they form the bedrock of a place. If, however, you want it to be the former - well then your bandwidth problems will likely be solved overnight because people will leave in their droves. Perhaps that would be preferable? Then people can come here, download a mod, and disappear. If there are any decent mods still to be made once some of the avenues for creativity, ideas and sharing are limited. (I'm being flippant with this last point. I say it to make a crude point.) So to summarise: --The ability to post a series of images is important. Nexus might not have begun with image sharing in mind, but it has since evolved to be a place where people come to do that. It helps generate a sense of community and also innovation, and drives traffic to mods. --The community of people who use the nexus sites are what makes the nexus sites. That should be fostered and encouraged to flourish, making nexus a truly wonderful place to for modders and players to be - not severely limited and curtailed. Its potential should be realised, even if it means redesigning certain parts of the site. Don't waste the opportunity to have this be a wonderful place. --Bandwidth would increase from forcing people to have no choice but to upload all their images to nexus; whereas by allowing people to post pictures 2-10 of their series in the description while stating that if they do so they must be hosted elsewhere would save bandwidth. --Having a favourites system in place that people can link to will negate the desire/need for people to post thumbnails of other people's pictures that are hosted on nexus in their descriptions, which will also save bandwidth for the site. I hope the people who are making the decisions about this take the time to read my feelings and thoughts on this. I also hope they will be able to take some serious time to consider just what the image share parts of the nexus sites do for the site and for modding as a whole, and what a wonderful thing a thriving, colourful, varied community can be.

Just to chip in, I'm encountering a CTD when trying to fight Mirmulnir - I've activated logging but I'm not noticing anything particularly useful there. Until this week, I was using a slightly older version with no problem at all, but I did a complete reinstall of my game and mods, and in the process installed the latest DD version. I have DM installed as well. It doesn't matter where I stand, outside the tower, inside the tower, the game crashes to desktop as soon as he gets close. I've reduced shadow quality, grass quantity, and turned off my enb in the hope of ensuring there isn't too much VRAM usage happening. I have nothing else installed that effects dragons, apart from bellyache's retex, but I've had that before too and it shouldn't cause any problems like that (I have a beefy machine). I shall follow the uninstall instructions tomorrow (it's late here now) and see if it makes any difference. I'm very early on in the game, obviously, so hopefully having to restart wouldn't be a problem if indeed I do have to.

I played in 1st person for the first year, then in November I switched to 3rd person :P I still go into 1st when I'm using archery and need more precision, and very occasionally when sneaking (usually with my bow drawn), but otherwise I'm definitely a convert to 3rd person. Changing the camera via ini tweaks made a big difference, and I find 3rd infinitely more playable now as a result.

I must say I haven't been one for magic so far in Skyrim. I tried it out when I first got the game and found it altogether clunky and unworkable. That said, there are lots and lots of people who love it, so maybe a year on my appreciation of it will change! She's definitely going to be a Redguard, but I'm afraid those dual-wielding swords are a must :D

Right, after a bit of troubleshooting I've worked out it's being caused by TexBlendLite (CBBE neck seam fixer). I've messed around with a few config parameters, and it's no longer resizing or compessing, but I'm still losing my mipmaps. If anyone has experience with this I'd be grateful of any help/tips. (I've asked on Caliente's nexus page for help too.)

I have a weird problem and it's bugging the heck out of me. I've got some custom face textures I'm using, and they are saved at 2048 size, no compression, with mipmaps. Whether I paste them directly into the correct folders, or add them via NMM, as soon as I start the game they are being automatically resized to 1024 with no mipmaps. Does this have something to do with how I'm saving them? They're sat there on my hard drive at their full resolution and size, with their mipmaps, and when I open them again with gimp they are just as they should be, but as soon as they get into the game they change. I use GIMP 2.8, export to DDS, generate mipmaps, etc. I'm using CBBE body textures, which come without mipmaps, which causes black bodies in game for me sometimes, so I resaved them in exactly the same way and they seem to be keeping their resolution and mipmaps and so on just fine. Could something be overriding it? When I open up the greatly reduced files in gimp, they are my textures, they look the same, they're just halved in size and as I say, no mipmaps. Any ideas?

Thinking ahead to some ideas for a future character I want to make, I realised she would be partially based off Isabela from Dragon Age 2. I have all the skill of a colour blind marmoset when it comes to even thinking about trying to do this for myself, but I'd love to see something like her armour - with a Skyrim twist. I'm not massively into the revealing armours - although I know her DA2 armour flashes a bit of skin and I wouldn't be averse to something similar even if I'd prefer it a little more modest and practical - and I love the ones that take assets that are already in the game and mash them up, add new things, not too fussy, but nicely done. It'd be great for a swashbuckling rogue or thief who hangs out in Riften, swilling ale in the Bee and Barb with the locals while telling them off-colour jokes from her time at sea :D Anyone up for doing something like that? Edit: A pic of some lovely art of her that I found online for reference: http://www.pixologic.com/interview/dragon-age2/8/img/img01.png (source) Another edit: I should also add, I'm really not a fan of that big old gold neck thing though. So if anyone were to take up the challenge, maybe that could be an optional thing >_>

I'm not sure about that message you're seeing, but in terms of the dark face bug, there's a simple trick that seems to fix it for most people: once you've finished editing your NPC in the CK, in the Object window highlight their name and press ctrl+F4 and confirm. It will export the facegen data into your relevant Skyrim folder. Hopefully that will work for you.

The problem is solved - thanks to the user 5h4d0w - so if anyone else ever needs to solve this: Open your skyrimprefs.ini (Under "My Documents/My Games/Skyrim/"), find the line "fGamma=xx" and delete it.

OMG, you have no idea how useful this info is. Thank you so much. I had scoured the ini looking for something, but I missed that line completely. The strange thing is, I swear I've changed the in-game brightness in the past and it hasn't suddenly freaked out and thrown my profile away, but since I most recently re-installed the game a month or so ago, and changed the brightness the first time tonight, BAM! Quite another kind of blue screen of death :P Life save, you absolutely are.

I have, incidentally, made sure my calibrated monitor profile is set to system-wide default under colour management. But it is still somehow being overridden and set back to standard sRGB when I start Skyrim. Any help would be much appreciated.