Madrias

Yeah, not sure why they're that overpowered. I get that they're a DLC enemy, and that you're supposed to go to Solstheim when relatively high level, but they're a menace. Someone failed at balancing out their attack damage versus their health - It wouldn't be as bad if they hit like freight trains, but could be taken down about as fast as they can take you down, but instead, they're like tanky, hard-to-hit dragons. On the flipside, yeah, I remember that bit of "fun" from Immersive Creatures. "Let's dump enemies on the map with no care whatsoever about the actual level scaling of the world." I ended up ripping the mod out because, well, these tanky turds are put in places that they don't belong. Basically, only two creature mods I use these days are "Animals are not Monsters" which makes most wildlife less likely to attack (Which is a blessing and a half when you just want to make it to a city with a load of loot, and you know that all those bear, saber cat, and wolf pelts are going to overburden you), and "Werewolves Occurring Naturally" which puts werewolves in the predator spawn lists so you actually see some outside of the Companions Questline (which pairs well when dealing with Moonlight Tales, because getting beaten up by werewolves can lead to certain lunar afflictions if not treated quickly enough). Stuff like Immersive Creatures can be good, but... I'm wary of anything that puts DLC content on the mainland, because Bethesda has the balancing skill of a toddler standing on a ball. Which is to say - They don't know how to balance their DLC versus their base game.

A bit late to the party (Yes, I checked the date this time, I'm only raising the dead a little here), but, I've found a few occasions where upgrading out of enchanted gear makes some sense. In this case, with an iron cuirass with +20 health, that's a great find for a lower-level player. Generally, and this is just from my experience, you want to replace it if: You get a Steel Cuirass with +10 health or more (obvious - It's better armor with a similar enchant) You get a steel cuirass and have the smithing skill to upgrade it to at least Superior. (At this point, the armor's protection starts to loosely equal the health enchant.) You find another piece of gear (amulet, gloves, or shield) with a Fortify Health enchantment. (Use that gear for your active fortify health, disenchant the iron cuirass - it's heavy and not very protective - and use the best-rated armor you have in its place) You can enchant an item with Fortify Health to the strength of +10 or higher. (This assumes you've already learned Fortify Health from some other bit of gear. At this point, any armor can become Fortify Health armor.) You find Orcish, Dwarven, or Steel Plate on your adventures. (The armor-rating boost from these begins to offset the enchantment, especially if you find multiple pieces of a set.) You find Elven or Glass Light Armor and choose to do a light-armor build. (Not always the most obvious choice, sometimes characters hate light armor, but the movement speed penalty of heavy armor means you're going to get hit more, while light armor relies on not getting hit through agility.) You join the Dawnguard and get their Heavy Armor (Similarly to #5, it's the armor rating boost.) Spend two level ups on Health (+10 each time) and immediately afterward, disenchant the iron cuirass and put on any heavier-duty Heavy Armor cuirass. In the early game, this is easier to do, and by raising your native health by +20 early on, you avoid falling into a sunken cost fallacy of dragging the iron cuirass through far more than it should have gone because +20 health is good. If you're past about level 15 or 20, vendors will often have better armor with potentially higher enchantments. It may be worth doing the level up thing (+2 levels into Health and dumping the iron cuirass) and buying a better set of armor. I don't know the numerics of it, but from my experiences, Fortify Health is one of the weaker enchantments to carry forward for me. It's better in the late game if you're having survivability problems, and do a little bit of casual alchemy (not the alchemy, enchanting, smithing loop, but make some Fortify Enchanting potions, get the strongest enchantment out of Fortify Health that you can within reason, and apply it) to give you some extra health. Personally, the ones I always get into trouble with are items enchanted with Health Regeneration. At what point is it worth dropping an item that gives you faster health regen in favor of taking less damage overall? Basically the long-and-short of it is this: Skyrim is very casual-gamer-friendly. If at any time, you're worried that your current enchanted item is essential to survival, put two or three levels worth of points into your health and you'll probably be better off. What I generally do is, up to level 10 or 11, I dump points strictly into my health, no matter whether I'm a warrior, rogue, or mage. No matter what, you'll appreciate 100 extra hit-points, and while enemies start hitting harder by that point, well, any armor is good to protect that extra pool. Even if you just use the extra-fast-levels (up to Level 5) for health gains, that's still 50 points of extra health, and there's not much gear out there that'll give you +50 health for free.

Ah, missed that it was two years out of date. The thread, in my defense, was near the top of the Skyrim Spoilers thread grouping. Even with all I said, I don't hate Dawnguard. I dislike certain aspects of it, but at the same time, it did do good things. Just a lot of it does feel like an afterthought. I think most of Dawnguard's minor problems would be easily ignored if we didn't have to drag Serana around, though. I can certainly agree there. Part of it is the fact that she interacts with everything. You stop to talk to a quest NPC, she's going to find the nearest idle marker and make noise with it. Or she'll walk into your back, or walk between you and the NPC, or complain loudly about the weather or the sun while you're trying to get what little information Skyrim provides out of the NPC you're talking to. This, of course, can be disasterous with mods in place, because if the voice acting is quieter than normal, and more information is passed on by voice, and then Serana pipes up with one of her classic sun complaints, well, there's a good chance you've missed out on some information. Part of it is that she's a forced companion. She's the DLC-long escort quest who breaks your stealth at all times, resurrects your thralls as her zombies so they ash out later, when she's not resurrecting wildlife to annoy you with, and the few times I've made the mistake of dismissing her or making her stay somewhere (when possible) and going ahead on a Dawnguard quest, only to soft-lock and have to drag her along and do things the hard way, it's infuriating. I'm flat out honest when I say that, until Inigo (the mod) released and revived bringing a companion along, Serana was the reason I quit taking companions. Because I misremembered them as all being like Serana. And, I agree, the whole "Good guys who are worse than the bad guys" trope sucked with Dawnguard. As I said, that alone makes the whole Dawnguard-half of the questline feel like it was a panic-fix when some intern asked about players who don't want to be vampires. Bethesda has a few problems when it comes to fantasy. They shy away from common fantasy tropes that would be good. As said, the Dawnguard being a holy order of paladins here to cleanse Skyrim of the Vampire Menace would do a whole lot for combating Isran's rotten attitude. Their writers are following the worst possible strategy for writing fantasy or sci-fi. Don't "dumb it down" because then you just end up with "There's nothing interesting here." People still praise Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood questline because it was good. It combined story with fun game mechanics and some plot twists on the way. They jump feet-first into all the rotten fantasy tropes that should be avoided. Animals are not monsters. Wolves are smart - they'll run away from an armored warrior unless they're absolutely starving, and if you take one or two out, the pack will scatter. Bears are territorial, but you're not going to see seven of them between Windhelm and Riften on the road. Likewise, they reluctantly gave us dragons, and it took them 3 DLC to give us the ability to temporarily subjugate a dragon to ride it. Why can't we call down Odahviing any time we want to fly from Riften to Solitude? Or hitch a ride on Durnehviir to fly to Markarth?I will admit, the dungeons are great. I loved wandering through the Forgotten Vale. The Soul Cairn was incredible and spooky in all the right ways. I wish there was more of that and not "Abuse the Radiant Quest System" like we got for most of the side-quests in the DLC. The questline itself is decent. It just lacks replay value because the main quest doesn't change beyond a few words here-and-there if you join Harkon's or Isran's side. Fighting Harkon at the end is a good bit of fun. When it comes to comparing it with the other DLCs... Yeah, sadly, Dawnguard is the best of the 3. It did what it set out to do, giving us an "evil vampires want to black out the sun with an ancient artifact" questline, and its alternate "We're stopping the evil vampires" questline. We got a couple new locations, a few characters worth talking about, and one rotten forced follower. Dragonborn gets hyped up because of Morrowind/Bloodmoon nostalgia. While I generally like Dragonborn's story better, it has several fatal flaws. The first being when you go to the Temple of Miraak the first time and have to put up with Frea as a forced follower, though at least she doesn't forcibly dismiss your current follower to tag along. The second being that someone clearly overheard all the whining about "Skyrim is too easy" and decided to make everything a bloody tank. It's gotten to the point where if I have to go to Solstheim, I kick the difficulty back from Adept to Novice because I'm not putting up with that crap. The third fatal flaw of Dragonborn is two-halves-of-the-same-whole. The Miraak fight. The Last Dragonborn against the First Dragonborn has a lot of potential for excitement. Except he's just a bandit with really high health, three instant-heals, and the ability to use a few shouts. And the other half of it? We don't even get the satisfaction of killing him, that's stolen from us by Hermaeus Mora. Hearthfire, as much maligned as it is, gave a great deal for something so small. Three plots of land, upon which you can build your own home with items from the worldspace, in a few unique styles. The ability to adopt orphans to create a family. Planting rare/hard-to-find ingredients in order to have more of them for later. Essentially, if I had to rank the DLCs in how much I enjoy playing them, it's Dragonborn, Dawnguard, and Hearthfire. Because Dragonborn has a more complete story, and because Hearthfire isn't really played so much as it's a side mission to the side missions. If I had to rank them in how well I believe they did what was intended, it's Hearthfire, Dragonborn, and Dawnguard. Hearthfire nailed what was intended. Dragonborn feels complete. Dawnguard feels like they were in a rush, got caught by surprise, and shoved the DLC out the door without realizing there is no "patch it later" on DLC. If I rank them instead in their potential for story-telling, well... Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and then Dragonborn. Dawnguard may have dropped the ball several times regarding opportunities to bring in fantasy tropes, but it has potential. Mods can fix Dawnguard. Hearthfire is nothing but story-telling potential. It's a great Skyrim "rags-to-riches" goal. Save up enough gold to buy a plot of land. Build a house there. Make it the best house you can. Dragonborn has the best story, but inherently, a great story means it has no real flexibility to say that this was intended when it wasn't written that way. Am I disappointed with Dawnguard as a DLC? Yes. But it did a better job than the other two.

Sorry about the little bit of necromancy - I found this topic (and a scroll of Raise Zombie) and thought it was a bit interesting. --- I'm in agreement on quite a few points: Dawnguard (DLC) feels rushed/incomplete Dawnguard (Faction) feels underwhelming Isran is one of the most annoying characters. Serana is an annoyance Dawnguard's guild quests all suck. In fact, I'll go semi-controversial and say that Dawnguard kinda sucks.Let's start at the top with #1. As a whole, the Dawnguard DLC feels rushed and incomplete. The quests predominantly send you to locations that already existed, with the exception of Fort Dawnguard, Castle Volkihar, and the Forgotten Vale. Through all of it, 90% of the quests are a form of vaguely-radiant fetch quest. The "exciting thing," a new variant of vampirism, is so hyped up that it's sickening, and it's very clear that the werewolves and the Dawnguard were just an afterthought when some intern said, "But... What if someone doesn't want to be a vampire?" It's not even as if being a Vampire Lord is all that good, either - It's like a werewolf but with a button to push to do magic instead of melee. Everyone still hates you, you turn into this ugly half-bat-gargoyle creature that looks like an extra from a bad monster movie, and you still have to deal with the usual vampire suck-fest that is "I can't see crap because it's night, but I can't adventure by day because of the sun." (I know, mods fix this - I'm not counting mods because mods fix everything.) This leads right into #2. The Dawnguard Faction is so underwhelming in all aspects. Here we have an opportunity to have a diverse cast from all walks of life, a thriving collection of vampire hunters. They've been openly recruiting for long enough that the vampires found out about it... So why are the farm boy Agmaer and the Dragonborn the only two recruits? Seriously, they missed an opportunity, even if they were just side NPCs like Torvar from the Companions or the three novice students in the College of Winterhold, or all of the bloody Bard's College, to have characters with a bit of story to them. Let's face it, if your initial meeting was just outside the door to the fort and you met Agmaer the farm boy, a Vigilant of Stendarr seeking revenge for the destruction of the Hall of the Vigilant, a former Stormcloak and former Empire soldier who constantly bicker and fight until the last battle, some guy in torn and ragged clothing who says he's "just here to kill vampires," and a mercenary who figures "there's got to be coin in killing monsters," you'd feel like this was a start to a guild of vampire slayers. You could then have planned, dramatic moments for these characters during your various tasks to get the Dawnguard going. Small side-quests from each of them. The former Vigilant wants his Amulet of Stendarr from the Hall. After doing that favor, he'll pay you some gold for every Death Hound Collar you bring him. He'll also pay you for vampire robes.Agmaer's quest might be to help train him, where your skill with certain weapons (One-hand, two-hand, archery) guides him on a path for damage, and your choice of armor is reflected in what he chooses to wear. So my Agmaer might prefer two handed weapons and heavy armor, but your Agmaer might be using crossbows and light armor.The mercenary will follow you for 500 gold and acts as an additional companion, even while Serana is around.The ragged man wants unusual alchemy ingredients, silver ingots, and a lot of iron ingots. If you're a werewolf, he's up front and honest - he's one as well, and the ingredients let him control it, the iron ingots are to build a cage to keep his new friends safe from him, and silver ingots are so he can make silver chains to restrain him as an added precaution. If you're not a werewolf, he'll spill his secrets only once you've proven trustworthy - you returned from gathering Sorine and Gunmar and passed the sunlight trial.The Stormcloak and the Imperial eventually find something they can agree upon - They both hate the Thalmor. They'll pay good money for any Thalmor robes you find, money which they get by telling Isran that most of the Thalmor are vampires.As you progress through the quests and Fort Dawnguard gets built up, you see the changes caused by helping these new characters as well as Sorine, Gunmar, and Florentius. You see a trophy room with death hound collars and vampire robes presented in cases. A cage appears toward the back of the fort with shining chains inside it - If the player admits to being a werewolf, too, a second cage will be built "for my pack brother/sister, just in case he/she can't restrain the beast." Agmaer starts by training with the weapon type you use the most, then later is seen running laps around the fort in armor, and later is seen with his chosen type of weapon and armor, ready for battle. Potions appear near one bed in the barracks, courtesy of the werewolf, some of which do nothing (and with mods, could prevent a lunar transformation), and some which force an extra transformation at will, and others which make your werewolf form way more powerful, at the cost of needing to feed twice as much to maintain it. Thalmor robes start filling a chest hidden in the back, and eventually end up overflowing it. As you have clashes with the vampires, some of these new recruits are scripted to die. The mercenary gets fed on and cast aside early on, when we retrieve the Moth Priest. The soldiers die defending the fort from vampires after we get all the Elder Scrolls. Before we go to get Auriel's Bow, the werewolf gives us the special potion recipes now that he's perfected them - One lets you take on werewolf form at will, another gives your werewolf form an "aura of peace" so that people don't attack you, and the last one makes your werewolf form highly resistant to magic. If you're not yet a werewolf from the Companions, he'll offer to turn you. Unlike the Companions rampage, you're instead instructed to meet him at the cages, where he drinks one of his potions, wolf-changes, and bites you. You black out, time passes, and you wake up in the cage with him saying, "I was wondering if you were ever going to change back." When you return with Auriel's bow, we witness his death as he tears vampires apart, his form unusually large (1.2, maybe 1.3x scale) courtesy of an experimental potion. He wins the fight, but drops dead from exhaustion. This leaves us with Agmaer, who now has proper gear, the former Vigilant, and the two soldiers for additional crew leading into the final fight. But, let's sidestep from this "what it could have been if Bethesda had actual writers" and instead look at problem #3 on the list. Isran is an obnoxious character. I get it, he's the vampire slayer with a reason because vampires killed people close to him, blah blah blah. It's craptastic writing. This more than anything else, tells me we were never intended to join the Dawnguard faction. Isran hates vampires. When Serana double-crosses her father and shows up, risking her life, I can totally understand Isran at that moment having no trust in her. When we keep coming back together and making progress, however? The least I could expect from him is a comment of, "I guess we've finally found one good vampire." When we come back from the Soul Cairn, I'd rather see his outlook change a bit. I'm not saying he has to roll over and accept that you're a vampire now, but it'd be nice if he'd acknowledge this was probably a very hard decision you had to make. Perhaps a more sympathetic, "Hey, I don't know what happened out there, or why you're a vampire now, but, we do a lot of our work in the day because that's when vampires are at their weakest. Here, hand me your map. Go see my friend, Falion, out in Morthal. Take this, it's a filled black soul gem - you're going to need it. He has a cure for... This." The idea being he knows it's still you in there, even if you're a vampire at the moment. At the same time, let us walk around and talk to the other Dawnguard members (and the extended cast) and have them comment on it. The Vigilant might be disgusted that you "joined the very creatures we were destroyed by," and tells you, "go get a cure, you bloodsucking fool." The two soldiers might ask you a few questions regarding what it's like, with the options to answer with a few different responses, with some being disgusted with it ("I hate drinking blood, it's disgusting!"), some being in awe of it ("I can't believe how powerful I feel all the time!"), some being neutral about it ("I can't really say I like this, but I don't exactly hate it, either."), and some being regretful about it (either "I'd rather be mortal. I only did this because I had to," or "It wasn't worth giving up my gift from Hircine."). Talking to Agmaer might get you a pep talk with, "Well, a friend of Isran has to be good, right? He's a wizard. He'll fix this and get you back on this side of the living." Talking to the werewolf gets you a couple of options. If you were a werewolf before, he offers straight up, "I can give back what you lost. It'll hurt, but I can save you a trip to Morthal." If you weren't a werewolf before, he instead offers, "If you'd like, I can help you out. Trading, well, a curse for a curse. But, it's going to hurt a lot, and you'll be a werewolf afterward." Either way lets you choose to get a free change to werewolf right there, saving your one-time-return with Aela for any other occasions of "oops." Either way, you will have to shed your vampirism to proceed, but with Isran instead being somewhat sympathetic - he knows you probably didn't want this, but it was the best of two rotten options - it's less of a sting to go visit Falion / get bit by the Dawnguard werewolf / Go see Aela and reacquire the Gift of Hircine. Once you kill Harkon, I believe Isran should step back and say, "You killed a Vampire Lord. I've never done that. The Dawnguard should be led by someone who knows how to kill all types of vampires, so I leave you as its leader. Of course, while you're out hunting, I'll hold down the fort as your second-in-command." This would give us, as with all the other factions, access to a nice room to call our own, possibly a specialized weapon or shield or armor, and yet, unlike the other factions, it's not something where we can't justify being "leader" and still adventuring. That said, the College of Winterhold, we could assume Tolfdir handles things in our absence, when he's not losing his alembic. Companions claim the Harbinger isn't truly a leader, but it'd be nice if you could tell Aela, Farkas, and Vilkas, "I know the Harbinger is traditional, but, I'm not ready to settle down just yet. Can the Circle lead in my absence?" Thieves Guild, you become the leader, but Brynjolf is your Second-in-Command. Dark Brotherhood is a bad joke, however, as The Listener, Nazir, and Babette don't make for a much of a guild of assassins. The idea here is that Isran openly admits that you're the leader, but he's second-in-command and the leader when you're not there. The thing that really annoys me, though, is something that mods fixed. You'd think Isran would order a clean-up of Volkihar Castle, and then turn it into the Northern Dawnguard Outpost. So, a quick side-step to issue #4: Serana is an annoyance. Let's face it, she is. Sure, she's one of the best AI companions made by Bethesda, but... I'll just say it this way. I like the character. I hate dealing with the character. Our first meeting, we know she's a vampire. I get it, kill one vampire, or learn where the nest is to wipe them all out, but my issue here is, we get lumped with a vampire just after becoming vampire hunters. Want to know how I would have changed things up? Have Serana be out of that confinement capsule by the time we get down there. The vampires got there before us, after all. Have them get her free from the capsule, feed an innocent to her so she doesn't look like a vampire, bring her up to speed on the basic political nature of Skyrim right now. Then have us making noise get the attention of the other vampires, who go up to investigate, die to us, and let us find Serana. Serana's smart. "Help! Help! These awful beasts dragged me down here! Can you help me get back to my home?" She can tell at a glance, you're a heroic-type character. Best way to get you to help, play the damsel in distress. Let the player have a couple of options that alter how Serana initially sees you. If you go the mercenary route and ask for septims, she tells you "My family is rich. If a reward is what you're after, get me home and I promise you will be rewarded."If the player is a vampire, let you see through the veil and say, "I know what you are. Don't worry, I'm one, too."If the player is a werewolf, let you see through the veil and say, "You're a vampire. Why should I help you?" Serana would reply, in her usual sarcastic way, "Because you're not the big bad wolf. You wouldn't be here if you were."If you offer to help right away, she thanks you.If you tell her, "Not now, but I'll come back for you when it's safe," Serana tells you she's following you anyway because, "You heroes are so forgetful at times."If you try to tell her, "I'm not interested in helping you," she follows up with, "Well, I'll just follow where you're going. You'll find the way out eventually anyway."If you ask about the Elder Scroll, she offers up most of her usual dialog regarding it.Once outside, if she complains about the sun, it's because "It's so bright. I don't know how long I've been down there, but it was too long." Volkihar Castle could do with a bit of cleaning up before we meet Harkon. I know Serana's visit is somewhat unexpected, but I'd expect a "noble house of vampires" to have class. No cattle on the tables, no blood or meat all over the place. Instead, have bottles of wine and blood at the tables, have some vampires there drinking from mugs or glasses, a place that seems inviting. It makes Harkon's reveal that they're vampires that much more shocking, potentially more inviting. I'd change that butt-ugly Vampire Lord form to basically just being an enhanced natural form with the bat wings. Activate your Vamp-lord powers and float up a bit to access the blood magic, or drop to the ground and fight with claws or weapons. You still look like you, and not some monster movie stage prop. That way, when Harkon changes to Vamp-lord to convince us, it's more of a show of power that is far less likely to gross out characters. Likewise, while I know "Vampires and Werewolves hate each other" is a tired trope, as far as I know, Molag Bal and Hircine aren't enemies. I'd love if the Vampire questline could be seriously started without giving up my lycanthropy, do the first few fetch quests for the vampires, but like the Civil War, give us one last chance to change sides when we're retrieving the Moth Priest. If we bring him to Harkon, he puts Dexion under his spell, then tells us, "You can go no further with us as a wolf. Come, it's time you were rewarded properly for your service." If you accept, you wake as a vampire lord and do the tutorial you should've done before the questlines, then go listen to Dexion's scroll reading. If you refuse, Harkon makes a quip about, "The devout followers of Hircine are always the stubborn ones," then tells you, "I had hoped you would have accepted this as a gift, as payment for your service. Instead, it'll be as a warning to not defy me again." You're bitten, wake as a vamp-lord, and do the tutorial... Likewise, as a vampire-sided questline, it should be possible to bring Dexion to the Dawnguard instead, and tell Isran, "I know what I am. I know you would normally hunt down and kill me. What I want is a cure for this. I offer a trade - The vampires were very interested in this moth priest, and I will leave him in your care. I would like a cure for vampirism." Isran offers to send you to Falion, mentioning, "Don't come back until you've been cured." But, back on track, when we arrive at the castle, it shouldn't be immediately obvious that they're vampires. Harkon's reveal should be the dawning moment for us. We're presented our usual options - Leave and be prey, join and become a vampire - but for mortals, they get, "I'm not sure about the whole vampire thing yet. Can I stay in the castle, talk to people, and help out a bit before I decide?" which lets you do a few quests, like the above-mentioned werewolf path, before your turning, and for werewolves, it's "I'm a werewolf. I'd prefer to keep my gift, but I'm willing to help out around here." Given that the Dawnguard path feels like the stapled-on story, I'll follow the DG path. So we choose exile. We return to Isran, and get Sorine and Gunmar. By this time, Serana has come to the fort and risked her life to help us. Unlike before, I have little issue with how Serana acts here in the den of vampire-slayers while she's treated with open hostility. What I do have issue with is how often we have to drag Serana along to other locations. Especially considering in some cases, we might have a vanilla follower acting as our pack-mule, and now we have to sideline them for Serana. The big reason I have issues with Serana as a companion? She's a necromancer. See, I get it, she's raising the dead to do her bidding because vampire, so it's very classic on that. My dislike of it is that either she's raising the chicken, goat, or fox that I just killed for being in my way, raising the bandit I was two seconds away from looting, or raising a creature on the other side of the doorway I need to go through. This, combined with her absurdly-high use of AoE spells, means she's constantly raising garbage, and then picking fights with my mod-added followers. Which leads to me wanting to just get her part of the quests done so I can leave her behind. Likewise, while I understand Serana has a lot more voice-lines than most followers... It'd be nice to hear less whining about the weather. I'm not a vampire, I'm not traveling exclusively at night when you've proven you don't burn in the daylight, so get used to the sun. Same goes for her idle packages. While moving around is infinitely better than standing in place like a post, it would have been nice if she had exclusions in her sandbox routine. That way, I can use the smithing gear at Warmaidens without her banging on metal or shoveling charcoal into the smelter. Or bring her to Kodlak's funeral without her trying to use Eorlund's smithing gear... Or worrying about whether stopping to think about "Do we go this way or that way" in some locations will result in an "accidental" shove off of an edge. The end result is that Serana is, as created, a great character with simultaneously too much and not enough to say, she's way too eager to jump in and use various work-stations while we're doing some crafting, is often times the reason for many characters' deaths, and then as the cherry on top, she's blessed with some of the worst combat AI I've seen. There's a bandit chief with full Nordic Carved Armor and an Orcish Greatsword on the ground, and there's a chicken that can't attack? "I think I'll raise the chicken." Which then brings us to #5. Skyrim is no stranger to sucky quests. But Dawnguard's quests have more suck potential than an entire store full of vacuum cleaners. Between the main quest being a carbon copy of the Vampire side, just we face vampires and gargoyles instead of Dawnguard and armored trolls, the lack-luster fetch quests or "go here and stealth-archer this guy" quests, and the fact that at no point do we make an effort to gather up the vampire artifacts as a "screw you" to the vampires, it's just not that good. Let's start with that last point. I get it, it's "replay value" to make us play both halves to see the different minor quests. Except it isn't, because Skyrim's Radiant AI guarantees an infinite supply of fetch quests, and most of Dawnguard's quests are just fetch quests. Let's be honest, a few "after the main quest" missions for either side to get the items they're missing, along with some possible "purify/corrupt" quests to add depth to it, would be fun. Imagine as the vampires getting the Dawnguard Rune items and then getting quests to corrupt them by using Serana's blood under the effects of a blood-cursed arrow into the sun, changing them from doing extra damage to vampires into doing extra damage to non-vampires and healing the user. Imagine as the Dawnguard getting the amulets, rings, bloodstone chalice, and ancient vampire parts in various quests, and then purifying them in some way. The bloodstone chalice becoming a sunstone chalice instead, offering extra damage to vampires for 4 hours after drinking from it. Coating the ancient vampire bones in silver to prevent them ever being used in a ritual in the future. The amulets and rings are stored in a display case that we can't ever open, but that is mentioned by Florentius, "Anyone who opens it will feel the full wrath of Arkay... And the sun." Then there's the million radiant fetch quests both sides do. "Go find Sorine and Gunmar at "random Dwemer Ruin" and "random Bear Cave" to send them to Fort Dawnguard." "Find crossbow schematics in dwemer ruins" "Kill a vampire." "Find these rings." "Find vampire parts" "Find the amulets." It sucks. Quests that could have been genuinely interesting if someone cared enough to put the items around are instead just boring. Let's face it, I'd have been way more impressed if Gunmar had been assigned a random cave, but instead of killing a generic Cave Bear like I've done 500,000 times already, we go inside and there's a bloody pack of feral werewolves. Like 4 - 8 of them. My mods did that to me once and it was awesome. And to know it was sheer coincidence that Gunmar picked a cave to spawn his stupid bear inside, the mod that put werewolves into the predator list picked that moment to spawn multiple werewolves, and through it all, it spawned enough to be an actual threat at my level. But then again, the whole Dawnguard DLC is a bit of a wet fart. You can tell it's not great by the major location placements - One in the north-west corner of the map, one in the south-east corner of the map. The radiant AI is notorious for sending you all the way across the map to start with, so having both locations extra remote is just a pile of suck. There's the fact that the Forgotten Vale and the Soul Cairn don't have maps. Jiub's quest is good, but like the other infamous "no-markers-fetch-quest" called No Stone Unturned, it sucks to complete. It's painfully clear that the play-testers never tried to complete Dawnguard without fast-traveling. So, that controversial hot-take I mentioned, that Dawnguard kinda sucks? Here's my reasons why. The DLC begins very invasively without mods squelching it. I don't mind Isran recruiting. I do mind the random vampire attacks, because I'm sick of my towns looking like a group of average murderhobos marched through and killed all the non-quest-giving NPCs. The map layout was designed to pad out gameplay. I'm damn sure that it's not a coincidence that I always find Sorine Jurard out in the armpit of the Reach, complaining about mudcrabs and dwarven gyros. Someone clearly chose that spot because it's across the map. They used the same main quest with an enemy palette swap. While this was fine in the Civil War because the holds we were fighting over changed, here, it's the same quest. Which means there is zero replay value. Vampires get all the cool new stuff. "Oh, wait, people might not like vampires? Um... I guess we could toss together a werewolf skill tree and never test the balance, and we can turn the NPC faction of the Dawnguard into a playable one." Seriously, I don't think anyone tried the werewolf skill tree out after creating it, because the "armor" doesn't stack up anywhere near enough to be useful in surviving past level 20. For all of this hard work to beat the main quest, we get... One set of new armor, a shiny Aedric bow that's probably worse in stats than the one you're using now, and the ability to fire arrows at the sun to either get a massive bounty on your head, or kill everyone with vampires. Beyond the DLC quests, it added very little. Dragonbone weapons. A companion that shows what Bethesda could do. Tons of vampire stuff, but if you're not a vamp-lover, you get the short end of the stick, and there's still some dookie on it. A couple micro-worldspaces that you'll never go back to.In the end, Dawnguard was one of those DLCs that was loved because it did everything right... Compared in a vacuum to stock Skyrim.

I know there's some mods out there that allow this sort of thing to work to some degree on Skyrim SE/AE. Unfortunately, my laptop does not like SE - I have 8 GB of RAM and Intel Integrated Graphics. While I can run mods just fine on LE, I don't care about the extra graphical weight of SE, or the Creation Club, or the constant SKSE64 update mess that SE requires. Basically, the reason I want this is, well... A bit stupid. I want to have analog movement of my character, but also be able to aim with my trackball mouse. This mostly comes as a result of having tried numerous "Everyone moves at the same speed" mods and having no luck with them - either everyone still outpaces you while walking, but you catch up to them when jogging, or it's dependent on your character being 1.0 scale at all times, so a taller-than-standard character ends up in "stop-and-start-and-stutter-walk" motion. It's basically the ever-present split between control schemes that annoys me. You can either have precision movement by analog control, but reduced accuracy courtesy of the analog stick for aiming spells and bows, or you can have precision aim with the mouse, but you're limited to "your walk is outpaced by ants" and "your jog is outpacing your allies" for movement speeds with the keyboard. I have no clue about scripting, let alone scripting with SKSE, so I can't make this, but I can hope someone else can, or that they can get permission to back-port one that works on Skyrim SE back to Skyrim LE. Because I really don't know why Bethesda is so against mixed control layouts in their games.

In general, Silus Vesuius dies in every game of Skyrim I play. The reasons why often vary, admittedly, the the end result remains the same. Reason 1: "Mehrunes Dagon told me to." Quite simply put, a lot of my characters have something against deliberately angering the Daedra. Especially powerful Daedra who have powerful gifts they can give to you. Reason 2: "Your family is the reason the Empire is as weak as it is." Extending the cause of the Oblivion Crisis out to the natural conclusion an Empire-faithful character might come to makes sense to me. Not just did the Mythic Dawn kick off the Oblivion Crisis, giving the Thalmor a chance to gain power in the Summerset Isles, they also completely wiped out the Septim bloodline. A strong bloodline that might have weathered the last 200 years a bit better, rather than the Mede Dynasty that let the Thalmor wander all over Skyrim. For characters who are old Imperial Legion who fought in the Great War, or old characters who were alive during the Oblivion Crisis, this often is their chance to get revenge on the Mythic Dawn. Reason 3: "As pieces, it is but a worthless trinket of a forgotten age. Reforged in blood and agony, it returns to glory." For my Daedra-worshipping characters, gathering such an ancient and powerful, legendary dagger can be worth all of it. The cost is one pitiful life spent hoarding artifacts of a forgotten age? Sure, I'll spill his blood and place his head upon the altar as my offering. Reason 4: "I have a museum, you fool, and I'm going to show this weapon, intact, for all to see." Legacy of the Dragonborn! Divines, this mod has changed up how I play so much. Doing shady deals with Daedra? Well, of course I will, I've got a spot in the museum for one of those. Of course, there's no option in the museum to let Silus live, take the pieces from him, and display the shattered Razor in my museum, so... Death it is. Reason 5: "This weapon is dangerous, both whole or in pieces. It should be in no one's hands, but it will be safer in mine." Ah, the classic "I am saving the world by hoarding dangerous things" strategy. This one is usually reserved for characters taking a "Fall from Grace" strategy in questlines. How many dirty deeds can one do before reaching rock bottom? Well, quite a few. But, this one hinges on the thought that, if Silus keeps all of the pieces there together, in his "museum", how long would it take before some thief feigns interest, gets a quick tour, sees the shattered Razor, brings it up to Mehrunes' shrine to get it reforged, and is then ordered to kill Silus and my character for our treachery? Worse, how long after that would it take before someone with said dagger goes running around killing highly-important people with this weapon? Versus one quick death, one dagger added to my inventory, and one less dangerous artifact laying around. Reason 6: "I am one of the last of the Vigilants of Stendarr. It is my mission to track down, collect up, and neutralize any and all Daedric artifacts I find. Because you refuse to relinquish this weapon, I must slay you." The role-player's option. Actually quite a bit of fun to collect artifacts with an intention to keep them safe and/or destroy them.

Only one I've traveled with for any length of time has been Nick Valentine, and I just ended up giving him an Automatic Laser Pistol because, well, it was in my inventory, I was low on carrying capacity, and whatever it was he'd been using before that was completely ineffective. Now, as long as I keep him topped up on batteries, he routinely sprays down super mutants and raiders with relative ease. As for the weapon I've used alongside it, well, Danse gave me a nice laser rifle, I made it automatic and put a recoil-compensating stock on it, and it seems to do the job well enough. If it seems like Nick's having trouble, I'll pass it over to him when I find something new. Really wish I could find a good plasma shotgun...

Sadly, this conflict between 200 years and the amount of trash left around is present in all of the 3D Fallout games. Fallout 3, I could half forgive because it was the first, and because the D.C. Ruins were clearly nuked into oblivion, and there's too many raiders for anyone to be concerned with cleaning up. Fallout New Vegas manages to be a little better about cleaning up some of the mess, but it also feels a lot like 50 years after the bombs, not 200. Fallout 4 continues the trend of feeling like 40 or 50 years after the bombs fell, not 210. All they'd have to do in any one of those games is pick up the trash and remove the corpses from the places they eat, sleep, and work in. New Vegas and Fallout 4 both show communities rebuilding. I could forgive the lack of technological progress because of the lore behind the resource wars, but even still, I agree, there should be signs of people rebuilding more than just communities. Sure, the electronics might be fried, but surely someone can manage to get one of those pre-war vehicles to work. Clearly every raider is a fair hand at slapping together a pipe gun, so why aren't there more variations on crude weapons? Then, as already mentioned, you have the Institute, the pendulum swung too far the other way. It's like they continued with 2077 technology and advanced 200 more years, but with what bloody resources? Synths would be hunted down and destroyed, scavenged for parts. Then there's the endgame issues. If you nuke the Institute, you've just destroyed the most advanced stockpile of technology the world has seen since the great kaboom. It should be possible to tell every faction, "Hey, these guys might have the technology to rebuild the world. How about instead of just blowing it all up, we go through, clear the place out, and keep it for ourselves?" If you shoot down the Prydwen, there should be scavengers everywhere, dying by the dozens to the few Brotherhood survivors as they try to get close enough to pick through all that sweet loot that just fell from the sky. It's a disconnect between "Number of years" and "state of the world" that leads me to always believing the bombs fell 50 years ago, not 200+. I'd love to see a city in Fallout where the residents have gone around and cleaned up their trash, figured out a sustainable source of power, buried the long-dead skeletons and made a graveyard, and then managed to repair a few buildings beyond just "Well, it has four walls, mostly, and there's at least half of a roof, so it's good enough. Sure hope a radscorpion doesn't come through my wall again."

You'll need a tool to open .BSA files. I know it's a bit out of date, but I keep the Fallout Mod Manager (FOMM) around for that purpose. Here's the link: https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/36901 As I said, I use it because one of the tools it has inside it is a BSA extractor. With that, you can open up the Meshes archive for Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and Skyrim (these are all the ones I've tried, at least, so I don't know if it works on any others), where you can extract their contents to a separate folder for experimentation. Never extract the BSA directly into your Data folder, you'll end up with loose files everywhere and it can cause mod conflicts. Once you've extracted an archive, you'll be faced with a massive collection of folders and .nif files hiding in them. Open one of those up and you'll be able to tinker a bit. I recommend weapons for learning, it's something easy to do, lets you mash bits of meshes together (Fallout New Vegas is great for having a lot of weapons that have multi-part meshes. Sometimes I spend more time making new guns for my FNV playthrough than I actually spend playing it...) and get a feel for the controls. Armors and clothing on the other hand, I have no clue how to deal with. I'd like to say that I know the basics of how to use NifSkope, but I feel I've barely scratched the surface.

When it comes to presidents, I have to admit, I treat them all like the politicians they really are. I don't like politicians. I believe that a politician is simply a lawyer who sucked at their job and decided making laws would be easier than arguing those laws in court. Yes, I know there are exceptions, I know that there can be occasional good ones, but for the most part, I paint all politicians with the same brush. I don't have, as a result, a problem with Biden, Trump, Obama, or Bush. I have a problem with the lack of positive action. Now, I'm not gathering data from sources, not seeking to prove a point, merely putting an opinion out there as someone who doesn't favor either side. I believe there are good points and bad points to both the Republicans and the Democrats, but in the last 20 years or so, they're doing more bad than good at the end of each 4 year term. Let's hit the major talking points, then, and get on with it. Climate Change. It's inevitable. History shows that the Earth's climate runs in cycles, hot, then cold, then hot, and cold again. We're in a hot phase. Do I believe we're contributing, as humanity, to the problem? Yes. What solutions would I propose? Well, we need clean power, and we need businesses, factories, etc. to be held accountable for their fair share of the pollution. Average Joe and his car isn't the enemy here. It's MegaCorp's office building with all of the office computers left on 24/7/365, even though they only run two 8-hour shifts five days a week. It's coal, oil, and gas being burned to generate power. It's the creation of solar panels and batteries tearing up the planet and creating massive amounts of pollution. It's the companies that promote the 'Disposable Society' instead of making products that last and that people want to keep for several years. So, how should we fix this? First, we need nuclear power. Yes, I know, it's not a perfect solution, it creates waste products that stay hazardous for thousands of years, but it's better than doing nothing. Plus, we've had at least 60 years of technological development on nuclear reactors that should, at least in theory, be able to make a reactor that can reuse a lot of its own waste. That gives everyone access to relatively clean power. As the mechanism of power generation is much the same (burn fuel, heat water, make steam, turn turbines, spin generators), it could even be possible to use smaller reactors to create that heat and thereby retrofit already-existing power-stations with a cleaner way to boil water. What do we do with the waste? Unfortunately, I don't really have an answer for that, but then again, I'm not a politician, a scientist, an engineer, I'm just someone with a head full of ideas who, occasionally, likes to write a little bit of sci-fi for fun. To solve the Disposable Society problem, however, we have to solve other deeper issues. Namely, cost of living. While Right-to-Repair is an excellent start, it's a band-aid on a bullet wound. Unfortunately, we were screwed from the start with the Dollar breaking away from a Gold Standard. Now, our Dollar is worthless. We have corporations who want more work from less people at lower pay, clashing with employees who want less work from more people at higher pay. Two ideologies that end up being polar opposites that will, unfortunately, have to compromise somewhere in the middle, and a perfect compromise has everyone walking away from the negotiating table feeling like they just got screwed. Tribalism (the Great Divide). Put any assorted, random group of humans into a room and wait a while, and you'll eventually see that they'll break up into groups with similar features, ideologies, etc. We are, by nature, a social species. We also have, to a certain degree, an expected level of intelligence, mixed with pattern recognition, memory, color vision, and personal bias. It's impossible for someone to not notice a difference between themselves and other people, nature programmed us that way. I guess, back in the cave-man days, being able to see these differences led to natural selection favoring those who could tell an outsider from their own tribe, those who could tell someone in their tribe looked sick, and as a result, we are biologically tuned to see anyone who doesn't resemble us as being different. This is not inherently a bad thing. The problem comes from the fact that society hasn't changed at its core. Whether it's 50, 100, 200, 500, 1,000, or 10,000 years ago, we still see 'Different' as 'Outsider' and thereby 'Dangerous.' Worse, society hasn't changed at its surface enough to have people accepting that sometimes 'Different' really is just superficial. It doesn't matter whether it's skin color, political preference, geographic location, favorite sports team, or choice of clothing, we still categorize people even when we don't really intend to do so. It's biologically hard-wired and hard-coded in how our brains work, because our genetic ancestors needed this to survive, just like the rest of our survival instincts. This is a "people problem" and unfortunately, both political parties are trying to keep the United States divided. Because they know, if we focus on each other and throw hate and vitriol among ourselves, we're not focusing on them. If we're not focusing on them, they can continue what they've been doing for the last 20, 30, 40+ years: Doing nothing for the People of the United States while lining their own pockets and telling us, "We are working on improving the quality of life for all people who live here." If we focus on the politicians, we would see that both the Democrats AND the Republicans have major problems. Neither side really fights for The People, they are merely in it for as much money as they can print for themselves. Just look at how little progress has been made in, say, 20 year time gaps. So, working backwards, 2020 to 2000, 2000 to 1980, 1980 to 1960, 1960 to 1940. Technology marched forward and evolved. Politics, however, remains the same. People remained the same, even though large leaps and strides were made for human rights. Women getting to vote, breaking up segregation and allowing those who were under it to vote as well, the 60's that were split between warmongers and hippies, the 70's through the 90's Computer Revolution, the 00's Internet Age, all the way up to today, people really haven't changed that much. We still see ourselves as different groups of people to be categorized, because that is what our parents taught us. Because their parents taught them. Because their parents taught them that way, too, and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, I don't see this changing for the better without a second Civil War, and that is something I hope I never see in my lifetime, though as I'm about half-a-year shy of 30, it might be within the years I have left. People are too keyed up on 'racial politics' to see the real threats that exist, and would rather see their black/white/brown/native neighbors as being 'the enemy' because "(Celebrity) said so, so it must be true." Education (or, the lack thereof). We have an education crisis here in the United States. We spend astronomical amounts on education, yet routinely score poorly when compared to other countries. Why? I believe there are a lot of parts to this problem. First, we have that ridiculous No Child Left Behind problem, the one that bumps kids forward a year even when they're failing their classes because it's a social stigma to fail. Second, we have teachers who don't care enough about teaching, they'll show up so long as they get paid. Third, we have 'historians' rewriting history to hide the bad things and the evils of our past, failing to realize that the only way to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past is to know your true history. Fourth, we have too many people trying to push their politics, religion, thoughts, and ideas upon other people's children, rather than teaching those children the real events of the past. How do we fix these issues, then? Instead of No Child Left Behind, which was a band-aid on an amputated leg, we need a different solution. Children should be able to fail and learn about consequences. Teachers should be trying to help the students who are struggling, not just praise those who do well and condemning the rest under the guise of "I don't know what I did wrong, these three passed just fine, and she aced her midterms. I don't know why these ten students failed." Teachers who no longer care about teaching, just their paycheck, create a lot of these problems. They're the ones who believe it's acceptable to give a student an hour of homework and expect them to find the time to get it all done. They're also the first ones to call a student lazy when that work doesn't get turned in. They don't care that the four other Lifers on the student's schedule also assigned an hour of work each, lumping some poor kid with five hours of make-work. These teachers also end up being responsible for a lot of the crippling social issues out there, because a child stuck at the kitchen table for several hours with their nose jammed in a text book and their hand cramped around a pencil isn't socializing with their friends. Friends who, also, are likely stuck doing homework. Children who sit around doing homework also don't get to be active, so they sit on their butt and scribble with a pen or pencil, then after 5 hours of tedious make-work, a brief dinner, now they get an hour or two, at best, of personal free time, and it's off to bed. When did it become socially acceptable for a child to wake up at 7 AM, sit in school from 8 AM to 3 PM, sit at a table at home from 3 PM to 8 PM? These kind of teachers make students who resent school, who hate it, and who then get in trouble for skipping it. (Source: I was one of those students once. My Sophomore year of High School, I had 5 "lifers" who believed the best way to teach was to drone on in a monotone voice for an hour, then assign an hour of homework. The only thing that made my day bearable at all was study hall and the fact that I could write fast, yet barely legible, so I could shave that time down. I also had the truancy officer on my butt for most of that year, and my Junior year, because I hated school so much that I'd rather play sick, lay in bed with nothing to do, and get chicken soup for dinner. Part of it was an overload of work, part of it was bullying, but that's a different story.) Rewriting our history to cover up the dark deeds of the past is an insult to everyone who suffered through that time. We should be teaching history so the latest generation can learn from the mistakes of those before them, not covering up the facts that neither side of any war has ever been the 'good guys.' We were terrible to the Natives who lived here in this country, and they, in turn, were terrible back to us. We were terrible when we dragged ships full of African slaves over here to put them to work, but we must not forget that often times, they were sold by their own people. We may have fought a war for our own independence from the British, but we must not forget that it was due to being taxed and not having a voice in the British Government. We must not forget that America, in both World Wars, tried to remain 'neutral' by supplying both sides on occasion, and that, in both cases, that bit us hard. We Must Not Forget, but so many people believe the best solution to these problems is to make them disappear, not realizing the rest of the world still remembers. Pushing one's personal ideology onto someone else's children is just wrong. It's okay if you're a Democrat or a Republican, if you're any of the various flavors of Religion or happen to not believe in any of them, if you believe that one person or another is a complete and total moron, or that I should rightfully take over the world because I'd make it a much worse place to live and yet we'd all remember happier times. On the other hand, it's not okay to push those things onto others. It's definitely not okay to inflict those beliefs on a captive audience who, by law, must attend your lessons. Why? Well, anyone who's ever accidentally let slip a bit of profanity around an impressionable young child, say around 3 to 6 years old, knows just how much fun you'll have trying to stop little John or Susan from running around belting out the unfortunate four-or-five letter word you invoked. Now, I'm going to go ridiculous here to avoid implicating either political party, because they are both guilty of this to a degree through teachers, but imagine this. If your child were to go to school and suddenly come home believing that the sky is green, that all women are aliens from Venus and men are aliens from Mars, that Pluto is the center of the Universe, and that Mathematics is a construct of the Devil designed to drive people insane, how quickly would you be pulling your child out of that school? I'm sure most of you would be furious at the bare minimum. Minimum Wage (Minimum Effort, Maximum Rage). I hear it said so often, "Raise the minimum wage, it'll make everything better," that I have to counter that, and counter it hard. All raising the minimum wage does is buy a year, at most, and raise the bottom level of the poverty scale another notch higher, while driving down everyone else's purchasing power. Why? Because raising the minimum wage doesn't raise the wages earned by people in other jobs. Now, that said, I believe the minimum wage should be a living wage, one high enough to support food, rent, utilities, etc. in the local area. Note the key-word, "Local." I also believe restaurants should be paying their waiters / waitresses / kitchen staff minimum wage, and tips go on top of that, untouched by those who did not earn them! That said, I also believe that raising wages isn't the answer. We need to fix the inflation problem, because as it is, things are getting out of hand. I can't get out of the damn grocery store with less than $50 and more often $100 in a basket for a week's worth of food for myself and my 63 year old father. I've already accepted that I will never own my own home, that I will never open my own business, and that the American Dream is more of an ongoing American Nightmare at this point. Unfortunately, some bright spark thought it was a great idea to unlink the Dollar from the Gold Standard and single-handedly flushed our economy down the toilet many decades later. We're the floaters circling around the toilet bowl, refusing to go down after a bad Taco Tuesday, wondering whether this is it and the bowl will rise (inflation falls, economy recovers, minimum wage = living wage) or whether the plunger comes out and we all go down (inflation rises, economy falls, living wage ends up exceeding minimum wage by a factor of 2 or more) and the country falls into chaos. Also unfortunately, there is no easy fix for this. As of this time, I am unaware of a single denomination of currency being used that is still backed by Gold, Silver, or Platinum. Would now be a good time to push for laws to make the Earth's united currency the Galactic Standard Credit? (Sorry, bad sci-fi writer's joke there.) The other half of the wage problem is the worker problem. Companies, for the last few decades at least, have been treating workers as disposable items. "You will do this or you will be fired" being a common favored threat in the Employer's Market. Unfortunately, the turns have tabled and we're now in an Employee's Market. COVID (and yes, I believe in how dangerous it is, Dad got it and nearly died, I had it and it was the most miserable week of my life) smacked the reset button for many of us in 2020. Suddenly finding ourselves let go for weeks, months on end, forced to go seek government assistance to keep a roof over our heads and the lights on, and food on the table, a lot of people suddenly were freed from their Wage-Slave job for several months. When jobs reopened, a lot of people evaluated their current conditions. For some, they returned to their old job, like my father did, because the pay was good enough to deal with the crap being thrown around. For some, they realized they could make it work with one income, and so someone became a stay at home parent while the other worked. For some, they used the time COVID provided to better themselves, and jumped into a newer, better, higher-paying job, or a lower paying job that they absolutely love. For others, they stayed on unemployment, occasionally throwing out a job application to places they know will never accept them in a desperate bid to keep money flowing in for free. Now? Companies are finding out that the 30 years of "We demand your total compliance and loyalty, while expecting you to know you are expendable and replaceable at any time" has now turned into, "If I'm going to work for you, you need to pay me what I'm worth. This is an insult." Terminating unemployment, while it sounds like it would fix the problem, will actually make it worse. The worst thing in the world is someone who is desperate. People who have gotten used to not working for a living will continue to find ways to maintain not working for a living. If that means they take to sawing catalytic converters off of "those moronic wage slaves'" cars, they'll do it. If it means going on daring daylight robberies to steal and pawn items from hard-working people's houses, they'll do it. If it means robbing convenience stores with a stolen handgun, they'll do it. So, how do we fix unemployment? We make it something you don't want to stay on for an extended period of time. How do we do this? Well, I'm not a lawyer or an accountant, but I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to have an "adjustment" after a reasonable period of time, like about 6 months, where after that time period, your unemployment drops to the state's minimum wage. If the above concept (living wage = minimum wage) is adopted, then you subtract, say, 15% from the minimum wage and use that for unemployment. You also make unemployment something that you need to work a minimum amount of time in between uses, so you don't get someone 'finding a job' every six months, working a week, and getting fired / let go / quitting in order to get full benefits back. Healthcare and Insurance. Would it surprise you to know that I hate "Obamacare" but like the idea of a proper Government-Provided Healthcare System? There's a few reasons, and I'll get to them in a bit, but "Obamacare" hurt everyone more than it helped. Firstly, everyone working full-time was supposed to be provided healthcare under the (Un)Affordable Care Act. What happened? A lot of people working 40 hours a week got cut back to 35-39 hours. No big deal for those making enough to afford a healthcare plan and insurance, not a huge deal for those who were already scraping by to lose a few hours a week. Someone saw that loophole and whacked it down to 25 hours = full time in the eyes of the law. People were laid off left and right, suddenly people who had been exempt from the ACA were suddenly under the gun and had to add another unaffordable bill to their pile. Businesses decided a flock of 20-hour-a-week people was better than a handful of well-trained full-time employees. Secondly, threatening people with fines for not having health insurance is not the right answer. If you can't afford the insurance, you can't afford the fine, after all. Not that the Government ever needs to make sense. Thirdly, it's just downright criminal and immoral to force people to buy a product from a private company under threat of the law. Especially when the plans created for people who can't afford healthcare and insurance are almost worse than not having insurance at all. So, how do we fix the current system? We keep the hospital system as it exists, because for the most part, it works. We keep the Private Health Insurance system as it exists, because for those who can afford it, it works. We add to it a Government Sponsored health-insurance system designed around those who work for a living, intended to be used by everyone, paid for out of your taxes (perhaps by diverting some of those military funds toward healthcare), used after any Private Insurance gets the bill, and does not bill the user in the end. How would this work in a theoretical situation? Let's say for an example that you get the Big Nasty and end up in the hospital with The Cough and some pneumonia as a result. You get a nice big hospital bill at the end of it all that, if you had no insurance, would cost you, say, $15,000. The bill, however, has been passed through your Primary Insurance, who decides to pay $12,000 and leave you with about $3,000 to pay on your own. This $3,000 bill gets sent to the Government Insurance, who decides to pay $2,000 out of it and sends it back to the hospital, leaving you with $1,000 left to cover. Now, let's say you get the same treatment, the same $15,000 "No Insurance" bill, but you don't have private insurance. The Government Insurance thereby gets that full $15,000, a note from the hospital that you have no other insurance company helping you out, they check your tax records from last year to get an idea of your income, and then send back the bill after paying a fair-and-reasonable amount, similar to what a Private Insurance Company would do. You get a bill around $3,000 and the hospital helps you set up a payment plan that you can afford. Closing Remarks. In the end, it's not really a battle to see who is the worst President. Both sides have had their problems, both sides have kicked far too many cans down the road for someone else to deal with, and both sides would much rather continue to play the game of "Hot Potato" with these issues in front of the public instead of knuckling down and doing something actually useful for the public good. Both sides target hot-button issues like the Second Amendment, Immigration, Wars, Climate Change, and the Great Human Divide, but without actual plans to do anything helpful. What are my beliefs on these five hot-button issues? The Second Amendment is there for a reason. While both sides routinely twist the words of the amendment to suit their needs, it is 200+ years out of date. It was created to keep a civilian militia armed in case of invasion, and in case of corruption. It was created in the wake of the blood-soaked American Revolution of 1776 when we were still feeling the wounds of British Occupation and reeling from British taxes. That said, I believe that guns are not the great evil the media tries to make them out to be. We only have to look outside of our country to see this: Where guns have been banned for long enough that they're inaccessible to the general population, the criminals use knives, tools, chemicals, and bombs instead. Gun Violence is a SOCIAL problem and needs to be fixed at the core. Less prisons, more mental-health facilities to find, diagnose, and treat the issues that cause people to pick up a gun and shoot other people. If you want to immigrate to the United States, I have no issues with that. Go to a border crossing with your passport, get your visa, pay your fees, apply for citizenship. Don't come over here illegally, take an under-the-table job, and use it to mail all of your earnings back home. Don't come over here and then start committing crimes. Don't be surprised if, after committing a crime, we decide not to throw you in one of our over-crowded prisons and instead ship you back home. Remember, you are a guest in our home. Treat our country like it's someone else's home, and treat it like you would want your home, your country to be treated. Don't throw trash everywhere, don't cause problems for those of us who live here. Please, try to pick up the English language while you're here, it'll make your life easier and the rest of us Americans will be less frustrated and more polite if we speak the same language. Yes, I know, we don't have a nation-wide defined language like everyone else, and I believe that was a mistake, we should have made our primary native language English. Why? Because if you go to France, you're expected to know French, if you go to Germany, you should know German, if you travel to Russia, you should be able to speak Russian, and if you go to Britain, you should know English. America is Great Britain's younger brother, and we had a fight a long time ago, but we're both over it now, and like any family, we should stick together. War is hell. I understand that humans are basically built for war, but at the same time, we should be civilized enough to settle our disagreements without requiring violence. Why is it that when two people disagree, fists get raised? Because that's how we're taught, unfortunately. We glorify war. We don't measure time by the lengths of peace, we count the wars. At our core, we are violent animals, but perhaps in the future, we could find a way to make peace between the countries. No more old men sending the young out to die for their country, for glory, for oil and land. No more holy wars, either, please. It's okay to believe a different sky-person put the world together, it's okay to believe that the universe was created in a massive explosion, and it's okay if you favor the old Greek or Roman or Egyptian gods instead. No, I won't tell you which I believe in. Climate Change is real, but we're looking at the wrong end of the problem. Volcanoes produce far more greenhouse gases than we do, businesses and factories create a lot more pollution and waste more resources, other countries need to get their act together, and we need nuclear power, not solar panels. We should focus on restoring and refreshing our aging power grid, and while they're at it, get the damn systems OFF of the INTERNET! Mission critical systems should not be easily accessible on the network! With nuclear power, we could then focus on things that make more sense to clean up and reduce pollution. Lay down new rail lines and hang up some electric cables to replace aging, highly-polluting diesel locomotives with electric ones that run off of the overhead lines. Electric buses with large batteries to overhaul mass transit, and make them something people want to use instead of trying to stuff everyone into a plastic electric shoebox. Look into alternative combustion fuels for cars, but do it seriously and not just 'how can we convert a gasoline engine to run on cow farts?' Humans have been making alcohol for millenia. We can't drink Methanol, but we can certainly make the stuff. Get emissions equipment set up to offset the byproducts of burning methanol as a fuel, and we might have an option for an alternative renewable fuel that doesn't compete with food crops, can be used as a long-term stop-gap during the long conversion towards electric vehicles, and will remain as a viable fuel source long into the future for people to enjoy older cars with a little modification. Quit throwing out electronics because they were 'so last year' and embrace using something until it no longer works. I have a hand-me-down Galaxy Note 8 that replaced a hand-me-down Galaxy S5. I see no need to upgrade any time soon. I'm using a laptop from 2015 because it's a design I always wanted, it was for sale used on Amazon, and so I'm the proud owner of a Panasonic Toughbook CF-31 (MK5). It's already survived coffee and being knocked off of the table twice. We need to build an alternative charging system, something that every manufacturer can agree on, that can charge non-Tesla electric cars quickly enough to compete with Teslas, because a monopoly on the electric car market is bad for everyone else. The Great Human Divide is something I would love to see be resolved in my lifespan. How hard is it to accept that men and women (and those somewhere in between) can be equals, even if there are physical limitations? How hard is it to accept that, no matter our skin color, we're all Homo sapiens at our core? How hard is it to accept that one person might believe in a different religion, might believe a different baseball / football / basketball / soccer team is the best, might think the color purple is nice, might be color-blind, might have a disability, and yet is still equal? How hard is it for us to be nice to one another? To accept one another for who we really are? To look past petty tribal garbage and realize that this person over there might be a potential new friend instead of instantly calling them an enemy? Either way, I've spent way too long writing this (we're going on about 2 hours or more at least), and it's a tiny bit off topic, but I believe it's more relevant to 'worst president' than all the monkey poo I could throw at the wall to carpet one president or another as being the worst. And, let's face it, I know I'd be the worst, so I'm never running for election. I mean, let's face it, who would want someone who's overweight and only claim to politics was winning the yearbook award for being "Most likely to take over the world" as their president? I sure as heck don't want the job.

Admittedly, I've played a lot of custom races since then, but I typically start any Elder Scrolls game as a Khajiit. For me, I play games to get away from the real world for a few hours. Being able to pick something not human just means I'm going to do it. Perhaps it's because I like creative writing, and have been working (incredibly slowly) on writing a story, but I find it easier to create a backstory around the beasts. Mostly because I don't find them boring, and I don't feel like I have to recreate myself as this character. I can be whoever I want to be, look however I want to look, and generally can get away with an easier background story for my characters. I'll be the first to admit that playing humans or elves in the Elder Scrolls has never appealed to me. As for Khajiit being my go-to, that comes from preferring my characters to have hair. Horns and feathers just didn't have the same draw. Now, if I could have gotten a head full of snakes, I'd have been impossible to convince away from the Argonians. So, I suppose for me, it comes down to appearances. I don't feel I have to try to make myself, or to try to uphold the standards of a "good looking" character, and it rarely has plot concerns being a non-human race.

I'm going to preface this by mentioning I've read about 90% of this thread in the past two hours (I skipped some of the more drama-laden posts) and that I typically don't get involved in threads like these. I have no desire to fling insults, threaten doom and gloom, or howl about how this isn't fair. I'm also going to give fair warnings on two points. The first is that I haven't downloaded anything in about 5 or 6 months, as a result of my desktop going up in smoke. The second is that I'm not going to hide my caustic personality if it happens to show up. I won't throw insults at people, so if it feels like I've insulted you, I probably wasn't intending on it. With that out of the way, I'll get to my points. While this thread seemed to me to have started out of some form of protest, it's spiraled out of control, and I haven't seen the community this vicious since the whole paid mods debacle. The important thing to remember is that within any group of people, there are nice people, and there are those who aren't so much. I'd say the word I'm thinking of, but it wouldn't get past the word filters, and I'm not about to try filter dodging from my phone. Now, we have an interesting split of the community. We have the Premium Members, whether monthly or permanent. Then we have the Supporters, who either paid for ad removal, or got dropped into it when their Premium expired. Then there are the Free Members, with a split sub-group based on whether they ad-block or not. So we have four groups, and each of those four can be roughly broken down into four groups: Nice, Evil, Calm, and Silent. The problem here is that those who have nothing good to say are belting out their thoughts, and instead of keeping it civil, they're targeting specific users, they're carpet-bombing entire groups, tarring and feathering everyone with the same brush. So, what group am I in? I'm one of those Free Members who uses an ad-blocker. Yeah, I'm one of those "filthy freeloaders" that some people have so "graciously" painted the whole group with. Now, I could give a long-winded spiel about my use of ad-block, but the short version is that I've had to reinstall Windows three times because of malicious ads getting past the antivirus, and each time, I was told I had to buy a new license key at the cost of $100. So, no, I don't let any ads in, not until the ad distribution companies can provide, to a reasonable degree, that the ads don't contain malicious code. So, why haven't I simply bought Premium or become a Supporter? Well, it wasn't from a lack of trying. I don't have credit cards, and I don't have a debit card, either. I buy my games on Steam using Visa Gift Cards. Now, maybe it was just the type of card I was using, but apparently, you can't make purchases outside of the United States with the ones I have used. Otherwise, I'd still be having this discussion, but carrying a different flag. Too many people here have forgotten one of the oldest guidelines for a conversation. "If you don't have anything nice to say, then say nothing at all." Instead, they point their internet hatred-cannons at everyone else who dares have a different opinion, a different title under their name, a different point to make, and they blast them. Do I consider myself a contributor to the site? Hell no. I have one not-very-good mod to my name that, last I checked, has maybe 30 downloads. I occasionally have advice, when it falls within something I've encountered before. I've downloaded a lot of mods in the past, and maybe endorsed a tenth of them at best. I had a mod in the pipeline, but it's stuck on a desktop that runs for 30 minutes at a time, so there it sits until I get back up and running with a bucket of new, expensive parts I can barely afford. Will I ever get Premium? Maybe. It depends on whether I get my hands on a gift card that works here, at a time when I have the money to spend. For the foreseeable future, though, I'm down and out for the next year. Maybe more. After all, I haven't done the math to know how many months it's going to take me to save up to fix it. So, with my howling over with, I'm going to call it a night.

Have you modified your .ini files by following someone's guide or downloading a pre-customized .ini file? Because that looks suspiciously like one of those 'ini tweaks' to the Papyrus memory limit, the kind of way-too-much that tends to cause more problems than it fixes. I'd recommend clearing your .ini files and reading up on some stability guides. As for .ini file tweaks that would be 'safe' to use, I don't know any. I'm running a relatively-stock .ini file with a full mod list.

Wasn't sure where to put this, honestly, but with a recent playthrough I'm doing, I've run into an interesting problem, one I created for myself. Simply put, I'm using Enhanced Camera to make my first-person view be the same height as my character. This particular character is, well, set to a scale of 2.0 (Yes, I know, lots of world clipping does occur, I'm able to put up with that.), and as a result, I've run into a small issue where a lot of activators are just out of reach when standing. Now, many of them are within reach when crouched, so this wouldn't normally be an issue. The issue comes in with a handful of doors that I can't open, even when using sneak to crouch, and talking with any NPC that decides to sit on the ground (like the Khajiit Merchants). For now, I've been 'solving' the problem by toggling clipping so I can get 'closer' to the NPC or object in question, but I'd rather solve the issue by enabling a longer activation range. The problem is, I'm not sure how to do that. I'm comfortable enough with the Creation Kit that I could make the change myself, but I'm not sure where exactly to look. And I'm also comfortable with editing .ini files if it's there instead, but again, I don't know what exactly I'd be putting in as a command. Yes, I know, I'm crazy for wanting to play a character that big in the first place. And I'm even crazier for wanting to adjust a core game mechanic for the sake of not having to reduce my character's height. As I said earlier, I'm not sure this is the right place to ask, but I also wasn't sure where to ask about this. EDIT: Nevermind, I found out how to do it. For anyone else looking for a similar solution to this perplexing problem, the answer is an .ini tweak. Open your Skyrim.ini file, head down to [interface] (or if it doesn't yet exist, make it), and add/change fActivatePickLength=180 (the Default value) to a higher number. As I'm playing a character twice as tall, I've doubled the value, and it seems to work just fine.

For me, the reason is simple: GTS 250 as Primary GPU. Even if I could get Skyrim SE to run, I'd have an experience that looks worse than what I'm used to, and with a ton of missing mods. I'd much rather play using LE, and anything I may make will probably also be for LE, because I can play-test, and thereby not release buggy crap. As for why I haven't upgraded the GPU in my system, it's simply a lack of funding.

In response to post #55732771. #55749371 is also a reply to the same post. Yeah, that 1280 pixel wide limitation sounds like it adds up. I use a 1680x1050 monitor, but I intentionally leave any browser window at about 3/4 the screen width. I multitask a lot, so not consuming the entire screen width is kinda important to me. For now, the 80% zoom reduction works for me, but I agree, there's more than enough space to squeeze the dropdown bar and the search bar up into the same area. I'd even argue that it's a bit ridiculous having the search bar take up as much space as it does. After all, most searches are based around one or two words, so why is the search bar long enough to type a full sentence in? I mean, at least the 80% zoom thing has made it very usable to me, and after a little while, the new layout kinda grows on you, I suppose. It's not "end of the world terrible" but there's room for at least some improvements. I mean, at this point, I'd even settle for just swapping News and Media so that I can get my site news without scrolling past the latest pictures of Skyrim characters in barely-any-clothing. It's nothing against the 'photographers' in the community, just looking at other people's screenshots isn't my cup of tea.

Well, I found out this much by accident, but for me at least, I've improved usability for myself with a simple little trick. I reduced the zoom from 100% to 80%. Yeah, I know it's nothing special, but it did two things I didn't expect: It put the search bar next to the drop downs (something I'd asked for in my main list) and gave me some 'blank space' on either side of the main content (another thing that was on my list), so it's gone from 'barely tolerable' to 'mostly usable' at this point for me. Font sizes are a little small, but not unreadable, so it'll work for the time being. I know not everyone can do this, but it works for me. I still think there's room for improvements, but it's not too bad at this point.

I think the notifications are broken, because no matter what I change in my user settings, I still can't get anything to show up. Even when I can check tracked mod pages and people have made comments. And I can't find any place to mention that the notifications are broken on either the new site or these old forums. Which, as one might imagine, is infuriating, because while I'm willing to put up with the new design, even though I don't like it, I use the notifications to check on potential file updates and to try helping other members with easy-to-fix modding problems. Which I can't do if the notifications are bloody broken.

I'll try to keep to constructive feedback on this. While I'm not a fan of the new interface, a lot of it could be rather easily resolved, I believe, without having to do a total roll-back. Let's start at the top of my list. 1: While I appreciate the new "Two top hot files" strategy, it feels way clunkier than the old Nexus Mods Hot Files, with 6 small images that, when hovered over with the mouse, would give a blurb of information. Now, only the top two mods have any information about them at all, and the lower five just tell me the name of the mod. In my opinion, this is a huge step backward in design, because now the only way to get any information about a mod we may be interested in is to click on it. The old design at least gave a blurb of information when we hovered over it. How would I fix this problem? Let's split the difference. Give us both more mods in the hot files (a Top 10 instead of Top 7) by reducing all of the mods down to the smaller picture size. It's big enough to get the core point across. Then, when you hover over it, give us the short-description of the mod. This, I feel, would both increase usability (Top 10 instead of an arbitrary Top 7) and put all of the mods on an equal playing field. 2: This may just be me, but I like a little "white space" to the sides of my content. Why? I use middle-click scrolling. Right now, if I middle-clicked on the main Nexus home page, I'm more likely to open a new tab than I am to activate middle-click scrolling. How would I fix this? Add a few pixels' worth of white space, maybe about the size of the Messages or Settings button, to either side of the page to create a 'safe zone' for either clicking, or scrolling through on a tablet device. 3: The New Mods list is just way too big. No, seriously, it is. They're nearly as big as the Top Mods, but they contain information. This is sad, that the top mods get less information than the latest stuff pushed out by mod authors. Perhaps condense this down to image sizes the same as the current "Middle 5" hot mods and relocate it back to the right hand side of the screen in an ordered list. This big-chunky-grid layout would be better suited for using my phone with gardening gloves on, not a 22-inch 1680x1050 screen. 4: Put the news page back where it was, to the left side of the New Mods list. Right now, it's under the Images section (I'll get to this in a moment) and thereby it's nearly invisible. In fact, if I hadn't accidentally clicked on my scroll bar when trying to aim for that narrow 'safe zone' to scroll down, I wouldn't even have known it was there. I'd think Site News is more important than a bunch of pictures anyway. 5: Condense the images down into a small-form list again, placed under the right-side-located New Mods List. Where they're at right now, they force site news to the bottom, making it possible to miss important things if you are just looking at a glance. In fact, if you wanted to keep the images as they are now, then place them under the News and New Mods list (which, theoretically, should be side by side as they were in the older layout, it just worked a lot better that way) and they'll fit right in. 6: The contrast between the old site and the new one is... Not pleasant. Your primary background gray is a little too bright. As a whole, you could darken the whole site and it'd just come out a little bit better. 7: Personally, I think the decision to, on reduced size windows/monitors (I don't use the full width of a 1680x1050 screen on my browser windows because I have other applications running, so my window runs at 3/4 of the screen width), completely blank out the background with a flat, boring 50% gray at 100% opacity, well, I think it's an eyesore. What is the point of having a background image if you're just going to cover it up with the same gray that my cheap vinyl office chair has? Either reduce the opacity or remove the background gray from areas it doesn't need to be in. It'll give the site some personality back, instead of looking like another Social Media Site clone. It'll also make it easier to recognize if you're on the Skyrim Nexus, the Fallout 3 Nexus, the Fallout New Vegas Nexus, or whether someone's link accidentally sent you to the Special Edition Skyrim Nexus or Fallout 4 Nexus. 8: You know, there's a reason most text boxes are white, and you type in black. There's also a reason that almost no one uses a white text-box that makes you type in gray. It's hard on the eyes, especially on a dark layout. If you're going to be fancy and change up the text boxes to be different, a black text box with a 30% gray should do well. But it'd require a darker background to make sense. 9: Big chunky buttons are great for mobile use. Since when did mobile games allow modding? Are smartphones and tablets now powerful enough to run Skyrim, Fallout 4, and the other games you're supporting mods for? No? Then why is the site optimized for mobile devices? If you took all of the "button blocks" at the top (the game, mods, images, videos, updates, and Support) and squeezed them down by half (You can do it, this wouldn't hurt desktop usability at all, and mobile users would also still be able to hit these buttons), you could fit the search bar right next to it, and give back quite a bit of screen space. Right now, it reminds me of those old 90's and 00's era toolbars everyone had to remove from Grandma's web browser every time the "computer is running slow again." In fact, if you wanted to be really fancy, I'd bet you could get the button blocks, search bar, and the top bar all into the same space with only a little bit of trickery. How would I do it? Split the logo, so that the symbol takes you to the Nexus Home, but the words take you to the Game Home (the one for your Skyrim/Fallout/etc.). Because we've already moved the news back to where it should be, just under the Hot Mods, offset left, the News button can be removed. Put "Install" over "NMM (0.63.14)" and shrink that button a little. This means you have two extra buttons left, Forums and Chat. Modernize these to fit in with Game, Mods, Images, Videos, Updates, and Support, put them at the end of the list, tack Install NMM at the end of that, and you've got a nice bar of buttons. Between the bar of buttons and the Nexus Mods logo/text, fit the search bar, now made acceptably small. Then the top bar would be nice, thin, and modern. It'd be a little cluttered, but right now, the whole site is cluttered, so it'd match just fine.

@WolfHunter17 That could be an interesting idea, at least theoretically. Normally, I'd expect the Vigilants or the Dawnguard to kill a vampire or werewolf, but... You've given me an idea. (Yes, I know, there's probably a few people already ducking for cover at that word from me.) Experimentation. The Vigilants of Stendarr have long realized that werewolves are created by the Daedric Lord Hircine, and that Vampires are the product of Molag Bal, although not always directly from either. Normally, capturing either 'alive' would be rather difficult, as werewolves tend to be secretive in their human forms and feral beasts in their wolf shape, and vampires typically only come out at night, and blend in rather very well in the day when fed, and both are stronger than the average human. Normally, this just results in them having to kill these 'creatures' because there's no real way to do a controlled test. However, if they hear about this mysterious prisoner who happens to be either a Werewolf or Vampire, they may have a few 'cures' to try that don't involve death. The basic idea is that these 'cures' pretty much do nothing. Maybe they inhibit your abilities when directly influenced by them, but otherwise they leave your lycanthropy or vampirism intact. Essentially, the 'cures' just cause your character a significant chunk of health and stamina damage as a result of trying things, because they're trying to break the Daedric binds of what they're believing just to be Daedric diseases. Now, here's where I have a few branching ideas, because my mindset is... unusual. I want to see things like this in the world and not just when you've been arrested, hauled away to rot in the dungeon, and found out about a little at a time. We'll start with prison, and I'm going to assume Werewolf, though the same could easily be true for vampires. And we'll assume a fairly clean arrest history here, in other words, you're not overly violent, you're not notorious for shifting in prison, and whatever you were arrested for wasn't an aggressive crime. In this situation, the Vigilants of Stendarr would try to "bring you into the light" by using some of their more mild 'cures,' although they'd still cause damage in the process, and they'd be coming to the prison to deal with you, so you'd get visits every so often with the Vigilants. The cures wouldn't be overly detrimental (you're not reliant on your alternate form to survive, and the health penalties could be overlooked for the most part) but they would be a nuisance. The biggest part of making them an annoyance is that they take up an opportunity for you to work against your bounty (essentially doing a job to reduce your bounty and get out earlier) by wasting your time. So, step two is that you are overly violent in prison, or you're notorious for shifting to werewolf / vampire lord form, or your crimes were violent (possibly a result of wolf / VL form), or you've attacked the guards in your alternate form. At this point, the guards want nothing to do with you, and they'll sell you to the Vigilants of Stendarr for the cost of your bounty. So your bounty is paid, but now you're a slave (effectively) to the Vigilants of Stendarr, who will live up to that line, the one that I think goes "Walk always in the light, or we shall drag you to it." You're not leaving until either they find something that seems to cure your form (a temporary thing, though it should be suitably obnoxious, like being locked out of your beast form for 3 days. A vampire alternative could be that you're unable to feed, are effectively mortal again, but you take damage in sunlight. This, like with beast form, only lasts a short while) or they get tired of wasting ingredients on you and decide to put you down. Obviously, this is an event where you're facing several Vigilants of Stendarr while using what little you have of your abilities to survive the upcoming fight. Ideally, you'd need to fight through four Vigilants before being able to retrieve your gear, fight through several more to retrieve your Daedric items and/or armor, and then finish off any witnesses or you might be dealing with this again. So, I mentioned wanting things like this in the world, didn't I? The idea I had on that would be that having an ability to talk to the Vigilants of Stendarr and say essentially, "I need Stendarr's Help." They'd ask what was needed, and you'd be given an option to either say "I just need a blessing" (essentially, the "oops, wrong option" choice) or "I'm a Vampire/Werewolf and want to be normal again." The second choice would have them testing ingredients and potions on you, with much lessened bad effects compared to the prison-grade ones. The idea being that because you've willingly mentioned it, they're giving you Stendarr's Mercy, in that they're trying not to harm you so that they can eventually cure or lessen the effects of what you have. Obviously, there's no curing it, but the side-effects of what they're doing could be a two-part deal. An idea would be that you have 50 more health in your human form, but your beast form is 50 health weaker. Or that as long as you don't feed, you won't burn in sunlight, but you'll be down 30 health. Essentially, the "If you don't use the abilities of your Daedric side, you'll be better off" type of situation. Obviously, for anyone who has Dawnguard, the Vigilants, well, we know what happened to them. Basically, the Dawnguard should be more extreme than the Vigilants, although I think it should be tipped more toward anti-vampire. They're more likely to apply harsh 'cures' to vampires, and settle for silver shackles on werewolves to keep control. Should the player side against the Dawnguard, thereby eliminating these options, then I could see prison being interesting. If you side with the Volkihar Vampires, I could see them paying your bounty and rescuing you by sending disguised vampires dressed as the Dawnguard to take you away as long as you remain a Vampire Lord. Cure your Vampirism, and suddenly you're being 'rescued' as feeding stock (thereby guaranteeing you end up a Vampire again). Cure your Vampirism and become a Werewolf, and find yourself being used as entertainment for the new Vampire Lord's Court, kept in a cage during meal times. Eventually you'll be released, but not before they've given something that prevents your return to mortal form for a couple days, and you'll be dropped off in a major city. Essentially, adding a penalty to the game for choosing to side with the Vampires, then turning your back on them and curing vampirism, and then for choosing to be Hircine's champion instead. Effectively, by having the Vigilants and the Dawnguard/Volkihar being able to take you out of the prisons, the idea would be that your experiences may vary wildly from jail to jail, from crime to crime, and character to character.

Sorry for my delayed reply, mostly just being busy (actually trying to play Skyrim, because I've dedicated a playthrough to doing those quests I typically skip on any given playthrough, so I'm doing a Stormcloak Civil War, as many sidequests as possible, I will finish the Thieves' Guild for the first time, and I must become Archmage before I even think of joining the Companions.) The reason for the guards not remembering you (this could change, I've had an idea for it, and I'll get to it) is entirely based on the idea that to the guards, you're just another prisoner, another number on a log-sheet that they get paid a certain amount of money for. While they may recall that Inmate #302 tends to give them trouble and Inmate #404 escaped again, and that Inmate #591 is supposedly the Dragonborn and has been doing tasks for them, as soon as you're released, they just turn to a new sheet in the log-books and keep going. So even if you do get captured and put on the list, it's with a new proverbial number, and thereby, at low reputations, you slip under the radar and your notoriety resets. So, I mentioned a couple things there that might have caught your attention, the first being that I had an idea about the guards possibly remembering you. The second being that mention of notoriety coming up again. That's right: The two ideas I have play equal parts in making the player's life miserable. First and foremost, let's deal with how guards could remember you as a fairly new player, with no fame to their name. Let's start outside the prison for this, but we'll get to inside the prison in a bit. Any high-profile crime is likely to have the guards remembering you more easily, and not in the way you'd want. Basically, the thought is, they'll easily forget the sneak-thief who got busted swiping apples off of the fruit stands, but they won't forget the murderer. This also influences how easily the guards will drop their guard and consider you for tasks other than requiring you to keep your cell clean. Secondly, the more often you go into prison, the more the guards of that hold will remember you, and the more likely you are (outside and inside the prison, this) to take the blame when things go wrong. Essentially, the idea that a criminal is always a criminal, and that you're so deeply into crime that you can't stop committing crimes, even after a few jail terms. You'll be less likely to be picked for tasks, watched more often, and get rougher punishments when they're handed down. You'll also be blamed more often when things disappear in prison, even if it's just a corrupt guard who decided to have that bottle of mead during lunch, because you're known to be a criminal, so why wouldn't you steal it? So now that we've covered outside, let's go inside. Getting yourself remembered by guards is easy: break the rules. (see a theme here? They don't remember good things, only bad things. This is intentional: Think of 10 good things that happened in the past week. Now, think of only 10 bad things that happened in the past three months. Bet you come up with more bad things than good ones, even though you're only supposed to come up with 10 each.) Stealing things, fighting other inmates, petty vandalism, getting found with contraband on your person or in your cell, these all make the guards dislike you, and more likely to remember you next time - as trouble. So, let's fast forward a couple quests, one dragon fight, a couple trips to the Greybeards, and one pesky Blade. You're now the Dragonborn, and you're, well, kind-of-a-big-deal around Skyrim. Keeping in mind what I mentioned here at your request, you're now known around Skyrim, your reactions matter, etc., the guards may have a few different ways of reacting to having the Dragonborn in their captivity. If you're known for being fairly calm and mild-mannered about things, and you're not a chronic law-breaker, then it's possible that the guards will go easy on you. If you're known for being arrogant and hot-tempered, and you're almost always breaking the law, prepare for the guards to throw the book at you at every opportunity, as well as making your life worse every day by getting you busted for contraband or finding excuses to go put you in the torture room. Now, let's assume you picked a non-evil, story-line-driven side-quest, like the College of Winterhold or the Companions, the two big ones. Being Archmage or Harbinger would get you specialized treatment. Archmage would get you a cell with multiple locks and a couple 'nice' bracelets that keep you from casting, so you can't be tempted to use your magic to pick the locks, or teleport, or brain someone with a flying pot. Being Harbinger would guarantee you don't travel without your hands being bound, and your cell (single man, at that, because they want to minimize the risk of you turning your cell-mate into a bloody stain on the floor) wil be checked every morning for weapons. Depending on whether it's known that you're a Werewolf or whether it's a secret, you may be fitted with silver bracelets that prevent transformations and act as a very visible reminder that you are in fact a werewolf. If you're a known vampire, don't expect to get any chances to feed, and be prepared to be gagged (like Ulfric was at the start of the game, with the vanilla beginning) at all times. Also expect that the guards will have some form of Divine protection against you feeding on them, something like, I dunno, the Tears of Arkay, which turns their blood into a vampire-harming poison. Now, if you're a member of the Thieves' Guild, or Guild Master, expect that you'll be put in a cell with your hands bound at all times, except when out of your cell. Also expect random searches for lockpicks. And expect that all the guards will blame you when any single thing in the prison disappears, even if you didn't do it. If you're the Listener of the Dark Brotherhood (and only reason for requiring Listener and completion of the DB questline is because they do an event that, well, quite honestly is noteworthy), expect the guards to actually fear you. "Here's a master assassin, someone who killed the most powerful man in the Empire, and he's sitting in that solitary cell, staring at me." The idea is that being the Listener means you could easily kill anyone, and not worried about what weapon you'd use. Expect frequent searches for weapons, but also expect little interaction with the guards, as they want to be as far away from you as possible. Now, it wouldn't be fair to mention all of that and not touch on the last way to get noticed by the guards. Being on the opposing faction of the Civil War. Stormcloak in an Imperial Prison? Expect to get an extra beating at every opportunity. Imperial in a Stormcloak Prison? Expect a few extra trips into the torture room. Both being the idea that if they can manage to beat some information out of you, you'll get out earlier (note: you won't, but that's what all torturers seem to say to get information easier) if you just simply tell them something important. And of course, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for the Stormcloaks or the Legion to simply feel resentful for the opposing faction sitting in their jail, mocking them because they're not allowed to kill it. So, instead, they beat the player more often, and they do more damage when they do so, meaning it takes longer to heal. And I've got an idea for that, so I'll mention that later. Yes, I know, I really should plan this out before I start typing, because I'm idea-prone when typing out ideas. The reason for the opposite factions being rougher on the player is simple: What driving force is there in the vanilla game to complete the civil war? That's right: trying to avoid Season Unending, which is by far the most boring and pointless quest I've ever done. So, what if siding with a faction brought their bounty prices down a bit, but raised the prices from the other side? So, for example, let's say that you stole something and incurred a bounty of 2000 gold. That's 2000 gold from either side, by the way. If you, say, sided with the Stormcloaks, then in any Stormcloak hold, it's 1500 (or 1000) gold, but in an Imperial hold, it's 4000 (or 3000) gold. (The idea is that some adjustment would be nice. Allow you to drop from 75% to 50% of your bounty, and an alternate that says you'll have to pay 150% or 200% of your bounty on the opposing side. Independantly controlled, I think, makes the most sense, but it's an idea) This means that getting arrested as a Stormcloak in a Stormcloak hold should have a lower bounty and likely a shorter prison sentence - they want you out there fighting, not sitting in a cell. Same with the Imperial Legion, they want you fighting, not in a cell. However, if you're a Stormcloak sitting in a Legion cell, they want you sitting there as long as bloody possible, because every day you're in that cell is a day you're not out fighting a war. But, that brings me back to the point up top, what driving force is there to complete the civil war? Well, now there's a reason other than just bounty resets (though that will play nicely with this, I think), and that's the fact that any future crimes committed in a hold owned by the faction you're fighting for will cost you less. And if you could hook the Jagged Crown quest and double the values against you if you turn-coat-and-traitor the one you started with, even better. I think the Stormcloaks/Legion would much prefer the proverbial 8000 (6000) gold if you pledged your oath, then became an oath-breaker and gave the crown to the other guys. Also, expect if you've done this that your prison sentence in those holds will be much, much more unpleasant. Which brings me to an idea: Healers of Skyrim. I know, it covers more than just Crime and Punishment Overhaul, but if there were dedicated healers (restoration mages) placed around Skyrim, it'd be nice to go to them and have diseases cured, be able to buy beneficial potions, and have at least the feeling that they exist. They need to exist because we need them in prison because... When you're arrested, Crime Hurts. Health regeneration should be seriously slowed when imprisoned. The idea being that if you're a troublemaker or an enemy soldier, you're going to spend a greater chunk of your time being punished. These punishments chip away at your health, and with health regeneration slowed to 10% or less, it'll take ages to recover. So the idea is, if your health gets too low, you can request to see a healer. Obviously, guard relations takes precedence, so a troublesome inmate or an enemy soldier only gets to see a healer if they 'pass out' during punishments (enforced blackout at 5% health or something, so as to avoid death and avoid trodding on mods like Death Alternative, which I adamantly refuse to play without, because 'death' in Skyrim is not immersive. My character isn't immortal, he's just lucky, and that's somewhat how Death Alternative feels) The idea being, if you get punished and you're dropped below a threshold, you wake up in the Healer's Wing of the prison, being recovered so that you don't die. If you're heavily wounded and you don't have an ill reputation with the guards, a trip to the healer will always be granted. And obviously, you don't want to tick off the healers, because if you do, bad things can, and probably will, happen. Now, maybe at some other time, I'll be able to come up with some basic quest ideas for things to do in prison, and holds they'd make sense in. And some of them will be perfectly set up to allow other inmates to take advantage of them.

That... That is a really great idea, Drew. (You don't mind if I call you that, right?) There was a mod I tried forever ago, can't remember the name of it, but it basically made all the prisons irrelevant, sent you to one main prison like the old Oblivion system, but you had to work to get out faster. Thought it was decent, but always wished it'd have left the default prisons alone and used them instead of making them just something to look at when you needed to do quests. So, as you said, the idea of needing to build up your trust with the guards, just to be able to get these jobs, just to shave a bit of time off of your sentence, I think that'd be awesome. It'd mean that prison isn't just working, it's full interactions. Essentially, trying to get on the guards' good side would just about put you on the bad side of some of the Inmates, but if you managed, your stay would be much faster. And I just had an idea for that, a little risk-versus-reward: Guards forget prisoners each time you leave (your trust is reset each time, thereby when returning, you have to go through this all over again), but inmates never forget. Why? Because they've got nothing better to do than remember that the Dragonborn was a slime-ball who cozied up to the guards to get out a couple weeks early. So the next time you return to that prison, the guards don't care that you were the ideal inmate the last time, as it's in the past and you're here, now, all over again. The inmates, however, remember how you basically told them, "No, I don't want to help you make skooma in the back of your cell," and "Are you crazy?! No, I'm not going to bring you a weapon," and they'll use that as an excuse to make your second (or third, or fourth, etc...) time to prison just that little bit worse, until you're nearly forced to do things to get on their good side because of some random event ideas I just thought of. Oh, Dagon, I'm doing it again... Random Events: We already know Skyrim supports these, I've played mods that I think can break you out of the sleep sequence a couple hours early, and if you're on a fixed sleep schedule, and you model some form of prison stamina multiplier where working requires stamina to keep doing a task, and it only regenerates when sleeping, being woken up is the worst thing that can happen. So, a few ideas on what could be done as a forced wake-up: - Shanked. Your reputation with the inmate population has fallen so dramatically that the only course of action they can think of is to try to kill you. Obviously, that inmate fails at killing you, and the guards react (they have to, a dead prisoner means paperwork and a loss of revenue for the prison.) by punishing both you and the inmate. (Takes two to tango, and obviously you did something to offend this guy, so you're getting punished.) Both of you get solitary confinement, which means your stay has gotten longer (a prison punishment for breaking rules) and you're unable to work it off. - Midnight Skooma Deal. Your cellmate has just offered to trade you Skooma for (insert object you're carrying). Accept, the trade is completed, and you're free to go back to bed. Decline, and your reputation as a nasty goody-two-shoes goes up. - Drugged. You refused a skooma deal one time too many, so your cellmate just made sure you're three-sails-to-the-wind with skooma, then called the guard. Obviously, these events shouldn't happen so often that you can't sleep, and should only be triggered by low-inmate-reputation, starting with skooma deals and progressing through drugging to being shanked. The idea being that the skooma deal would be an early warning, and an easy way to settle your inmate reputation back to where it should be over time. And because of that, I got another idea, making Skooma and Foul Brew useful to the player as more than trading commodities: They help you sleep, provided you don't over-do it. Skooma is highly addictive, but works very strongly, and might be used in the event that Foul Brew doesn't have the effect anymore. Alcohol, of any sort, helps you get to sleep, provided you haven't become dependant on it to sleep. And yes, I said 'of any sort,' thereby implying that the guards may have mead or wine available if you're willing to steal it.

As you'd asked me to check this out after coming up with a lot of ideas for your Crime and Punishment Overhaul, and you needed input on your Reputation system, I'm here, and sufficiently tired enough that the ideas will flow, although I'll try to have some restraint on post length. Granted, this is a much less idea-inducing topic (only one thing really to discuss, rather than a dozen ideas that spawned from one another, though that might still happen) but I'm willing to help with ideas. Disposition and Temperament: Personally, I think these two should be split. I know, I know, it's more work, but hear me out. I have a reason for splitting this up. Disposition: The way I see it, your Disposition is how NPC's perceive you as a person. You're somewhere on a sliding scale from "Good Natured" to "Troublemaker" and thereby when dealing with NPC's, they rely on what they know of you. Being closer to Good Natured means NPC's like you more, which results in: +Lower prices +Easier Persuasion +Easier to be Forgiven -Easily taken advantage of -Harder Intimidation -Higher Bribes Things that would put you closer to being good natured: +Donating money +Completing Miscellaneous sidequests +Not Stealing or Committing Crimes +Persuading people However, there's always a flipside to the scale, and that's being a Troublemaker, and you'd get to deal with: -Higher Prices -Harder Persuasion -Harder to be Forgiven +Rarely taken advantage of +Easier Intimidation +Lower Bribes And obviously, things that'd make you a troublemaker" +Committing Crimes +Fistfights without Brawling (I'll get to it, I promise, there's a reason to make this split) +Intimidating people Temperament: The reason for splitting this is to allow a bit of a situational conflict, and thereby more things that can happen. Essentially, while Disposition deals with how people see you as a person, Temperament is a modifier to that. The idea is that while you could be seen as Good Natured or a Troublemaker, there's also the fact that you have to consider how you're known to react to a situation. Temper slides between "Calm Natured" and "Furious" with "Even Tempered" in between. By default, you are "Even Tempered" until proven otherwise. So, let's start with what that gets you: Even Tempered / Standard Prices / Equally able to Intimidate or Persuade / Standard Reactions (I'll get to it) Doesn't seem like much, does it? However, this is the only stage that doesn't have penalties going with it. So, what changes your temper? Well, with - going toward Calm Natured and + going toward Furious: - Persuading your way out of situations. - Praying to the Divines (once a day) - Reacting non-violently. + Reacting Violently + Praying to the Daedra (once a day) + Intimidating your way out of situations. Simple, right? Not quite. Praying should always have a very small modifier, so that it takes a lot to change anything. It's mostly there as an idea, or an option to make an adjustment. Now, the idea I had is that a modification to quests like the Thugs could be useful: One, to modify the Thugs to give an option to Persuade, Intimidate, or Do Nothing (Defend). Persuasion would work better if you're good-natured enough to do it, Intimidation would work better if you're a known troublemaker, Temper modifies your odds of success. Two, to add the ability to confront the person who sent thugs after you in the first place, with the options to apologize, persuade, intimidate, or attack. So, what would the modifiers be for those four things I just mentioned? Apologize should push your Temper toward Calm Natured by a reasonably large amount. Persuade (on Success) should push your temper toward Calm Natured a little. Intimidate (on Success) should push your temper toward Furious a little. Attacking should push your Temper toward Furious by a reasonably large amount. Note: an attack doesn't have to result in death. In fact, I think the idea of the dialogue option "You'll regret you did that. (Attack)" should start a brawl with the NPC in question. Remember how I said above, that by default, Brawls shouldn't count against you? This is why. I see Brawls in Skyrim as a sport, much like bowling, baseball, soccer (football for our friends across the pond), and golf. They don't have anything else to do, so they get drunk and punch each other until someone gives up. Perfect example is the fight in Jorrvaskr when you first visit the Companions. So, what happens if you do everything right, apologize to those you've wronged, persuade your way past every challenge in your way, and end up Good Natured? + Better Prices + Easier Persuasion + NPCs like you more + Divines give stronger blessings. (basically tripling their default effects) - Easier to take advantage of - Harder to intimidate - Much more expensive bribes And if you attack everyone who sends thugs after you, after intimidating those thugs to leave you alone, and end up known to be Furious? + Lower bribes + Easier Intimidation + Less likely to take advantage of you. + Easier Persuasion (though nowhere near as much as Good Natured. Basically, your temper is legendary, and whoever you're persuading will realize this is a rare opportunity. But some people just don't care.) - Divines give weaker blessings. (Basically half of their default effects) - NPCs dislike you more - Higher Prices Now, I know what you're thinking, that both offer easier persuasion. Yes, but NPC's still hate you more if you're Furious, which kinda reduces that persuasion boost to an almost-worthless level. Basically, it'll only work on the most fearful of NPCs. Now, I've mentioned this four times now, and I know you've got to be wondering: What do you mean "taking advantage" of the player? What I mean is you're likely to get cheated out of gold when turning in quests, because you're the "nice guy" who "would do this for free if you were really a good guy" and "wouldn't mind" if they kept some of the gold. If you're a known troublemaker, they don't want to cheat you out of your rightly-earned gold: They fear you'll break into their house and steal everything. If you're known to have a violent temper, they don't want to face your wrath, so they pay you fully. But if you're good natured or if you're known to be even tempered, you're less likely to do anything about it, so the population of Skyrim takes advantage of that. It's a harsh world out there. Oh, and the effects stack, so if you're a good-natured person with a violent temper, they cancel out, or if you're a troublemaker with a calm temper, it cancels out. If you're good natured with a calm temper, you'll almost always get the guilt trip, and if you're a violent troublemaker, you'll never be shorted. An example, using a standard everyday "Go kill the Bandit Leader of (insert dungeon here)" quest. Let's set the character as the perfect good-guy, so Good Natured and Even Tempered, thereby getting double-stacked with a chance of being taken advantage of. We'll also assume that your Crime and Punishment Overhaul is working, so this is a Bounty Hunter quest, and you can capture the bandit alive for a higher reward. So you go into the dungeon, bringing justice with a blade to all but the bandit leader, and you use Persuasion to make him give up. ("I'm sure if you turn yourself in, you'll receive a lighter punishment.") You bring him back to, we'll just say Whiterun because I'm tired and can't think of a better place right now, and turn him in to the Jailer in Dragonsreach. His (or her, I won't discriminate) dialogue should go something like this: "Thank you. I'll see to it that this bandit trash sees justice." Obviously, you get a choice between two dialogue options: "I was told there would be a reward" and "Isn't the reward supposed to be higher for bringing them back alive?" If you get lucky, he'll reply, "Yeah, sorry, almost forgot about that." and pay you your reward, shorted by about a third. (if it was supposed to be 1,500 for bringing them in dead, and you triple that to 4,500 for a live reward, you'd get 3,000 because you've been taken advantage of, with no way to call him out on it unless your temper was high enough.) If you're not lucky, he'll reply, "The safety of Skyrim should be enough of a reward for you." Attempting through any means to get your reward at this point just results in a similar line. Attempting intimidation ends up leading to: "I'm not scared of you. I won't make the first move, and if you do anything to me, you go in there with your new best friend." Attacking him (only available after a failed intimidation for a character who's good natured and even tempered) results in a very quick beatdown and you ending up arrested. (The idea being that the Jailer should always be two or three times the player level, and have a modified version of the Khajiit Unarmed Damage Bonus that allows him to do stupid amounts of damage in a brawl (which Attack would be a modified brawl quest anyway) so he'd end up winning easily. Obviously, even if you win, he'll just put a stupidly high bounty on your head because you've screwed up your Reputation and gained a poor disposition against him.) So being the good guy has penalties, obviously, but so does being the bad guy. How do you balance this out? That's easy. If you set the % chance for being taken advantage of at 40%, then it's only 40% as long as you're either Good-Natured or Calm Tempered. Now, obviously, there's a reason you start out in the middle on both, and that's just because you're not known to anyone. Now, changing your Global Disposition and Global Temperament should take a long time. However, local ones should change easier, and there should be sub-factions and obviously exceptions. Now, to simplify this, I'm going to call Disposition and Temperament, along with Hero/Villain, Fame/Infamy, Criminal Reputation, and Affiliation all as "Reputation" for now. I'll continue with the ideas of each being separate after this, but I need a way to track all of this without wearing out my fingers. I'll break it down for an example on what I think would work (note, this may not be even practical to code, though I think you could probably find a way to approximate it) Global Reputation takes so long to change because it's based on Skyrim's 9 holds and their Reputations toward you. So, it takes forever to change because, early on, you're only known in Whiterun Hold, and the other 8 holds don't know a thing about you. Later on, you're the Dragonborn, so you're a little known, and a lot of people see you as a hero (I'll get to it), and even later on, you've been to most of the holds and done quests and you've interacted with people. Hold Reputation is based on factions within the hold as well as your Crime Reputation. These should be: -Guards (Separate from Crime. If the Guards hate you because you keep finding reasons to punch them, or you attack the Jailer because you haven't gotten paid, it should be independant of your bounty. Also the hardest to get back up, because of pack mentality.) -Shopkeepers (If you cause problems in one shop, expect everyone to hear about it in no time flat, and expect higher prices as a result) -Citizens (The common folk you see shopping, wandering about, etc. Easiest to have your Reputations change because your only real option is small-talk and the occasional quest.) -Nobles (The Jarl and his Court. Offend these guys and you're bound to have a bad time.) Now, there should be Excluded Factions. These are factions that just don't change, no matter what you do. They should be: -Any Faction with a Questline. -Temples of Divines and their Followers (the idea being that even if the Divines hate you, the Priests and Priestess' of the Divines believe you could be saved from evil) -Temples of Daedra and their Worshippers (the idea being that the Daedra love change, whether for good or evil. Why hate someone who brings change in every footstep?) So, to recap: Global Reputation changes as a result of Hold Reputation, which changes as a result of Guard, Shop, Citizen, and Noble reputations, which change as a result of The player's Actions for or against those factions However, your questline factions, temples, daedric quests, they never change around you. Okay, I've covered Disposition and Temperament finally. Oops, that's a bit lengthy. Well, I did warn you I had ideas. So, Heroes and Villains has to wait, because something has to be covered first, and that's Fame/Infamy, which I'm using to cover Renown. Fame and Infamy should sound familiar, because I believe Oblivion used a similar system. Fame is gained through, well, quests. Specifically, notable quests. You gain fame from: = Being named Dragonborn by the Greybeards = Becoming a Thane = Joining the Companions = Joining the College of Winterhold = Becoming Harbinger of the Companions (classed as a separate event, because this should bring much more fame than just joining them, but they're known around Skyrim.) = Becoming Archmage (again, the College is known around Skyrim, but the Archmage is more important) = Joining the Bard's College (Solitude Fame Only, but it'll help some) = Restoring the Burning of King Olaf (Fame is not Solitude only, just very mild) = Buying the Player Home in a hold. = Completing the Purity Quests for the Companions (Big fame boost, as you've saved the Companions, or at least, those who considered it saving, from their little problem.) = Completing the Civil War for either side. -----DLC----- = Joining the Dawnguard (Very small fame boost at first, as everyone's heard by that point about the Dawnguard) = Completing the Dawnguard Questline for the Dawnguard (The world is saved from a vampiric plot to kill the sun!) = Buying a plot of land in a hold = Building a house on that plot of land = Dragonborn DLC completed, as you saved Solstheim from certain doom. Now, you gain Infamy from quests, too, and only from the quests. Infamy is not a bad thing, though: it'll carry modifiers that offset certain... unwanted effects from Disposition/Temper. Infamy is gained from: = Joining the Dark Brotherhood (and this is because every now and then, you hear a guard say "I know who you are. Hail Sithis." So if it's all that secret, how has a random guard heard about you?_ = Joining the Thieves Guild (Sure, it's secret, but Riften's known as the home of the Thieves' Guild.) = Murdering the Emperor (Big gain of Infamy. You just killed the 'most powerful' person in Skyrim.) = Restoring the Thieves' Guild to its former glory. (Big gain of infamy. You just made the Thieves' Guild notorious again) = Daedric Quests. (Decent infamy gain, especially if you wander around with Daedric stuff in your inventory) = Being a Vampire (small infamy gain, hardly noticed) = Being a Werewolf (small infamy gain, hardly noticed) -----DLC----- = Joining the Volkihar Vampires (Small infamy boost) = Completing the Dawnguard Questline for the Volkihar Vampires (A Vampire has Auriel's Bow and can blot out the sun!) Now, Fame and Infamy both work together to entirely benefit your character. Why? Because you shouldn't be punished for picking certain questlines, keeping certain abilities, etc. Fame modifies: + Less likely to be taken advantage of. + Easier Persuasion + Easier Intimidation + Better Prices Infamy modifies: + Less likely to be taken advantage of. + Easier Intimidation + Lower Bribes As said, don't punish for taking up questlines that aren't just for good characters. The idea behind this is that even the character playing the holy do-gooder we mentioned above, who got the unwanted modifier of 80% likely to be taken advantage of, if they just do the 'good' quests (the Fame List) could completely erase that modifier by the time they've completed the vanilla list, let alone the DLC list. At the same time, if they decided to fall from grace and completed the Infamy list, they could erase the 80% modifier again, and they've boosted their Intimidation a touch. Complete both, and while it doesn't make the Disposition/Temper completely irrelevant, it gives you a feeling of respect (Ever notice how Skyrim's NPCs are just completely nasty to you, even when you're the Archmage, Listener, Harbinger, Guild Master, Dawnguard/Volkihar, Dragonborn, and Savior of Nirn? The idea of this is to stop that by making them have some bloody respect.) So, with Fame/Infamy covered, let's go into Heroes and Villains. Heroism is gained from doing the 'good' quests. Main quest, Companions, College of Winterhold. Also from Bounty Hunting. Hooking to the ideas from the Crime and Punishment Overhaul, you get Heroism points for being on the Jury and making the right decisions (Letting the innocent go free, punishing the criminals. Oh, crap, I'll have to make another post over there mentioning this idea and fleshing it out... I'll do that after I finish this...) and for assisting in punishments (As said, I'll have to mention this over there.) Villainy is gained through doing terrible things. Murder, theft, slavery, banditry. So, what do they both do, and how do they effect you? Heroism: = At higher levels - Passive Bonus: No One Dares. (Better quest reward gold, better prices, +10% health/magicka/stamina regeneration boost) = Better prices = Criminals Submit (Bandits would rather not fight such a well known hero. It's far better to tell your story of how you were defeated by the great and mighty Dragonborn after you capture them. After all, they'll have plenty of time to perfect and tell the story.) = Delighted to see you - Citizens give gifts, applaud when they see you, or cheer. Happens when you haven't been seen in a civilized area for a while (in other words, if you camp in Riften for a while and then travel to Solitude, you won't get this, but if you camp in Riften, then decide to go clear out, say, Fort Greymoor, then head to any city, you'd get a lot of praise.) Villainy: = At higher levels - Passive Bonus: Primal Fear. (Fear Cloak affecting all but the most sturdy beings (up to level 60 run away in terror.), possible bonus damage on fleeing targets) = Higher prices = Criminals are Friendly (Bandits won't attack, whether because you're one of them, or they're just afraid for their life.) = Leave At Once - Shopkeepers won't do business with you, Guards won't let you into walled cities, and they won't have the keys on them if you pickpocket or kill them. Only way into a city is a master locked gate. Obviously, this is where things start to happen. Now, Villainy goes away in one of two ways, and seeing as this is supposed to partner with Crime and Punishment Overhaul, I feel this is fair. The first way is to just simply wait long enough for it to bleed down. Your crimes will eventually be forgotten, or at least, considered less important. The second way is through CPO by turning yourself in and accepting your punishment. So, why does Villainy use Leave At Once as something it does? To slow down a player's villainy streak to allow them to cool it down. Why? Because once you have Primal Fear, the only way to turn yourself in will be when the Jarl and the Jailer send out Elite Bounty Hunters, who have explicit instructions that you are not to be killed. Primal Fear is basically designed to make the game nearly impossible to play, and realistically so. At that point, you're considered something no longer human, but some Daedric beast in human shape, because no one would believe a mere mortal could cause so much devastation and pain. Leave At Once would kick in fairly early on. So, the Stages of Villainy would be: 1: Higher Prices ("You and your kind steal from me all the time, so you'll pay more to pay me back.") 2: Criminals are Friendly (Preparations for Leave At Once or for Banishment. Note: This ability goes away fairly fast, but Leave At Once goes away first, so you'll be able to hide out in towns long before you end up being killed by bandits who were once friendly) 3: Leave At Once ("Skyrim is No Place for a murdering Daedra like you. Go back to Oblivion.") 4: Primal Fear ("Run away! It's going to kill everyone!") I was thinking that basically, one murder wouldn't be enough to invoke Leave At Once, but it should instantly put you at Criminals are Friendly. Two murders should invoke Leave At Once. I'm thinking 5 should be the point at which Primal Fear kicks in (to prevent it being activated by accident. No one murders 5 people in Skyrim 'by accident') and that's because Primal Fear is temporarily game-breaking. So, Villainy points should be something like... 20 points for every item stolen (worth doesn't matter, it's just counting thefts.) 500 points for banditry (500 points worth of stolen items. This adds another 500 to make an even 1000) 750 points for slavery. 1000 points for a murder Which I think gives the points tiers for 1-4. 1: 20 - 1800, with prices rising in 5% increments, for a total of 375% higher prices, stacked with your adjustments for disposition and temperament modifiers. 2: 500+, as we want bandits to be friendly before 3 can ever be started. 3: 1800, guaranteeing either 2 murders starts it, or 3 enslaved people, or 2 enslaved people and a few stolen goods. 4: 4500, thereby either 5 murders or 6 enslaved people causes everyone to run from you. As for Heroism, I'll leave the scale up to you. Okay, Criminal Reputation now... I think I talked about that one pretty well in CPO, so I'll leave it there. That leaves affiliations, which is about the only one I actually severely disagree with... So I have ideas, as usual, on what would work better. Affiliations: Joining an organization in Skyrim, vanilla Skyrim at least, carries no risks and fairly sorry rewards. I'd like to change that a bit, personally. While there still shouldn't be too many risks, the rewards are, well, not enough on their own. Let's look at what you get by default. The Companions, you get an axe that kills elves better, a nifty shield that you'll end up putting on your wall, a select choice of followers with an AI that makes a box of rocks appear smart, and if you chose to keep it, the ability to become a beast that requires mods just to make it not die in combat with anything that outnumbers you, and an armor set that, by the time you get to make it yourself, is outclassed by anything you can grab off of a Thalmor patrol or a dead bandit. (Seriously, I've gotten more Nordic Carved Armor (Dragonborn DLC) off of Bandits than I can use, long before I ever get my first set of Wolf Armor unless I rob Skjor of his.) The College of Winterhold, you get a circlet with a fairly mild enchantment on it, some robes that have an enchantment weaker than I can make on any bog-standard bit of gear, and a fancy room in the College. Wow, that's a lot less than I remember it having... Oh, and I suppose you get a dragon priest mask from that part of the quest. Dark Brotherhood, you get some decent light armor, although easily surpassed by anything you could find laying around after a few levels have gone by, a really good storyline, some funny clothing that makes you look like Cicero, or some really funny clothing if you had the last laugh, a dagger which makes a decent collectable, and a new lair that's a total gold sink for everything you just earned. Thieves Guild, you get some decent light armor, though it's surpassed by everything by the time you grind out the million pointless thievery quests to get it, a halfway-decent storyline, another set of decent light armor that should get you killed if you wore it in public, and the world's worst game of "I hid these everywhere, so have fun finding them." Blades, you get a dragon-slaying Katana, and a set of kinda crappy armor. And now the Civil War, because it's something to consider. Imperial Legion, you get a suit of Imperial Armor (your choice on light or heavy), an enchanted and leveled item for each rank-up, and an enchanted and leveled sword on victory. Stormcloak, you get a suit of Stormcloak armor, an enchanted and leveled item for each rank-up, and an enchanted and leveled sword on victory. So, how do we fix this... Well, first, let's do this. Wearing faction armor should make you hated by those who hate the faction. There, that'll make things easier. So, pretty much, most armors aren't going to be affected. However: Wolf Armor means even if you manage to raise your villainy high enough to be thrown out of towns, bandits are still hostile: You're one of the companions, or so they think. Use a different armor if you need to hide out like that. College Robes really won't be hated by anyone, but you'll be recognized as one of the College of Winterhold Students. Archmage Robes won't be hated by anyone, but you could go give the Jarl a heck of a scare. Wearing your Dark Brotherhood Armor in public should make normal citizens flee in terror, guards should (depending on how far the questline is along) either tell you not to take armor off of dead assassins (assuming you're not far along), treat you as a trespasser and that you need to leave, and failing to listen results in an arrest (completed a few quests), or run in terror (killed the Emperor). The Penitus Oculatus should want you dead on sight. Wearing Thieves' Guild armor in public should have all eyes on you, being wary. Guards should attempt to arrest you for suspected thievery. Wearing Nightingale armor in public should have only the most vigilant of guards being able to spot you, but unable to remember why they wanted to arrest you (Basically, wearing Nightingale armor should be trouble free, other than that if you change out of it in plain sight, you're going to be arrested for being a thief. Consider it Nocturnal's Protection, if you will.) Wearing Guild Master's armor in public should have you arrested for thievery. Wearing hold guard's armor should make you appear to be a guard to most people, except other guards. Wearing one hold's armor in a different hold will have no effect. Wearing Blades Armor should make Thalmor hostile to you. Wearing Thalmor robes (hooded) should make Stormcloaks and Thalmor hostile to you. Wearing Thalmor robes (no hood) should make Thalmor hostile to you, and Stormcloaks hostile only if your race is Altmer, Bosmer, or Khajiit. (Would also be a good reason for the Stormcloaks to be hostile if you're Dunmer and wearing these.) Wearing Imperial Legion Armor should make Stormcloaks hostile to you. Wearing Stormcloak Armor should make Imperial Legion Soldiers and Thalmor hostile to you. The idea being that, rather than wearing whatever you want and getting away with it, you'll be treated as a member of that faction and given the respect you deserve for doing so. Walking through Windhelm in Thalmor Robes should get you dead in 10 seconds flat. And we'll expand this list intelligently to include amulets and artifacts: Wearing an Amulet of Talos should make the Thalmor hostile immediately. Wearing or wielding Daedric Artifacts should make the Vigilants of Stendarr hostile. (having them in your inventory, however, should be safe.) Now, to make faction armors worth it, because now they all inherently carry a little bit of risk: Wait for it. Your current Disposition/Temperament is nullified as long as you wear the armor. If you're well known, this effect is itself nullified. (The idea being that, as long as you're a nobody, everyone assumes you're just whatever you're wearing. If you're famous, they'll recognize you through your 'clever disguise' and treat you like normal. It also means you can't just use Guard Armor or Soldier's Armor to get into a town you've been thrown out of.) Then there's a matter of two/three 'bonus' armors that can be worn. These could be designed as effectively easter eggs. Emperor's Robes: Despite the fact that everyone knows the Dark Brotherhood murdered the Emperor, if you wear his robes, you boost all positive attributes of your Disposition and Temperament. People won't take advantage of you. Guards (if this is possible) will kneel before you. If wearing the full set, even Jarls will kneel before you. Jester's outfit: When people see you, they can't help but like you. Prices are much better. Greybeard Robe (I think this has to be consoled in, although some mods may have made them available): The resonance of the Thu'um has settled into the very fabric of these robes. Persuasion is almost always successful, intimidation is almost always successful, and Shouting is 75% more powerful. Again, just a handful of ideas. Not sure if any of them are practical.

I don't see it as lore-breaking. I don't think it was ever exclusively mentioned as Skyrim's prisons, and if I remember Oblivion well enough, all you did was sit around in prison. Could read it as a reference, then, to the fact that in Skyrim's prisons, you'll work, while in Cyrodiil, you sit and grow old. And yes, I'm working on your requested look at the reputation system, and unfortunately, despite my best efforts at keeping it short, it's gotten lengthy again. Suffice it to say, I've got ideas, but the core seems good so far.

Personally, I'd love to see this for a bounty-hunter playthrough. Seeing the bandits you bring in get punished would be perfect. It'd both add life to the world (Ironically, by adding death to the world at the same time), and add a sense of productivity. Walking into Solitude and seeing the bandits you brought in a few days ago are now standing in a row, each being executed one after another, I think it'd add a reason to take bandits back alive. Even better if you get paid more for bringing bandits in alive, rather than outright killing them. For the player, though, I personally think it's foolish. Sure, it's very realistic, that if you ran around and murdered entire villages, you should be killed, but it just sends you to the "Load a Save, or Start a New Game" screen. Which, I suppose if you wanted to kill off a character and start a new game, that would be a fitting way to go, but I think I can speak for the majority that reloading your last known good save is a bit boring. Plus, if player execution was a thing, and it couldn't be turned off, I'm sure a lot of people would skip the mod, even if it had features they really liked. Then again, that's an idea. Have player execution disabled by default, and a warning when turning it on that your player could be killed as a result of their actions. Also that if you're playing with Death Alternative, it's probably not going to be compatible.