rptb1

That's void under English law, at least, and therefore probably under US law. It's a principle of contract law that you can't "agree to agree" to be bound by some future contract that you haven't seen. I see a lot of this in online agreements and it's totally bogus. It would never stand up in court. (Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is what my lawyer tells me. I have not read the Steam agreement.)

Thanks, that's close enough.

I'm no expert on modern ideas about vampires, but in the old Hammer Horror days they *had* to sleep and were totally vulnerable while sleeping. So one of the challenges of being a vampire was having a very secure place to spend the daylight hours. That's often what limited them from travel, made them ship themselves around on coffins in packing crates, etc. (There's even a reference to this in Skyrim -- I won't say where.) I don't know exactly how this could be turned into gameplay, but when I caught vampirism I applied this rule to myself, and it made for a very different way of looking at the Skyrim map. Venturing into territory without certain shelter was essentially impossible. At one point I had to invade an inn and kill everyone inside in order to use the bed, and of course I ought to have been discovered by a wandering traveller. This is the sort of thing I mean by an interesting weakness. It leads to different gameplay and stories to tell. I encourage you all to think well beyond combat. How do we make an entire vampire play experience by changing the rules?

But can I *puts on sunglasses* woof ro dah? (Actually a semi-serious question. Quest rewrite anyone? Jarl: Go see the greybeards boy. Off you go. Go boy! Fetch! Later, dog kills dragon, buries bones.)

Skyrim has a castle/cave/village full of people every few hundred yards. It's enormously dense already! On the other hand, take a look at London around 1300: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/London_1300_Historical_Atlas_William_R_Shepherd_%28died_1934%29.PNG It has a fair bit more complexity than Solitude, but a population of about 20-50000. I'll leave someone else to measure the area of Solitude, calculate a population with the same density, then use "player.placeatme <lydia> 10000" and see what happens ;) I'll remind you that there's no way to push through crowds in Skyrim. Well, except "fus ro dah". Perhaps that's what it's for. I've never found it useful for anything else so far.

As I understand it, the AI is goal-directed, and problem solving. A really great project would be to make the AIs of NPCs who are vampires have a real need to feed, so that they have to find paths to sleeping other NPCs (or you!) possibly with a chance of spreading vampirism. There could be a whole game in that, as either vampire or vampire hunter. I really don't know how much can be done with the Skyrim AI. It's the bit I'm waiting to look at.

Any vampire mod must include some serious disabilities and weaknesses to balance out strengths *in an interesting way*. It's no good if the weakness is "has a lisp". There's no game in simply adding + to everything. The player can already beat hundreds of bad guys in a row without dying, so why do you want to make it even easier? I would like to see a vampire mod with a big list of minus signs, and a few interesting plusses that will require cunning and skill to use. Otherwise, when you become a vampire, just print a message saying "You win Skyrim." :)

Forget the blood. Skyrim makes it very hard to be consistently morally good and treat other people well. Most of the morally evil choices have good results or no consequences. It's a libertine fantasy. I think if you're worried about the game's influence on your children then you're looking in the wrong place. I don't believe you can "fix" this with a mod. (For what it's worth, my 9yo nephew plays, supervised. He just likes hunting dragons using magic.)

I think this one ought to be simple. Please could someone fix the crappy animation transition between dual wield idle and standing/turning/walking? Just get rid of the semi-crouched pose and replace it with the single wield animation, and it should transition smoothly into all the others. See below for a very short video showing the problem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vFwQmciqn0 Thanks!

Yes, but that's exactly what makes "master difficulty" difficult: you either have to be much tougher yourself, or manage the fights better (distractions, followers, movement, etc.). Even on master difficulty, you can . (Even in that fight, you can see one particular NPC takes about 10 point-blank arrows to kill.) I do think "master difficulty" is pretty poor, since it only affects damage and nothing else. It doesn't make NPCs smarter, or more sensitive to noise, or more numerous, better equipped, able to self heal, etc. etc. To simulate the effect you want (both you and enemies going down in few hits) use a *low* difficulty setting, and artificially lower your own health with the console, or take off your armour. I've played the whole game without armour (or alteration spells) for this reason.

Hi everyone. I love to have some improvements and variety to the combat AI of enemies. My biggest complaint about Skyrim is that it's too easy, and that's mainly because once you've figured out how the enemies behave you can very easily outsmart them and control any fight. I'd like to know if improvements are even going to be possible, or if it's all part of the core engine and can't be touched. Does anyone know? I think things could be improved by more variety in the tactics used by NPCs, even if they weren't any smarter as such. RIght now they all act in an aggressive, fight-to-the-death manner. Here are few improvements I'd like to see. Perhaps we could use this thread to brainstorm more. Please note that although I'm sometimes arguing from a point of realism, my goal is to make the game more fun, difficulty, and interesting to play, not more "realistic". Realism isn't a goal, fun is the goal. 1. Fix :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHbF9ynGZV0 If you damage an enemy from sneak, they should be on alert for a long time, and they should alert other people that there's a sneaker around, so that they all begin to search. There's no way they should simply return to standing around waiting to be shot or stabbed. This will force the player to make better use of their first opportunity, and make clean kills from sneak harder. Perhaps this could be counteracted with the "calm" spell or similar, making the illusion spells more significant. At the moment, sneak has a magical effect on the brains of enemies. There needs to be better modelling of the idea that there's an enemy around somewhere. 2. Reaction to dead bodies. Right now it's "I'm going to get whoever did this" and then return to doing nothing. A body of a dead comrade should cause a full alert. . If an NPC encounters a dead body, they should start searching, or go to report it to the boss, or shout for help (and have their shout answered) etc. This will make it necessary to hide bodies or make kills considering who will see them, or force the player to kill or distract someone who's about to discover their handiwork. 3. Stuck enemies. Any time that an NPC is unable to move and unable to do damage to you, it should change tactics. Waaaaay too often I end up beating a boss whose just got stuck on some landscape or furniture and can't hurt me (dragon priests are the worst for this). Only the dumbest of dumb animals should stand on the spot while I shoot it. 4. Enemies who care about their own lives. When you're fighting you're comparing health bars. If yours is dropping faster than theirs, then you're losing the fight, and you change what you're doing (possibly backing off or running away). The combat AI should do something similar. If an NPC is losing a fight, it shouldn't just keep on keeping on, waiting to die. It should back off, go get help, heal itself, make a desperate move, *something*. Again, it's a question of changing tactics and having more variety of tactics. The survival instinct should be *very strong* for everyone, (except daedra for whom banishment is a minor inconvenience.) 5. Factions. There's no way an enemy should be able to magically detect your faction through walls. Say you're in a bandit camp. The bandits will say "is somebody there?" and go on alert if you're nearby, but they ignore each other. How come they're so jumpy? If the sound of footsteps puts them on alert, then they'd be putting each other on alert all the time. They'd have to see you and realize you're not one of them, or react to your behaviour (such as noticing that you're sneaking or have your weapons drawn). What if I wander into Forsworn camp wearing Forsworn gear? Why don't the Stormcloaks or Imperials react to my uniform? Similarly, guards would have to see my face to know I'm a criminal, not just hear my footsteps. These kind of improvements require some modelling of NPC *belief* about what faction you are. There could be a lot of gameplay in that. So, is any of this kind of thing feasible with the kinds of modifications that Skyrim allows?

Your experience of Skyrim seems very different from mine. 1. Enemies hit for double and you hit for half on "master difficulty". That is all that master difficulty means. So if you took that away, there wouldn't be any master difficulty. I'm not sure what you want instead. ( would be nice.) 2. I play on master difficulty, and a lot of enemies do go down in one direct power attack with a warhammer. 3. I already dodge attacks all the time, using actual movement. I'm not keen to have WoW-style "chance to dodge" or "chance to parry" die-roll procs introduced to the game. I'd rather use my own skill. There's already plenty of interest: block-bash to interrupt their power attack (even with a bow), then counterattack, for example. That covers a lot of your "parry and stab". 4. Lightweight bows draw very fast once you have the relevant perk. Heavy bows draw slower, but hit harder. Many enemies do go down in one bow hit from stealth, even on master difficulty. They've done so throughout the game, even when my archery wasn't at 100. The high level draugr are total damage sponges though. 5. Arrow dodging cuts both ways. I find it very useful that *I* can dodge arrows, especially since I'm worth about two arrow hits at level 50. Good timing prevents enemies doing the same to you. I've been a real life archer (though not for some years) and the arrow speed doesn't seem unrealistic to me. But gameplay trumps realism anyhow. All that said, try out the "deadly combat" mod. It has some of the things you want.