JanusForbeare

Kind of a shame that they want to take it out of the Planescape universe. It's such a wonderfully crazy place. I miss you, Nordom! Still, the original was awesome, so I'm optimistic about this. There aren't many video games where you can talk the final boss to death. :D I hope they allow character creation. That was my only real beef with PST.

I'm curious about this. I've never played Minecraft, and I don't know anything about it's community. Why wouldn't it fit in on the Nexus? Please don't get me wrong, I'm not being confrontational - just ignorant and inquisitive. :)

Are we talking globally, in the West, or in cultures like India or the Muslim world? I think it makes a huge difference - it's one thing for a Westerner to say, "We shouldn't have arranged marriages in our country because it clashes with our values/infringes on personal freedoms/whatever," but it's quite different to go around the world imposing a western value system on other nations. In Western countries, I don't think there's a place for it. Regardless of your ethnic or cultural background, when you immigrate to another country, you agree to abide by its laws and code of conduct. Your minority rights should and will be protected (to an extent), but they don't extend to flagrantly breaking the law on the basis of tradition. However, in nations with a longstanding history of arranged marriages, I don't think that it's the place of outsiders to bring about a change in the system - at least not directly. In those countries, arranged marriage is often a fundamental pillar of economic and social systems, and can't simply be removed without threatening the stability of the entire culture. Such instability can range from public discontent, to social ostracism of those involved, to financial ruin, to all-out civil war. If foreigners are responsible for the change, then they will be (rightly) blamed for the consequences, and it will be interpreted as an act of imperialism and/or modern colonialism. However, indirect change can be brought about simply by exposing the citizens of such countries to other social systems and values. This is the case in India, where long-term contact with the West has begun to encourage homegrown resistance to the notion of arranged "pragmatic marriages" (as opposed to romantic marriages). This has triggered a slow evolution of the traditional system, which is infinitely safer, from the point of view of national and social stability. EDIT: I didn't vote, because there is no option for "It depends on the setting". :)

Since they can drown, I'd have to say yes.

I'm usually over on the Skyrim forums, but I thought I'd pop over here to post some news about M&B that put a smile on my face: Apparently Taleworlds is working on a sequel to Mount and Blade called Bannerlord. No juicy details have been released yet, but given the popularity of the franchise so far, it's fair to assume that Bannerlord will have higher production values than its predecessors. Our Turkish friends over at Taleworlds have promised bigger and bloodier battles, as well as "highly requested new features". I don't know what those features are - though I would guess that they include a more detailed world map and questline(s) - but I can't wait to see what they come up with! Anyone else willing to hazard a guess about what sort of new features BL might include?

I can understand your argument, and there are definitely good tips in here for new modders. However, I have to disagree with this point: It's not reasonable to expect 90% of mod authors to create new cells - and if they did, Skyrim would be pretty boring, because most of it would be identical to vanilla. The fact is, sometimes mods are going to collide. Of course you want to reduce the risk of that occurring, but that's no reason to shy away from modding vanilla content. If you run across a cell-based conflict between your mod and someone else's (as I did recently), it can very often be solved by playing around with load order. If it can't, you can always contact the author of the conflicting mod to discuss the problem and ways of circumventing it through a patch or updated version of one/both of your mods. Worst case scenario, players have to make a judgement call about which they want more. You potentially lose downloads if you choose option #3, which I think is motivation enough for authors to attempt one of the other solutions, but if they don't work out, they don't work out. In general, I agree with what you're saying. Mod authors should aim for maximum compatibility. It's just good business, if you want to maximize your downloads/endorsements. However, I think it's ultimately the user's responsibility to keep their own game running, not the mod author's. If you download 200 mods in a single night, you better expect complications. Modding your game is always a gamble, and if you're not willing to lose a save, or feel that you are too far along to roll up a new character, then maybe you should stick to vanilla.

This is from the Steam Forums (Courtesy of SuperBoyOfMeat), but it's worth quoting here as well:

Yeah, true, the days of playing as reptilian drag queens are behind us. And Bethesda thinks they're so avant-garde for allowing same-sex marriages in the game. :P It's funny how much people miss spears. Who'd have thought? I'm actually a little bummed out that they're bringing them back in Dragonborn, I have a joke in my next update about the absence of spears outside of Morrowind. It still kinda works, though, since Solstheim is essentially part of Morrowind now, what with the Dunmer exodus and all.

My pleasure. :) I was a big fan of VORB back in Skyrim (which was similar), and was really happy to see that VadersApp had continued his work in Skyrim. It really adds to the immersion of the game when every NPC's body type is a little different.

There is Realistic Body System, which gives NPCs randomized body types depending on their profession and skills (not the player, though). You usually end up with quite a few overweight merchants and innkeepers, among others. Last time I checked, it only worked on female NPCs, but the short description states that it works for both genders, so it may have been updated since I last played Skyrim.

Nope, not as such. I didn't mod Morrowind extensively (though my first attempts at modding were done in its CS), so I'm not very familiar with some of the work that was done for that game. I'd prefer to stick to canonical references where possible, though admittedly they're few and far between. That's part of what makes it fun, though... there's more room for creativity! I missed the bit about netches in the interview. I'll need to take another look. I skim-read, it's a bad habit.

The readme has him listed under "Solitude", so it's a safe bet he's in the Thalmor Headquarters, not the embassy.

Interesting, thanks for sharing. I don't remember meeting that Dark Elf when I played through the TG questline (though I admit it's been a while). The interview is an intriguing bit of lore... though I suspect it's a little out of date. From what I can gather, it was written as a "teaser" in preparation for the release of TES III. My guess is that some of the subjects being referred to got cut from the final version of the game. TES III was originally intended to take place across all of Morrowind, not just Vvardenfell (you can still find some official maps online that show how cells were to be assigned across the entire province), so it's safe to assume that things like "Malahk-Orcs" inhabited the regions that didn't make it into the finished game. As for the "Sky-Lamps", the description makes them sound an awful lot like Netch. I find the comment about the lifespan of Dunmer as confusing as you do, though. As you say, the survivors of the Red Year don't look so ancient in Skyrim. If we take the Dunmer in the interview at his word, it would certainly put Atvir well past middle-age. For that reason, I choose to believe that he's lying/incorrect. Actually, come to think of it, Occam's Razor would suggest that the whole subject's just been retconned by Bethesda. I rarely say this, but in this instance: screw the lore. :D The old lore, anyways.

It makes me wonder how the rules pertain to posting publicly available information about the internal workings of someone else's mod, though. I agree with DraketheDragon, I wouldn't want people re-posting my intellectual property without my consent, but I wouldn't be as adverse to someone who's patched the mod for their own use sharing information about how they went about it (assuming, of course, that I had been unreachable for a while). It's still a touchy subject, but at least you'd still be getting 100% of the credit/downloads/endorsements for your work.

Greatsword: Good. Rabbits: Evil. 'Nuff said.

Screenshot looks pretty funny, but I absolutely hate it when modders give creatures/NPCs names entirely in caps. I mean, why!? These are grade-school level grammar mistakes. Obviously, flying jack-o-lanterns aren't meant to mesh seamlessly with Skyrim, but the name just sticks out like a sore thumb...

I've had a few bad experiences... Cheap Jeep Thrills: A racing game with zero effort put into it that is clearly nothing more than a feeble effort to sell more Jeeps. Unrealistic physics, wimpy AI drivers, a complete inability to trash your vehicle no matter how hard you try, painfully obvious texture recycling, half-baked sound effects (you'd think Jeep could have at least recorded an actual engine sound for them), this game has it all. I got it free with one of those steering wheel things for the Wii, though, so at least I can rest easy knowing that I didn't actually pay for this piece of garbage. Ultima 8 - Pagan: Once EA got their hands on Origin, the grandaddy of all RPGs died a slow and painful death. This game basically did away with everything that made the Ultima series great. There were no party members, forced linear gameplay, a tiny game world, a weird emphasis on jumping (which has encouraged some former fans of the series to dub it "Super Avatar Brothers"), no NPC portraits, and more bugs than dialogue. Way to go, EA. Spore: Okay, this probably shouldn't be listed among the worst games of all time, but it was a pretty huge let-down for me. After all the hype, I was really expecting some incredibly complex, science-oriented Simlife 2.0. Instead, what I got was a series of four short, mindless mini-games that bore virtually NO resemblance to the evolutionary process they were supposedly inspired by. What's worse, the gameplay in all four stages of evolution was so incredibly different that A) None of them were fully developed, and B) Even if you enjoyed one a little bit, the rest of the game did not resemble it in the least. Eventually I got bored, made a couple of species that looked like certain parts of the human anatomy, led them to their intergalactic demise, and stopped playing. Whoop-dee-doo. I had to make flying space ******s to find the game the least bit amusing.

It actually looks better than the majority of the text I usually read in mods. No spelling mistakes, proper use of grammar, and vocabulary suiting a mystic order of reclusive monks. My only comment is about the first sentence. When you say "draw the Words along the side of their diagrams", what diagrams are you referring to? That's the only point that seems a little unclear.

*Rolls eyes, and ignores Galen forever* @Nakakita: You're right. I mean, the Empire is kind of in disarray after the Great War, but the dissemination of information (read: propaganda) is usually deemed a pretty critical part of state infrastructure. It's strange that it doesn't exist in a more organized form in Skyrim. Of course, LittleOrk has a project on the go that might rectify that, and I'm looking forwards to seeing what he comes up with. I also really miss the Imperial City. Well, more the "city" part than anything else. Urban centres in Skyrim are tiny, and 90% of their quests take place outside the city walls. Not all of us want to spend all our time wandering frozen wastelands; sometimes it's nice to be around other people (even when those people are digital facsimiles with brains built out of two or three simple AI packages - after all, there are people in real life who aren't much better off ;)). I'm really nostalgic about IC, Vivec, and Mournhold... it's kind of a bummer that the next DLC is taking us to yet another land of ice and snow.

As Dark0ne (site owner) said: If you can't afford the games you want to play, that's unfortunate. But if you (hypothetically, of course) pirate the games, that's the same as walking into EB Games and stealing a hardcopy. If you were caught doing that, would you really offer up the excuse, "Well, I can't afford to pay for it, and since the developers have lots of money, I figured it was okay"? That doesn't even fly in court for starving people stealing loaves of bread, it certainly wouldn't fly for someone stealing what is (let's face it) a luxury product. Since time immemorial, when honest people wanted something they couldn't afford, they did one of two things: 1) Saved up for it, or 2) Went without. I don't see why it should be any different today. There's also the issue of the site owners being liable for the activities of their users. This pertains more to people who upload mods that are in violation of copyright, but it's a slippery slope that can easily begin with turning a blind eye to software pirates. No one wants the Nexus to go the way of Megaupload, and so the site owners continue to enforce their zero-tolerance policy towards pirates. I don't think that's a bad thing. EDIT: Oh god, don't get me started. Someday, that's going to be my battle-cry as I charge into Beth's offices at the front of a horde of angry geeks.

You do realize that you just asked me to continue this pointless debate, then denied that you were responsible for derailing the thread?

You can find a list of the staff here.

There's really no point in debating this with you, because you're clearly set in your ways, presenting false information and opinion as fact, and are just repeating the same argument over and over again rather than actually making an attempt to rebut valid points. How about, rather than derailing the thread with your minority opinion, you go find somewhere else to post, and we all get back to discussing Oblivion, which is what this thread is supposed to be about in the first place?

He`ll be less powerful in the next update. I`m still working at balancing him out; it`s not easy, though, as different players play at different difficulty settings, and further modify the difficulty of their game through mods that add more creatures, make them tougher, change the nature of combat, etc.

Now you're just splitting hairs. There was more role-playing in that game than there has been in most TES games, and if you'd played it you'd definitely classify it as an RPG. Besides, as I said before, genres aren't hard-and-fast categories, they're broad, fluid attempts at defining widely-varied items. -As I've already stated, Hitchiker's Guide, among other text-based games of that era -Pretty much every JRPG ever made -The Legend of Zelda (you'll probably point to the little hearts as "statistics" - funny that your definition of stats is so open to interpretation, but your definition of RPG is so firmly entrenched) -Harvest Moon -Paper Mario To name a few. Why are you so desperate to prove this point? You do realize that regardless of what you say, some people are going to disagree with you. Just because someone has a different opinion than you doesn't make them wrong, nor does it mean that your own point of view is invalid. It points to the fact that (as I'm now saying for the third time) gaming genres are not possible to definitively define. It's like artistic genres; some paintings are obviously intended to be abstract, while others are obviously intended to be surreal, but many artists' work could be defined as either, or both. The human capacity for artistic expression is too great and varied to be contained within neat little categories, and games are just another form of art.