Taramafor

Sod it. I'll just quote myself from the other thread.

Ehhh, I'll just quote what I said in another thread. I don't feel like typing up another wall about it.

I went with the top answer. It's Bethesda trying to charge money for content that is basically mods. Again. When I buy a game I buy "the game". And if I have it for 5 years I expect to have the full content at that point. Not something released with yet another price tag slapped on. Survival might be free for now, but it's going to cost £15 later. And later content put in Skyrim likely won't have the "Buy now for free" thing. And mods have done it better. Which adds further insult to injury. The ONLY time this doesn't apply is when the content is on a large scale. New maps, multiple units and factions spread out. New story content. A MULTIPLE number of things that enhance the gameplay. If we give in to paying for survival now it's going to risk having to Beth charge for horse armor later. Bethesda had their chance and they messed up. And here I see a over 5 year old game getting an additional price tag slapped on. Yes the company wants money for other games. No that doesn't mean THIS game gets away with being paid through the nose for. Especially when mods have already done it. The only real change is the debuffs (since frostfall and needs and requirements were clearly pasted. Not a bad thing in and of itself), but that's a simple enough thing to do. And certainty shouldn't have taken over 5 years to do it. Now if it was a donation system I wouldn't mind at all. Anything from creation club could then be paid for due to the content alone. In other words if there's a small donation for the current content it could be a hint to the makers that more things need to be added in. And if there's a large donation (and this can be well over an asking price) it could be a sign that it's doing something right. Either way it's a sign that there's some form of feedback to be had. You simply do not get that with fixed prices. I bet Bethesda would be actually getting money from creation club easily if they implemented a donation funded system. But they are once again trying to force "mod content" on the players. It started with Oblivion horse armor. It's continued in Fallout 4 (though I don't know the history with creation club with Fallout 4) and it's continued into survival with Skyrim. There's no "early days" about it. It's been going on for years as it is. At least they're no longer trying to charge people for mods other people made. To quote what I said earlier, if modders do good work I would encourage donations to the mod makers. I'm quote proud of campfire myself. Love my immersion. Going to point out that immersive things like this are lacking in survival in Skyrim. I think that says it all.

I run my mods through modO. Had a hiccup with sky UI trying to run frostfall and survival but I just unticked then reticked the campfire mod. SKSE, Sky UI and Campfire with survival beta all work fine with no problems or having to copy and paste anything through modO. Just need to run the SKSE.exe. Only Frostfall fails to run with survival. but that's a conflict between the mod itself and survival (likely due to the heat stats or something).

Let's think about this for a moment. We have a measly timed conjuration spell of "Summon familiar". But there's one thing the first Neverwinter Nights game did very well that Skyrim doesn't even try with when it comes to proper familiars. What do I mean by "proper" familiar? Well a familiar is a summoned creature that is tied with the spell caster in a more permanent manner then a nor conjured creature is. It's a companion. What's more they tend to come in a variety of forms. Normally one, but I suppose it could be possible to have multiple spells to allow for multiple species. Though only one at once for balance purposes of course (despite not being timed summons it would be possible to unsummon them). Now let's look at Skyrim's familiar. It's... a ghost wolf. Not only is it a lazy copy and paste of a ghost texture, they went with a WOLF. It could have been any number of other things. A very small talking dragon that likes riddles. A hellhound blazing with fire. A badger. Even a spider would have been more outside the box. But nope, we get a wolf. Only when we see the undead horse in it's more solid state do we get to really see what a proper familiar looks like. A summoned animal/creature that does not simply disappear after some time. So I can at least give some credit there. Even if they did kind of go the easy route with picking a horse. The drawback there however is that it is tied into the Soul Cain alone. So we have one decent familiar in the game. That undead horse. I kind of forgot the name (I remember it begins with an A though). Thing is, we can't do much with it. Yes, we can ride it. But how can we interact with it? How can we interact with that ghost wolf? Or any other animal/creature? Well, we have yet another example in Skyrim itself in a way. Balbus, the talking dog. Imagine having a creature follow you around all the time that was like that. But a little less up your butt and able to be told to put in some distance when you're trying to do things like cast a ward spell at the mages school. Balbus is a good example of what a familiar can be like. He talks with you, even if what is said is a little limited. You can tell him to stop following you (the equivilent of unsummoning him) or to follow you around. Until the quest is done at least. Yet here we are also restricted. He provides no positive effects for the player beyond being a distraction and he goes away forevermore once the quest is done. Balbus is flawed then. But can this be improved? Not with Balbus but with animals/creatures on a whole. To this end I got to thinking about the first Neverwinter Night's game. Where you can summon a number of familiars and interact with them in different ways. Though it was all in text form. This becomes more restrictive with Skyrim because it means we need to see how we're interacting with them. Which means more work with animations. But I do remember a talking fairy dragon in Neverwinter Nights and it would talk to me. When it wanted to play a riddle game the riddle was different more often then not. It's a limited number of about 10 riddles chosen at random, but it was different and varied. Another familiar might be a giant spider that might give you a silk robe it made if you play with it enough (this is actually seen in Neverwinter Night's 2. though the spider itself isn't a familiar. You can have a familiar one in NW1 though). Skyrim gets some things right, but I think it also gets some things wrong. Things that Morrowind did. Things that other RPG games did. And that's explaining what is happening through text as much as what is shown on the screen and with spoken words. That doesn't mean I don't want to see and hear what's going on. It simply means some "text description" could go a long way with enhancing the game. The player noticing a heirloom on an NPC for example. Without some way to clue the player in with text, you're limiting yourself to having another NPC tell or show you this. And just being told with a quest marker gets old fast. But first let's go with what we know in the game. The seeing and the hearing. To begin with how can we get a familiar in the game at all that is a more permanent and interactive presence? First we'd need to be able to summon a multiple number of creatures (hopefully more solid and less ghost like) without them fading away after time. Ok, that's done. Now what? Step 1: Make the familiar useful when it's present. Either in fights or useful in some other game mechanic way. Step 2: Interacting with the familiar itself. What can we do with it? How does it entertain us when we're sitting at a tent and making a campfire? Step 1 is easy enough. Buffs and debuffs. When the familiar is present it has positive and negative effects. Depending on the type it could help us to detect/avoid traps. Make a defensive animation as you near an enemy you have yet to see (better hearing, basically). give higher spell resistance or better spell damage. a debuff can be along the lines of a loss of max health for a while when the familiar dies (like with cold in survival). Or half your health being taken away. With additional magika and stamina effects. Would tie in nicely with survival. This would encourage players to look after their "pets". Which can of course be told to keep back from fights as well as engage at will. so that's step 1 covered. How do we cover step 2 then? well we'd probably need descriptive text in dialogue menus giving us choices as to what to do with them for a start. From here we could tell them to go and find some ingredients for alchemy. Both useful and interactive. If it's a canine (dog, wolf, hellhound. Hellhound could basically be deathhound on fire) or feline (panther, house cat, Sabertooth cat) it could roll over and the as the player rubs it belly. Though in the case of the hellhound maybe instead of rolling over it just snorts some smoke at you half the time if it isn't in the mood. If the familiar talks, like with the fairy dragon from Neverwinter NIghts 1, this opens up some more possibilities. Such as the randomised riddles. Maybe it will circle your head and then land next to you when you click on "Play with" or something. A badger might crawl up your leg, onto your shoulder and then hop off. Hmm, a hellhound could probably curl up in a campfire now that I think about it. That at least is simple enough on its own. This follows the lines of what followers do already with the amazing follower tweaks mod. It would do it naturally on its own. Could be more likely to be near a fire nearby too (say at an inn). If a familiar is an cold/ice type then they could be less likely to be near a fire. All of these things add to the immersion. Sarina herself wears a hood outside. The things each one does should be different and varied. Both outside of combat as well as in it. Basically summon a none timed creature (perhaps change the summon familiar spell to give options as to what type along with unsummon). Have it give buffs when alive and debuffs for a while when it dies (say a day or two. Or otherwise sudden harsh penalties). Have it be interactive when not in combat and able to be both ordered around (distance. Engage at will or keep back and don't fight) and played with. It basically comes down with the playing with them thing. That's probably going to be the tricky part. Having multiple species helps in that regard. A badger would not do the same things as a hellhound for example. More variation.

Sigh. And what you need to realise is that no matter how much someone wants to do that they simply might not have the ability. I'm working on my own (none Skyrim) project but I don't consider it the "bestest idea eveh". In fact I'm going out of my way to have others give me ideas which I might then add in because they're good ideas. I also tried to get into webcoding, but this combined with everything I needed to do was simply too much at once. And now I know someone ELSE that has a better head for code and can do that. I know enough to be able to tell them where the code needs to go. But THEY are the one putting in the code. And that's what a mod is like. Some people are the ideas guy that does the writing. Others are the ones putting in the content itself. You're basically telling everyone to "Do it on your own". Neglecting the fact that perhaps, just perhaps someone will see an idea on this very sub forum and might just think "Oh, maybe I want to work on that." Maybe they won't just work on that, but it could be something to add in their already existing project if nothing else. Depending on how big or small it is. Or wherever someone finds an idea interesting enough to put their own personal project aside because they might find another, unconsidered idea even more interesting then what they didn't think off. By your logic we may as well not bother with sharing ideas at all and just do it all on our own. Which is exactly how games came to exist in the first place. People share ideas. They either work together or take another persons ideas and add it into their project. This isn't just how mods are made. It's how games themselves are made. Mods don't just magically get made with one persons ideas. A multiple number of people give ideas for something to exist in the first place. Then something is made and more ideas are added on after that. In the case of the former it's formulating something to be added in to begin with. Tents. Campfires. Hunger. That kind of thing. In the case of the later it's more feedback based. What kind of tent. What can campfires do. How hungry you get over time. Either way it all revolves around ideas. Not just from the person making the mod (or game. Or even book or film or even a RL event) but from other people as well.