LE Looking for a team to create better Skyrim

[BetterSkyrimProject]

Good day, fellow modders!

 

Skyrim may be named "the best game ever" by some, but we all know that it can't be further away from the truth. Skyrim is not a good game - believe me, I have some experience in game industry. It's dull, unfinished, imbalanced, underdeveloped, plain and crude game. If you don't agree with me, have a look at Skyrim Nexus - people are trying to change each and every aspect of the game.

 

If it's such a bad game, why bother doing anything at all then? The answer is simple - there is a possibility to make this game great. We already have all we need, so we won't be making a game from scratch. We have powerful tools in our disposal and the Nexus as a proof that anything can be done. And we have the amazingness of the TES universe.

 

All we need to do is to make Skyrim better. Again, a lot of people tried - we tried - but we all have the same problem. One is changing lips, another is adding bears, but their amazing work is either not compatible at all, or look strange if we install both. The lack of communication between modders makes Skyrim look like Frankenstein - all quilted together, patch worked and unstable. I don't want us to make another abomination - I want us to do an amazing project, which will make Bethesda guys cry and allow gamers to enjoy Skyrim more, much more.

 

I know that this may sound quite ambitious. But I handled quite a few ambitious projects and can ensure you of my reliable skills in managing other people's work and letting them stay focused. As I told, I worked in the game industry for quite some time and have the vision and knowledge "how to do it right". To make this a real new beginning, I created this account today and prefer to stay anonymous for the sake of clear judgment. The only thing I lack is technical skills - to put it simply, I can't make mods. That's why I rely on you.

 

I see the process of enhancing Skyrim divided into three main categories:

 

- Visual likeability

 

Skyrim still looks good, but graphics are not the main problem here. We need to make color palette more engaging and realistic, more dynamic. Also, vanilla faces and bodies are just atrocious - and don't even get me started on hair and clothes. In-game items look like they origin from different games - no cohesion whatsoever. The cities are planned by people who never saw actual cities, and dungeons are simply generic. Plants, buildings, exterior, interior, NPC - anything can be made much more visually appealing. And I have a plan how to do it. I just need somebody to do it.

 

- In-game depth

 

This is a major setback of the game. It's just plain. There is nothing there, "up onto that hill". Taverns are empty, towns are dead, guilds are just a mockery. Even the dragons, the civil war are nothing but several lines in dialogues. And I don't even bother to mention any portion of realism and lore. There are no such things in Skyrim, and this makes me sad, because there should be.

 

- Enhanced gameplay

 

The game asks us to do two things - to do (blah) quests and to explore (huh) dungeons. And we usually do it both at the same time. That's all. You can never be a Jarl, beggar of farmer. You cannot plan murders, save lives, protect your ideals and burn villages to ashes. You can't even be a mage with this stump of the College of Winterhold. You can't have meaningful relations or enjoy your life as a wealthy citizen or a national hero. We should be able to do this and much more. We should enjoy the game to its fullest. It's not too late.

 

As you can see, all three categories are linked together. But, with bits of proper management, we can do it right away and all at the same time. And I have some grand idea how to make you and I satisfied with the result... But enough with this.

 

If you are interested, e-mail me: [email protected]

 

You can also send me a private message or post a reply here.

 

Please, mention what you are good at and what you would like to work on and/or any information you find worth mentioning. The more people reply, the sooner we all can enjoy better Skyrim!

 

Together we can achieve anything.

 

Best wishes,

 

Alex

 

[ethernalhero]

Good luck mate, I really do agree with you, now that you mention every thing here it really makes you think how much there isn't in Skyrim, and I've got a feeling that if you do finish what your saying, it could turn out very well. Once again, good luck. ;]

[Petemichaelbabicki]

Troll post? This must be a troll post surely? I'll bite non the less.

 

I don't know who said Skyrim was the best game ever, but regardless weather it is or isn't; it's still a fantastic and addictive game that I've clocked more hours on than any other game in my extensive Steam library. Skyrim is definitely one of the best games out there and the amount of work that Bethesda put into this seems far under appreciated here in your post; it's an entire land filled with hundreds of people to interact with, hundreds of quests and endless possibilities (one of the reasons there are so many let's plays with thousands of views out there, each play through is different).

 

I understand people have come to think of Skyrim as bland and boring, the same reason that I've come to find World of Warcraft boring, I've simply played it to death. Do anything enough and you'll get bored of it.

 

The reason you find that Skyrim has such an active and talented modding community is because of two reasons;

1. The game is actually worth modding. It has a lot of potential and people are just trying to make it better (no game is perfect, and never will be).
2. Bethesda were good enough to supply us with a versatile and useful Creation Kit, that is far better than a lot of tools out there (I've used CryEngine SDK, UnrealKit UDK, RedKit, a host of different Neverwinter editors and a load more far simpler editors, and the Creation Kit is a great tool, regardless of it's flaws).

Now I'll address your concerns and see if I can help out with some of the things you're asking.. and I do understand that you'd like to consolidate all of your ideas and plans into a single mod, but there really isn't much need; everyone has different opinions on what looks good, feels right and what good game-play is, hence why we have so much choice (I for one hate those anime style outfits and body mods with huge knockers, but I understand there is a big audience for that, and a lot of people would rather play with those mods installed; who are we to tell them they're playing the wrong way?)

 

Visuals

 

You mention that the colour pallet isn't to your liking or isn't realistic enough? We have a huge list of ENB's, lighting and climate mods to choose from; as well as texture mods and so on; everyone can pick and chose how they want to play their game, instead of being limited to what you personally think is 'good'. I for one love the Wilds and Bleak ENB's, but there are people that think they're too colorful, or too dark. It's all down to personal preference.

 

I won't link any ENB's here, because there's simply too many, but you can find them on the Nexus easy enough.

 

"The cities are planned by people who never saw actual cities"

 

..and being as this world is not our own, neither have you. It's a medieval setting back in a world far older than ours.. and if you go back to early demographics you'll notice the population of the world was far, far less than it is now (more people live in London alone now, than there was in the whole of Great Britain back then).. so these 'Cities' as you call them aren't far from what you'd have expected back then; small communities not connected by rail, roads or any other means. Obviously there was a few more people in your average town than 20-30, but adding generic people for the sake of it won't improve game-play (unless you plan on voicing them and adding houses for them; seeing as everyone else in Skyrim has their own house, bed or job.)

 

The fact that you're questioning the research that Bethesda would have done seems very naive.

 

I'm all for adding more people, but it has to be done right, which means skilled voice actors, NPC characters with their own homes, agendas, families, jobs and lifestyles, which is a far bigger job than you might think. Still, good-luck anyway.

 

Game-play and Depth

 

I'll agree with the towns being rather empty, just like I did in my previous statements. I'll also agree that the Dragon battles are flawed and a bit of a joke, but there are mods out there that increase town populations and another out there that makes Dragon combat 'better', though it's not something that's really bothered me too much. There are complete combat overhauls out there too.

 

"the civil war are nothing but several lines in dialogues"

 

This comment was like nails on a chalkboard to me and one of the reason I bit and had to reply to this. I've helped several quest mods, made quest mods of my own and spent a lot of time with quests and dialogue.. and the amount of Dialogue for the civil war is.. astonishing. There are thousands and thousand of line of dialogue in this game by not only skilled voice actors, but some big names too, and they've done so much great work. Jump into the Creation Kit; click the all tab and type 'CW' and tell me again there's only several lines of CW dialogue.

 

As for realism.. are we honestly talking about realism in a world with Dragons, 30 odd gods, walking copses, magic, giants, time travel, vampires and werewolves? I understand there must be a basis for some realism in there, but I don't really know what you mean by lack of realism? Lack of aging? People don't go to the toilet? A single arrow doesn't kill you? Just elaborate on this point please and maybe I'll agree with you. In which case, the reason a lot of these things haven't been implemented is either because it doesn't add anything to the game-play or because it would make game-play worse, rather than better (coming from a gaming background, I'm sure you're aware of this; it's the same reason the people who made Call of Duty didn't have players guns jam on them on a regular basis like they do in real life.. or have single bullet wounds put you down for good, weather they kill you or not, you'll certainly be out of action. Sometime realism ruins the plot narrative).

 

Enhanced Gameplay

 

I actually agree with a lot of these points. You should be able to take over as a Jarl and do Fable 3-esque things such as manage taxes, improve the town and so on, so I'll give you a +1 for that. I'd even be willing to script that for you and join your team. Beggar and Farmer game-play would be fun for the best part of an hour tops, but it lacks depth, unless you plan on making a full blown Harvest Moon system.. and.. good-luck with that.

 

I agree with you that Skyrim is not a perfect game, and that some of your ideas are good ones, but a lot of the things you have mentioned have already been modded for. You say skin textures, armors and bodies don't look right? There's a tonne of mods for all of those, take your pick. I also understand you'd rather have one 'super mod' rather than 20 mods made by different people; it's just not going to happen. You can come back at me when this mod is made and rub egg in my face if you like, but I'm pretty sure I'm safe.

 

I'm glad there are people out there as enthusiastic as you are and willing to make these projects, but I've seen too many topics like this fall to bits. There's too much work involved; you're talking about doing things that would take a company like Bethesda months, let alone a bunch of amateur modders with busy lives.

 

Start small, think small; get one of those many things you mentioned done and present it to us here to show your commitment and you'll attract a lot more attention. I'll even help myself, as I am doing with a lot of projects on here. If you want help with the Jarl project then I'm in. I'll mail you later with all the mods I've completed and helped with and my skills.

 

Good-luck!

[FortuneQuacker]

Now that Bethesda has pretty much committed to not developing any more TES games, any time soon. Maybe it would be more appropriate to try and develop a mod that covers a different part of Tamriel. I for one would jump head-over-heals into a 'Black- Marsh' or 'Valenwood' or even a revamp of 'Cyrodil' using all the new resources from the Skyrim world. That would be a project worthy of a team of talented modders.

[BetterSkyrimProject]

Thanks for the replys, people. It didn't go as I expected it to go (my mailbox isn't full of eager modders yet), but this is a start. :)

 

Good luck mate, I really do agree with you, now that you mention every thing here it really makes you think how much there isn't in Skyrim, and I've got a feeling that if you do finish what your saying, it could turn out very well. Once again, good luck. ;]

 

Thank you, that's the point - there are so many things missing in Skyrim that it's actually dissapointing for me to play. Really. I feel sad that my playhours go nowhere, and there is nothing I can expect from the game, even if I advance further and further. If we tweak it, it could really be much-much better.

 

 

Troll post? This must be a troll post surely? I'll bite non the less.

 

...

 

Good-luck!

 

That's a great reply, thank you for making it. I'll try to address to everything you wrote. And thank you for your support. I'd love to have some help with this, but I don't want to abandon the idea of making this project real. But I'd be happy to discuss this Jarl idea - I have bits of concept already. Please, do mail me and we can discuss it through. :)

 

It's obviously not a troll post. :) And I know that Skyrim is this massive game that took great effort to create. It is huge, it is enourmous - but quantity surely doesn't mean quality. Back in my day I played Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion. And with each respective title, Bethesda created much more "popular", but much less intertaining games. It is understandable - this is a common trend in the game industry, and it is interconnected with technological advance (better graphics - need more time to implement different ideas - less ideas in the final product).

 

Still, gameplay-wise Bethesda has been rolling downhill with each incarnation of TES series. I can prove it, but it will be a lot of work to do, so I just put it simply. In Morrowind you felt that there is an adventure waiting by this corner. In Oblivion you managed to capture this feeling sometimes. In Skyrim it is nowhere to be find. It may sound strange, but this feeling is a prior indicator of any good game which deals with advantures and explorations. I know that Skyrim is still the best game of its genre - but it doesn't make it a good game. With all the effort they undoubtedly put into it - if you "scratch" it, you'll that there is nothing underneath. Examples will follow.

 

You are totally right that this game has a lot of potential and we have powerful tools to work with. This is exactly my point, as I wrote above. If we take these tools and imply our fantasy and good knowledge of game mechanics and esthetics, we can make Skyrim much more better than it is now. Now, cornerning the variaty of opinions and tastes and the issue of "there is no ring to rule them all" - there is. It is called cohesion. You can enjoy your anime, but you know that there is no place for it in this game. People may want to make their characters look like pimps and hustlers, but they know that they are doing for the purpose of fun solemly. They sure do not expect their heroines with huge breasts in two tiny pieces of clothing to be anything but this. And what I propose is a development of the ideas already existing there.

 

Here is example one. Does anyone enjoyed the in-game races' vanilla appearance? Human races are just ugly, beast ones are plain and elves... My God, elves are just abominations. I see what Bethesda tried to do here - they wanted them to look like an "alien" race, meaning that they are not pretty in the eyes of humans. Well, they surely succeeded in that. But in the terms of gameplay it is just painful to play Dunmer or High Elf, because one can't relate to them. They have nothing likeable in them, along with other races.

 

I'm not saying that all people of Skyrim should have angel-faces and look like every boy and girl's fantasy come alive. But they should be more attractive, that is for sure. The first thing to do is to understand racial differences between humans and elves and beastly races. Humans are simple - we have plenty of examples of human races. Agronians and Khajiits should look more human-like. They now look too alien and out of place, if you really give it a thought. Among some variants I'd pick these ones:

 

See? Sad kitten from vanilla - and here is so much better cat-human than this. And for the Argonians I'd go with this. Both examples have strong human resemblence, but still look beastly and unique. In previous games Bethesda really didn't care much about the continuity of beast races representation - so why should we? And all the new races out there on Nexus prove that this can be done.

 

Then we need to rely on lore to see how elf and human races developed through time. In the lore, for instance, Dark Elves were once a part of High Elves, but they later went isolated and were transformed by Azura's curse (or maybe they just evolved naturally under new circumstances). This should leave an impact on them, strong enough for other elf races not to rely to them anymore (as in lore), but still with the resemblance to the elfkind.

 

I can go on, but I think that the point is clear.

 

Once again, thank you for trying to bring several mods to my attention. But, as I said - there are many great mods out where, but they usually do not work together properly. It looks like patch-working, and I am looking for the whole garment.

 

Color palette. Second example. It's not about shadows or textures or tastes. It's about additional tones in the palette. Colors should look like more dynamic, there should be more tones. It's hard to explain. Here is the most pretty picture of Skyrim scenery. And here is the dullest real-life scenery. It's both whitish and foggy, but just notice the grass color - it's much deeper, not brighter, but deeper. Skyrim color palette is washed out, and that's the problem. There is nothing exciting about "washed-out". People tend not to settle in such places. Players do not enjoy such places. It makes game - quite naturally - look dull. That's the issue.

 

Cities. Third example. You definitely underestimate my intelligence. :) I know that there were no railroads back in good old Medieval times, and there were far less people living in cities or elsewhere, thanks. Let's have look at Whiterun. Can anyone explain why Dragonsreach is located up there and is not surronded by other houses? It's natural for medieval cities to grow around the significant place - castle or marketplace. OK, in this case the castle was built later - the center was Jorrvaskr. But again, it's on the ourskirts of the city. The center is Gildergreem for some reason, but it was planted not so long ago. OK, I agree - let it be. But for the sake of realism and city development logic, there must be houses around Jorrvaskr (downhill), up to the Hall of Dead and left to Battle-Born's. Maybe even outside city walls. Anyhow, vanilla Whiterun is just a mere village, and I don't even want to start covering the point that this is, by its historical and geographical function, the trade center of Skyrim. Really? With five stalls and four shops? And for "skilled voice actors, NPC characters with their own homes, agendas, families, jobs and lifestyles" - you must be kidding. Do show me any NPC in game, who has an agenda or a lifestyle. In GTA, for instance, people have nothing - they are there just for the bits of realism. But they do their "job" - they make you believe that you are in a living-breathing city.

 

Realism. Example four. You are telling me that you felt the impact of the Civil war. Really? Ok, NPC have different lines of dialogue when you are in different cities. There are several random convoys on the empty roads. And there are several camps in the outskirts. That's all. If we are talking about realism, we are not talking about "real-life realism". We are talking about what make us believe that this is real - the Civil war is real. The cities are real. The roads are used not only by our hero. Lives are shattered, world outside city walls is dangerous. The borders of the Hold are patroled. There are battles here and there. There is propaganda, and not just some lame bard singing in a half-empty tavern. We can do all this. And then you can truly feel the war. That's my point.

 

I for one would jump head-over-heals into a 'Black- Marsh' or 'Valenwood' or even a revamp of 'Cyrodil' using all the new resources from the Skyrim world. That would be a project worthy of a team of talented modders.

 

Oh, that's the next step, for sure. But it's very ambitious, still, because it really need a lot of work. What I propose is tweaking, and you are talking about creation from scratch. I've been there - it was hard, to say the least. :)

[Petemichaelbabicki]

I'm actually rather taken back by your post and you've answered a lot of my questions respectfully, and didn't snap like many people do on these forums. I'm glad you took my post as constructive criticism, rather than just plain criticism.

 

Rather than beating a dead horse, I'll skip right to the point that still bothers me about this project; the 'one big project' idea. I understand and actually completely agree with you that it sometimes feels 'patchwork' using so many different mods. I really do love the sound of this mod and I agree that if done right this could be an amazing project, but what concerns me is the amount and time people have already spend on individual areas of Skyrim.

 

I think a team of people could make an all around better game, but their graphics will never come close to that of those people who have spent years improving ENB's, constantly tweaking them.. better combat than those combat mods that have been around forever and have had teams updating them on a regular basis.. or a better UI than SkyUI that has had thousands of hours of man power poured into it.

 

I believe you can make a better Skyrim, but I think each area of your mod could have already been done by 'patchworking' as you put it.. and if you're very careful about what mods you patch together, you can actually make the game you're talking about.

 

..but still, I can see where you're coming from. Things get messy and you don't know which mods will be discontinued and which mods will cause your game to crash. At least with your idea you're getting one team, one mod and no issues. Probably the sole reason I'm interested and paid this thread any head to begin with.

 

I'm happy to see you know your lore. It made me smile when you mentioned Jorrvaskr being the center of Whiterun; I'm a bit of a lore nut myself and was going to jump in with that before you mentioned it. What I will say is that Skyrim (and Tamriel for that matter) is a place of war; civil war, war against Daedra and wars against other races. A lot of these 'towns' would have been subject to war and knocked down, burnt or rebuilt over time, so their placement may have changed due to those things? I doubt it really matters.

 

Agendas

 

This is rather funny, because I was just talking about this in another project. It's all about the packages, if you look at NPC packages at the minute, each character has things they do at certain hours, on certain days and certain months, which is somewhat wasted, because the player won't ever sit around or follow these NPC's to find out that what they're doing is more interesting than it appears.. and having monthly packages is just plain stupid.. nobody playing Skyrim would ever notice that Ysolda visits Solitude on the 20th of Frostfall,so why include it?

 

That all begin said, I do feel that there is room for improvement on Packages and Idle Markers.. and as I said in the other topic about this; I'd love to get involved in improving this.

 

I'm skeptical about all this, but only because it's so broad and because you're trying to outdo too many other modders on things they've solely focused on for months or even years. It's kind of like saying 'I'm going to be the best athlete!' .. you might have a chance at becoming the best 100m runner, the best swimmer or the strongest weight lifter, but there's no chance you'll clear the board through-out.

 

It's an exciting idea though, and you know.. what have you got to lose? I'll lend a hand if I can. I know the CK inside out, so if you need any help with any of it's functions; packages, quests, objects, weather, climates, papyrus or scripting, send me mail and I'll get back to you ASAP.