What do you want in a new overhaul mod?

[Mattiewagg]

Getting away from hp is a great idea! I love games like Dwarf Fortress that do it. Unfortunately, such a dramatic change to the game system is far beyond the scope of this mod. Sorry!

 

Instadeath will be avoided, I'm happy to say.

 

The idea of people being wounded and falling down instead of immediately expiring is really interesting. I'm going to put that into our stretch goals and see how feasible it is. But you should know that arrows really are very deadly. You can read from this account that they were often more likely to kill you in the 18th century than gunshot wounds. Of course, that's if you're not wearing armor. Armor in this mod (I really should come up with a name) will protect you from arrows very well, as you can see on this page of the design document (scroll down to the bottom).

 

Animations are not really my skillset, but adding them would certainly be a great way to increase verisimilitude. I'll add that to the stretch goals list.

Animations often require FNIS. And they're very, very difficult and time-consuming I'm afraid to say.

[Arrogancy]

Kestrelius, I'm not sure why exactly it's buggy - it may just be bad implementation on the author's part. The mod in question is "Battle Fatigue and Injuries." The really severe bug is that after dying and reloading (or sometimes just reloading) it crashes the game. I think what happens is that there is some script which is trying to apply an injury to your character and discovers that your character isn't the character it was pointing to (because a reload happened). It may be more of a problem with lots of scripts running, and BFI not failing gracefully or something. Anyway, I guess I can put that as a stretch - maybe somebody on the team can find some better way to implement it.

 

Matthiaswagg - noted. I'll put it on the stretch stretch goal list. Unless I find an animator willing to take it on.

[Kestrellius]

Hm...alright, yeah. What is it with modded animations always being insanely difficult to do, regardless of the game?

[Mattiewagg]

Hm...alright, yeah. What is it with modded animations always being insanely difficult to do, regardless of the game?

Because it's an incredibly difficult thing to do. Think about an animated movie - every single frame has to be animated carefully. I'm no expert on animations, but to make it smooth and good looking, you have to do something similar. Aside from that you need the skill to actual manipulate it.

 

A lot of animations on the Nexus tend to be dances.

[Grogthenailer]

Hi Arrogancy, I looked at your spreadsheet, read this thread and have to say I am excited about the possibility of a new Overhaul in the works. It is sorely needed and I am behind you 100%. There is really only two Overhauls (Skyre and Requiem) and a new one has not been released in years, I like your vision of what you want. There is definitely room for this and actually I think it is really needed. This is a great idea and it is due. I am late to the conversation here but just saw this and knew I had to respond. There will and would be a lot of interest in this and besides that the journey to make it come to life is most of the fun right ?

 

I have spent countless hours trying every mod under the sun, be it Requeim, Skyre or any mod. Seeing what meshes and does not. Lots of mods can be put together for piecemeal overhauls but it is not the same, a new overhaul is definitely the way to go. I like to tweak and see how A works with B all in the pursuit of the best Skyrim I can have. I have zero skills making mods but I have a persistent need to tweak. At any rate here are some ideas for the overhaul that I would like. This will be generalized as I think that’s what you want in this thread, drilling down into details is something that can done be as well but I think you are asking just our general impressions of what we want to see in an overhaul.

 

Ok so:

 

Deleveled enemies or partly? Deleveled is good if you have some direction, (can’t accept certain questions or know to stay in an area or avoid others until stronger) I hate banging my head against a wall when not having any sense of what I can take on or not (and a waste of time)

 

You could also build your overhaul to go well with other mods ( Immersion) Frostfalla – Ineed, Wet and Cold so it takes away the hassle to build one yourself. Some mods you can just incorporate and ask to install with yours) Most do any way. Find your top mods you want to have in this overhaul perhaps and have them be compatible out of the box to save time.

 

Combat: I prefer tough but fair. I prefer Requiems combat over Skyre. I prefer a lean towards more hardcore combat but not ridiculous hardcore that is fun breaking. I will just go through some trees quickly (at work right now so rushing this a bit)

 

Archery: I would like to see 3 branches – Force - Speed - Accuracy

 

Force: The amount of damage done on hit, force of the blow

 

Speed: The speed you draw an arrow (or load xbow). The speed you move with drawn bow, distance arrow flies

 

Accuracy – how accurate you aim is...starting out would cause lots of sway and/or your recticle changes in size so you shot anywhere within that reciticle, think of modern shooters and their reciticles

 

Bocking: 3 branches – Defense – Offense – Fitness

 

Defense branch handles the defensive aspects of the shield, how much it mitigates, how much stam used, versuses arrows – heavy weapons – light weapons - magic

 

Offense – Using shield as weapon – bashing – reflection – drop weapons – kill shot at 20% etc

 

Just some ideas, having a short period of time to type so have to go for now. I really hope you move forward with your plans dude. Will check this thread later tonight at home

[Mattiewagg]

Hi Arrogancy, I looked at your spreadsheet, read this thread and have to say I am excited about the possibility of a new Overhaul in the works. It is sorely needed and I am behind you 100%. There is really only two Overhauls (Skyre and Requiem) and a new one has not been released in years, I like your vision of what you want. There is definitely room for this and actually I think it is really needed. This is a great idea and it is due. I am late to the conversation here but just saw this and knew I had to respond. There will and would be a lot of interest in this and besides that the journey to make it come to life is most of the fun right ?

 

I have spent countless hours trying every mod under the sun, be it Requeim, Skyre or any mod. Seeing what meshes and does not. Lots of mods can be put together for piecemeal overhauls but it is not the same, a new overhaul is definitely the way to go. I like to tweak and see how A works with B all in the pursuit of the best Skyrim I can have. I have zero skills making mods but I have a persistent need to tweak. At any rate here are some ideas for the overhaul that I would like. This will be generalized as I think that’s what you want in this thread, drilling down into details is something that can done be as well but I think you are asking just our general impressions of what we want to see in an overhaul.

 

Ok so:

 

Deleveled enemies or partly? Deleveled is good if you have some direction, (can’t accept certain questions or know to stay in an area or avoid others until stronger) I hate banging my head against a wall when not having any sense of what I can take on or not (and a waste of time)

 

You could also build your overhaul to go well with other mods ( Immersion) Frostfalla – Ineed, Wet and Cold so it takes away the hassle to build one yourself. Some mods you can just incorporate and ask to install with yours) Most do any way. Find your top mods you want to have in this overhaul perhaps and have them be compatible out of the box to save time.

 

Combat: I prefer tough but fair. I prefer Requiems combat over Skyre. I prefer a lean towards more hardcore combat but not ridiculous hardcore that is fun breaking. I will just go through some trees quickly (at work right now so rushing this a bit)

 

Archery: I would like to see 3 branches – Force - Speed - Accuracy

 

Force: The amount of damage done on hit, force of the blow

 

Speed: The speed you draw an arrow (or load xbow). The speed you move with drawn bow, distance arrow flies

 

Accuracy – how accurate you aim is...starting out would cause lots of sway and/or your recticle changes in size so you shot anywhere within that reciticle, think of modern shooters and their reciticles

 

Bocking: 3 branches – Defense – Offense – Fitness

 

Defense branch handles the defensive aspects of the shield, how much it mitigates, how much stam used, versuses arrows – heavy weapons – light weapons - magic

 

Offense – Using shield as weapon – bashing – reflection – drop weapons – kill shot at 20% etc

 

Just some ideas, having a short period of time to type so have to go for now. I really hope you move forward with your plans dude. Will check this thread later tonight at home

That sounds good. When I have time I'll add my ideas for the perk trees.

[Grogthenailer]

The difficulty level is going to be one of the hardest to nail down, there is mods like High Level Enemies but an overhaul can do much more in that regard as you can control all apsects.

 

One thing have wondered is a multiple pyramid approach. So like this:

 

Levels 1 - 10

 

Levels 11 - 20

 

levels 21-30

 

Level 31-40

 

Etc. Difficulty changes on this sliding scale. level 1 hard = level 10 easier, level 11 hard, level 20 easier, so it moves as you level back and forth. The game text could tell you "you are more well-known, tougher enemies seek you out" or something like that when you ding level 11, then as you scrape by at level 11 and get to 15 you will do better, at level 20 it would easier (not easy-mode) At level 21, rinse lather repeat This is one way.

 

Or

 

Could have a pure deleveled world BUT areas/quests and enemies are explicitely shown so there is no guess work.

Edited August 22, 2014 by Grogthenailer

[mrnexusmods27]

I would want all of the realism in requiem (an arrow or mace to the face will kill you if you don't have heavy armour, undead are realisticaly much harder to kill than people, dragons are much harder, etc) with all of the fun and cool things (like the amazingly epic perk system) from skyre. I also think the way requiem handles perks to be more weighted would be nice. What I mean is you can't smith without having the perk for it. Although, I am largly a role playing character, so realism, difficulty and immersion may not be the cup of tea for everyone else for example, I like the idea of needing a book to teach yourself the knowledge of dwemer craftsmanship, because it would be long lost otherwise, but I'm sure not everyone will. If you want it to be better for more people you could try making the difficulty useful, in the case of skyre-like difficulty being lower, and requiem-like difficulty being higher. Besides that stuff, I also like the idea of skirmishes with bandits being fast-paced, but a battle with a powerful necromancer, miraak, harkon, or alduin being longer with many stages to be like an old rpg-style epic boss fight. Also, the way of defining actual combat could be reworked, like when there is a wolf ten miles off that wants to kill you, but you just want to smelt some iron. Finally, ai needs some serious work to seem more realistic ex: enemies swimming to follow you if they are determined, but sometimes can't be bothered, when you are know as the dragonborn they may run away, when you wear daedric armor they might get scared, when sneaking with a torch they see you, when you shoot an arrow and kill their friend they don't just go "what was that?" and look around for a bit before relaxing and instead either hide, run away, go to where the arrow came from, or even better: they throw a torch into the hall to see you or set off a trap where you are at. Hopefully you had the time to get this far, but I want to let you know that I understand these may not all be easy or even possible. I just thought I would provide a list of the things I still feel are left empty even when playing with a massively modded game.

[Arrogancy]

I'm really glad to hear how excited everyone is. And I appreciate your feedback very much!

 

Grogthenailer, regarding perk trees, it’s not very helpful to just read that there should be three branches in archery that do A, B and C. What if someone else says there should be two branches that do X and Y? Or four branches? I can’t do very much with that. What really is valuable is if you tell me what you value, and what goals you’d like me to try to achieve. Your statement that combat should be “tough but fair” is a great example of this - that’s information that I can really use. Advice about specific perk trees is still welcome, but for it to help, it really needs to be presented with a goal that justifies it, or a problem that it solves.

 

For example, this would be bad:

 

“You should have an extra branch in Alteration devoted to Mage Armor.”

 

Whereas this would be excellent:

 

“In Vanilla, Mage Armor isn’t really a realistic alternative to heavy or light armor, even though there are perks that make mage armor better when you aren’t wearing armor. Ebonyflesh cast with all the perks is just 300. This is much lower than what roughly the same perk and skill investment in, say, light armor, would get you, and it both starts off worse and never gets better. I’d really like you to make Mage Armor better so that it’s a realistic alternative to the other armor options.”

 

There is actually a compatibility priority list on the "Philosophy" sheet.

 

So, we’ll definitely be going with a mostly deleveled world for the mod. I’ve found that people really like the idea of a deleveled world, and it serves the mod’s goal of advancing realism. I definitely hear you on the elimination of guesswork. I don’t think it will be possible to be completely explicit about everything, but making clear to the player what sort of challenges they can or can’t face is definitely important. We’re probably going to do something like this:

 

1. Raise the level for all the harder story quest triggers

2. Avoid giving you a radiant quest that’s out of sync with your level unless it’s really obvious that you can’t handle it (“slay a Giant” or “kill a Dragon” is fine, because you know if you can’t handle a giant or a dragon. “Slay a bandit” who’s twenty levels higher than you is not fine.)

3. Areas in harsher climates have tougher enemies. Bandits near Windhelm or Winterhold will be nasty, whereas Forsworn and stuff near Whiterun should be easier.

4. Travelling at night is more dangerous than travelling in daylight.

5. Bleak Falls Barrow will not be ridiculous

6. The really nasty stuff (Falmer, Dwemer constructs) will be in places you have to choose to go into - by level 20 or so, you should have no problems travelling the road. At least, during the day.

7. At low levels, strong dragons will attack you in towns much more often than they will attack you in the wilderness. At high levels, you’ll start getting attacked by stronger ones that you’ll have to face on your own.

 

mrnexusmods27, we will be having much faster and more visceral combat than vanilla, but won’t be quite doing instant-death. If you look at the Armor and Mage Armor sheet on the design document, you’ll see that getting killed in two or three hits while unarmored (bear in mind, though, that power attacks deal more damage) is more the direction we’re going in. Combat will be visceral and dangerous, but not instant-death visceral and dangerous. Besides realism, we have another goal that “quick”, “save” and “load” are not words of power.

 

It may be more realistic that you’re killed by a mace in the face, but, well, at that point it becomes incredibly unrealistic that the Dovahkiin is still alive by level thirty. It’s the action movie star problem. Or, to put the matter another way, the “I have to know where these Jackals with beam rifles spawn in advance in order to actually beat this level without getting sniped in one shot” problem.

 

What’s more, Skyrim’s combat system is more abstract that what you’re describing. When you attack another actor with a mace, it is not necessarily the case that the mace hits them square in the head. That information is not determined by the game. Maybe the blow glances, or strikes a less vital part. Perhaps that is what damage increasing with skill represents - being able to strike more accurately and squarely. If it bothers you that maces don’t kill instantly, I’d suggest modifying the narrative you impose onto the game mechanics, as opposed to trying to change the game itself.

 

Making enemies flee the dragonborn (or a guy in Daedric armor) is a nice idea, but it’s probably beyond the scope of this mod. Sneak overhauling is a stretch goal. (In the vanilla game torches do make you easier to find, actually).

[mrnexusmods27]

Thanks for the reply although I'm sorry about not reading the original armor sheet first, I was just super excited for a new overhaul. I think with my ideas it might be better for me to try to make add-on mods that you can use along side other overhauls.