Qwinn´s Ultimate DAO Fixpack v3 (no longer beta!)

[AdenYeshua]

Maciej:

 

Have you donated to my Paypal? Pretty sure you haven't, cause so far no one has. So please stop treating me like you're an employer who's annoyed with a lazy employee. K thanks.

 

I just donated, and since we are on the topic my first and only request is to ignore this person. Think that can be arranged?

Edited July 12, 2017 by Thandal
Removed gratuitous vulgarity.

[Qwinn]

Thanks Aden, it's very appreciated. And sure, I can do that.

[shades01]

Well, well, from heated discussion to paypal donation... Way to go... Anyway, keep up the good work Qwinn...

[Qwinn]

Can't tell who sent that second donation, but, thanks to you as well!

 

Couldn't get anything done tonight, was mom's birthday, will poke around tomorrow night.

[Qwinn]

Hey, question: I've recently noticed that a lot of mods have an "Official Endorsements Topic" under the mod's "Forums" tab. It seems to ask everyone to add a note when they do an endorsement, and seems to be integrated with the Nexus website. How do I make one of those? Or is there one out there already being automatically generated that I just can't find for some reason, and if so, how do I add it to my forums threads?

[dmg22]

Hi,

 

Cammen's Lament quest: The line is: "this isn't about cammen again is it?" and the woman in the way is the one standing to her left by the fire.

 

You have a paypal button?

Where might this be located?

 

------

 

Just (what started out as) a quick note....

masterwork:

Your position, from what I understand, is "It's called re"masterwork" so it should be better than what it is so I'm going to increase it's tier."

You're using the word like it's supposed to have some great meaning regarding power and stats and usefulness. It doesn't.

masterwork:
: a great work of art
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/masterwork

Muisca raft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muisca_art

Very impressive piece. Gold. If you melted it down it would still be worth real money.

Fontaine Bartholdi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontaine_Bartholdi

Very impressive piece. Lead. If you melted it down it would be worth next to nothing.

But they are both masterpieces. And that comes from the creator not the material.

Calling something a masterwork has nothing to do with material used.
It has nothing to do with stats.

It has everything to do with someone looking at it and saying, "Wow."

 

Cheers

[firepanda]

Just remembered another thing. After completing 'Lost to the Memories', you can return to Orzammar and speak to Orta again. She will say that the expedition to Ortan Thaig was successful, thank you again and give you 10 gold.

 

However, in the toolset, there is a developer comment (in the dlg file I think?) that she should give you gold and 'something nice' (as in, part of the spoils from the expedition -- I'm a bit hazy on the exact wording). You could perhaps add an item to the rewards.gda file to reflect that?

 

~~

 

And sorry that all my 'bug reports' (and whining) are about items, which you're probably completely sick of by now. That's just the part of the game that I've modded the most.

[Qwinn]

^{Cammen's Lament quest: The line is: "this isn't about cammen again is it?" and the woman in the way is the one standing to her left by the fire.}

^{I couldn't duplicate this. If I talked to Gheyna at the *exact* moment when that elven woman does one of her walking back and forth animations, yes, she will be pacing partially between the camera and the scene for a half a second before she walks back to her normal position. If that's what you're referring to, I'm not really worried about it, things like that can potentially happen briefly in a lot of places. But I've not found any way that she just gets stuck in between the camera and that dialogue line. Can you think of something else you might have done to make that happen, like block that woman during her animation? Can you duplicate the issue yourself?. Note that I made no changes to that elf woman's position (or to the dalish camp area at all, for that matter) or to the cameras in Gheyna's stages, so whatever's causing this I'm pretty sure it's a vanilla bug (not that another one here would surprise me - I HATE GHEYNA AND CAMMEN!).}

^{You have a paypal button?}

^{Where might this be located?}

^{The mod's page, upper right next to the Endorse button. Any donations would be much appreciated!}

^{Calling something a masterwork has nothing to do with material used.
It has nothing to do with stats.}

^{Erm, yes it does. You're conflating things with no intended function at all - a piece of art - with something that has a very important function - a protective helm meant to save your life. Would you call a motorcycle a masterwork if it couldn't move under its own power? If you'd like a really interesting dissertation on the definition of "quality" as it applies to artwork vs. functional objects, I recommend "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (seriously, it's one of the more interesting philosophy books I've read), but no, the idea that a functional item being totally crappy in that function can still be considered "quality" - much less a "masterwork" - carries no weight with me, sorry. (And before you try - no, he's not giving it to you as a work of art - he says "Use it well." And if you say "Maybe he meant use it as selling it to an art collector!" - just don't, okay?}

Edited July 12, 2017 by Qwinn

[sialivi]

Not sure whether or not this is a bug or if it has a lore reason, but when you find Deygan in the forest his eyes have a sort of glowing yellow color which I associate with having contracted the werewolf curse, yet he states he has in fact not been bitten.

[Qwinn]

Almost forgot this one:

 

DE017: "Drake Scale Armor": Herren will no longer refer to female wardens as male when discussing the cost of the armor.

 

If the Warden is female, he'll now say: "Pay...? No, Wade, no!". No change for male Wardens.

 

Back to the Redcliffe items issue:

I highly doubt the developers intentionally setup armor tiers to get strength values that benefit rogues. That's merely an accident, not a deliberate decision.

I very very much agree with this, which is why the "it's useful for rogues!" argument hasn't carried much weight with me beyond taking my "useless" remark out of the readme.

 

I agree that redcliffe is designed to be the first area, and the game certainly leads you towards that conclusion.

I mentioned that I didn't see "much" pointing toward Redcliffe being meant to be done first. I do agree that Alistair does seem to nudge you in that direction first more than any of the others, which is why I didn't say I see nothing at all pointing in that direction, heh. Alistair's nudging is it, as far as I can tell. Aside from that, the only thing that reflects such an intent is in fact the crappy quality of the rewards of the area, which is the subject under discussion.

 

That said, firepanda made an argument that had me leaning toward retracting here:

 

For that matter, how many high-quality items are there in Redcliffe? Just scanning through the items available in this area, almost every item you can find is steel or lower. (Eamon's Shield, Chevalier's Mace, Helm of the Red, Heavy Maul, Shielded Dwarven Armor, Owen's Remasterwork are all steel or lower. The Fox's Bow is Sylvanwood, the Green Sword is Veridium).

It seems to me that the quality of Helm of the Red, Owen's Remasterwork, Shielded Dwarven Armor are entirely in line with the area. The item quality in Redcliffe in general, is designed with a player straight out of Lothering in mind. I agree with you that this is silly (personally, I do Circle and Orzammar first), but a design decision that widespread can't really be called a bug.

This seemed convincing initially, but then I noted that of his list of 6 items that are poor quality material, four of them are the items under discussion. The only other items added as data points for intent are the Heavy Maul (which can be found in the Human Noble origin, and in Awakening, steel in all cases, so I don't think we can glean anything from that), and the Chevalier's Mace, which is found in the same place as Eamon's Shield and is also steel (and I am still retracting the change to Eamon's Shield). Then there's the items that ARE better.

 

Now, here's the thing.... remember in the Fallen Templar/Knight discussion, I pointed out that when a change is made, the burden of proof is on the person arguing for the change to prove that the content in game is implausible, not the other way around? Which is why it was not incumbent upon me to assume that Genitivi's expedition was funded with one copper, it was incumbent on the person arguing for the change to prove that a well funded expedition was NOT plausible.

 

Well, here, to defend my changes, I'm the one with the burden of proof that the way it is is not plausible. I consider that implausibility to be achievable in two ways: 1) It is implausible that the designers intended something, OR 2) In the game's context, what is happening is so implausible as to be fourth-wall breaking.

 

Are the stats on the five items I fixed implausible under either of those measures? Well, you guys have successfully argued, in my book, that the intent could have been to ASSUME that everyone goes to Redcliffe first, hence the poor quality (it's clearly not a *given* that players will go to Redcliffe first, otherwise why does Oghren have dialogue here at all? But the rewards could plausibly have been set to what they were in that assumption). I don't agree with that intent - I think one of the best things about the game is that the 70% of the content in the middle can be done in any order, making it much more sandbox-y than most RPG's are capable of. I think all of the items in the five middle areas (aside from armor/weapon sets, those do need to remain consistent) should have been made to scale, in order to maintain a good progression of improving equipment regardless of the order you do them. BUT, that's how I think it should have been done. There *are* legitimate cons to that approach, such as, introducing an incentive to metagame where you intentionally do things in an order to make the items you really want to stick with long term be acquired last.

 

Is it *implausible* that the low quality is intentional due to the assumption that players will do things in the order that is suggested by Alistair's nudging? No, it isn't. You guys have argued this successfully. In and of itself, big picture, crappy quality in Redcliffe could have been done intentionally in the assumption that most people listen to Alistair and does Redcliffe first. I don't *like* that assumption, I think being able to choose your order is a big plus in this game and the pros of scaling due to that well outweigh the cons, but the way it is is not implausible or outright *wrong*, so without more to go on, that still makes my fixes a tweak, not a bugfix.

 

So to make the case for implausibility, I have to argue that the quality of the items is so poor within the game's context as to be fourth-wall breaking. Note that my fourth-wall breaking criteria does not require proving that the designers intended otherwise. If something in game simply doesn't make sense in the game's context and clearly snaps the average reasonable person out of Willing Suspension of Disbelief, and no plausible justification can be made for that excessive lack of internal consistency, it needs to be fixed, regardless of what might or might not have been intended. (For the record, I think the Orzammar rewards satisfied BOTH criteria - implausible as intent AND implausible in game context.)

 

For this, they have to be taken one at a time:

 

1) Eamon's Shield: As I said, I mistakenly thought this was Eamon's reward for reviving him. It isn't, it's just in the vault. Is it plausible Eamon would use such a shield? Yes. Despite the poor material, the bonus stats are significantly better than most other available shields in game. It's definitely not so poor as to make the idea that Eamon might use it completely implausible or fourth wall breaking. I am retracting this one, as previously stated.

 

2) Shielded Dwarven Armor: Is it implausible and fourth wall breaking that a master smith like Owen would reward you for saving his daughter's life with a crappy steel outfit, while simultaneously opening up his upgraded store which is chock full of at least red steel and probably silverite+ inventory? It's not horrifically bad if you do, in fact, do Redcliffe first, but then if you do it early, it won't scale much if at all, and the impact of my change is minimal. But if you do it later, with Oghren in the party and he goes off about how awesome this craptastic (for that later point in the game) suit of armor is, I think *then* it is most definitely so silly as to be fourth wall breaking, and some scaling is required to make it not ridiculous. The arguments dgm22 made - "Maybe he likes it because it's lighter! Maybe he likes the color! Maybe he wants to return to his roots!" - no. In my game, when I picked Oghren up (and I did Orzammar relatively early, before even visiting Denerim, Redcliffe or Haven) he came equipped with full tier 5 red steel dwarven armor. That has an armor of 11.25, compared to 5.95 on the SDW. What he *comes* with - vanilla dirt common non-unique dwarven armor - can provide twice as much armor as SDW, never mind Juggernaut. While Oghren grouses a lot, I don't see him as being actively suicidal, and the stats on this armor are so poor compared to Juggernaut or even what he comes with that he'd actually have to want to be cut to ribbons any time an enemy looked in his direction in the later game. For him to prefer it over the much better armor that would certainly be available by that point makes Oghren either suicidal or an idiot as a warrior, unable to tell craptastic armor from something that might actually protect him, like what he was wearing when you meet him. If he's that stupid, I can't see him surviving long enough for you to meet him. And I think it's implausible that Owen would actually want him dead after he helped save his daughter. The impact of my fix is minimal at the point where the reward is most plausible (because it won't scale much if at all), and grows as the implausibility of the reward grows greater, and as such, I'm leaning toward keeping this one. To argue against that decision, give me a *good* reason to believe that Oghren wants to ditch his red steel dwarven armor or Juggernaut armor and wade into battle as a front line combatant wearing a repurposed tuna tin.

 

More later.

Edited July 12, 2017 by Qwinn