[WIP] Cerwiden -SMART Healer- Dev Opinion Poll 4

[Mujuro]

@Caladyiel Thanks, the feedback definitely helps!

 

@Wasbunny There's quite a lot that got added with v1.7, and Elric is merely a prototype of sorts (only 2 modes,

and a temporary ally at that, as he leaves after Ceri's v1.7 installment is done

). I've got some thoughts on expanding archetypes, as well as providing a more "permanent" warrior archetype option.

 

@lexx005 The friend system Ceri has from v1.6 would be what I would need to expand a bit more if I were to take her out of the system, as right now, the friend functionality is tied to the vanilla system. I've got some thoughts on how I'd do that, but need to do some prototyping.

 

@Agriasbloodmoon I'd not done a mount earlier mainly because of Ceri being in the vanilla system, and other mods that improve vanilla already cover mounts (UFO, CH, etc.). That said, and because of some issues relating to mounts that arose during testing of Ceri v1.7, I'd started thinking about moving Ceri out of vanilla, for better or worse. Getting Ceri to have her own mount isn't difficult; in fact, she DOES have her own for certain quest segments, and I'd forced an override for her to use her own mount instead of any supplied by CH by way of example (simple vanilla mount, no special textures, etc.). What I was more concerned about was the loss of functionality associated with mods like CH (like mounted combat for followers, for which Mitchalek did an amazing job).

 

Ceri's healing would remain unaffected by the move, as her healing doesn't check against the vanilla system in any case (I found that too narrow for my personal liking :P).

 

Regarding her use of armor, I'd intentionally set her proficiency low, but I do understand fully about her being "squishy" (I play protected version, and have had to reload plenty because she gets crushed :(). That said, I'm not convinced the solution to this issue is to have increased armor proficiency for Ceri. Rather, I believe it "should" go more to combat archetypes/roles, and "crowd control". Stated differently, a warrior archetype's "role" in combat is, among other things, to draw and tank opponents. By contrast, Ceri's role is to support and heal/cast. As such, it's a warrior's job to keep the riff-raff "off" Ceri. I made the initial foray into this sort of combat behavior in Ceri v1.7, with the introduction of a (temporary) warrior archetype that has a "tank" mode with "taunt" ability. I'm still thinking about how I want to make this more permanent for players.

 

Finally, about setting her home, if I end up moving her out of vanilla, I'll need to do something like that (right now, when dismissed, she only has 2 options ... stay in area or go back to Riverwood). I'd not done that because there are other mods that allow you to set follower homes already.

 

@calfurius I'm planning to have, at a minimum the start for, the romance sub-plot released with Ceri v1.8. I've been chatting with JanusForbeare, DreamKingMods and Emma, and it appears that we may not be able to work much interaction among our followers until December 2012/January 2013 at the earliest, so I may switch focus to getting as much in for Ceri's "personal" side quest installment instead.

[Exsanguinatio]

Voted for my options and like lexx005 said, let politcs be politcs. I just want to point out a few things though:

 

Regarding question 1:

Voted no as I find summonables more annoying then helpful. But if this was optional and could be turned off, just like the area destruction spells, I'd have no problem with it at all.

 

Regarding question 2:

Voted yes and I see no reason why this would be lore-breaking. If you have a sneaky character playing on master difficulty with enemies with buffed armor and health using Deadly Dragons like me, this would be a huge help. The last thing you want as a sneaky character is to be spoted before being able to deal a first crippling blow. Now, if you don't use much sneak, how would Ceri having more sneak impact your game at all? What I'm trying to say is: Ceri being more sneaky would be a huge help to those who depend on this stat while having no impact whatsoever to anyone that doesn't depend on it. So, if people who don't use nor depend on sneak won't even notice the change, how can this break immersion at all?

 

Regarding question 3:

Voted no by mistake. I'm sleep deprived and have too much blood on the caffeine running through my veins, so don't judge me. :(

Not sure if I can fix my vote on this one. If I can't, just consider +1 vote to the "important" option. Fixed my vote.

 

Regarding taking Ceri out of the follower system, I think it's a great idea. The only problem I'd have is with her horse. I use horses a lot since I try not to use fast-travel and I'd feel like a slave owner if Ceru had to follow me on foot. But since that's not an issue, I'm all for it.

And I do have a few suggestions regarding that. Since she's a priestess, I think her horse should be white. It'd fit her best, imho. She may arrive in Skyrim in it and during or maybe after her main Chaos Lords quests, Lord Donblas could reward her with an upgraded staff (maybe that uses expert level magic. Since the average player needs at least lvl 35 to complete the Chaos Lords questline, I believe it wouldn't be OP by then) and a horse armor for her trusty steed (is there any named horses on the Elric Saga that could be her horse name?). This horse armor would be awesome and I believe fits the epic and godly armor a Law Lord should give. The good thing is that horse armor is part of a modders resource called Horse Armors for Skyrim and doesn't require permission to be used. This one would be good too but I believe you'd have to ask for permission from the mod author to use it, despite being a version of the first horse armor I linked.

 

Also, I think Ceri deserves her own unique horse and horse armor so I believe the first armor I linked is the best option. Just my 2 cents. :)

Edited October 27, 2012 by Exsanguinatio

[CasperTheLich]

i heard ceri talking about sneaking out of the temple to go to the market a few times. so i'm changing my opinion on having a sneaky ceri. i guess it does fit her character after all.

[lordrichter]

I guess my role here is to be the "stay with the follower framework" person.

 

I do not fully understand the limitations of the follower framework and the various mods that have improved upon it, but I do know that the limitations can be binding.

 

A powerful advantage, and equally powerful disadvantage, to the framework is that it enforces a certain level of consistency across the game. If you have only one follower, this is not an issue, but I use followers like employees. I station them in my houses as live-in servants, ready at a moment's notice when the Dragonborn needs a little extra muscle. I can speak to them all using the same terms, and because follower-friendly mods build upon the framework, they all pick up the same capabilities from other mods. The disadvantage to this is that other than appearance, virtually all of the framework companions out there are basically clones of each other.

 

I accept the disadvantage because the alternative is akin to having each follower speaking a different language, one where I am the only other one who knows it. With the framework, I may tell the follower to "wait" or "follow" or "relax" and they each understand this. If each modder was deciding what language to use for these simple commands, I might have one follower respond to "will you please follow me" while another uses "if you are not busy, I could use your help" and a third one uses "join me." I will agree that the framework mods tend towards utility instead of immersion, and selecting Command followed by Relax is about as non-immersive as one can get, the simple matter is that it is an adequate trade for the chaos that could come about if people generally abandon framework mods and simply invent their own language and way of doing things.

 

I have gone into my rant against Bethesda about the shortcomings of the user interface already. (Basically, it is that "mouse-nears", which is like a mouse-over but the mouse does not have to actually be over anything, can change the highlighting so that the smallest movement of the mouse, deliberate or accidental, anywhere in the selection panel, can change the item selected) Scrolling through a list of options increases the possibility of a mistake when selecting. On top of that, I know exactly what I am looking for and it is the same for each follower, so I rarely have to page through the list in order to find what I am looking for. Naturally, if someone knows of a fix for this UI issue, please let me know. I have not seen one, yet.

 

My game is a lot more than just follower mods, but I do have mods in place that benefit followers. These tend to be written for the framework, and while they may conflict with portions of the framework, they do understand it. Other mods do not natively recognize non-framework followers, which leads to a "custom follower patch" situation. Mods that step on other mods tend to have compatibility patches. I hate compatibility patches. It is yet another thing that I have to keep track of when I play the game. Other than remembering to check both mods, it is not a problem as long as both modders remain active, but we are now 1 year into Skyrim and several of the mods that I originally installed are abandoned. Some had to be removed due to incompatibilities. Many still work as intended. I tend to forget about dependencies between mods when I have not played the game for a while, as has happened with my Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 games. Each Cerwiden Compatibility Mod that I have to install adds to the probability that an abandoned mod will no longer work with Cerwiden and when I come back to play Skyrim in a couple years, the chance of me remembering, or even finding, all the latest compatibility mods is significantly reduced.

 

I know that Bethesda made the decision when they invented Serena for the Dawnguard DLC, and while they may have accomplished whatever goal they had for doing it, I think that the modding community paid a price for the decision. Unless every follower friendly mod that needs to know about Serena explicitly includes Serena, Serena cannot benefit from everything the modding community has to offer. This will probably get worse when the next DLC comes out and Bethesda invents yet another follower that does not use any known framework.

 

In the end, this circles back to two questions that really form the basis of the discussion.

 

1) Are the changes in Cerwiden that conflict with frameworks and other follower-friendly mods actually critical to Cerwiden, or are they nice-to-haves where the investment of effort really exceeds the payoff?

 

2) If the existing framework is so inconvenient, is there the possibility that maybe the community needs a new general follower framework that is better designed for use with advanced followers? Something that is backwards compatible with the vanilla framework but allows for better customization? I do not deal with the framework, so if this makes no sense, forgive me, but it seems to me that maybe what Cerwiden, and the 'intelligent' followers of the future, need is a new common framework, not the creation of a special one just for Cerwiden.

[Exsanguinatio]

After playing just a couple of hours with Vilja and seeing what is possible to be done when a follower is removed from the follower framework, I have no more doubts that taking Ceri out of the follower framework will be for the best. Just the sheer amount of possibilities far outweight any cons, imho.

I'm, sure this will require an insane amount of initial work from Mujuro and some mad coding, but I believe it'll mostly erradicate compatibility issues and will make updating much more easier. It'll also give Mujuro much more freedom to do a lot more content for Cerwiden.

 

To anyone that still have doubts about this, I really recomend downloading Vilja and seeing what is possible to be done with their own eyes. Also note that there's absolutely no requirements whatsoever for Vilja. Cerwiden also have no requirements, but I know Mujuro had to hack and slash and bypass a lot of things to achieve this using the follower framework.

 

@Mujuro

I hope you don't mind that I linked Vilja here. But I believe she's the best example for what is possible at the moment and how much trouble removing Ceri from the follower framework will save you on future updates.

[Mujuro]

Thanks everyone for providing comments, please keep them coming! :)

 

@Invisible Man Gals do stuff like that sometimes. :P

 

@lordrichter That's the dilemma; you may remember that the earliest versions of Ceri were designed to be more "functional" versus her being fleshed out with her own personality, questline, etc. I'd thought long and hard about this when initially designing Ceri, and that's why I decided to leave her in the vanilla follower system. What I didn't anticipate was how many users wanted Ceri to have her own personality and be more of an "independent" companion versus a vanilla follower who had a slightly better situational AI, which, in turn started driving Ceri versions 1.3+. But it wasn't until really getting into Ceri's v1.7 quest installment that I started running into roadblocks associated with her being in the vanilla follower system.

 

@Exsanguinatio There's a lot more than can be done with Ceri outside the vanilla system, as you've seen. :P The catch, as you noted, is that Ceri looses the benefits of mods that improve the vanilla system, short of me simulating some of those features (of which some are easier than others to do). And no, I don't mind you referencing Vilja at all; as I've mentioned on a few occasions, Vilja really set the standard for companions in Oblivion, and it goes without saying that she's raised that bar again with Skyrim Vilja). :) In fact, if Vilja was already released for Skyrim when I started building Ceri, I most likely wouldn't have created her. :)

[Exsanguinatio]

@Mujuro

Then I'm glad Vilja was released just now. I can't play Skyrim without Ceri anymore. I love her heals, her SMARTCast, her voice, her personality, her sometimes gloomy and sometimes carefree comments and so on. It just wouldn't be the same playing without her.

 

Regarding the benefits of the follower framework, imho, the advantages of taking her out and giving her own framework that will reduce conflicts to a minimum, give you the freedom to greatly expand her quests, interactions with the enviroment, the player and other npcs while reducing your work updating and giving support, vastly outweights the benefits of UFO/AFT/EFF/etc. And if Ceri is pulled out of the follower framework, those mods can still be used with other followers with no problem.

 

Anyway, just my input. :)

[Triaxx2]

Ultimately, I hope that once all the DLC is out and about, the makers of UFO, EFF, and AFT get together and all build a unique framework to bring all the followers together under one system.

 

Not that it'll ever happen, but it's a nice dream.

 

As for the poll questions: No, she shouldn't be summoning creatures. Those are generally deals with Daedric entities, and so it's not a good one for her. However, if she were to summon a custom weapon, either a conjured staff or perhaps a conjured bow for dragon fighting, for example, that would be fine. But making them custom weapons with unique models, and looks so that they don't look like the default 'deal with the devil' weapons. A bow with a golden shader, so it looks like it's divine in origin, instead of daedric.

 

I said no to a lore-based reason, however, discretion is the better part of valor, and if she were to cast muffle upon entering sneak, that would be fantastic. After all, a good priest or priestess knows when to be discrete.

 

Finally, on the last, yes, archetypes are important. It's all but impossible to tactically engage an enemy, using a bow and arrow for that opening sneak damage, when the instant your follower sees, they fire off loud summons and then start flinging damage spells at full tilt. Usually just after you've fired the arrow. I've had targets survive a death cam because they moved to avoid a spell and also were missed by the arrow.

 

I have yet to meet a follower who didn't charge in straight away.

[vidalia]

@Mujro I am glad Vilja took so long to arrive in Skyrim for if she hadn't we would not have Ceriwiden. Awesome job on the 1.7 update btw.

 

After playing extensively with Atvir and Ceri and now Vilja, I am firmly in the camp for removing her from the vanilla follower system. Doing that would let you focus more on her personality and abilities and quests rather than playing nice with Dawngaurd, Hearthfire and any future Bethesda DLCs and updates that affect the vanilla system.

 

Regarding common follower functionality like housing, mounts etc perhaps the three of you (you, Janus and the Vilja team) could collaborate and come up with a

common framework for consistency?

 

On another note I find that Ceri does not heal herself too often (I play with the protected version) - is that by design?

[Wasbunny]

Just going to echo what most people are saying with regards to taking Ceri out of vanilla. I too have been traveling with Vilja and Ceri and am 100% supportive of having Ceri taken out of vanilla. One reason being that I had wanted to eliminate the follower mod I was using (AFT) since it seemed to level all the followers to the point of being overpowered (in fact to keep things balanced it really should decrease the levels with each addition...but that's off topic). I was told by the Vilja team that since Vilja wasn't counted towards the usual follower count I could recruit her in addition to the standard (1) with no follower mod installed. They also actually thought Ceri was set up this way too, but as soon as I uninstalled AFT it became very clear that Ceri needed to be taken out of the vanilla system.

 

Ceri and Vilja seem to get along so well, I know I'm not alone in eagerly awaiting any kind of real interaction between them (Ceri should stay the quiet one though imo, don't need two delightful chatterboxes).

 

 

I don't know how I missed seeing the 1.7 update (it says in NMM 1.0 though)...but excitedly downloading now.