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

[Exsanguinatio]

@Triaxx2

I'm not sure I understood you there. If you're talking about armor for follower horses, the horse armors from Convenient Horses are cosmetic only and have no armor rating. I can't be completely sure about this, but I believe no horse armor for Skyrim have armor ratings and are cosmetic only.

If Mujuro decides to give Ceri her own horse, it'll have it's own unique armor as he mentioned in his post above. And I'm sure it'll be essential or spawn again after a while like Shadowmere. It'd be just impractical to have the horse dying in the first dragon attack.

 

If this is not what you meant and I completely missed your point, I'm sorry. It'd may be due to the lack of caffeine in my bloodstream. :wacko:

[Triaxx2]

Sorry I was replying to Mujuro and explaining that I like UFO's 'So what are you good at?' line because it tells me what the most effective armor is for Ceri. She's better at light armor, instead of heavy, so it's better to put her in that.

 

@Mujuro: Can Ceri be told not to dual wield weapons? I gave her a Shivonna from Jaysus Swords so she'd stop trying to hit people with her dagger after running out of magicka, but now she stops shooting to run in with dual weapons. I don't mind the dual wielding, but I take the dagger away, and the next moment she goes racing by, carrying an Iron Axe in her second hand. I'd rather have her spell/sword wielding.

[jack013]

you can just tell her to wait outside while you clear a room with your sneeky skills.

[Aelthas]

Hello Mujuro,

 

I have been playing with Ceri for a while now, and recently started using Vilja. I may attempt to use Atvir Dres too (hope you do not mind me mentioning him!)

 

Definitely, in my opinion, Ceri should be removed from the Vanilla Follower System. After tasting that with Vilja, I am hoping you would do the same to Ceri; as someone mentioned before, the benefits far outweights the "inconvenience" of losing some of the boons that are tied to the Vanilla system.

 

On another subject, it would also be nice if, in the future, you could release Elric as a standalone follower, just like Ceri, with the possibility of a romance subplot (I could even help you with the quest if you have no idea how to do that!). There are way too many female followers and I miss having a hotshot male companion mod in the same molds of Ceri and Vilja.

 

Whichever is your decision, I want you to know that if in the end Ceri stays as is, I will still love her the same way, even if she is a chatterbox - well, no longer, since Vilja's now the Queen in that aspect. :wink:;)

[lordrichter]

Hello,

 

I am checking back in here after playing Vilja for a while now. This note is going to end up sounding like a comparison of Vilja and Cerwiden, but now that I have played with an extensively written companion/follower that does not use the framework, I think it is important that I revisit what I said above. I want to make it clear that my intention here is not to create conflict, should there be any Vilja people reading this, but to show the problem that I see with breaking from the framework.

 

From my previous statement:

 

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.

 

Vilja uses language that reinforces my concern with fragmentation of the "command language" used to instruct followers. They have invented a language that is somewhat different from others to control how Vilja interacts with the player. For example, when I want to talk with Cerwiden, I can select "Ceri, I'd like to speak with you ...". The ellipsis at the end tells me that I will have more options. The rough equivalent for Vilja is "Let's just talk for a while." The period at the end does not indicate that more options await.

 

The Vilja team made other decisions about how to address different features and the design of their nested options reflects a very custom interface. There are two different places to tell her to wear, or not wear, armor, and a third place to teach her what armor you want her to wear. Contrast this with Cerwiden, who has a single custom menu dealing with what she wears.

 

I am kind of picking on Vilja here, and I am sure that there are reasons for what they do, but the purpose of mentioning this is to illustrate the fragmentation of controlling language. If you decide to break from the follower framework, I at least want to register a desire that the advanced companion and follower modders get together and decide on a way to talk to them. As a matter of fact, I see room for another follower framework that could be the basis for followers who have split from the vanilla framework. This could be a framework that could provide the basic background functionality, like what to wear, when to wear it, whether to follow, ride horses, etc, while allowing the modders the freedom to craft behavior that is different from everyone else. At minimum, I think we (players) need an agreement between advanced follower modders where they can agree on basic ways of interaction that is common to all followers?

 

I also talked about other mods that work with the follower framework and the need to replicate the functionality of these mods into advanced followers. I use Convenient Horses, and an early version of this had an annoying problem where followers on horses would plow into my character when stopped. Or, maybe it was Better Horses that had this problem. Anyway, at some point this was fixed, and Cerwiden does not plow into my character. Serena, does not. Vilja, on the other hand, does. Whatever the fix was to prevent this, and whatever fix Bethesda included in Serena, is not something that is part of Vilja 1.0. I have not tested Vilja 1.1 or 1.1.1 to see if they fixed this.

 

This is another thing, and not limited to just horse behavior, that I hope you are prepared for if you strike out on your own.

 

As far as behavior, framework vs non-framework, it is rather interesting in the Cerwiden seems more free-willed at times. I think that there are idle behaviors built into the vanilla game (or maybe it is EFF) that take over and Vilja does not replicate this. When in an inn, Cerwiden will join in with whatever is happening. Vilja will follow me, never more than a couple feet away from me, until I instruct her otherwise, like getting her drunk. Yeah, she will pace around a bit, but always within an invisible fenced in area. On the other hand, when in a player home (vanilla), both will stand there unless dismissed, so it is somewhat of a wash. Serena wins over both Vilja and Ceri when to comes to finding something to keep herself busy.

 

But, beyond the idle behavior and the command language, I actually cannot tell much of a difference between framework Ceri and non-framework Vilja, as far as they go. They each have a personality, where most vanilla followers do not, and they are separate personalities, mostly opposite.

Edited November 19, 2012 by lordrichter

[Rono]

"FREEEE Ceri....." Yes, in favor of removing her from vanilla restraints. When there's a problem, It's hard enough to figure out what mods might be conflicting with her, and what other follower mod options broke her. Yada, Yada, Yada.... I vote Yesss.......

[TehKaoZ]

I can see the benefits of keeping her in the vanilla system but, the problems of compatibility for other follower mods unfortunately makes it problematic and as you say, you end up doing more troubleshooting than developing. I recently decided to stop using all of those big follower overhaul mods and have been trying to build a party out of independent followers from the vanilla system. companions like atvir dres, vilja and valfar are companions that do this. I still use cerwiden to take up that vanilla slot because shes simply too valuable to go without, but I think the benefits would be greater if she were independent

[indomidable]

 

Should Cerwiden have the ability to use conjuration spells? I voted No basically the only way I could see this is special bound gear, or if she were summoning an Angel ;) No Daedric contracts for this lady.

 

As a priestess/healer, should Ceri have better "sneak" capability? I voted yes for this however her casting muffle + invisibility when I'm sneaking would also work! I typically create boots that have muffle enchantment specifically for my companions. I'd love to see more advanced companions using SMART, and SPIKE from (Guard Dialog Overhaul) could be useful for comments about custom gear/status etc.

How important is having party-combat with role-based archetypes? I think it's very important just because that's the way I play. If I'm playing a Mage Character I want a tank keeping aggro off of me. If I'm playing a Tank I want dps classes.

 

As to the Freeing her from vanilla followers: I'm for it 100%, I agree that a common advanced followers dialog would be nice for things like Clothing, Relax (better yet auto relax in Inn's, Cities, and Player Owned Houses), It'd be great to have a dialog choice to set which archetype companions filled..Ranged DPS/DPS, Tank, Healer/Support, granted followers that provided those roles would work well.

While I like convenient horses it was mostly for my followers, if all of my followers had their own I wouldn't use it. Same goes for follower frameworks if all of my followers were "advanced" then I'd not need that mod either.

 

As to thoughts for Ceri I agree with having her own horse that she summons when I get on mine, dismisses after we dismount. I'd love to see a Torchlight II type companion mod where I give my companion loot then tell them to go sell they comeback and give me the $ based on value and their barter skill+my renown.

Radiant Quest aware would be cool.

I like some of the other simple quest ideas some have mentioned like getting good reputation with her from completing quests (Main big amounts) and helping others (small amounts) of reputation/factioning with her.

 

[Mujuro]

Hi everyone, I just got back from my family vacation on Tuesday and am now catching up on work and slowly getting back to working the next Ceri installment. Thanks for all of your thoughts and feedback, please keep those coming.

 

@Aelthas I've been in contact with Elric's voice actor to see if he's available to do more lines for additional quests and/or become a full follower. My preliminary concern with making Elric a full follower is Stormbringer. I'm actually working on extending the tank+taunt ability Elric has in Ceri v1.7 to allow for it to be assigned to other (vanilla system) followers. And no worries at all about mentioning other follower mods here (Atvir, Vilja, et al.); I'd like to think of Ceri as being complementary to other followers, rather than being in direct competition with them.

 

@lordrichter I'd been chatting with Emma and her team, as well as JanusForbeare and DreamKingMods, about interactivity, which we're all going to be working in Q1 2013, but also the start of a framework for our followers. So far, they're none to crazy about the latter idea simply because they're mods handle similar functions differently, and would require a fair bit of effort to try to re-integrate those functions back into a single framework. This is perfectly understandble, as they removed their followers from the vanilla system for good reason. I'm still thinking about how to achieve a "best of both worlds" scenario ... if it is even possible. To some of your other comments:

 

1. Horses and Riding Behavior: One of the reasons why Ceri "responds" as she does with CH is because she's still in the vanilla system and, as such, gets full benefit from using CH. The reason why CH is generally more responsive, particularly if you have a decent rig, is because CH polls frequent checks against your followers and you while riding, such that they "detect" the environment around them much faster than vanilla Bethesda defaults. I'd go as far as saying that CH does 15x+ the detection checks as vanilla, which why is the responsiveness is so much better. The drawback, by contrast, relates to quest-based NPCs (e.g., Ceri and Vilja) that have some sort of plot-destination functionality. CH forces riding followers to "follow" and, as such, doesn't allow the followers to "lead" while riding (hence Ceri's v1.7 custom horse override of CH for certain plot segments). And this is a case in point on the pros/cons of having a follower in vanilla ... if we were to try and do custom horses and have them as awesome in responsiveness as CH, we'd basically need to replicate the core of the system and, if you're using CH already, you're DOUBLING your event-check overhead. This sort of thing would likely pose performance issues for folks with less-than-high-end rigs.
   
2. Sandboxing Behavior: Serana is only "partially" in the vanilla system, and has a very different sandbox/idle AI than NPCs in the vanilla follower system (note that Followers Can Relax replicates Serana's sandbox/idle behavior for the vanilla follower system). Ceri does NOT have any custom sandbox code; because she's in the vanilla system, use whatever sandbox parameters are offered by the framework/improvement mods (UFO, EFF, FCR, etc.). By contrast, I'm assuming Vilja uses completely custom sandboxes, so what she does when "relaxing" will be driving by the custom parameters set up. So it would indeed be possible to give non-system followers Serana's sandbox features, it's a matter of replicating it ... which was what I was originally seeking to AVOID doing, simply because FCR already built that functionality. :P
   
3. Inn Behavior: This is very similar to the above relating to being in the vanilla follower system. I'm guessing that Emma's removal of Vilja from the system and/or other specific factions (which are what control certain aspects of "inn" behavior like bard audiences, etc.) is why she behaves differently, and very likely this was an intentional move on her part because Vilja is an aspiring bard.
   

 

@TehKaoZ It's something I'm very carefully considering, and have been experimenting a bit to see if I can get the "independence" without completely breaking her out of vanilla. So far, it's not been meeting my expectations, but more because of possible confusion between the commands offered by the framework/improvement mods versus some new, custom equivalents I'd been testing for Ceri (e.g., sandbox behaviors). On a completely tangential note, the author of Valfar (Omesean) and RDT (Reaper911) created a new, custom outfit for Ceri that will be part of Ceri's next quest installment. :)

 

@indomidable The archetype concept was something I wanted to work on since the early Ceri versions, but didn't get a chance to experiment much with until Ceri's v1.7 (current) release. And even now, it's only "experimental" and partially implemented, as the warrior/tank/taunt archetype is specific to Elric and only available during Ceri's v1.7 quest installment. I'm working on extending this to be more generic, but will likely only apply to those in the vanilla system. I've already spoken with Emma and her team, as well as JanusForbeare and DreamKingMods about archetypes for their respective followers, but they don't want another mod (including this one) applying archetypes to their combat behaviors.

[Triaxx2]

Can't wait to see what you guys come up with. I'd love to see a non-vanilla framework. Considering what's been done within the fairly awful Vanilla System, I love the idea.

 

I think it'd be interesting it you built the idea of archetypes into the system, so any new follower could utilize the various archetypes, but existing mods, such as Vilja could have custom archetypes to take advantage of the framework. IE if Vilja is doing her Bard thing, it would allow Ceri to sing along for example.

 

Or if Ceri is having to heal you, a follower with the defensive archetype can be 'alerted' to taunt enemies attacking you.

 

Hooray!! :D