Anyone else feel armour and weapon mods ought to NOT be craftable or f

[Bart95]

Fair points all around, Midas in Oblivion though -was- cheatable. Just use the item IDs for the required reagents and boom, done.

[dwiss]

I do fully understand your personal point about easyness to obtain stuff - but thats how the console unfortunately works. So everyone being able to find the stuff by name will be able to 'cheat' themselves easily to anything in their loadorder. But i think you lost the main thing here - its a game . An RPG on top of all - so its a lot about how YOU play the game. Skyrim is tremendesly open and just add a few immersive mods and life can be really hell - its about being creative yourself and adapt to your goal.

[EnaiSiaion]

My old Battledress could only be found in a bag in a remote location. Cue massive amounts of QQ that it was "annoying" to find. I was pretty much forced to add crafting options.

 

So for my next armor mod I made the crafting options more expensive; if you wanted to explore, you could find the armor on a corpse in the wild, with a spirit standing over it to make it easier to find. Everyone still used the crafting options...

[jackowonderful]

i ussually'd just add a condition or two on the recipe. like that a quest has been done. but i don't use many mod items.

[Bart95]

My old Battledress could only be found in a bag in a remote location. Cue massive amounts of QQ that it was "annoying" to find. I was pretty much forced to add crafting options.

 

So for my next armor mod I made the crafting options more expensive; if you wanted to explore, you could find the armor on a corpse in the wild, with a spirit standing over it to make it easier to find. Everyone still used the crafting options...

 

Ouch, sucks people just want the easy way for deh phat lewt these days. Even only in Oblivion the mods I suggested were praised for encouraging exploration and discovery. Personally I'd just put my foot down and say "You want the epic gear? Work for it" but I'm not you and it's not up to me to decide what people do with their mods.

 

Still, will be interesting when I finally get around to modding my own stuff and refuse to put in easy crafting or easily found chests in the middle of whiterun. :D

[Jaradin]

I think we'd all love if this were possible, but it's a pipe dream to expect our 3-D artists to also know dialogue writing, character design, event scripting, and even voice acting all in one bag. That sort of work requires a team of people, one that is difficult to build with the sort of time and obstacles that these modders have.

[jet4571]

3D art, texture work and scripting quests are 3 different skill sets that take allot of time to do well and most of the artists specialize in one of those skillsets. Look at the majority of quest mods, most dont include all new mesh work and if they do the majority of those were done by a third party for the mod. very small group that creates all new meshes and textures themselves for a quest mod. The same works for modelers and texture artists, very few do any scripted quests and those quests are usualy rather short and more of an annoyance.

 

Making a new 3d model can be a week or more to get just right and in the game functioning depending on the complexity of the item. Making a good quest could take up to a week depending on the complexity and quality just for a simple quest like finding a sword. Then with the quests you need to spend allot of time trouble shooting. If your 3d modeler is spending all their time creating and patching quests then that is far less time for them to do what they really enjoy and thats making the items themselves. So that ends up being less produced and released items to satisfy a small subset of players that want everything in a quest.

 

For myself the esp that comes with armor and weapons never gets used in the game but in the CK. I have 1 armor/clothing mod, 1 weapons mod, and 1 mod that adds both of those to level lists. I have a small group of armor and weapons for my followers and myself that is not in the level lists. All are craftable and without crazy crafting requirements such as require a recipe to even have it in the list or need deadra hearts and 30 steel ingots, 20 leather, and 30 leather strips. I do this myself because thats the way i want to be able to get my armor and weapons. If you want them to be hard to get requiring a quest and dungeon delving then learn to use the CK and do just that for yourself.

[Bart95]

Indeed I will. (On a side note: These mod items don't have to be in a quest of any sort, like my example from an old Oblivion mod, just give a book or something in the world that gives clues to the location of said items. No scripting. No hassle. Just make a book/note item, drop it somewhere easy to find, then stow the items somewhere else. It'd be like an easter egg hunt, for weapons and armour! :D)

[dwiss]

Indeed I will. (On a side note: These mod items don't have to be in a quest of any sort, like my example from an old Oblivion mod, just give a book or something in the world that gives clues to the location of said items. No scripting. No hassle. Just make a book/note item, drop it somewhere easy to find, then stow the items somewhere else. It'd be like an easter egg hunt, for weapons and armour! :biggrin:)

You are basically describing the ' i drop a chest somewhere with the stuff' ;) - you just add a layer with the book.

 

I can only repeat what jet describes and some others have said before - its a trade off between getting your mod published and liked by as many as possible and making it immersive at the same time. These 2 things dont go well with each other. Like fashion the word ' immersive' isnt defined as a constant - it depends on the single users taste. There are players who love to be immersive but lack the time and want stuff that behaves like real stuff but without annoyance to get the stuff. Others want to have a constant challenge. Others again want the stuff only to be available for themselves - this list could go on forever. There is too much variaty in the players themselves to find a single answer to this.

 

Jet describes the best practice actually - he takes mods and arranges them for HIMSELF locally again. Thats exactly what i do as well with other peoples mods i use constantly. On the other hand - i am modding myself and just with a simple mod like mine i had so many different requests regarding bodyslots, how to get the stuff etc that i had to make simple and clear decisions. Its simply impossible to provide a setup that suits everyone equally fine.

Edited March 29, 2013 by dwiss

[EnaiSiaion]

A quick and dirty solution might be to spawn an NPC that tracks you down and attacks you, with an assassination order from whoever sent them (check for stormcloak/imperial alignment, place letter from opposite alignment). Kill that NPC and you get the armor.

 

That's what I'm going to do for my next armor mod. :D I'll let you know if people hate it.

 

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Sidenote: the shout metamagic items in Thunderbolt have been involved in a similar issue. They used to spawn in High Hrotgar, but people complained that it was "too easy" so now you have to find them as random drops. Of course you needed them to play a shout based character effectively so this was a big nerf. Then people started asking for perk mods to enable them to play a shout based character effectively. Rofl.