The Elder Scrolls XVIII: "What's So Civil About War, Anyway?"

[Fyraltari]

Issue there would be making it all interesting, pocket sizing a whole country is a good way to fit in varied biomes and different types of aesthetics and content. All Whiterun all the time would get boring far faster I imagine.

It'd certainly make it harder to justify all the dungeon crawling and monster fighting.

I agree that restraining the game to the something as big as a county or a minor kingdom would be best.
Daggerfall only showed parts of High Rock and Hammerfell and Morrowind, despite the name, only showed Vvardenfell. There's no need for a game to show an entire Province.

That said, one should remember that Skyrim's holds and Cyrodiil's counties are themselves the size of countries, so just one notable city in each is a really low number.

[Resileaf]

It'd certainly make it harder to justify all the dungeon crawling and monster fighting.

I agree that restraining the game to the something as big as a county or a minor kingdom would be best.
Daggerfall only showed parts of High Rock and Hammerfell and Morrowind, despite the name, only showed Vvardenfell. There's no need for a game to show an entire Province.

That said, one should remember that Skyrim's holds and Cyrodiil's counties are themselves the size of countries, so just one notable city in each is a really low number.

Mind you Vvanderfell is still about half of Morrowind.

That said, I agree. Trying to portray an entire enormous province means that you lose in the details where everything feels tiny. Major cities feel like pretty villages, minor towns are a collection of three or four buildings, villages are inexistent unless they're plot-important or fill up an empty space. I don't know what kind of fix exists for that though. If you shrink the map, you no longer can have plots that affect an entire province (and in a civil war plotline, you need an entire country to make the plotline impactful and show that it affects all of it, not to mention it's harder to make culturally and visually-different places). If you grow the map to make the province look more accurate, everything becomes more generic and more empty because it's impossible to develop an entire world down to the individual peasant and you'll have to fill it up with generics.

A potential change could be to make it like FFXIV, where free-roaming areas are separated by zone transitions. You can highly develop some areas while implying that there are enormous distances between the various places you visit. This does go against the usual Elder Scrolls open world method though.

[WritersBlock]

The "Tamriel Rebuilt" mod got another update recently I really need to download. Not only does it add the mainland of Morrowind, and ton of new content, they also seem to be quite dedicated to keeping the Elder Scrolls series lore straight. (Unlike Oblivion) Cannot wait to see how horrible House Dres is when they are added. (House Indoril are some nasty people but Dres are supposed to be on a whole other level of bad)

[Delicious Taffy]

I'm gonna be picking up ESO in the next couple days cuz it's like $6 right now. Now, as a rabid FF14 player, is there anything especially different I should be making a note of, so I don't go in and immediately get blacklisted for thinking I can act the same?

If it matters, it's gonna be on PS4 and I'm not committed to playing long-term just yet. Also I'm not a high-level raider or anything as it is (can barely clear Extremes), so I'm mainly asking about the base gameplay and the social aspects.

That is, if anyone on this board even plays ESO.

[GloatingSwine]

ESO is pretty much all about the questing. There are dungeons and raids (trials) but they're not as developed as FFXIV and it doesn't really have the wide scale community. It still has the same thing FFXIV does with everyone rushing through them when you play them with randoms as well though. No equivalent of Duty Support yet.

Mostly I reccommend new players start by picking up their alliance storyline and play that, the mages and fighters guild, and the OG main quest side by side. Don't worry about gear until you hit 160CP when its numbers stop going up.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Mostly I reccommend new players start by picking up their alliance storyline and play that, the mages and fighters guild, and the OG main quest side by side. Don't worry about gear until you hit 160CP when its numbers stop going up.

Never played FFXIV, but I will add: start crafting research ASAP (even if you’re not into crafting for its own sake it’ll let you retrait your gear later, and it’s fairly simple to do), and don’t worry about hoarding set pieces in case you need them later - ESO has a stickerbook now that will let you recreate any dropped set pieces that you’ve bound to your account.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, each piece of gear has a trait on it, you can research them to use them yourself, the first time you see a new one hang on to it and try and keep as many researching as you have slots for.

In general sell any gear that has the "valuable" icon and deconstruct the rest for crafting XP.

[Spore]

I'm gonna be picking up ESO in the next couple days cuz it's like $6 right now. Now, as a rabid FF14 player, is there anything especially different I should be making a note of, so I don't go in and immediately get blacklisted for thinking I can act the same?

You level skills by assigning them to the hotbar then questing and killing monsters. This can result in hybrid builds that are wonky levelling builds that CAN heal, but are not specialized in healing. Some that CAN tank but are not specced into it.

These are called hybrid builds, and a part of (elitist) players frowns upon them, because it is seen as a way for DPS to sneak into dungeons as "fake healers". But healers are still very much expected to heal and buff their party first, then dps. But DPS they shall. DPS ranges from "press 1 until your fingers bleed" over a simple pet build to very complicated builds. I never truly tanked, but tanking is pretty straight forward (they are more or less just a sturdier DPS).

Pick the race that pleases you visually. There are meta builds, and unlike other games race does matter somewhat, but it is like old World of Warcraft builds. The race is the last 3-5%ish. It is mostly about player comfort honestly. People typically start race and build/class and stay that way (because race change costs money). 2000 bonus magicka from Altmer is a boon to any magicka character (healer, or mag dps). If you are unsure, Dark Elves, Khajiit and Argonians are a good start for either path.

Damage dealers are split into magicka and stamina (taking 100% of all stat upgrades), tanks are usually health focussed, with a bit of either or both, depending on your build.

[GloatingSwine]

That mostly applies when you want to do dungeons though.

Respeccing is super cheap, so don't worry about where things go whilst you're levelling.

Also if you bought one of the collected editions that gives you either High Isle or Blackwood go there first and get at least one companion so you can start them levelling, that takes a while.

[LibraryOgre]

This is a game design/storytelling trope I don't especially like. We hear about these "great cities" and then it's a dozen buildings with maybe twice that many people.

Daggerfall. Arena, too, but Daggerfall was like this.

[GloatingSwine]

Daggerfall. Arena, too, but Daggerfall was like this.

No?

Daggerfall had huge numbers of buildings. They were generic and there were only like seven or eight templates, but there were zillions of them per town.

The city of Daggerfall in Daggerfall had 306 buildings (not including the castle), which is not a "real" city size but by videogame standards is pretty sizable. By 1995 standards it's absolutely gargantuan.

Even the smaller villages would generally have 50+ buildings (but more of them would be generic residences).

And it just randomly generated an NPC swarm whenever you went to town to pad out the static NPCs so there was the impression of a large population.

[LibraryOgre]

No?

Daggerfall had huge numbers of buildings. They were generic and there were only like seven or eight templates, but there were zillions of them per town.

The city of Daggerfall in Daggerfall had 306 buildings (not including the castle), which is not a "real" city size but by videogame standards is pretty sizable. By 1995 standards it's absolutely gargantuan.

Even the smaller villages would generally have 50+ buildings (but more of them would be generic residences).

And it just randomly generated an NPC swarm whenever you went to town to pad out the static NPCs so there was the impression of a large population.

Sorry, I meant "Daggerfall is what is being sought".

[Vinyadan]

As far as cities are concerned, I think Red Faction: Guerrilla was an oddly courageous title. It was similar to the 3D GTA as general setup, except it was set during a violent revolution on a terraformed Mars. You started out in the more peripherical and sparsely inhabitated areas, but, as the game progressed, you got closer to the main population and administration hubs, interspersed with military, industrial and civilian compounds. The thing is that you could not only enter, but demolish each one of the buildings, and they were rather complex structures (it also made fights and missions more interesting, for example when you got a jetpack and the ability to enter towers by blowing the roof with a charge, or when you could enter a building by slamming a car into it, or run a mining truck through the wall of a military base). I don't think there's another game like that.

[veti]

In Fallout 3 there are buildings that are completely non-interactive. Not only is there no way to enter them, there is no visible door at all, even if you walk all the way around. They're basically rocks.

It's possible to add a lot of generic NPCs, all acting individually in a reasonably immersive way, if you just drop the insistence that they all need their own dialogue. Assassin's Creed comes to mind - released in 2007, it had well populated cities that actually looked and felt like cities, at the cost of a great many non-enterable buildings and uncommunicative people. Even individual behaviour AI packages aren't that demanding as far as CPUs are concerned. What takes time is writing and customising them.

[Gwynchan'rGwyll]

Witcher 3 comes to mind. Novigrad felt like a properly big city. I remember immediately thinking "this is what a city in a game should feel like".

[Triaxx]

So, having the Skyrim Itch again. Any lesser known mods you like that you think need some more eyes on?

[veti]

So, having the Skyrim Itch again. Any lesser known mods you like that you think need some more eyes on?

As I mentioned a few days ago, I recommend Warden of the Coast. Once you get to level 15 or so, anyway - don't make the mistake of starting it as soon as the hook spawns.

[LibraryOgre]

So, having the Skyrim Itch again. Any lesser known mods you like that you think need some more eyes on?

My personal favorite is a skill uncapper. Instead of having to reset your favorite skills once you get to 100, your skills just keep going. After 100, you CAN reset them, but you don't have to.

Unrelated: I wish the Fury, Calm, Fear spells had been pegged to the Dragonborn's level, instead of the targets. Would have made them far more useful (but I still think Fury is a great investment before doing the Bleak Falls Barrow)

[Grim Portent]

Unrelated: I wish the Fury, Calm, Fear spells had been pegged to the Dragonborn's level, instead of the targets. Would have made them far more useful (but I still think Fury is a great investment before doing the Bleak Falls Barrow)

Honestly would have just made them work on anything, with NPCs that you don't want mind magiced just being immune.

Or something like Illusion level * spell tier. Maybe throw on a /2 or /4 depending on how much you care about the existence of higher tier version of the novice spells.

[Spore]

Honestly would have just made them work on anything, with NPCs that you don't want mind magiced just being immune.

Just give them a chance to fizzle and aggro the target with your exact location. You'd change the illusion armor enchant to be (add up to 10% to illusion chance with 5 pieces buffing the chance by 50% plus whatever bonus chance the skills unlock). Maybe even capping it at 85%.

[veti]

Been trying to play Summerset Isle.

I want to like this mod. There's been a ridiculous amount of work put into it. The land itself feels, if anything, slightly larger than Skyrim proper, although (inevitably, perhaps) rather empty. Scenery, music and textures are lovely, voice acting is decent (though not as good as other big mods I've played recently).

Unfortunately, all that ambition is not backed up by enough technical competence to carry it off. I had to give up when I came to a main-quest-breaking bug. Nothing exciting, just a character won't speak to me when I need them to, and without them I'm at a standstill.

And this is where the whole thing gets ugly. Ordinarily, I'd post a description of the bug on the Nexus forum and hope the author got back to me with instructions on what to do next. But the author has shut down all discussion on the Nexus - no Forum, no Posts, no bug reports. That's - not the hallmark of someone who cares about their users' experience. Instead they direct me to a wiki, which is (1) clearly heavily curated, (2) out of date, and (3) won't even let me register as a user for anyway, so that's that.

What else to say about the mod... Enemies are OP (which I don't necessarily mind, but they're OP in the least interesting way possible, which is to say they're basically vanilla enemies but with much bigger stats - think of the bullet sponges from Point Lookout and you'll get the general idea, but turn it up to 11). There's far too much walking (the Shimmerene Mage's Guild, on the inside, is about as big as the whole of Windhelm, and you have to cross it repeatedly to get from the entrance to the tower at the back where your quest giver hangs out). There are some good things here, a lot of content, and some cool plot ideas; however, after several hours of play, I've yet to meet a single NPC who makes me give a damn' what happens to them.

So, regretfully, I'm going to abandon this character. Until such time as the author starts offering support, he's stuck.

[LibraryOgre]

I have picked up Skyrim again. I crowdsourced my character creation to my 7 year old, so I am a female argonian. Oddly, I found myself falling into a two-handed style... Conjuration, first, with an off-hand dagger for when I'm casting or out of magicka for my summoned battle axe.

[Rater202]

I understand that there's no possible way that this could have been programmed into the game and have make sense... But I kind of wish that there was a way you could save every Thalmor uniform that you loot over the course of the game and then dump them out during Seasn's Unending in order to intimidate the elf-bitch.

[Rynjin]

I just wish they'd included a way to get unenchanted Thalmor uniforms in the base game. Why do the bad guys always have the most swag?

[Fyraltari]

I understand that there's no possible way that this could have been programmed into the game and have make sense... But I kind of wish that there was a way you could save every Thalmor uniform that you loot over the course of the game and then dump them out during Seasn's Unending in order to intimidate the elf-bitch.

If the fact that you eat dragons for breakfast isn't intimidating already, I don't think killing a few dozen elves will make much of a difference.

That said, having her react to dropping a set of thalmor robes was definitely doable. Oblivion had the Dark Brotherhood traitor react if you bring his mother's head to him.

I just wish they'd included a way to get unenchanted Thalmor uniforms in the base game. Why do the bad guys always have the most swag?

Because they had Tamriel's Hugo Boss design their uniforms?

Only half-kidding, if there's obe place in Tamriel that would have fashion designers, it'd be Summerset.

[Rater202]

If the fact that you eat dragons for breakfast isn't intimidating already, I don't think killing a few dozen elves will make much of a difference.

Chances are neither she nor any of her men have seen that in person and as we've established previously, nobody invited to the truce negotiation was taking the dragons seriously as a threat.

Hard proof that you can slaughter the Thalmor, however...

Actually, on that note... Am I hallucinating or isn't there a random encounter that's a Thalmor hit squad with a signed letter from the bitch ordering your death?

[Fyraltari]

Chances are neither she nor any of her men have seen that in person and as we've established previously, nobody invited to the truce negotiation was taking the dragons seriously as a threat.

Yes, they were, otherwise they wouldn't come here, they just thought the war was the more pressing problem.

Hard proof that you can slaughter the Thalmor, however...

Changes what? I mean, besides pissing her off, which you know, positive, but still, it's not like people capable of single-handedly defeating squads of enemies are that rare.
Also, that's not proof of anything besides you having all those uniforms, for all she knows the stormcloaks killed these guys and handed you the uniforms. If she's going to doubt the stories of you killing dragons because she didn't see that with her own eyes...

Actually, on that note... Am I hallucinating or isn't there a random encounter that's a Thalmor hit squad with a signed letter from the bitch ordering your death?

Signed? Don't know about that, but orders for your death, yeah.

[Resileaf]

Mind you it would have been a good parallel to the Aldmeri Dominion bringing the head of every Blade agent in Aldmeri lands to the emperor before the war.

[Grim Portent]

I doubt Elenwen would be fussed by the idea that you can kill droves of Thalmor grunts. They're grunts for a reason, they're inferior Altmer in the eyes of their superiors due to some combination of (public) personality flaws, lack of skill, lack of magical ability, lack of zealotry or just poor breeding. They exist to serve and/or die for the good of the 'pure' Altmer back on Alinor.

Elenwen herself isn't presented as some kind of master mage or anything, just a decent intelligence agent, so I imagine she's as disposable to her superiors as her field agents are to her. She's protected by her position as ambassador, and not a whole lot else, but that protection is really strong for anyone who cares about politics. Even for the Dragonborn killing her would be a social faux pas that would achieve little and cause running problems in the future.


Broadly speaking, killing Elenwen wouldn't be hard in itself, and she knows this full well. But if she doesn't do her duties in spite of personal risk her superiors will just kill her and ship over a replacement, and she has the veil of diplomacy with which to give most enemies pause. Killing her achieves nothing beyond personal satisfaction and giving the Dominion an excuse to invade again.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I understand that there's no possible way that this could have been programmed into the game and have make sense... But I kind of wish that there was a way you could save every Thalmor uniform that you loot over the course of the game and then dump them out during Seasn's Unending in order to intimidate the elf-bitch.

I actually tried this, except just with the helmets…

Mind you it would have been a good parallel to the Aldmeri Dominion bringing the head of every Blade agent in Aldmeri lands to the emperor before the war.

…and this is why. The problem I ran into was that the black-robed Justiciars (you know the ones who are leading the squads and by extension would send more of a message) don’t have helmets, or even a hood in some cases. And the only message dumping the entire squad’s wardrobe in front of the Embassy sends is that I am an irrepressible packrat which…doesn’t quite land the same way.

Only half-kidding, if there's obe place in Tamriel that would have fashion designers, it'd be Summerset.

They do indeed have a Sapiarch of Apparel Analysis.