1102 replies to this topic

[Randox]

As part of my getting back into Skyrim, I have gone looking for even more graphical mods. I already have times in the game where I am looking around, and the game world is so beutiful that I just stop and gaze around in wonder. My goal is to have even more of those moments. Staying away from realistic lighting mods though. I have a couple (one for outside and one for inside), and beautiful as they may be, I don't wish to be wishing for a floodlight for the rest of the game, so I keep them turned off in the interest of being able to see where I am going. Of course, now I have packs that are duplicating each other, so I'll have to sort out the load order, or pick which ones I want to keep. I got a whole new set of detailed cities, and I think I'll run all of those, but have the new ones load last, since they were developed later and seem to be more comprehensive.

It still amazes me the effort people (especially Jay, who seems to be the author of like 70% of the mods I am using) put into this kind of thing. The vanilla world is pretty stunning in its own right, Bethesda did a pretty good job I think. But these people see something they don't like and just BAM! Gorgeous world.

I am not enjoying the process of getting my new addons though, since steam has no progress bar for this. So I just sort of have to let my computer sit and not use steam and hope its downloading stuff (though I guess I could look at my network usage to see if I am downloading or idle, and look at that, download usage at nearly a Mb/s, so I guess I am still downloading).

[Cheat]

BAIN and NMM will help a lot with load order.

[decebal]

Randox, on 02 September 2012 - 07:21 PM, said:

As part of my getting back into Skyrim, I have gone looking for even more graphical mods. I already have times in the game where I am looking around, and the game world is so beutiful that I just stop and gaze around in wonder. My goal is to have even more of those moments. Staying away from realistic lighting mods though. I have a couple (one for outside and one for inside), and beautiful as they may be, I don't wish to be wishing for a floodlight for the rest of the game, so I keep them turned off in the interest of being able to see where I am going. Of course, now I have packs that are duplicating each other, so I'll have to sort out the load order, or pick which ones I want to keep. I got a whole new set of detailed cities, and I think I'll run all of those, but have the new ones load last, since they were developed later and seem to be more comprehensive.

It still amazes me the effort people (especially Jay, who seems to be the author of like 70% of the mods I am using) put into this kind of thing. The vanilla world is pretty stunning in its own right, Bethesda did a pretty good job I think. But these people see something they don't like and just BAM! Gorgeous world.

I am not enjoying the process of getting my new addons though, since steam has no progress bar for this. So I just sort of have to let my computer sit and not use steam and hope its downloading stuff (though I guess I could look at my network usage to see if I am downloading or idle, and look at that, download usage at nearly a Mb/s, so I guess I am still downloading).

Get the Better Males Mod. It will really pump up the realism.  

[Randox]

The order I have them in seems to be working fine, though I suspect one of them is responisble for my bed in Breezehome being owned, and my not being able to sleep in it. I can live with that though. Oddly enough, the more blood and dripping armour are the ones that I am really noticing. Not getting wet in the rain or after swimming actually did bother me, and the extra blood from fighting seems to be a tad bit more realistic, so that fights are more like this now:

[Serpent Eye]

Has anyone DL'd Hearthfire yet?

It's only $4.99, but I'm not sure if it's even worth it. It sounds cool though!

Just hoping someone on TIF can provide an opinion..?

[Randox]

There is a mod that does much the same thing (does some things better, like more choice in the internal decoration style, but can only be built in one location), though I think I might hold out for this on the PC because apparently I am a sucked for $5 dollar content (even an economics students brain has a tenuous grasp of the concept of money at the best of times).

Dawnstar is really bugging me right now. On the one hand I want it. On the other hand, every single thing I have read about it indicates that it is not worth its price tag, not even close (from reviews, I would peg it as comparable to one of those $7 expansions they did for Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3). Also, I prefer a good character when possible, though I am hearing that being a vampire lord is actually a pretty huge pain in the but since it disables most of the game while your in that form (including picking things up), and I don't want to overpay for content that seems to have been done the lazy way.

Also, I went back to my original charecter whom I have pretty much been duplicating, minus a different quest order and some quests my original (well second char, my first was a mage). I stopped using my main melee fighter after getting that annoying bug at the end of completing the civil war quest line. Something about an NPC following me everyplace. Anyway, all the patches since then and now seem to have fixed that, which means I might go back to my original fighter for now, and not use my second fighter again until hearthfire because why not. I think I might also need to start working on my mage again, or start over with magic, and this time awknowledge that there are other spells than the ones in destruction, and they really would help me out (like extra allies and magical armour so that I'm not relying on my uber protective cloth robe), and I need to do up a ranger as well. Though a ranger will probably end up as a light armour ranger/theif/warrior hybrid, because enemies can run at me. Still, it would be nice to use a different set of armour, glass sort of looks neat.

[Serpent Eye]

Well, I went ahead and bought Hearthfire anyway.

It's really awesome so far! More or less it's like Construction on RuneScape. Running around finding various building materials to expand your house and make decorations.

My favorite part so far is the garden... 11 "Soil" spots that you can Activate. Once you Activate a spot, it will bring up a list of any *plant only* Alchemy ingredients you are carrying (Blue mountain flower, Whitecap, etc.) You then use the "Give" option, and you plant that ingredient in the plot. A few days later (I'm at 3 days, and there are little shoots sprouted up!!!) and things start to grow. Very very cool - you can more or less have a constant flow of Alchemy ingredients? If you don't mind waiting for them to grow.

My garden looks a bit odd at the moment with a bunch of Glow mushrooms growing everywhere.

The only thing I'm not sure about is how many ingredients you get back when you harvest? Getting only 1 back wouldn't really make sense since you use up an ingredient to plant it in the first place.... maybe you get 2-3 back when you harvest?

Edit: It seems to vary depending on the plant. I got 5 Deathbell back, 3 Creeper cluster, 2 White cap, etc. The plants stay grown after harvest as well, so you just have to wait another 4 days for them to replenish.

[Randox]

And I shall have the largest Nirnroot Garden in all the land, an lo, it will piss off all my neighbors with its great sound.

I acutally have found a reason why it will be worth buying this on PC, even though there are free mods that duplicate it. People don't make mods for mods, but they do make mods for DLC, so I am expecting the modding community to take everything Bethesda didn't bother with, and fix it, becuase they will have a functional house building system to work on top of, which frees you up overhaul the choices and what not, so I can't wait to see what people do with this. I am hoping I will be able to make a castle some day. It's also possible that the scripts the DLC adds might find other uses that help with other kinds of mods. I don't know, I'm still trying to put my dungeon together (and if no one can let me build my own house, I'll plop one down on the map someday and call it mine because thbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt).

[Serpent Eye]

Well, I should clarify that you can't grow ALL of the plant-based ingredients. Including Nirnroot, Jazbay grapes, etc.

[Randox]

That might be just as well, otherwise I might actually grow a nirnroot garden, and it might actually be loud and annoying. There will probably be a mod for that though. But I want a mod that will let me build a 3 story castle with a tower, because at least one of my characters is going to become a neighbor from hell.

Another mod I want to look into if I don't think it will cause to many problems is one that eliminates the need to load cities when you enter them (so you can just walk through the gate, rather than beaming through it). Apparently one of the previous games was like that, and I think that would really help immersion. Unfortunately, because I know how the map was built, and I am pretty sure I grasp how all the mods that make cities prettier work, such a mod would almost certainly ruin most of them (towns like river wood would be fine because they are part of the world area anyway).

[Giordano]

Why is this game still 60 bucks? I want to buy it so bad but not at 60...it's been out for almost a year now, it should be at most 40, so when a steam sale hits its 25ish bucks.

[Kimberly]

It's consistently been in the top 10 games according to Gamefaqs since its release. Games that popular are always slower to crash in price. It sucks, because that usually carries over to their DLC too @_@ Dawnguard is overpriced.

[Alg]

Randox, on 06 September 2012 - 09:40 PM, said:

That might be just as well, otherwise I might actually grow a nirnroot garden, and it might actually be loud and annoying. There will probably be a mod for that though. But I want a mod that will let me build a 3 story castle with a tower, because at least one of my characters is going to become a neighbor from hell.

May I introduce you to the Creation Kit? Once you learn how, you can probably build the castle entirely out of Nirnroot (Or at least line the walls with it).

Edit: In fact, I'm going to start that project now...

[decebal]

All this talk about Hearthfire makes the little PS3 fanboy inside my heart die a little.

Ah well, the fact that nirnroot gardens aren't possible yet brightens me up a bit. Damn, I made a bad decision buying Skyrim for the PS3 after the FO3 GOTY fiasco.

[Randox]

I have the creation kit. I even have a tomb that I will never finish that I partially built toying around with it. It's all a matter of time and effort though, and to do a good job of it is a lot of both. I am planning on going through the tutorials again on the weekend though.

[Vezon Dash]

I just started playing Skyrim a few weeks ago, and yesterday my suitemate bought Dawnguard. (its his XBox) I haven't really touched the Dawnguard materials yet, but I have already almost contracted vampyrism 4 times in the past day just doing my normal kind of tasks. I'm starting to get kind of annoyed at this whole situation since there will probably be a time where I won't be able to cure myself before it becomes permanent somewhere down the line. =/

[Randox]

I've been watching the skyrim news on steam, and was reading this article on Kotaku, and more importantly the comments section. Learned some things about how sony likes to build their consoles (and that probably all cross platform developers want to shoot them for it). I also learned that some people don't understand that the hardware inside a PS3 does not magically improve itself to keep up with technological developments, and that no matter how good your programming is, there is a finite limit to what the hardware can do.

Not saying that Bethesda couldn't have done a better job porting the game to the PS3, but it seems like the most expensive to port to assuming you start with the PC version (because it is less like a computer than the 360), and the PS3 version has to be supported by PS3 sales of the investors will light someone on fire.

[decebal]

Randox, on 09 September 2012 - 03:23 AM, said:

I've been watching the skyrim news on steam, and was reading this article on Kotaku, and more importantly the comments section. Learned some things about how sony likes to build their consoles (and that probably all cross platform developers want to shoot them for it). I also learned that some people don't understand that the hardware inside a PS3 does not magically improve itself to keep up with technological developments, and that no matter how good your programming is, there is a finite limit to what the hardware can do.

Not saying that Bethesda couldn't have done a better job porting the game to the PS3, but it seems like the most expensive to port to assuming you start with the PC version (because it is less like a computer than the 360), and the PS3 version has to be supported by PS3 sales of the investors will light someone on fire.

The problem here isn't the fact that the ps3 is hard to port, that is well known. The problem is that Bethesda postpones the release of the PS3 DLC up to 3-6 months without any reports of there being any bugs, then they delay the release by another 5 months (which is what happened to Operation Anchorage for Fallout 3) to "iron out bugs". To make matters worse, they have shown that they don't even pay attention to their PS3 players even after the delays. The most notable example that I can think of is Fallout 3: Game of the Year edition. If I were to buy the DLC right now, I can choose to either buy the GOTY edition for $20, however I will have to start new characters because of a bug that does not allow old characters access to the DLC (plus the GOTY Edition is known to be more buggy overall), or fork out $50 for all 5 addons on the PSN. A $30 difference for a smoother game that allows me to play my old characters.

[Randox]

Except that in this case, there are reports of bugs with dawnguard on the PS3 I think. Or at least a lot of the people commenting there seem to be under the impression that the official reason DAwnguard was not released on the PS3 was that the larger saves it creates caused the system to shit itself.

[Alg]

Randox, on 09 September 2012 - 04:35 AM, said:

Except that in this case, there are reports of bugs with dawnguard on the PS3 I think. Or at least a lot of the people commenting there seem to be under the impression that the official reason DAwnguard was not released on the PS3 was that the larger saves it creates caused the system to shit itself.

I've heard that this is the case with Bethesda games on the PS3 in general. If this article is to be believed, it's the same kind of problem that Morrowind had on the Xbox (Saves would bloat until the game became nigh unplayable).

I'd say that they're just not good at making console games, but they've gotten better on the 360 (Though there will be plenty of bugs regardless of the platform).