Skywind Creatures Fate.

I'm not familiar with mods of that type for Oblivion and Skyrim, but I like the system. It also seems more realistic: whereas you might find fighting a bear or, say, kagouti, very dangerous while you are still inexperienced, no matter what a badass you are, these creatures will still pose a threat to you. Well, Oblivion sucked at that - many of the lesser creatures would just go extinct at some point in the game.

Ahem. 1 to 100 might be a bit over kill. Like, let's say I just left Moonmoth fort after leaving Seyda Neen. I'm on my way to start my first quest! Suddenly a level 89 Cliff Racer spawns and one shots me. Or if I was going from Seyda Neen to Moon Moth after exiting the Census office. What if a level 45 rat spawns and one shots me?

This is a neat idea, but 1 to 100 is a bit over kill. I don't think a rat should ever be level 64. I don't even wanna think of what would happen if a level 98 Cliff Racer spawned and started attacking NPCs.

I can agree with that, scale the cliff racer but have everything else as you described. What's the point of playing Skywind if you don't have to run for your life! It is however a bit hard to run from a cliff racer so ya maybe scale them

Yes definitely, 100% onboard.

I'm quite happy to make the game as hard as possible. If we can make blighted and diseased stats really quite high and have them spawn more regularly once character level is higher as well, for keeping you on your toes.

hey the concept is really cool and i would like to see it in game, but i think it only lacks one thing:

 at level 45 finding a rat level 1 you can just ignore it and move on, but if you find 6 or more maybe you will have to kill them. So the point is, when you level up, the lower level creatures start to spawn at greater numbers so the game is still challenging because, they may be weak by themselves, but they have numbers to compensate it. (eg: wolves).

I know it is possible to spawn various creatures at once the question is: can you increase the number of creatures spawned as you level up?

I am giving this suggestion because the "curve of difficulty" would be almost a straight line so initially the game would be hard and later easier in comparison, as the same creatures spawn at level 1 and at level 50 (i know they will scale their level but as a level 1 finding a lvl 1 rat and a lvl 15 kagouti is different from at lvl 50 finding a lvl 5 rat and a lvl 45 kagouti.)

The thing is that Elder Scrolls games have a tradition as the game progresses you basically become a God. Obviously a crowd pleaser, but I'm always about the challenge of a game.

But my vote is to make the game constantly hard, meaning scares, more thought into tactics, etc.

I really like the idea of blighted creatures to represent later stages, because its just not suddenly creatures that you encountered at level one are more difficult. They represent a time line in events coming to a head, and the situation of the blight.

So I'd say there was a case for increasing creature encounters as the game goes. More packs as it were. Creatures have come out of their hiding places and are rabid.

This will help maintain a level of hardness that should keep players on their toes throughout.

But too be honest I didn't play Morrowind or Oblivion so if the status quo is make it easy then perhaps somebody will just make a mod for this type of thing. I installed all the hard mods for Skyrim and still found it way too easy, but that just probably my awesome skills ;-)

hmmm. not sure... skyrim uses it's scaling thing, which is nice when you start playing but becomes boring as soon as you level. Maybe working on the existing system. Most time you will get default encounters but from time to time you will get smth with 10-20 level above yours. It can be scripted for each encounter, you will get 5% chance to get a 30 levels above yours creature / bandit etc, 10% to be 25 levels above, 15% to be 20% and so on and 100% to be default. ofc this depends on the creatures base stats and how it grows per level. In skyrim if it were to drop on a sabercat when exiting the mine at level 1, i don't think you'll have a chance.

I'm for the idea of having things spawn in relation to the region. I'm for immersion more than anything so having high-level Daedra run around Daedric ruins is fine by me. Cliff-racers flying in mountainous areas, blight becoming more prevalent the closer you are to Red Mountain - they're all things I feel could make the game feel better. I also like the idea of higher-level/diseased creatures running rampant around the ghost fence as it would make Red Mountain a lot more intimidating - the idea being that it should feel like a constant looming threat over the player since we all know we'll eventually have to venture there.  

I do like the idea, but I could see this getting frustrating for players just trying to get around and constantly running into stuff too strong for them to handle. I only bring this up as a counterpoint. The current discussion just seemed so one sided. Lol. Is it possible to put percentages on the spawn rates? Like the creatures stronger than you spawn less often?

I am the exact opposite of the "gotta be hard" crowd. I like my sandbox games easy on combat, because I love exploring and stories. And Morrowind has some of the best places and stories in TES

Personally, I think that we should take the middle road. Creatures you would need to spend a lot of time and effort outfighting, outsmarting or simply outrunning should definitely have their place here and there, but we don't want to overwhelm people too much. Higher leveled or large groups monsters should be a rare occurrence in the beginning, and increase in likelihood the higher up and more powerful you get. But only to a certain degree, of course.

Pussies, harden up

 

What if there was something like leveled regions. Like stronger creatures in the more dangerous areas like in/around Red Mountain, Molag Amur, and the Ashlands? In the end though, personally like the difficult route along with Happy, but it's just personal taste. We should be basing everything on what the majority of skyrim pc gamers want, otherwise it'll deter a lot of people from playing it.

majority of skyrim pc gamers want?

Creatures to die if the camera points in their direction, oh yeah and big boobs.

Maybe we could make this as a submod? So people who want it harder can download the submod, people who don't can just ignore it. I understand why people like challenge like this but me and I'm sure others don't like it so surely to please everyone this can be optional?

Oops wrong thread D:

I always thought that it made sense to do difficulty by region.  The harsher ashland regions could have more dangerous enemies, and the farther you go from roads and towns the deadlier things get.  I definitely agree with everything SikSikSikki said.

Hm, personally we can go all Dark Souls with this, but this probably will turn off players xD.

But I agree that the more dreadful regions should be filled with nastier enemies from the start. As far as I remember correctly, it takes a while anyway until you start to discover these parts and have quests in there?

I still think that it should be a submod, I think it should be that the vanilla Skywind should have it like it is in vanilla Skyrim and then just have things like this as a submod. Just my opinion :).

I had a mod for Morrowind where animals that weren't diseased or blighted were fine to ignore you until you attacked or got right up against them.  This seemed to make sense to me.  Diseased creatures were more aggressive but not as tough as healthy, and blighted were more aggressive and a lot tougher than healthy.  I think this is a good way to keep the exploration fun in areas a low level might go, and places like ghost gate foreboding, since you're far more likely to find those around red mountain.  Cliff racers become a lot more atmospheric when most of them ignore you.  It's like seeing an eagle or something.

I'm all for having the game difficult. Skyrim was baby-tier. Creatures should be dangerous. Diseases should grow from a minor stage(a few stat reductions) to a critical stage (which will be almost unbearable).

Maybe more features like this. Someone mentioned in a different thread that glass armor and weapons were more effective than others, but less durable. We need more stuff like this in my opinion. Increasing a few stats(damage, speed etc.) only is boring.

Having creatures at set levels would be good. Someone who has killed 150 Scamps should have an extremely easy time killing rats or Scribs and a hard time killing Clannfear or Daedroths. These creatures would be a challenge at low level, but the higher level you get, the easier these creatures would get.

Thermocrius

I'm all for having the game difficult. Skyrim was baby-tier. Creatures should be dangerous. Diseases should grow from a minor stage(a few stat reductions) to a critical stage (which will be almost unbearable).

Maybe more features like this. Someone mentioned in a different thread that glass armor and weapons were more effective than others, but less durable. We need more stuff like this in my opinion. Increasing a few stats(damage, speed etc.) only is boring.

But some people don't like it more difficult, so that's why I think it should be made optional.

Its like those Skyrim logic pages that post stuff like "Kills 50 dragons, killed by a sabrecat"

They need to "git gud".

Or are we appealing to the Call of Duty audience? Seeing as Dark Souls is getting popular, people will be more used to games like they were back in the days: hard.

Edit: what happened to the quoting?

Thermocrius

They need to "git gud".

Or are we appealing to the Call of Duty audience? Seeing as Dark Souls is getting popular, people will be more used to games like they were back in the days: hard.

Edit: what happened to the quoting?

Skywind should be aimed towards as big an audience as possible, and this is done through making things like this optional. Just my opinion.

CiaranB123

Thermocrius

They need to "git gud".

Or are we appealing to the Call of Duty audience? Seeing as Dark Souls is getting popular, people will be more used to games like they were back in the days: hard.

Edit: what happened to the quoting?

Skywind should be aimed towards as big an audience as possible, and this is done through making things like this optional. Just my opinion.

Skywind's goal should be to make the game interesting enough to hold people's attention, which is what this would help do.  Since we're not in this for profit we don't have to cater to the largest possible audience (which is the casual gamer that probably will not invest much thought or appreciation in the game).

Killing a dragon at level 4 in Skyrim, and then killing dragons forever try ever thereafter was not 'epic'.  It made killing dragons a dull experience.  Skyrim had great promise, and the DLCs were better in many aspects than the main game, but it just didn't hold my attention like I believe Skywind should hold others'.

Smitehammer

Skywinda goal should be to make the game interesting enough to hold people's attention, which is what this would do.  Killing a dragon at level 4 in Skyrim, and then killing dragons forever try ever thereafter was not 'epic'.  It made killing dragons a dull experience.  Skyrim had great promise, and the DLCs were better in many aspects than the main game, but it just didn't hold my attention like I believe Skywind should hold others'.

Which is exactly why you had mods such as Deadly Dragons and DCO, to make them more challenging, whereas people who didn't want this just didn't download the mods. Simple as that. Because this is such a big mod with such a big target audience I definitely think it should have many optional features.

I don't mind if it makes it harder, just have this as an option rather than what people HAVE to do. You're argument just seems to be based on 'most people like it this way so we'll have it this way and won't think of others who don't like it this way', sorry if I misinterpreted :).

We don't have to cater to the largest audience possible - we aren't in this for profit.  If we were Elder Scrolls Online we'd have to make sure to cater to the masses - easy mode play, simplified skills, pretty female orcs - because this is how we'd ensure maximum profit.  But we are making a labor of love - there's no reason to 'dumb it down' to maximize profits.  If a mod were to be made, perhaps it would be one to add leveled lists so everything levels as you do, but I think once people adjust to the deep end of the pool few will want to go back to the shallows.

I can see this from both sides. The vets of the series want a nice challenging experience becouse that is simply what they enjoy. And they believe that it adds depth and a feeling of accomplishment to the game. Which it in fact does. The other side of the argument, however, feel that there are those that want to play the mod that either just want to experience the story and world, and/or aren't great at the game so the higher difficulty would be aggrivating, and therefore ruin the experience. One simple solution I can think of would be the difficulty setting. Just turn it down. If these harder machanics are tuned in to a higher setting then the normal or easier settings won't be all that difficult. Of course that sounds good on paper anyway. Would need to see how it played out in game.

Well for me it isn't the challenge, usually I play expert/master with SkyRe, it's the fact that if I wanted to go to a certain area early on I wouldn't be able to due to the really high level creatures there. This, for me, completely destroys what is so good about these games - the fact that you can do whatever you want, whenever you want. I don't want to be turned away from a dungeon early on because it is too hard, or if I go back to an area and do a quest I missed then it will be too easy and boring. 

And smitehammer, I'm not saying 'dumb the game down to make it cater for the mainstream audience and maximise profits', I'm saying that there should be multiple options for people who want to play this mod and enjoy it their way rather than your way or anyone else's way.

Hey guys, i've been looking into the development for a long time now, and I would like to share my opinion about the subject

Scaling level monsters are a bad idea I think, or at least the way Oblivion did it. The point of an RPG is getting better. You encounter some big ugly monster, and barely escape, so you train yourself to become stronger, and the next time you slay the big ugly monster easily.
I did not get this feeling in Oblivion, when the bandits were just as powerful, or nearly as powerful as I was. It was immersion breaking. I saved the goddamned world, closed 20+ oblivion gates, and I these simple bandits had daedric armor on them, and they were running around with PC-2 levels.

I liked how Skyrim bandits scaled until a point, but they remained relatively weak in the whole game.

The game can be still hard, of course, "bosses" can have scaled levels, and equipment, where it is logical. Monsters can still be higher level, nobody says you have to defeat Netches on your first day in the game, but after you trained hard enough, no rat should give you problems.

RufusDaMan

Hey guys, i've been looking into the development for a long time now, and I would like to share my opinion about the subject

Scaling level monsters are a bad idea I think, or at least the way Oblivion did it. The point of an RPG is getting better. You encounter some big ugly monster, and barely escape, so you train yourself to become stronger, and the next time you slay the big ugly monster easily.
I did not get this feeling in Oblivion, when the bandits were just as powerful, or nearly as powerful as I was. It was immersion breaking. I saved the goddamned world, closed 20+ oblivion gates, and I these simple bandits had daedric armor on them, and they were running around with PC-2 levels.

I liked how Skyrim bandits scaled until a point, but they remained relatively weak in the whole game.

The game can be still hard, of course, "bosses" can have scaled levels, and equipment, where it is logical. Monsters can still be higher level, nobody says you have to defeat Netches on your first day in the game, but after you trained hard enough, no rat should give you problems.

It's quite like that in Skyrim though, if you come across a bear at level one then you need to run away, come across one level 50 and you kill it easily. Come across a few wolves early on, fairly tough fight, come back 20 levels later, it's easy. If you go into dungeons, though, they'll usually scale with you to make it so that you can go in at level 5 or 50 without having to skip them because they are too hard or not have fun when doing them as they are too easy.

Anyway, all this is irrelevant, what I'm trying to say is give the player the option to have it one way or the other, not force them to do what you want to do.

Tajnarasha

I'm for the idea of having things spawn in relation to the region. I'm for immersion more than anything so having high-level Daedra run around Daedric ruins is fine by me. Cliff-racers flying in mountainous areas, blight becoming more prevalent the closer you are to Red Mountain - they're all things I feel could make the game feel better. I also like the idea of higher-level/diseased creatures running rampant around the ghost fence as it would make Red Mountain a lot more intimidating - the idea being that it should feel like a constant looming threat over the player since we all know we'll eventually have to venture there.  

^This.

Even if we tear off level scalling almost completely (and I would certainly be up for that), the game will still pose a big challenge and won't become boring. With time you'll learn to survive in more and more dangerous areas. That way levelling will pay off (because let's say West Gash will be a pretty safe place for you at level 10), but you will still have a challenge ahead of you, which will be the more difficult regions.

If I was to describe regional difficulty with the character level (first number is "survivable if lucky and l33t", the second number is "not threatening anymore"):

Ascadian Isles 1 - 8
West Gash 1 - 12
Bitter Coast 1 - 14
Azura's Coast 2 - 18
Sheogorad 2 - 20
Grazelands 5 - 24
Ashlands 8 - 33
Molag Amur 10 - 35
Red Mountain 15 - 50


That of course only takes animal spawns into account, monsters in ruins and caves would pose much more of a threat, depending on the dungeon/special area itself. Most likely the most dangerous (and rich) dungeons would be in the most dangerous places.

About Cliff Racers - I think they should be more region-specific as well :P There shouldn't be many of them in the Bitter Coast, while plenty in West Gash, Ashlands, and Molag Amur (I imagine Cliff Racers are rather fond of cliffs).

I don't think any more difficulty balancing or scalling is required. It is perfectly fine and immersive that some parts of the world are not accessible until you progress. First - it makes progress actually important and gives more satisfaction when you get a level, and also balances the pace of exploration much better. Not sure why Bethesda tends to make the whole world accesible from the beginning, that is one of the factors that ruin exploration (in Skyrim it was a bit better, but still not too good).

Other than that, I'd really like to see some cool animal behaviour/AI. Not sure how possible that is or if we have anyone who knows how to do this, but it would make the hunting part of the game so much more interesting if the animals didn't go into full berserk mode whenever spotting us. Some could try to scare us off and only attack if we come too close, others would stalk us silently from behind and attack if we spot them/when they get close enough. And those AI programs could also be used in fights between creatures themselves :P It would be really cool to see a pack of Nix Hounds sneaking and ganging up on a guar.
 

Dragomir

Snip

 

There are actually realistic animal behavior mods for Skyrim. It would be a good idea to take a look at those for things like you mentioned, Nix hounds packing up on their prey - animals being territorial but not aggressive towards the player. Things like this would definitely be great touches to life on Vvardenfell because we weren't able to see them back in Morrowind due to tech limitations. 

 

As for the ''every area should be accessible'' argument. Where Red Mountain was concerned, there were always high-level ash monsters regardless of your progress in the game. That area specifically was extremely harsh to play through. Nothing stopped you from venturing there, but if you wished to fight Dagoth Ur's minions it was your funeral. Same thing for a few ruins that had high-level targets that would wield glass and daedric artifacts regardless of your level. 

This is one of the best mods that makes creatures' AI dynamic.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/10175/?

Off topic: One thing I personally loved about Skyrim is that it had many docile creatures (deer/elk, rabbits, foxes, mammoths, giants, ...) that you'd hunt for crafting materials

The biggest problem with that that I can see is imagining dociles that fit into Vvardenfell. 

we;re planning on teir 2 creatures after march, small critters that act as prey.

it got docile creatures like gaur and netch  but its not realy  a place where mammals live its a harsh land whit bug and reptile beasts 

would be fun to replace rabbits in skyrim whit some bunny sized lizards on vvardenfell that only run away and dont get agro from the other creatures maby a few diffrent textures to fit different places

Rabbit-sized insects would be a better fit. :P

lizards, maybe just 10 inches (about 30 cm) large would be a nice idea for a docile creature in some areas of vvardenfell!

 

 

And we'll need some frogs or boomerang-headed amphibians to make sense of the sounds of the Bitter Coast.  Maybe amphibian mixed with mollusk. Frogs with snail heads and inflatable bladder-sacs?  Cambrian arthropods?!

Oh yeah, would be SO awesome to have something like this lurking in the waters of Bitter Coast:

[External image]

yes yes yes yes! but not too large. they should be small critter.

And we'll need some frogs or boomerang-headed amphibians to make sense of the sounds of the Bitter Coast.  Maybe amphibian mixed with mollusk. Frogs with snail heads and inflatable bladder-sacs?  Cambrian arthropods?!

This tickled my muse. What about small creatures that could conceivably be related to netches (jellyfish) or kwama? Or even some little two-legged creature like a small cousin of kagouti/alit (dinosaur)?

 

I'm the one who currently working on "ambient bugs". That's mean also a little creatures-just-for-matherials. There are abot 5-7 of them, going to show them asap (1-2 days) =) I'm totally love the idea to use prehistoric creatures like references and for inspiration! 

Not Really a critter but for the past few days I've been working on a side project thst recreates some older elder scrolls creatures that weren't present in skyrim or morrowind, such as the dadrea, Vermai.

 [External image]

Heres just a very quick and early build that i did two days ago. I just added some basic surface detail and did a quick poly painted to get a feel for it. Certain shapes and muscular details still need to be worked out. Like this model, the rest of the models are still very wip.

 

 

great stuff! would love to see more old creatures coming back to life, maybe someday there'll be a revisit to battlespire :-p