[RELZ] Quest Clutter Removal

Greetings, my name is Beave and I have been following this project for a couple of weeks. I recently added a few quest fixes and other scripting-related functionalities, such as the "price on your head" topic, to version 0.35.

Aside from that I have been working through quest dialogue - original Morrowind has a TON of dialogue entries for comments after quests are finished. While some provide a bit of interesting backstory, most entries follow the generic "thank you again" and do nothing but clutter the dialogue UI. With Oblivion this is exaggerated because of how the topic font is larger.

I have discussed this matter privately with David Budreck, and he is in agreement that clutter dialogue would be nice if removed. However, the biggest issue I have encountered in doing this is that topic filtering for individual entries tend to rely on other entries, such as the clutter dialogue, to help filter each other out. Consequently, removing clutter dialogue requires that I tweak the journal filters for most of the other quest entries.

The link below allows you to download these dialogue changes, which currently extends to the entire Fighter's Guild questline. I have tested most of the entries, but David is hesitant to incorporate such dramatic changes until they have undergone more extensive testing. By now I have run through the FG quests several times, and I fear that I may drive myself insane if I do it much more. Therefore, I ask that if you download this mod, be sure to test as many different quest branches as possible.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ydt66ci6k4cfev8

Also, this second link will give you a text file with a list of commands. It raises all of your attributes and skills to 250, health and magicka to 1000, and gives you 10000 gold, the Skeleton Key, and a Repair Hammer. This is especially useful for starting a new game and jumping in quickly to test something. Download to your Oblivion directory. In the console, enter the command "bat TestEquip.txt" to execute the list of commands. You can also skip most of the CharGen process by jumping off the boat and running off into the world instead of walking down the dock.

http://www.mediafire.com/?tvm3k6a364r3uqx

Last edited by thermador on 28 Sep 2011 - 09:17.

Beave, Sot and

Beave, Sot and RobertNeville777 have also been working on dialogue. Sot is working on voiceing dialogue here: http://morroblivion.com/forums/morroblivion/general/1648 and Robert is working on Voiced Greetings here: http://morroblivion.com/morrowind-voiced-greetings.

Perhaps you guys have already worked it out, but it seems to me like there could be some overlap between the three people. It would stink to have voice actors work on voicing dialgoue that would later be cut, etc.

Just thought I should let you know so that you can do whatever you need to.

I can imagine how crazy a job like this would be. Thanks for your hard work!

wat

I must admit, I am completely against changing the dialogue at all.

What benefit is there to removing the post-quest dialogue? It makes Morroblivion less like the original game, while also removing a key feature that makes the game more realistic -- people seem to remember that you did something for them. Plus it sounds like a ton of work for ... what benefits, exactly?

I guess the idea is that it

I guess the idea is that it clutters up oblivion's clumsy text interface. I use darknified's mod, so it doesn't bother me. So I do lean toward Thremador's point of view, if its up for debate.

Personally the after-quest

Personally the after-quest dialogue was never an element that I enjoyed even in Morrowind. There is actually a mod called LessLore that uses scripting to filter out some of this dialogue.

I agree with your point of realism, but most after-quest dialogue is rather generic. There are only a few entries that actually have some story, which I intend to keep but with a "Say Once" flag so as to get rid of them eventually. Besides, consider this - how realistic is it for people to be able to "thank you again" repeatedly by having those extra entries? I think the after-quest dialogue was really just put there to allow for less journal filtering for previous entries.

Concerning voiced dialogue, I have not worked anything out with these other modders yet. Perhaps the best solution for combining this project with others would be to put "Say Once" flags on all of the after-quest dialogue rather than deleting them.

I like say once a lot better

I like say once a lot better than deleteing ;D

Most of the work I have done

Most of the work I have done has likely become obsolete at this point; David has gone through the FG quest line himself and debugged a bit. At some point I will see what is left to be done, hopefully keeping in sync with David's work from this point forward, but I won't have much time to do anything for about a month at least.