» Wed Feb 03, 2010 1:50 pm From the readme:
The primary purpose of this mod is to radically change several aspects of the game that I felt to be imbalanced: birthsigns, racial bonuses, skill progression rates, spell effects, and the game's premade spells. I've since also expanded it to cover alchemy ingredients, as well.
BTB's Game Improvements is largely based on the well-known "Wakim's Game Improvements" mod, as you might have guessed from the name. The alchemy portion, in turn, was conceived as the spiritual successor to its counterpart in HotFusion's "Economy Adjuster" mod. Many of the changes made by this mod are either inspired by or taken directly from the above-mentioned ones, and thus I prefer to think of my work as a continuation of what was started by Wakim and HotFusion. What started as a series of modifications to Wakim's Game Improvements quickly grew so large in scope that it evolved into this release.
A secondary aspect of this mod is the addition of a script called "Level-Up Birthsign Remover", written by SpectaclesOfDoom and modified by myself to accomodate this mod. What it does is remove your birthsign just prior to leveling up and then adds it back immediately thereafter, therefore allowing attribute bonuses given by birthsigns to carry over the 100-point limit.
I've broken the mod up into three separate plugins: the "Character" plugin edits the game's birthsigns, races, and skill progression rates; the "Spells" plugin changes the magic effects, pre-made spells, and sets new starting spells; and the "Alchemy" plugin deals with alchemy ingredients. An alternate version of the "Character" file (located inside the folder of the same name) omits the permanent Khajitt Night-eye bonus. All of the changes made by the plugins are detailed in their respective "Changes" files.
That's pretty much all you really need to know. If you'd like to know more about the reasoning or motivation behind the changes I've made, continue reading.
For birthsigns, the focus was largely on making them all not svck. It bothers me that most of the signs conveyed bonuses that would quickly be obsoleted, rendering only a few of them actually useful. One of them - The Atronach - stood head-and-shoulders above all the others. The "drawback" of stunted magicka could easily be worked around by most players, and the defensive bonus that it conveyed was such that one could simply walk into Mordor at the outset of the game. So, using the Atronach as a benchmark of awesomeness, I set out to make all of the game's signs useful and appealing.
My main intent was to allow each birthsign to convey a bonus that remained useful throughout the entire game, but without being too overpowered. With the help of the Level-Up Birthsign Remover script, stat-boosting birthsigns are now able to convey their bonuses past the 100-point cap. As for the other birthsigns, I adjusted the powers as I saw fit. Your feedback on these changes is most welcomed, and my contact information can be found at the bottom of this file.
For races, my goal was more to make them all more distinguished from one another. As with the birthsigns, I wanted each race to convey at least some benefit that couldn't easily be replicated or rendered useless ten minutes into the game. Very few of the original racial powers were useful enough to influence a player's decision, and the starting stats/skill bonuses were hardly noticeable at best (any deficiency could more than easily overcome within the span of a few levels). Racial abilities were overhauled, and each race now has at least one power to call its own.
Combined starting stat totals for each race are now lower than before, with some of them now starting out as low as 20: low enough to actually be a noticeable handicap. To compensate, each race now has a full host of seven skill bonuses, several of them in hard-to-increase skills, all raised to a value of 10 across the board (any higher would make it possible to start out with minor skills higher than your major ones). As much change as it seems like, however, I ended up remaining surprisingly faithful to the game's original settings. For the curious, the lowest-possible maximum level to achieve with these new settings is 64.
For spells, almost none of the ones available for purchase are auto-calculated anymore. Nearly all of the pre-made spells are now not only powerful enough to be useful, but tend to cost anywhere from 50 to 80 percent than if you had custom-made the same spell. Spellmaking is still the way to create the most powerful effects in the game, but at least purchasing spells now has some draw other than simply acquiring the effect to enchant/spellmake.
As something of a side effect of the above, the game can now be a bit more challenging in that enemies and NPCs also now have access to the new, more powerful spells.
The cost for magic effects has been changed pretty much across the board. Underused/worthless spell effects are now much cheaper, while some of the more abused ones have been royally jacked up to prevent cheese abuse. In extreme cases (Sanctuary, Fortify Attribute, etc.), enchanting and/or spellmaking privileges have been revoked. In short, the pre-made spells are all still very much useful and affordable without being overpowered, and trying to create your own overpowered versions will now prove much more difficult (or, in same cases, impossible).
For example, take the "Open" and "Command Humanoid" spell effects. Both of them can and will be abused to hell and back by players who are just starting out in the game. This mod will provide you with reasonably-priced spells for these effects that are relatively free of fromage, but saying "screw it" and just enchanting yourself a 100-point Open ring 10 minutes into the game just isn't going to happen.
The skill progression rate changes I can't comment on too much. Weapons and armor now level slightly more slowly than before (with the exception of Marksman, which now levels up slightly faster), and Armorer is now considerably easier to raise. The Enchant can now be raised by fighting with "cast on strikes" weapons, but is conversely now more difficult to level through recharge/creation spamming. Acrobatics has been changed into an Agility-governed skill, with Hand-To-Hand combat filling the vacated spot for Strength. There's some other stuff, too.
As stated above, the alchemy changes were inspired by HotFusion's Economy Adjuster mod. HotFusion took issue to the somewhat random values assigned to alchemy ingredients and underwent a painstaking process of assigning new values to all of the ingredients based on rarity and difficulty of collection, the most noticeable result being that animal-based ingredients were all now much more valuable than before and that killing things for their body parts could actually be a somewhat profitable venture. My only complaint was that he apparently neglected to include a third factor - actual usefulness of the ingredient in question - into his equations. Still, his formulas provided me an with excellent base upon which to start my own work.
My only other complaint about HotFusion's changes was that it failed to address a number of other ingredient settings in the game that seemed (to me, at least) either half-assed or entirely pointless. Namely, several alchemy effects served no purpose whatsoever except apparently to fill space, and were thus removed and replaced with ones that helped to further enrichen the complex tapestry that is the creation of potions.
Some of the more noteworthy removals include:
-Fortify/Drain Intelligence, because they were clearly the single largest exploits in the entire game (Drain Intelligence, for anyone who wasn't aware, could be used to completely recharge your magicka).
-Drain Personality, as it was the only "drain" effect that had no real negative bearings when appearing in a potion. All instances have been replaced with other assorted drain effects that actually do.
-Light, for being infinitely inferior to Night-Eye (as well as completely worthless in several cases). All instances have been replaced with the Night-Eye effect.
-Cure Paralyzation, which is probably the most flat-out pointless effect in the game. All instances have been replaced with Resist Paralysis.
-Damage Health seemed rather pointless in the few cases that it showed up. All instances have been replaced with the far more common Drain Health.
-Blind only appeared twice, and in two ingredients that should never be combined in the first place. Both instances have been replaced with Paralyze.
-Drain Alteration, Damage Intelligence, Damage Magicka, Recall, and Fortify Maximum Magicka all appeared only once, and thus could never actually be used in a potion. All have been replaced with new effects.
-I left Vampire Dust (Vampirism) and the "Poison" ingredient alone, as well as most of the other "unique" ingredients. I did change all of the "cursed" ingredient variants, however.
Additionally, two new alchemy effects have been added: Slowfall and Disintegrate Weapon. The latter was added primarily to help ease the painfully-slow leveling of the Armorer skill, as well as to give you something to do with Bungler's Bane and Hypha Facia (both of to which the effect has been added) aside from selling them to Arrille for little more than a few drakes and his eternal scorn.
I also lowered the weight of several ingredients that were far too heavy for the often-meager benefits that they actually provided. You should now rarely find yourself consuming or selling off ingredients solely because they're too heavy to be worth lugging around.
On that note, lastly, new primary effects have been assigned to most of the ingredients, the intent and focus being that consuming them directly (as opposed to just making them into potions) should at least convey some sort of benefit. This notion is reinforced somewhat by the "character" plugin, which halves the experience gained by potion creation (from 2.00 to 1.00), while leaving the experience gain for eating ingredients at the default setting of 0.50. Even if you don't agree with my logic, this change should hopefully be of little consequence to your game
And that's about it.
