Well, if you think of any, let me know.

I'm not really in a position to go looking myself at the moment, since my internet access here at work is rather limited (I have to come to the other side of the building just to get on).

EDIT: switching gears for just a moment, I just finished up with my updates to the readme, and I believe I'm done with the "Settings" plugin (aside from the skill growth consideration), which just leaves me with the "Spells" and "Equipment" plugins.

I'm not sure who was talking about it before, but I've decided that the best way to work around the fact that my camping cell edits can't work on any cell that's added or edited by another mod is to just add back in the edits I used to have that made it impossible to camp without being immediately attacked.

@Inverness Moon

For me, my melee skill tends to become my secondary option as typically I'll start firing on things well before I am close and generally I will do enough damage to kill or nearly kill most things I encounter even at low levels so I just end up using Marksman more than my melee skills.


I'm opposed to Levitate being an option for anyone who isn't a high-level mage and prefer everyone else to use extremely weak spells or potions or scrolls. I think that perhaps for Telvanni mages maybe there should be a quest item that grants a short but potent flash of levitation for those tricky Telvanni tower tunnels. Obviously I'd like to see you going the other way but that's just my play style. I think I feel that Jump should be similarly restricted too since it can also give the player a huge advantage against nonflying enemies. In my game, I've gone to the trouble of removing the Levitate effect from all but a single ingredient and I've made the potions, scrolls etc. much more scarce but this is only important if you're the kind of person who has trouble not exploiting game mechanics.

I'm surprised that you seem to have taken a different way with Water Breathing as previously you increased the base cost.

I understand what you're trying to say, but to put those edits in perspective, you must first realize how almost entirely worthless both jump and levitate are in potions at their current values with all of the other settings in my mod taken into consideration. I haven't tested to confirm, but I think that both settings I'm proposing will still result in potions weaker than most of the pre-made spells.



Raising the cost was a losing battle, as I go on to describe in my readme., because water breathing is effective even at a duration of 1.

Oh wow, I didn't even think about that. Too bad.

Yeah. Slowfall has the same problem, pretty much. So no spellmaking or enchanting for either one of them, partly to avoid custom spells that only cost 1 magicka while still being effective, and partly so I can lower the effect costs so that they'll actually be useful in potions.

By the way, I just noticed a simple problem with the necromancer's amulet.

The amulet has a constant effect fortify magicka. This only increases the current magicka and not the maximum, so once you use that extra bit of juice up its like the effect doesn't even exist since you can't reach it again without reequipping the amulet. I think it needs to be changed back to fortify intelligence. 15 points if not 25.

Pretty much anything with a CE fortify magicka *or* fortify fatigue effect is going to have this problem, it would seem.

Yay, that's one more thing I get to fix.

Sheogorath's Signet Ring is the only item I have with constant effect Fortify Fatigue. I suppose you just replace that with the original 10pt Fortify Personality.

Good point.
Marksman definitely has the advantage of keeping you away from most damage.

However, considering BTB GI's philosophy, if we balance marksman with a lower growth rate, it will certainly conduce the player to spend more time grinding, using his bow on mud-crabs. I will be boring, but will work.

In general, I feel it's easier to fight with a bow in MW.
The daedric bow can deal up to 50 damage which can one or two shots many enemies.
Maybe another solution could be to reduce the average damage of all bows and keep the growth rate to a non boring value.


Oh, I'm honored


I'm glad it still helps!


A short break won't hurt
Long time I didn't boot on Windows!

I give values using my grandmaster set, Int=77, Alch=66, no buff (I could get +20 int).
Before values use BTB 9.0, after use the values you "have in mind".


Before / after: 11pts - 19s / 28pts - 53s
Since there is no more boots of blinding speed, the best alternative I've found is jump + feather potions.
Now if I reduce jump's cost to 2.00 I get more than twice the duration and the power, which is far more convenient but I think I'll feel wrong using such a boost.


Before / after: 11pts - 19s / 15pts - 27s
It's ok, no big difference.


Before / after: 7pts - 11s / 27pts - 52s
Duration may be boring in some cases, but it's no big deal and it finally gives the player enough time to slowly fall across Vivec's districts.


Before / after: 14s / 52s
I think a grand master in alchemy should be able to hold his breath at least 52s!


Considering MrTea arguments, I'm not sure what the best solution could be.

One thing I've been thinking about for awhile is how constant effect spells are done in Dragon Age. You sacrifice a percentage of your mana to keep a spell activated on yourself until you decide to turn it off. Obviously, Morrowind wouldn't support that mechanic well, but what about having spells that have much longer durations (several minutes) in exchange for applying a drain magicka effect for the same amount of time?

One thing I get tired of is repeatedly casting night eye or detect creatures when I'm in a dungeon or something. I would much prefer an effect that lasts five or ten minutes while draining a few times the magicka points as the cost of the spell so I'm not having to recast it at inconvenient times.
This my protest when it comes to Marksman. I don't like the idea of making changes that encourage grinding.

I'm reminded of the bow problem in Oblivion where they do puny amounts of damage, enough that Bethesda was influenced by an improvement mod to change that in Skyrim.

Also, daedric bows were already lowered to do 40 damage, unless you're referring to other parts of the formula. I don't know what all goes into the final damage value.

Edit: I was looking through the Spells plugin read me again and noticed that several other spells had been added to Ervona Barys at Ebonheart, who, as I noted before, only sold to Champions in the Legion. I suggest those also be moved to someone else.

Nah, I'm going to have to be more creative. Personality and intelligence are the two attributes for which I try to be really stingy about handing out fortify effects (for hopefully obvious reasons).



I think I've identified the core of our disagreement over Marksman, and that would be whether or not we consider it to be a "primary" combat skill.

As I mentioned, I have both axe and marksman as major skills. However, I tend to rely on my bow as my primary weapon, and only pull out my axe when I have to.

That being said, I'm not sure where that leaves us. What do y'all think?



It looks like that value may be a bit too low... the duration in particular still seems too high. I'm thinking 2.40 will



...the hell? How is it that Levitate ends up with different results with the same value?

Anyways, that still seems a tad bit too high. The duration of the spells are 20 seconds apiece, and I'm thinking that a grandmaster potion should come close to matching that (which would leave most amateur potions still fairly ineffective).



Yeah, that looks good. I don't see amateur potions being too overeffective, and the new quality/exclusive potion values I've set in the "Alchemy" plugin still make them good to have.

That reminds me, I should probably post them here.



Slowfall and water walking/breathing have the same values, yet levitate and jump differ...

Weird. Just weird.



Too many problems with that. One, you can block against the drain magicka effect with magicka resistance. Two, it would have to be damage magicka, since any drained value is restored when the effect ends.



I've gone back and raised the durations of the detect potions, and I'm thinking I may do the same for the spells. Night-eye may recieve the same treatment.



For the record, I don't think bows do too much damage. It just seems that way because you're attacking from a distance rather than close-up. Try fighting close-up with a bow and you'll realize that any extra damage they may do (my axe is still stronger) is offset by a really [censored] rate of fire.



Yeah, I was going to replace her entirely with a different NPC. The only trouble is finding one that's suitable. I think I've found a good candidate in Sadrith Mora, though.

After further consideration of what I said above about the Marksman skill, I've concluded that it is indeed tougher to level than other weapon skills due to the need to keep your distance from them. Yes, it'll level up faster earlier on when all you're fighting is mudcrabs, but that should change when you move up to more formidable opponents.

On the other hand, it's a great skill to use against Cliff Racers >.>

I suppose it's settled, then: Marksman skill will go up to 0.75.

Grinding is annoying but, you know, the player is not necessarily forced to grind. When I play, I don't really grind anything except Acrobatics which is really only because it's irresistible to bunny hop everywhere. I think someone who wants to grind will do it one way or another and people that don't think it's necessary will reap the intended rewards of reducing skill growth(that being, in theory, more challenging gameplay.) To a certain point, maybe you'll want to pump Marksman up 10 levels so you can go investigate some dungeon, but if you take your time and don't rush things you can reach that level without grinding. I think it's about pacing yourself rather than just forcing a skill to go up all at once which just seems like turning a game into work. Maybe this is a whole different discussion in itself.

Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous. A low level player can have access to a Daedric Bow using the Bound Long Bow spell though BTB did greatly increase the base value for that spell I think. I think you can still cheaply make a spell or enchant an item with the spell for, say, 12 seconds which is often more than long enough and then you end up with a light, highly-powerful weapon that isn't really affected by weapon damage which you can easily use over and over. It's possible BTB has put restrictions on this that I'm not aware of. I'm not sure if he touched that really easy Ebony Mine quest that gives you access to an actual Daedric Bow.


It's a pretty interesting idea but using Magicka would probably be much more of a hindrance to mages than warriors which might not be for the best. I think I might prefer if it was health rather.

This idea relates to the subject of Resist Magicka which is an effect that I really have mixed feelings about because it really makes it almost impossible to make cool enchantments/spells/etc. that do both good and harm to the player work properly with the Boots of Blinding Speed being the classic example. I think that positive and negative aspects to, for example, an artifact is a really interesting gameplay element and I'm not sure if what Resist Magicka brings to the table is really worth what it takes away. We already have Spell Absorption and Reflect for magical defense though of course Resist Magicka is useful in that it simply nullifies magic rather than absorbing or reflecting.

I think this is why we have torches and such in the game though I don't think that the devs really did an effective job with lightsource items. I think that sometimes operating in darkness provides an interesting challenge so I think I'm opposed to Night Eye being easy to utilize.


Personally, I don't think it's a huge deal. It would be hard to balance it right for everyone because some people prefer to position themselves perfectly to snipe an enemy with as many shots as possible before they can get within melee range and other people prefer to just wade into combat swinging a heavy piece of metal. I think that the more "difficult" the game becomes, the more people will probably want to rely on range attacks so if you try to make enemies more dangerous then you will probably see Marksman gaining levels quicker but I don't think you're trying to do that right now.

I suppose that problem could be easily enough dealt with using a script to edit the magicka or temporarily reduce magicka resistance to zero so the effect isn't countered when applied. That would take some effort though. Perhaps this is a job for MCP to make it so magicka resistance only applies to spells from enemies? That would make it easier to make enchantments that have both benefit and harm.


Using health wouldn't make much sense, imho. Perhaps a formula that uses a greater percentage of magicka depending on attributes and magic skills? So that warriors couldn't overuse it. Or perhaps something simpler like a minimum skill level.

As I mentioned before, perhaps this is a job for MCP?

Having to repeatedly cast Night Eye is not challenging in this least, it is simply irritating.

I think there should be higher level versions that have longer durations instead of greater magnitudes.

I would be really, really happy if MCP tweaked Resist Magicka to only apply to spells casted by enemies.


Well, I don't think it needs to make a whole lot of sense since we're talking about magic. I really do think that gameplay should take priority here and that means balancing it for all classes. I'm not saying it has to be Health, but I don't think Magicka is good for this since you can easily just not use Magicka at all. If it is Health, it should scale so that everyone is equally worse-off. If you want to try to make sense of Health being reduced, just see it as a portion of the player's life force being shared in exchange for the magic. It might all be a bit too convoluted too implement, though.


I think that makes sense. The duration should remain long for all instances of the spell, but the magnitude should start off weak and slowly get higher. I would like to give the player reasons to use torches, though Morrowind's lighting is certainly not that great in my opinion.

True, but outside my scope.

The lighting in this game svcks, pure and simple, but the magnitude of said svckage seems to vary greatly from one computer to the next.

Perhaps we should pitch the idea in the MCP thread? :foodndrink:

What about fatigue?

Taken care of!


It would definitely be interesting from a gameplay sense though do mages use very much fatigue relative to warriors? I'm not sure if things would be disproportionate between those two extremes. In terms of lifetime fatigue usage I think everyone is about equal since everyone runs everywhere and that kind of eclipses other types of fatigue usage I think by quite a bit but in combat I don't know where mages would be relative to warriors.


edit:
By the way, has anyone considered how Morrowind would play if skills didn't level through usage? It would be one of those things that would be a little too nonsensical even for a fantasy game but I think it could also make gameplay more interesting as it would reduce incentive for players to grind. I would never need to bunny hop ever again. It would very likely require tweaking to the game "economy" to make the training reasonable and you'd end up with people farming souls for gold or something which is grinding so that would need tweaking. All in all, perhaps not workable but I think it's an interesting idea as if it were implemented correctly it could reduce repetitive gameplay(though I did just make an argument against grinding being unnecessary to begin with in an earlier post.)

Um... sorta. My mod does sort of does that, at least to misc skills.

I like the MCP idea, too.

EDIT: almost done with going back over the "Spells" plugin... that just leaves "Equipment" to go.

Well for mages, the chance to successfully cast a spell lowers depending on your fatigue level. Since internally, spells can have over 100% chance of success, this would only start being noticeable for higher level stuff.

At this point I don't know how much of an impact to cast chance would occur. It would require testing. But I think fatigue is the best bet for a middle ground between all types of characters.

Is this true for vanilla? Maybe it's just that it needs to be tweaked to get a noticeable amount of failures, but I didn't know/remember this.

FWIW, I think fatigue is a good compromise. It would be interesting to see this with tejon's fatigue mods, which amplify the effects of fatigue loss.

All righty, I am now officially done with everything except the "Equipment" plugin and deciding how to handle the new spell merchants issue in the "Spells" plugin.

Here's the changelog at the moment:

I forgot that, and of course I agree with that change.



According to the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Combat#Damage, you'll get max base damage (40):
- with 50 STR and
- if your opponent has no armor and
- if you fully draw back your swings.
You'll get twice damage at 100 STR.


Same for me.
If I want to play with a melee weapon I have to create a specific character who doesn't use range weapons at all.
It shouldn't be that way...


In most situations you'll be able to keep your opponent away from you, because of the poor AI and the architecture of most places (dungeons/caves...) where there are almost always corridors.

I'm not sure what's the best solution to balance range fighting.
Thoughts:
- lower bow damage
- make more creatures immune to projectiles
- increase arrows / bows gold cost
- reduce arrows speed


I fully agree. But I as I follow BTB's principles, I just try to find a way to "to discourage the spamming/grinding of skills as much as possible while promoting their growth through regular use". If there is a way to grinding it can be really tempting.



Considering my experience, what you say is true for melee weapons, but I'm generally frustrated with marksman which improves at a slower pace, which systematically ends up grinding a long time until I get a decent chance to hit.
As BTB is suggesting to lower the growth rate, I'm afraid it'll get worse.

Impressive list of changes BTB.
You did a huge and fine tuning of so many values!
Many spells and potions that were useless will at last play a part in the game, thank you.
Most of your changes really make sense to me, I have a few comments though.


Should I understand the attribute total sum of argonians will now differ from other races?
The GCD mod calculates its growth values partially based on such a sum, so it would be best if all races had the same sum.


The area range is a good idea, though we'll have remind keeping our companions out of the radius.


Mag and cost are a bit high. Many companions don't need so much heal while in battle, and many PC don't want to spend that much magicka.


Who would need more than 60s of slowfall?
While this effect is active, each jump you make slows you down, it's irritating.



There is redundant and conflicting info here.


I think most of your new bargain potions will be useless for any possible situation for any player.
Maybe you could boost them a bit.


Does it include blight diseases? With BTB 9 I recall having contracted blight diseases very often (Blighted Nix-Hound!!), and it was a pain to cure it (few/expensive spells/potions/ingredients) or to prevent it thanks to a resist spell.

Oops. Looks like I left the first change out. There should also be a "strength from 40 to 30" in there.



Yeah, but there's a whole bunch of heal companion spells, so I did my best to stagger them out in terms of cost/magnitude. The cheapest one (Veloth's Gift) cures 30 health, the next one in line (Zenithar's Gospel) cures 60, then 90, then 120, then 180.




Just a convenience thing, I suppose. If you're heading out somewhere were you know you're going to do lots of falling?

The main point is that there are several effects where I was really scratching my head over how to make the exclusive potions in in way desirable to keep around, and that's when I ultimately decided to give super-long durations to some of them. I figure there will still be some people who will sell them off to the nearest vendor, but it's not like there was much else I could have done with it anyway.



Er, yeah... typo. That's left over from when I was rewriting the changelog to be easier for everyone (including myself, since I use the changelog as a list of changes to be made to the plugins) to read. I believe I changed my mind about Swift Swim at the last moment, hence the discrepancy... and probably why I forgot to delete the old part.

*Delete, delete*



Well, bear in mind that one thing I didn't take into account when I made these values initially was stackability, which is why I've come down on the durations of bargain potions so hard. One bargain potion in just about any situation probably won't do much good (except for restore fatigue/magicka/health), but a few of them might. Even better would be to stack a bargain potion on top of a cheap or a standard one. If you start to look at the values even in terms of just two potions stacked together, they suddenly look a lot nicer. I'm not necessarily trying to *encourage* stacking, but I do know that it's going to happen no matter what, so the best I can do is plan for it to at least some degree. But I digress.

The other thing I didn't consider was that I had created a linear progression for potions whose values were exponential. The value of a bargain potion is 10 gold. An exclusive potion is 250. Previously, bargain potions offered way, way too much bang for the buck, whereas quality and exclusive potions were pretty much vendor trash.

So, I guess my overall point is that you get what you pay for, and you shouldn't expect a whole lot from something with the word "bargain" in it



I'm pretty sure it does. I might actually reneg on this change, since I made it at the last minute when I was redoing the resist disease spells and kept thinking to myself that I still couldn't envision myself ever using them.

By the by, with regards to the Marksman thing, I'd like to point out that even though I'm slowing it down along with the melee weapons, the growth ratio remains the same (i.e., it grows 50% faster than melee weapons do). Unless you were trying to say that your Marksman skill grows slower than all of your *other* skills, which I'd find hard to imagine.

By the way, I will also be going through every spell and determining whether or not it's as readily available as it should be (i.e., certain spells are only sold by one or two NPCs that may refuse service to you), so there should be a few more additions of spells, particularly the low-level ones, to more accessible merchants in the coming update.