I suggest editing the plugin, I also thought it was wayy too high with btb's values, try these, I believe they are harsh enough to discourage killing, but mild enough to be able to play an evil character, as well as not ruining your game by doing said quest the way you did it.

Pickpocket-300
Tresspass-300
Assault-500
Murder-3000
Death Warrant- 7000

Also think about it, killing one person and going to jail pretty much halves every one of your skills, if not more, its 1 day every hundred gold if I'm not mistaken. Yeah......... 50000.

I think I'll make those changes, they all sound reasonable.

Either way though, a (at best) 1400+ septim fine for a 50 septim reward, and no other way to complete it if you're in the position I'm in, seems incorrect. (Not to mention the cost of getting back into the Thieves Guild, but I believe that was part of the point of the quest, to get you to choose a side.)

Sorry I've been neglecting this place lately... a coworker of mine downloaded an editor for Final Fantasy VI, and I've been obsessing over taking the same thing to it that I brought to Morrowind (it's also why I haven't been updating my site recently, either).

As for the quest issue mentioned, I'd have to look into it further. I'm unfortunately not really the best when it comes to quest issues, due to my infamous "never actually having played the game".

Hey, I was going to do something like this for myself, but why not put staves in the enchanting skill, after all they are too weak for practical combat use, its also out of place in the blunt department, since it already features 1 and 2 handed (staves being 2 handed "wide") and anyway, the only thing people will most likely use it for is enchanting. Also why not make it so that the better you are at enchanting, the cheaper it gets.

I'd like to bring up summoning spell costs again. I'm not sure they give you the appropriate bang for the buck. For example, Summon Winged Twilight costs 150 magicka to cast. Deadric Bite costs 72 and I can remove 85% of a Winged Twilight's health with one hit. It seems like the summoning spell would be more balanced if it was in the realm of 80 points. My character, a Sorcerer, is supposed to use summons often but I never do because it doesn't seem as... profitable as other methods of attack.

Both good ideas, though I'm not sure how either one of them would be implemented (I'm not sure if you can have a weapon rely on a non-weapon skill, and I'm particularly sure that you can't have them gain experience through use in the same manner).


I think the idea is that, for the higher-cost summons, you'd create a version that doesn't last as long (20-30 seconds or so). The pre-made spells stay at the same cost mostly so that they're expensive to buy.

I may have another look at it when I go back through the mod. Though, as I said, I'm sort of distracted by another project at the moment.

Just wanted to report that I finished Morrowind's main quest last night (main game only, about to start on Tribunal), and played it start-to-finish using BTBGI. Overall it was a fantastic, balanced, fun experience. Here is what I felt worked and what didn't.

What worked great:

• Leveling in general was very well paced, though it felt like things were a little slow to get rolling. Once I hit around level 5 or 6 I felt like I had hit my stride and things flowed extremely well.
  
• I finished the game at level 22, with my highest attribute being Strength at I believe 96. The others were in the 60s - 70s (for the ones that I decided to put points into). Strength is the only attribute I raised every level without fail, and it reached almost-but-not-quite 100 at the end of the game, so excellent timing.
  
• Since this was my first complete playthrough of the game, I don't have a good frame of reference for this, but all of the magic (items, potions, enchantments) seemed perfectly fine and well balanced. Nothing seemed egregiously overpowered. I did not try alchemy.
  
• The economy is finely balanced. I was never a rich man. Most of the game at level 6 and beyond was spent with about 800-1200 septims in my pocket, which made me think hard about everything I decided to buy. I had some additional money-sinks beyond default Morrowind, however (Dave Humphrey's Furniture, Homes to Let, NoM). I could have had more coin if I had wished, but I'm a huge collector and wanted to collect one complete armor set of every type of armor in the game, as well as books. As such, I only sold duplicates of loot. Mid to late game, I started making a killing off of Sixth House Amulets. I had ~5000 gold around level 14 onward, and I finished the game with about 20k. Food and health potions were by far my biggest money sinks, along with rent, spells, and transportation. There were opportunities to help out on these costs that I didn't take advantage of (more hunting for food, alchemy for potions), but I still made ends meet easily without being inundated with cash. In my opinion, the economy is damn near perfect.

What didn't work as great, and some personal observations:

• Using the Economy Adjuster Crime plugin as recommended by your documentation, the penalties for even the most mundane crimes are much too high. There are several instances in the Fighter's Guild questline where you are essentially forced to commit assault, murder, and trespass. The penalty to clear such crimes, even if you are on good terms with the Thief's Guild, can be many thousands of times higher than the quest reward itself. The worst example I saw of this is the issue I posted earlier, where the reward for a quest was 100 gold and the penalty was 50,000.
  
• I never purchased training from a trainer because it was always too cost-prohibitive. When I needed around 500-800 at all times for transport and supplies (and to afford next month's rent), spending 500-1500 on a single level of training was never worth it.
  
• I understand the original intent of incentivizing the player to sleep at an Inn, but many times the sleep restrictions in various cells came off as more of a hassle than an improvement. If you're out in the middle of nowhere (Say, near the Urshilaku camp) and you need to recover health without magic or potions, an option should be available to you. NoM's bedroll allowed me to sidestep this.
  
• If you make the mistake of choosing a magic skill as a major or a minor that doesn't use Intelligence as its primary attribute, you are going to be hurting for most of the game for magicka. Since you aren't leveling a skill that contributes to an Intelligence multiplier at level-up time, it almost never makes sense to take 1 point extra in Intelligence instead of, say, 2x or 3x in another attribute instead. I don't know if this is possible, but it would make sense if willpower as well as intelligence contributed to total magicka (perhaps half the sum of Int + Wil, a la Health is half the sum of Str + End). It's a bit odd that Intelligence is the only contributor to total magicka when both Health and Fatigue have multiple attributes that help increase them.
  
• Athletics might be leveling a bit too slowly. I ran the entire game with Athletics as a major skill and it only reached 55 by level 22. I didn't do much swimming, I used Water Walk; I don't know if swimming makes Athletics level faster and if that would have been the way to make up the points.
  
• I didn't feel personally affected by this, but the way constant effect enchantments are treated might need to be looked at. I get that constant effect is generally bad for balance, since you're getting this benefit for free all the time, so we want to make things "on-use". The potential for exploit comes from when you need to take down a tough or series of tough opponents, and you decide to use the on-use enchantments of, say, 10 different items all at once for the 30-60 second window you're afforded it. You're Iron Man on skooma for that 30-60 seconds. If the items in question were constant effect, this kind of thing wouldn't be possible; you'd have to choose which effects you think you need based on your limited equipment slots. With on-use enchantments, you just eat them all and get the benefit of them all. But, only for that 30-60 seconds. Is that balanced? Maybe, I'm not sure.
  
• I essentially played the entire game with zero fatigue. With so much time spent running, you will never have any fatigue unless you just rested, or are taking Restore Fatigue potions intravenously. I'm not sure what the balance ramifications would be to removing fatigue loss while running altogether would be (for reference, this is the way fatigue is handled in Skyrim)

Anyway, as many have said, exemplary job. BTBGI made my playthrough very tight, focused, and fun. Thanks!

For your issue, I had posted some values above for the code book issue. I generally agree with most of what you posted. As for the code book quest, really, the quest was badly designed in the first place. Some things I might add is that, generally the progression of armors and weapons is pretty bad, though of course, btb's mod doesn't edit the actual values, and is not a problem with his mod, but usually I go from steel to ebony alot of the time, even though I didn't know their locations from the beginning.

Separately, with the artifact nerfs in the game that he applied, they seem to be mostly because btb assumes most people are replaying it, and will go strait to the good stuff, though I think that if one does that, its sort of pointless try to balance it for them, if they really want to break the game, they can do it anyway (plus he hasn't played it before as well). I seem to remember a mod that randomized the location of artifacts, and its a great idea that actually encourages exploration, which after all, is what this game is all about.

Arizzi: I absolutely did apply your suggested changes and things felt much better. I'm probably going to go back and make edits to those quests to minimize the amount of crime required to complete the quests. I discovered that it's not just the Code Book quest; several of the end quests of the Fighters Guild involve crime, including murder.

As far as armor progression goes, I went from Imperial Steel straight to Ebony after defeating the Archmaster of House Redoran, which I agree felt like a really huge jump and skipped things in between, like Dwemer.

I'll have to look into the artifact randomization. I found Chrysamere on my own organically, but I think that's about it.

Just wanted to drop by and say thank you for all the hard work you've put into your mods. Been using your mod list more or less as the "Morrowind modding bible" whenever I decide to reinstall morrowind

I get a lot of mixed feedback on the economy. some people still think it's broken, and some end up poor throughout the entire game. From what I've been able to piece together, paid training and my "no misc skill growth" setting seem to be at the heart of it.Which version of my "Settings" plugin were you using, may I ask?


The only reason that I advocate such ridiculous crime penalties is because it's my intent for the player not to commit them at all unless they can do so without getting caught, Clearly, the fact that I've never played before hits me pretty hard here, since I'm unaware of any quests that pretty much force you to do so (at, which you've just pointed out, a ridiculous loss). The game's crime system is one of those few thorns left in my side that I just don't know how to handle, since the guards are all still too stupid to know what to do to a naked woman with 10,000 septims worth of stolen crap at her feet.


This is a change I'll defend, actually. I think that one of the dangers of being in the middle of nowhere is that you lack access to what is essentially free healing. It's sort of an RPG staple that I'd wish not to get rid of.


That's an interesting point. I suppose the logical answer would be to make intelligence a more prevalent governing attribute. But, then again, it governs the two hands-down most popular skills. I can't imagine a mage-type build that doesn't include either Alchemy or Enchant in its skillset.


Yeah, it levels *much* faster in the water. I did that deliberately because I was sick of how uncontrollable its growth was.



You eventually fall into a "is it even worth it?" trap if you try to combine too many "cast on use" effects, I think.

I understand your point, which is why I tried to leave a good variety of pre-made constant effect items in the game. But as for allowing the player to make their own? Yeah... no.


I think that, in my next update, I might further lower the fatigue loss for running. Getting rid of it altogether might be a bad idea, though.


De nada


Same reply as above.

For skills, I think you should look no further than the game's sequel, they have a good skill distribution, plus it fixes a bunch of the skill distribution issues.

http://uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Skills
http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Skills

Note how each style (combat, magic, stealth) has 2 specific attributes that contain almost all the skills for playing that style. While Morrowind sort of has them distributed unevenly all over the place. Of course Morrowind has more skills, but really with the oblivion structure, its quite easy to add them in the appropriate place.

BTB,

I was looking through your 432 page ReadME (thank god you write well) and was curious what I would be giving up if I drop your "Settings" plugin? I use GCD. I know they more or less work well together, i'm just not sure I want an "extra harsh" game.

Not sure what that means!

-joel

Hey I was wondering, when an enemy flees, is he supposed to come back and start fighting again after going a certain distance, because by the game rules, the enemies fleeing is still are considered engaged in combat, as such the battle music still plays. This can become exceptionally annoying, and can pretty much nullify your higher values for the flee settings, is this a fixable game bug, or is it something only mcp could address?

Oh, I also have another suggestion that I will try to implement into my mod, but you might like to as well. I remember seeing a mod that balanced the armors and weapons at one point, and it had the enchantibility of items scaled so that heavy armor has the lowest and clothes, robes and jewelery had the highest. Now I believe that the developers attempted something like that, but I assume they forgot or just got lazy, since the values I've seen seem to be very, sporadic in general. It might also help to make wearing armor decrease your spells effectiveness, like in oblivion, with heavy armor being around 70 percent, medium 80, light armor 90, to encourage mages to wear robes and stuff. Though that might need a script, but I don't know about all the gmsts so maybe not even that.

Oh and perhaps it would be a good idea for factions, to decrease the minimum requirement for the second required attribute. For example the fighters guild if someone picks strength and intelligence, they are going to spend alot of time maximizing and otherwise taking advantage of the levellinig system (and its also quite time consuming), because since the fighters guild requires strength and willpower, its going to be extremely tedious/expensive levelling up skills you don't use, as well as the ones you do, plus you have to increase your willpower by 5 points for each rank. So maybe by lowering the second attribute, you wouldn't have to worry about as much, or maybe after each couple of ranks you would have to raise it, but it can certainly be a problem raising 5 every level.

Crap I probably should just make my own damn mod instead of annoying you guys with suggestions.....

Easiest thing to tell you is to look at the "Settings" changelog.


You've given me some good ideas in the past, but given the amount of them you seem to have, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea.

Recall that my mod was born as a series of tweaks to someone else's mod.

Or do what I did and make a 6th plugin called "BTB2 - Electric Boogaloo" that adds in fancy things like constant effect enchants and further price / damage lowerings. If you look at the amount of time put into it and the amount of changes made its much easier to tweak it to what you want rather than just say "welp I'll make an overhaul".

But fatigue should be looked at. You already move fairly slow in game; [censored] to whomever tells me to walk to regain fatigue. It should only be lost when swinging a weapon, casting a spell, or swimming.

I approve of this >.>


I actually have a few ideas for another update that I need to do at some point, and one of them is further reducing the fatigue loss from running.

As I said before, though, my neglect of my mod at the moment stems from the fact that I'm currently busting my ass on *another* mod for a little game called Final Fantasy VI. If anyone is interested in the details for that, let me know.

FFVI, the SNES game?

The one and only.

In Rebirth I've reduced the amount of fatigue by 0.5 p/s points when running, it does a whole lot actually.

The "minspeed" (startspeed) has also been increased to 110, (100 vanilla), which REALLY makes the game more fun at start. (although one need to lower the "maxspeed" to make it impossible to run around like soinc at higher levels )

Perhaps something similar can be implemented here.

The latest and greatest at time of posting, so, the version included with 12.3.


Point taken.


Neither of which I happened to take as a major or minor I chose Alteration as a Major and Restoration as a Minor. Restoration spells only became viable for me when I managed to get it above skill level 30, because the magicka-cost-to-failure-rate ratio was simply too high to make it worthwhile. And even then, it was only useful outside of combat (the mid-to-upper level healing spells cost too much magicka, so, I would need to cast the simpler spells like Mother's Kiss 4 or 5 times to restore my health). I suppose this is acceptable behavior for a "minor" skill. Alteration was viable most of the game, with the exception of some of the higher level Open spells. Wild Open costs 60 Magicka, and my total was around 48. So to even cast it, I needed to quaff a Fortify Magicka potion.


*raises hand*

Well, since you asked... >.>

It all started when my back-to-back at work showed up to relieve me one night and said that he'd downloaded an editor for Final Fantasy VI. What began as an idea to merely make the game more interesting by making each esper only equippable by certain characters has grown into pretty much a complete overhaul of the game, both in terms of gameplay balance and the script.

Our goal for gameplay balance is to make the game more interesting largely by making the characters more diverse from one another. Since character growth is closely tied to esper stat bonuses, the restrictions mentioned above play a vital role in this task. The other primary aim of esper restrictions is to make the game less of an Ultima spam-fest and to encourage the use of different types of attacks, namely regular physical combat. To this end, every esper, spell, skill, weapon, piece of armor, relic, and item has been painstakingly re-balanced to hopefully provide a richer experience. Enemies have been overhauled, as well, though I'd like to keep most of those changes a surprise and thus will not be providing the extensive documentation on them that I will for the other balance edits.

For the script, the aim was to preserve the best parts of the original Ted Woolsey translation that we all know and love while taking what didn't work as well and making it more faithful to the original Japanese. There's also quite a bit of our own style of snark in the mix, but we're making a concentrated effort to avoid an "obvious fan translation" vibe. Thus, most of the more lemony lines are in out of the way places that serve more as easter eggs to reward players who seek them out rather than over-saturating the main storyline with them. It is our hope that our version will feel more natural than all of the other re-translation attempts currently available (FF6 Advance can svck it).

The current status of the project is nearing an alpha version. I've taken the task of applying all of the initial gameplay balance edits, and I'm currently done with everything except enemy stats, specials, battle scripts, and sketch/control commands (which are all lumped together as far as editing goes). I have no idea how much longer it will take me, as I've yet to even start with the bosses, but we'll see how things go.

Anyone wishing to keep up with this project can find the current gameplay balance changelog here:

http://btb2.free.fr/temp/ff6.txt

This file is updated continuously, but bear in mind that the project is at a point where most of the changes being made (i.e. the direct enemy edits) are not ones that I wish to disclose, mainly because trying to document stat alterations and battle script edits would just slow me down and drive me mad. Despite the lack of tangible progress, however, I assure you all that it is still being made.

I actually reduce the fatigue loss from running by about that much already (I'll have to double-check my settings). But, I *do* increase fatigue loss from other activities, so maybe that makes it seem worse.

I kinda like the speed idea, too.