Hey all,

I've been getting closer to a project that I've been sort of dreading because of the can of worms of conflicts and fine-tuning it involves, so I want to get some input on it.

The project is, for both a guide for the community as well as myself, to make sense of the body of mods out there that rebalance the game economy and items (weapons, armor, misc. items, etc.). They're sort of packages of spaghetti sitting in a directory on my hard drive (and I imagine on some others' as well) that present a writhing mass of guaranteed conflicts that object merging may not wholly eliminate (or will it?).

You know what I'm talking about -- TAD Balancing, WGI (to the degree that it touches on these areas), Varg's weapon and armor fixes, Demens Ignis's Objects and Game Balance Mod, PirateLord's Economy-Trade Fix and Trade Enhancements, HotFusion's Economy Adjuster, VenomByte's Economy Fixes, and others in this vein.

(I have even toyed with the idea of a major rebalancing mod of my own for my own use -- I was the type of player who enjoyed Rolemaster and other more simulationist-type games in my younger days, if that gives you any indication -- that would be similar to Taddeus's and Varg's adjustments, with my own adjustments. I would also release it if there's interest, of course. Either that, or to contribute to or continue one of the other projects. But I digress.)

So, getting to the point, I'd love to get some input. Do you guys use those sorts of mods? Which ones? Do you mix and match them? Does it cause you a lot of hassles? Do you use any special procedures in merging the objects? Is there a lot of interest in this, and, if so, why? (Simple game balance, simulationism/realism, kicks, obsessive-compulsive disorder spasms...)

The kind of guide I'm thinking of would be, like the rest of the ones I write, oriented to the generally-computer-literate and savvy player (and modder who is trying to find time to actually play), bringing together community knowledge and helpful information that cuts out a lot of time-consuming digging through marginally-relevant sources to pick out the desired information. Along the same lines as the tutorial projects of Ronin49 and other folks at Mythic and in the community at large.

Is there any interest in this sort of thing? Input will be much appreciated.

Well Oscurro's Oblivion Overhaul (for oblivion) sounds similiar to what you had in mind for Morrowind.
I like the idea. There are hundreds of things you could do..including giving people new options for quests.

The only one I've ever used is Objects and Game Balance Mod (along with a weapon rebalance mod I made myself). I've probably used it in about 75% of my games.

Ooo thats an oldie but a goodie I remember a long time ago when you chided me about who the mod author was. Turns out i was correct Of course gullible me believed you though mister 99% accurate Pseron Wyrd ha ha :foodndrink:


I've pretty much used em all from Wakim's Game Improvement to Adventurers by Adam which is my favorite because of its amazing balance. I also love how Adam wrote some amazing detailed readme files with easy to understand information on how to use the Morrowind Construction Set editor to make our own changes to his Adventurers mod. It really helped in giving me a natural intuition on what is what in making the game act a certain way.

I use one made by me that balances economy and items' cost.

I think there is no need to use some mathematical (and maybe alchemical) formulas to determinate the costs of the items, so we have some odd prices for anything (like 13371 gold etc...)
and they are still items that the player can never sell.
I simply changed the costs of all the item so that they can be sold to most of the shops in Vvardenfell or at most in Mournhold.
Except of this mod made by me, I use 2 esps from Wakim Game Improvemens, the 2 esps that balance the cost/power of the spells.

I use these. Stock Morrowind is far too easy and unrealistic. I would 100% back a plan to come up with some sort of unified rebalancing mod, because some of the existing ones don't play nicely.

The default economy is in shambles. Money should be very difficult to earn.
Default items/armor/weapons are also a mess. Too much is overvalued, undervalued, or overpowerful.

I have yet to find a combination of mods that makes things as realistic/challenging as I'd like. I started work on one of my own years ago, but I never finished it and the ESPs are long gone.

Will never be possible to fix MW's economy unless you remove virtually all loot from caves, tombs, etc, etc and make it so that you can't loot armour & weapons off corpses, thus shops will be your main source of supplies, instead of your local bandit cave (or daedra ruin if you are powerful enough).

One thing that would help, and that I've not been able to work out is to have your dead opponents armour and weapons all suffer major damage, since they don't take that much damage during a battle. This will force you to spend a lot on repair costs/repair hammers to get their full worth, and so may not be profitable to loot and repair many items.

I find my game economy balanced.

My characters don't get rich quickly

These are the modifications I made:

- Creeper and Mudcrab are removed
- enchanting costs are reduced to 1/4
- training costs are reduced to 1/2
- the summoned creatures cannot fill soul gems anymore
- the soulgem costs (empty or filled) are reduced to 1/10
- deaderic, ebony, glass, dreugh, indoril items' costs are reduced to 1/10
- orcish items' costs are reduced to 1/4
- most of cheap magical items are now more expensive and the items too expensive, are cheaper.

some examples:
Daedric Cuirass from 70.000 gold to 7.000 gold
Glass CLaymore from 32.000 gold to 3.200 gold.
Grand SoulGem with Winged Twilight's soul, from 60.000 to 6.000 gold
Aryon's Dominator from 233 to 23.000 gold

so, you can sell almost everything in Vvardenfell or Mournhold, (except the unique powerful items) and you don't become rich so easy.

I tested this with a new Pc. Now I am Archmage and Grandmaster of House Hlaalu, and all what I have, is 14.000 gold.

I never have used them. Haven't played long enough to know what's off and what's not.

I created my own rebalance for equipment. It's constantly a work in progress though. Too many items, too little time. The focal point was spears though. Differentiating between Long Spears, Short Spears and Halberds. Making it so things like an Ebony Spear would have longer reach and More power than Even a Daedric Spear. But changing it so the Daedric Spear (A shorter one) Would be quicker with slightly shorter range. Making sure that the Daedric Spear still won out on DPS. I also did this with a lot of Swords and Shortsword too, but spears were in need of the biggest changes. I also retooled a lot of Medium Armors, and even changed some, to give a better grade of progress. Such as the horrible gap between Dwarven and Ebony armor. No Decent endgame Medium armor (Aside from Ebony mail) and what have you. Physical characteristcs changed too. Generally raised light armor DR while significantly lowering resilience.

I haven't really gotten back into finishing the rest though. I've been waiting for Vality to finish the Grass mod. Solsthiem and the Ashlands/Molag Amur just look.. wrong.

I use nearly all of the balancing ideas from HotFusion's Economy Adjuster combined with 3 esp from Wakim Game Improvemens (Balance - Game Settings, Gameplay - Dialogue and items) plus Service Requirements by Vanhikes & makeshiftwings. Too balance the object prices I use PiratLords Trade Enhancements. But I'll admit that it can be hard too make these mods play nicely together without conflicts but I still think it's fun. I still need more knowledge and game experience about the how the spell system works. It has always been hard too play as a mage/pure mage and that's how I like it. But it could be very usefull with some kind of overview too make both my and other players decisions easier.
But interresting quests combined with a good story/lore in general will always be the most important things in my game. I highly admire the work of the LGNPC team it makes the people at Vvardenfell alot more interresting.

I use magic regen I think thats a mustfor mage characters. LadyC birthsigns is a nice addition as well.

I'm working on my own mod at the moment. I intend to make it all modular, and I've already released something for Armor and Tools. The Armor is going to get an overhaul update, alongside a release for Weapons and Clothing. Progress is slow, due to the huge amount of work that needs to be done to correctly calculate the cost of enchanted items. I haven't even gotten into the CS yet. -_-

As for mods, here are the ones in my Downloads folder (doesn't mean I'll actually use them)
Reduce Spell Casting Cost by Aragon
The Dodge mod (v21) by Aragon
Improved Hand to Hand by Fliggerty
Light Based Sneaking by Vanhikes
Something called Leveled Magicka, but the .zip doesn't have a readme, so I'll need to search for info on it...
Merchant Investments by Fliggerty
Magicka Regen v20 by Aragon
Object Permanence by TheOne&Only
Protective Guards by Fliggerty

So... basically stuff that improves unarmed (aside from the Code Patch fix), hand-to-hand, NPC AI, stealth, and spell-casting, and a tad of realism. I'm not sure if those are the things you had in mind when you asked the question in the Opening Post, but I felt I had to add something after I tooted my own horn. :hehe:

Bet you wish you never started. You think, "oh, that's easy enough", and then 20+ hours later your eye's are bleeding from looking at numbers.

Let me warn you, once you put it in the game and play, you'll have to spend another 20+ hours re-tweaking

All I've done is plug in WGI and forgot about it. I've downloaded most of the game balancing mods out there and started looking through their readmes. I then tend to go Gah! I don't understand enough what the ramifications are of what they're doing and there are so many different approaches that it's hard to say which I'd prefer. It's not the fault of the modders, most of the ones I've downloaded are very complete in their documentation. It's just me understanding the different approaches and the differences between their mods.

So, such a guide (to your usual high standards) would be invaluable to me. I don't underestimate the effort involved in such a thing though.

I do have a little bit of a vested interest in Alaisiagae's mod(s) so will be checking that one out when it's done (no pressure! I grok how hard it must be!).

[Edit: Wow, "grok" is accepted as valid by Firefox's spell checker. Wonder if any more martian words are?]

:lol: Nah, it isn't that I hate it or dislike working on it, it's just that playing Titan Quest and reading comic books is much more fun!

I use several balancing mods:

- hardcoe Factions 1.0, by Darkflame
- Service Requirements v1.4.3 (WGI version), by vanhikes & makeshiftwings
- Wakim's Game Improvements Modular
- Improved Gold Weight, by Manauser (not a balancing mod per se, but has an influence on in-game choices)
- Sri's Alchemy (Bloodmoon Edition) Remixed, by Srikandi & Adeliedreams
- vn_economy_ItemLists.esp, from VenomByte's Economy fixes v1.1
- Taddeus' Balanced Weapons v1.3

I also use a custom economy mod of mine which actually is a compilation of tweaks from other mods. Namely: HotFusion's Economy Adjuster (the "Merchants", "Crime" & "Misc" modules), VenomByte's Economy fixes, GooglyBoogy Economy and BlindEye's Bribery.

It increases the Mercantile and Speechcraft skills of merchants, fast travel and guild guides costs, penalties for crimes as well as repair and training costs. The value of player-made potions has been set to 1/10th of their usual value and bribery has been made harder.

It's not perfect but I'm mostly satisfied of it, as it seems that the main sources of imbalance in my game now are third party mods (namely MCA and Baron's Partners which spawn hostiles with lootable gear). Nothing dramatical though: my latest characters (level 2 and level 3) have respectively 494 and 2441 gold, and that's only because they rarely use fast travel; also the latter is saving money to buy some decent breaker sword for his Mog companion. In comparison my main character that I started more than a year ago, long before I loaded any balancing mod, had no more financial issue at their level (He's now lev.41 with 296 500 gold in the bank and a mercantile of 89 boosted through training. Overpowerful, filthy rich and boring. I won't play him anymore.).

So, to answer your questions, Gluby:


Definitely.


See above.


No. In my setting it's just a matter of who loads first/last. If I were to use some armor rebalance mod I would have to make some compatibility adjustment though (with armor replacers and fixes, left gloves mod and such).


Yup. Most definitely.


Because Morrowind economy is broken. HotFusion nicely summed it up in his readme from Economy Adjuster v1.1:


I believe I tracked down, downloaded and tried every economy/weapon/armor balance mod in existence. Should a comprehensive guide have been available at the time, it would have saved me a lot of time. :nod:

That's at the high end of my hopes, yes. Of course, that would mean a fairly large collaborative effort with a serious base of interest/support. I think Taddeus seems to have come closest in coming up with a consistent, systemic unified revision to rein in the game's Power Elements Gone Wild, though I found it unsatisfactory for reasons I will recall when I get back into all that side of things.



I like that one too, and had it in my games when I, uh, played.



I never checked out Adam's Adventurers, but, from the sounds of it, it seems like it sets a good example for documentation and methodology.



It really is a hugely important issue. I had started on that, trying to come up with something that has some non-arbitrary basis -- a sort of labor theory of value-based game economy. But, obviously as posters have pointed out, there's a LOT involved. But I wouldn't be averse to collaborating in that sort of thing...




I completely feel the same way. I did too -- I still have my little "cutting table" of ESDs cut from other mods, and my own attempts at a beginning. Did you ever try TAD balancing?




That's a sobering viewpoint on it, and it's clear you've worked extensively at rebalancing it in your mod. Perhaps if we could dilute the leveled lists with more low-value loot?

More seriously damaged armor loot seems like it would definitely be a good thing to implement in a larger, more logical and more balanced scheme.



Very interesting, and very close to what I'm thinking in that aspect of it An even marginal abundance of super-valued items is ridiculous, from any perspective. In real life, three-million-dollar paintings are only three-million-dollar paintings if there are people who will pay that for them. The idea of 60,000-gold items floating around in relative abundance in a high-magic, high-fantasy world just irks me. Reining that in seems, as you suggest, like it would at least bring us back into the stratosphere in dealing with the problem.



Then do play as is for a while and get a feel for it. I quite loved it when I started out, but soon found a steadily-building mass of imbalancing Monty Haul factors that just kind of cheapened the game and made it lose its savor. Matter of style, taste and preference, but you may find these sorts of mods preferable later.



Yeah, this is definitely NOT a task to be done individually, methinks.
Too much. If I worked on it, it would definitely be collaboratively.

Sounds like you put a lot of thought into your balancing. The thing you mention about better grades of progress... that's something I'd really like to see developed as well. Granularity. Little differences, little quirks. They make it all more interesting.
I'd love to see what you came up with.

[continued in next post]

I'm all for it, but for now real weight on gold and self control goes a long way with me.

As far as removing money bags mud crab and cash it in creeper from the game, just
ignore them and don't use them. But yeah, I can see a lot of mercantile modifications
in order. This game requires lots of self control. There are just hundreds of ways to
fall into the exploit categories of this game, money aside.

Yeah, the reconciliation of these sorts of mods with each other gets to be a huge headache. At minimum, I'll put together some sort of guide that addresses this subject matter.



Yes, regen mods are pretty much essential for mage-balanced games.



It looks like a good horn to toot. I haven't checked them out yet, but I was eyeing your AIM and TIM entries at PES, it looks like you've done some serious work on it.

I'm definitely in it for the realism, immersion and all that.

(Now for my own horn-tooting: to find out what the Leveled Magicka mod, check out its entry on my http://www.mwmythicmods.com/Gluby/Gluby_Magicka_and_Spell_Effect_Mods.htm. )




Conan, what is best in life?
To crunch the numbers,
to see them derived before you,
and to hear the lamentation of their quotients.

--Accounting department slave pits scene from Conan the Accountant




I can grok that.

Uh oh, now the pressure's on...



Yep, same boat. I tracked balance mods down similarly and had been assembling the same kind of thing you did when RL viciously snagged me out of the Morrowsphere for a while. Sounds like you've got a good mix, as far as it goes. Why, out of curiosity, didn't you use the rest of the TAD set?

Overall, what I had been trying to do was take an idea similar to that used in TAD balancing (standardize and rationalize armor types, but with an across-the-board reduction -- as an index, I believe Daedric armor had rating 56 or 60 or something in it) but make it more granular and leave room for peculiarities, and cobble it all together with some of my own ideas and those of other modders whose balance mods I liked.

Hmm... I will, of course, have to refamiliarize myself with all this and look into it all again, to make the guide. But... hmm... I wonder how many we could get together to work on a major rebalancing project? Morrowind Rebalanced or somesuch. The mind swims...




Of course, the mental processes involved in purposely playing with one hand tied behind back are themselves kind of immersion-breaking. :shrug: It's one thing not to player->additem gold_001 2000, but it's quite another to purposely avert one's eyes from an in-game bit of content that is only effectively an exploit, rather than being directly one. Self-control is important, of couse, but I personally would just rather have no creeper merchant there for myself. Plus, beyond all that, it's temptation. Like a big-eared demon-gremlin waving a cigarette in front of my nose.
But that's just me.

In short no.

When I first started playing Morrowind, I realized the costs, damage and weights assigned to almost everything was completely out of wack. I saw the plethora of mods that attempted to address this, thought 'good' and looked closely. Most did a fine job in their area, but of course were rendered a bit pointless by including even one mods that adhered to the 'Morrowind standard' that was not covered, let alone a mod with very strange ideas about pricing. (This armour of mine is slightly inferior to glass, but it looks so spiffy, I'll charge 1,000,000 for the briastplate!)

I very swiftly reminded myself that the game isn't about economics or portage. Hence although a bit daft, it didn't really effect my enjoyment.
p.s. ...and the million septim briastplate? That's what the console is for. (well, one thing).

Yep. It pretty much means that using a rebalancing system means manually applying those changes EVERY mod you use in order to avoid having it throw it all out of whack again. Since that's extra work for those able to make the changes, and prohibitive for the unable, it spoils a lot of its gameplay value. What I loved about TAD balancing is that there was community support for it, resulting in, what, 30, 40 patches to other mods out there for it? (I'm going off the top of my head.) Nothing short of that sort of thing, methinks, would really rise above the problem. But if... the mind swims again.



Well, the way Bethesda left it, that's for sure. The developers clearly, at least in my estimation, were not given the time or resources to really balance it out and make that aspect of it make sense (I can't imagine they didn't have the will, though). Surely they didn't, for example, intend to leave medium armor as a poor shadow of the other types, or to have gold itself quickly become obsolete.

As to what the game's about--of course, we could also say that the game isn't about other things that have been dragged, kicking and screaming, into it... and then laugh in triumph as we play them. (That's a fairly giggly-looking muhaha, but it'll have to do.)

But I think (or perhaps hope) that it has some potential, though, for a much more satisfying balance for players who want that sort of thing, at least, even if it cannot be made to have a lean-and-hungry feeling that truly endures into the mid-to-late game.


Edit: Small correction.

The full versions of Taddeus' Balanced Armors and Taddeus' Balanced Objects included mods that I didn't want in my game or that conflicted with my load list. At the time I didn't know that Taddeus released light versions of his mods (still available from http://web.archive.org/web/20070703021914/www.tadnan-hideout.com/MW/main.html, courtesy of The Wayback Machine).

Also I had a liking for Number One's http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=6715 mod (I found out later that it had http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=934980&hl=).

As for Taddeus' Balanced Settings and Taddeus' Balanced Enchanting, their features are (mostly) superseded by my custom economy adjuster.

For the record, both light versions of Taddeus' Balanced Armors and Taddeus' Balanced Objects are currently loaded on my test machine (alongside your Creature Loot Mod by the way, and a handful of recently released stuff?). Should I like them, I might consider adding them to my main game next time I update my load list.

Hmm. I'm curious now. You might have to share the goods. bliviongate:

Once I get a few other projects done, I'm going to try to rationalize all this tangled mess of balancing/economy/armor/weapon/item/weights mods, and then look into a better overall solution (or look into expanding/revamping an existing project). But this is definitely evades casual tweaking, that's for sure.

The strangest thing is Morrowind's Economy is not broken. It still takes awhile to earn money. I mean, Lol, wut. Even at Creeper, without modding him, you're still stuck at 5000 a day. I can't find getting 5000 dollars, and then having to go off and wait somewhere, or fight some monsters would be unbalanced. Anyone who thinks that's unbalanced has never really considered it.

I'm sorry, but Morrowind's economy is not broken.

Look at Balmora, if you sold enough to buy out every shop a day, it's still take you a long time to get any real decent enchant money. I mean, it takes awhile to earn 200,000 this way, and most major enchantments cost close to that.


And Daedric Curiasses are supposed to be really expensive. Sigh.
Anyhow, I don't see the big deal at all.

Anyone willing to just rest for 24 hours for creeper or mudcrab is just wasting time that could be better spent. Like ,I don't know, cleaning a sink.
My current game, I have 600K, but that's mostly because I sold a lot of junk to my custom Made Super Creeper mod. I gave him 50,000,000 gold to bargin with. And unless I sell him I don't know, 500 Daedric armor pieces, it's not like I'm going to get that. I just don't want to wait days just to sell him junk. I mean, have you tried carting around 40,000 pounds of Daedric Armor?