I do not know what race and stats PC has, but my PC is not protected much by the meager health pool he has at low levels, or even higher levels. However, I also use nGCD, a smooth leveling mod, RBP, a racial balance overhaul and Progress, for global skill progression slow down. The rats in the tutorial dungeon can kill my character before getting a class assignment from Baurus, and, even then, boars and stray mountain lions are still very dangerous. Anything other than fur armor is a nice find.

Irrational ... your brain is ....umm something else.

I linked mods that might interest you above that help with this.

Are you a morrowind player? I ask because these concerns might hold more water in Morrowind where player skill is not anywhere as important as it is in Oblivion. In Morrowind even hitting a person is all stats based - stats control everything. In Oblivion player skill plays a much larger role. Whether you contact the NPC with an arrow or sword really is up to the player skill while stats control damage and defense amounts though. It is more balanced game play in that player skill/character skill work together.

For that orc with a hammer to hurt me he has to contact and I do notice that being able to block or even better dodge his blow is more important than whether my enchanted plate mail can absorb 70% of at a low level.

Of note - I do not use either the alt armor formula or the stat based mod either.

[edit for clarity]

If your comparing AR to Morrowinds' system then it just can't be done.
They may be TESIII and TESIV, but there are huge differences in the game. If not Oblivion may well have just been another expansion pack for MW.
I'm not saying one is better than the other. Although the same basic leveling formula is common to both, skills work very differently.
Take long blade as a prime example. In Morrowind even at a level of 150 the same base damage is done, only the chance of a hit increases as the skill improves. Not so in Oblivion - damage increases dramatically as you level.
Everything in Oblivion is skill based.
You cannot make comparisons on the two games based on that fact.

Surprised no one has mentioned http://www.dreamingthepyramid.net/TNR-TIE.html yet (other then the vague links to the comparison things). It seems to be what you're looking for, I'd check it out.

It doesn't have all the additional content that OOO and MMM have thought, I am working on a patch that combines them thought, and then theres http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1071066-betawipz-tie4mods-reborn-betawipz/ that does kind of the opposite. Since you haven't played OOO or MMM to extensively to hate missing their features (it seems anyway) I'd try just vanilla TIE until one of the two patches gets released.

Shikishima-

I'm not sure if you were replying to me or irrational, so I thought I'd extrapolate a little.

If me then I'm not sure how to reply except to say that calling everything skill based in Oblivion is misleading - do you mean character skill or player skill? To me the frustrating thing about Morrowind (that others seem to love no end) is that player skill has so little impact (other than the player initiates the combat or decides when to swing or shoot). In Oblivion I find that you the player have more ability to move your character around for positioning, timing of blocks, power attacks, and all around fighting style whereas in Morrowind much of that is the stats.

So to me Oblivion is way more advanced as a video game - I actually find the combat in Morrowind frustrating even with mods - I get more player fun out of bioware games and their gimped combat than Morrowind.

I know many think that Morrowind is pure role playing and all about the character stats but I find this to not be the case and I think the designers were shooting for a more Oblivion type of combat just that the game engine options of the time limited them. Further, I think it is a mindset of those that do not prefer the visceral combat aspects of player skill oriented games and like RPG flocked to morrowind with their beliefs and as an after thought stated that it was designed to not be visceral or player skill based. http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1025807-marksman-mod-please/page__view__findpost__p__15712303.

Anyway this balance between player skill and character skill is something I've found that pretty much when it comes to medieval style fighting (not first person shooter/sci-fi) Oblivion is the best game I've played and why I prefer mods by Duke Patrick over DR, UV, and the other combat overhauls because Spooky really does make mods that accentuate that interplay and give the player who wants to develop his skill (his very own stats if you will) a very rewarding experience.

And your total AR is?

When talk remains in wavy form without detail, then sure, its easy to think your health is not doing the saving and its all down to your armor.

But with a low level character with an AR of 10-20, the fact is, it is health doing the saving. Your AR rating tells you exactly how much of that damage you are blocking in percentage terms, and ive given you a useful rundown of why arithmetically, the marginal benefit you see at high AR ratings is much greater. So saying 'my PC is not protected much by the meager health pool he has at low levels' is not very precise. Give me the AR rating your character at low level has, and we can see what contribution it is having.

I care that my PC can last a certain number of hits without armor and putting on better armor or any armor at all helps extend the number of hits my PC can take. If you do not like this feature of Oblivion, it looks like you need to find another game to play. I enjoy Oblivion, especially the heavily-modded version. Total AR is not a bid deal to me, it changes with the PC's level, and I do not have a running setup of Oblivion right now as I am over 800 miles away from my desktop.

What IS your AR? How many more hits is armor allowing you to take?

Before suggesting this issue cannot be remedied or is not broken, perhaps you ought to do the rundown first. I understand that is difficult without a running oblivion setup. If you did have one up though, you might realise that your low level character sees no difference between most armors in the game.




And i duly noted and thanked you for your suggestions. I do appreciate the help, but you cannot expect me to drop the subject while others debate it.

I played and gave up on Oblivion before. I did play Morrowind and was dissapointed with Oblivion for a myriad of reasons, including this, but that is not relevant as i do know Oblivion almost inside out. AR is obviously not my main issue with Oblivion, hence the this thread focussed on other things - but its just a good example of the kinds of basic, underlying faults that the game still has.

Finally, if you are asking in relation to your theory:


Then I would advise against reading into my answers. Most Morrowind players complained of the dull combat and most were happier with the more visceral combat in Oblivion, although it did come at some other costs. Its not like Morrowind players were 'rpgers' who enjoyed slow dull combat as opposed to visceral, more fps style oblivion combat.

What Morrowind players did not like about Oblivion was the lack of mature and interesting content, broken game mechanics and a general feeling of 'dumbing down'. The content question has been much addressed, and basically comes down to randomly placed loot and enemies, unlike Morrowind's far more numerous custom content. The dumbing down referred to the simplified levelling system with only major and minor skills, unlike Morrowind where a third category existed, as well as the removal of things like levitation, simple and braindead dialogue, quest compass, big and consolified interface and numerous other pet beefs. The broken game mechanics are probably the hardest to see and thus the most contentious. Many have stood behind the way the enemies and loot level, the way weapon damage fails to keep up with progressions in health, the rate at which weapons wear down, magic etc - and among these, the AR system that i argue is broken in the stock game. However, most reasonable people who the problem is demonstrated to would probably agree that these game mechanics exhibited some fundamental flaws, and i would certainly argue that the more informed modders and developers would argue this even more strongly.

Of course, you will always find people who are satisfied with things the way they are, or do not long to have errors repaired. The more discerning will probably despair

As I said, I cannot give you the specific details of my PC's AR because I have no Oblivion to run and will not have access to my desktop for more than four weeks. Also, I do not think that this is an "issue" that needs to be fixed. This is your issue with Oblivion. I have not said the issue can be fixed, and I earlier suggested you should make your own mod to try and fix the issue to your tastes. I do not know the "rundown" to which you refer, and this debate is pointless for me. The mod you want does not seem to exist, and it is not a change I care to see in Oblivion. There is no debate for me here. I jumped on this issue initially because I felt you had belittled OOO and the changes it makes. Read mods ReadMes, and do not put them down for not making changes that are not included in the mod. It is hard to tell that the AR thing is not your "main issue" with the way you have gone on about it in such detail. The thread's title hardly matters. The last page and a half tell a different story.


Good luck finding or making a mod that make the change you want to see in the game...

I have given ample reason and have quoted others who give ample reason why this is an error in the game mechanic, and should be 'fixed'. Whoever did the AR values at Bethesda thought about them arithmetically, and did not have regard for the marginal effect at higher AR values, resulting in unbalanced armors. Even if you refuse to accept Bethesda did not intend to have this marginal effect change armor balance, I have given a good breakdown of why armors are unbalanced in the game.

You call it my 'issue' but in any case it seems you simply do not care. I would put it to you that is not how you develop a good game - whether youve noticed or care, the issue and the faulty arithmetic is still there



A mod that fixes the issue does exist, has been linked here, and shouldve been part of the game. Of course, if id known about it beforehand i would have simply installed it, but now that weve gone down this discussion, I dont know on what basis you dismiss it when you have not turned your mind to whether the armors are balanced in the game, how they work, or even what percentage of your incoming damage they block. Thats your choice.

But to claim i am the one with the problem is quite something else. The problem is with the game and the person who developed it not having a basic grasp of how this formula would work.



I read the ENTIRE readme for OOO. From start to finish. I got the fishy stick. I knew what different mods it incorporated, and i looked at how it changed things in the construction set. My criticisms are well informed

How can i say anything good to you when i post so much detail and you refuse to even read it, dismissing it offhand? This discussion has gone on 1 1/2 pages because I was elaborating my points, which came under question. Yet now i find you came in here to defend OOO, warn me not to criticise it again, but did not care nor understand what i had to say about it or the stock AR behaviour it modified?

Perhaps you simply ought not jump on these issues without being prepared to discuss them

I am glad that you read the OOO ReadMe, and I am not "dismissing [your posts] offhand." I did not see you post much of anything about OOO other than how it exacerbates this AR arithmetic that bothers you so and how you were disappointed in the author. I did not add OOO to my game to because of its armor and weapon stats overhaul, and I do not see how wanting different changes in my modded Oblivion setup from you and many other users is "unfair." Mod users are free to add whatever mods they want, and consumers are able to buy whatever games they want. If you are a turn-based strategy fan that thinks most FPS games lack depth, complaining about the lack of depth in the game is not going to make the FPS fans change sides. "Different" and "broken" are two very distinct terms by which you can judge a game. You are applying the latter term, and I disagree. What is wrong with that?

Edit: There seem to be two different levels of discussion going on here. Yes, I do not really care about this arithmetic issue you have pointed out. It is not an important part of the game for me. Also, I rarely buy equipment in any game. I only do that to acquire special items where that is the only way to obtain the items. What makes a "good" game for me differs from what makes a "good" game to you. People are different, and that is fine. However, you seem to have found a mod that does a good job of rehandling the inconsistency you pointed out, so is there still a problem here?

Oh hey don't read me as discouraging you from examining this issue - I'm all for improving this game - maybe the dialogue will create an inspiration to fix the issue that improves all of our game experience.

Myself - I just find that crunching numbers and getting super quantitative does not address the feel of how a game plays. Sometimes even skewed and seemingly wrong numbers can still play with the right feel. A purely subjective thing.

I play with mods that ramp the damage on everything way up but also increase the efficiency with blocking and when combined with player skill not getting hit is the goal because even at high levels your character could get very hurt. That too is a work-around to this issue.

And I realize that there are great many things that Oblivion does not do right. Which is why I'm here, you're here, we are all here.

Yet again it is a lot about perspective - these mechanics maybe pain some but be a challenge to others. These rules are then the rules of a game.

I said two different things.

First, i asserted that the AR system is not as intended and broken, and that OOO has exarcerbated this. This was a claim of fact

Second i lamented that OOO did not fix this AR issue, and that i had hoped it would. That was an opinion

'Different' and 'Broken' are based on premises. I premised using 'broken' on the fact that most changes in armor and weapons are purely or almost purely cosmetic in stock Oblivion (and thus OOO, which barely changes them) and thus are 'broken', because i believe and i believe the developers believed that there ought to be some qualitative difference between them and that you should have some incentive to upgrade armors and weapons. If you, however, do not mind purely cosmetic differences between armors, than that is 'different'. What i do not accept is that we can have two different results about, given the same premises, this does in fact happen or what effect armor has on incoming damage. These are given by the AR formula.

What is wrong then, is that you use a blanket statement of 'difference', but i do not know whether you are challenging my claim of fact about what the AR system does, or my premises that upgrading armors and weapons should be more than cosmetic. Also, i do not see why i cannot express some dissapointment that OOO did not rebalance armors.



Yes, i very much agree that perspectives are infinite on how this system should be - but not how Bethesda INTENDED them to be. My theory is that Bethesda intended the armors to be balanced differently based on the numbers and the formula they used. 'Feel' is certainly the most important, but when you are modding you have to number crunch to see the problem. This is because placebo is a major aspect of how we see things - the armor or weapon graphic changing can make us think our character is significantly tougher, when most of the armors or weapons might be about the same.

So i might change the armors to be equal in marginal effect across the AR range - as that mod does - and implement the armors as Bethesda intended - my theory satisfied. But then i might run into what you are both saying - that armors as Bethesda intended are not actually very balanced either.

And thats certainly fair enough, but in order to come to this conclusion i have to TRY and TEST these - and thats what i was doing when i was rebalancing these armors for mysefl! So i am fairly convinced the armors could be better balanced, as could the weapons, and im fairly confident that if you tried it, you would agree as well. Now all of us might prefer a slightly different take on them, and i did when i was modding them. BUT our preferences take a backseat if the armors are showing almost no difference in the first place with largely cosmetic upgrades. Then we can say that if all of us want a difference between armors, we need a system different than stock.

Which is why i lament that OOO did not do this.

I am not challenging you AR system issue. I am just saying that the AR system, as it is, Vanilla or OOO-modified (slightly), does not bother me at all. I do not feel that differences in armor are only cosmetic either. I care about how the game plays more than the number crunching. To me, "broken" does not apply there. To you, it does. That is a disagreement in perspectives on what makes a game "good" or "complete" or whatever you wish to term it. Go ahead and lament over the changes that OOO does not contain if you want, but a mod only contains what it contains. OOO is not the only overhaul out there, and Oblivion is not the only game out there. You can look for different options, such as the ones Psymon pointed out. Even overhaul mods like OOO do not change most of the game. Users add other more focused mods to handle their more personal tastes.

You said "i believe and i believe the developers believed" the latter part of that statement is not a fact. You stated it, yes, but that does not make it factual. The game is as it is out of the box. Those are the facts. You pointed out the existing AR system. Fine, I can take that as being factual too; however, that does not translate to "broken" for everyone.

I disagree with the term "broken," but we have to agree to disagree there. The numbers you are spitting out do not phase me. Also, I did not like most of your OOO commentary. I love OOO, and I am definitely biased on that front. I appreciate it, and all of the other mods I use, for what they do change, not what they could have changed. If I find a mod's changes completely irrelevant or not to my liking, I uninstall it. I have not had the misfortune of buying a game that I have really disliked either. That is also a different outlook from what you have expressed here. We have to disagree there too. Okay, that's life...

Edit: Extrapolation is very theoretical, and you are trying to extrapolate Bethesda's intentions based on their formulas. You can state that your extrapolations are facts, but that is nonsense. I think that there are people who may enjoy the damage rebalance you say you plan to create, and there are also a lot of people who still will not care.

We can certainly agree to disagree on whether AR systems are important to game 'feel'. This is certainly quite personal (although we really ought to sort out whether its largely cosmetic or not, as that doesnt change)

However, let me just put this to you. Would you even notice the AR fix i am talking about if it were implemented in OOO?


Once again, it would only eliminate the marginal improvements at high AR values, making AR values neutral and changing armors in the following ways:



Is this so drastic it would bother you? Because it would actually create appreciable differences between the armors and mostly create bigger differences between light armors

Hmmm...If it makes a big difference to how adding armor feels, I would probably notice, especially since, by the numbers, it would make the largest difference at low levels. That is where characters are most vulnerable in OOO or FCOM-modified Oblivion. I would probably notice right-away in the starter dungeon. Using a skill rate slowing mod such as Progress, it would take hundreds of hours for my PC to reach high levels, so I do not even have prior experience with which to compare the difference such a rebalance would make at those levels.

Edit: wording

At low levels, based on my current game, AR you can achieve ranges between 8-20 or so (depending on armor and heavy/light). For example, i achieve 8 AR with fur/leather at the moment (level 2), and might achieve 15 AR with heavy armors or very good light armors.

In stock oblivion this difference is practically negligible - it ranges between 8% and 15% damage reduced, which means there is an 8% improvement going from crappy fur to much heavier iron or high quality light armors at this level. Overall, armor means i take about 1 extra hit for every 10 i suffer - probably not worth the effort.

However, with these changes, I would range between around 14% damage reduced at 8 AR, or 24% reduced with 15 AR - a 14% improvement from crappy fur to iron or good light armor. Now the better light and heavy armors mean i need an extra 1 hit for every 4 - suddenly upgrading armors makes a lot more sense at low level, even though the great majority of the damage (75/100) is still going through

The beauty of this is, however, that at higher levels these armors do not become unbalanced

With my play style (not buying new armor and weapons) I am lucky to find good armor at level 1, unless I lure a mini boss baddie into a trap of some sort. Otherwise, I probably will not see too many upgrades until level 5 or something. Not to mention, the racial rebalance mod I use along with my PC's race do not help in the endurance (health) or strength (encumbrance) areas. The changes your rebalance mod would make should be pretty evident, but I would have to play with it installed to see if it fits my game or not. It does not seem like it would disrupt the game I am used to in anyway, but whether or not the changes would feel significant requires play-testing for me.

Well if you do mod this then there are two ways to go about it scripts or entry by entry.

as much as I really dig what skyranger does I did not like what that mod means in terms of uninstalling it - basically all the changes are recorded in the save game so if you find it not to your liking then you have to go around and be in the presence of the armors that have been changed (if memory serves me correctly) ... I also did see some weird variances - like picking up a shield with an AR of 100.

So please don't do it that way. Maybe there could be a better script because patching each entry means always more patches and I, for one, could do with no more MOBS type patching.

Now in terms of incentive to buy armor - if you play with FCOM (I think just OOO right now) and/or Armamentarium then you will likely never buy fancy armor. While OOO/Frans/FCOM remove bandits with glass armor that does no mean that the armor is all weak - by level 5-7 you will start seeing some pretty hefty armor drops in loot. Not godlike but pretty good stuff.

In fact with Enhanced Economy reducing merchant income - my character is swimming in loot that there is not enough money to even buy from him.

I guess that makes our experiences very different - before i reached level two i had closed the Kvatch gate and retaken the castle, thus giving me access to a full set of chainmail. I also have the funds to purchase Dwarven or orcish cuirases and shields.

The thing about this AR problem is that its an arithmetic problem. In terms of actual armor balancing, its a very fine line that these mods have to run and i dont mean to say one mod will fit everyone. However, from a modding perspective and balance perspective a neutral AR increment, as opposed to one with greater marginal benefit at higher AR values, is very desirable because it ensures predictable and linear responses to changes.

So lets say we changed the AR values to be, as this mod does, neutral - that ensures a linear and even response as armor values change. But if you were unhappy with the way it improved weaker armors, we could still dial those back to be equal to what they were in the stock game, and yet the mod would still be useful because it allowed for a far more direct and linear response in armor protection as you increase AR - without changing balance in your game.

That is why i say this is a fault of Oblivion - because the arithmetic they have chosen to use to represent AR values is biased to the higher end of its scale, and is not neutral - and thus produces skewed results if, for example, you cast shield 10% on a daedric wearer, rather than on someone wearing fur. The whole system is using a skewed numbering system is my point



His system addresses the skewed AR numbering system in the most direct way, so ill try and use it to see how it works and what his script does.

The reason this numbering system so bothers me is because what i tried to do as well was make armors in my game more 'realistic' in a way i thought reflected their power. So i reduced the overall impact of shields on AR, and improved most armors to the point where some blocked a lot of damage. This was something i wanted to try, to see how it 'felt', but what i quickly found was that the skill progression and AR numbering system got in my way, and did not allow me to produce results precise enough consistently enough that armors didnt get three times worse with a bit of wear.

I wanted to get at the innards of the skill and AR number system, but gave up on it all at the time. Some ideas i would have liked to try included armor that needed certain 'magnitude' to even puncture, such as a strike of certain power. Again, i was limited by an inability to modify the basics of the system.

These are probably not the kinds of things you two would like to see, and it certainly comes down to choice. But an AR system that reacts equally at the higher values as it does at the lower is a start

Well please pay attention to the uninstall of his mod - nothing worse than getting involved in a mod to find you don't like it then have to do what that mod requires.

Reduce the impact of shield on Armor Rating? ... yeah you lose me on that - smacks of morrowind. Two characters not blocking and smacking each other with weapons in some arms race.

I know Duke/spookyfx would have more educated things to say about that, but armor isn't always all that - I'd rather have a good shield than armor if I had to choose. Armor types have various reasons for being worn (not just light for stealth and heavy for tank). It is supposed to be that plate mail type armors were meant to block blunt-impact based damage while chain/leather were for blades and sharp edges. Truly full set would have chain mail underneath the plate blocking the sharp edges that sneak through. A shield though would be good against most.

So then would you decrease the impact of the block skill too? Where does the block skill fit into your scheme?

My head hurts, both from the number crunching in this thread and from a flu I have. (I am home sick at this time.)

So I will only touch on this a little for now:

I have made many Oblivion immersion combat mods (I am the author of the Duke Patrick mods) based on my 30 plus years of SCA combat experience and historical reserch on medieval heavy weapons melee combat. But changing the AR system has almost never been a big concern for me.

Realistically armor is not dramatically changed in efficiency by "wearing skill". I wish I could take "wearing skill" out of the game. You could put a farmer in chain armor and it would protect them more or less the same as if a trained knight where wearing it with only a few exceptions. This is defiantly not the case with a shield. Shield work can change some of the damage by deflection but not as much as most gamers think. For the most part the shield either stops the attack or not. An elephant stepping on your PC will never be stopped by a shield block even by the best Knight. A 2 handed sword might be turned harmlessly by a skilled deflection reducing its damage to nothing. A 2 handed war hammer... much less so! But the bottom line is in most cases with Melee weapons either you parry the blow or you do not.

Because Oblivion puts way to much importance in "armor wearing skill" and the armor game mechanics in Oblivion do not account for damage TYPE (such as...as Psymon said "plate mail type armors were meant to block blunt-impact based damage while chain/leather were for blades and sharp edges"...etcetera.) I like most players just ignored the armor system for the most part. I just used the default system and never considered changing it other than wishing it could be changed to "do it right".

Armor is mostly only a fashion statement in oblivion, that is "OK" because the beautiful near photo realistic (no floating health numbers rising from opponents, no combat fireworks, no flashes of light when you hit things) aesthetics are a big part of why I like the game. (Wow you can actually SEE the combat and not just a laser light show with flash pods!)

I would give up the aesthetics of the armor if I could have my way with the games armor mechanics. But until OBSE or TES 5 changes this basic issue with the armor (damage type verses armor type) I see many other projects that need more attention in modding Oblivion.

I would use your armor balancing mod as you stated as long as you do not touch the Shields or blocking game mechanics in any way and as long as "heavy" armor is still much better than "light" armor. Just be sure that the damage absorbed by the armor is directly in proportion to the weight. Armor that weights twice as much should protect twice as much. This is in line with the basic weight and force physics of medieval materials. Ideally armor would absorb damage quantities not damage percentages. A steel 10 pound helmet would absorb 100 points of damage if a sword does 300 points of damage for example. But that might require a locational damage system be in the hard code of the game as well!

However If reducing the AR on a Shields will not effect how it blocks attacks (I am not sure at this time about that) then yes I would agree with eliminating the AR on all Shields. A Shield adding to the Armor Class came about because war game developers "back in the day" did not have the experience or knowledge to do otherwise. Shield Armor class modification was a bad concept that came from the old D&D days.

So then if I understand you correctly (and thanks for posting that) ... you are OK with removal of AR on shields but not reduction in the effects of blocking skill AND you are OK with removal of the armor wearing skill in favor of more realistic utilization of armor in the game?

Thinking in my own head the ramifications of that ... so that the emphasis would be placed in gathering loot for better armor and not on player skill for that arms race.
The emphasis on shields would be on skill (both character and player) and not on material or AR ... wouldn't that then turn the shield type into an equally aesthetic exercise as armor now is?

I think I'd still rather have a steel shield than a fur one.

Not sure if skill rates could be yanked out of armor formulas ... probably what you refer to as an OBSE thing.

Likewise what then would the skill rates be used for?

First off, this was just an idea i was toying with for a private mod for myself.

Second, the idea is not to eliminate block! Under the current system, a shield adds to your total AR rating (and a fairly hefty chunk too!) as well as acting as a shield. What i toyed with doing was reducing the chunk of AR that the shield adds to your armor rating, so that it acted - well as a shield mostly, and that the majority of your AR was made up of your actual armor.

What that would do was make your total armor rating WITHOUT a shield (ie if you are using a two hander) similar to what you would get with a shield equipped. Why did i care? Well, because i was pushing AR quite high in the mod (to make armors more 'realistic' - again, this was just something i wanted to try for myself), lets say 80 AR to demonstrate the point, then if you lost 10 AR when you took off the shield the armor (now at 70 AR) would become 50% worse! I wanted to avoid that by reducing the impact of shields on AR (but not removing them - shields and blocking would still be vital)

This mod makes the AR number scale neutral instead, and so it circumvents a large part of this concern. But shields still often contribute as much as a cuirass (or greaves, ill have to look at the numbers again) to your AR - using a two handed weapon, you are not only at a disadvantage due to the loss of the most effective block and the use of shields, but also a significant chunk of AR!


This is pretty much what i wanted to do as well, and why i gave up on it. I wanted 'wearing skill' (ie light armor/heavy armor skills) to have a much lesser effect on armor protection (AR) and have other effects instead (slowing you down, fatigue, ability to use a weapon or even the ability to fight in the armor at all - many different ideas and ways of penalising poor armor skill, to make up for a lesser effect on AR). My logic was exactly the same as yours - armors would protect unskilled wearers almost as much, but not quite - an unskilled wearer would not be alert and able to prevent the use of armor-circumventing strikes, like jabbing under the armpits, or might present the wrong profile, so some effect of these skills on AR is appropriate.

Again, i want to stress this was just an idea I was toying with in my own game, not something i think is appropriate to most or even a significant portion of other players.


Again, we share this logic. Although its a long time ago, i recall my brother making a mod for us that increased the blocking effectiviness of a shield. Although some damage is probably appropriate (lacking another way of dividing 'strikes that are effectively blocked' and 'strikes that are too heavy to block') another impact, such as on fatigue, might be appropriate. I sort of like the way blocking costs fatigue at very low skill levels - but this seems to stop happening fairly quickly as you level the skill

Again, me and my brother were unable to go into the innards of the blocking/armor skill specifics to make the changes we liked


This is what i wanted to change. I despised the fact that most armors (at least for much of the game) were distinguished by mere aesthetics, and wanted to create greater variety in their effects. Like you, i found i was unable to change the innards. In terms of shields, as far as i recall, a shield's ability to block is NOT impacted by its AR and thats why i was playing with the effect they had on AR, but this is certainly something i would make sure of first!

The armor system was just something i decided i did not like and tried to change - but without access to the innards to account for different strike types and magnitudes (eg heavy armors block light dagger strikes, but not heavy blows), and more importantly the way skills affect AR, i abandoned the effort when i gave up on oblivion. I never really planned to make any public mods so i was not constrained by expectations and could toy with ideas that appealed to me. A public mod of this type would need to stay more conservative, not changing things such as blocking mechanisms (or doing so in a seperate mod - besides, block works ok in the game)

For most people, a simple elimination of the marginal effects of the AR numbering system to make it neutral - as the previously linked mod does - is all that is needed. Perhaps that mod just needs to rework its uninstall mechanism, or be implemented in a different way or more directly in the damage formulas, so that it can be easily and uncontroversially incorporated into many overhauls and mods, fixing the skewed marginal aspects of the AR numbering system.

For a deeper change of the way armor works, the ability to change the innards is needed


This would be desirable (or at least interesting to try) but quite a lot of difficult questions about whether it can be done. Locational damage sort of seems to be in the game, with different parts of armor being hit and degrading, but this might just be random.



Exactly right, that was a concern. To a degree it was the 'lesser of two evils', and if the shield's contribution to AR was only reduced, not eliminated, getting a steel shield over a fur one still made a lot of sense, but you are right that, perhaps, not enough.

Thats where other mechanisms around shields might come in - for example, durability would be significantly different between the two, and if we could change the innards to make shields block all blows below a certain magnitude (but not, for example, an extremely heavy strike) then we could make a steel shield block heavier blows than a fur one, while lasting longer under the strain.

Lacking the ability to affect the innards, however, i was looking at only reducing, not eliminating, the shield's contribution to AR for precisely this reason



If i could have my way then light/heavy armor skils would affect your ability to move and fight in these armors, as well as (but to a much lesser extent than in stock oblivion) how much they protect you (to simulate your inability to properly angle or otherwise avoid penetrating blows). It would all depend on what mechanism worked best once i could try them.

At the moment, i cant even touch these bits so the point is moot

Like I said, gamers like to think so, but this is not really so much the case.

What you are talking about is more in the category of dodging (which is a combination of evading, deflecting and retracting from the force of the blow) NOT "armor wearing skill". In combat you would do this whether you have armor on or not, wearing armor helps because it absorbs force, but that makes it armor not a "skill".

I know it seems logical (what you are saying) and that is part of why it has been a misconception for so long in Melee combat games.
But the fact is that there is no such "armor wearing skill" taught in Melee combat. Not in historical manuscripts and not in heavy weapons martial arts such as in the SCA.

But I do not wish to debate this further, I am not feeling up to it. It is your mod so do what you like as you need to be happy with it not me right?

As to the shield, the main difference would be durability. A wood shield and steel shield both block the same sword blow equally. Otherwise it would be a "plank of wood" not a "shield". But the steel shield is expected to last longer.

Now if we could use damage types in this game it would be a different story altogether. In general wood blocks arrows better than steel pound for pound. It has to do with the way wood absorbs the kinetic energy differently than steel does. And wood stops the heat of fire much better than steel, but wood will not last nearly as long as steel while doing so. But this is all very moot because Oblivion cannot/does not evaluate different damage types.

BTW Oblivion does not do locational hits, armor damage is done randomly by the game. There is no collision detection for individually parts of armor. That is why several modders including myself have had to make locational hit mods.

I am going back to bed, good luck with this, this is indeed a good mod concept, it is just that it cannot be done "right" with the tools available at this time. But you only need to get it to "feel right" in YOUR game, that is what is important for you if you are going to make the mod.