Do people still play this game?

I've recently come back to Morrowind after a long hiatus (I do this every year or so), and thought I should finally get around to releasing the new version of MCA I started working on not long after I released 6.1.

Here's some of the features:
Random sitting NPCs in all taverns using Archmaestro Antares' animations http://i.imgur.com/h8LoL.jpg http://i.imgur.com/r6Wf2.jpg
Random reading NPCs in booksellers, Mages guilds and Temples (also courtesy of Archmaestro) http://i.imgur.com/f6boa.jpg
Removed Champions, so you won't see NPCs wandering around in Glass/Ebony/Adamantium armour
A new menu will appear when you start a new game or install MCA for the first time, where you can choose to disable some of the more 'controversial' features, such as bandits in towns, bandits/witches/marauders in caves and Daedric ruins, hostile drunks, highwaymen, courtesans, companions, and control the size of bandit parties.

I'm also considering making Westly's Master Headpack optional, with the ordinary Bethesda heads being default. They will still be random though, and you'll have to use a pluginless replacer to pretty them up if for some reason you don't like the Westly ones.

The main reason I posted this is to find out what bugs I need to fix. I know of a couple, like the drunks still causing crashes (I think they've crashed every version since I put the damn things in) and the missing sound files for Shareel. So for those of you who still use MCA (I know there's at least one or two), or even gave the last version a try and then uninstalled it for whatever reason, are there any other problems that need attention? Maybe just general weirdness, or immersion-breaking lore violations?

You're also welcome to make suggestions if you want, but I can't promise I'll take note of them.

I've got an idea. Make patrols of guards of about six on the roads patrolling along the way to another place. eg. 6 Imperial guards patrolling from Pelgiad to Ebonheart and they stay there for the day and the next they go back to there barracks in Pelgiad.

Yes, i second that..

how about merging MCA Names and naming any other leftover NPCs?


you could try adding some random encounters, like while traveling you can watch a fight between some guards and some wilderness creatures..

some modularity would be welcome too, like making your changes to undeads and dungeons a separated module, a module for equipment changes would be welcome too..

your companions are also awesome, what about fleshing out the dialog of some random NPCs and maybe adding some quests? i`m spoiled by LGNPC and mods that freshen out the game..

you could make an official lite version..

and.. welcome back

My heart just stopped for a second.
Random NPCs are gonna use different animations? That's awesome. Can't wait for next version.

I still see bald Mabrigashes occasionally.

Regarding to make Westly's Master Headpack optional is something that I don't understand. Why you would do a such thing when people are actually using it to avoid Bethesda's default heads.

I bring this up because it has a minor conflict with Kateri's Julan the Ashlander Companion mod and is definitely in conflict with Trancemaster's http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1348329-rel-morrowind-rebirth-16/ mod. It is about the http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1348329-rel-morrowind-rebirth-16/page__view__findpost__p__20643374 that the outcast Ashlanders has here and there.

The outcast campsite near http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Favel_Ancestral_Tomb has a quest attached to it when you're using Kateri's Julan, but the campsite is also set to respawn overtime and when that happen the quest will be reactivated so to speak. How about to remove the respawn flag for that outcast campsite and make it only quest related nothing else.

I understand why you remove the champions, because to me it looks kind a of silly they wandering around in Balmora and sometimes they confused me as http://www.tessearch.com/search?general=bounty+hunter&game=3&act=Search&page=1. Instead why not have them in wandering mode around Arena canton in Vivec and when you talk to them they may challenge you for a duel in the Arena, but the outcome could be different if you don't kill them and if you accept their yield they could become your companion. I don't know if this feasible or not, but I think the game will have more immersion.

MCA is my all-time favourite can't-play-without-it mod! Can you please please please make the new version backwards-compatible much as possible, as nearly all the mods I've made for my own use are dependant on MCA.esm in some way or another. I'm currently still using 5.1 as to be honest I never found a reason to upgrade to 6, but the animations would defintely be reason enough to upgrade this time.

I've not used 6 so I don't know how many of these you've already addressed, but some things I changed in 5.1 for my own use are as follows:

The crusader chainmail outfit with the red crosses on it is, IMO, anti-lore and just plain nasty looking all in one, so I took that out.
The leveled lists for the spawned merchants stock items end up with them selling Daedric weapons at higher levels, so I toned them down.
The undead in tombs seem to scale to higher levels much quicker than any other enemies, which make some tomb quests suicide missions at low levels.
I took the bandit spawn points out of the first cave in Seyda Neen as pretty much only a Warrior character stood a chance in there fresh off the boat.
Most of the nice new armours and clothes that spawn on MCA characters don't appear anywhere else, so I've merged some of them into random loot and shopkeepers' leveled lists
Some of the companions don't have a "background" topic, so I wrote some (I like to RP).
I wanted a Savant companion, so I made one (your companion scripts are lovely and easy to work with!)

While you're here, can I ask a question that's bugging the hell out of me? I'm trying to add full MCA integration for a new race - I've got it all working except the mca_lovesounds script, which flatly refuses to play anything. I've copied the whole block of "if...endifs" as it is for the existing races and tried pointing it at the various hit.wav files for each of the built-in races with no joy, what am I doing wrong??

Cheers,
P

Uhm... I'd say some finer balancing between hostile NPCs/creatures and vanilla ones. Some of them tend to be far more powerful and/or better equipped than vanilla, so much that vanilla enemies pale in comparison; the gap is too obvious, and make the added NPCs and creatures stand out instead of blending in the game.

The other issue on the same line ("ehy, here's one of them MCA guys") is with equipment; I like a lot of it, especially now that it has been better blended with vanilla stuff, but the problem is that only NPCs added by MCA will use it. "A hooded guy on the road, here comes another bandit/hughwayman".

No idea how this could be solved other than by removing the extra equipment, though; at least, for those NPCs you don't want to stand out.

How about an optional feature that introduces some high level enemies ? because it is hard for high level characters to find worthy opponents as most mods tend to cater for low/medium level characters.

I agree and good point.

Always loved MCA! I did often mod it a bit more to my liking like removing the town bandits, so that new option sounds good!

Any chance of an official addon for Tamriel Rebuilt? I made one ages ago for Telvannis and Antedeluvian Secrets, but I imagine your own version would be much better.

How about merging MCA with the Undead Arise mod ^^

Not only high level, we need 3x or 4x more bad guys. Morrowind is ridiculously easy when being level 50 or higher.

The last MCA already has Neopt's Undead Mod and some skeletons do arise..

* MCA Names being merged, or recreating your own version of it.
* Improved companion scripts
* TR support

Yep, MCA is really that awesome. All of my mods that I'm making depend on it, so backwards compatibility would be appreciated. I have taken some complaints from people who do not want to use it for whatever reason, but I'm like "oh well." But if MCA can be improved without making it incompatible with mods that want to celebrate it by requiring it, I'm pretty excited.

I think that inclusion of Westly's headpack as default (as well as the optional Clothiers of Vvardenfell integration) is just brilliant, and I've created my own mod to follow in the visual style that this set up.

I use Animated Morrowind, Animated Morrowind II, Animated Morrowind Expanded, and The Regulars - all of which add animated or sitting NPCs. This functionality would be very welcome in MCA... I've been sorting through animations, myself, and found some looping sitting animations that have a character moving to sit down, and then looping from the standing position again. I think sitting pants look awful in a modern game, so if you can get it to work, you are my hero yet again.

I would like to have only low level characters in Vvardenfell, and the high level ones in Mournhold/Solstheim.
The Arch-Mage of Vivec, is a 23 level characters, and you should not meet mages guild members higher than him (or at least it should happen very rarely)

I was a huge fan of the mod up through version 4, but didn't like the drastically changed balance in 5 or 6.

The earlier "Morrowind Comes Alive" NPCs more-or-less fit in with the rest of the game, but the later "MCA" ones stood out as "mod-added" even from half-way across town. The greater difficulty is fine at higher levels, but begins WAY too high and ramps up quickly from there. When your Level 1 "semi-fighter" character is facing hordes of 6-8 opponents, each with far better skills, weapons, and armor than you, and they can outrun you at double the speed, it's not my idea of fun, or even interesting. When every wandering MCA NPC is obviously better equipped and skilled than their vanilla counterparts standing next to them, you end up fighting the MCA opponents and simply ignoring the feeble "vanilla" foes until later. A few fights, and you're outfitted with stuff WAY above normal, and then the vanilla NPCs seem hilariously underpowered. Either you powergame and use the MCA looted equipment, rendering the vanilla content moot, or don't, and the MCA opponents become unbeatable. The disparity is simply bad for gameplay, and anti-immersive as well.

The extra bandits in caves, ruins, and towns might be fun as a rare surprise, but having them as near-guaranteed respawns every last time you return makes such places useless as "makeshift player housing" or for storage. I'd love to see a couple of respawn points with about a 1% chance, just enough to leave a trace of uncertainty, not a 90% chance where their very absence is a surprise.

I recall stepping into a Dunmer fortress with my level 5 or 6 character, dealing with the vanilla bandits around the door, and then sneaking to the next corner. I spotted an NPC down the hall, which was obviously an MCA 6.x-added bandit, and unleashed an arrow. In about 2 seconds, I was surrounded by over a dozen MCA bandits rushing from the far corners of the building at insane speed, all of them wearing high-level armor and swinging Daedric, Ebony, or Glass weapons, except for the one firing Holding arrows from a nasty mod-added bow (Ebony bow?, it took over half the character's health in one shot, plus paralyzed) and another summoning a Hunger, as if there weren't enough of them to deal with a paralyzed and already half-dead low-level character. There was no way to cast a Recall spell, no time to grab a potion, and no possible way to fight back or run; the character died about 3-5 seconds after firing that arrow. That's not what I call "entertainment", and I ceased using MCA from there on. Since then, I've been using Starfire's mod and enjoying it, but missing some of the old "Morrowind Comes Alive" content.

Don't get me wrong; I LIKE most of the added content, but it's too much too soon for any semblance of balance. That goes for both the opponents and their equipment. The basic game doesn't throw Daedric or Glass equipment at you right away (it's there, and available with a few "exploits", but not in your face or otherwise affordable at low level), and neither should any mod that's not specifically intended and plainly stated to do so. "Special" equipment shouldn't be common at ANY level.

Making it configuarable might just be the right answer.

Can you also includes in it this fix:

Can you also put the MCA meshes/textures in their own folders?
Because they conflicts with Visages of Vvardenfell.

But Nepots undead mod doesn't even come close to the quality of Antares Undead: Arise mod... not even close.
Should seriously replace Neopts with Antares version.

Heh, this is actually a really big plus for me, if it includes the hairs, because I don't like a lot of the hairstyle choices.

I don't have any specific recommendations for MCA 7 but I can tell you how I feel at least.

My mod collection was getting obese (several hundred) so I did some spring cleaning and removed about 100.
That included removing MCA 6.1, Wesley's Head Pack, and the animated NPC's.
My reasons for doing so included:
-I know MCA has a noticeable fps hit
-MCA combined with LGNPC and other mods (e.g. Tales of Seyda Neen) meant there were tons of NPC's milling about everywhere, it was too much
-I think some of the mods I removed were adding extremely durable enemies that were too frustrating to beat
-I was annoyed that Wesley's Head Pack and other mods added too many weird tattoos, nice translucent hairs that sadly are incompatible with going underwater, and I decided I prefer Better Heads as it means the player and NPC share the available faces fully
-The animated NPC's are kind of buggy because, for example, if you look at the book the scribe is writing in next to Socucius Ergalla it has some corrupt Unicode string as its name. Plus, the animated NPC's have an FPS hit too.

I thought it was fine that MCA NPC's had generic names like "Commoner" as I don't want to confuse them with more important NPC's. Also I don't mind not being able to loot some of them.

I still prefer MCA 6.1 over Starfire NPCs; I was having problems with the latter mod as NPC's were being dropped in locations where they would get stuck, like on the edge of thin walkways in Balmora. Also, I don't really like the weird objects that "Hold It" gives them.

Wow, I haven't had that experience with MCA 6. Neo, does this happen in v6, or am I just missing it? I thought I read somewhere that the daedric and glass equipment had been removed from the latest version. I'm not on my PC or I would check the readme.

I rarely see more than 1 MCA-added foe at a time. Granted, some of the hostiles on the roads will slaughter a first level character, but to me, first level is about being helpless and being ultra-careful. Plus, we have the safe roads mod for when its too much.

I agree that some caves could be used for player bases (especially for those that use multimark) if the necromancers and stuff didn't respawn... if the cave doesn't have anything in it that re-spawns, probably best to have versions of the npc-generators that don't respawn. If the original inhabitants respawn, then fine. This honestly didn't bother me, but I imagine that it might for some. Me, I had killed R'Virr and turned his place into a museum for my artifacts... when I added MCA there were people in my "house" lol - hey, it was a stolen house - kind of makes sense.

I do not use a powerful PC at all, so I always wonder why so many people complain about FPS hits. ie - my computer can run Skyrim (only with a tweak to the .ini file), but not MGE XE with distant land and shaders. I figure if I can play the mod without problems, we're probably talking about very low-end computers that have problems with FPS, or people with their MGE settings too high. Since Morrowind is ten years old, I'd hate to see mods get watered down by reducing content for older computers at this point. I know there are plenty of people playing Morrowind that simply play it because they cannot play Oblivion or Skyrim, but an FPS problem in that case would be more of a problem with the user's computer, not the mod. Options for low-end computers are excellent and awesome, but I think a mod whose job is to add content, clutter, detail, NPCs, etc, should be able to do that and do it well without recrimination. [Not complaining about your comment, Blouge - you're recounting your honest experiences - you just made me think of this point.]

As for Westly's... I agree that some of the hairstyles don't look right on certain very manly or old male faces. Using MCA (along with westly's and Clothiers of vvardenfell) as required mods for my mods, sometimes I do select default hair (hoping to god the player at least has better heads installed) for the male characters rather than westly's collection. The hair from Westly's collection looks great on male elves, however. Keening doesn't require westly's headpack to be activated, as it draws directly from the MCA selection to keep it simple (following example from MCA)... so if you can keep the hair/ face IDs the same even if they become optional, it would make my job easier - otherwise I'd have to require westly's headpack to be activated and reassign all the faces and hairs. I realize this isn't your problem to preserve compatibility with mods that require your mod, but if you can, THANK YOU

You're asking him to remove his own content and replace it with someone else's. This makes me sadface.
You know that Neopts is the creator of MCA, right?

Plus, removing his undead would make all the undead vanish from Keening. This would make me sadCATface. 3: