You did find a bug. It's not new, and it's not actually in nGCD. I just happen to have created one of the more reliable ways of triggering it. I don't know all the details myself, but it seems there are some quirks to how the Oblivion script engine starts up, and it's not uncommon for OBSE-dependent scripts -- especially those that use arrays -- to sometimes initialize incorrectly. The right conditions can turn sometimes into always.

Long story short: don't do that!

dying and then reloading ur last save is not subject to this, right?

Well, although there are certain situations which will reliably trigger the issue, it's otherwise kind of random and can happen after nearly any game load, even the very first. But this is uncommon, and you really don't have to worry about playing in a messed-up state, as it's very obvious -- even if you don't check the character page, your Health, Magicka and Fatigue bars will all be empty!

When it does happen, the fix is quitting Oblivion and restarting -- there's nothing wrong with the save file. If you ever see something like this in the middle of a play session (more than ten seconds after game load) then something else is going on and you should report it.

"Times Trained This Level 23/5" Might be a problem there.
The only settings changed in nGCD .ini are:

set nGCD.bSimpleUncap to 1
set nGCD.bDoNotManageMagicka to -1

Oom

Huh. I wonder if some other mod is editing your training sessions? Try this -- go to the console and type:

set ngcdplayer.recalc to 1

That will force recalculation on the next frame, which should reset your available training sessions to what nGCD thinks they should be. Then immediately open the training dialog and see what you get. This will work even in menu-mode but the number won't update if the training page is already open, so do it while you're talking to the trainer, but right before clicking the train button -- that should minimize the chance of another mod processing a different change.

Also, you should probably turn on LevelCanDecrease in nGCD.ini -- that was a bad default. (And might actually be related, though I doubt it -- the problem is too few sessions available, not too many.)

Changing LevelCanDecrease fixed it!
Thanks! :clap: Oom

Thanx for the good explanations so far! The math stuff is quite obvious (now) but intelligent (golden ratio and the other formulas for "curves")

But now after about 40hrs of playing my http://www.linklost.com/occ/?Paladin&Holy%20Paladin&0&2&2&0&5&6&1&5&8&15&18&19&20 I'm reaching level 10 soon...

My nGCD is set to fLevelFactor = 0.75, Progress mod to 2x slower leveling, as I'm a casual gamer and MBSP, RBSP, Armorer etc. enabled.
As you can see my Character Template shows max. Level (with Vanilla!) would be 49.

What does this exactly mean to balancing if FCOM is used? (fLevelFactor -> max. Level 75). Should i lower Progress to 3x? Or lower fLevelFactor to 0.5 regarding to FCOM based on Oblivion level-ups (not progressing, that is 3x slower in OOO along with FCOM)
I.e. FCOM balancing is based on vanilla levels, skill progress (nevertheless progress speed 3x slower, but level cap and level-up stays same!), so the progress is still faster or "different" to the balancing of FCOM?!

Opinions wanted! from experienced 200hrs+++ nGCD players with FCOM

Regards
Jed

The skill advancement rate, which is what OOO sets to 3x and you've got at 2x with Progress, has nothing to do with game balance or difficulty. It's purely an immersion and gameplay-style choice. Think of it kind of like watching a video in fast forward or slow motion -- everything changes by the same factor; all the same content is there in the same order and combinations. How fast to set your skill gain depends entirely on how long you want to spend at lower levels. Are they a chore to get past, or an experience to savor? Opinions differ!

The nGCD level factor is the ratio of your power to the world's power. From a top-down perspective, it makes you level faster or slower just like the skill gain rate; but the difference is that everything else isn't kept in step. Raising that value is like playing a movie in fast forward but the main character is still moving at normal speed, and when he has to confront the nuclear laser sharks he might not have finished his "learning to swim" montage.

Sometimes I stretch metaphors. Just a little.

Anyway: FCOM is generally a lot harder than vanilla, but there's really no way to "balance" nGCD.fLevelFactor against it since there's no equation to solve -- difficulty is purely a matter of preference. Some people like crazy challenges, some are just really good at action games, and on the other hand some mostly like to hang out in Divine Elegance play dress-up. As a mod author I want to try to set a default which gives an enjoyable experience to most users, but I can only hit the general ballpark and it may be totally wrong for you specifically. Bottom line: if it feels too hard nudge that number down, and vice versa.

I find most theories of game balance (especially when it comes to weapon stats) to be exercises in subjective jousting. Abandon the idea of objective truth in balance and you are good to go.

I have a few questions regarding trainings per level (kind of like what was reported above).

After the extended delay updating from RC to 2.2 (used the ModAV command). I play for a good long while yesterday. It was great. Then went to train and saw that it said I had already trained 51 out of 61 times for this level.
In progress I set this:
set Progress.iTrainingSkills to 10
In nGCD 2.2 I set these:
set nGCD.iTrainingMode to 0
set nGCD.fTrainingFactor to 2.5

Previously with RC it had lost track of trainings per level and I had set the iTrainingSkills to 999 in Progress. But reset to 10 with nGCD.

He is level 24 which with above settings would mean that he has 60 available trainings .... does this mean that it recalculated all the available trainings from the beginning and if so then why 61 and not 60? If he receives no training this level then will the next level read 51 out of 71?

I think I may have a mod conflict in my load order in reviewing these settings I looked over a few save games in Wrye Bash and found two instances when I saved while in sneak mod and I see the level is 22592. Since I don't often check level I'm betting a stealth mod I have installed is doing this and then nGCD is correcting it back. I know with Realistic Fatigue the mod Proximity Based Stealth Penalties would cause extreme level fluctuations, but I'm not using that. What I am using is: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=25462, but I will not be able to narrow this down to see if that is it until later tonight or the next time I can play.

My experience, opinion or better said immersion is quite good now with Progress 2x slower, fLevelFactor 0.75. Not too easy, but not too unrealistic challenging. I would recommend these settings for comebacks and advanced casual Oblivion players.


That's exactly the point! My power vs. The World's Power. FCOM / OOO are based on vanilla. So there's a level cap at 50. Ok, this level-cap in vanilla is for calculating health and some other stuff. BUT, what about the non-scaled monsters and enemies. If FCOM / OOO (which includes the leveled monsters and enemies) is setup for level-cap of 50, am I not too strong in late game for fighting against these? Well nGCD+Progress handle PC levels different. There it's only a number to keep it simple.

I just want to be sure the PC level value (which is 1-50 in vanilla, 1-100 or 1-75 in nGCD depending on fLevelFactor) does scale the right difficulty with the MMM monster levels.


True! It's a matter of personal slant, yes. But I want to keep it all as linear as possible, e.g. I don't want to be overpowered at levels beyond 50 (beyond vanilla level-cap) and not underpowered at levels 1-25.

-

BTW: before I have to dig further into all .inis, is it correct, I don't drain Fatigue if having Marksman at 40 and shoot arrows? http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Marksman#Mastery_Perks, all correct.
Started a new character with own http://www.linklost.com/occ/?Ranger&Ranger&0&5&10&2&3&4&5&9&10&11&12&14&16 = Ranger/Archer with thieves' and healing skills. Nevertheless skill progress in Marksman is quite slow compared to Blunt/Blade. I know I have the Range based stuff enabled, but still is slow. I would roughly guess 3-4x slower than killing with Blunt/Blade?!

And did you think about Athletics/Speed stuff making you faster, you don't run the same amount of seconds to reach a target to improve the skill? The faster you run the slower you progress for same distance.


Thx so far, overdue endorsemant to be soon at tesnexus.com and my personal recommendations mod wiki


Regards
Jed

Gah, big long post got eaten. Have to run, apologies for abrupt answers, will clarify later if needed.

Psymon: Progress is irrelevant now; it's 61 because the 2.5 isn't rounded, and can go up mid-level -- you're at least 40% of the way to 25.

Jed: You've got it backwards. Higher level cap but same skill cap means lower skills at any given level, making you less powerful relative to a "level-appropriate" enemy.

If I understand "got eaten" right, I recommend you https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/6984/ (in case you use this browser).

Ok I got it right then on the other point of view, the PC level is just a number IF using nGCD+Progress. BUT! FCOM / OOO and above them all vanilla PC levels calculate the monster and enemy levels! FCOM along with MMM got leveled enemies regarding to vanilla progress, PC level etc.

That is: With level 50 vanilla you maxed out your major skills AND your attributes all to 100 (if micromanaged your level-ups). FCOM (MMM) bases on this progress.
With nGCD at PC level 50, you don't have major skills at 100, nor (more important!) attributes. That is the level linearity I've meant.
Game is more difficult if you can reach level 100 with maxed out skills, than with level 50 if vanilla growing monsters are used. But not with FCOM. Fixed monster levels there, only some scaled to PC level.

Well it might be nit-pickin', but it's a serious point to think about IMHO.


Regards
Jed

Hmm well work canceled again but at least I can look at this.

I don't think it is Hear No Evil that is causing wild level fluctuations, but need to test more. To be certain I'm thinking of the same issue that may affect Realistic Leveling I'm quoting this from the RL readme:
So will mods that use player.setAV (like http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15025) have an adverse effect on leveling with this mod?

Also recalling that I used that command prior to installing 2.2 as per your instructions in the statcleaner thread. Might that have had an effect? Don't think so as it was prior to installing this.

Here is a http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo54/psymon11b/WhackLevel.jpg - This occurs when the character sneaks and is successful at it. I now need to disable some mods and narrow down the cause. I thought the message I'm highlighting with the cursor would give a hint 'To grow stronger' but it doesn't seem to match any level up message with vanilla Oblivion http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Level. Does nGCD add messages beyond level 21?

And to be clear if you see me posting in ABO's thread as well it is because I have three different installs managed by http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1119357-wipz-mtes4-manager/ and not because I'm using RL and nGCD in the same load order (that would be daft) ... I am using progress in both load orders (The third is Nehrim where no natural grow leveling mods can exist at this time).

jedcoooper - thanks for lazarus link - now installed.

No -- I use Chrome, that feature's built in. This was entirely self-inflicted. I multi-quoted, then accidentally hit Start New Topic instead of Add Reply. Since the quotes were there, I didn't realize my mistake until I finished typing and tried to post and it popped up an error telling me I hadn't filled in the topic line. I tried to copy/paste and apparently flubbed the copy. Having hit the back button and then clicked Add Reply in the same tab, there was no way to navigate back to the page where my text was. My fault, but still pretty frustrating!


Tangent: I heartily disagree that attributes are more important. Take one character with all skills at 100 and all attributes at 30, and match them in nearly anything against a character with skills at 30 and attributes at 100... I think skills win. nGCD actually reinforces this with the skill component for health and magicka.


Very true, but your level wouldn't matter to those creatures in vanilla either.



Yes, and that's why LevelCanDecrease should be enabled. The problem isn't usually as bad as it sounds, though. AFAIK, the only time your level is actually checked is when a leveled list is being resolved. There are some exceptions, but 99% of the time this only happens at cell reset. This means that unless you're sneaking across miles of unexplored countryside, or sneaking as you go through a loading door which you haven't been through before (or within three days, or whatever your respawn timer is), your sneak will be at its unmodified value and your level likewise at the moment when the game actually looks at it. The rest of the time it's really just cosmetic. Granted, the current situation where levels can go negative and wrap into the thousands might exacerbate the rare situation where it's modified at the moment it's checked, and that will be fixed in the next version.

To be honest, if I were to be concerned about anything when using that mod with nGCD, it would be the hit to Agility when sneaking. But I haven't seen anyone complaining that I've made their ranged sneak attacks too weak.


No. I continue to disappoint Brumbek with this fact.

So you're saying that what I'm seeing is cosmetic and not a fundamental issue that could carry over into new saves? Is it or is it not a dire situation that I need to find the root cause of before going on. Of note I did not notice these fluctuations until today when they happened last night. I am able to replicate it though in my game by just being successful at sneaking. So the next day the character had the level as before (was not permanent).

If not dire then I'm calling off this bug hunt. and a big thanks if you can put a work around in - if you do I may switch both load orders over to nGCD.

btw I'm not using Proximity based sneak, so it is some other mod interacting with it.

Is there an entry in edit I can look at to see what mod is adding the level descriptions beyond 21. [apparently that is slevel messaged under game settings but I can't find any that go past 21 ....hmmm.

thanks

[edit] and someone recently tried to sell me on the idea that proximity was now compatible with RL and so I added it to that load order and found pretty quickly that it was not as my level leaped from1 to 12 and stayed that way. So no hits to agility were not the big issue.

Yes.


Nope... as you see, the ones up to 20 are stored in string GMSTs, and there's a generic "I'm even more powerful!" message for 21+. Any level-specific messages beyond that have to be done with a scripted message. Only way to find it would be scanning all your .esp's for that text.

Well then that is good.

For what it is worth I found the mod triggering it - http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1116797-duke-patricks-combat-archery-thread-3/ ... The circumstances of it being very particular. The character has to be sneaking and come within pickpocket range of an NPC - then the level readout goes haywire.

There are about 20 scripts in the esp and I did a precursory search and only found one plaver.SetAV in the script aaaDPMasterScript like so: So maybe it is triggered when sneaking backwards. In any event I tested in my load order with Realistic Leveling and could not get leveling weirdness, so perhaps it is not as serious as it is for Proximity Based (which with RL got me leveled to 12 from level 1). And maybe RL has the work around already but not for proximity.

also the mod I have installed that most likely adds the extra leveling messages is http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=32508 though there appears to be only one for all levels past 21.

im running ngcd at 0.75 multiplier as recommended but also with the uncapper... should I be roughly 50% at 17 skill ups sofar at level 1? just seems like every time I load my game my % gets higher or lower randomly and the more i skill up the lower it gets? im just seriously having weird problems... 34 skill ups per level would make the game incredibly easy right? even if skills/stat caps are at 200.

If you check the moment you load, you'll probably see inconsistent display -- scripts aren't fully active for about five seconds, and there's some stuff that doesn't save with the game and has to be set every time Oblivion runs.


Should be 25.83 skills per level, up from 23.67 with 100-caps. Not a big jump -- less than 10%. I think they can share that default.

It's also not as good as that many skill-ups would be in vanilla. Even if they're not quite as important as skills, attributes matter a lot. 24 skills per level could easily give you +12 total attribute gain, but nGCD is only going to give about +6.

Of course, once again, "difficulty" is a very personal concept. Don't be afraid to change it to whatever feels right.

The latest version of nGCD causes the occasional CTD when using a bow. It doesn't happen that often, but it does happen. I disabled nGCD and the CTD never happens.

There's nothing special about Marksman. If this is actually happening, it's unquestionably a mod interaction. Unless you can isolate the other component(s) of the conflict, not much can be done.

Well, the crash is rare. But it does happen. I'm sure it is a dynamic of mod interaction. But, being that it is so rare, I'll live with it.

so with a 200 cap, i should be leveling up every 25-26 skills? or with 100 cap? at 200 cap im getting 48-50 skills per level. thats not right then? if so maybe I had editing something wrong in the ini's? checking through 4 or 5 file saves with at least 20+ skill ups, all are around 30-50% to next level.

i wanted to retract this statement because i realized i was just wanting to be able to level my skills up normally PAST 100 but I still want the same max as before so I wont be wasting skills on stats that cant go up anymore.

Huh... that does look like exactly half-speed level advancement, doesn't it. Can't check at this moment, but it's very possible that when I re-wrote the level code, I wound up making it scale with SkillMax, which it previously didn't and wasn't intended to. That would mean you have to double the level factor when you double the skill cap. Not a big issue if you know it's happening, but of course you have to know! Thanks for bringing that to light, I'll verify it tomorrow.

Edit: Totally don't understand what you just said in the follow-up post. This probably has something to do with needing sleep.