As you might be aware I am expanding the whole of Hlaalu territory, in every possible sense. As a reward at the end of a large questline (of Great Hlaalu Guard) I have placed a huge Player Manor in Balmora.

However I got stuck with an issue: How many Mannequins should I provide, and/or should I leave room for more, my concern is that a huge room with many Mannequins looks out of place, immersion breaking, yet I want to make the most complete player Manor, one that most would love to own.

Therefore;

Should I add a mannequin for every ingame armor?

Should I include both male and female mannequins?

How many mannequins would be ideal in your opinion?

Should I leave room for movable mannequins to be placed?

I would really appreciate your feedback, thank you!

Hello,

just my opinions on given topic:

1) Definitely not, that's too many in my opinion and as you said, it would look out of place.

2) I would say yes. The best would be to have player decide, for example via interaction with given mannequin (yet some might find this immersion-breaking).

3) It depends on many things. On the size of the interior, if you have something like "trophy room" in the manor etc. And mostly, it depends on the way you place them around. Personally, I don't like one huge rank of wooden men in one room. If you place them on hallways for example, with only one at given place, that might look nice. So generally, not too many in one place

4) Well, this is a tough one. I tought about this with regards to all furniture in my mod that adds house. In the end, I solved it by allowing player to talk to seller of the house and have all furniture removed, so even players with furniture mods could use it if they do not like what I did. But I can tell you, this is very tiresome. In your case, you could leave some blank spots and allow player to "order mode mannequins", which would place them in these spots, or simply let him buy moveable... hmmm... well, so I guess this is yes to moveable mannequins

1 - Thats way too many

2 - Can this be left to player choice? like.. add male (or female) mannequins and when the player interact with it they can change the six of the mannequin (would require some scripting i think..)

3 - It depends on the room size but even still.. i wouldn't like to see 300 mannequins on the trophy room.. add a dozen or less? then give the player the option to get more if they need..

4 - Sure.. can't see the problem with it..

My comments on your blog still stand:

I'd personally opt for the mannequins to be an optional addition to the manor - rather than just sitting there when you walk in the door (how many people's homes, no matter how lavish, have you walked into that have a dozen mannequins standing around? I've rarely even seen a suit of armor in anything but a castle). Make it similar to Oblivion and Skyrim player homes where the player gets in touch with a furnisher who will install some mannequins in the manor for a fee.

Plus, then the player could select to purchase either male, female, or 50/50 mannequins.

To answer question number four, I would say: if it doesn't ruin the look of the house, then sure. Maybe just a few walls of the house which have slightly raised floor or something.

And what about this: Make all mannequins placeable/pickable. Then place a few in the Manor. Then player can buy more/remove all/place them somewhere else

Regarding number 4, have you considered leaving places where a person would place mannequins instead of having specific spots?

For example, i remember a castle mod that has little indents in the hallways, they were not used for anything so i placed mannequins in them.

I prefer a room for the Mannequins (helps with frame rates too in the rest of the house).

I prefer to have both male and female availible

Just give me a bunch of pedestals in a room that I can put the mannequins on, or, just give me an interesting room to place the mannequins in without pedestals

I use the mod that adds a mannequin store (forget the name) and one of the things it does that I like is they can dance. I set up dancing mannequins in one part of the house, standing mannequins in the other part of the house. The other part it does is I have several choices to the type of mannequin I get (stone, ethereal, wood, normal skin etc)

My house mod also has a crate that I can get the mannequins from (they are just wooden looking ones not like the ones I can buy at the store in Vivec), so a crate to select them from would be fine, as i may not want every mannequin.