Suggestions on gameplay mechanics

After getting my Morrowind to reach nirvana visually, it was gameplay to change for my satisfaction. Here I compile my ideas which can add to Morrowind experience without taking anything away.

I played Morrowind years ago and I don't even think I really played it. It was a blind man trying to find his way. I learned half my English there. But 8 years later here I am. Being around for some time and seeing gameplay changes and all, I am somewhat more close to the subject. I still don't think I have the right to talk about RPG game mechanics because I stayed away from them like plague whole my life. Openly disgusting dice-roll mechanisms, isometric views, bad graphics, lack of realism... In theory I should be an RPG lover, as this is the genre it is supposed to be. I am glad I found it in Morrowind, again. Just took some time to realize...

I'm watching Gix17 and anolyzing it overly. For a closer viewing, I take my friend Victor as test subject. Victor, never played or heard TES before but has some online RPG background including WOW and HMM(I never played both though.).

He tried to exploit the game in ways. I also insidiously put my plan to encourage him for more exploitism. (Yes, he doesn't know. I'm insidious.) I noted stuff that's going wrong. What is going wrong? He maxed everything in two weeks.

I must warn you, I can only generate simple suggestions hard to implement. I'm not going to details on anything as my knowledge is not very high, it is also only 3 parts. (and 4 additional IDEAS covering, inventory, magicka, speed/fatigue and sleep necessities, scroll down to IDEAS)

Now,

3. Economy.

Player finds a merchant who likes him.
Finds a highly expensive item:
Sells for very low price.
Buys back for slightly lower.
Sells back for slightly higher.
Rinse and repeat.
450000 gold in 1 week.

If it was 20 weeks, I would say OK. But this is unacceptable. Now I think the disposition resets is a bug being covered in MCP, hopefully will help. But it is not enough.

Every merchant must have a varying capped disposition. It is in their character to be a robber, just like the player can have this character. (Maxing out will be history in this game. I will come to that in part 3)

Where a merchant in Vivec is a friendly merchant having max 90 disposition available.
A merchant in Balmora could be a robber, having max 50 disposition available.
(Also we can bind a merchant's disposition increase to his/her personal interests, where one likes Dwemer artifacts, the other simply can be a scrolls collector. Discovering this would have high role-playing value.)

We will bind their disposition to their total value of their items and their gold. When player sells a 30000 gold item for 7000 gold, this increase in total richness of the merchant will make her/him greedy and hence results in low disposition. So player needs to use bartering, literally. If there is another hardening value. It can be adjusted too.

Phew, we fixed the economy or did we? Any thoughts?

2. Spells/Potions
Consecutive spell/potion effects are being added together causing unbelievable stats. Consecutive spells/potions should have halved effects, so it won't double up.

I never played a magician character so I don't know much. Magic is like mathematics, so if one discovers a good algorithm, it is their right to benefit it. It is a very involved school so I think it is balanced in itself.

See bonus 3 at the bottom for magicka regeneration.

1. GOD-ISM
In time, you became a god. And the game breaks. This is the leveling and stat skill system.

1.a We should use caps.

An orc character has a 30 strength bonus. But then again, it maxed at 100. ??? It should work like a fortify effect. Also for MAX an orc can have 150 strength only. Numbers are imaginary, but we can find this caps properly for each race.

(We can argue if these caps should apply to intelligence, since magic is unlimited power. We can discuss this separately. We can also exclude magical effects.)

Skills are the same. Skill bonuses also must have a fortify effect. But I don't wanna put a cap. Because:

1.b LEVELING AND SKILL PROGRESSION
Everyone is maxing their skills eventually. People invest time to do this. (Sometimes, putting their character in front of a rat and checking next day!) This is their right to have have these skills, and this is nothing we can solve by putting caps or slowing down. Because skills are for everyone to develop, it can come from a birth mark or it can be having a gift for the skill but working hard must also count too. So the problem when I think like this, is like a neon light on a Christmas tree.

Now this gameplay mechanic does actually exist in the game.

When you got arrested and serve prison time a magical thing occurs. Some of your skills decrease and some increase. WHY? Because it appears the skills you didn't/couldn't care simply decrease. Now why on earth this doesn't apply to all game?!

Yes, you can max skills, only those you continuously practice. While others decrease to their default values. No one can practice all skills to max, off course maybe some, if they can.

So no, your skills won't decrease, only the ones you work out and abandon later. It is possible to only focus on some so you won't notice any skills decreasing. I suspect that will be major skills. Minors will see the decreasing effects if they increased and abandoned. Miscs will stay that way. Now, you can fully practice your skills as much as you want, trying to get higher misc skills while trading of some of the practice time for your major skills. You won't become an omnigod(you can but it will need some work) anymore but now you can become anyone, a mage, a warrior, a priest...

Leveling will see the decreasing effects. Now you have 3 points, 8 attributes, 5 major, 5 minor skills and miscs.

I will add more multipliers:

Normal classic x5 multipliers. They work as before. Nothing interesting.
No increase or simply canceling effect because skills only decreased. x0
Minus multipliers. So the abandoned skills will effect the governing attribute the same way normals do. Minus 5 speed attribute. Your speed will decrease from 50 to 45.(I highly doubt something like that would happen but who knows, chaos!!!) Now the player can use the point as +1 on that. I imagine the matter will look like this:

Strength + 5 x point
Intelligence - 3 + point
Endurance + 0 x point. (No point in giving, but you can. : See Edit1)
Agility + 0 x point
Speed + 4 x point
Luck + point

I would try strength, speed and luck. A reason to use luck finally. Or it could be that I can try to save my intelligence from dropping at least 1 point.

Strength + 0 x point
Intelligence + 0 x point
Endurance + 0 x point
Agility + 0 x point
Speed + 0 x point
Luck + point

This is also possible. But it means nothing. No need to wait for leveling. It will be a surprise every time.
Edit:I think I should give a meaning to this one. Let's say, giving a point to a 0xp will prevent that attribute from decreasing next level.

It appears to me as chaos value, it will be really random. It is possible that one wouldn't experience any side effects from this system for long at least and go on their gameplay as before. But eventually they will face this down to earth system but hopefully not in disastrous scales but in increasing game play length. One can cycle every quest out there with the same character this way.

Edit2:

Perks

When you increase your skill to a 50<, 75<, 90<(or only maxing); you gain *gameplay* perks, as in Oblivion's skill abilities and Fallout's perk system. When you forget the skill, you won't lose these perks. So a veteran character might become low in his/her skill, but since he/she won't lose gained perks, basically a "STILL GOT THE MOVES" situation.

A large variety of perks(Really large) to compensate the need to work these skills. So you simply work out a misc skill for its perk. Very simple encouraging and add to gameplay value, merging 3 games without going far from Morrowind philosophy.

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PS. You can even transport your character to Oblivion or Tes V given if they have similar system. Transportation can be imprisonment base, losing your gear, forgetting spells or you can simply leave your house and gear behind and start over.

IDEAS

Bonus 1: SPEED/Fatigue
I am not happy with how this works and the mods I tried didn't solve the issue for me. My suggestion on the matter:

Real Fatigue = Speed + Fatigue

Depletion of fatigue starts depletion of speed seamlessly the same way.

So your character will deplete his/her fatigue and speed will start to fall down, he/she will start to slow down to eventual stop. Much like real life. This also means varying speed, in a way.

Bonus 2: Inventory/Stacking/Encumbrance
This is another game mechanic that doesn't really likable. Although, I understand the need to have lots of objects. My suggestion while seem unrealistic might work and give a sense of carrying.

A simple bag in inventory.

Rest is all virtual:

Having this bag will sort items weight less than 5.(it can be also item type based)
Bag's potential will be based on Number of Items in it rather than weight.(Grid in disguise)
Bag's max weight will be a standard 20w scaling with number of items in it.

The trick is having the number limit higher than actual weight potential, giving space for stacking more.
100 items less then 5w in a max 20w bag, maybe.
50 items between 5-15 in a max 70w bag, maybe.

Balancing is, bags will not affect Speed, they will hurt Strength and/or Agility.
Encumbrance will be normalized to represent more about actual carriage: sheathed and drew weapons, wore apparels and some more room for personal belongings, plus bags.

So Encumbrance can be adjusted to down to earth numbers. It is possible to use more than one bags. 1-5, 5-15, 15-35... Limit is bag weights. Maxed 20, 70, 150, respectively. (Numbers are suggestions).


Visual:
This can be hard, I heard inventory is hard to deal with.

If bag items can be stacked too, that way one can empty a bag by dragging it on avatar, and emptying them.
This will trigger previous bag to be stacked, if opened.
If it can't be visually achieved, at least moving the bag to a container must take all binded. For easy inventory operations.


A thief bag simply:
any object worth of more than 200 gold and weight less than 5 can be defined as a bag. The limit can be define in max weight or value.
The quest giver actually might ask to fill it, literally. It can be a bonus attached to normal quests as in Thief.
Thief char must equipped it to fill it.

Another bag example.
Alchemy bag:
Only ingredients, limit is number.


Bonus 3: Magicka: Spirit System by Perilisk
Regeneration of magicka was always a problem. Some finds Oblivion's way to easy where some finds Morrowind's way way tedious. It is impractical for Mages.



Spirit can be bind to time(real slow, full day maybe?) or number of spells(intelligence or intelligence/4). So resting can be meaningful in this system as much as magicka regeneration.

Summons can stop regenerating with extended duration or better, summons will stop regeneration and use remaining magicka for duration extension.

60 second ancestor ghost50/100 magicka/spirit(max magicka)60 + 50 seconds = 110 seconds.We must assign half of it or it will deplete. 60 + (50/2) = 85For giving it a meaning multipliers60 + (50/2) x 4  = 160 sec4 is for ancestor ghost.For Golden Saint multiplier is 1.60 + (50/2) x 1 = 85 sec

Here is an example of 3 color UI:
http://s51.photobucket.com/albums/f386/vtastek/morrowind/Morrowind2009/new%20UI/?action=view¤t=Move45.jpg

I should definitely animate the lower part. I'm not an artist couldn't find a nice way to do it. Suggestions are welcome.


Bonus 4: Sleep necessities: Powered by Spirit System
This type of dealing can be added to health and fatigue too. For NOM like necessities:
Without sleeping:
Starting after 1 day for fatigue, 3 days for full depletion.
Starting after 5 days for health, 2 days for full health depletion.

Health will regenerate but for minor wounds. All hits over 30%(or some other cause) will hit max health while minor hit will fall to regeneration area.
It is possible that sleeping won't restore original health if there are major wounds. Making health potions, healers and magic real necessities.
Bleeding. A warning when you try to sleep, "Major wounds bleeding" message. It can also activate the max health fall.


Bonus 5: Pop-ups messages
I don't like pop-ups and I don't think they're a necessity. This is a philosophy thing I guess. A visual and sound cue must be enough to pass what's going on. Here some simple suggestions that can work better than the "you can't sleep--" messages.

When you try to sleep in wilderness, instead of a pop-up message:
character crouches,
a wild animal noise, human noise(howls, whistles any sound cue.)
character stands up.

on water:
character crouches,
splash noise,
character stands up.

On air,
nothing happens. I mean really...

Here we satisfied all visual and sound cues.

let's do it for bleeding:
character crouches,
a weak injury voice showing blood in some way(not fading hit fader, also my UI will always be active in a bleeding case, normally it fades),
character stands up.

character crouches,
press t again,
character sleeps and dies.

If there is any other messages I skipped or you have a suggestion, please report it.

Bonus 6: How to be a GOD and armorer skill

Since the game involves gods, and becoming one is a possibility. I have to find a way to add it to this system. As the lore suggests, the power is coming from artifacts. So you can get powerful weapons that gives you godly powers. I'm thinking giving these weapons very high conditions like 50000/50000 but no armorer can repair them. So you have to use them wisely. When condition reaches zero the weapon becomes a one level down version of the same weapon which can still be good compared to other weapons in game but not godly anymore.

A magic version can be still the same but an unchargeable version of an enchant.

While going into armorer skill, I understand the armorer must have some powers. Like increasing the stats of a weapon or decreasing them. If an armorer is low on his/her skill, he/she can repair(condition) the weapon but decrease its efficiency(stats). But with high armorer skill, in addition of repairing, he/she can also increase the weapons stats. The weapons can have potentials about their higher efficiency. Much like enchanting. :wink_smile:

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All stuff here depends on Morrowind's flexible, open ended, freedom oriented design adding another level to it without breaking it.

Discussions, expansions and formulating input is welcome/needed.

Thanks for listening my boring boring boring English.

Pseron Wyrd mentioned this mod by Balor, implementing this idea about leveling.

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=2699

It is not exactly the same. I think mine adds some more chaos to leveling menu. Did I mention I love chaos?

I will be playing the mod to see how it works and feels. I want to hear what others who played it think? And also any thoughts on my leveling and progression system? Do you know mods which fix number 2 and 3?

I really like the idea of skills you only train one going down. Thats a really good idea.

What kind of perks would you propose?

*Alucard voice*
I am interested in this.
I want to see if I can do this... I'm not sure about falling down, but slowing down when fatigued sounds good. Combine it with my GPS script...

Actually, I don't know. I moved the post to general discussion section for covering TES4-5 then added the perk idea. Although I think there is some limited abilities in Morrowind too. But I don't know if we can extract them from skills. I think best way is to rely on community content. For example the unworking Zooming Bows mod. That mod supposedly add the ability to zoom after a certain marksman skill. If it can be fixed, it can be a good candidate. Also I read http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1094886-the-levelling-system/page__view__findpost__p__16038576, suggesting to bind the perk reactivation to attributes. So you won't lose the perk you gained but if your let's say agility is lower than needed, it will deactivate temporarily.




Thanks. I have another idea dealing inventory. I will update the first post. Let's see if it attracts interest...

Also read this post, Daniel_Kay puts it into words better than me.
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1094886-the-levelling-system/page__view__findpost__p__16038576

Bonus 2: Inventory/Stacking/Encumbrance

Updated first post with Inventory idea.

Summary:
using different type of bags(30 item capacity, independent full weight which work as grids virtually) for lowering the encumbrance penalties, balancing is: each bag affects a different attribute.
Thieves must fill quest defined bag to complete a quest.(3000 gold value bag to fill)

Bonus 3: Magicka: Spirit System by Perilisk

Bonus 4: Sleep necessities: Powered by Spirit System

Updated first post with magicka regeneration and sleep necessities ideas.

Summary:
Max Magicka will fall as the time passes. Remaining magicka will regenerate. Really simple.
Health and Fatigue will be the same. Makes potions usable and sleeping a necessity.

Bonus 5: Pop-ups messages

Summary:
Instead of pop-up messages, I suggest adding simple visual and sound cues. Very simple.

I like the idea of that health system, it always bothered me how you could be sliced open with a sword and just go home and sleep it off.

It is a simple check.
Major wounds = no sleep

This is also the first message I propose. Note it is a brother to original sleep ban. Hey, let's remove it for balancing:
When you try to sleep in wilderness, instead of a pop-up message:
character crouches,
a wild animal noise, human noise(howls, whistles any sound cue.)
character stands up.

on water:
character crouches,
splash noise,
character stands up.

On air,
nothing happens. I mean really...

Here we satisfied all visual and sound cues.

let's do it for bleeding:
character crouches,
a weak injury voice showing blood in some way(not fading hit fader, also my UI will always be active in a bleeding case, normally it fades),
character stands up.

character crouches,
press t again,
character sleeps and dies.

"This is a good death. There's no shame in this..."

I think this will be bonus 5.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG0OkQIw1Oc

A good will.

I like it!
Your ideas on magicka and bleeding are interesting. The bleeding one, in particular, would make magic and healers really useful. One could also add first-aid kits (sold by merchants) and medical herbs (in the wilderness) to allow the character to sleep with a deep wound if he doesn't have a healer or a potion on hand.

I like you like it. If you want to add it to NOM, that would be incredible. I think about NOM's penalties, they are the same, right? Penalties affect endurance -> max health. Essentially the same system. Sometimes I don't make sense.

I think I can animate the red crescent so it can be dripping blood, litterally! I am also thinking rather than dividing it into 3, I can make a cracked stone version and fade between shiny and cracky. Cracky indicating you need a good sleep or drink or wait I can use a desaturated version for sleeping and cracky for thirsty. What do you think?

Is that UI shader fully working? It looks great -- and I especially like the way the interface fades when idle for a certain period of time.

The thing couldn't hit me. I have high agility( :poke: ), things can't touch me. And I used an enchantment mistakenly. Overall bad demonstration. But it works for me. It is only I don't know how to get rid of the original bars without using TM. I think I need beta testers.

If you want to be a beta tester, PM me.

PS. What kind of English is that? :facepalm:

Nice to see the UI in action. :goodjob: I managed to set it up with my super-low screen res and it looks great.

One neat trick I discovered while playing researching yesterday, there's a way you can disable the main HUD but leave name boxes, containers, and dialog intact! It's kinda ridiculous, and it resets on cell changes or if you open your inventory, but it's neat. :disguise:

Open the console and use TM. Close the console and press your Rest key. The rest menu is invisible, right? Get this: press the console button twice, and then the Esc key twice. The rest menu is back! Close the rest menu and--woah! There's no HUD! Try talking to someone or opening something, it still works! It's like a halfway-TM. It's nearly perfect for what we need, it just resets on a right-click.

Off-topic, what's going on at PES? Did everyone take a week off!?

Eheh, it would be really great to have visual UI indicators for hunger, thirst and sleep. After I'm done with the NoM upgrade, we can work on the MGE version and set up all the details.

Since it seems that you can manipulate the UI as you like, I've a little request. When you change cell, the name of the new cell you enter appears in the lower right corner of the screen, but it's too tiny and too hidden to be seen. Can you make it appear somewhere it the center of the screen, with a bigger font and a fade in / fade out effect?

Hmm, I don't know if I can hold it in my mind. It is good to know there are already states about UI parts.


:foodndrink:


"Since it seems that you can manipulate the UI as you like"
Now, we don't know that yet. Maybe it is wishful thinking. Hrnchamd commented about cell change resets are hard to track down. I think it is time to open this to Hrnchamd. He is our only hope!

That kind of precision is hard for shaders. I don't know if there is a way to do it font based. Peachykeen can do it! But if you're talking about art, like in pictures, that I can do. But someone should provide them. But even that will be hard as one shader can only take 5 pictures.

Bonus 6: How to be a GOD and armorer skill

Since the game involves gods, and becoming one is a possibility. I have to find a way to add it to this system. As the lore suggests, the power is coming from artifacts. So you can get powerful weapons that gives you godly powers. I'm thinking giving these weapons very high conditions like 50000/50000 but no armorer can repair them. So you have to use them wisely. When condition reaches zero the weapon becomes a one level down version of the same weapon which can still be good compared to other weapons in game but not godly anymore.

A magic version can be still the same but an unchargeable version of an enchant.

While going into armorer skill, I understand the armorer must have some powers. Like increasing the stats of a weapon or decreasing them. If an armorer is low on his/her skill, he/she can repair(condition) the weapon but decrease its efficiency(stats). But with high armorer skill, in addition of repairing, he/she can also increase the weapons stats. The weapons can have potentials about their higher efficiency. Much like enchanting. :wink_smile:

The precision isn't an issue, but the fonts might be, as well as trying to send the text to the shader. It would be much better for code support in MGE for printing text, with the closely-tied MWSE functions, that would be a breeze to use and not too hard to write.
Now, to do it with a shader, you'd need a way to transfer the text. Any shader model less than 4 can't handle logical operators, so bit-codes are out. It's possible to pack a font into a texture, been done since the beginning of time, and rendering that isn't hard at all. I'd be a bit worried about the texture function limits, it might take 3.0 to do shader-text. Fading isn't hard either.

So, it's possible if you can figure out how to get the text into the shader in the first place.

It's rather easy to turn off the HUD with code, the scenegraph has a visible flag which you can set. MWSE doesn't support writing to arbitrary locations, so that kind of thing is a bit hard to deliver. Writing text with a shader sounds pretty ridiculous to me, how inefficient would that be.

I've been porting MGE to gcc so I can strip all the depth based features I don't use, it runs much smoother on this piece of junk here. It's also possible to deliver MWSE in a seperate dll again, such that adding functions would be replacing that dll , while not being stuck with the same MGE build forever. There's serious code quality issues with MGE that makes things difficult.

Would it be possible to create an MWSE wrapper functions to handle that? For example, using a bitmask, call the MWSE function and it'll set the correct scenegraph flags?


Given that it has full memory access, though, it should be possible to write anywhere (you may have to set the mem permissions, though). There just isn't a function in MWSE to do that, yet.
But, do you mean it's hard to get MWSE to write to the scenegraph flags for the HUD, because that location can change?
I'm not sure I get what you're saying here, all the different parts sound easy to do, just maybe not together with the current framework.


Very, to the point of being useless. It's also not easy to write, doing it with textured geometry calls is much more efficient and just a better idea in general. That just has to be added to the code.


Dynamically linking MWSE in would definitely be an improvement and would help with a lot of the MWSE-versioning problems. Actually, just being able to dynamically link DLLs for some kind of plugin interface would be nice (I mean, if we're pulling MWSE to load, why not put together a full-blown plugin system while we're at it, it'll add features and save time in the future).
The only possible issue are the MGE functions, those would have to be setup somehow to keep them working and compatible. Not sure how that would work.
As for the MGE code... why do you think it's so damn slow? It would be a lot faster if the code got even a quick rewrite. Too much has been tossed on top for it to be a solid system anymore.

The truth is that I don't know exactly what shaders can and can't do. :whistling:
But yes, I think that getting a shader to use a font must be a nightmare, if it even is possible. Well, I hope that it can be done in a way or another.

I was working on a kind of this for my End of Days mod. I had a folder full of individual letters, and I was planning to have the script read a string one letter at a time and load a HUD element to each letter as a texture... of the letter. I stopped when I realized that
A. Variable width fonts are a nightmare, I'd have to store the width of each letter and use offsets and blah blah blah
B. My method of stopping time for a moment, playing a blank video, would render said implementation useless. I didn't realize this until after I had prepared a folder full of letters and calculated offsets and stored widths and blah blah blah

HUD functions are also more restrictive than shaders. You're essentially limited to moving them around. No fading, animating, etc. unless you make a texture for each frame of animation.

Shaders can create any texture or geometry that can be generated using a simple, pre-written mathematical formula. You can use variables and limited if statements, but it all has to be written beforehand. There's a lot you can do, but there are some limitations too.



Why on earth would you want to put the characters in separate textures?
The traditional way of doing it is to take a character map (for example, 26 lower-case letters, 26 upper, 10 numbers and a dozen or so common symbols), the create a texture of 128x256 or so. Split it into a grid, and draw a character in each grid square. Now you simply store characters as indices on the grid and retrieve that square. You also don't use variable width characters, make everything the same size square. It's much more optimized and not terribly limiting.
Now, as far as using HUD functions, I'm not sure what's possible by manipulating the scenegraph. We'd have to get Hrnchamd in to talk about that and describe exactly what could be manipulated there, but if it is a series of polys being drawn (I assume they're drawing tris or quads), there's a lot that can be done lower-down if we can find the right intercept points.