Tdroid

4 hours ago, The Good Doctor said:

@Witchking of Angmar @Tdroid

Resident Scandinavians, how accurate is this?

Seems about right.

On 6/13/2020 at 10:39 PM, BigBossBalrog said:

@Celan @The Good Doctor @Tdroid You guys are fans of Thief right? Apparently some of the people involved it in are making a new Immersive Sin. It looks pretty sweet 

 

Never played Thief, actually, but it is one of those old series which I am definitely interested in playing at some point

13 hours ago, The Good Doctor said:

I forgot that @BTC was actually one of the first to join up. Just wasn’t ready to start until chapter 2.

And @Tdroid was all over that thread back then. OG.  

I was all over the place in general back then I remember Jorn Horn-Hand; he's that character that just sort of dropped out after a couple of posts before I finally returned for my glorious trolling in Chapter 2

On 2/13/2020 at 6:22 PM, BigBossBalrog said:

The Sonic the Hedgehog movie reviews have come out. It has 71 on rotten tomatoes. Sonic the Deader then Disco. 

We.Live.In.A.Universe.In.Which.Sonic.The.Fucking.Hedgehog. Has.A.Higher.Score.Then.The.New.Star.Wars.Movie 

To be fair, given the fact that the new trilgy even made think more fondly back on the Prequels... sigh... Hopefully the Elder Scrolls won't go this route with 6.

23 minutes ago, The Good Doctor said:

A) Perhaps if you know the game in and out so well that you can rush to find/buy all of the enchanted items you could ever need early on. Otherwise, you’re mostly just gonna be wading through piles of generic "X Damage" rings and "Open" amulets for the first half of the game. More high level and utility enchantments like Levitation, Slowfall, Jump, and fortifying specific skills and attributes aren’t guaranteed finds early on. Moreover, they are usually rather weak.

 

B) This is definitely an exaggeration. It’s barely longer than the cast time for adept level spells in Skyrim. Just a quick charge and then it’s off.

C) Only if that random motherhumper has an intimate knowledge of the game and doesn’t mind dealing with a lot more annoyance than is necessary to be an effective spellcaster. Even then, I wouldn’t say it’s stacked heavily against them in the context of dealing with the threats of the game. If Morrowind had PvP, then yeah, it would matter, but because it doesn’t, it really isn’t as big a difference as you’re making it out to be. 

 

A) You literally don't need to know the game any better than as a mage, since you can buy a lot of the enchantments you need from the same places you buy new spells: Temples, churches, Mages Guilds and Telvanni Halls. You're just also going to find them as random loot, with various merchants and as quest rewards on top of that. Edit: And those "X Damage" things are damned powerful, since you can fire off 4-5 blasts in a very short periode of time.

B) I double checked and it was more like 2-2.5 seconds. Still about 2-2.5 seconds longer than enchantments. Of course, Skyrim has its own problems, but at least you're not competing with 0.something cast time spells in that game as a mage.

C) Intimate knowledge in the form of "let me check the inventory of these magic merchants", "let's look at this enchanted thing I saw in this regular merchant's inventory", "let's hold on to the ramdom loot and quest rewards that makes me much more powerful" and "I can make custom spells, so maybe I can find someone to make custom enchantments too". It's about as obscure as the intimate knowledge needed for being a mage, which is to say not at all.

23 minutes ago, The Good Doctor said:

This is only true for Skyrim, to be honest. Magic is much more viable at high levels in both Morrowind and Oblivion thanks to spellmaking. 

It's only really viable in Oblivion thanks to "Weakness" spells, given how ludicrous the health values get (and arguably only the self stacking Weakness to Magic after a certain point), but it is still more efficient than using weapons. Works reasonably well in Skyrim too, if you keep Weakness poisons handy. Just too bad they're limited to poisons this time around.

2 minutes ago, BigBossBalrog said:

I think alot of problems with Morrowind's magic system carry over to the other TES games. My personal problem with it is the lack of scaling, and how Magic is just really unviable on higher difficulties, and during the late game.  Right now it's way too static, especially in Skyrim. 

If they added a scaling system, I think alot of my problems with it would be fixed. Something like how Dark Souls does it, in which your stats scale with how powerful your magic is, and even your elementary magic is powerful if you invest enough into whatever stat governs it. 

I don't think anyone with experience from a moderate range of games would argue the Elder Scrolls series are anything worth mentioning when it comes to mechanics in general. The combat is just sort of there, neither very engaging or aggrivating, as a vehicle to explore the world. Which is why I think Oblivion and Daggerfall aged so poorly; there isn't much in the way of meaningful exploration.

29 minutes ago, The Good Doctor said:

A) Eventually, yeah, you will have plenty of enchanted items to choose from. But it takes even more time and work to reach that level of versatility in gear than it does to simply learn the spells yourself. Not to mention the incredible headache of sorting through a bunch of arbitrarily-named rings ("I need a levitation spell. Am I searching for Ring of Flying, Levitation Ring, Cloud Band, or Metallic Circle of St. Olms' Nongravitational Extravaganza?") that clutter your inventory and are more annoying to sort through than potions (which a natural wizard build can get by only carrying a minimal amount of if they know the game well -hence why I said it’s not the best beginner build).

B) 1) Casting times are not long at all for normal spells. 2) and 3) go together, but that recharge time is generally even longer than the time it takes magicka recharge when resting. And a large magicka pool far surpasses the amount of use you will get out of enchanted items you are likely to find in the world. On a mage build, I can cast "levitate" many more times in one adventure than I can use the Boots of the Apostle enchantment, and still have the magicka to spare. Of course, a smart mage would use both.

C) This is true, and it applies to almost all playstyles. Morrowind becomes very easy after a point, making min-maxing downright overkill. Sure, a late game enchanter or adventurer who has created/collected lots of magical items might be better than a pure wizard who mostly relies on his own magicka, but not without the drawback of dealing with that annoying bag of rings.

And so for me, it becomes a question of being as effective as possible while mitigating the annoyances that I can do without. That means carrying as few items as necessary and cutting down on the tedium of things like needing a magical ring for every occasion. Is it optimal? Probably. But it’s also annoying and not necessary for such an easy game.

A) It's not really even "eventually", when it comes down to it, since enchanted items aren't more expensive than spells, but a lot more reliable early on. Being a mage is arguably only better for a very short periode (probably somewhere in the levels 5-10 or thereabouts), because being a mage is highly impractical until those levels and after level 10 the resource scaling for the player is absolutely insane. The headache of the menu I can grant you, but that applies to spells as well, since they really did go for the "flavor over brevity" approach with a lot of them, especially a lot of the more useful ones. Neat idea, annoying in practice. Of course, the sorting tabs in the inventory helps a lot. As does the hotkey menues, where you should assign the most commonly used ones.

B) It's about 3 seconds, which is a great deal harder to manage than the 0.something seconds an enchantment has, especially with some motherhubbert charging at you with intents of tearing you a new behind. When it comes down to it, you can make passable enchantments for well under 1000 gold for most of the early game (or just buy them), since you don't need stuff that blows up mountains yet. A simple fireball or lightningbolt can be extremely effective when 4-5 castings of a 10-30 damage spells in the time of a normal one still averages around 80-100 damage, after all.

The recharge time is only long on items that has an extraordinary high enchantment value, meaning a very complicated (and therefor likely situational) spell. The simple spells you use regularly can work on petty, lesser and common values with ease. On top of them recharging independently, of course, which means that you can actually cast the same spell between 1 or 10 or 100 different resource pools a lot of the time. Then there is the additional imbalance of the Enchant skill lowering the cost of using enchantments, but that is so overkill that it isn't even necessary to factor into it. Just a fun fact.

C) Min-maxing is overkill in this game, to be sure, but it doesn't change the fact that the way magic was handled is poor, clunky and stacked heavily against actual mages when compared to random motherhubberts with a sack load of shiny rings and amulets. With 30 Int and 9 Enchant, no less. A proper enchanter is more like this:

The only thing saving Morrowind's weak mechanics is probably the laughably low difficulty the base game has. And the world building.

29 minutes ago, The Good Doctor said:

Only if you bust your ass to level enchanting and have a shitload of gold and filled soul gems to make enchanted rings for every occasion (which is a viable spellcaster playstyle). Otherwise, it comes down to what you loot, which besides artifacts is rarely better than spells you can buy or make for much less effort.

Second point is silly since there is no village idiot with a bag full of rings, and if there were, he presumably only got those rings by looting them or making them. If he made them, then he’s a wealthy and powerful enchanter instead of an idiot. If he looted them, odds are good that 90% of those rings are not gonna give him better spells than a Tevanni Master Wizard. Not to mention that the Telvanni happen to possess a large portion of the magical items in the game, so they make use of this too.

It can stand on its own. It’s just more difficult starting out and I wouldn’t recommend it to beginners. 

By "village idiot" I mean characters like my Orc barbarian, with minimum Int and no magical aptitude at all. You get an obscene amount of magic stuff with both simple and more complicated spells both as random loot and quest rewards (not to mention you can easily buy them at comparable prices to spells), so it's an inevitability that your non-spellcaster will surpass your spellcaster at magic simply by playing the game and you don't sell of all their enchanted loot. This is prior to making your own stuff. When you do start to amass the gold necessary to make custom enchantments (which isn't hard, since it is Morrowind, after all), all bets are off. The only mage that requires any form of ass busting is the traditional mage that masters and casts his own spells.

Spell holding items have 1) no casting time, 2) independent resource pools and 3) naturally recharge on their own. Even in the case of you having a weaker spell in your ring than the one at your fingertips, you can fire at least 4 or 5 of it in the same time at a lower relative cost, making any power difference of the spell itself pointless.

It can stand on its own in the sense that the game is mechanically simple and it takes very little time before you're overtuned compared to most enemies in the game with a handful of exceptions, but that's more on the game's overal low difficulty than anything. If they hadn't included level scaling for certain types of enemies, like Daedra and Undead, the game could barely muster anything worthy to stand before a half decent lvl 12 character prior to the expansions, which seem to be between 30 and 50. Spellcasting is janky and made entirely pointless by the enchantment mechanics. Just buying a couple of simple enchantments ("Now available at affordable princes at Tribunal and Imperial Cult shrines, as well as Mages Guild and Telvanni Halls, near you," read in commercial narrator's voice) to start off and looting, questing and eventually making the rest is just better than levelling as a mage.

2 minutes ago, The Good Doctor said:

I’ve been legitimately enjoying it on my current run. It gets significantly better after you’ve leveled up your stats enough to hit your opponents with every swing and not fail every next casting. The early levels are a pain, but that’s why the game gives you tons of easy low level quest options in most major cities.

Magic is fine unless you do a pure spellcaster build, then the lack of regen becomes a pain. But if you make a build that doesn’t completely rely on it, then the extreme utility of all the different spell types more than makes up for the stunted magicka. My biggest problem with magic is the menu, and how all the spells are just on one page alphabetically instead of sorted by school. Makes scrolling through them to find the one I want a pain.

A pure spellcaster would be best off picking the Atronach birthsign, as that gives them easy ways to replenish magicka without hauling tons of potions or enchanted rings.

I enjoy the gameplay even more than Oblivion in many regards. There is more strategy to it. I think the shitty animations and the floatiness of the attacks hurts it more than the mechanics.

The main problem with the magic is that if you just replaced each of the spells you use, regardless of the build, with a magic ring containing the same spell, you're always better off. The village idiot with a sack of magic rings is a better mage than the Telvanni Master Wizards. And that it can't stand on its own as a playstyle just reinforces the point that it isn't good.

2 minutes ago, BigBossBalrog said:

And you can always uses mods to help fix some of the games flaws. 

It's also....15 years old at this point? It's practically a fossil, so I can forgive some early jank, because a majority of RPG's were like that 

I can forgive it's jankiness, but I'll never see it as good. It's there on sufferance, like the somewhat annoying girlfriend of a guy you like to party with that insists on joining you. It's not a deal breaker, but you'd be having a lot more fun if she didn't keep pissing off other girls

22 hours ago, BigBossBalrog said:

Morrowind's shitty graphics cant change how amazing it's art direction is. 

Unfortunately, the graphics aren't the only shitty things about it. The gameplay too; it's something to be tolerated rather than enjoyed. And the spellcasting. Despite the number of effects in the game, spellcasting is a chore. In fact, the most powerful mage I ever had was an orc barbarian with 30 Int that hauled some 100lbs worth of enchanted rings with him: The individual and regenerating magicka pools and instant casting makes being a regular spellcaster pretty damn terrible when compared to just being a hoarder.

Morrowind pretty much only makes due because of the world building. Which, ironically, makes it age a lot better than Oblivion and it's lack thereof, despite the more engaging gameplay.

Hi... I'm back...

Had some busy days at work, so this place completely slipped my mind for a little while... But I'm back now!

On 1/29/2020 at 8:05 PM, TheCzarsHussar said:

AIght so I'm caught up and holy hell not only was that a fucking amazing post, but looks like I missed some super sweet commissions and Doc's drawings.

@Tdroid A man of ancient antiquity has returned to the RP, I'm a bit more busy than I used to be but I'm always up for Elder Scrolls posts. If you need someone to write with in your posts, hit me up. I have folks in Kyne's Watch.

@ColonelKillaBee The Rebec commission confused me with them them big old eyes.

@The Good Doctor My dude, your Ubbe drawing radiates that PELINAL energy, good shit

 

  Reveal hidden contents

The intro with Mila dreaming really did make Baldur seem legendary, the corpses chanting "Ash-King!" absolutely made that scene. Remind me to never fish with Colonel, we'll be attacked by deep ones or some shit, and he'll yeet into the water for a couple arms.

The ending of the post was sweet as hell, I sadly don't recall reading much of anything on Daric's father because that was probably before my time in the RP. But goddamn if he didn't have a domineering presence.

Absolutely stellar post yall!

 

Sounds good to me. Sorry that I went silent for a little while, something came up with work and stuff.

On 1/23/2020 at 11:55 PM, ColonelKillaBee said:

I wouldn’t even fight this nigga if he whipped these out  I’d go home n call it a day.

 

Funny. And I can appreciate the yellow sabers; they don't get enarly enough love. Gotta love that KOTOR Sentinel.

Just now, The Good Doctor said:

One thing I’ll give ESO credit for is that they do stuff like this a lot. They showed intelligent and even winged Minotaurs, Cyrodiil as a jungle, different races following the correct religions, and even got Sotha Sil right. I would not put it past them to somehow bridge the gap between the icey Volkihar of lore and the batty ones we see in Dawnguard. 

I'm watching the stream and they're talking about Blackreach and stuff (something about "what else has been down there?" etc.), so my money is on the ol' Volkihar being somehow related to Blackreach. The vampire kinda looked like it was going to an underground place in the trailer, after all.

Just now, ColonelKillaBee said:

You play? I plan on getting back into eso for it. Tho me n doc were just saying we hope they show the ice magic volkihar vamps mentioned in lore that they didn’t bring in Skyrim for whatever reason 

On and off. Haven't caught up on Vvardenfell and Summerset yet, but I did play through Elsweyr. Definitely going to do this one though. Sad that there doesn't seem to be a new class coming though.

This looks fun.

Regarding the origins for Aenar, I am looking for someone to write with for 3, or thereabouts, short chapters. I won't spoil what these will be, but I will give a rundown of 3 characters of import I hope someone else would write:

An instructor at the College with a martial bent. Maybe even Giraud Gemane, as he was a soldier before he was a bard.

Someone about Aenar's age; his partner in crime!

A strict instructor, usually running afowl of the one above.

47 minutes ago, Centurion said:

@Tdroid oh shit one of the OGs has returned!. Welcome back man. I look forward to working with you.

Also, if only the forum on tesalliance didn’t get yeeted before I got out from basic my dank ass Ubbe origins posts would be in the there 

I dunno about OG, as I mostly joined in around chapter 2 Helped catalyze a lot of arguing too, so that's going to be fun But yes, it's going to be gloriou- I mean fun. FUN! fun...  

Aenar Fleet-Foot

8 minutes ago, The Good Doctor said:

I’ve got no issues with it. Approved. 

If Colonel and Balrog are cool with it, you can post it on our CS page. Remember to use spoiler tags.  

 

What's their code again? I can't find it on the bar and been a long time since I've been on a forum like this now...

Just now, ColonelKillaBee said:

And he’s notoriously slow  

With a full time job, and DM responsibilities in a D&D group and a separate RP, I can be too

Just now, The Good Doctor said:

We have a separate RP page called Origins that is pretty much for more in-depth background or origin stories like this. Usually they’re a little more planned out than the more fast and loose main RP posts. 

Sure, but I don't want to do it alone even so!

2 minutes ago, The Good Doctor said:

Our last post ended in a bit of a cliffhanger with regards to several of our characters, that we probably won’t be able to pick back up for a little while due to IRL reasons. So if we do any posts with your character soon, they would have to take place a little before the last post chronologically. 

If you have any questions about the state of things. The world, Kyne’s Watch, the characters, etc. Feel free to ask. A lot’s happened. 

I will!

And on that note; anyone interested in doing a bit of pre-stuff with him? Maybe a "best off" selection of his backstory sort of thing and what he was doing during the conflict.

Just now, BigBossBalrog said:

Or maybe he mutated into a giant bat creature  The Vampires from Warhammer do that.

If offered, he would've definitely taken Volkihar blood, but oh well...

1 minute ago, ColonelKillaBee said:

Lol well tbh all three of us were very new at this, but all things considered, I’d say it was fine. No more giant cats only using 12% of their power to break your shield for instance. Live and learn.

Hehe. Well, Sam was never going to tip the scales anyway and I am glad I did go through with it at the time. He was a lot of fun. Hmm, I wonder what ol' Sammy boy is up to these days...