mothergoose729

Comparison shot I stole from the internet: I think HDR nebula with real stars is a clear winner. Its the same thing, I mean what else was bethesda trying to recreate artistically here. The mod is just much more detailed and much better.

This is a good point. STEP is about enhancing the vanilla experience. Maybe dead body collisions is best served as a part of a realism pack? Seeing as dead bodies piling up can lead to undesirable behavior in game, maybe it should be reconsidered as a part of core STEP. Many great mods been taken out for lesser reasons. I don't have a preference on the fireball spell. If you have to type a console command or used a scripted spell hack, its pretty much equally bad. Not that dead bodies isn't great, use it myself, but the two are mostly interchanged. With either version, a note aught to be made to the user about what problems might come up and how to fix it.Â

This is almost certainly and upscale and add noise filter kind of project, which means that it will almost certainly look nearly identical to what STEP currently offers. That is all EDT is, plus the added noise texture from the first mod. I will try and do some comparison tomorrow, if nobody gets to it by that time.

Thanks, not sure how I missed that. The nordic carved set in vanilla is brown I think? STEP wiki recommend black. Pretty minor thing. From the elderscrolls wiki: https://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Nordic_Carved_Armor I think the black looks better personally, but the vanilla is brown. I think the alternate version of drauger is so much better because IMO than the default replacer. The added hair and beards add so much, because it looks like you are killing dead nords instead of zombies. But it isn't as close to vanilla.

I love the ash creatures. My vote would be to include it and the whole creatures pack. Its all good stuff. I really like the drauger part of creatures, the version that is "closer to concept art" (basically they have beards). Such a huge improvement.

There is some work going on in the semi automated STEP forum, and we are trying to zero on an exact definition for all STEP mods. Cabal gives the user a lot of options, and the STEP wiki has left that part ambiguous on purpose, because all of cabal's work is great in the mod. For automated STEP though, ambiguity is the enemy, so there needs to be a consensus on exactly what in Cabals mod is the preferred definition for STEP. Also, if the discussion hasn't already took place, there needs to be a discussion about the creatures portion of book of silence, as the regular wiki doesn't address it. From another thread, here is what I proposed. Looking forward to hearing what you all think: book of silence armors -> elven gold, hide cabal's cut?, iron vanilla cut, steel no fur, scaled brighter, orcish brighter, wolf grey, glass default variant (grey I think?), ebony black book of silence uniques -> savior hide brown fur, ebony mail black book of silence creatures -> not including this pack? Its great stuff, and true to vanilla book of silence weapons -> use all of them book of silence dragonborn -> nordic carved brown, do not include ash spawn and ash gaurdian? book of silence hotfixes -> include all of them right

Thoughts? I haven't read that they maintain their youthful appearance indefinitely. There is also a great deal of conflict in the lore on life span of mer. I have read more than a hundred years, I have read as many as a thousand years. The more recent literature in the franchise points to the former. I think it is best in this case to look at the historical precedence for how age is portrayed in the ES games. In the ES games, there are elderly mer. In Skyrim, the voice for the older mer is different from that of regular mer, and their appearance differs too. It seems to follow that the consistent older people mod could extend to both human and mer races. Also, I think you have to consider the intent of the mod. The intent of the mod is to resolve conflicts between appearance and description of characters. A great example, the high elf that gives you the quest to retrieve the white phial in windhelm. He is described as near death, his history suggests he has lived a long time, and the voice actor used is the one used for other older characters. It makes sense that appearance should reflect that (provided that mer can age at all).

I am pretty sure xp32 has height adjustments for first person. if you are using height adjusted races, try removing the mod and using only xp32 instead.

So I don't know if other people have been having problems with this tool lately, but I have been having many. Nothing game breaking, it just fails to optimize many BSAs anymore, and it crashes for no particularly good reason and fails to compress textures a lot, ect. Shame too, because it used to work just fine, even if its texture compression algorithm wasn't as aggressive as DDSopt. Most of the problems DDSopt used to have when I originally made this thread have been fixed. So I won't discourage people from using optimizer textures, but I am thinking DDSopt is definitely a better tool now, especially compared to where it used to be.

Xp32 skeleton replacer works just fine. Just don't forget to add FNIS to update animations correctly. BTW this is not an appropritae place for this kind of question in the future, try the general support forum.

yeah that is some really cool stuff. Excellent work shockz thanks for sharing it with us.

Why wasn't this a part of the original game? Very cool :)

A 1k version should be fine. Can't imagine for this kind of texture you are ever going to notice the difference in quality anyway between that in a 2k version. Look forward to trying it out.

Morrowind. If I am being honest. I also really like legend of the dragoons. A massively under appreciated JRPG from the golden era of JRPGs.

2k is just to much for that texture. It would cause rather terrible instability problems with STEP for pretty much anybody trying to use it. Not to mention hardcoded memory limits.

Yeah your expectations for ESO were much higher than mine. All of that sounds really cool, I would definitely pay for a game that had all that in it. ESO definitely doesn't have all of that. I was pretty cynical coming in. I expected a WoW clone with the most superficial ES slapped on top of that. In some ways it is just that, but it has enough ES spirit in it that I am reasonably satisfied. I haven't done any of the PvP elements, which will likely not interest me at all anyway, but doing the exploration I found rather satisfying, although exceedingly easy (but maybe it gets harder further in idk). I would describe cooperative mode as "parallel questing" rather than cooperative questing, which sounds bad but it has its ups and downs. The characters in game speak to you, the player, so you complete them individually. You want a cooperative mod you play with your buddy and you do the same quest at the same time. There might be improvements or enhancements to that at later stages of the game or in a later version of the beta, idk. The quests where interesting enough that I was left fairly satisfied. The thing ESO is severaly lacking is any ability to seriously role play. MMOs in general have this weakness. The free-for-all nature of the games make it rather difficult to get immersed in anyway, or create any kind of portrait for your character. There definitely could have been more done to give the player the feeling that their character is special and unique and that they have some control over who they are and where they came from. You don't really get any of that. Other than this though, my opinion pretty much echo Aiyen's. An ESO world like you described would be really cool, but the reality of creating such a thing doesn't make good business sense... or rather its a huge risk in that there would be millions in additional development costs. Hard to float that up the cooperate ladder. I am hoping there will be another beta weekend soon and I can get further into it. What I said before in the ESO beta thread I will repeat here; people who like MMOs are going to have a lot of fun with ESO, the hardcore ES fans probably will not. Its a different kind of game from the single player experience, and all the good, and lots of bad, that comes with that.

No doubt spellbreaker could use some work, I just don't like the artistic choices this author made.

Spellbreaker looks like a discarded piece of junk, and that is kind of what is cool about it. Its an unassuming artifact, which is nice along the other flashy/blingy ones. I would be disappointed if Cabal included this in one of his packs, because in my opinion its not true to the original game and honestly doesn't look that good to my eyes either.

Alright lets talk ESO beta. I put in a few good hours and here is what I think so far. Can't be too specific or I might get in trouble.. so what might otherwise be a lengthy review is reduced to nonspecific bullet points: ES Lore: They are clearly trying. There is a lot of familiar elements. Artistically I think there are a lot of differences between the representation of some things in previous ES games, and in ESO, but they are similar. You will see very similar themes from other games and similar environments as well. Game Engine: The engine in ESO is definitely superior to skyrims. ENB folks you will be very comfortable in ESO I think. The game suffers from a host of poorly done meshes and textures however, even worse than skyrim, and the environments are under detailed. So its a better engine, but not as good an implementation of said engine. This makes sense though, because you can scale back shaders, lighting, and shadows, but you can't really take away stuff from a scene to improve performance on the very low end. It is unfortunate for us ES players, who are used to vibrant and detailed world. It was kind of like being in a mock up of a skyrim universe. I was reminded of how people who make model train sets will build little replica villages and towns and the like, with little shrubs and bushes and people, on some kind of astro turf material. Its a bit like stepping into a miniature, or a replica. There are bushes and people and little houses but it does feel more like a reenactment than the real thing, if that makes sense. They did put a lot of effort into characters though, so textures and models related to characters are very realist and detailed, while the environments is not so much. Exploration: Mixed bag here. There is a lot of world, and the game definitely encourages you to go out and explore it. However, the environments are under detailed and pretty generic. So you can go out and fun stuff, but its not very interesting stuff to find. You do get quite a variety in different world spaces. I got to explore a few different places, and while I can't really say which places, I can say that, in my opinion, they were very, very different. Hope you can read into that. Combat: if you have played WoW at all, ESO feels like a vastly superior and much more responsive combat system. Compared to skyrim you are going to notice a lot of things are missing. I found combat to be rather boring and repetitive, but it was definitely better than playing runescape or guild wars. Characters: For the player character, there are huge number of ways to customize your skills, appearance, and lots of different equipment to choose from. You are constrained though in what you character can do. It feels more constraining, in my opinion, than skyrim did. The NPC characters are all very detailed in appearance. The dialogue between characters is actually really good. Not all of it was properly voiced, I notice a robot pop up from time to time, sometimes with a real voice actor cutting in between lines, which was rather odd. The voice acting overall though is excellent and the characters are given very interesting things to say. Quests: I will say there are quests, and they are more meaningful than "kill 8 things". I was reminded of the more simple side quests in skyrim. There are elements of a broader story continuum and minor sub plots that you interact in. The characters are interesting and the quests are mostly driven by the plight of said characters. What you do in the quests, however, not so interesting. I wish I could say more than that but I can't. I have hopes to play more in the beta. I will continue to update this thread with my opinions as the beta goes along, and when ESO goes live you will hear all about what I think, in the nitty-gritty. My impression so far is that people who really like MMOs are going to have a blast with ESO. It is much, much better in many ways than the classic MMOs. People like myself who like ES games but not so keen on MMOs are going to find things to be disappointed with, and might not be interested in playing this game. My personal opinion, not sure if I will get ESO when it comes out or not. Everything that is cool about it is cool because an ES game did it first. That being said, so much stuff technically well done so there is a lot of value in what they have so far. Look forward to saying more later. I encourage you all to try and get in on the beta, there will probably still be quite a length of time before it goes live and you might be able to get in on the action before then.

I just use the MCM menu and assign that to the dpad. Same for dual weild parrying. It can pretty messy if you add more than that though. I still can't quick save, which makes me very sad.Â

I much prefer gnome. 3.0 and below gnome anyway. Most of the linux community is gnome. Mostly because its so simple. I like features of kde but gnome feels better organized.

My first es game was morrowind on the xbox. I probably put in more an 500 hours, all laying on my back :). I cant thardly play with mouse and keyboard, just hate being upright.

You can disable unity and go back to a simple gnome desktop. That is definitely what I prefer. Been using arch myself lately. Not for to many good reasons though, just because it is what is running on my schools server and because it uses bash shell by default.

A healthy bit of cynicism is making its way into my opinion. As an MMO though, I think ESO is superbly done. Compared to other MMOs, there is a lot ESO is doing right. As a game though... I have never been a fan of MMOs. So its this weird thing where I appreciate the work but at the same time I am thinking the game might not be for me.

For MMO combat, its a qutantum leap. Skyrim combat is better. A lot better.