What video games have you been playing III: You're gonna need a bigger boat.

[cybrxkhan]

No, which do you recommend?
I'm still in a Civ4 mindset when it comes to mods - the concept that mods don't need to be merged to be useable together is still a novel concept for me.

Yeah, coming from a Civ mindset it was weird mashing together a bunch of mods at first, but to be frank I think that's the best way to go rather than relying on big honking mods.

For needs mods, I currently use iNeed. It's relatively minimalistic, so all you need to do is remember to eat/drink/sleep in a common sensical way. You can also configure.customize it in many different ways via MCM, and, best of all, it is pretty much compatible with any mod that adds in any new food or drink (if there's a food/drink the script doesn't recognize, itl'l prompt you to tell it whether it's food/drink and it'll "remember" it). Before that I used Drink Eat Sleep Bathe, which is even more minimalist but it unfortunately does not have the level of compatibility support and customization that iNeed has.

The two big survival mods are Frostfall and Hypothermia, but honestly they're not my cup of tea so I don't know how great they are. Frostfall is really popular though. I use a small mod called [Camping Lite](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/11526/?) that allows you to set a tent anywhere for roleplay/immersion, though.

As for environment, what do you mean by that? Like a weather overhaul or flora overhaul or something?

I'll have to wait until I get around to buying a new computer for that. My laptop can just barely handle Skyrim on low graphics and the lowest resolution.

My old PC was probably worse than yours and I managed Tropical Skyrim alright with performance mods - there's also modmods that optimize it and do various things to improve perofmrnace like removing useless flora.

 

[Ajidica]

By environment I meant Frostfall.

 

[cybrxkhan]

By environment I meant Frostfall.

Oh okay. Then yeah the only alternative I know is Hypothermia and/or doing it inside your head.

 

[gay_Aleks]

TES6 in Valenwood pls. I wanna see this whole Wild Hunt in face, especially as a participant.

 

[shadowplay]

Yeah, infamy that high causes all sorts of problems. I know, because when playing as Burgundy I intentionally let my infamy climb to almost 300 in the late game, just to see what wound happen. Pro tip: don't do that. All my neighbors declared war on my as soon as their truces expired, and I had revolts everywhere. You get a lot of nasty events for high infamy, such as +15% revolt risk in certain provinces - and fighting that will indeed make it hard to keep war weariness low (and since you'll likely be at war with your neighbors, it will be even more difficult to lower war weariness).

So yes, you shouldn't let it get that high. There's a red flag in the status bar with a number such as 80/42 - the first is your infamy, and the second is your infamy limit. If you go above the limit, bad things happen, and the farther above, the more bad things happen. You're pretty far above it - the highest I've seen the limit is about 45.

I would recommend releasing a few vassals, as IIRC in EU3, releasing vassals lowers your infamy. Release enough to get it below the limit, and within a few years the bad events will wear off, and eventually you should be able to get things under control. In the meantime, hire one of the advisors who decreases revolt risk by 0.3% per level, and perhaps also one of the ones who lowers infamy by 0.05 per year per level. And going forward, try to stay under the infamy limit!

See also, the EU3 Wiki article on infamy (sometimes referred to by its EU2 name, badboy).

Thanks for all the advice. I actually ended up abandoning that particular game, I had messed it up so badly (bankruptcy, countless rebellions, invasions by damn near everybody), but it was a good learning experience. I'm doing a lot better this time around.

The game is very addictive.

 

[madviking]

yesterday i realized you can do legendary skills

15 hours later holy crap where is my live.

 

[Synobun]

I'll just push my way into the conversation here and say that I've never been able to enjoy Morrowind. I tried playing it for the first time a couple years ago and have been giving it another shot every 6-12 months since it's lauded as the best TES, but I just... can't. The mechanics are so bad, combat in particular. Audio is sub-par at best and the graphics aren't tasteful at all.

Since people seem to enjoy the game so much, is it a case of nostalgia or is there some special way I'm missing that I can employ in order to detach myself from all the aspects it fails miserably at and instead focus on the aspects it excels at?

Speaking of TES, still playing Skyrim. Just discovered that you can get around that big mountain from the south as well as the north. Woops!

 

[cybrxkhan]

I'll just push my way into the conversation here and say that I've never been able to enjoy Morrowind. I tried playing it for the first time a couple years ago and have been giving it another shot every 6-12 months since it's lauded as the best TES, but I just... can't. The mechanics are so bad, combat in particular. Audio is sub-par at best and the graphics aren't tasteful at all.

Since people seem to enjoy the game so much, is it a case of nostalgia or is there some special way I'm missing that I can employ in order to detach myself from all the aspects it fails miserably at and instead focus on the aspects it excels at?

Speaking of TES, still playing Skyrim. Just discovered that you can get around that big mountain from the south as well as the north. Woops!

It's a combination of Rose-tinted nostalgia, the uniquely exotic setting and worldbuilding, a main questline that ties in well to aforementioned setting and worldbuilding, and it was quite a game in terms of scope, grandeur, and beauty for its day. Like all TES games, exploration is most important though at the end of the day. TES games are never for the combat or quests in and of themselves.

 

[Synobun]

It's a combination of Rose-tinted nostalgia, the uniquely exotic setting and worldbuilding, a main questline that ties in well to aforementioned setting and worldbuilding, and it was quite a game in terms of scope, grandeur, and beauty for its day.

I'm not sure I agree about beauty. Medieval Total War, Age of Mythology, Cossacks, Jedi Knight 2, Renegade, Medal of Honor, and Serious Sam (all games released the same year) all looked more aesthetically pleasing (not necessarily better graphics) than the gloom and inadequate draw distance of Morrowind. Can a game be pointed towards with its beauty when maxed settings make it look like you're running around in a perpetual fog as your character frantically animates a big sword like a shiv (while not hitting anything)?

I could see the uniqueness and world-building, but I've never been able to get past the presentation of both these factors in order to admire or otherwise enjoy them. Even the text looks bad (to me) so it's impossible to ignore the rest and focus only on the words.

 

[Grisu]

Questions for the EU3 people:

How do I lower my war weariness? I'm stuck in this cycle now of constant rebellions to put down, which keeps raising war weariness, which leads to even more rebellions. How do I stop this cycle?

What about infamy? Is it more a matter of not letting my infamy get so high in the first place? I'm playing as France and my infamy went above 80.

in short, you never should get your infamy anywhere close this high. it's tempting to constantly wage war on your weakling neighbours if you're a powerhouse (like france) but once the bb wars start it's really an endless cycle. Better just gobble the weaklings up slowly and one by one...

and now I think I have to dust off my EU3 install....

as for the world of warships guys...do you play the other world of * games too?

 

[cybrxkhan]

I'm not sure I agree about beauty. Medieval Total War, Age of Mythology, Cossacks, Jedi Knight 2, Renegade, Medal of Honor, and Serious Sam (all games released the same year) all looked more aesthetically pleasing (not necessarily better graphics) than the gloom and inadequate draw distance of Morrowind. Can a game be pointed towards with its beauty when maxed settings make it look like you're running around in a perpetual fog as your character frantically animates a big sword like a shiv (while not hitting anything)?

I could see the uniqueness and world-building, but I've never been able to get past the presentation of both these factors in order to admire or otherwise enjoy them. Even the text looks bad (to me) so it's impossible to ignore the rest and focus only on the words.

YMMV I guess. The graphical quality never bothered me much. I don't even bother to play Morrowind with graphics mods for the most part. Bethesda open world games have never been about objectively being graphically superior, but being able to use inferior elements to create (an illusion of) something amazing. Also, a lot of what you describe is just the age of the game in my opinion.

I think it's just a matter of taste at the end of the day for you. Some people will hound you for not really clicking with Morrowind, but the TES can be a cesspool of argumentation like that so ignore them. I know I'll never be able to convince people that Oblivion is way better than people give credit for. Different strokes for different folks.

 

[Synobun]

You'll never have to convince me, Oblivion is my favourite.

 

[cybrxkhan]

You'll never have to convince me, Oblivion is my favourite.

A kindred spirit!

 

[gay_Aleks]

That makes us three.

In a relatively related note: I got the Morag Tong armour! It is so gloriously epic for my sneaky sneak Marksman!

 

[azzaman333]

I tried playing Morrowind once upon a time. Didn't get more than 15 minutes in before I never played it again. Skyrim was alright though, got 100 hours into that before I got annoyed with a game crash and never picked it up again.

 

[Arakhor]

Morrowind was one of the first good-looking, stable open-world games in the grand style. Sure, there was Daggerfall, but that had more bugs than one of those blue electric fly-killers on a summer night. The fog (draw distance) was actually quite clever, in that it made the world feel a lot larger (ably assisted by the lack of instant fast travel), and there were so many places to go and people to see (even if they all said much the same things), and there were endless dungeons, ruins, caves and mines. There were a dozen factions you could join, many different spells to cast, outfits to try out and even books to read, all of which could be totally irrelevant to the "Main Quest", which really wasn't that bad at all, as far as Bethesda's track record goes.

The faces sucked, even on the Xbox in 2005, and combat/walking speed/skill use really wasn't particularly fun when starting out, but the sheer unparalleled amount of options you had in the game were amazing. It's part of the reason why Oblivion felt like such a let-down for many people (including me), especially with the way they cut back on so much of the stuff that Morrowind was so good at - tonnes of options, lots of factions, loads of spells etc.

 

[bhavv]

Morrowind was the (single player) game I played more than any other. I couldn't get into oblivion or skyrim as much.

 

[BirraImperial]

I'm trying out ESO...Got it for $15 on GMG. I have to admit the game doesn't look as bad as people say it is, but I'm just starting out.

BTW, GMG is having a huge summer sale with many games including Skyrim Legendary Edition for just $10 if anyone's interested...

 

[cardgame]

I've put about 15 hours into GTA V so far

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The attraction of Morrowind for me is the details. There is no way to match the level of detail that can be included in those paragraph long descriptions in the modern world of "get a voice actor to say 'hur de hur' and the game sells better" marketing.