yung.carl.jung
Hey Bird! I'm Morose & Lugubrious
Dear CivFanatics,
A few months ago I made a thread asking what your dream RPG would look like, and it received hundreds of enthusiastic answers.
Now I've decided to really do it, and I am asking you for help and creative input. Anything, be it a spell, a talent, a playstyle, a boss encounter, a certain mechanic, a rare item, you have ever wanted to see in a game, I could implement for you. Here is a list of what I currently need ideas for/help with:
before you request something or share an idea, please check if it is already in the Skyrim base game, or in the Skyrim Redone mod! Here is an overview of everything SkyRe does: https://www.scribd.com/doc/166531304/skyre-guide-pdf
I will give a short explanation of my project and what I set out to do: I am modding Skyrim, the original version, via the Creation Kit and scripts, but I am mostly relying on already pre existing mods, which I plan to merge and then fine tune. It will be a complete overhaul that leaves the aesthetics and game world mostly intact, and instead focusses on purely the gameplay, not cosmetics. What I set out to do:
1. Create a rewarding gaming experience. I will do this via making the game harder or fairer where it counts.
1.1 I will be changing the loot system so that you will have very powerful, completely unique items, not random enchantments, with very low drop chances, that can be acquired even from weak opponents. This in turn means that "grinding" is never senseless and can always produce a treasure you didn't even know existed. High quality loot will also no longer be outdated with level ups, as it will often be specific for a situation, like giving you resistance against a certain enemy, giving you non-combat buffs, or simply due to being very powerful. A pair of legendary frost-resistance boots you find at the beginning of the game might become useful once more in the later stages while fighting giants, since it will still be stronger than randomly enchanted loot!
1.2 I completely changed the leveling system of the game. Now you receive experience for killing enemies or friends, discovering new places, reading books, clearing dungeons, and other activities. Powerleveling through permacasting spells, which was necessary for fast leveling in the base game, is completely out.
1.3 I will be introducing rare enemies, boss encounters, which have somewhat fixed locations, but respawn, and are surrounded by less powerful enemies. These will be very challenging and have a unique fighting style, partially scale off of the players level, so there will never be a point where they're easy to beat. This was one of my major disappointments with Skyrim, where any boring Stealth Archer archetype could 1-shot Giants, some of the most powerful enemies, with ease. Combat will also be more strategical, you will often be forced to fight multiple enemies at once and employ Crowd-Control on others to keep them at bay, defensive abilities, AoE abilities, your followers, of whom you will have more than one, your summoned creatures, shouts and more, to even have a chance to win.
1.4 Your character's strength is wholly dependant on his level and the amount of quality items he has. So leveling up in and of itself feels rewarding, contrary to the base game, where it sometimes made the game harder if you did. Many enemies in the game will be of a fixed level, so they are impossible to beat at low level, hard to beat at mid level, and easy to beat in the endgame, however rare enemies will always be around to be a challenge for your charater. Just killing monsters and leveling up in and of itself should feel rewarding.
1.5 Your character grows as you play. Not as you permacast ward spells. Reading books will give you unique skill-ups or spells and abilities you could otherwise never find. Everywhere in the game you will randomly find "Goblin Statues". These tricky encounters are text-based and leave you with a choice. You either get a perk point, or you increase a skill, or an attribute. The crux is that the skill or attribute may not be the one you want to improve, so you're faced with the decision of choosing between getting a significant boost in a non-significant attribute (consider that, e.g. Warrior classes still have to use mana to some degree), or a non-significant boost in an important attribute. This way your character will be shaped by all the encounters he goes through, and every replay of the game will be wholly unique.
2. Make choices meaningful. This is achieved by introducing a completely new perk system. Every one of the 18 existing perk trees now represents a class with a unique playstyle. Every perk point investment represents a comitment. However, perk trees are not exclusive, so you theoretically have a chance of creating one of 306 different hybrid classes. Every playstyle is viable and has a way of doing damage, contrary to the base game where more than half of the skill trees were not only irrelevant for combat, but really utterly useless.
2.1 All perk trees now feature skills, one of them being your Bread and Butter skill, a gameplay defining spell, ability or shout that you will alter throughout your gameplay. It was a shame that mages only really had one or two viable playstyles, and that melee type characters never had to use any spells or abilities besides shouts, that will be forever changed. Also, the abilities you get from your perk trees, which I will call unique abilities from now on, are almost always more mana-friendly and deal slightly more damage than spells you can buy from vendors. Spells from vendors cost way, way more gold. This way you will never have a jack of all trades character, no Battlehammer wielding, Fireball throwing demigod.
2.2 Perk trees are completely cut off from ability level and abilities. For example, the Warlock class (formerly Conuration tree) uses Destruction Magic, Conjuration Magic and Illusion Magic, and you no longer need to have a certain skill level before you can access perks, your new limiting factor will be perk points, granted by level ups, just like in the base game. The idea behind this is to make levelups more rewarding. They will also be more common.
2.3 Perk trees don't have perks that are clearly superior to others, they now allow you to specialize. Most perk trees will allow/force you to choose between one of two specializatios that play out differently. You have to make meaningful decisions between, say, having better singletarget, or better AoE damage, between having more utility, or being more combat oriented, between surviveability and mobility, and so forth. E.g.: Necro Warlocks have high single target damage, decent Crowd Control effects and low surviveability. Hellfire warlock have high AoE damage, decent mobility and surviveability.
2.4 Mastery will lead you through your respective perk tree. Mastery perks are passive buffs to your playstyle, like % modifiers for example, that you will dump a lot of points into. Mastery limits which perks you can access and which you cannot, with the most powerful of perks coming later in the tree. Perk trees will be linear and mastery will be the middle, while the perks on the left and the right will often be specific or even exclusive.
2.5 All perk trees end with a trinity. The trinity tops off every perk tree and is different for every class. It consists of one perk that gives you a recipe, which will allow you to craft a legendary item, after farming the necessary materials. They also feature a passive steroid, an ability that is active at all times and improves your combat. Finally, there will be one greater power at the end of every tree, which is usable only once per day and transforms your character into an avatar. You will be forced, in every dungeon or fight, to use this strategically, seeing as you cannot rest in dungeons, hence you will only get to use it once. This incentivices players to finish one perk tree and then start another, instead of investing into 10 different ones and getting only the best skills.
3. Make combat versatiles, challenging, and skill-based. Most changes in here were not done by me at all, but just copied from pre-existing mods.
3.1 Warriors really have to watch their Stamina and Health, otherwise they risk doing almost no damage. Mana is also used as a ressource for Abilities, which now can be used while wielding a weapon or while blocking, allowing for completely new, never before seen playstyles that combine hack 'n slay with careful ability management.
3.2 Timed blocks are introduced, meaning fast reflexes are rewarded and constant blocking is a lot less effective, making combat more fast paced.
3.2 Mages cannot spam spells anymore and often have to Crowd Control or Slow enemies to let mana recover, or use specific perks to help with Mana regen in Combat.
3.3 Mages and other classes are very squishy, meaning you constantly have to keep multiple enemies away, and also keep them in your head, via new abilities like AoE freezes, fears, disorients, blinds and so on. Mentally managing multiple targets will be essential.
3.4 Assasins are a new kind of playstyle that wasn't very prominent in Skyrim. They are mobility based melees that die very fast, but also dish out insane damage. Unlike the stealth archetype these keep themselves alive via dodging intelligenty, going invisible for very short amounts of time and reappearing, teleporting themselves away, and confusing opponents.
These are just general guidelines, there is more to come in the future. Most of my work is built on the Skyrim Redone (SkyRe) mod, whose perk trees I will change completely. It lays a very solid foundation and honestly implements literally hundreds of changes I thought up myself, but don't have the ability to code into the game. It makes the perfect basis for my mod.
Most of the 18 classes are already outlined. They are:
Please do not hesitate to give me feedback on my ideas! If you dislike a class, a gameplay change, or anything else, share that with me, and give me a good reason! If you think a class or existing mechanic should be altered, please also tell me. These are just ideas at the moment, they are not set in stone at all.
Right now my priority is to
1) finish theorycrafting
2) map out all the classes
3) map out all the perk trees
4) think up all the new unique items
5) come up with cool enemy encounters
6) integrate all that into the game via the creation kit
7) playtest the game and adjust difficulty and balancing
8) debug and check for errors
9) release the mod as a beta version for everyone to playtest
Currently I am looking at about one or two years of work. I have help from some friends, but will be doing most things alone. Just a friendly reminder: T3ndo, the guy who made SkyRe and literally dozens of other insanely great mods, did it all by himself, in his spare time, and he needed less than a year (iirc) for most of his mods, so that is great motivation for me. Especially since what I am attempting needs 0 Papyrus coding and only uses the basic functions of the KC, as opposed to T3ndos mods. Let's do that, together!
A few months ago I made a thread asking what your dream RPG would look like, and it received hundreds of enthusiastic answers.
Now I've decided to really do it, and I am asking you for help and creative input. Anything, be it a spell, a talent, a playstyle, a boss encounter, a certain mechanic, a rare item, you have ever wanted to see in a game, I could implement for you. Here is a list of what I currently need ideas for/help with:
Spoiler :
before you request something or share an idea, please check if it is already in the Skyrim base game, or in the Skyrim Redone mod! Here is an overview of everything SkyRe does: https://www.scribd.com/doc/166531304/skyre-guide-pdf
I will give a short explanation of my project and what I set out to do: I am modding Skyrim, the original version, via the Creation Kit and scripts, but I am mostly relying on already pre existing mods, which I plan to merge and then fine tune. It will be a complete overhaul that leaves the aesthetics and game world mostly intact, and instead focusses on purely the gameplay, not cosmetics. What I set out to do:
1. Create a rewarding gaming experience. I will do this via making the game harder or fairer where it counts.
1.1 I will be changing the loot system so that you will have very powerful, completely unique items, not random enchantments, with very low drop chances, that can be acquired even from weak opponents. This in turn means that "grinding" is never senseless and can always produce a treasure you didn't even know existed. High quality loot will also no longer be outdated with level ups, as it will often be specific for a situation, like giving you resistance against a certain enemy, giving you non-combat buffs, or simply due to being very powerful. A pair of legendary frost-resistance boots you find at the beginning of the game might become useful once more in the later stages while fighting giants, since it will still be stronger than randomly enchanted loot!
1.2 I completely changed the leveling system of the game. Now you receive experience for killing enemies or friends, discovering new places, reading books, clearing dungeons, and other activities. Powerleveling through permacasting spells, which was necessary for fast leveling in the base game, is completely out.
1.3 I will be introducing rare enemies, boss encounters, which have somewhat fixed locations, but respawn, and are surrounded by less powerful enemies. These will be very challenging and have a unique fighting style, partially scale off of the players level, so there will never be a point where they're easy to beat. This was one of my major disappointments with Skyrim, where any boring Stealth Archer archetype could 1-shot Giants, some of the most powerful enemies, with ease. Combat will also be more strategical, you will often be forced to fight multiple enemies at once and employ Crowd-Control on others to keep them at bay, defensive abilities, AoE abilities, your followers, of whom you will have more than one, your summoned creatures, shouts and more, to even have a chance to win.
1.4 Your character's strength is wholly dependant on his level and the amount of quality items he has. So leveling up in and of itself feels rewarding, contrary to the base game, where it sometimes made the game harder if you did. Many enemies in the game will be of a fixed level, so they are impossible to beat at low level, hard to beat at mid level, and easy to beat in the endgame, however rare enemies will always be around to be a challenge for your charater. Just killing monsters and leveling up in and of itself should feel rewarding.
1.5 Your character grows as you play. Not as you permacast ward spells. Reading books will give you unique skill-ups or spells and abilities you could otherwise never find. Everywhere in the game you will randomly find "Goblin Statues". These tricky encounters are text-based and leave you with a choice. You either get a perk point, or you increase a skill, or an attribute. The crux is that the skill or attribute may not be the one you want to improve, so you're faced with the decision of choosing between getting a significant boost in a non-significant attribute (consider that, e.g. Warrior classes still have to use mana to some degree), or a non-significant boost in an important attribute. This way your character will be shaped by all the encounters he goes through, and every replay of the game will be wholly unique.
2. Make choices meaningful. This is achieved by introducing a completely new perk system. Every one of the 18 existing perk trees now represents a class with a unique playstyle. Every perk point investment represents a comitment. However, perk trees are not exclusive, so you theoretically have a chance of creating one of 306 different hybrid classes. Every playstyle is viable and has a way of doing damage, contrary to the base game where more than half of the skill trees were not only irrelevant for combat, but really utterly useless.
2.1 All perk trees now feature skills, one of them being your Bread and Butter skill, a gameplay defining spell, ability or shout that you will alter throughout your gameplay. It was a shame that mages only really had one or two viable playstyles, and that melee type characters never had to use any spells or abilities besides shouts, that will be forever changed. Also, the abilities you get from your perk trees, which I will call unique abilities from now on, are almost always more mana-friendly and deal slightly more damage than spells you can buy from vendors. Spells from vendors cost way, way more gold. This way you will never have a jack of all trades character, no Battlehammer wielding, Fireball throwing demigod.
2.2 Perk trees are completely cut off from ability level and abilities. For example, the Warlock class (formerly Conuration tree) uses Destruction Magic, Conjuration Magic and Illusion Magic, and you no longer need to have a certain skill level before you can access perks, your new limiting factor will be perk points, granted by level ups, just like in the base game. The idea behind this is to make levelups more rewarding. They will also be more common.
2.3 Perk trees don't have perks that are clearly superior to others, they now allow you to specialize. Most perk trees will allow/force you to choose between one of two specializatios that play out differently. You have to make meaningful decisions between, say, having better singletarget, or better AoE damage, between having more utility, or being more combat oriented, between surviveability and mobility, and so forth. E.g.: Necro Warlocks have high single target damage, decent Crowd Control effects and low surviveability. Hellfire warlock have high AoE damage, decent mobility and surviveability.
2.4 Mastery will lead you through your respective perk tree. Mastery perks are passive buffs to your playstyle, like % modifiers for example, that you will dump a lot of points into. Mastery limits which perks you can access and which you cannot, with the most powerful of perks coming later in the tree. Perk trees will be linear and mastery will be the middle, while the perks on the left and the right will often be specific or even exclusive.
2.5 All perk trees end with a trinity. The trinity tops off every perk tree and is different for every class. It consists of one perk that gives you a recipe, which will allow you to craft a legendary item, after farming the necessary materials. They also feature a passive steroid, an ability that is active at all times and improves your combat. Finally, there will be one greater power at the end of every tree, which is usable only once per day and transforms your character into an avatar. You will be forced, in every dungeon or fight, to use this strategically, seeing as you cannot rest in dungeons, hence you will only get to use it once. This incentivices players to finish one perk tree and then start another, instead of investing into 10 different ones and getting only the best skills.
3. Make combat versatiles, challenging, and skill-based. Most changes in here were not done by me at all, but just copied from pre-existing mods.
3.1 Warriors really have to watch their Stamina and Health, otherwise they risk doing almost no damage. Mana is also used as a ressource for Abilities, which now can be used while wielding a weapon or while blocking, allowing for completely new, never before seen playstyles that combine hack 'n slay with careful ability management.
3.2 Timed blocks are introduced, meaning fast reflexes are rewarded and constant blocking is a lot less effective, making combat more fast paced.
3.2 Mages cannot spam spells anymore and often have to Crowd Control or Slow enemies to let mana recover, or use specific perks to help with Mana regen in Combat.
3.3 Mages and other classes are very squishy, meaning you constantly have to keep multiple enemies away, and also keep them in your head, via new abilities like AoE freezes, fears, disorients, blinds and so on. Mentally managing multiple targets will be essential.
3.4 Assasins are a new kind of playstyle that wasn't very prominent in Skyrim. They are mobility based melees that die very fast, but also dish out insane damage. Unlike the stealth archetype these keep themselves alive via dodging intelligenty, going invisible for very short amounts of time and reappearing, teleporting themselves away, and confusing opponents.
These are just general guidelines, there is more to come in the future. Most of my work is built on the Skyrim Redone (SkyRe) mod, whose perk trees I will change completely. It lays a very solid foundation and honestly implements literally hundreds of changes I thought up myself, but don't have the ability to code into the game. It makes the perfect basis for my mod.
Most of the 18 classes are already outlined. They are:
Spoiler :
Please do not hesitate to give me feedback on my ideas! If you dislike a class, a gameplay change, or anything else, share that with me, and give me a good reason! If you think a class or existing mechanic should be altered, please also tell me. These are just ideas at the moment, they are not set in stone at all.
Right now my priority is to
1) finish theorycrafting
2) map out all the classes
3) map out all the perk trees
4) think up all the new unique items
5) come up with cool enemy encounters
6) integrate all that into the game via the creation kit
7) playtest the game and adjust difficulty and balancing
8) debug and check for errors
9) release the mod as a beta version for everyone to playtest
Currently I am looking at about one or two years of work. I have help from some friends, but will be doing most things alone. Just a friendly reminder: T3ndo, the guy who made SkyRe and literally dozens of other insanely great mods, did it all by himself, in his spare time, and he needed less than a year (iirc) for most of his mods, so that is great motivation for me. Especially since what I am attempting needs 0 Papyrus coding and only uses the basic functions of the KC, as opposed to T3ndos mods. Let's do that, together!
should be fun for all the wordy forum members!), different specializations, and so forth.
