I just uploaded a "mod showcase" for this mod. This is the first in the series I plan to continue doing for my own mods, and eventually other community member's mods as well. Hopefully somebody finds this one useful, took me many days to make, more than I expected.
What exactly about it is bad? It seems like a nice rebalance for those more comfortable with Morrowind-style defense. If you prefer a more all or nothing dnd-type experience there's always vanilla or SphincterVision Attacks.I don't see why this mod in particular is bad. Especially considering all of the work that went into it.
not to belittle this work, but some people consider this mod an 'upgrade' of vanilla system by default. They really should think twice, because I think Daggerfall vanilla system represents armor mechanics more realistically in the end. For example, plate armor simply deflects sword attacks, unless a vulnerability is found. You can't cut through metal, not even chainmail (the latter can be pierced with a poke, but it is not easy). Blunt weapons is a different matter, you definitely can pierce armor with a war hammer (or its backside claw, for example) if skilled and lucky - but again, to my knowledge more often than not the same principle still holds. All of this seems being closer to Daggerfall chance-to-hit system than anything else. Oblivion/Skyrim-style damage reduction doesn't make much sense to me.
While D&D's Armor Class system definitely feels more true to life in regards to how in real life you want to use shields and armor to avoid direct hits, that doesn't necessarily translate the best into a game like Daggerfall. Daggerfall gamifies a lot of nuanced mechanics from real life for the sake of making the game more enjoyable. There are many mechanics that aren't true to life, either because they would be too convoluted, or wouldn't be fun to play with.
Think of Hit Points, and how sustaining injuries in combat is almost a guaranteed death or early retirement for a medieval warrior in history, but in Daggerfall it doesn't matter if you're at full HP or have 1 HP. It's a simple analog to real life injuries so that you can tackle the problem in several ways that don't exist in real life. In real life, you cannot drink a potion, cast a spell, or even sleep for 8 hours to rest off a flail hit to the shoulder. The game chooses to sacrifice that realism in order to make the game more fun. And sometimes, these real life situations are too complicated to meaningfully represent otherwise. Armor Class might accurately represent armor glancing off blows, but it doesn't represent warding with shields, and deliberately absorbing impacts for strategic purposes. It also doesn't represent the fact that not all hits will glance off armor, and if you're getting hit with a mace, plate will reduce the kinetic energy of the impact, while chainmail won't.
And if we're talking about realism, why would Daedric armor be better at glancing off blows than Adamantium? Damage Reduction at least makes sense on the idea that better materials will absorb more of the impact, but the crux here is that it's just a game mechanic to incentivize upgrading your gear. How realistic a mechanic is has no value compared to how fun or interesting a mechanic is.
A mod like this also allows for more roleplaying opportunities and makes the game more diverse. For example, in vanilla there simply isn't a reason not to use armor. If you want to play an evasive dodger, your best bet in vanilla is to put on the heaviest and most durable equipment you can find. With this mod, relying on your dodging skill is more valuable, and wearing armor doesn't make you have a higher chance of dodging. Taking sustained damage instead of occasionally taking large hits also means more opportunities for things like equipment maintenance, and finding ways to heal. I almost never had to heal in vanilla because I would mostly dodge everything. And I never had to repair my equipment because it didn't degrade fast enough.
While I understand your point and I definitely am not going to dictate what is fun and what is not, I think some of your counterarguments are non sequitur. The point is not that the game mechanics must be as realistic as possible in every way for the sake of being realistic, but in some ways and not in another. There are different meanings of being 'realistic' and they are not equally good.
This game works just like a fairy tale. It is okay to accept some magic in a fairy tale, but not okay to accept, say, completely different laws of physics. Some realisticness in certain ways is absolutely needed actually to allow a game being fun and interesting.
In game, you are intended to be a hero, and this already means that there are some additional assumptions about how survivable you are: indeed, there is much faster healing than expected naturally (even without Faster Healing advantage), you are also in fact much more agile in combat than any other enemy by default, and so on.
This is actually welcomed and needed to justify how you are able to destroy single-handedly the whole dungeons and combat units. You are either extremely lucky, or unnaturally hardy, or simply blessed by the gods - I can and actually have to swallow these assumptions to enjoy this game as such and its story. This holds even apart from the valid point you make that many simplifications are necessary to keep gameplay fun and not overloaded with tedious complications, not to mention the technical limitations.
However, the point under discussion is a different thing. While player character can be an unnaturally strong hero, the world still needs to be realistic enough to be believable and engaging. Imagine that the developer also makes that in-game peasants grow grain with magic, and not agriculture. Just bake some bread with conjuration magic spell. Is it fun? I would say not at all, and it is game-breaking in fact. I still want to play a medieval-style game with the same common sense as in real life, but spiced up with supernatural beings and sorcerers - real-life superstitions that "became reality" in this game world.
"Jelly armor" is similarly inappropriate, in my view, although not as extreme as an example above. This is neither a game mechanic to justify heroic scenario, nor an element of fantasy lore. And not even gameplay simplification or technical limitation, to begin with. This is just a replacement.
The exact borders and 'red flags' in this regard are a matter of personal taste. You make a valid point that some relaxations are needed to allow new role-playing styles. My intention, however, was not to simply discourage anybody from this mod, but to induce to think before installing it: do they really need it? A lof of people download overhauls simply because they believe these overhauls make things better by default, replacing "obsolete" D&D system, which allegedly "doesn't make sense". The latter is not true. There are two alternatives each with its own pros and cons, and I personally prefer to stick with vanilla. Especially since there are mods that improve the latter.
LyraKeaton makes a valid point that "Hit Points" don't make sense to begin with; a PC with 1/300 HP can fully recover by sleeping on the cold dungeon floor for 8 hours. Even if you roleplay that your PC brought medical supplies with them it still seems unreasonable.
You're right that you can just pretend your PC is unnaturally lucky/hardy/blessed, and you kinda have to in order to roleplay (except with The Tale Continues perhaps?). But why not extend that to the idea of HP itself? Historically RPG Hit Points don't represent literal vitality, but a combination of physical hardiness and avoidance of lethal attacks through any means (divine providence, pure luck, mysterious magic, keen senses, etc). HP hitting 0 is the PCs narrative luck running out and finally being struck with a lethal attack, rather than them succumbing to a thousand cuts. This is why PCs can "tank" successful sword thrusts whereas normally a successful sword thrust would mean almost certain death.
Viewed this way, I don't think any one way is more realistic than the other. "I shouldn't lose any HP unless the blow would have landed on an opening in my armor" (similar to how dodge works) and "I should lose HP but less because armor increases my survivability" (similar to how endurance works) sound equally realistic to me in the context of narrative luck.
I'm very excited to use this mod, but quick question, since most of the skills (or what they effect) has been reworked, is there a list anywhere? Like I wanna make a spellblade but I'm not sure what attributes they need.
So far this mod is looking good, but I haven't understood very well if armors and shield affect Dodge chance. Just to make sure I understood, I can equip armors and a shield, it won't affect dodge at all because it is all now tied to the Dodge skill and AGI/LUCK attribute?
Thanks for the reply, I forgot to ask before if it affects hand-to-hand combat having a shield equipped ( like, maybe it counts as a weapon ). But so far it seem to be working well with an equipped shield
Just wanted to throw in and say thank you for all the work you've done and continue to do on this excellent mod which is a staple of my load order.
I'm not trying to rush you, but I am curious if you have a rough estimate of when 2.0 will be released? Itching to start up a new playthrough soon but I might wait for this to drop if it's going to be anytime soon. Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere. Insanely hyped about the prospect of this being eventually compatible with Combat Event Handler + widgets with recoil etc., but I know these things take time. Thank you again and I'm excited to see what the mod looks like moving forward.
At the pretty slow pace I've been working on my projects the past few months, I'd say don't expect v2.0 to be out anytime soon. But my best estimate would probably be within a couple of months hopefully, but I have no concrete idea when. Hopefully that is a somewhat acceptable answer to your question, glad you enjoy the mod.
I wanted to ask, if there are any events I could subscribe to with my mod. Since "Vanilla Combat Event Handler" seems to be incompatible with your mod, my mod stops working if users installed your mod.
If not, I think the best place would be inside CalculateAttackDamage(DaggerfallEntity attacker, DaggerfallEntity target, bool enemyAnimStateRecord, int weaponAnimTime, DaggerfallUnityItem weapon) I could create a PR on GithHub if you like.
I think it would be best to wait until I get v2.0 going, where I will hopefully be able to address any recently compatibility issues and such. But feel free to rebuild on your side if necessary.
Using this mod makes my weapons break very quickly. I'll have to carry half a dozen weapons because every weapon breaks after a few uses. Like, i'm killing two rats and i get the message my sword is useless.
EDIT: i "fixed" it by discovering the mod settings and turned "Equipment Damage Enhanced" off. While not a bad feature per se, i also play with climate & calories and roleplay realism, meaning i need a lot of money to repair gear AND buy rations and warm clothing and whatnot and that makes it difficult, especially in the beginning. I do think degradation happens too fast though. As i said, after a couple of fights a weapon becomes useless or broken.
It might be, I'll have to take a look at it, but probably won't be making any updates or bug-fixes until I release the v2.0 I have been working on, thanks.
I guess the shield module compatibility version is no longer functioning since that mod hasn't been updated in a while? Should I bother trying or will it mess something up?
The author for that mod actually remade it and added more to the mod and renamed it to Ambidexterity but its only on his github for download and it has compat for this overhaul just google Daggerfall Ambidexterity.
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https://youtu.be/fjQzjeNGRAQ
Update for functionality with DFU v1.0.0 (and hopefully any newer).
Daggerfall gamifies a lot of nuanced mechanics from real life for the sake of making the game more enjoyable. There are many mechanics that aren't true to life, either because they would be too convoluted, or wouldn't be fun to play with.
Think of Hit Points, and how sustaining injuries in combat is almost a guaranteed death or early retirement for a medieval warrior in history, but in Daggerfall it doesn't matter if you're at full HP or have 1 HP. It's a simple analog to real life injuries so that you can tackle the problem in several ways that don't exist in real life. In real life, you cannot drink a potion, cast a spell, or even sleep for 8 hours to rest off a flail hit to the shoulder. The game chooses to sacrifice that realism in order to make the game more fun. And sometimes, these real life situations are too complicated to meaningfully represent otherwise. Armor Class might accurately represent armor glancing off blows, but it doesn't represent warding with shields, and deliberately absorbing impacts for strategic purposes. It also doesn't represent the fact that not all hits will glance off armor, and if you're getting hit with a mace, plate will reduce the kinetic energy of the impact, while chainmail won't.
And if we're talking about realism, why would Daedric armor be better at glancing off blows than Adamantium? Damage Reduction at least makes sense on the idea that better materials will absorb more of the impact, but the crux here is that it's just a game mechanic to incentivize upgrading your gear. How realistic a mechanic is has no value compared to how fun or interesting a mechanic is.
A mod like this also allows for more roleplaying opportunities and makes the game more diverse. For example, in vanilla there simply isn't a reason not to use armor. If you want to play an evasive dodger, your best bet in vanilla is to put on the heaviest and most durable equipment you can find. With this mod, relying on your dodging skill is more valuable, and wearing armor doesn't make you have a higher chance of dodging. Taking sustained damage instead of occasionally taking large hits also means more opportunities for things like equipment maintenance, and finding ways to heal. I almost never had to heal in vanilla because I would mostly dodge everything. And I never had to repair my equipment because it didn't degrade fast enough.
This game works just like a fairy tale. It is okay to accept some magic in a fairy tale, but not okay to accept, say, completely different laws of physics. Some realisticness in certain ways is absolutely needed actually to allow a game being fun and interesting.
In game, you are intended to be a hero, and this already means that there are some additional assumptions about how survivable you are: indeed, there is much faster healing than expected naturally (even without Faster Healing advantage), you are also in fact much more agile in combat than any other enemy by default, and so on.
This is actually welcomed and needed to justify how you are able to destroy single-handedly the whole dungeons and combat units. You are either extremely lucky, or unnaturally hardy, or simply blessed by the gods - I can and actually have to swallow these assumptions to enjoy this game as such and its story. This holds even apart from the valid point you make that many simplifications are necessary to keep gameplay fun and not overloaded with tedious complications, not to mention the technical limitations.
However, the point under discussion is a different thing. While player character can be an unnaturally strong hero, the world still needs to be realistic enough to be believable and engaging. Imagine that the developer also makes that in-game peasants grow grain with magic, and not agriculture. Just bake some bread with conjuration magic spell. Is it fun? I would say not at all, and it is game-breaking in fact. I still want to play a medieval-style game with the same common sense as in real life, but spiced up with supernatural beings and sorcerers - real-life superstitions that "became reality" in this game world.
"Jelly armor" is similarly inappropriate, in my view, although not as extreme as an example above. This is neither a game mechanic to justify heroic scenario, nor an element of fantasy lore. And not even gameplay simplification or technical limitation, to begin with. This is just a replacement.
The exact borders and 'red flags' in this regard are a matter of personal taste. You make a valid point that some relaxations are needed to allow new role-playing styles. My intention, however, was not to simply discourage anybody from this mod, but to induce to think before installing it: do they really need it? A lof of people download overhauls simply because they believe these overhauls make things better by default, replacing "obsolete" D&D system, which allegedly "doesn't make sense". The latter is not true. There are two alternatives each with its own pros and cons, and I personally prefer to stick with vanilla. Especially since there are mods that improve the latter.
You're right that you can just pretend your PC is unnaturally lucky/hardy/blessed, and you kinda have to in order to roleplay (except with The Tale Continues perhaps?). But why not extend that to the idea of HP itself? Historically RPG Hit Points don't represent literal vitality, but a combination of physical hardiness and avoidance of lethal attacks through any means (divine providence, pure luck, mysterious magic, keen senses, etc). HP hitting 0 is the PCs narrative luck running out and finally being struck with a lethal attack, rather than them succumbing to a thousand cuts. This is why PCs can "tank" successful sword thrusts whereas normally a successful sword thrust would mean almost certain death.
Viewed this way, I don't think any one way is more realistic than the other. "I shouldn't lose any HP unless the blow would have landed on an opening in my armor" (similar to how dodge works) and "I should lose HP but less because armor increases my survivability" (similar to how endurance works) sound equally realistic to me in the context of narrative luck.
This seems like it took a lot of work, thank you.
I'm not trying to rush you, but I am curious if you have a rough estimate of when 2.0 will be released? Itching to start up a new playthrough soon but I might wait for this to drop if it's going to be anytime soon. Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere. Insanely hyped about the prospect of this being eventually compatible with Combat Event Handler + widgets with recoil etc., but I know these things take time. Thank you again and I'm excited to see what the mod looks like moving forward.
I wanted to ask, if there are any events I could subscribe to with my mod. Since "Vanilla Combat Event Handler" seems to be incompatible with your mod, my mod stops working if users installed your mod.
If not, I think the best place would be inside
CalculateAttackDamage(DaggerfallEntity attacker, DaggerfallEntity target, bool enemyAnimStateRecord, int weaponAnimTime, DaggerfallUnityItem weapon)I could create a PR on GithHub if you like.
Maybe I will try my luck with IL Rewriting to add a post execution to your method in the meantime :)
EDIT: i "fixed" it by discovering the mod settings and turned "Equipment Damage Enhanced" off. While not a bad feature per se, i also play with climate & calories and roleplay realism, meaning i need a lot of money to repair gear AND buy rations and warm clothing and whatnot and that makes it difficult, especially in the beginning. I do think degradation happens too fast though. As i said, after a couple of fights a weapon becomes useless or broken.
from the github script.
mods.damageMod = (attacker.Stats.LiveAgility / 50) + (attacker.Stats.LiveSpeed / 50);