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About this mod
Corrects for a longstanding bug that causes third-person mobility to be slower than first-person in almost all circumstances -- sometimes by more than half.
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Third-Person Movement Speed Fix
Corrects for a longstanding bug that causes third-person mobility to be slower than first-person in almost all circumstances -- sometimes by more than half.
The correct way to install this mod:
Alternatively:
Did you know that you literally travel slower when in third-person?
This is a problem I noticed way back in the first days of the game's existence. The problem is in fact only one of a giant list of issues with third-person gameplay which are still, every one of them, unsolved to this day. While most third-person issues probably can only ever be fixed through F4SE dll wizardry, the mobility issue was enough of an annoyance to me, since I use the vanity camera a lot, that I decided to put a bandaid on it. And that's what this mod is: A patch to cover the leaky hole that is third-person mobility. As I will elaborate below, my solution is arguably a little inelegant, and certainly it's not the kind of foundational fix I had hoped would be available over two years after release, but it does work, and it does solve an extremely irritating gameplay flaw.
(But by all means, please, someone dig deeper and give this problem the concrete fix it's been needing for years.)
How severe is the problem?
It depends on many dynamic factors. Are you sneaking or not? Is your weapon holstered or not? Are you overencumbered or not? How many of your legs are broken? Here are some example answers:
As far as day to day impact on one's gameplay, if one ever sneaks while in third-person, they are definitely being slowed down by this bug.
Here is a video I made over two years ago, roughly documenting the phenomenon and providing early estimations of some disparities. Sadly, it remains fully valid today. (Skip to 1:05.)
Why is this happening?
I don't know. My best guess at this point is that third-person player character mobility may be inherently tied to the animations themselves -- animations which obviously don't come into play when in first-person. There do not appear to be any variables one can tweak in the Creation Kit to force third-person mobility to correspond 1:1 to first-person mobility.
What is the solution implemented by this mod?
This mod watches for changes in all variables which dictate disparities between first- and third-person mobility, and adjusts the player character's speed to compensate.
Those percentages are all over the place. How were they calculated?
Brute force. I found a quiet stretch of land and walked from A to B dozens and dozens of times under every conceivable circumstance, in both first- and third-person, multiple times each. The disparities were noted and the numbers plugged in.
Caveats (these are worth a read):
Corrects for a longstanding bug that causes third-person mobility to be slower than first-person in almost all circumstances -- sometimes by more than half.
The correct way to install this mod:
- With the mod installed, load a save where your character is naked, or in any event is not affected by any temporary speed boosts, such as from armor.
Alternatively:
- With the mod installed, load any save, but subsequently remove all temporary speed boosts, and then type the following in the console:
- set ResetSpeedMult to 1
Did you know that you literally travel slower when in third-person?
This is a problem I noticed way back in the first days of the game's existence. The problem is in fact only one of a giant list of issues with third-person gameplay which are still, every one of them, unsolved to this day. While most third-person issues probably can only ever be fixed through F4SE dll wizardry, the mobility issue was enough of an annoyance to me, since I use the vanity camera a lot, that I decided to put a bandaid on it. And that's what this mod is: A patch to cover the leaky hole that is third-person mobility. As I will elaborate below, my solution is arguably a little inelegant, and certainly it's not the kind of foundational fix I had hoped would be available over two years after release, but it does work, and it does solve an extremely irritating gameplay flaw.
(But by all means, please, someone dig deeper and give this problem the concrete fix it's been needing for years.)
How severe is the problem?
It depends on many dynamic factors. Are you sneaking or not? Is your weapon holstered or not? Are you overencumbered or not? How many of your legs are broken? Here are some example answers:
- Standing, holstered, unencumbered, no legs broken: 0% difference.
- Standing, holstered, encumbered, no legs broken: Third-person is ~9.45% slower.
- Sneaking, wielding, unencumbered, no legs broken: Third-person is ~15.5% slower.
- Sneaking, wielding, encumbered, no legs broken: Third person is ~45.13% slower.
- Sneaking, wielding, unencumbered, one leg broken: Third-person is ~52.06% slower.
As far as day to day impact on one's gameplay, if one ever sneaks while in third-person, they are definitely being slowed down by this bug.
Here is a video I made over two years ago, roughly documenting the phenomenon and providing early estimations of some disparities. Sadly, it remains fully valid today. (Skip to 1:05.)
Why is this happening?
I don't know. My best guess at this point is that third-person player character mobility may be inherently tied to the animations themselves -- animations which obviously don't come into play when in first-person. There do not appear to be any variables one can tweak in the Creation Kit to force third-person mobility to correspond 1:1 to first-person mobility.
What is the solution implemented by this mod?
This mod watches for changes in all variables which dictate disparities between first- and third-person mobility, and adjusts the player character's speed to compensate.
Those percentages are all over the place. How were they calculated?
Brute force. I found a quiet stretch of land and walked from A to B dozens and dozens of times under every conceivable circumstance, in both first- and third-person, multiple times each. The disparities were noted and the numbers plugged in.
Caveats (these are worth a read):
- This mod does not use "spell effects" or "perks" to achieve its speed adjustments. Partly because, to the best of my knowledge, they cannot be applied multiplicatively (for cases where the player is wearing speed armor, for example), and partly because "constant" spell effects only apply every 1.0 seconds, which is too low a rate to satisfyingly capture instances when one wields a weapon or begins sneaking. This means everything is done via direct adjustments to the player character's speed variable, and such an approach carries the risk of said variable going haywire due to overlapping adjustments across multiple vectors. While I have taken some pains to prevent this happening, and I have played my own game with this mod active for many hours without issue, the risk is still there. If the player character's speed ever seems to go out of whack, one can fix things by removing all temporary speed boosts and then typing the following in the console: set ResetSpeedMult to 1
- Third-person, holstered sneaking is un-fixable. For whatever reason, the game has an unbreakable cap on the mobility of the player-character while (holstered) sneaking in third-person, and that cap is already hit even when just sneaking with no overencumberance and no broken legs. People making use of armor that increases speed may have already noticed this: No matter how fast they're meant to be going, sneaking speed just doesn't seem to budge. (Ironic when you consider that the entire point of the "sleek" armor mod is to increase mobility when sneaking.) You can even force your speed to 1000 in the console and it still won't matter. However! The moment you take out your weapon -- even just your fists -- that cap gets lifted and your speed reaches the level it was supposed to. In any event, the point is that this mod cannot fix mobility under this specific circumstance. My advice is to always have your weapon out when sneaking.
- Third-person sprinting power armor sprinting with overdrive actuators is also un-fixable. Just like with holstered sneaking, for whatever reason, the game has placed a cap on third-person mobility when sprinting in power armor, resulting in the overdrive actuator mods being completely useless in third-person, and also meaning that nothing this mod does could ever fix it.
- Third-person sprinting without power armor, but with mobility enhancers, is also un-fixable. Same speed cap as before. If you have enough pieces of armor with movement boosts, sprinting in third-person is literally slower than just running! And there is nothing that can be done to fix this.
- The purpose of this mod is to force third-person mobility to match first-person mobility, not to make arbitrary adjustments to both in order to render a personalized ideal. What do I mean? I note specifically that when you sneak while encumbered in first-person, your speed is exactly the same as when you're walking encumbered in first-person! (See the above video.) Does this make sense? Of course not. Nonetheless, it is how the game has worked for two years, and it's too late to jump in and declare that the game really ought to do it this way or that way. That's just not the goal of this mod.
- The speed adjustments made by this mod can interfere with certain animations. This seems to be limited to instances where the player character has a broken leg or two. The animation will often revert to just a slow run, as opposed to leg-dragging. The mobility of the player character is properly corrected regardless.
- When unholstering a weapon in third-person, the speed correction is temporarily delayed. This is because internally, the unholstering animation counts as "wielding", whereas if you ping the player character via a script during this moment, it thinks they are "holstered". No getting around this. But it only produces noticeable anomalies in extreme cases, such as broken legs.
- Other than when sprinting with overdrive actuators, there do not appear to be any disparities in mobility when wearing power armor.