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After a lot of work, I've finally released the long-awaited version 4 of SPERG. Many of the changes will be very obvious as soon as you load your game (after following the upgrade instructions, of course), but there are a lot of important changes that most users won't notice.
Almost every single script has been rewritten and optimized, which means much less strain on the scripting engine. Numerous perks and abilities have been reorganized and simplified in the editor, making it easier than ever to open up SPERG in Creation Kit and see how it works. Plus, SPERG is packaged as an .esm now, so it's easy for anybody to make compatibility patches for it or expand upon it.
In short, even if it weren't for all the new perks and features, SPERG 4 would sti... -
Kill your darlings. Writers of all stripes have been subjected to this advice so often that it's become cliche, yet it rarely seems to make its way out of writing circles. Like any overused phrase, it has many different interpretations, but the core of the idea is that it helps the creative process to destroy the things you like most.
There are probably several reasons for this. One is that your fondness of a particular idea or character can blind you to its flaws, so you'll be more objective about something that feels less personal. Another is that you'll probably keep telling the same stories with the same characters over and over again if you don't make a special effort to really do something different. Personally, I like to think that it's simple advice... -
I've never considered SPERG to be just a perk overhaul (hence the "Rebalanced Gameplay" part). However, things can get messy if you don't set limits. A whole lot of mods suffer from so-called "mod-creep" wherein features completely unrelated to the purpose of the mod get jammed in haphazardly, inflicting the unsuspecting userbase with a litany of unexpected changes to their game. Even if the features are well-documented, the mod becomes an all-in-one package, and users have no choice but to accept the often unwanted "features" alongside the changes that made them download the mod in the first place.
To keep myself grounded, I find it necessary to define a specific scope for SPERG. Obviously it's more than a perk mod, so limiting it just to perks isn't quite acc... -
It's undeniable that a character using SPERG will be more powerful than a character of the same level in vanilla Skyrim. There are two main reasons for this.
First, SPERG aims to make each perk more noticeable and meaningful. Perk gain is slowed down to compensate, but auto-perks offset that by quite a bit. When every perk is more powerful than its vanilla equivalent and you get almost as many, the result will be obvious. Having a character that easily grows more powerful is a natural result of having a leveling system that feels more meaningful in general. It doesn't just feel more meaningful - it really does have more of an impact.
Second, I designed SPERG to add on to Skyrim, not replace it. That meant setting some hard guidelines for myself, one of whi... -
Believe it or not, I intentionally designed SPERG as non-modular. In my experience, most users just want a simple mod they can install with no fuss. Even those of us that don't mind tinkering under the hood sometimes just want something simple we don't have to think about. I designed SPERG to be exactly that - even with no configuration whatsoever, it just works. Areas which require the most effort (such as uncapper integration) I've made as simple as possible rather than instructing users to configure everything themselves. Throughout SPERG's development, I've always tried to make it as easy as I can for the end user.
However, there are users who prefer the added control afforded by complex configuration options and modular design. To satisfy those users, ... -
It's taken me a long time, but I'm finally wrapping up work on the next version of SPERG. I expect it to be out within 1-2 weeks, just as soon as I'm assured that there aren't any obvious new bugs that have crept in.
Before I get into what you can expect from the new version, I want to briefly mention my design philosophy for this mod and for modding in general. I greatly prioritize bug fixes over new features because I want using this mod to be a stable and smooth experience. I would much rather upload a mod that is incomplete but polished as opposed to a mod with as many bugs as it has features. As a gamer myself, I find the former to be much more usable.
To that end, this version does not contain a lot of big, new features, but it does contain a...