The premise of the mod is quite interesitng, and it was fun to read the notes on the different patients and figure out bit by bit what had happended.
The good thing about there being no quests or scripts is that everything worked pretty nicely. There are a few graphical issues, but still, it was quite an enjoyable mod, thank you.
It appears to me lot of areas with overpowered enemies. What should be the "investigation"? If all suspects attacks you on sight there isn't really need of investigation... Boh.
This mod is really rough around the edges, but it was fun. Bosses would reappear elsewhere for some reason and everyone had the same loot. I did like the randomised gear the adventurers had.
Had to dump the mod though. Crashed midway and then I couldn't boot my save.
For the creator http://forum.step-project.com/topic/6214-howto-use-creationkit-from-mo/ http://www.loverslab.com/topic/40913-creating-new-script-in-creation-kit-error/ hope it helps.
Yes and yes? I have a rusty Fallout 4 mod I've been sitting on that I'm about to dump here, just to get it off the shelf. But in general, that experience (between the terribly glitch-ridden FO4 CK and the laughable mishandling of mod support on Bethesda's end) has been pretty sour, and helped me realize I was pouring a *lot* of time and energy into work which will only ever be seen by a very small handful of people.
I'm also planning to start an "indie game graveyard" of abandoned Unity projects, some of which are pretty interesting even in their unfinished, semi-broken states. When I have time to devote to game design, it's going to be more on the indie end, though what I'd really like to be doing is designing levels and/or narrative elements for a mid-sized studio.
I've played this mod and would like to leave some feedback. The sheer size of the mod makes me feel it definitely deserves some.
This mod is a little rough around the edges, but it's overall fantastic.
The storyline was a bit disjointed (which is not a criticism), and left me very confused as time went on. As I found and read the various written materials included in the mod, things became clearer, one tiny revelation at a time. This was a really nice change from the typical mod's story-telling.
There were several areas I encountered with graphical issues. Places where statics didn't fully meet the ground, or one place (the large dead-end cubby near the rare potion collector) where my screen would flicker to and from completely black. However, I don't think the mod actually added any (or at least not many) custom meshes or textures, which means you were working with vanilla assets. I recognize how difficult it can be to fit together a large mod like this with vanilla stuff. Much of the stuff in vanilla is clearly intended to serve a particular purpose, and repurposing it can be tricky business. So, that end of it was very well done. (I've tried and failed a similar task myself.)
The balance felt a little off, but I have three reasons why this might have been an issue for me more-so than for others, and thus might not be an actual mod issue.
I was level ~40 when I went in. I think it was expecting a lower level. If this is the case, perhaps letting the people level higher with the PC might be in order?
I think I accidentally managed to come in from the wrong direction. I found the place by accident when searching for one of Dawnguard's aetherium pieces. So, I entered using the Rare Potion Collector's area, and I think that might have actually been intended as the exit.
I'm using Wildcat on Legendary (which means both me and my enemies do 4x damage, and I'm a stealth archer, so I could sneak attack most anyone with my bow and eliminate them from a distance easily). But even in close-quarters combat, there wasn't much of a fight for me, usually. I did die several times, still, so it wasn't exactly a cakewalk, it just wasn't exactly difficult, either.
The design of the place was really interesting. The mish-mash of architecture was complete non-sense, and the sheer strangeness of the people I was encountering was completely ridiculous.
Spoiler:
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I even discovered there were multiple instances of what should have been unique NPCs and was super lost (I thought the mod was broken). This theme continued when I discovered a room with what might have been all of the unique NPCs, twice (one group alive and the other group dead). It was obviously completely broken.
And then I started discovering there were real reasons for those things, and they didn't just make sense, they were actually interesting reasons. Discovering those things was a fantastic trip through the readings provided. Realizing these people made sense was a great (slow) surprise.
The readings themselves were very well done. Technical note: the books are missing something, although I don't know what. When I put them onto a bookshelf that auto-aligns the books based on width, it placed all of the books from this mod into overlapping positions like they didn't register as having a width even though they clearly should have. Aside from that (which I didn't even notice until after I was done with the mod), the readings were great. I was discovering several copies of them, which was really confusing (and ties into the previous paragraph). They were well-written and provided insight in decent sized chunks (they didn't reveal too much at a time, but they did each clear up some specific, useful question). I especially loved the misspellings of things the writer shouldn't have known how to spell. (Thu'um comes to mind.)
I really liked that some of the NPCs were placed in unexpected places.
Spoiler:
Show
I remember being outside and sneaking. I could see there was someone that knew I was nearby, and I could see their enemy-dot right where I was, but it still took me a good 5 minutes (I left and came back) before finally doing the obvious thing and looking up. This goes for both outdoors on the fallen trees and indoors on the rafters.
I didn't explore the sewers yet, but I do intend to go back to them. After completing the main portion, I decided to go ahead and finish the Dawnguard quests (which, as I mentioned, I was already doing). But now that I'm done with those, I think I'll go check out the sewers and see if I missed anything.
I mentioned it was a little rough around the edges, and it's true. But it is by no means bad or lacking. It's mostly the relatively minor graphical issues I encountered that I'm referring to. They make it feel like the other things you encounter are also bugs, even though those others are intentional. This is unfortunate because, since they're intentional, they shouldn't make you feel even more like you're playing a bugged mod, but they still do to an extent because you've already encountered some bugs. (Which is to say that once you encounter definite bugs, you're likely to attribute other inconsistencies to bugs as well, even if they're not.) My only real advice here would be to look for and fix as many of those issues where statics leave gaps that you can see through.
Spoiler:
Show
And maybe put in some (probably very minor) note suggesting that space and time aren't functioning quite right near the beginning. (Unless you did, and I actually did just come in from the wrong direction.)
Another minor thing I noticed was that the courier often appeared in mid-air like he'd been placed there and was supposed to drop to the ground on load. Sometimes he did drop, and sometimes his havok never set in, so I found him floating.
Also, you made me sad. I felt so bad for the (in-game) creator of Questhaven, and there was nothing I could do for him.
I'm not sure if you're planning to edit this mod at all, but whether you do or not, this is awesome. Much better than I expected. Thanks for the (enormous amount of) time you put into this.
It's great to know that, even years later, there are people finding this mod who get (and enjoy) what I was going for. Thanks for a novel's worth of first-rate commentary! I'm pretty aware of most of the issues you point out, and am not planning to fix anything at this point - if the mod were to find massive popularity, that would be another story. As it doesn't seem likely that it will explode in popularity anytime soon, I have to focus on other pursuits - modmaking has proven a lot more time-consuming than indie design, and it's hard to feel like you get much respect in return for all that work.
The Rare Potion Collector's cave is indeed the main entrance, though in retrospect that was kind of a strange choice the player into Questhaven. I'm sure a lot of people missed it altogether. Not sure how to fix that book issue, but I'm glad you enjoyed the reading - I put a lot of effort into building all of those characters, but now wonder if I should have spent that time fine-tuning some short stories or other work which appeals to a bigger audience. But glad to hear that someone really enjoyed my work here.
I do have an old FO4 mod I've been sitting on, which I'm planning to publish today. But after that, I'm pretty done with modding. I think I missed the boat on the Skyrim glory days, and from the way Bethesda's been handling its mod-distribution, it doesn't seem likely that things will ever be the same. Oh well!
47 comments
The good thing about there being no quests or scripts is that everything worked pretty nicely. There are a few graphical issues, but still, it was quite an enjoyable mod, thank you.
Level 67 here --- only the Mages gave me any trouble
and not so much if I kept my distance and used my bow.
Main problem for me was --- it was a little dark
but I got through it
Summon/Conjure a Fox Familiar for 15 secs = LOL
It was fun. Thank you ^^
Had to dump the mod though. Crashed midway and then I couldn't boot my save.
http://forum.step-project.com/topic/6214-howto-use-creationkit-from-mo/
http://www.loverslab.com/topic/40913-creating-new-script-in-creation-kit-error/
hope it helps.
I'm also planning to start an "indie game graveyard" of abandoned Unity projects, some of which are pretty interesting even in their unfinished, semi-broken states. When I have time to devote to game design, it's going to be more on the indie end, though what I'd really like to be doing is designing levels and/or narrative elements for a mid-sized studio.
This mod is a little rough around the edges, but it's overall fantastic.
The storyline was a bit disjointed (which is not a criticism), and left me very confused as time went on. As I found and read the various written materials included in the mod, things became clearer, one tiny revelation at a time. This was a really nice change from the typical mod's story-telling.
There were several areas I encountered with graphical issues. Places where statics didn't fully meet the ground, or one place (the large dead-end cubby near the rare potion collector) where my screen would flicker to and from completely black. However, I don't think the mod actually added any (or at least not many) custom meshes or textures, which means you were working with vanilla assets. I recognize how difficult it can be to fit together a large mod like this with vanilla stuff. Much of the stuff in vanilla is clearly intended to serve a particular purpose, and repurposing it can be tricky business. So, that end of it was very well done. (I've tried and failed a similar task myself.)
The balance felt a little off, but I have three reasons why this might have been an issue for me more-so than for others, and thus might not be an actual mod issue.
The design of the place was really interesting. The mish-mash of architecture was complete non-sense, and the sheer strangeness of the people I was encountering was completely ridiculous.
The readings themselves were very well done. Technical note: the books are missing something, although I don't know what. When I put them onto a bookshelf that auto-aligns the books based on width, it placed all of the books from this mod into overlapping positions like they didn't register as having a width even though they clearly should have. Aside from that (which I didn't even notice until after I was done with the mod), the readings were great. I was discovering several copies of them, which was really confusing (and ties into the previous paragraph). They were well-written and provided insight in decent sized chunks (they didn't reveal too much at a time, but they did each clear up some specific, useful question). I especially loved the misspellings of things the writer shouldn't have known how to spell. (Thu'um comes to mind.)
I really liked that some of the NPCs were placed in unexpected places.
I didn't explore the sewers yet, but I do intend to go back to them. After completing the main portion, I decided to go ahead and finish the Dawnguard quests (which, as I mentioned, I was already doing). But now that I'm done with those, I think I'll go check out the sewers and see if I missed anything.
I mentioned it was a little rough around the edges, and it's true. But it is by no means bad or lacking. It's mostly the relatively minor graphical issues I encountered that I'm referring to. They make it feel like the other things you encounter are also bugs, even though those others are intentional. This is unfortunate because, since they're intentional, they shouldn't make you feel even more like you're playing a bugged mod, but they still do to an extent because you've already encountered some bugs. (Which is to say that once you encounter definite bugs, you're likely to attribute other inconsistencies to bugs as well, even if they're not.) My only real advice here would be to look for and fix as many of those issues where statics leave gaps that you can see through.
Another minor thing I noticed was that the courier often appeared in mid-air like he'd been placed there and was supposed to drop to the ground on load. Sometimes he did drop, and sometimes his havok never set in, so I found him floating.
Also, you made me sad. I felt so bad for the (in-game) creator of Questhaven, and there was nothing I could do for him.
I'm not sure if you're planning to edit this mod at all, but whether you do or not, this is awesome. Much better than I expected. Thanks for the (enormous amount of) time you put into this.
The Rare Potion Collector's cave is indeed the main entrance, though in retrospect that was kind of a strange choice the player into Questhaven. I'm sure a lot of people missed it altogether. Not sure how to fix that book issue, but I'm glad you enjoyed the reading - I put a lot of effort into building all of those characters, but now wonder if I should have spent that time fine-tuning some short stories or other work which appeals to a bigger audience. But glad to hear that someone really enjoyed my work here.
I do have an old FO4 mod I've been sitting on, which I'm planning to publish today. But after that, I'm pretty done with modding. I think I missed the boat on the Skyrim glory days, and from the way Bethesda's been handling its mod-distribution, it doesn't seem likely that things will ever be the same. Oh well!