Why Acheron does not prevent every death This is a rather controversial point of Acheron's design that I've seen people being confused about, so I want to give some more insight to why I decided to not prevent every death in the game per se, and there are in fact multiple reasons for this:
1. Preserving the gameplay loop Killmoves in particular are a great example here. I believe that having your throat cut open, having your head removed from your shoulders or your flesh being burned to cinders is something that you should not survive. Killmoves are, by design, a cinematic execution, and not having an execution execute you is missing the point of an execution and creates inconsistencies, disrupting your (hopefully) fluent gameplay loop by making you guess if the guy you just impaled is actually dead or not. I do not want to disrupt your killing spree with that question, I want you to instinctively know, that your target is in fact dead.
2. Not intervening with other mod designs Because any author that puts "Player.Kill()" into their script wants you to die when that line executes, maybe they soft locked you and want to force you into going back to the last "checkpoint". Maybe it's not the player that's been killed and that actors death mandatory to progress your story. Fundamentally, if another mod author puts something in their script that causes someone to die for any reason, then I assume the author explicitly wants that actor to die. If the death is not intended, then the respective script is faulty and should be corrected. Either of those 2 instances is not something Acheron wants to intervene with, which is why Acheron ignores any scripted damage/death. It ensure compatibility with other mods.
3. Preventing soft locks Lastly, even in the Vanilla game, there are instances where you enter a room and the door behind you closes, you can no longer escape and are forced to fight an enemy to the death, some of those instances also include a papyrus script running in the background for the entire duration of the fight. What do you think happens when Acheron prevents your death during such fights? It may even teleport you out of the Arena. The door is shut, the papyrus script keeps running, you have no way of going back into the arena. You're forced into either using the console, or accept such a soft lock - and the potential consequence of a papyrus script eating resources until a new game is started (said script may even include side effects that hinder further progression in other ways, like a DoT, or debuffs). Obviously, neither of these solutions are optimal.
Skyrim, fundamentally, is not designed to support death alternative mods. How exactly a game treats "death" - how it treats your Hp reaching 0 - is something that is fundamental to a game's design. While in Elden Ring, a death is merely a soft reset taking you to your last resting place, in Binding of Isaac and Hades it's essentially a perma death. In Skyrim? It's a hard reset to your last save, that's just how it is and that's how a lot of quests - both Vanilla and modded - expect the game to behave. It isn't about whether or not there is a modder out there who can just remove death entirely, it is in fact possible to achieve that today, the earliest of DA mods are doing just that. The irony here is that the one thing that sets Acheron apart from other DA mods, is that Acheron has the ability to choose when to let you die and when to rescue you. At the end of the day, you have to choose between two evils: Use a DA mod that prevents every death and thus might softlock/break your game, or use one that not always has an alternative to offer you.
So... Does anyone have an answer to the "load data error" problem? I have every requirement correctly installed and no missing masters errors in my game.
Hey, awesome work reviving this concept from the dead (pun intended). The mod really works great.
One thing though, I can't seem to get this to work with using controller only. The mod seems to require mouse input. Is there a way to work it to where I can use just a controller?
Would it be possible to add an option to only disable killmoves while hunter's pride is active? It's the only defeat condition I use, and I like to have killmoves enabled when I'm not trying to defeat an enemy, so it'd be nice to not have to go into a menu whenever I enable hunter's pride to turn off the killmoves.
I regularly find defeated NPCs at random, like when I enter a area there are always some npc in cities that are in a defeated state. Can you just add a debug option to fix the defeated state without the use of healing potions. Thanks
I am having an issue where when I am a vampire lord everyone I kill with vampire drain is put into the defeat stance. I have hunters pride turned off, and it doesn't happen when I am in my human form or when I use my claws as a vampire lord, I don't know if this is intended, but I cannot find a setting in the mod menu to change it and turning off acheron is the only fix I found for it so far.
I am having an issue where when trying to start the game, a message pops up titled "Acheron Load Data" where it says "some game objects could not be loaded. This usually due to a required game plugin not being loaded in your game. Please ensure that you have all requirements installed." I have all of the requirements installed and this is occurring after an issued I had where I basically had to reinstall several mods. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated
I did a brawl with an NPC and beat him, but after that he remained defeated and I could no longer talk to him. Is there a way to fix this? EDIT: it fixed itself. Now there is another issue. Whenever an enemy beats me, he doesnt kill me at all. He just stares at me while im down, kind of makes the game easy since I don't die. What should I do?
387 comments
This is a rather controversial point of Acheron's design that I've seen people being confused about, so I want to give some more insight to why I decided to not prevent every death in the game per se, and there are in fact multiple reasons for this:
1. Preserving the gameplay loop
Killmoves in particular are a great example here. I believe that having your throat cut open, having your head removed from your shoulders or your flesh being burned to cinders is something that you should not survive. Killmoves are, by design, a cinematic execution, and not having an execution execute you is missing the point of an execution and creates inconsistencies, disrupting your (hopefully) fluent gameplay loop by making you guess if the guy you just impaled is actually dead or not. I do not want to disrupt your killing spree with that question, I want you to instinctively know, that your target is in fact dead.
2. Not intervening with other mod designs
Because any author that puts "Player.Kill()" into their script wants you to die when that line executes, maybe they soft locked you and want to force you into going back to the last "checkpoint". Maybe it's not the player that's been killed and that actors death mandatory to progress your story. Fundamentally, if another mod author puts something in their script that causes someone to die for any reason, then I assume the author explicitly wants that actor to die. If the death is not intended, then the respective script is faulty and should be corrected. Either of those 2 instances is not something Acheron wants to intervene with, which is why Acheron ignores any scripted damage/death. It ensure compatibility with other mods.
3. Preventing soft locks
Lastly, even in the Vanilla game, there are instances where you enter a room and the door behind you closes, you can no longer escape and are forced to fight an enemy to the death, some of those instances also include a papyrus script running in the background for the entire duration of the fight. What do you think happens when Acheron prevents your death during such fights? It may even teleport you out of the Arena. The door is shut, the papyrus script keeps running, you have no way of going back into the arena.
You're forced into either using the console, or accept such a soft lock - and the potential consequence of a papyrus script eating resources until a new game is started (said script may even include side effects that hinder further progression in other ways, like a DoT, or debuffs). Obviously, neither of these solutions are optimal.
Skyrim, fundamentally, is not designed to support death alternative mods. How exactly a game treats "death" - how it treats your Hp reaching 0 - is something that is fundamental to a game's design. While in Elden Ring, a death is merely a soft reset taking you to your last resting place, in Binding of Isaac and Hades it's essentially a perma death. In Skyrim? It's a hard reset to your last save, that's just how it is and that's how a lot of quests - both Vanilla and modded - expect the game to behave. It isn't about whether or not there is a modder out there who can just remove death entirely, it is in fact possible to achieve that today, the earliest of DA mods are doing just that. The irony here is that the one thing that sets Acheron apart from other DA mods, is that Acheron has the ability to choose when to let you die and when to rescue you.
At the end of the day, you have to choose between two evils: Use a DA mod that prevents every death and thus might softlock/break your game, or use one that not always has an alternative to offer you.
One thing though, I can't seem to get this to work with using controller only. The mod seems to require mouse input. Is there a way to work it to where I can use just a controller?
Any help is appreciated and thank you.
EDIT: it fixed itself. Now there is another issue. Whenever an enemy beats me, he doesnt kill me at all. He just stares at me while im down, kind of makes the game easy since I don't die. What should I do?