RPGWatch Feature - Nehrim Retrospective

Yep, I know. Didn't like it. Fate=No Choices, just consequences.
 
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I just felt obliged to reply to your comment, crpgnut:

I'm one of the two writers from SureAI, and I just wanted to encourage you to take a look at Enderal, even though you didn't like Nehrim's story. We were aware of its linearity and we've changed that within our boundaries - You have to be aware, though, that constructing a TC of Nehrims (and Enderals) scale is a massive undertaking. Even with Enderals storyline (Which is very different from its feeling, its themes and its style), which allows for a lot more freedom of choice, we still feel constrained by the restrictions of… well, of being a modding team with very few members. But while I can't guarantee that you'll like Enderals story, you should definitely give it a try. :)

Ah, and one more thing: We're going for a complete, professional English synchronization.

Thanks for your comments, your feedback and thanks to Fluent for the great article!

Nicolas Samuel (SureAI)
 
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Yep, I know. Didn't like it. Fate=No Choices, just consequences.
I completely understand some of us like linear games so it's not a problem, but others don't.:)
Ah, and one more thing: We're going for a complete, professional English synchronization.

Thanks for your comments, your feedback and thanks to Fluent for the great article!

Nicolas Samuel (SureAI)
That's good to hear I can't wait to see the final product. Thank you for all your hard work past, present, and future.:salute:
 
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Well, I'd be crazy not to at least look at it, if it's free. Like I said, you guys are the masters of level design. I had fun with Nehrim till I had to start following the story.
 
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I should point out that I was the big Nehrim guy when it was first released. I was the Watch guinea pig since I'm such a huge TES fan. I enjoyed the game a lot at first and was helping folks get it running, etc. I just got tired of it when I had to release dipshit from his well-deserved exile :)


http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11379&highlight=Nehrim
 
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@Nicolas Samuel

Thank you for stopping by and keep up the good work.

Together with Feline Fuelled Games SureAI is one of the best modding teams I've seen so far. I'm following your work from the very beginning and promoted it here at RPGWatch a bit.

... und ich freue mich schon auf Enderal :)
 
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Level scaling isn't a terrible thing in itself, especially for an open world game. Level locked content kinda defeats the purpose of an open world, so it's very much a subjective preference. Some people want to feel all powerful and therefore they want to go back and stomp on some bandit's face. I know this is a huge deal for some people, so YMMV.

The first thing I noticed was how the world in Oblivion wasn't full of valuable items lying around everywhere like it was in Morrowind which, with the inclusion of trainers, made the game seem like one big joke.

I see you point, I just don't agree. To me it's quite the opposite. What's the point of an open world when I still can't get myself killed by taking a wrong turn, or when it's impossible to find great loot until my level is high enough? Or when Dragons are just as easy to kill when you are level four as when you are level 20, it takes away all sense of character growth and acomplishments. Sure, it means that if you know the game you can get a glass armor an hour into the game (Morrowind) or a Power Armor when you're level 2 (Fallout 2). To me, that's not a problem, because it won't happen your first playthrough unless your intentionally reading forum posts with spoilers to make the game as easily as possible.

We just have to agree to disagree about level scaling.
 
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Level locked content kinda defeats the purpose of an open world, so it's very much a subjective preference.

It is subjective, sure. But when you've conquered the Arena at second or so level in vanilla-non modded Oblivion, I think the silly odious existence of level scaling will really become apparent to you. The almost inherent lack of variance in challenge within such a system simply isn't particularly enjoyable, at least for me. It also potentially diminishes the joy of exploration, for you know what you find won't be especially interesting.

But seriously, I can't believe anyone would try to make a positive argument in favour of level scaling in a thread based on a fantastic overhaul mod that simply annihilates that system. :)
 
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I avoided Nehrim for a few years because of the German voice acting. When I finally tried it out I almost smacked myself for avoiding it once I got used to reading the English subtitles.

Nehrim blows Oblivion out of the water in every conceivable way. The environment, the leveling system, the magic system... I actually really liked the story too even though a lot of folks seem to dislike it.
 
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I see you point, I just don't agree. To me it's quite the opposite. What's the point of an open world when I still can't get myself killed by taking a wrong turn, or when it's impossible to find great loot until my level is high enough? Or when Dragons are just as easy to kill when you are level four as when you are level 20, it takes away all sense of character growth and acomplishments. Sure, it means that if you know the game you can get a glass armor an hour into the game (Morrowind) or a Power Armor when you're level 2 (Fallout 2). To me, that's not a problem, because it won't happen your first playthrough unless your intentionally reading forum posts with spoilers to make the game as easily as possible.

We just have to agree to disagree about level scaling.

That we do. I just don't share the criticism that has been voiced ITT, like that you have to keep track of what skills you practiced. In Oblivion, contrary to Morrowind (IIRC) you can just 'wait' or use fast travel to replenish your health and magicka, so the only reason for sleeping in a bed is to raise your level. Therefore, you can put off leveling up until you've raised those skills with the attributes you favor. You only need to really write that down if you're an obsessive-compulsive powergamer.
I also doubt that I'll run into trouble at some point just because enemies are scaled. If you play the game naturally, you'll gather enough ressources to be up to that challenge. Of course, if you put Acrobatics as a major skill and just jump on the spot for hours to level up, you may run into trouble with enemies using high-level gear. But that's the way only a trained chimp would play.

But seriously, I can't believe anyone would try to make a positive argument in favour of level scaling in a thread based on a fantastic overhaul mod that simply annihilates that system. :)

I also said that gameplay/ writing in vanilla Oblivion was good. That doesn't mean this mod is somehow inferior. Like I said, level scaling or no are just two ways to achieve the same thing.
 
you can just 'wait' or use fast travel to replenish your health and magicka, so the only reason for sleeping in a bed is to raise your level. Therefore, you can put off leveling up until you've raised those skills with the attributes you favor. You only need to really write that down if you're an obsessive-compulsive powergamer.
Granted, I am a minmaxer and if I waste character stats I feel bad. It's like...chosing a race on character creation you absolutely hate after the first hour and then always have the feeling you should start over.

But that aside: The "natural" way would be to rest whenever you get the message that you get a level up. But I think you agree that this is nothing you should do.
So instead you would save, rest, check your gains and load again.
But if you accumulate more skill gains which you would need, you also waste potential. Thing is, chosing an ability you would use most like a melee skill for a fighter is the worst thing you can do in Oblivion.
Nehrim fixed that.
Well, don't want to go into detail here, after all this thread is about Nehrim. If you want to dig deeper into the leveling problem you might want to read this: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Leveling#The_Leveling_Problem
 
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I also doubt that I'll run into trouble at some point just because enemies are scaled. If you play the game naturally, you'll gather enough ressources to be up to that challenge.

The problem to me isn't the challenge, I agree that the kind of minmaxing Kordanor suggests isn't necessary at all. On the contrary, my first run of Oblivion I didn't even know the mechanics for attributes at level up, I just rested whenever I got the message. No, one of the problems with level scaling is rather the lack of challenge, I never have to run away from an encounter, everything is "just right", which to me is just wrong. I dislike the scaling in almost every game I've seen it, like Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 etc. I'm aware that loads of games have level scaling, even Baldurs Gate spawns more enemies when you have a higher level. But I never knew that when I played it, it wasn't obvious to me. I still would have chosen to not have it given the choice though.

The whole idea with level scaling is to give the players a consistent challenge, never to hard, never to easy. Well I want it to be "too" hard if I try to take on a higher level enemy early in the game, and if I minmax and know about all the places I can grab good gear early I'm fine with it being too easy.
 
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I think a mixture of both is the best compromise. Like a "fixed world" where you don't find skaling on the one side, and on the other side random encounters, or spawned mobs in a previously cleared areas and maybe mobs in the storyline which are scaled.
I think enemies "thrown" at you should be engaging and not annoying. While that is true for realtime games like skyrim, it's even more true in turn based games, where boring fights also eat lots of time.
 
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But that aside: The "natural" way would be to rest whenever you get the message that you get a level up. But I think you agree that this is nothing you should do.
So instead you would save, rest, check your gains and load again.

Uhm... no. The natural way would be one of two things:

1) you simply live with your stat gains. This is the option for roleplayers I guess, because it really reflects what your character has focused on doing.

2) Keep a broad overview of what you're doing and adjust as needed. Like, if I spent a lot of time dungeon crawling and I've therefore mostly accumulated points in heavy armor, blade and block, and I get the message that I can level up; I might take a break, go to a city and chat up random people to gain more Personality. It's what I've been doing and it works well.

Well, don't want to go into detail here, after all this thread is about Nehrim. If you want to dig deeper into the leveling problem you might want to read this: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Leveling#The_Leveling_Problem

quote from that article:

The fact that monsters and other enemies level up at the same time as your character leads to the "leveling problem". If you make poor choices in leveling up, your character will become relatively weaker than the monsters as your level progresses. Therefore a given situation in the game will become harder rather than easier, even though you would expect the same situation to be easier for higher-level characters.

Two things:

The first thing isn't really a huge problem IMO. Poor choices can cripple your character? Fine. Skyrim practically doesn't allow for bad choices, but I don't like that kind of herp derp simplification. I'd also argue that these "bad choices" will mostly be made by novice players; as soon as you understand how the system works and adjust to that, you won't run into that problem. Unless, like I said, you're 100% into roleplaying a character, but then you'll probably take this in stride too.

The second thing, well, some games don't get easier as you progress, but harder. I personally don't mind that (if I like the game), especially if good choices enable you to maintain the same level of difficulty. The wording in the article is a little off; of course, a higher level character will/ would have an easier time dealing with a weaker enemy. It's just that you don't encounter that enemy anymore. So, it's not really "the same situation".

But I also didn't want to derail the thread. Carry on Nehrim people ;)
 
The two points you mentioned are what I actually meant - you would just rest whenever you get a level up and then maybe after 10 levels or so you might start wondering why it's becoming harder instead of easier.

Just one more thing I want to throw in: I loved playing Avernum on torment. Avernum also offers an open world with no scaling. But while the world is open. on torment the enemies are so hard, that you really have to consider where you go and which battle you face next. Several times I tried to beat a battle for an hour and left, just to come back a couple of hours later with higher characters and try again. And I think that is very rewarding and feels like an accomplishment. This feeling of challenge, accomplishment and progress is missing for the most part in a completely scaling world.
 
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To me, the sandbox nature of Oblivion makes the difference here. If I hit brick walls with a certain character, fine. I mean, there are still enough loopholes... you could farm ingredients for alchemy to make money. After all, there are trainers for everything. There's also the cheap way out by using the difficulty slider, but I'd say that's not what most people will want to do.
 
Thanks for the article Fluent. I reinstalled oblivion and downloaded Nehrim for the first time. So far I'm really enjoying it. I like the original Oblivion game, but I really love having a fresh new world and story to explore.

If anybody else was foolish enough to buy Oblivion from Direct 2 Drive back when that was actually a thing, you have to download a crack to get it to work with Nehrim, just a crack that lets you run the game without the CD.
 
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Thanks for the article Fluent. I reinstalled oblivion and downloaded Nehrim for the first time. So far I'm really enjoying it. I like the original Oblivion game, but I really love having a fresh new world and story to explore.

No problem. Just wanted to shed some light on what I think is a phenomenal game.
 
I really need to get around to trying Nehrim one of these days. You guys make it sound pretty damn good. :)


It is subjective, sure. But when you've conquered the Arena at second or so level in vanilla-non modded Oblivion, I think the silly odious existence of level scaling will really become apparent to you. The almost inherent lack of variance in challenge within such a system simply isn't particularly enjoyable, at least for me. It also potentially diminishes the joy of exploration, for you know what you find won't be especially interesting.

But seriously, I can't believe anyone would try to make a positive argument in favour of level scaling in a thread based on a fantastic overhaul mod that simply annihilates that system. :)

+1

I don't know how anyone could try to claim that the degree of level-scaling in Oblivion was ok. It obviously wasn't for most people, and that's why we haven't seen it since. Vanilla Oblivion was, imo, the worst of the main TES games by far.
 
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It's ok for casual/mainstream gamers who don't know what they're missing with level-scaling. I'd argue that's actually most people - or at least half of the audience for Oblivion and Skyrim. Otherwise, Bethesda wouldn't bother putting it in all of their games - not to mention Bioware and all those other major developers.

Believe it or not, Oblivion became a huge hit partly because a lot of people who'd otherwise have been turned off by challenge and hardship were able to enjoy the other trappings of an immersive fantasy simulator - without being killed by their own curiosity because they weren't prepared.

It's really down to appreciating how people differ.

Personally, I loathe level-scaling with all my heart - but I realise that I'm an enthusiast gamer - and I'm invested in gaming and RPGs on an entirely different level than the average mainstream RPG fan.
 
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