The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Yeah, I think there's still small mods and updates occasionally, but for the most part the big mods I use are still the same.

It really depends. Something like the Static Mesh Improvement Mod hasn't been updated in years, but what it does nobody wants to replicate, so it's inevitable. But landscape and plant and weather mods? Those change a ton and get entirely replaced over time.

Seems animation mods have taken a huge leap in quality, too.

And that's not counting gameplay mods, where I haven't even started looking but that'll have to be done. Especially as my playthroughs before were comparatively downplayed immersion-heavy.

I always mean to install some good magic mods, but then I end up stealth-y sniping (again) and it was wasted effort.

I'm sure there's a mod to explicitly prevent you from being a stealth archer if you have such poor control.

I just find that too boring to do.

pffff stealth archer

pffffff

I've never had any desire to be one,I've always leaned more on being a great sword wielder

Oh, LOD generation, what a slow process you are. But worth it. Especially now that grass LOD is also a thing we can do...

I forgot how long it takes to just do the whole "large-scale texture and lighting" part of modding. Not even gotten round to touching any character-specific stuff yet.

The output is gorgeous, though.

Edited by RainehDaze on Sep 14th 2021 at 8:36:33 PM

Took a week, but I finished my mod setup. Well, almost—I want to grab a few more miscellaneous SKSE-based bug fixes, some casting animations for my character, and some in-game tweaks to stamina usage...

But now there's some actual gameplay in the fighting, a third person view with lockon and good camera behaviour, and of course tons of graphics and lighting improvements. End total... ~160-170 mods as reported by Vortex? And everything seems to be stable. At over 30fps! Probably 60 if it weren't so heavily loaded with postprocessing, Dyndolod for the grass too, and at 4k.

Very very nice. With a well behaving camera, who knew that was possible in a Bethesda game.

SmoothCam (with a good preset) and True Directional Movement are super important for any 3rd-person play, I feel, even before you get into the thick of animation and combat mods. Just... third person that actually feels good? No janky, twitchy camera with terrible aim.

Edited by RainehDaze on Sep 19th 2021 at 4:43:03 PM

I... I feel like that introduces problems that only ES has been able to really deal with....

Lock on? Who the heck would deliberately gimp their system by introducing a camera that would require you to lock on just to be able to aim your attacks? One of the greatest weaknesses in the Dark Souls system is that you can't back away from a ranged enemy with your shield up. It's the one weakness skyrim doesn't have

... In what possible scenario in Skyrim am I backing away from an enemy shooting at me whilst holding block? I can't even think of a single situation in Dark Souls where I've wanted to do that and not sprint/dodge the hell away from there instead of slowly backing up†. "I can't do a thing I have literally never, under any situation, considered to be a viable or necessary tactic in combat" isn't my idea of a huge loss.

As for target lock-on, for melee attacks it's more about keeping the camera in third person trained on the enemy? Playing in third person otherwise feels super disorienting. You can play entirely without locking on in Dark Souls or Bloodborne, if you so choose (and I could probably automatic locking on in MCM here), and it's useful in Pv P scenarios, but then you reintroduce camera jitter and adjustment that's particularly unpleasant in third person.

If you mean "You can't freely re-aim attacks well after they're started", I've already got many, many other things working to suppress that and the AI tendency to 180 mid-swing. I want dodging and positioning to matter, not everyone effortlessly tracking.

† Also, if you hold block in Dark Souls then you'll stay facing the enemy whilst you move away...? And unlike in Dark Souls here I can control my lockon range so that anyone shooting at me is still targeted so I can do this...?

You have left me very confused because on further recollection, I can do it except in the situation there is an enemy shooting at me I can't lock on to, and I cannot think of a single area in any Dark Souls game (or even Bloodborne, not that its shields are useful) where this would be the slightest bit helpful. If something is shooting at me, I either want to advance towards it or run past it, not slowly back up.

Edited by RainehDaze on Sep 19th 2021 at 7:29:29 PM

That's the thing, you HAVE to lock on to aim your shield, and the lockon distance is abysmal. I can't tell you how many times I've held up my shield to move back, only to suddenly turn around and wiggle my character's butt at someone because I stepped an inch too far and the lockon broke, and because all the enemies in Dark Souls are roughly the size of small islands, I'm still within reach of their absurdly long weapons. which I then catch with my spine, rather than my shield. Or I'm trying to back down a long, narrow bridge/battlement/corridor, and there's an archer at the end. And enemies have crawled on to the bridge or whatever after having been clinging on the sides.

Skyrim's shield/sword system always made sooo much more sense to me. You face towards what you're looking at, and you point your shield toward the thing you are looking at. You attack what you are looking at. You never get surprise by something your character is clearly facing, and yet somehow doesn't see, because your camera doesn't face the same direction as their face/

That weird camera mod is like playing a FPS, only you use your WASD to aim your gun

Dark Souls isn't actually difficult, it's just jank as hell. The hitbox detection and dodge/block system is great, but traversal and camera controls are like, the first few Resident Evil games and it's terrible.

I'm also perplexed that the mod refers to that camera style as "modern".

That camera style is so old! The Souls games started using that weird camera like ten plus years ago. I'm pretty sure the pre-angelina jolie Laura Croft games used it too.

Meanwhile, God of War PS 4 came out in 2018, using a "aim where the camera is aiming" camera

I get that FPS-cam is also pretty old, but FPS-cam is good.

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on Sep 20th 2021 at 3:02:53 AM

... You don't have to lock on to aim your shield? Like, your entire premise here is that "you can only aim if you can lock on". But... that's not true? If you don't lock on in Dark Souls (or indeed this), then you attack and lock on in the direction that your character is facing. There's entire Pv P tricks in DS based on this idea and how the weapons/shields have defined hitboxes, where some attacks will hit around shields if you instead aim for somewhere beside or past your opponent.

There's nothing weird about the camera mod; it does what you normally want in a third person perspective: left makes you go left on screen, not left-as-relative-to-your-character, nor does your character's perspective dictate camera perspective. That's just jank. It's messy. It works like Dark Souls or Nioh or Devil May Cry (well, 5, before that had a lot of weird fixed-perspective rooms) or Monster Hunter World. Third person behaves, it doesn't jitter, ranged attacks in third person aim relatively well. That's... a lot of modern things. Hell, from what I've heard it's not like other recent games like Ghost of Tsushima or Sekiro were hugely different.†

First person works, sure, but I don't want to play in first person and squander all the potential of animation and clothing mods and character customisation. It also works much worse with dodging; gets pretty disorienting. I'm not getting to get advanced first-person directional-based attacking and parrying (I don't think anyone's implemented that in Skyrim in a playable way), so I'd rather have third person with positioning importance and dodging.

As for Dark Souls and no lock on:

Bow only, no lock on. It's obviously a daft challenge run, but I'm really not sure what camera control you think the DS games have. Lockon being too short is a nuisance, but again—I can control that here (it's customisable!), so it's not like "this flaw in the implementation Dark Souls has" is an inherent design fault. <_>

† It is, I'm pretty sure, a refinement of the Ocarina of Time camera control. I agree it's not "modern" as in "new", but it's "modern" as in "really common in third person action games and refined to provide good third-person control". Whereas Skyrim's default third person is "First Person but the camera's floating behind you and getting disorienting".

Edited by RainehDaze on Sep 20th 2021 at 9:11:42 AM

Pressing left turns your whole body left. s moves your whole body to face towards camera. Meaning the big scary thing you're moving away from can stick its spear in your back, rather than your shield, which your character holds uselessly away from the enemy. Skyrim's camera is just, like, FPS camera. You input "left", your character strafes leftwards. You input "down", your character moonwalks. These are normal things to do. You can still move left, right, etc.

You have played Dark Souls yes? Then you know you have no control over which direction your shield is pointed. You can only point the shield directly in front of character, UNLESS you use lockon.

This makes, for instance, Sen's Fortress, fake difficult.

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on Sep 20th 2021 at 3:18:56 AM

I've played Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, Dark Souls III, Bloodborne, Nioh, and Nioh 2, for third person soulslikes off the top of my head. Not counting that I also own the PS4 version of DS3, I played that one alone quite a lot.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you describing the unpatched DS 1 mouse+keyboard implementation? Because all of the controller implementations use left = strafe left, right = strafe right, back = move back etc. I think DS 2 and DS 3 use that by default for their WASD actions, too, but I haven't checked in ages. This mod functions like the controller one and, indeed, how every Soulslike plays in my way too much time in them.

Though if they ever worked like you're describing, I guess they were patched too? Seriously, I don't remember Dark Souls ever having the Tank Controls you're describing.

Edited by RainehDaze on Sep 20th 2021 at 9:24:32 AM

Are we reading the same page? The page I see says:

D - Run Right

A - Run Left

This is not Strafing. My understanding of strafing in video-games is that means your guns/weapons/shields remain pointed towards whatever your camera is looking at, and your character walks to their side, like a crab.

This is, the character spins on their heels and runs left or runs right. IF they raise their shield, the shield is also pointed left, or pointed right. If I back away from an enemy for any reason, and break lock-on, my character whips around, exposing their back. I have this problem in both Dark Souls and the Demon's Souls remake

If other Souls games fixed that, if the shield is always pointed at the same direction of the camera in subsequent games, I need to go ahead and get them, because my chiefest grievance would have been resolved.

I misspoke when I compared DS cam to Resident Evil Cam. Dark Souls doesn't have tank controls; it just has no strafe-walk.

I like fallout New Vegas's melee because if you back away while facing your enemy, your enemy's melee attack would miss you, and then you could attack while they finish their attack animation.

Skyrim, as well, because you can always back up while attacking. No luck with getting the enemy to miss, though, because of the janky Skyrim hitboxes.

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on Sep 20th 2021 at 3:41:28 AM

If you block and have lockon, it's strafing. If you're not locked on or committed into some animation, it's free movement. This is the advantage of a third person camera: you are not beholden to acting like a first-person camera and can take advantage of running around and dodging without the camera itself needing to completely reposition. That's the point of having TDM+SmoothCam: the camera and character movement are intentionally decoupled.

If I wanted a first-person camera, I'd be playing in first-person: third person is a terrible perspective to play first person from, so I don't see any reason to emulate it. Your viewpoint is set back from its point of rotation, which means wild swings can be way more disorienting, and if things start moving quickly then tracking them gets equally messy. Overcorrect to adjust and...

Your chief problem honestly feels like lockon range is too low? Since... I cannot think of a single possible situation where I want to block an enemy and move sideways and also don't want to be focused on that enemy. Not the inability to strafe whilst freely moving around—that's actually closer to tank controls than anything, you've just added strafing and moved turning over to the mouse/right analogue stick.

(As for difficulty, Soulslikes aren't difficult because of the camera; I'd think after one thousand hours in the genre I'd get the camera behaviour down. The camera was probably the most intuitive thing for me, it's how I expect third person to behave anyway. Difficulty comes from animation locking and commitment to attacks; if I start something then it's very unlikely that I can target another point or aim elsewhere, nor can I cancel it after a given point. Doing something at the wrong time is therefore dangerous.)

This is part of my modlist. The full list includes the aforementioned camera stuff (not actually necessary, but dodging with unlocked third person gets disorienting) along with various animation fixes and tweaks, along with AI behaviour and something that alters all weapon hitboxes in the game. It's not perfect, but it's way closer.

A big problem isn't just that the hitboxes are jank, it's that they have huge attack cones and the enemy can pivot mid-swing. So, you can't dodge anything for shit. Positioning is irrelevant and it's more a pure RPG stat contest.

Edited by RainehDaze on Sep 20th 2021 at 9:44:25 AM

I played with a zweihander and usually carry the wolf ring. I can tank at least one hit from most enemies, and the pancaker takes care of making sure they can't hit me again XD. For me, timing was never the problem, and wasn't usually very hard. For me, aim was the problem. So many times I swung my sword and Ornstein takes a mocking little step to the left and my mile-long sword whiffs by him.

and the jankiness of needing lockon always bothered me. I honestly wish I could reliably aim my weapon by just looking at the thing i want to hit. decoupling the camera from the character means that the character might be facing slightly off.

I never had a problem with tracking enemy movement in skyrim, except maybe for the teleporting hagraven. But I expected that. I've also never had a problem being disoriented in Skyrim. I have the Moral Peril(?) mod, which shrinks attack cones to be more reasonable, and stops enemies from tracking movement after the attack animation plays, so wolves can't bite you after the camera clearly shows they missed. I also got a mod that adds a little dash in the direction you're moving.

I extremely don't like when third person and first person play differently in the same game, which is why this mod perplexes me so much. I didn't realize that people could like it. But I suppose if the native camera was literally making you sick, that would make the game more bearable to play.

decoupling the camera essentially means you are now aiming your weapon with WSAD, doesn't it?

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on Sep 20th 2021 at 3:52:55 AM

I never had any problem with the lockon. Hell, I don't need lockon to hit an enemy, sometimes it was easier to toggle it on or off to reset facing. Like it's necessary for magic and ranged attacks if you aren't a masochist, but some bosses actually get easier by disabling it as you can deal with their movements—you just need to understand how the camera and character movement works. Having the character controlled by one stick (or wasd as the case may be) and the camera by another is great for those situations. Ornstein has nothing on Friede or Lady Maria. An example that comes up a lot in some of those fights is rolling through an attack but then wanting to turn around faster than the camera will adjust (or Friede is literally invisible), so pull backwards on the stick to hit where they're going to be when your attack fires.

Mortal Enemies is the mod you're thinking of, and it's one of those included in the list. Well... it should be, I apparently forgot to activate it whilst I was testing it earlier. Derp. There's some others that affect NP Cs more specifically and force them to keep to their heading (Ultimate Combat, IIRC?), too.

Ah, but they're not the same game from my perspective. If I'm playing in first person, I'm after a different experience from if I'm playing in third person. Particularly in something like modded Skyrim, where my choice of mods and balance decisions is going to be heavily affected by how the camera controls.

It doesn't make me sick, since I don't get motion sickness, but I know people who really can't take it; I just think it's really unpleasant and jerky and from experience before these mods released it just gets kind of unpleasant if there's lots of enemies and stagger effects etc. I'd rather just even it out to something approximating a pure-third person experience.

If not locked on, yup. Same as Dark Souls plays.

The one downside is a loss of directional power attacks but there's like one quest in the game that uses them, and the perk effects are just... meh anyway. I've got better things to do with combat than invest in RNG power attack side effects.

A thing I have noted is that there's basically two ways to change Skyrim's combat: either you heavily mod the combat mechanics and scripts, to make it more driven by player choice and action, or very perk driven, where you focus more on overall strategy and character design. Middle grounds exist, naturally, but I'm more on the gameplay side. Blame Morrowind and Oblivion for predating perks; skills should mostly be for damage scaling etc.

Edited by RainehDaze on Sep 20th 2021 at 10:06:02 AM

See, I regularly go back and forth between the two view points all the time, and do combat in both views. I assumed everyone played that way.

Skyrim as it is, plays like the Fallout games, like the new God of War, and like some third person shooters, like Fortnite.

Some shooters use the no-strafe when not locked on, like Watch Dogs, and Grand theft Auto. Aiming is a nightmare, because if you are running to the side, your character has to take the time to turn around before aiming the gun.

I tend to dislike the way that feels, and only tolerate it because I enjoy something else the game offers so immensely.

I'll be honest, you've sort of blown my mind showing me that people would choose that kind of camera system

If I'm in first person, I want to strafe: my viewpoint is my character's viewpoint and I'm going to get really damn confused if they're facing some other way than the camera is showing.

If I'm in third person, I want the character to go that way: my viewpoint is the camera and my directions are given relative to that. Strafing, when doable, should be some other way (I'll need to look into if I can add dedicated strafe keys, now I think about it).

The reasoning is thus: if I'm in third person, I can keep an eye on threats at all times. Maybe they'll telegraph some attack I need to respond to. Maybe they're just shooting me rapidly. So, I don't want to strafe slowly, I want to run like hell to the left if they're chasing me down with some attack or there's some environmental hazard I want to avoid. Wanting to specifically strafe as opposed to moving left is less common. Similarly, I might want to attack something that came in unexpectedly from one side or got summoned, but I don't want to lose sight of the major threat.

Edited by RainehDaze on Sep 20th 2021 at 10:12:55 AM

That makes sense. There's not really a significant difference in Skyrim's run speed vs Strafe speed. You can't sprint while strafing, sure, but I never had much of a problem turning the camera and sprinting away when needed. I guess combat style matters too. I prefered daggers, conjuration, and archery.

Archery is outright better in first person. Daggers require you to pick one target and focus on them, and conjuration means i always have someone watching my back if I flee, so I guess I never noticed situations where decoupling might benefirt me.

Typically if I need to flee an enemy, it hasn't helped me to watch the enemy, I need to watch where I'm running so I don't get stuck on some scenery. I know the enemy will be somewhere behind me and I can just look back if i need to check up on him.

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on Sep 20th 2021 at 4:40:38 AM

Maybe the solution is to have two different terms for the two different styles of 3rd-person camera, so that it doesn't become confusing who's talking about which (and for games to give both as potential options for playing 3rd-person). The two styles are definitely different from each other in terms of gameplay and personal experience, and I'm not gonna say one is better than the other because you've both made great points here.

• 3rd-person OTS: A 3rd-person camera that follows the head and body movement of the character like a 1st-person camera does, just from a perspective behind and above the character. It's not quite Over-The-Shoulder from where the camera is exactly located, but I feel like OTS still gets the idea across that the camera is connected to the player character.

• 3rd-person Omniscient: The camera is its own entity decoupled from the player character, with both being separately controllable.

As far as game-feel goes, the former is closer to a 1st-person game while the latter is closer to a fixed-camera bird-eye-view game.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Sep 20th 2021 at 2:50:40 AM

I've tended to prefer big melee weapons and magic. Yeah, distant aiming in first person is better, but at some point I don't really want sniping, I just want to fire off at nearby enemies.

See, when running away, I'm the opposite. I don't need to see the scenery; I was just there. The scenery probably hasn't changed. Enemies, however, might do some sort of attack I want to respond to. To take an earlier example, you mentioned backing off from enemies on a bridge whilst something is shooting at you. In the exact same scenario, if I haven't decided to rush the bridge and ignore the melee enemies, I don't want to back up slowly, I want to sprint and just dodge the arrows as they come.

Or more useful for running around in general, tbh. If the camera is fixed on the source of danger, it puts more emphasis on following enemy actions. At the least, "thing you need to keep an eye on" remains pretty stationary.

Yeah, one's more third-person limited, the other's closer to third-person omniscient. It is considerably closer to games with a fixed camera—it's actually a control scheme where you can swap to locking the camera onto scenery or a special enemy and treating it as a fixed camera if your artistic inclinations so require it. That's still annoying, a lot of the time.

I usually don't need to run away except in like, narrow draugr tunnels that constantly turn and twist and are full of fallen debris. Meanwhile, as long as the enemy isn't in front of me I know he's behind me and that's usually enough information for me.

If I'm backing away on a bridge, it's usually because I've been ambushed crossing it. Not something that happens much in Skyrim, but happens all the sticking time in Dark Souls

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on Sep 20th 2021 at 10:28:00 AM