Well, as usual, I find that your criticism to OOO tends to be skewed and lacking depth of analysis. A pity, really, considering the very clever statements and arguments with which you dissect other topics in this fine page (of which I became a reader after replying to your first comments on the mod)
Difficulty of fights in OOO is not merely a factor of more health, hence more blows/spells required for a kill. In fact, OOO uses several aspects of the engine to make combat more interesting, much faster and deadlier.
First, it re-works all weapons, armors and spells in the game to make them many times more deadly than in the original game. Thus, fights are actually faster and require much more tactical thinking, rather than the plain button-smashing of the original game.
Second, it gives several new combat styles to all enemies, old and new, that allow the AI to use maneuvers, attacks and fighting techniques that were never seen or possible with the CSTY sheets developed by Bethesda.
Third, the "cheap trick" you call, several types of spell boosts to HP was a design decision by which I could with a couple of minutes, change the health levels of thousands of NPCs and Creatures without having to go through them one by one, again. I had to go through them many times, and the spell trick served for both testing purposes and ease of future work.
Fourth, obviously, you have not looked in-depth at how NPCs/Creatures receive HP. It is controlled by several factors. One is level, another is a game-setting multiplier, another is an HP/LVL multiplier, another is giving it by hand (thereby sealing that one number regardless of level) Thus, I had to allow the multipliers to do their work, because otherwise creatures would never have any slight variation in HP regardless of the level ranges I allowed them to have (which is a good thing to have because it gives them some diversity) The cheap-trick would have been to raise the game-setting multiplier several fold. Thus changing the whole set of enemies health with a click of a mouse. The OOO trick is far more complex. I tweaked their level ranges, their HP/LVL ratio multipliers for health, and gave different sets certain upgrades in health based on a spell so that I could test them out.
Fifth, spell-based HP boost is only one of the dozens of new spells I created to give extra abilities and powers to enemies, both individually and collectivelly.
Thus, again, you oversimplify what I did with OOO and continue on complaining as if you had a personal vendetta against it. I suppose we don't have to remark that it is ok to disagree on design decisions, and I am happy that you are keen to give your opinions on these matters.
What surprises me is that you keep on making sloppy analyses and then write them as if you had achieved a perfect understanding of the matter, all the while charging me with over-simplification and lack of thoroughness. That, I am afraid, is not up the the standards you set with other analyses in this site. Frankly, it begins to smell of a personal quest, rather than objective criticism--a shame.
Re: Found the problem with Oblivion CS/Oscuro
Well, as usual, I find that your criticism to OOO tends to be skewed and lacking depth of analysis. A pity, really, considering the very clever statements and arguments with which you dissect other topics in this fine page (of which I became a reader after replying to your first comments on the mod)
Difficulty of fights in OOO is not merely a factor of more health, hence more blows/spells required for a kill. In fact, OOO uses several aspects of the engine to make combat more interesting, much faster and deadlier.
First, it re-works all weapons, armors and spells in the game to make them many times more deadly than in the original game. Thus, fights are actually faster and require much more tactical thinking, rather than the plain button-smashing of the original game.
Second, it gives several new combat styles to all enemies, old and new, that allow the AI to use maneuvers, attacks and fighting techniques that were never seen or possible with the CSTY sheets developed by Bethesda.
Third, the "cheap trick" you call, several types of spell boosts to HP was a design decision by which I could with a couple of minutes, change the health levels of thousands of NPCs and Creatures without having to go through them one by one, again. I had to go through them many times, and the spell trick served for both testing purposes and ease of future work.
Fourth, obviously, you have not looked in-depth at how NPCs/Creatures receive HP. It is controlled by several factors. One is level, another is a game-setting multiplier, another is an HP/LVL multiplier, another is giving it by hand (thereby sealing that one number regardless of level) Thus, I had to allow the multipliers to do their work, because otherwise creatures would never have any slight variation in HP regardless of the level ranges I allowed them to have (which is a good thing to have because it gives them some diversity) The cheap-trick would have been to raise the game-setting multiplier several fold. Thus changing the whole set of enemies health with a click of a mouse. The OOO trick is far more complex. I tweaked their level ranges, their HP/LVL ratio multipliers for health, and gave different sets certain upgrades in health based on a spell so that I could test them out.
Fifth, spell-based HP boost is only one of the dozens of new spells I created to give extra abilities and powers to enemies, both individually and collectivelly.
Thus, again, you oversimplify what I did with OOO and continue on complaining as if you had a personal vendetta against it. I suppose we don't have to remark that it is ok to disagree on design decisions, and I am happy that you are keen to give your opinions on these matters.
What surprises me is that you keep on making sloppy analyses and then write them as if you had achieved a perfect understanding of the matter, all the while charging me with over-simplification and lack of thoroughness. That, I am afraid, is not up the the standards you set with other analyses in this site. Frankly, it begins to smell of a personal quest, rather than objective criticism--a shame.
Jorge Salgado
"Oscuro"