Okay, so there's numerous threads talking about quest lines; how they're too short, how they need be expanded, WIP's for expanding, ideas for expanding and the like... And I've been thinking about this since about 50hrs into playing the game.

My plans are ambitious, depend on what the CK allows us to do and what SKSE and other tools expand on what we can do... So to not overload myself, I'll be breaking things down into stages and parts.

The overall goal is to expand each factions questline by at least 3x it's current length, seeding into the existing vanilla lines and expanding some past their 'end quests', then proceeding onto expanding the questlines beyond skyrim itself (see http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1277482-potential-skyrim-enlargement-mod/ as well!).

Branching questlines for the stormcloaks/Imperials to reforge the empire, becoming high king, all that muckety muck... but that's the latter stages...

Initially, I'm going to start with the College of Winterhold;

A lot of folks think it is ridiculous to gain entry to the college so easily, I know I do... So first up is changing that; No spells = Entry fee of 1000g, 1 spell demo = 500, demo all 5 = 100g.

Next up is Trainers - Using the AI logic for 'demo a spell to get in' each trainer will require a 'demo of a spell from that school' to unlock their ability to train you of your current school mastery (Apprentice/Adept/etc) and they will only train you to 1 pt below the next mastery level - you'll have to earn that 1 pt for the next mastery level.

Expanding the 'Ranks' in the college and the quests to attain each rank - Expand the ranks to morrowind type (like 10 iirc before archmage) AND require you to complete X number of quests AND ask for promotion. Each spell school teacher (or professor, or instructor, whatever you care to call them. ) will have 3 quests at each rank you have to complete (Go get this ingredient, go get this item, go kill X, go make friends with Y, things like that)... each Rank you want to attain will require more and more completed quests before the archmage, with recommendations from the instructors, will promote you... now some quick math, if there are 5 schools and 3 quests from each instructor, there's 15 quests for each rank, and if there's 10 ranks, that's 150 quests...Yes, there will be some repetition (go get x item types), but each rank means the quests become harder. To become archmage would require all the instructors to recommend you and... a surprise... beyond the normal end quest for the mages college.

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Keeping things 'quest only' keeps the mod smaller, more manageable, and quicker to accomplish. Doing things faction by faction means people can pick and choose what factions they want improved. It means I don't have to worry about textures or any of that mucking about with objects I don't need to and in theory, make mod interoperability easier.

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Once each faction is expanded, then I go onto the next stage, expanding beyond all the 'end quests' - Become High King: By the Moot's decision or by combat with Ulfric(whether imperal or Stormcloak), increasing the reputation of the college beyond winterhold (i.e. rebuilding the 'mages guild' across skyrim), Reforging the Fighters Guild (Or Adventurers Guild as the name, will decide when I get there) Deal with the issue of the Blades, and the Dark Brotherhood (which direction do both groups go? Straight mercenaries or Imperial Agents? Straight Assassins for hire or Religious assassins?)... Each faction will have choices to be made by the player on their direction... Support the PC or hate and try to thwart the PC?

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Up to this point, it's all about Quests, AI, and NPC's.... No armors, new cities, building your own stronghold, etc... So again, in faction by faction chunks, this becomes easier and more manageable... Because I don't feel like killing myself doing this.

Now comes the hard part and comes back to the link for a larger Tamriel I posted above... And is far more abitious in nature...

Taking the war to the Dominion - through diplomacy with other regions and 'war missions' - Rebuilding the >guild name< across Tamriel, becoming Emperor,,Rebuilding the 5 Great Houses (with 'build your stronghold' features) and a few other surprises I have planned.

This requires at _least_ each major city in each province as it's own worldspace (to start, open cities may be possible), hundreds, if not thousands of NPC's to populate the cities, and textures, textures, textures!

I'm hopeful that by the time I hit this stage, there will be a plethora of texture packs (modders resources) for the different races architecture... Or perhaps some of the province projects will be done/far enough along that I can obtain permission to use their stuff to plug my quest material into... But that's a ways down the road.


And yes I plan on being lore friendly as possible... Taking into account 200 years of history we haven't gotten yet, I'll try to keep it as close as I can... I like lore and immersion!
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Quest lines for the mages guild are written, dialogue is about 50% finished, I have around 30 voice actors on tap atm... Now I just needs me the CK!

Yes I know this is ambitious, yes, I know it's going to take time, yes I know it won't attract folks to help until I've released something... I simply wanted to get this out there for people to comment upon. Opinions, Ideas, and constructive criticism are welcome... Telling me 'Why bother someone else is doing X faction' isn't... why? because I'm aware others are working on X faction, and either I don't like their ideas or I don't think they go far enough, or I think they go to far....

I'm not interested in High King/Queen. An advisor perhaps. But taking over for Ulfric just doesn't make sense to me.

I'd love to see some of the faction quest expanded, Winterhold, Bard, Companion are the most in need of it. I like the option of leaving someone else in charge when it's all over so that the player character isn't tied down.

Sounds great, I look forward to downloading it in 80 years.

Seriously though you need to dramatically reduce the scope of your plans. You will very quickly find that most of the grand plans you have are far beyond your ability or capacity to complete either due to a lack of experience with the CK or simply a lack of time or interest. On fact your interest will fade even quicker as you confront the massive task you have set yourself and seen how slowly you are making progress towards it.

If I had to give advice other than 'give up' however I would suggest that your idea to return a more in depth guild advancement and requirement system has merit. In fact I did something very similar for a mod for Oblivipn, got around 25-28,000 downloads on tesnexus last I checked, so the idea is quite popular.

Instead of individual quests though I created a global value for the guild 'reputation' and then created dialogue that allowed the player to turn in various items (eg for the mages guild they could give soul gems, books, plant ingredients etc) and each time they did it would add to the total reputation. Completing normal quests etc would also add to the reputation. The player would then need a reputation past a certain level to advance - kind of similar to how the player needed to have stolen a certain amount of gold worth of items to advance in the thieves guild.

I would suggest doing something similar for the college of winterhold may be a good idea. It is easier to set up than 150 individual quests - which will take you a long time, trust me, and allows the player to involve their guild growth in their normal exploring. The primary advantage though is that this is achievable. You will be able to do this - but not what you have suggested.

Let me know if you require more info. Hope you take my advice into consideration seriously.

Grinding 'turn in' quests for advancement? Uhm.. this isn't WoW circa 2006.

Just because it will take a long time, does not mean the OP cannot break the project down into digestible chunks, working on one faction at a time, one quest at a time. Finishing one quest line before moving onto another. It doesn't all have to be one huge release all at once.

Garden, if you've any experience modding quests please do share. The amount of time the modder spends working on the quest is exponentially longer than the amount of time it takes to play quests.

There is no observable difference between turn it in quests and a fully scripted fetch quest. Heck even Bethesdas radiant story system is nothing more than a way to create never ending 'kill' quests. They have no story or background and consist of only sending the player somewhere to fight stuff. A fully developed quest with story and scripting and dialogue takes hours and hours of work for 15/20 minutes of play time (for if you pad it out with filler fighting).

Can you actually take pre-existing content and make a separate world space for it? I wonder if each hold of Skyrim has its own world space (considering each has its own bounty and everything).

Anyway, the hardest part of this project would be the voice acting. Adding additional quests to NPCs would be extremely hard, as they already have their own voice actors. Adding new NPCs would probably be best, unless you plan on re-doing the dialogue for all the NPCs you plan on using. That alone will take quite some time.

Okay, perhaps you missed the part where I said I was breaking it down into stages and parts? It also appears you are assuming I lack experience modding, or dedication.... You make numerous assumptions to the negative against myself without knowing me. That's fine, assume what you will, it is the internet afterall. *rolls eyes*


Now this idea does indeed have some merit and is useful (ignoring yet again, the disparagement of my skills/dedication *sigh*)... I wouldn't tie non-college quests to the college growth though... just like I wouldn't tie college quests to the Blades... *shrug* different approaches for different people.

Yes you can...

Actually the VA isn't an issue for me... Splicing audio is something I've been doing off and on for over 10 years now... If the bits of dialogue I require aren't in the vanilla files, or I can't splice them together, there is software (and I do have it) that can take existing spoken audio, anolyze it, and create new words that sound 'close' to the original... it isn't perfect by any means, but it works... and if that doesn't work, or a particular NPC sounds way off with new 'created' dialogue, I have 30 or so VA's on tap, local to me... I'd simply redo the entire NPC's spoken dialogue (not something I'd want to do, but hey, to keep immersion...)

Are there going to be rewards for quests/ranks ala Morrowind and Oblivion? It'd be cool if the quests netted you an enchanted piece of gear, rare scrolls, a free skill-up of your choice, a new spell...that sort of thing.

Aye, of course. NPC spell sellers will have more spells to sell you, certain ranks will grant items (robes, staff, etc)... And of course each rank you attain will get you a spiffy new title, thus spurring you onward to earn a new spiffy title and again! *grin*

[Snark] Thank you for that information! I didn't realize it was almost 2012!!! Wow, I really need to pay attention to the calendar! [/snark]

Anyways, the point of the 'grinding for advancement' quests is 2 fold... The first part is as I said, to actually gain advancement, the 2nd part I purposefully left off because I'd like to make sure it's possible before promising it... the 3 quests per instructor to get materials would be used to make new spells (you are part of a college after all)... So if there's 5 schools, 10 ranks, that would be 10 spells per school for 50 new spells added... It _should_ be feasible to add new spells....

Oh, and FYI, you still have to grind for advancement in WoW even at the end of 2011... If you're going to make try to make with the snark, make it at least amusing eh?

Sounds promising. Get help though. As much help as you can to have a team that can share the load for such a big project. I would LOVE an expansion on the faction quests!

I didn't miss the part where you said you would break it down. However if you want to release something and for people to use it it needs to be complete. You don't release a half finished quest - people will call it broken and not bother with it - so you cannot release even a part of the mod until you have completed that entire part. And you are clearly underestimating how long it will take you to complete that.

Once you begin to work on the mod in the construction set you will have to face that reality. And if you see that you have far far more to go then you will become disheartened at how slow your progress is and give up. Aiming to achieve something realistic will actually see you complete it. Trust me, I'm not writing this because I want to put you down, I'm writing it because I want you to actually produce and release something.

Even taking into account your disclaimer of "I know that it will take a long time etc", considering that 1) "I have a great idea for a mod that will add more content to the game than what an entire team of 15 professional designers working full time could achieve in 3 years" type posts tend to be made by only those who have no understanding or appreciation of how hard and how long a large scale mod will take, and 2) you have no uploaded mods on any of the tesnexus/fallout nexus mod sites, I would say my assumptions about your modding skills/experience are on pretty solid ground. If this isn't the case then please feel free to upload the mods you have worked on, or direct me to the mods for the other games that you have uploaded and I will gladly amend my opinion. I don't mean to belittle or insult you saying this since we all have to start somewhere, i just want to see you succeed by making smaller gains at first rather than biting off more than you can chew and getting disheartened and giving up modding all together. If you'd like to take my advice then good luck and I'll be happy to give it a download once you have released something. Otherwise best of luck with your future project, although as I have said before I do not think you will be able to see even an initial release. Either way happy modding.

OK, what software is this? I've never heard of anything out there that can do this. And if it exists, it's pro-level software that costs thousands. You imply you're a professional, after all.

You're making a lot of claims about what you can do, but you sound like someone with insufficient experience and overreaching ambitions. You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk? Because I'm seeing a lot of hot air and boasting, and no evidence to support this. Do you have a GHF account, or Nexus? Do you have any finished or in-progress mods for any games? Where?

I'm going to back up the idea behind reducing your scope, Ling Wei's last post sorta hit the nail on the head. I too would categorize you as the inexperienced, overambitious type simply because of the sheer amount of content you are suggesting. Even if you have the skill,time and support to do so I would still recommend reducing these into seperate mods. Trust me after dozens of hours of work it will feel nice to have something complete and ready to upload.

Wow... So because I haven't uploaded any mods to the Nexus I am an "Inexperienced, Over-reaching, new player"? How very condescending of you all!

So glad I decided to share my thoughts for some constructive feedback! So glad that the Skyrim Mods forum, For DISCUSSION OF IDEAS AND WIP is so full of welcoming and encouragement! Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside! *rolls eyes*

Make all of the negative comments you wish, doesn't deter me, doesn't change what I know I can do, doesn't change my plans one iota. *shrug*

Don't take it as a personal attack, they are trying to be helpful in thier own way. Many inexperienced modders propose grand ideas on these forums, and very very few of them come to fruition. Having not seen your work, I don't blame them for thinking that this might have a similar fate. Now, that said, there have been some hugely successful mods that have come out of left field, such as The Lost Spires for OB, so it is also possible that this will achieve success of that level.

I suppose the question to ask is your background with game development, have you experience with producing either mods or games themselves? If the answer is no, consider starting smaller, and eventually work on this rather grand project.

That said, I'd be very interested in assisting with this project. I was planning to do a College of Winterhold expansion myself; I'd welcome the opportunity to discuss your plans/provide ideas/assist with structure. I have a decent number of resources on my end as well (I work in the game industry). Do you have a design doc. for CoW yet?

I agree with what many have said. Narrow your scope a bit. Nobody is trying to bash you, they are just being honest. We've all seen scores of threads like this, where a person has a big plan for their first mod. All too often these projects disappear as they begin to realize just how daunting it is. Obviously none of us know what you can do, but based on what little we know we're assuming that you're inexperienced to modding.

I suggest starting very small. Expect about a year minimum to probably get half to 3/4 of the number of quests you're planning.