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welovetesvkaidan · 2 months

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OPINIONS ON KAIDAN EE/IF???

My honest reaction:

in all seriousness, if you wanna hear me yap about it, more under the cut

warning like, genuinely a ginormous yap, like a HUMUNGOUS, sleep-deprived yap,,, im cursed to be obsessed with skyrim + modded followers instead of touching grass

I think a lot of this is probably gonna be the same thing other people have said, so im sorry

if you feel i'm gonna be bringing up redundant points and get mad at me😓dont read

I haven't experienced and thus won't talk about the versions of EE and IF that are now separate mods from each other. I don't know anything about that.

if they're better now yayyy but this is about pre-separation

I should preface this with the fact that I've played through Skyrim 3 times with different stages of Kaidan EE/IF:

The initial Dawnguard + fixes/miscs mod

Kaidan EE/IF versions before extensive faction/NPC dialogue for Kaidan

EE/IF w/ NPC Dialogue (AKA Fratpack)

I was also part of the two different discords that were purged and created during these intervals. i don't even know if there is a discord currently?

anyway, that is to say that I have experienced the mod and it's behind-the-scenes progress, extensively so I have a pretty good idea of what I liked and didn't like

That being said, I will introduce probably my biggest problems with it: Tonal whiplash

Okay, well the most common complaint is ofc that a lot of the writing is out of character - and I agree. But it's not just ooc on paper, it's his voice too. I swear, it is very jarring hearing hushed, mild og Kaidan 2 voicelines, and then being deafened by EE Kaidan SCREAMING in my ear ALL.THE.TIME. (like... why are you yelling at me rn jeez)

Seriously. I'm not sure why they didn't just re-record everything from the original mod instead of adding more and more contradicting lines on top of the originals. It definitely could have been a standalone mod, and sometimes it almost feels like it is - because he is just so different.

My most infamous moment in my last playthrough with him happened after we defeated the dragon at Kynesgrove. His og Kaidan 2 dialogue played first, in it he shows interest and is cordial about Delphine ("I wouldn't mind prodding her mind" or whatver dialogue), THEN immediately after his Kaidan EE/IF dialogue will play, in which he walks up to Delphine and STARTS YELLING AT HER AND INSULTING HER - like they argue for quite a bit wtf. And it's like, listen, I have my thoughts about Delphine, but whether or not it was okay to yell at her isn't the problem. It would be fine - IF he hadn't just calmly told me he thought she was okay.

It is sooo confusing how he contradicts himself :(

I mean, yeah, fragments of who he is are still there, I can tell it's Kaidan, but he's warped to fit a different character. Like a con-artist Kaidan.

Anyway, besides the contradictions, it also feels out of character because of his established backstory.

Let's go over it: He's an orphan, lost his only connection to his family(his guardian) to drugs, fell into substances himself, joined a violent cult, had to escape said cult, came clean from his addictions, has been traveling Tamriel bounty-hunting, got brutally attacked by the Thalmor, rescued by mere chance. Do you honestly mean to tell me this man would be yelling, pissing, drinking, lewding, and joking his ass off?? After all that???? NO - or maybe not these levels of extreme. (maybe some other dude might, but Kaidan's characterization insists he is a brooding, keeps-to-himself man, even though he never acts like it anymore)

That man should be tired, and he did feel like he was tired in the original. He was more brooding then than he is now, usually silent, but could still have an edge of comedy/wittiness, he was smart, he had been through a lot!

In that regard, EE/IF Kaidan felt like... we are experiencing Kaidan 10 years in the past - like a Kaidan in his early 20s when he was still a drunkard low-key terrible person. He is just so energetic, always yapping - GOD he talks a lot now. ugh but most of the time it wasn't about anything, it was either inside-jokes, meta jokes, and only occasionally did we get things that added to the experience.

For example, I think most of us who have played Kaidan 2 remember at least one specific line he has said while exploring. What comes to mind for me is either "Can you smell the magicka in the air too? Smells like a rainless thunderstorm." or "Watch for the mammoth with the carvings on their tusks, that's how the giants mark their herd." Alright, both pretty nice small talk for characterization (he IS smart) and worldbuilding.

Tbh i can't really remember any iconic lines from the additions of EE/IF Kaidan... the only two lines that stood out for me were: the "elevenses" line from the clip above (started bumping into him every time he was about to say this so he would stfu... total tonal dissonance), and one he said while I looted Lucky Lorenz ("poor sod wasn't as lucky as his namesake would have you believe!") kai HOW do you know this man, and his nickname, who told you that??? (idc about it that much but its like the only other added line i remember)

I thought that maybe his ooc-iness might have been caused due to the collaborative approach of the mod, I think the mod authors created their own perfect Kaidan - and that's good for them! It takes a shit ton of work (Ik cuz i was there!!) But I think the original essence was lost with each addition. It might have been lack of direction for the voice acting too, a lot of the lines might have hit better if they weren't borderline screamed.

Okay, at some point while playing I got so tired of his constant himbo chit-chatter that I tried tuning him out and bringing other npcs from vanilla skyrim as followers. Problem: even without kaidan on your party, everything starts being about kaidan. Because the extension made it so that Kaidan either has history with/character interactions and development with different NPCs from the base game.

The main poor sods that traveled with me:

Erik the Slayer: Apparently was Kaidan's childhood friend, got inspired by Kaidan to become an adventurer. Least egregious in my opinion, they say sweet things to each other. I swear, Kaidan yells more at me than he ever did at Erik.

The Companions: dumb, dumber, and dumbest basically.. This part of EE/IF was also known as "The Fratpack" and y e a h they pretty much had Vilkas, Kaidan, and Farkas acting like immature frat boys all the time. Just,, absulutely taking away all the maturity out of these GROWN ASS MEN. im sorry, i guess i dont get the appeal. I liked it when they didn't behave like teens (Aela im so sorry, you deserved better than being part of this)

Lydia: All she does is simp for him, ALL.THE.TIME. You think she's about to have a meaningful thing to say? nope, she's checking out Kaidan's ass. Think she'll have a deep convo with another npc about one another? nope! she wants them to tell her all about Kaidan. Both the Companions and Erik will either talk down to her or have to deal with her thirst for Kaidan. i had to start leaving her home.

They also suffered from the same tonal whiplash as Kaidan, unfortunately

additionally, the mod added an "early flirt switch" - you could basically toggle Kaidan to start showing romantic affection for the Dragonborn before the amulet of mara., the interactions were good on paper, but everytime he stammered and stumbled over his words it was written in such an unnatural way... pls people don't talk like fanfics lol !!!

I did like that he gave me flowers, my inventory got full of them - but then he noticed how many flowers I had in my inventory and judged me for "picking everything i see" ugh dude you gave them to me, but also even if you hadnt... mind your business lol

Another addition was a feature that basically made it so NPCs could potentially throw flirtatious comments at Kaidan and the Dragonborn (Bishop flashbacks😨)

You can't do anything to defend Kaidan from those comments, but he WILL take it upon himself to defend your honor infront of any men, women, jarls, or criminals that even so much as find you attractive (THIS INCLUDES FARKAS AND VILKAS BTW :( ) by being rude, forthcoming, AND violent. so yea, you can guess the target audience

speaking of which, he definitely comes on too strong on you once you start the romance, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I specifically picked the "go slow" option for the romance, and the next day or two it was him constantly complaining about having to go slow under his breath, how he wanted to do anything but slow rn... and like just, wow. :/ yikeees lmao

Maybe this is the result of "i can fix him" romance ideals? im sorry but I liked him when he was down to earth

Bonus? He comes with a campsite now, which has to be magic because its ginormous and he somehow lugs it around despite it also coming with a whole ass furnace (fine fine i'll hold my disbelief)

anyway I do like it, its basically a player house you can take anywhere (so long as kai is with you ig) also you can have a cat in there

I like that there is an MCM, I like that the MCM lets you get through the quest stages in case you get stuck

I like that he can guide you places, usually he gets stuck in a tree or rock but its the thought that counts

I think if the mod had continued in the vein as its original iteration when it was just audio/bug fixes and included these qol features it would have been better than it is now.

But it seems maybe i'm just not the target audience, and as a young woman I'm really confused as who the target audience is 😓

okay im srry rant over

if anyone else wants me to yap about other kaidan skyrim things also ask or join in cuz i like yapping about skyrim and kaidan to people!!!

#anon im so sorry you opened pandoras box with that one #my most favorite interest ever so i must yap about it #kaidan 2 #kaidan skyrim #skyrim custom followers #tesblr #skyrim #tes v skyrim #kaidan mod #modded skyrim #this new kaidan is evil!kaidan he is evil he does not respect woamen #also please don't judge me for giving him a chance 3 time i thought he'd get better😔#im looking at the workshop version of him with a lil hope but EE/IF disappointed me so bad i cant trust anything anymore #pls just give my man an mcm

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wetthandss · 10 months

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i have never and will never use rails and minecarts in minecraft because they are just so inefficient and expensive for such little gain. theyre incredibly slow unless you use a rare and expensive material thats difficult to find and much more so get in large amounts to make a small number of powered rails that you have to place pretty close to one another if you want to reach an actually useful speed, and if youre making a rail system that small whats the point you can just walk or run there. there are no other relevant blocks for rails except detectors. no bumpers or launchers or stations or anything, very little utility outside of complicated redstone machines for furnace, hopper and chest minecarts that most players arent concerned with. i think theyre a horribly underdeveloped feature but also one that has SO MUCH potential. here's what i would do to make this feature better and how i actually would use it if it was that way.

i would remove the need for powered rails to go at any useful speed. you could travel in the minecart at the speed you can with a powered rail in the game now just by holding the direction you wanna go. powered rails are still there, and you can use them to go even faster if you want. they're like a speed upgrade rather than a necessity for travel. secondly, you dont have to keep holding down the button to keep moving, the minecart wont lose speed as it goes unless it hits a powered rail, where it will decrease in speed similarly to how it does in the base game, but only down to normal speed and not to a snail pace or complete stop. if you push a minecart (without being in it) it will slow down quickly to a stop, because itd be pretty annoying watching it run away on you if you accidentally push it. but also that already happens when you have to place powered rails down every 10 blocks and if the minecart touches them it just runs away on you. in my ideal update, to push a minecart down a track without losing speed, you can either get in it and get out of it when you reach speed, or you can use a powered rail to get it going. ADDITIONALLY, powered rails just act like normal rails when inactive instead of stopping entirely. if you want a rail that automatically stops the minecart, keep reading cause i have a replacement for this usage.

i would allow diagonal rails to exist, including on slopes. this is something i wish for other blocks that connect to each other in minecraft too, like fences, walls, iron bars etc. the zigzagging pattern is very ugly in most use cases and requires you to use double the materials. this would also be useful for setting up proper train stations where a train can be pulled to the side of the track either to let another train pass or to be filled with passengers/items.

i would allow multiple rails to connect to one another, letting you have multiple paths. a redstone activated directional rail could control which path you go on while in a minecart, while the default is just continuing straight.

I would add rail signals with an associate redstone connected rail that can decide when a minecart is allowed to pass or be stopped, or set a precise timer that counts down before making a redstone signal. you can set it to repeat or to only start its timer when receiving a redstone signal. would this remove the need for other forms of redstone timers? yes because i think its such a simple thing that requires incredibly complicated setups to do precisely that are frankly unnecessary to the average player and would allow them to make redstone more useful to them without having to spend nearly as much time and energy fine tuning multiple different complicated timer setups. you can still use the complicated timers if you want. no one is stopping you. anyways, this would let you automate trains a lot easier or automate a round trip rail system with consistent schedules, or to send a minecart back to you after sending it away.

Minecarts will have an updated model with a clear front side and a back side. you can flip directions whenever you want if youre riding in it, its mostly just an aesthetic change, but ive run into situations where if i stop a minecart on an inactive powered rail and activate it again, it will start going back in the direction it came from rather than continuing forwards and that is REALLY ANNOYING. i get that thats useful for sending a minecart back and forth but my bumpers would solve that issue while the clear front/back side fixes the one i mentioned above at the same time, as well as just making it more predictable and visually clear.

I would also aesthetically change the chest minecart cause i think it looks really ugly, i would prefer the chest minecart to show the minecart filled up with the sprites of the items that are inside it. i think that would be way cuter than just having a big wooden chest inside a metal minecart.

finally have actual linkages to tie minecarts together. it can just be a lead idc.

maybe a minecart that can be filled with rails that it automatically places as it goes? idk about this one

another maybe is that detector rails could be configured to only activate one-way.

a third maybe is having "lazy rails" that let the minecart travel at the speeds that they do now, so people who would inevitably complain about these changes ruining their finetuned overly-complex redstone rail machines could have something to use.

And finally i would have a bumper rail that can bounce back a minecart at half its speed, or its full speed with no loss if powered with redstone.

so i would definitely use rails and minecarts WAY more if these features were in place, they would be actually efficient for long and short distance travel, more versatile and less rigid in how you can actually place them, you can use redstone and train linkages to create more complicated railway setups if you want, it would all LOOK better, and it could actually be useful for putting in mineshafts. as it stands now, you have to put powered rails all over the place (a full chest minecart can only move 16 blocks per single powered rail boost! and it will slow down heavily before reaching the next too), fill up your stupid looking chest minecart and push it down where you then have to have a big redstone setup to automatically send the cart back, timed with a redstone timer (either a massive repeater one or a smarter comparator/observer one) so that the cart has time to unload into the hopper below it before being sent off again where it can make its way back to you.

in my update, you can fill the (good looking) chest minecart and use a single powered rail to push it where it will continue to the end (slowly, but at a far more consistent and as a baseline FASTER pace) where it will reach a detector rail connected to a rail signal which will start its timer, stopping the minecart. the cart will unload into the hopper, the timer will finish, sending the minecart into a powered bumper rail on the end where it will flip directions and be sent back, it will pass through the rail signal (because the detector block is on the other side) as if it were a normal rail, and come all the way back to me.

#i am not tagging this with minecraft im afraid if i do then rabid vanilla minecraft fans frothing at the mouth will attack me for not liking #their precious underdeveloped lost potential features that go #“umm actually i do it like this and its just fine *shows me the most unnecessarily complicated rail system ive ever seen in a video game*”#like come on. the game is called minecraft. there are even naturally generated mineshaft structures.#using minecarts as an actual utility WHILE YOURE MINING would be really fucking cool!#im not a modder and dont ask me to just get this mod or that mod. im talking about one of many underdeveloped features in vanilla minecraft #a game i do not even like without dozens or hundreds of mods. so yes i know. you can just mod it.#but sometimes you have to consider that if you have to mod a game so heavily to make it fun its probably not a fun vanilla game.#i want vanilla minecrafters to flourish and have a game with actual thought put into its features that havent seen any #meaningful updates in 10 years. unfortunately thats not what microsoft does with the game.#heres 8 new mobs that dont match the aesthetics of our game at all that have one super hyper-specific use that youll do once and then ignor

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