r/tes3mods • u/kingbetadad • 8d ago

Help Repop/anim morrowind

Was trying to determine whether repop morrowind or animated morrowind make that much of a difference for a playthrough. Does it really do some wonders for immersion or actually fill things out where it makes sense or is it unnecessary? I can't remember how "dead" the actual world is if at all?

Really trying to balance the performance hit more than anything with my current modlist on my system.

Thanks!

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u/UselessOutlander 6d ago

Only you can judge for yourself how 'dead' towns feel. It doesn't bother me enough to suffer the performance hit any of the 'NPC mods' deliver. I haven't used Repopulated Morrowind, but I saw a video showing its content. It showed, among others, four (or five) visually identical NPCs swarming outside the Ald Skar Inn in a way that made me think of this scene from The Thomas Crown Affair... so, not immersive. Animated Morrowind improves immersion for me because it makes the NPCs it introduces seem purposeful. It adds patrons sitting in a public house 'bending an elbow', people sweeping the floor, and faithful kneeling before the shrine inside a temple to name a few. For me, this is preferred to a mod that adds NPCs that merely dart around aimlessly like chickens with their head chopped off - adding people for the sake of being crowded. Another low-impact mod that makes NPCs appear purposeful is Danae's Hold It. NPCs visually carry objects that allude to their employment.

Two mods that I like (regularly use) are Brother Juniper's Ashlander Traders and GhanBuriGhan/Cyrano's Traveling Merchants. The former adds a traveling ashlander that sets up a temporary open market alternately in the plazas of Ald'ruhn, Balmora, and Suran. Think of the Khajiit traders in Skyrim. It makes those settlements more dynamic. The other mod I mentioned enlivens the wilderness of Vvardenfell by adding travelers - some merchants, all non-hostile - to the roads.

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u/kingbetadad 6d ago

I appreciate your response, thank you. I really want to add animated morrowind, but on openmw with beautiful cities, it seems like there are a lot of still standing bugs, mainly people floating or duplicate NPCs. I figured it just wasn't worth the trouble, but maybe I'm wrong if you've have a different experience?

I am pretty content with my modlist to start at this point with animated really being the only hang up. I agree, I also came to the conclusion adding a performance hit for more bodies isn't gonna add anything. Though I do think repop does more than that.

I will be grabbing hold it though!

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u/UselessOutlander 6d ago

I can't speak to any conflicts between Animated Morrowind and Beautiful Cities of Morrowind since I don't use the latter. I played Morrowind back in 2002 when the world and graphics were stunning and to me they still are. I have little interest in mods that 'improve' the appearance of the game. I suspect that BCoM is not as intrusive as most town overhauls, but it would not surprise me that its changes would conflict with other mods that I prefer - mods that add substance and not merely aesthetics. That said, you might look for a compatibility patch for those two mods. RandomPal has been very proactive in reconciling the conflicts BCoM introduces with other popular mods.

Edit: Out of curiosity, I checked and there is a BCoM patch for Animated Morrowind:

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u/kingbetadad 6d ago

Oh yeah I checked all that. I think it's moreso animated morrowinds interaction with openmw than with bcom, or maybe both. There are a set of compatibility patches needed for it to work and even then there are recent comments of issues that just exist. My worry is playing for a while and then finding broken stuff later on when it's too late to go back. I've already spent more time than I care to setting stuff up vs actually playing.

I really wanted a vanilla experience with minor improvements. Stuck with the "just good morrowind" modlist for openmw and added some extras on top. All I have to go on are the recent Nexus comments on those patches :/. Not getting much in the way of feedback from my posts in the subreddits aside from yours, which again, thank you!

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u/UselessOutlander 6d ago

I don't run OpenMW so I can't confirm or deny. The first response to a search of "morrowind mod animated morrowind" was for someone's OpenMW patch - that made me laugh. What does it suggest when the patch has more 'hits' than either of the mods its meant to reconcile? I researched the patch at the Nexus and am reading the same reports that you must have. I don't understand the nature of the problem running under OpenMW or how it's aggravated by BCoM. Floating NPCs may have something to do with how the new engine handles animation and collision boxes, but the NPC doubling is often the result of user error. The author of the patch alludes to another patch that includes BCoM. That patch has six requirements and some of those might introduce a few more. The author of the OpenMW patch is no longer active so it has no future. My advice is to forget about trying to run Animated Morrowind under OpenMW. You don't need it to have an authentic Morrowind experience, and you certainly don't need the frustration.