It's 2023 And I'm Modding Skyrim - Again

System · December 2023

Joseph Bradford is modding Skyrim again. Somebody stop him.

Sovrath · December 2023

*cough* if you want a challenge feel free to play my mod.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/64878

It's a slow and steady burn but for those who like it, they, well, "like it!"

ShankTheTank · December 2023

I was the first to arrive.

Scot · December 2023

Nope, Sovrath beat you to the draw.

Thing is, if studios were still prepared to take the risk to make a game as big and gorgeous and modable as Skyrim, would we all still be talking about it so much? Sadly, this is a tale of studio accountants and investors as much as it is one of mods.

Funnily enough the game does have its distracters which seem to focus about it not being on rails enough for them. Which shows you how little real open world gaming has. For me the mods were really important and Starfield shows 'Bethesda' still intend to keep that which gives the games such longevity.

waveslayer · December 2023

been dabbling in a mod called enderal, only about 4 hours in but seems interesting so far

Viper482 · December 2023

Okay....I'll reinstall Skyrim again.

Aeander · December 2023

You know, the only mod I've ever considered absolutely essential was the remove turn limits mod in XCOM2. As a naturally defensive player, fuck turn limits.

Angrakhan · December 2023

Scot said:

Nope, Sovrath beat you to the draw.

Thing is, if studios were still prepared to take the risk to make a game as big and gorgeous and modable as Skyrim, would we all still be talking about it so much? Sadly, this is a tale of studio accountants and investors as much as it is one of mods.

Funnily enough the game does have its distracters which seem to focus about it not being on rails enough for them. Which shows you how little real open world gaming has. For me the mods were really important and Starfield shows 'Bethesda' still intend to keep that which gives the games such longevity.

On the flip side, in spite of the fact so many gamers lament that game development has become "all about the money", I wonder how many of them would be willing to risk 8-9 figures of their own money on some passion projects just for the love of the game. My guess is that number is very low. Maybe Mark Jacobs qualifies as I understand he dumped a significant chunk of his own money into City State Entertainment. That's all I can come up with, and my guess is Jacobs has probably lost his ass on that investment.

Fact of the matter is in order for developers to not focus on the money someone is going to have to figure out how to build games much much cheaper than they do today. Even Indy titles require millions of dollars to get across the finish line and we've seen recently what happens when that kind of money and the business acumen to wield it effectively isn't in place. The Day Before ring a bell?

Anyway my point is it's one thing to sit in your armchair with nothing more at risk than whether or not to buy some game on Steam and trash talk about how studios aren't willing to take a risk, and quite another to line up tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and 5-7 years of time and decide to light the fuse on starting a new game project. Your risk != Their risk.

Sovrath · December 2023

Scot said:

Nope, Sovrath beat you to the draw.

Thing is, if studios were still prepared to take the risk to make a game as big and gorgeous and modable as Skyrim, would we all still be talking about it so much? Sadly, this is a tale of studio accountants and investors as much as it is one of mods.

Funnily enough the game does have its distracters which seem to focus about it not being on rails enough for them. Which shows you how little real open world gaming has. For me the mods were really important and Starfield shows 'Bethesda' still intend to keep that which gives the games such longevity.

Skyrim is great as a fantasy playground for people who want to go off and "find adventure."

There are still things I discover and still different ways to play. The mods I use are, for the most part, new dungeons, quests with a few mods adding extra gear. I should add I have over 2600 hours in Skyrim though a good part of that might also be me testing my mod while I was making it. I have over 7500 hours in the Creation kit.

I try to keep it simple as the use of mods, especially mods that require all sorts of other mods or content to make them work, can break your game.

And while their creation kit could be much better for the layman (me) there is a lot one can do with it without being a coder.

It's so easy to make one's own house for example. Putting together a dungeon is easy as well. There are enough tutorials online that can give you added info.

I wish all games with "modding tools" were as straightforward. They could still be better though.

I'll add that, unless it's fixing bugs (there's one particular mod that specializes in this), I don't subscribe to the idea that "modders fix bethesda games." Modders change bethesda games and change them for particular tastes.

Oh! here is a really nice narrative critique for skyrim:

Scot · December 2023

Angrakhan said:
On the flip side, in spite of the fact so many gamers lament that game development has become "all about the money", I wonder how many of them would be willing to risk 8-9 figures of their own money on some passion projects just for the love of the game. My guess is that number is very low. Maybe Mark Jacobs qualifies as I understand he dumped a significant chunk of his own money into City State Entertainment. That's all I can come up with, and my guess is Jacobs has probably lost his ass on that investment.

Fact of the matter is in order for developers to not focus on the money someone is going to have to figure out how to build games much much cheaper than they do today. Even Indy titles require millions of dollars to get across the finish line and we've seen recently what happens when that kind of money and the business acumen to wield it effectively isn't in place. The Day Before ring a bell?

Anyway my point is it's one thing to sit in your armchair with nothing more at risk than whether or not to buy some game on Steam and trash talk about how studios aren't willing to take a risk, and quite another to line up tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and 5-7 years of time and decide to light the fuse on starting a new game project. Your risk != Their risk.

Oh you are quite right when it comes to funding the development of a whole game, few players would even consider doing so. But I think you are making a mistake of scale. I was talking about a studio, you are talking about individuals. So in some way whales are doing just that, pouring money into passion projects with no guarantee they will see the light of day and I don't see developers going on and on about the risk players are taking. I don't see this as trash talking by the way, not sure who I am trashing?

As always it takes two to tango, the studio and the players, here though can we expect the players to do more? Players are supporting countless early access games and funding gaming over the last 15 years to the extent that it moved into the first place for revenue generation in the entertainment industry. Can we say that players have done their bit? Over to you studios. But I am not dismissing the problems we both raised in fact there is huge risk, could it somehow be further alleviated?

ValdemarJ · December 2023

Needing a 4090 to enjoy the mod throws a huge red flag for me. If a mod is so poorly optimized it needs a $3000 gpu, then it really isn't that great.

I'm about halfway through a Skyrim save right now. It's mostly vanilla with only Creation Club assets added in. It's a struggle to play through because after playing Starfield, the engine and game feels so janky and crude. I want to play Skyrim with the improved Starfield engine and features because the old game is really starting to show its age and the mods aren't fixing that.

Finally, if a mod isn't on the integrated Creation tab, then I'm skipping it. There are a shit ton of good mods on that platform now that having to relegate my play time on a PC with Skyrim installed just so I can use Vortex (or worse have to manually install it), isn't worth the hassle.

cameltosis · December 2023

Funnily enough, I had been considering reinstalling Skyrim lately. I had finally gotten around to playing Starfield but it was real garbage, so I started looking around for a good RPG to play. Sadly for me, the RPG market has gone in the opposite direction to what I enjoy, so everything modern looked rubbish.

so, yeh, started thinking about Skyrim again and what mods I would want to install.

What held me back is the same thing that always holds me back: the world of Skyrim was boring to explore, the combat was dogshit, and scaling ruined a lot of the experience.

I spent some time looking for a decent combat mod but couldn't find what I wanted. I really, really dislike action combat, I find it soooooo boring! But, I couldn't find anything that turned the combat into something deep and tactical

lotrlore · December 2023

ValdemarJ said:

Needing a 4090 to enjoy the mod throws a huge red flag for me. If a mod is so poorly optimized it needs a $3000 gpu, then it really isn't that great.

I'm about halfway through a Skyrim save right now. It's mostly vanilla with only Creation Club assets added in. It's a struggle to play through because after playing Starfield, the engine and game feels so janky and crude. I want to play Skyrim with the improved Starfield engine and features because the old game is really starting to show its age and the mods aren't fixing that.

Finally, if a mod isn't on the integrated Creation tab, then I'm skipping it. There are a shit ton of good mods on that platform now that having to relegate my play time on a PC with Skyrim installed just so I can use Vortex (or worse have to manually install it), isn't worth the hassle.

I might have made it seem like you absolutely have to have a 4090 to run this mod: you don't. There are visual presets for rigs only running the GTX 1080 for example. the 4090 is if you want to take advantage mostly of DLAA instead of using Skyrim's temporal AA solution.

That said, the 4090 really does make it all sing - especially when combined with the DLAA for a much cleaner overall image. But it's not a barrier of entry - you can run this mod on other hardware as well just fine.

Arglebargle · December 2023

The problem with a 2000 mod compilation is that I only want 1000 of them. While the numbers may change, the ratio rarely does.

Viper482 · December 2023

Running it at 1080 (not on the 4K thing yet lol) and it looks and runs amazing with 2000 mods lol. Super easy to install as well, took about 45 minutes. The only downside is you need to at least pay for 1 month of Nexus premium or this would take you forever to install.

ShankTheTank · December 2023

lotrlore said:

ValdemarJ said:

Needing a 4090 to enjoy the mod throws a huge red flag for me. If a mod is so poorly optimized it needs a $3000 gpu, then it really isn't that great.

I'm about halfway through a Skyrim save right now. It's mostly vanilla with only Creation Club assets added in. It's a struggle to play through because after playing Starfield, the engine and game feels so janky and crude. I want to play Skyrim with the improved Starfield engine and features because the old game is really starting to show its age and the mods aren't fixing that.

Finally, if a mod isn't on the integrated Creation tab, then I'm skipping it. There are a shit ton of good mods on that platform now that having to relegate my play time on a PC with Skyrim installed just so I can use Vortex (or worse have to manually install it), isn't worth the hassle.

I might have made it seem like you absolutely have to have a 4090 to run this mod: you don't. There are visual presets for rigs only running the GTX 1080 for example. the 4090 is if you want to take advantage mostly of DLAA instead of using Skyrim's temporal AA solution.

That said, the 4090 really does make it all sing - especially when combined with the DLAA for a much cleaner overall image. But it's not a barrier of entry - you can run this mod on other hardware as well just fine.

Not just the DLAA, but primarily the ray traced global illumination. That’s really the heavy part since the mod is basically brute forcing the ray tracing through software and not utilizing the dedicated ray tracing hardware on the graphics card, therefore necessitating a very high end card.

As Bradford said though, you can simply choose to not install the ray tracing preset which drastically reduces the hardware requirement. The mod is very scalable and customizable during installation.

Theocritus · December 2023

Aeander said:

You know, the only mod I've ever considered absolutely essential was the remove turn limits mod in XCOM2. As a naturally defensive player, fuck turn limits.

haha I refunded in ten seconds when I saw the turn limits....Like the second mission youre super far away and have like 7 turns to get there and kill everything....forget that.

Sovrath · December 2023

hmmm looking over this mod list I think I'll install it. I like the idea of "transformative."

Scot · December 2023

Theocritus said:

Aeander said:

You know, the only mod I've ever considered absolutely essential was the remove turn limits mod in XCOM2. As a naturally defensive player, fuck turn limits.

haha I refunded in ten seconds when I saw the turn limits....Like the second mission youre super far away and have like 7 turns to get there and kill everything....forget that.

Those are just difficult missions and quite realistic for a military operation, some times games need to be harder as long as the spike is not crazy.

tooque · December 2023

Heavily modded VR Skyrim is one of best VR games there is. I've spent many many hours in that. Still go back every so often.

Sovrath · January 1

cameltosis said:

Funnily enough, I had been considering reinstalling Skyrim lately. I had finally gotten around to playing Starfield but it was real garbage,

I spent some time looking for a decent combat mod but couldn't find what I wanted. I really, really dislike action combat, I find it soooooo boring! But, I couldn't find anything that turned the combat into something deep and tactical

I'm curious why you think Starfield is garbage as it seems to be the Bethesda game formula but in space?

What type of games have the combat you are looking for? Are you looking for something more "souls like" for skyrim or is it something completely different? I mentioned souls like as I believe there are mods that turn skyrim's combat into a souls like experience.

Aeander · January 1

Sovrath said:

cameltosis said:

Funnily enough, I had been considering reinstalling Skyrim lately. I had finally gotten around to playing Starfield but it was real garbage,

I spent some time looking for a decent combat mod but couldn't find what I wanted. I really, really dislike action combat, I find it soooooo boring! But, I couldn't find anything that turned the combat into something deep and tactical

I'm curious why you think Starfield is garbage as it seems to be the Bethesda game formula but in space?

Just because it's the formula doesn't mean it lives up.

My dad still runs Skyrim several times a year. He uninstalled Starfield before coming anywhere close to the end. He was bored. I'll regard his opinion on that as much as I would expect someone to regard mine on a type of game I'm passionate about.

cameltosis · January 1

Sovrath said:

cameltosis said:

Funnily enough, I had been considering reinstalling Skyrim lately. I had finally gotten around to playing Starfield but it was real garbage,

I spent some time looking for a decent combat mod but couldn't find what I wanted. I really, really dislike action combat, I find it soooooo boring! But, I couldn't find anything that turned the combat into something deep and tactical

I'm curious why you think Starfield is garbage as it seems to be the Bethesda game formula but in space?

What type of games have the combat you are looking for? Are you looking for something more "souls like" for skyrim or is it something completely different? I mentioned souls like as I believe there are mods that turn skyrim's combat into a souls like experience.

For me, Bethesda has never been any good at gameplay. Their gameplay has always been quite shallow, then further undermined by their meta-game. But this was balanced out by Bethesda giving us large, open, non-linear worlds to explore.

I feel that over time, Bethesda has been *slowly* improving their gameplay, but *rapidly* downgrading their worlds.

Starfield felt like a continuation of that trend. I feel like the gunplay and ship combat were both minor improvements over previous gameplay systems.....but still shallow and simplistic. Whilst the world building continued to get worse. I didn't visit a single location during my ~20hrs of gameplay that got me excited. Nothing felt worth exploring, nothing caught my attention in any way.

In short, there was simply nothing that I saw or experienced that made me want to keep playing.

[NB I do recognise that 20 hrs isn't enough to experience the whole game. there may well have been some content worth doing, or maybe the base building would have gotten better or more worth while. But if a game can't grab me after 20hrs, they can't expect me to keep playing until i reach whatever might be good.]

In terms of what combat im looking for specifically, im looking for tactical combat. By that, I mean combat where success or failure is primarily determined by the decisions I make during combat.

In terms of single player games, you tend to only see this in turn-based games, but the MMORPG world has provided a ton of games over the years, namely the better tab-target games.

A souls-like combat system is the worst thing I could imagine! Not only is it shallow (just like all other action-combat systems), but it's also punishing. I don't consider souls-like to be difficult at all, just punishing.

Aeander · January 1

It does seem to me that is Bethesda insists on designing around first person, with optional 3rd person, they should very much just forego any pretense of RPG combat and just make a shooter. Bring in Id Software to give their games combat on par with Doom and just build the RPG around that foundation. They'd have a better game for it. Not my kind of game, but a better one than they've got.

ValdemarJ · January 1

Sovrath said:

cameltosis said:

Funnily enough, I had been considering reinstalling Skyrim lately. I had finally gotten around to playing Starfield but it was real garbage,

I spent some time looking for a decent combat mod but couldn't find what I wanted. I really, really dislike action combat, I find it soooooo boring! But, I couldn't find anything that turned the combat into something deep and tactical

I'm curious why you think Starfield is garbage as it seems to be the Bethesda game formula but in space?

What type of games have the combat you are looking for? Are you looking for something more "souls like" for skyrim or is it something completely different? I mentioned souls like as I believe there are mods that turn skyrim's combat into a souls like experience.

I'm playing both side by side and I can understand why Skyrim fans don't like Starfield, but I think a lot of the criticism is strange because a lot of it exists in Skyrim.

Skyrim is massively more dense than Starfield which gives it a vibrancy that the latter lacks, except in certain key areas. There is a scripted trigger event around every corner in Skyrim, not so in Starfield.

Starfield is basically Dragonborn in space and I wonder if that gives some Skyrim fans an uncomfortable sense of the uncanny valley. The good quest chains in Starfield are every bit as good as those in Elder Scrolls or Fallout, but there are also quite a few that feel completely underbaked.

For example, compare the side quest lines between FO:76 Mistress of Mystery and Starfield's Mantis quest. The former is much longer, more intricate and nuanced, and does a better job at connecting the player with the characters. The latter is a quick once through a hideout and you're done.

Skyrim's Serana companion quest line delivers similarly compared with Starfield's Andreja or Sam Coe. Setting AI personalities aside, the Serana questline is just much fuller and richer. Similarly tragic stories are told by Andreja or Sam, but at what feels like twice the pace with less threading.

A lot of things like loading screens, wonky dialog conflicts, inconsistencies, and quirky behaviors are flush in both. Overall, Starfield feels like a much more polished, but sparser version of the dragonborn advanced being narrative that exists in Skyrim. I wanted more Asimov than Lucas though, and more Fallout than Elder Scrolls. That's where my personal disappointment lies.

Scot · January 2

I must say I can't understand players who were expecting Skyrim in Space. You have to allow a studio to flex its wings and try something new, this is like saying "They haven't made a sequel to Skyrim yet so as far as I am concerned anything they put out has to be the sequel."

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It's 2023 And I'm Modding Skyrim - Again

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It's 2023 And I'm Modding Skyrim - Again

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