Just curious.

Vanilla is good and all, but it gets a bit droll in comparison to a modded version of the game after a while. To be honest, all of my core content is still the same, just there's a lot more to do on the side. Then again, I never pick mods that are too far away from the lore anyways(and pretty much use a lot of tweaking mods).

Do the 3 DLCs count as vanilla?

I played vanilla on the consoles, I played vanilla to get used to the PC game, now I want a bit more flavor in my game. I have not done anything to alter how the game looks, or behaves, just mainly added things, fixed a few bugs, and cut down on Skyrims dragon problem so I can actually enjoy the game a bit more.

I played vanilla on my first two characters, about 150-200 hours total. I enjoyed it and I would do it again. Most my mods add things like new armor, houses, companions, ect. I'm not currently using any mods that change gameplay or graphics.

Yes, over the years since Morrowind, most everyone considers any DLC/expansion to be called vanilla.

It makes it easier when discussing mods and/or questions about gameplay, since you can say "That NPC is vanilla, so you can check the wikis." or "That's not vanilla, your problem is mod related"

Nope. i dont think i can go back to vanilla, the colors are all horrendously bleached out. I went backto browse some of my vanilla screenshots, and man. Everything looked grey. The contrast and saturation in vanilla skyrim is horrible.

Bethesda has given us the Creation Kit and we have their full blessing to improve the game through modding.

It makes no sense whatsoever to stick to vanilla on PC.

Yes, but only because I play on 360.

If and when I get a decent PC I'll switch to a heavily modded Skyrim.

I used to play "vanilla" (on the 360), but I switched to the PC version to take advantage of the fixes in the Unofficial Patches, because I was getting tired of all the bugs: game freezing, broken quests, weapons/shields not cleaning up, etc..

I have to be honest it's a very ugly, dreary and just gray game on vanilla compared to mods on P.C., occasionally I have issues with my P.C. so it's off to PS3 for a couple of days or weeks but really I just find it hard to play. I have a feeling looking back on this game in 2020 it will be look worse to me than Vanilla Morrowind currently looks like on XBOX right now. Some of the graphics mods and other basic stuff like SkyUI fundamentally improve the game from it's vanilla form. I also enjoy some of the new questlines, such as Wyrmstooth and of course my personal favourite interesting NPCs which blows Bethesda's regular NPC writing out of the water. I just appreciate how easily Bethesda games such as Skyrim can be modded so I won't complain.

Yep. On XBox; still don't have any DLC.

It's only grey because it's supposed to be. Nobody goes to Canada in the winter to look at the pretty colours.

This isn't Cyrodiil.

PC player here. All DLCs, strictly Unofficial Patches ONLY. Game is as good as vanilla. I don't like playing modded Skyrim.

500+ hours clocked on Steam.

Not anymore. I played for more than 1000 hours in the vanilla game on the PS3, but have been modding the game since April this year. I love the vanilla game, but mods give the game the extra flavour it needs after 1000 hours, IMO.

Really? I don't really play vanilla Skyrim but I don't use mods that change the colours either and I don't need them. Maybe your screen has problems? http://i.imgur.com/MHx0bAm.jpg

Why?

Does he really have to justify himself?

I suppose it's a bit unusual to be a PC player and not use mods, so it would be interesting to find out why they don't. Personally once I moved to PC from 360 and started using mods I never looked back.

I play vanilla on the Xbox (the only flavor they have).

It's modded on the PC but I only have a few immersion mods, and a couple of clothing mods, one weapons mod and the HD texture packs.

If you never played TES games before and PC Skyrim vanilla was your first flavor, I'd bet you'd be playing it several times over with different character builds and exploring the crap out of the place before considering mods. I like to experince the full concept of the game and its lore before branching out and doing personnel customisations like mods. At least thats my philosophy with any PC game series first up. I did that with FO3 & NV and then when I started introducing mods, it really deepened my appreciation for devs tryng to "balance" all elements in any given game.

atm, my character is playing solo on master level... its challenging for a Nord..lol..

Plenty of mods that don't 'change the game', from the unofficial patches to occlusion culling for extra performance. Why wouldn't you?

I played on the console for 5 months at release. I built my rig in spring of 2012 and immediately started learning about mods. FO3 was the first and it was a vertical learning curve. Thanks to an amazing community, I was able to get a solid understanding of what it took to become a responsible mod user.

Then we have Gopher and all of his great tutorials on modding. A few weeks later I moved onto Skyrim and started running around 10 mods. I now play with and average of 80 mods and on occasion, pending the character, will get to 120 or so.

There are some mods That I just couldn't play without. iHUD, being at the top and followed by SkyUI. Just the basic customization that these allow makes the experience so much more enjoyable. Granted there are about 30 that fit the "must have" list, like the Unofficial Patches, Convenient Horses and Amazing Follower Tweaks... and the list goes on.

Oh... I couldn't end without mentioning Live Another Life , Frostfall and Realistic Needs and Diseases. Truly incredible additions, without question.

I can't see myself playing vanilla again.

I play on 360 with all DLC's. So yeah, vanilla.

My cousin is giving me his gaming computer if I can buy a ￡150 graphics card.

I'll be playing modded skyrim sometime in 2014.