Vanilla Skyrim is an exceptional game, far above most of what has been on the market over the last decade. That said, it becomes one of the all time best gaming experiences I have ever had when mods are added. gamesas designs their games specifically to be moddable, even making versions of their own utilities available for free. Modded Skyrim isn't really a "different" game than vanilla. It's the very game the developers wanted to give their consumers.

The best Skyrim is whatever any single one of us enjoys the most. For me, due to not having played a whole lot, it's a largely vanilla playthrough; I do use SkyRe, but only for changing the way the world levels and how strong opponents are. Apart from that, it's just the unofficial patches, Skyrim Speeds, RaceMenu, Run For Your Lives, When Vampires Attack, and Deadly Dragons (the latter again just for stronger dragons). I won't use any texture mods, certainly not for my Khajiit characters (and I did try, but it felt wrong).

In my experience, there is a time for mods, but that is often after a person feels they have gained most of what they can from the vanilla experience and not before that.

Everyone has their own way of playing a game. I always thought comparing builds, achievements, etc. was more a feature of the MMORPG world, as in a single player game, you play for your own amusemant.

Personally I spent a lot of time early on in the game maximising my smithing and enchanting perks via, well smithing and enchanting, so those ice wolf scenarios were not that lethal. None of this relies on mods.

Also, I kind of meander through Skyrim, getting to know the place, and entering every cave I see, Nordic ruin I find, etc. So, now at level 63, I am really getting into the MQ, since my personal journey (Harbinger, Arch-mage) have made me the worthy Dragonborn I feel I should be.

I'll give legendary a go today, could be fun.

Vaen, ha! Well even in a dead is dead there are common sense exceptions. Glitches and bugs are definitely reload able the whole DiD community is ok with that idea. Kill cam, well sadly, most would say no. KC is avoidable with care so if it's the players fault then dead means dead. That is really what makes it not easy. See if you just save before every bad fight and reload upon death, then frankly you are always going to just walk through the game aren't you! Further more, if you Know that you are going to reload a botched fight, then you didn't even have to be all that careful did you? Just blunder in, have a bash, if it fails, do a reload easy peasy. What I'm trying to validate
I suppose is that Vanilla skyrim is NOT easy unless you choose to make it so. Personally I love the finger biting challenge of survival in that world, for me, playing other than DiD is unthinkable because of the very thing you said. It would be too easy!!!

I'd agree with that to some extent. My Skyrim is hardly modded compared to my MW but then I've played MW so much that coming upon something new (or more likely I've forgotten about) is quite rare.

Still besides the fixes like Sky UI, the Unofficial Patches, Kill Them Generals, Run For Your Lives and When Vampires Attack theres a lot of mods that improve minor things the developers just didn't have time or resources for. The Prince and the Pauper makes childrens clothes much better. The jarls children have fancy clothes, the beggars rags. Another mod makes wedding rings wearable on the other hand. I'm not going anywhere without my beloved's ring. Then theres the hairstyles, clothes and shoes (especially the shoes). I wouldn't expect these to be priorities for Bethesda but being able to add them to the game makes a big difference to me. Not to mention the excellent mods that make the cities seem a little more like actual cities or add in content that Bethesda didn't finish and got cut. I can't see how anyone could argue that mods like these alter the game from the developers vision, especially since no game is ever made that totally matches the developers original vision of it.

Not that it worries me if it doesn't match the developers vision. I don't have any characters with pink anime hairstyles but if I wanted them thats my choice, nobody elses.

I understand that thought, but despite reloading I never rush in like a drunken Rambo I always treat every fight like it could be my last, and even run if I have too.

This does remind me of a mod I never tried though. There's one where instead of dying, you have a certain % chance of being taken prisoner by said enemy faction, with all your items taken away and your left with nothing but rags. You have to escape and find your equipment.

Bad game design that allows you to play however you want? It really shouldn't be a qualifier for design quality, anyway as not everyone has the same gaming experience. DiD players aren't the only ones who can find challenges in Skyrim.

Forcing you to use followers and take certain perks sounds more like bad game design to me. Of course, mods do come with the benefit of being adjustable/removal.

edit:
That definitely sounds like a cool mod.

Bad game design as in having to limit or avoid certain aspects/chunks of the game content in order to give it any form of challenge. I shouldn't have to handicap myself to compensate for the lack of AI in enemies.

Well, it doesn't force you to use followers, if you want, you can more than risk taking on a Dragon as it should be by yourself... though I wouldn't recommend it As for the perk points, in the vanilla version I found that I did not need to take or max certain perk/trees, since the game was easy. You did not have to max the 1handed damage perk if you had smithing and enchanted items ect. With mods though (like SkyRe), that changes.

Indeed. Can't believe I forgot about it. Gonna give it a try soon it will nice not to have to reload, and instead end up in bleedout while my follower(s) save my ass.

Agreed. I'm all for increasing the game's challenge, but some mods just overdo it and impede player choice. Like, don't give an enemy 100% spell absorption/physical damage resistance and call it a challenge. It's cheap and the game isn't designed for such a thing (by which I mean followers are hella dumb and take a knee far too quickly). Imagine going through a dungeon and finding out that the boss is immune to your main/only way to cause damage. There's absolutely no way for you to know about that beforehand, either.

Interesting how a thread about modding got turned into an opportunity to puff out our feathers. Skyrim is not a difficult game. There has never been a difficult Elder Scrolls game, and Skyrim is probably the easiest of the five. If you were to play your "legendary dead-is-dead" using a heavily armored "sorcerer-type" character, you'd find it far easier to survive; your poor character-design choices don't reflect on the difficulty of the game.

You don't seem to understand that when you raise the difficulty setting (or lower it), or when you choose to limit the gear you use (or not), you are doing exactly the same thing that modders are doing; you are altering the game to suit your own personal preferences. And this is really the point that most of the mod-users are making here. This isn't about pleasing anybody else, or comparing "accomplishments." It's about playing a single-player game in a way that is fun.

Which I myself like since I can calmly roleplay without things getting frustrating which is why I don't use any mods that add to the difficulty. Not my gameplay style.

For me, it depends on the character. I like a bit of challenge when I'm playing a heroic warrior, but I don't need anything but the basic animals and bandits to frustrate and annoy my weakly-armed Alchemist.

Generally, I try to use only mods that retain the normal "vanilla" balance of the game. If a mod I'm using gives some kind of an advantage to my character, I'll usually offset that by choosing not to use some other skill or gear.

I don't get the impression that most PC players are using mods as a way to make the game easier. On the contrary, the popularity of mods that make the game more difficult seems to suggest that the opposite is the case.

That is, indeed, what Vaen was saying.

If that was directed at me... I don't think I have any disagreement with Vaen here. My previous remark was an answer to "Rick. Halfon"; I believe it was his response to Vaen that I disagreed with.

No, just pointing out that Vaen's reasoning (and others in the thread) backs that up.

Ah. I misunderstood. Thanks.

Yep I sure do in fact understand that difficulty sliders and gear choices are a way of affecting the game to ones own personal preferences, but it's not exactly the same as modding, because well firstly they are built in choices, not mods. And secondly, everyone has access to the same difficulty slider in the vanilla game.
Umm, just a minor clarification, where I have been mentioning 'achievements' well of course I didn't mean the Xbox term for reaching certain goals. I meant it in the bigger sense of doing well.

Anyway....however you play.......enjoy your day..........

First off I hope you enjoy it.

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It depends on the mood I am in when I do get the urge to play. I usually only use a few mods

vanilla skyrim is a great game no doubt , the scale the concept , just stunning ,

but the game was made with the limitaions of consoles in mind

a perfect example , rorikstead is suppose to be the breadbasket of skyrim and we see in the game is one inn one house and 1 field

Sollitude suppose the biggest tradinghub of the north , sollitude docks is basicly empty

magic there are only 50 or so spells , 3/4 of them become obsolete after level 35

there only 20 or so different armour outfits and they all look like the textures were done as a afterthought

all of the faction questlines feel incomplete a good example id the companion your character can become member of the innercircle after beating up a peasant woman , kill a wolf and clear out a single dungon

like i said it is a great game and those examples do not break the game in anyway , they just feel odd sometimes

but i am still convinced that the developers wanted us to mod the game and improve all those little things they couldn't do

I agree. I think the Bethesda design philosophy is something like this:

"Build a basic, enjoyable open-world console game, and provide PC users with the means to extend it."

They intend it to be modded. The games are knowingly left incomplete. I know of a surprisingly large number of people, on these forums, who started with the console version of Oblivion or Skyrim, fell in love with the game, and have since bought (or built) PCs so that they could mod the games. For those people, Bethesda has sold two copies of the game.

My wanting challenge(and certain types of characters) is putting the game on Adept! I already have more spawns on, so for every one bandit, four spawn. But I do change the things around depending on my character, I make animals spawn in larger quantities if I'm playing, say, a hunter.

I find the game somewhat easy enough that I can understand the mods that make things tougher. I tried them and I found things more tedious than anything! Same with the realistic needs/Frostfall, tried it, but not my cup of tea, again I found it tedious.

But yea! Just the fact that they released the CK mean that they do want the community to go around modding. If they did not want anyone to "ruin" their vision, they would not have released it.

Go home, you're drunk. Only way to play Skyrim is modded.

I play on PC with thousands of mods and my console version.

I really like quest/armor/weapon mods. I love skyrim i just need some diversity after two years (damn time flies). I play the crap out of all their games for months before i add anything to them.

Yep. I am one of those people who both bought and built just to mod Oblivion and Morrowind.

Played Oblivion and Morrowind on console for years and never really felt the need for mods. Then when Skyrim came out, I played Skyrim for about a year on console until I got bored with it and frustrated with many aspects of the game I did not care for but could not change on console. Got so frustrated with vanilla Skyrim that I went back to Oblivion. But after getting frustrated with what I saw as the shortcommings of Skyrim, I had a harder time overcoming the shortcommings of Oblivion.

Finally decided to buy a gaming laptop, solely to mod Oblivion. This was a big step because of my very limited computer knowledge at the time and how intimidating it sounded to mod Oblivion with all the weird jargon modders use, not to mention the various and somewhat wierdly named utilities, like Wrye Bash and BAIN installer, TES4 LODgen, etc. I did not know a mesh from a texture, much less what a LOD was, and everything I read about how to mod a game just sounded so incomprehensible that it took many many hours of study over a period of months before I even felt competent to start modding a game.

Then, after spending several months getting a stable load order set up for moderately heavily modded Oblivion, I decided to take a run at modded Morrowind. Since I had a knowledge base from learning to mod Oblivion, getting a stable load order set up for Morrowind only took a matter of weeks, rather than months, although there are quite a few significant differences between Morrowind and Oblivion due to the somewhat similar but distinctly different utilities (Wrye Mash, mlox, TES3cmd, TESTool, MCP, MGE XE, Exe.opt) vs (Wrye Bash, BOSS, TES4Edit, TES4Lodgen, TES4ll, OBSE, OSR).

Then I wanted even better performance, so I built a gaming desktop solely to mod Oblivion and Morrowind. Again, I had only very limited computer knowledge before buying that laptop, but learning to mod Oblivion and Morrowind gave me the confidence and skills I needed to learn to build a PC from scratch. It was much simpler and easier to build a PC than to mod those games.

I have not bothered to mod Skyrim yet, and I still play it a little on console, but I am still frustrated by all the things I dislike about the vanilla game (and there is a very long list of stuff I would "fix"). For that reason, I don't play much Skyrim these days. Someday when I have a bunch of free time, I will spend the time to mod the heck out of Skyrim. I always tend to overbuild things, and the desktop I built is no exception. It can certainly handle anything a heavily modified Skyrim could throw at it.