After doing two heavily modded play-throughs - my mod greed has been eased quite a bit. I no longer feel the need to have all mods. Both load orders around 200 active mods now.

If you want to be able to switch between those installs - check out http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1142151-rel-mtes4-manager/. I have two full installs with a lot of mods each and Nehrim and a vanilla/tinkering install. That too helped - I can think "Oh this mod might fit better over here than there."

You do bring up another major difference - Oblivion modded can still stress even the most recent hardware. It is so easy to mod Oblivion to cripple my computer. I don't think it is that possible with Morrowind unless you set everything in MGE to max.

So yeah Oblivion can be about balancing stability with new content. It is often one or the other - less content more stable - more content less stable.

That's true. I did once try to use maximum of textures (8192 made in 2 steps) during the land distant wizard process in MGE and in-game I could hardly move my character, so that's possible for Morrowind if you use one setting in MGE to it's maximum.

Installing all of the unoptimized rocks and stuff from MTAEVWD is I think the best method to totally crush Oblivion. :teehee:

I agree with the "weird hidden mod cap" idea to an extent. For me it's more of a performance cap, because although I do get crashes more frequently than what anyone would consider acceptable, it's pretty minimal compared to the frequency of crashing I would experience when I didn't use OSR / 4gb patch or pay attention to my texture memory usage and optimal compatibility between mods.

However I hit a point a while ago where it seemed my game just became capped at 30 fps, and when I disable a bunch of mods that one would expect to alleviate a lot of the pressure, the gain in framerate is barely noticeable. The circumstances that send framerates down to single digits are still just as punishing. So some fundamental combination of mods seems to have a stranglehold on resources. Your mileage may vary (greatly), of course.

Just a few points.....

A lot above are talking about Oblivions hidden cap on Mods.....Say you Mod Oblivion to the Max it allows..255. the problem is Oblivion doesn't stop there, it Counts every single mod in the DIR. (even if NOT being used!) IT even counts the BSA's in the DIR. when this total reaches 300-400 all hell breaks loose.

This is the reason BASH has ghosting, it hides the unused mods. Also the reason BASH installers are OUT of the oblivion DIR.

And to the OP....Arena was fun, Daggerfall Rocked. Morrowind (Got on my nerves). Modded Oblivion is here to Stay!!
Pics...
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/2010%20Oblivion/ScreenShot72.jpg
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/2010%20Oblivion/ScreenShot319.jpgIncludes QTP III(on OLD 8800 gts) Need new pic with 560TI!!
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/2010%20Oblivion/ScreenShot330.jpg
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/2010%20Oblivion/ScreenShot328.jpg http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/2010%20Oblivion/ScreenShot323.jpg
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/Oblivion%202011/Oblivion_2011_04_19_23_31_16_282.jpg

http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/2010%20Oblivion/Arena-Map.jpg

Why would I Show the Original map from the First in the Series?.....
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/Oblivion%202011/Oblivion_2011_03_07_17_25_33_226.jpgTop half (Zoomed all the way out) INgame (using Onra's Heigth maps)
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/Oblivion%202011/Oblivion_2011_03_07_17_25_37_223.jpg
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/2010%20Oblivion/ScreenShot299.jpg
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/Oblivion%202011/Oblivion_2011_03_07_17_44_29_486.jpg
And then Pull into Port @ http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/Oblivion%202011/map1.jpg
(hoping some day this is all fleshed out) but as it stands there is Just the Land here BUT I have Sailed there and Got REAL hungry and Thirsty!! (Reminder to Bring more Food and Water next trip!!)
Have Fun Modding Oblivion to the point Its just not the same game they gave US!!

Psymon my man, I don't often agree with you but this time you've possibly nailed it.
If you go for the vanilla game then Morrowind wins hands down. It's possibly IMO the greatest RPG ever.
But modded Oblivion..... aw jeez.....the changes can be breathtaking if your willing to spend the time and effort to do some research and do it properly.
It's over 5 years and I'm still playing this damned game, finding new content with every mod I play.
If it can be modded, then it's been done.
I've said it often, modded correctly Oblivion is a helluva ride.

Hey long time no see.


I won't hold it against you. Promise

All this discussion has persuaded me to give Morrowind another shot. Going to take it super slow though - thanks to Leonardo2 for links.

Grab the morrowind overhaul by kingpix, easy to install with good instructions, then install MGE XE.

I have to disagree with the mod numbers for Morrowind and Oblivion. Morrowind was a lot more stable for me than Oblivion is. I had close to 400 mods running on Morrowind, and the crashes were very few and far between. Granted that took a lot of work, but it was worth it. I've spent twice as much time working out the mods on my Oblivion install, and a stable game for me with 250 mods is 15-20 minutes before a CTD.

I have to admit though, Oblivion has some amazing mods that Morrowind simply could not handle.

uh huh ... So I try to install Morrowind again and then install Wrye Mash, TESTool, mlox and MGE.

Now I can't even get the game to load without crashing.

I remove all legacy of these tools and it is still hosed.

From my own experience this is true, because there is another aspect which hasn't being discussed yet and that's the problem with the amount of gamesaves you can have in Morrowind before the real problem begins. Another member in the Morrowind community did a test once of the number saves that you have in the Saves folder before the game became really unstable and the result was IIRC about 970-980 files. If you have less than 500 gamesaves in Morrowind the game is quite stable imo.

In Oblivion such problems doesn't exist and the only problem I've notice in Oblivion with my saves so far is that they tend to be more corrupt than those saves in Morrowind. For mods in general there is another aspect that you need to remember and that's the difference about modding between Morrowind vs Oblivion, because in Oblivion you have obse and obge as a single *engine booster* (if that's correct), but in Morrowind you have mge (includes an internal mwse version), mwse and mw-enhanced for more advanced mods in Morrowind.

Between both games mw is far more stable for me using the tools provided by the community,specially mash which sort almost everything out,repair saves and such.
If not maybe testool merged objects (usually have it),and as last resort manual edit with tesame,tespcd or ee even if a lot of the stuff in ee is way over my league.
Mlox is handy provided there is an updated list to go with it,and last mge which is fine as long mw get one ordinary run first,no need for enb nowadays either.
The only fps drawback is as always when Balmora has a lot of added npc′s in there,otherwise everything I throw at it works,even Balmora works sort of but with noticable reduced fps though.
I don′t do mwe-stuff,that crashed my games more than I like,mwse is usually fine.

Oblivion on the other hand is strange,weird directory structure compared to mw but eventually it get learned,took a while.Another weird example is when one official dlc muck another dlc up,easily fixable but still strange.
Overall my oblivion can run rock stable for months and months and suddenly for no good reason,same hw,settings and mod-list it gives ctd,and lacking any repair saves that works like the mw counterpart it is only to test each mod one by one,testing the obse-stuff one by one and finally get it sorted,but trying to load the save with your 50+ character is out of the question so a new game it is.
-repeat at will

Is there a warning message in-game? Or it is some sort of windows crash?

It was http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1174576-morrowind-graphics-extender-mge/page__view__findpost__p__17545489 compounded by updating DirectX and needing to install latest ATI drivers.

But again MGE is one tool that was a major pain to get working. That is the thing with Morrowind - so many damn tools. anyway I'm and going now - lets see how much patience I have this time.

I actually think the Morrowind file structure is sloppy compared to Oblivion, but it is all what you are used to I guess.

I'm glad you got it working.


Personally, I was a little confused about the file structure in Oblivion at first and the hardest part was to figure it out what in earth is there two oblivion.ini files, but eventually I found out why there were two .ini files in Oblivion.