Hello, i love modding my copy of Morrowind and was looking at grabbing Oblivion on pc (only played it on 360 previously). I was wondering how different the mod variety is between the two games. Morrowind has full working MGE with HDR, Bloom, and water shaders, full retexturing of every item etc. Another question is how much harder is it to install mods on Oblivion compared to Morrowind?

I guess the main question is how much has Oblivion been improved with mods compared to Morrowind.

OB has all that too.


not sure about this day and age. But I am going with a OB being harder. Sometimes. Perhaps. See back in the day of MW, it was pretty straightforward. And got more complex over time. OB kinda inherited a lot of the things that evolved in MW right off the bat. And now, Installing Ob mods is like a crazy alphabet soup.

imo OB has probably benefited from mods more so that MW ever did. :shrug:

Since you're quite familiar with Morrowind mods I suggest that you should http://tesivpositive.animolious.com/?page=guides_mod_installation and ask your self was it a difference compare to Morrowind, because only you can decide what's hard or not. :tes:
I almost forgot... there is also a site http://tesivpositive.animolious.com/?page=site_settings link which allow you to test your knowledge about Oblivion mods.

It's not that different from Morrowind at all really. You still have the ESPs, the meshes/textures folders, the BSAs etc. The third party utilities have evolved too. Wrye Mash is Wrye Bash, its merge feature being expanded immensely and now almost a necessity for running lots of mods together, Mlox is BOSS, MWSE is OBSE etc. Oblivion handles mods better than Morrowind from what I've seen; where morrowind would crash with a weird error message oblivion would soldier on, though not without problems.

There's an archive invalidation thing you need to use in order to get textures to work. I still don't understand it. I use the utility on obmm to handle it :-/

There is a lot more attention that needs to be paid to making mods work together - especially in the form of patches.

If you are familiar at all with Wrye Mash then you will be astounded at what all Wrye Bash can do. And I recommend Wrye Bash highly - the faster you learn it the more you can do and mods you can use correctly.

expect more ctds when testing mods. I'd say less stable overall than morrowind, but I'm not a morrowind aficionado.

Sounds like a pain in the butt, in morrowind you can just slide textures into the texture folder and you are good to go. Morrowind Overhaul has suddenly made retexturing all of morrowind a easy thing to do in less than an hour, and runs pretty stable.

To each their own - I never was part of the original morrowind rush and so don't see what the fuss is about. The game play is horrible, the graphics even modded are eh, the constant maintenance on save games just because you took a mod out or added one was a pain.

That isn't an issue with Oblivion - no save game maintenance - just learning to bash the patch for wrye bash. The main reason patches are needed are for landscape issues. Wrye Bash's bashed patch takes care of most instances of leveled list merging, but no need to worry about duplication usually. The save game files are much sturdier in Oblivion I think and the more you take away in terms of mods being used the sturdier it gets. I found the opposite for Morrowind - taking mods away and things kept getting less stable, due to the save game issues.

Pretty much most user end issues can be worked out by 3 programs: Wrye Bash, BOSS, and Tes4edit.

With OBMM's BSA redirection installing new meshes/textures is as simple as putting them in the data folder, just like Morrowind. The main reason why so many patches are generally needed is due to the massive amount of gameplay overhaul mods that can be installed, unlike morrowind which generally has less mods that change every facet of the gameplay. In fact, so many automated utilities are available for oblivion that it sounds more intimidating wthan it actually is. Installing mods is just a matter of unzipping them to the data folder like in morrowind, or you can just let an automated wizard do it for you with a lot of the popular mods.

Both bash and obmm have bsa redirection features.

I recommend not manually installing and getting familiar with http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1084204-bain-mod-installation-projects/.

As Psymon points out, Oblivion is much easier on mod maintenance. I've limited myself pretty much to 150+ mods in Morrowind, even with some of the excellent tools that make it much easier nowadays to run lots of mods. In Oblivion, I have no problems with running 250+.

That said--I still prefer Morrowind, for reasons that aren't pertinent to this thread.

I would say that one area of mods you'll find a lot more of in Oblivion than Morrowind is leveling systems, simply because most of us perceive character leveling as broken in vanilla Oblivion.

And you will also find major overhauls, not of the game as much as how the game is played--Oscuro's, Mart's, Francesco's, etc--in Oblivion. Morrowind had overhauls that tinkered with the refinement of things, but nothing on this scale.

Yes they have BSA redirection features.

I think most people doesn't know how good BAIN as an installation method really is, but now BAIN is going to be even better with some http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1181935-how-to-improve-the-oblivion-faq-thread-1/page__view__findpost__p__17532991 into Wrye Bash 292 when it's released.

Lol this quote pretty much assures me i won't be listening to your opinion on the matter when it comes to morrowind, guess i should of expected fanboyism on the oblivion forum but i was actually looking for information on how the modding for both games differ, i have played both games to death so i already know the strengths and weaknesses of both, i just never tried oblivion modding.

The main reason i gave up on oblivion on the xbox was because of the leveling system, and the fact the world was so predictable. But after looking at screenshot threads i have to say the main problem i have even with modded oblivion is the textures outside of the draw distance, when you look 200 feet away all you see is a few trees and ground that looks undetailed and muddy texture wise, can this be fixed? I guess i don't see that problem as much in Morrowind MGE with retextures. If i knew i could fix these issues with Oblivion mods it might give me the incentive to try it again.

Aww shucks - I was so hoping to get my opinion in a higher regard. Even in reflecting phrases of pain we will not see I to I ... such is the ism of the schism.

Seriously though - I tried twice to mod Morrowind and liked the act of modding it - the payoff though was minimal. I am a fan of games that involve player skill as much as character skill. I think Oblivion struck the right balance there especially in terms of combat, but the magic is pretty bad in Oblivion.

So if you cannot abide my view on Morrowind then all I have to offer is my measly tutorial on BAIN.

@Oldfashionedguy; yes, both of those issues you cite with the LOD can be fixed. You are looking for REAVWD and some sort of LOD quad replacer (there are a lot of those around). A lot of mod users use these; I'm not sure why you haven't seen any screenshots with them yet.

I think we all can agree that Oblivion style combat would rock in Morrowind , I have to disagree on the graphics though, a fully modded Morrowind looks very close to Oblivion, slightly different but close.

Hopefully Skyrim brings back Morrowind's depth, landscape variety and political intrigue, while retaining the great combat that Oblivion showed. And now i need to grab a copy of Oblivion to start modding

There is one big difference between Morrowind and Oblivion that makes using mods in Oblivion much better then Morrowind. In Morrowind many mods don't work together (especially content mods) where as in Oblivion most mods work together and ones that don't usually have patches that make them work together. Another thing is that there is so much more that can be done with mods in Oblivion then Morrowind which is mostly because OBSE is much more advanced then MWSE. The only area Oblivion isn't ahead of Morrowind in is MGE is currently better then OBGE.

PS. If you are trying to use a large amount of mods (especially content mods) Oblivion is much easier to use since with Morrowind you would likely need to change mods to make them compatible in order for them to work together and in Oblivion you probably won't need to.

PPS. I always get part way through getting mods to work together in Morrowind then quit out of frustration because I would rather use mods that add quests then visual mods. (I do use visual mods but they are not my priority.

Yeah this

Someone once told me that morrowind does not need patches. I think (and I may be wrong) that patching in morrowind is not as easy - something to do with the standards of making esp masters of other esp was not as developed in morrowind modding heyday.

Morrowind modding seems far more fragmented to me. There are very neat projects to be certain, but I don't see the teamwork there to make mods work together near as much as with Oblivion. Oblivion modding feels like a team of modders - especially around here.

And what I'd want is better combat but all that I've seen for that in Morrowind is not that stable.

Yeah so twice I've gotten 2/3rds through modding morrowind and just got frustrated with it never being the case that you can deactivate a mod and move on. Always always cleaning up and even then problems.

Still I may try again.

In terms of actual improvements, I would say : ballpark figure

Morrowind - Hugely Invested Mod Install - 50% gain over original. MGE is fantastic.

Oblivion - Hugely Invested Mod Install - 1000-5000% gain over original depending on how far you go. (and in this process, you will get failed installs, and start again, and again, and again)

And that's not to say - in my opinion - that oblivion was inferior to morrowind, therefore a lot of that gain is simply catching up. I would dispute that. I think we started ahead in some ways. And then moved beyond that. The comparatively small gaps that oblivion did lack, i feel other mods did fill. However to me, the more exciting stuff was not the mods that made oblivion like morrowind. But rather oblivion like something else entirely. (And don't get this confused with lore bypassing, I mean a completely cohesive improvement on aspects that suit the core game)

A lot of the mechanics that oblivion introduced, have been altered, everything can be configured. ini files, bash patches. It's millions, billions perhaps, of variables.

Ever since either game was released, I had always delved into modding. (and the fallout games). However since oblivion, extending into fallout 3, and new vegas, mods have simply done more. And oblivion, while being older than vegas or fo3, has done the most. I would say it's the most successfully modded game in existence. By a factor of about 200. And that's using very little overstatement.

However, getting oblivion completely changed, adding content, depth, density, improvements, story, and diversity, on quite the level that is achievable in oblivion, is also the biggest task anyone can ever have with mods. It's an absolutely huge undertaking. Perhaps not to install an overhaul mod or 3. But to get every single major mod working without any kind of hitch. No framerate loss, no crashes, no memory overflowing, no tears in the landscape. That takes a long time. A very. Very. long time.

In that sense, I like to mess around with my morrowind. Because it's like playing with lego compared to quantum mechanics.

I feel that oblivion has a staggering amount to work with. Partly because of what was in place, and MOSTLY because of the additions the community added. Like obse, the extensive nature of wyre bash. And about 2000 other things. All of which would take 800 pages to mention.


(ps. A basic fcom install, would probably be only slightly harder than morrowinds installs. So I am not saying that getting oblivion to that point is hard. What is hard is getting that, plus 200+ other mods all working together perfectly. Which is a dream that a lot of us have. And occasionally achieve. (better hope we back it up before we mess it up again)

I don't know ... I got a couple installs with 200+ mods that work. What I end up reporting on is not game breaking issues - mostly it is just bugs and small conflicts. It is pushing 300+ that gets me in trouble. Just takes patience and steady pace.

That and being able to play with a known issue going on and not letting it bug you to the point of not being able to play at all. Many issues are not game breaking - any modded game is going to show the seams - just how much of looking behind the curtain do you want to do? The more you get into it the more the illusion is lost and what you see is the why things are showing up and not the immersion. The more advanced modders all seem to say that they don't play as much anymore and that is large part of why I never got into modding - I'd rather play.

The innovation of Oblivion mods is head and shoulders above any other set of mods for any other game I can think of. The only games that come that close are again ... by Bethesda.

Still I wouldn't call it quantum mechanics (or even rocket surgery).

As for the OP here are some useful links:
http://www.gamesas.com/?showtopic=820948&hl
http://www.gamesas.com/?showtopic=790175&hl
http://www.gamesas.com/?showtopic=814477
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1010109-list-list-of-mod-lists/

And these lists are not even the most up to date - still though usefull in examining the main approaches to mods.

Although I loved Morrowind (and some of it's modding), I'm not sure it is even fair to compare it to Oblivion. Especially MODblivion.

I think the reason for that is a contradiction. First the amazing stand-alone modders, and there are hundreds, like TheNiceOne and Khettienna who have taken parts of the game, and I'm guessing here, they they didn't like and changed the game for everyone, forever. TheNiceOne, for example, has owned the economy, the HUD, the hotkeys and the mapping system, and we all have a better game whether we use them all, or only a few. The first time I tried to open the door to Rosethorn Hall after a particularly long adventure in Windfall, and found it locked due to many weeks of back taxes, floored me! (Poor Enya must have been trapped inside when they bolted it). And though not all quest mods are single modders, some of the best storylines I've played were NOT part of the original game. Hehe, after over 2 years of playing, I may actually get back to saving Cyrodiil from those mean-ass Dremora... maybe.

The other side of that is the amazing team projects like Better Cities, All Natural Weather and Unique Landscapes. Just those three mods alone (with a nice retexture overhaul like QTP III or Vibrant) completely, and I mean COMPLETELY changed the entire world. I'm not sure I could play the game without being able to watch a sunset, or brave a thunderstorm, near the Cheydinhal Falls. Don't even get me started on the water shaders and night skies!

And one more thing about this modding community. These modders are, for the most part, patient and helpful. They've not only answered all the pertinent questions and bug reports on their mods, they've actually taken the time to incorporate some requests (reasonable requests) into future versions of their mods. Make sure you read the "readmes" and all will be well. And if it's something you overlooked, most gurus give you a pat on the head when you overlook something, and help you anyhow.

So that's the difference in modding. I just want to add two things. Follow the previous advice on the tools and websites to get you started. You may have played this game on the XBox, but trust me when I tell you, it is not nearly the same game as a modded PC version. And just have fun. I can't tell you how much fun I've had modding and learning from these guys. I can't say i speak for everybody, but 1/2 of the fun I've had (and probably about the same in hours) came from getting things just right for my personal tastes. You want realism, you get it (Hawk smacks his lips when thirsty, his stomach grumbles when hungry, he yawns loudly when tired and almost faints when he picks up just one too many pieces of armor to sell next time he's back in the city.)

Welcome and have a great time.

The focus is different. There is more to do by default in Morrowind than Oblivion, and a lot more "uniqueness" built-in with Morrowind than with Oblivion--visually distinct locations, hand-selected enemies and rewards. But Morrowind is an older game with older graphics. So there are lots and lots of retexture mods for Morrowind, but a fairly standardized set of gameplay mods (NOM, GCD, etc.) and a decent but not expansive set of quests. Oblivion is almost the opposite. There is a fairly small set of graphic mods that are most commonly used (Qarl's textures plus a few other bits and pieces, RAEVWD for distant land), but a lot more choices for any given element of gameplay (nGCD vs. Realistic Leveling vs. Oblivion XP vs. others, for example) that are all widely used, and also more content mods for Oblivion--quest mods, both large and small, dungeon crawls, more mods that add new towns and villages, and more individually-packaged clothes, armor, and weapon mods for Oblivion. Because of the differences between the games, there are also a lot of mods for Oblivion that don't have exact Morrowind mod anologues, because they seek to transform Oblivion into something with more of the "uniqueness" of vanilla Morrowind: Unique Landscapes, Better Cites and Open Cities, and the various gameplay overhauls like OOO, Frans, TIE, etc.

Using mods generally takes more work with Oblivion; on the other hand, there's more of a focus on patching content mods so they can work together, whereas in Morrowing modding often the attitude when Balmora visual mod X breaks quest mod Y is just to shrug and say that you'll have to choose one or the other. The emphasis on making things compatible explains why Oblivion modding can be more work. And that said, you seem focused on graphical mods, and adding some texture packs and OBGE with some shaders should not be too much trouble.

Sadly the LOD texture replacers only go so far and RAEVWD is an ice cold FPS killer. You really have to give credit to the MGE team, their implementation of DistantLOD in Morrowind is more seamless and better looking than Bethesda's implementation in Oblivion.

Yes,

I can get a stable oblivion, but there are lot's of simple things that I have done wrong to totally mess everything up. Like setting the heap replacement in OSR (oblivion stutter remover) to 1. Which provided the best results, but also crashed at 1.8gb of ram, even with the 4gb patch. Simply switching that to a threaded heap allowed my oblivion to keep eating memory into the 4gb range before getting purged back when indoors to about 1gb. (purging the cell buffer is not recommended when you go over the max and are in an exterior (so an automated program, such as the feature in streamline, is probably best disabled if you see over 1.8gb of ram frequently) , in my opinion)

For me, since I starting using every single correct version of mods (nothing is ever outdated - every patch known to man) there are a few simple things that generally cause a crash. Messing around with memory settings in the ini, changing things drastically on the same savegame, messing mods that change the ui (for startup freezes), messing too heavily with the stutter remover heaps and sizes. And the counting game curse.


Counting Game Curse.

Which is, once my oblivion mod count starts to rise into the engine limitation range. Everything starts to take a turn. This is mostly a lot of major mods. That is. Not just little tweak mods, but the entire fcom, level lists mods, some major quest mods (hand cleaned). Which i consider essential. Then any kind of mod beyond a very specific point starts to eat away at everything like acid. Adding that unique landscapes compatibility patch reduced my framerate by 10fps? What? Ok, I will revert to my 120mod fcom install. Install that patch. No change. Ok. !79 mod install. Install patch. 10fps drop and mild stutter. There is like this certain point where oblivion starts no longer care what complexity or script intensity a mod has and just counts any additional data as overload. And you could have 300 mods (via merging) and get the same result (if they are smaller mods) , but there is only a certain amount of inner workings that can be changed before some cap gets reached. And then it all starts to crumble. And it's not linked to memory used, or cpu being eaten by script polling either. It's 100% some kind of internal overload button.

Right now I have 3 oblivion backups (120gb compressed) and i keep switching one out, testing, installing one or two random and small mods. Hits cap. Each additional mod takes a huge hit on performance. Until about 20 mods later. Crashville. The actual mods being installed don't really matter. They could be anything from a compatibility patch to overhaul mod.

So the only way for me to escape this, is to plan out exactly what's most important. And understand as best I can the point before that happens. And stick well behind it.

Then again, if you simply had a fcom+UL+BC+combat+100 or so more. That would still likely not lead to any of what I am talking about. However, the more you install mods, the more attached you get to them, so 200 mods starts to seem more like something you need, than excess.