Because we're used to it and Bethesda knows it and encourages it.

Sounds to me like you never used mods. Complaining about a food you never tasted is a bit silly, don't you think? Thing is we're not complaining, we're talking about the possibility of adding salt and pepper to suit our tastes.

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I'll explain: Modding is what made Morrowind and Oblivion so interesting to me! The creativity that people put in to make new characters, landmasses, quests, items, the hard work that people do to make those things and change game mechanics that are not always as I like them (for example: I did not like everything of the leveling system of Morrowind, some aspects of it were good, some things were not good for immersion in the game for me personally, someone else will like other things and may dislike other things)

Now let me ask a question, out of curiosity. Why wouldn't you change your game (as you said in your other post)? Do you play TES games over and over in vanilla mode? Do you just play TES games once?

Let's see.

The game has unnatural ambient lighting which kills the atmosphere. It is probably *fixed* after QA complaints which pretty much disables all the quality work of artists. Anyway, ambient lighting mods are a must.

Smoking chimneys and windows lights. Daggerfall had those. In Morrowind, only smoking chimneys. In Oblivion, no smokes, no glowing windows. Luckily, we have mods.

I really wish things can only get better. But sometimes, time is not on the side of developers. If the game can be improved, it will be improved by modders.

There is something called emergent gameplay/narrative. The "the way developers intended" does not apply here. I mean, if there is something they intended, it is players using mods and get creative, hence they include CS.

Sometimes stuff needs 'fixing' to fit in with my idea of what makes an interesting game.

Oblivion, especially, had a lot of design decisions which (although I can appreciate why they did it that way) really svcked the life out of the game for me personally. The very aggressive level scaling was the worst offender here. Minigames making certain skills pointless was another bad one.

I get mods for issues like this as soon as possible, so that they don't ruin my enjoyment of that all-important first playthrough.

Bethesda have a definite 'style' and approach to game design. This is a good thing. Certain parts of their philosophy don't quite fit with what I want from an RPG (a very forgiving approach to difficulty, for one thing), and that's fine by me, because the modding community lets me have it my way. For me the 'art' in games is the world, the lore, the plot, the adventure. Changing the way the game systems work so that the game is more fun for me does NOT change these things. I still feel that I'm playing Oblivion. It's just that I'm playing a version of Oblivion that is interesting for me as a game, not just as a story.

Mods that alter the gameworld drastically, or add all kinds of items, I would wait a while to download... and generally that kind of mod doesn't really interest me, apart from Mart's Monster Mod which adds interesting new enemy types.

"why can't you people just accept a good game the way it is without changing it personally you make me sick"

This comment really freaks me out, to be honest. Firstly, "accept a good game the way it is"... what's wrong with wanting to build upon a good game, to make it into an even better game? And Oblivion, for me personally, wasn't even that good a game, merely a game with fantastic potential ruined by a few design decisions that didn't work for me. The modded Oblivion I play now is a fantastic RPG. The issues that are such a big problem for me may well be the right choices for you. That's what is so wonderful about modding: it's all optional. Secondly, "personally you make me sick"... why on earth should you care about how people choose to enjoy the game? I think it's fantastic that you enjoy the game unmodded, I'm glad that all the hard work that Bethesda put into the game is entertaining thousands of people all around the world. Vanilla Oblivion just didn't do it for me personally. Why would you deny me the pleasure of enjoying the game?

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I'm sorry if my plan to use a custom (classic non-tes dwarf) race & maybe have a custom-rolled companion is so horrible to you but I like having a say in my adventure.

Only occasional mods, really. I haven't got into them much, *hopefully* Skyrim will change that

showler is wise. Always play thru vanilla 1st then check for existing fixes.

I've removed and edited a bunch of posts. Proceed as you were. :foodndrink:

Thank you! I agree that those posts did not add to the discussion!
Edit: by the way, good idea Umrahel, I should get a beer! Anyone joining?
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Something I was wondering: do you have info of some mod teams already starting to mod for Skyrim? Making stories, models, etc? I haven't heard about any teams (or people) actually starting, only some teams talking about possibilities.

Did any teams already start working on mods before TES4 came out? I think Silgrad was already modelling, not sure if I remember right.

Just wondering...

I tend to tweak as I go along, initially to remove annoyances such as the loading area text message in Oblivion. Subsequent characters will have a varying range of mods depending on the type of character I'm playing.

ATM I think the modders want to find out what formats that the engine uses, since it is a new engine it may not be as easy as it was to go from say Oblivion to Fallout 3. but I'm sure there are modders that are thinking of what they'd want to do.

I'm an xbox 360 gamer, my computer can only handle oblivion on medium graphics, and it still lags then. So... no modding for me. Only duplication glitches. :/

We don't yet know anything about the modding structure other than there is one. I doubt many modders are willing to work on something tangible without any assurance it will work.

FYI I never played Morrowind, and after Oblivion's graphical and combat system improvements, getting into MW was really difficult.

I have been a OB mod-user (not a modder) for the past 3 years. What started as mere curiosity is now a full-fledged passion. I live for mods. There are many things that needed improvement in Oblivion, so this transition was inevitable. But apart from fixes, there are mods that add more life in the game - like MMM, adds bunch of new monsters. Or mods like Elsweyr that add new landmasses. There are some mods that I would not have thought necessary (some aesthetic choices), but after playing them, I eased into them and accepted them more. I am an active member of the Oblivion mods forum, and thanks to the great contributions of modders large and small, my game is much improved and an all-time favorite!


I prefer lore-friendly mods and mods that agree with the style of Bethesda. Same with new music - I like it if it is in the same style of Jeremy Soule.

So, initially, I'll play through Skyrim w/o mods, but will jump into the modding scene as soon as it gets a little well-developed and polished. Who knows, I might try my hand at actually "creating" a mod!

Sorry if this has already been posted but:

'Earlier today Nick Breckon tweeted “For everyone that’s asked me, we’re now confirming that we’ll be releasing modding tools for Skyrim.” Elaborating further on the Bethesda Softworks Forum, Breckon stated: “We’ve always been impressed with what the community has done with our tools. Like the Elder Scrolls Construction Set for Morrowind and Oblivion, we plan to release Creation Kit so you guys can mod Skyrim.”'

~http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/01/19/skyrim-definitely-has-modding-tools/

It's not possible to respond to your poll at this point because we know very little about the game.

I don't know if I will need to replace the textures/shaders etc., or if I will need a mod for survival/hardcoe mode.

Hopefully vanilla Skyrim will be perfect and I will play for a year before going back and trying some mods.

I usually look to mods to fix things I don't like and add new content. Most of all, I love adding new adventures to take my characters on. Its great to have a strong main story to take your character through, but its even better when you could take your character's adventures even further. See exciting new lands, fight challenging new opponents, and find new paths to power, or upgrade your character's arsenal and armory with new weapons and armor. (Though I prefer realistic and functional armor and clothing, which is hard enough to find.) When things get boring, I look for companions and friends to add to my journey. Of course I still go through the vanilla content with my newer characters, but I just love when the world I know is expanded by the ideas of other people.

It's interesting to see the results of the poll. Many people are hard-core modders, many fall somewhere in between and only a few don't mod. That was not what I was expecting! I was expecting a lot of new people and console-gamers who did not mod, but this is only a small minority according to the poll.

Mod on!

As a hardcoe modder, I have no idea why someone wouldn't add or want to add mods. The sheer volume of stunning weapons alone should be enough to convince most people to go for mods. Then you get into things like house mods, castle mods, quest mods (who can get enough of quests, after all?) and overhauls extend the life of the game exponentially. Those that don't use mods are likely people that never have and only play consoles. Those people, in my humble opinion, are missing out on an absolute world of fun.

"After playing some time, I fix things in my game that I don't like with mods." This mainly my style at first. But after playing for quite some time I like to add a few extras too. Stuff to make things prettier, more interesting, and convenient like: texture replacers, new homes, companions, new outfits, and carryable storage bags.

I'ts nice that your trying to make your own experience but when you basically scrap the game that developers worked years on making just to build your own game without paying for the licensing fee, it is such an insult. Now adding things to a game is fine but changing everything in the game is a bit much. As for the the "perfectly fine" part, it doesn have meaning and it is able to be rated. When the a system fulfills it's purpose, it is fine. It's not a point of view, it's something that can be rated.

original game = hundreds of hours of game-play

mods= thousands of hours of game play

game+mods+expansions = millions of hours of game play

so I chose 1

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1160685-i-only-worry-about-stuff-that-cant-be-modded-in-how-about-you/

I made a tread about my lack of concern with things that are easier to mod in, check it out. Mods are one of the things that make Beths games special for me, there are so many mods for there games, with OB I made the best single player RPG(for me) now I will make an even better one with Skyrim. I don't worry about things like number of quests,weapons,etc because there are always lot of mods for those, I only care about things that are harder to mod. For example I was worried they would go Fallout style 2.5 equipment slots, history has shown that mods don't really fix this issues. But its already been confirmed it will not be like Fallout, yippie.

Woo there, let the dude play/mod the game how he wishes, this is WHY mods are good, people can do what they want and it does not hurt anyone else.

@Jasp we are a minority, we make up less than %25 of Beths sales(based on recent games). But Beth still care enough about the pc to release a mod kit to us, more support than most other company.

These polls people put on here are meaningless in the larger scheme of things, even if they got 1000 people to respond(which they never do) its still a fraction of the millions of users of Beths games.

PC gamers are only 25%? Wow, where did you get that statistic? I was not aware of that, I thought everyone wanted modding abilities.

As a student/scientist, I can of course also be critical of my poll . Only a certain part of the TES gamers posts on this forum, the greatest fans & the population that is most concerned about the game, and thus, most likely, people that use mods (since they make the game so much greater). But it's interesting to discuss it, even using a quantitative method for a qualitative goal!

Edit: one result of the poll would be about people of this forum: I think with 100+ replyers & the outcome of this poll you can assume that most people are (semi)hardcoe modders. Not taking account the people who are not on this forum, who are mostly console gamers if your statistic is true