I think many mod-user veterans will agree...
"The longer you've been using mods, the less mods you use in your game."

I always do play with mods, (about 50 esp) but I would have no problem playing Morrowind without them.
I enjoyed the game on Xbox for 3 years before I played it on PC, and I never got bored or frustrated with the original content.

There might be two (or three) types of players though... Ones that need their Morrowind to be updated so that's it comparable alongside new games, and then other players that don't mind the old style and enjoy the simple nostalgia. Although, I am sure many of us fit into a third group somewhere in-between... I do... but...

I can't think of a single mod, (except maybe the MPP and MCP for the fixes and clean-up,) that not installing would prevent me from making a new character.
Examples:
Better Bodies... yeah, but how often do I see naked people?
Graphic Herbalism... vanilla isn't that slow/bad.
LGNPC... but how often do you stop to chat anyways?
New Landmass... Vvardenfell still has secrets to see.
**edit: I use and love these mods, ^ Not picking on them.

New players always seem to want a ton of mods, but it seems that the more you play with mods, the less mods you consistently end up using.
Maybe this just has to do with the smaller amount of really excellent mods. After a year of using mods, chances are that you have played all the classics and experimented with all sorts of different cool things.
Afterwards you can distill the favorable results into a small Load List and be content, remembering the great ones but not needing to repeat them with every character.

I conclude that the more mods I play, despite considering them essential to the community or amazing in their content, the more I am eventually drawn back into the Vanilla game.
Rediscovering the weirdness of Palansour, solving the three Atronach riddles at Kand, or re-reading The Poison Song books... things like this always bring me back to the original game.

What do you guys and girls think?
Have you found yourself using less mods the more you play? Or do you still install all your old favourites even if you're not going to play them?
How essential are the extenders in keeping you interested, not as a modder, but as a player?

**This doesn't really include Texture & Mesh replacers, for two reasons.
- Almost everyone improves the Vanilla ones
- They don't effect gameplay

/block of text

I agree. I started off with a maxed mod list.

Now I probably only use the essentials that instead of adding totally new things, I just add stuff that enhance what is already in the game

agreed,

i used to have over 300 mods, though, by looking at them, and seeing how they worked i eventually became inspired to make them myself.
then there was i time i had about 100? or less, and i thought that was good. but then i released i barely played the main game, let alone mods, and i was adding mods and having to restart the game more than actually playing it.

so now i have about 20 mods, mostly by me, and i'm happy with it because they all "get along" unlike before where i had mods doing one thing and completely overshadowing another thing (ie: silgrad tower had trees that didn't match with the new tree's i'd added to the game... continuity errors!!!)

and i agree about BB, i only have it cause WHEN i do see a nvde person, my eyes hurt. But i don't use LGNPC; all that dialog seems to cause an FPS hit, and i barely do quest let alone talk to randoms.
still like the mods, but they're not "necessary'

I used to play with a lot of game mechanic altering mods like GCD but it's been awhile. I always install a ton of graphics replacers, I always install GNGDR and Immersive Chargen, and I always install LGNPC/TR. That's basically all I run.

When I started downloading mods back in early 2007, I have installed something like 100esp, and barely played the game itself. Now I have something like 50-60 esps and I'm happy with that.

When I played the vanilla game (Minor mods self made to take care of minor issues, like buggy quests), I think I played something like 150+ hours, and still had so much left to see and do. Biggest issue I come across is the quest organization or finding the proper references in the journal becoming difficult. Course I also didn't have access to the internet, and my harddrive space after MW was installed had like 500Mb free... (Yean, 4-6gig harddrive, gotta love it!)

It would seem to me, that adding more land masses & quests and all this extra stuff seems excessive when you haven't completed so many quests in the game (Assuming you can. I think when you join one house you can't do quests in another, with certain exceptions). So mostly visual updates, bug fixes and to make the game more balanced is what you should go for, and after you start having issues finding more to do then you would add the extra lands and mods. Perhaps my perspective is too narrow.

whenever i have played reguardless if it was way back when or now. I still tend to use quite a few mods in my game though no where near the max point where i'd have to start merging mods to make room for more esp's. I've seen ppl who say they have a top 10 or 20 mods they consider essential . however my list of mods i wont play without surpasses that by quite a bit. i normally run around 175 mods. though quite a few of them are texture replacers. i dont use the LGNPC and i do not use TR ( as it conflicts with most of the other land mass or quest mods that i prefer to use) and I do not use game mechanic altering mods . like you said there are different kinds of players. so id be in the " still install all your old favourites" however i do not install any mods which i do not use. though i used to install the vampire mods so that i could play one but i got tired of deactivating and reactivating mods depending on the type of char i was playing.
some things like MCP and MGE and a couple others i personally dont reguard as mods. on my list thoes are above and beyond essential .

I've been sort of a minimalist from the start, so that hasn't really changed much. If anything, my mod list has gotten bigger as I've slowly embraced things that I feel the game needs.

Thing is, there's two different ways to look at mods. Some people see them as things that, well, mod the game. Others, like myself, see them as things that *fix* the game. As such, I can't imagine playing the game without my full mod setup, just as I couldn't imagine playing the game with large chunks of what's *supposed* to be there missing.

I almost always have a bunch of mods that I will never play loaded. My thought is that with my current character I will run across whatever mods I can until I get bored with that character. Next time, I won't use the mods that I did in the previous game. I will eventually have a list of my "must have" mods.

Also, I have just as much fun adding mods and making them work well together as I do playing the game. Anyone else?

i do have a few different morrowind installations:
1 - has just about any mod installed & merged to see how far morrowind can be pushed. things moved, mods merged, etc. probably somewhere in the realm of +2000 mods combined in some fashion, though most were small mods to begin with. it's a hilarious adventure in this installation, as it really feels like a piecemeal work from the community, and no longer looks or feels like the old morrowind. some of the modders here would have a heart attack seeing their work next to some of the amateur work in this installation.
2 - is a stripped down installation of bugfixes that is used primarily for building mods and testing.
3 - is the installation that tries to stay true to the old morrowind, with bugfixes and gameplay tweaks. this gets the most use when staying true to TES lore. funny enough, it does *not* have better bodies or better heads, never needed to see boobies or butts, pretty faces, or skin tight clothes. i find charm in morrowind's ugliness.
4-6 are total conversions.

I don't mean to go off topic here, but: This is why I don't want Skyrim to use Steamworks. I like Steam sure enough, but one install per game makes it useless for Bethesda games. /rant

...damn, you people are hardcoe.

I play with a number of graphics improving and bugfix mods...but thats it.

Morrowind in the way of content and even gamestyle is pretty perfect im my opinion.

I can safely say that the above doesn't apply to me. The mods I install, I consider either fixes or expansions to the game. So if they are bug-free and fun, why would I ever want to remove them? I basically use mods to create some sort of Morrowind++, with the entire vanilla content fixed/balanced (not changed) and with tons of additional content around it. I only have one installation with an evergrowing loadlist that I tweak over time, until the game can't take it and just refuse any more addition. But with around 140 mods in my loadlist, I think I still have a long way to go until then.

I returned to Morrowind almost a year ago, around the same time I got this laptop, and within at least a week of having it again, I was downloading mods. A lot of mods. I've never, ever had even close to having the maximum installed/running, but I was downloading them by the truckload. Every category, every aspect of the game I thought might have cool stuff in it, I went looking, and I found it. That went on for months. Had quite a few problems arise from it, namely when I needed to remove a whole bunch of textures, or the couple of times I've had to re-install the game because I'd seriously messed something up. Then there was my haphazard attempt at modding the game myself, which cost me quite a few save games.

It's only recently have I truly come to know what kinds of alterations/additions to the game that I find to be worthwhile, and really know what I'm doing when it comes to installing/building mods. (And of course I still run into issues. ) A lot of old mods I got bored with, like Pearls Enhanced. I had a nicely-built Nord female with pretty much all modded gear with whom I spent hours pearl-diving, because, thanks to that mod, it was actually interesting to do. But Pearls Enhanced is now absent from my hard drive, as are about 90% of the other mods I used to not be able to live without.

Over the past month or so, as you may know, I've become very immersed in modding. So immersed that the only time I play the game anymore is to test mods. I have about 50 installed right now, but the number of them that I have actually running when I play fluctuates considerably, and really has nothing to do with whatever mods I "can't live without".

I've listed such "gotta have" mods, but honestly, such is meant in jest, because vanilla Morrowind is a solid game. Buggy, quirky, possibly too big for it's own good, but solid. And after my dungeon mod (the last in the project list) is finished, I intend to purge my game of all mods. ALL OF THEM. And just play, like I used to. Of course, there'll be a game running beside that with as "perfect" of a list of mods (half of them my own) as I think anyone could possibly achieve for themselves.

So yes, I'd say that the average modder probably uses fewer and fewer mods as time passes, because we become more familiar with exactly what we want, and how to implement it without having 100 mods installed.

And I do count retexturing, because:

1) Not everyone does it in such massive quantities, myself for example (although Wolli seems to be intent on getting me back into that, the little Scamp )
2) It doesn't affect gameplay, but it DOES affect the experience. A prettier-looking world IS a more tantalizing one to explore.

And I don't touch the extenders. Graphics card can't handle MGE, and MSE I don't need.

I have over 80 esp.s, but those are mostly graphical enhancers. About 20 of em' are pure mods, like the neverhalls & forgotten halls.

I used to have loads of mods, but nowadays I only use those with exceptional quality (matter of taste I assume)

Then I've got Rebirth on my hands which makes it kinda hard having loads of mods

Great responses.
I'm glad to see a diversity in thought.

It's always interesting to see what different people consider essential.
I for one, never use mods that "re-balance" aspects of the game, economy/armor/alchemy/etc. I've been using the original balance for so long that I know how it works (and how it doesn't) so I base my gameplay on those set rules. Changing the economy rules now would just confuse me, and I'd probably never know what to do.


Yes, well said. That's what my thought is too, but now I see it doesn't seem to be true for all of us.

I prefer not to achieve "balance" through my work, but a greater level of challenge. Try a couple of my birthsign plug-ins, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

you think that's bad, then you'd hate to see my doom/doom2 installs back in the day. same with civ2.

though in fairness, the total conversions should be treated as seperate games, and the mega-modded version is completely different too.

Also not to mention that I have always found the less esps loaded, the more stable the game.

I agree with that mostly, but I've actually found that the crashes/freezes I used to get all the time have been alleviated by MCP. I don't know how, or if that's even what happened, but it would certainly appear that way.

This is a good general rule, and one I've heard repeated several times. However, I'd like to draw a distinction between the quality vs. the quantity of scripts running in your game. Increased instability can be the result of a larger quantity of inefficiently written scripts running simultaneously, conflicting with each other, running every frame, more than one messagebox per frame, etc. Many of the scripts in the esps I use I have optimized myself, and my load list of over 100 ESPs runs quite efficiently. I could also write a single .ESP that would tank your game.

So, "more == worse", as the thread's title implies, isn't completely true. It may be more accurate to say "more inefficiency == worse". But, not every modder that writes something great is a software engineer, so that's that :sweat:

Back on topic, I have over 200 mods in my installation (which may or may not include .esps). I'm more like Logorouge in that each mod I add I feel is an important addition to the experience and improves the game in some quantifiable way, and sticks true to the original spirit of the game and its lore.

i do, every http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/8769/jesusp.jpg i http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/6381/plantbreeding.jpg the http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/8510/lordofash.jpg with my current http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/8756/lordofash2.jpg

okay, so.
i've about 60-70 esps running. most of them are graphics enhancers/replacers, balance mods,
and bugfixes. a few additional creatures, and the occasional quest mod (really just three: a
personal nerevar armor version, roht and buug).
this list is slowly increasing though. when i add a mod to it that means i usually have worked
through it, deleted some stuff, tweaked some other stuff and adapted it to my liking (and also
made it compatible with all the other mods if necessary). so yes, less is more.

Most likely have close to 300 mods with numerous ones merged to fit under the mod limit.

Would I be content with Morrowind unmodded? No. There are too many interesting locations, stories, characters and things to do now to go back to the largley bland characters and hack/slash in the original game for me.

I steer clear of mechanic altering/balance mods though as they just don't interest me, the oddities and things that appear broken are to me just things to embrace and see how they add to the gameplay and the sometimes topsy-turvy nature of Morrowind.