Has anybody noticed that NPCs in pretty much every single town and city crowd around doorways and stand idly by for ages before actually going through them? I'm not sure if this is the consequence of running population mods, but even if it is, I feel like there should be some kind of solution to the problem.

I've noticed that if I deliberately run into an NPC standing in front of a doorway, they'll stumble, look at me, and then proceed through the door. It's kind of like smacking them in the face, causing them to suddenly remember what it was they were doing.

No, they pause and then enter in my game. The pause is not long.

Lydia does that to me sometimes. I have to run into her to get her to move or just use the dragon shout.

It possible it's the pop mod. More NPC's can be more CPU intensive. Only way to determine is to disable it then try. As always don't overwrite saves while your doing this.

Make a new manual save and then test. Then load THAT save when your done testing.

I think it turned out that the problem was the Lockpicking Overhaul mod that I've been running almost since I first started playing. It caused a similar but worse issue a long time ago, but I could have sworn it was fixed. After deleting it finally, I no longer have the issue and I'm not constantly reminded that I'm playing a video game.

Oh, well. Thanks for the replies, guys!