As anyone can tell you, effectively handling larger mods in Oblivion is a huge task, especially for anyone new to the scene. Of all the things I can think to perfect in Skyrim it would be a better way to natively handle mods without the need for things like Wrye Bash or BOSS. Even after all these years, the largest mod undertaking in Oblivion (FCOM) STILL isn't easy, efficient, or perfect. Some of the features that would be useful are:

1. Ability to suggest and change load order from the game launcher
2. Ability to clean dirty mods from within the game launcher
3. A list that you could pull up at anytime that clearly lists conflicts and marks what mod will take priority
4. Of the conflicts listed, perhaps a way could be implemented to pick which mod takes priority if you want to change it easily

It would help immensely throughout the lifetime of Skyrim if Bethesda essentially automated the features of programs like Wrye Bash. I have a feeling it won't be too long after release before we start seeing larger and more epic mods from the community.

Given that there will always be additional features/scripts/etc that modders will want, leading them to make something like OBMM.... it doesn't really seem like there's alot of motivation for Beth to spend much time on doing their own version.


(Never actually used Wrye, and I don't really know anything about BOSS.... is it a fancier version of OBMM?)

BOSS automatically sets your load order, and provides some tips for incompatibilities, etc. And I agree, there will always be things that modders will want to add on (that's what they do!), so a custom, modder-made program would make more sense.

I've never had a problem managing my load order myself, so have never had any need for BOSS. Wrye Bash (at least to me) doesn't appear to be very user friendly, so I've never learned how to use it, however TES IV Edit and it's Fallout equivalents I have gotten some experience with and have leaned how to use them.

I would like if Bethesda gave us a better way to manage our load orders, but with the way the community handles it and continues to update it the way Bethesda likely wouldn't be able to do (not a knock against them, they have other things to do than continuing to update something that the modders can do themselves... and do a mighty fine job of it too.)

Bethesda has always supported Mods ever since Morrowind and it's construction set. They give modders all the tools they need and the freedom to create and make availible mods that use original or in game resources.

What they don't do is support the mods once they are made. Too many variables, too much liability and too many things to go wrong in the mix. In the past, the modding community comes up with the tools to work with mods, as they are needed. So, that need is taken care of. If you think about it, they modding community is the best source of mod usage related tools.

The only thing I want them to do is make the mod files like .omod files. Where all of the stuff is automatically packaged together, so installing is a quick click and everything is right where it is supposed to be (even if the person who made the mod is doing stupid [censored] like putting textures in the male dunmer voice folder) That is all I really want.

Edit: Oh, and load order changing.

It all comes down to this: Why would Bethesda bother with something that they are never ever going to use themselves?? The only things that go into the CS/CK are things used to create the game, so there's no reason to waste development time on something that will inevitably need to be replaced a few years or even months down the line as modding expands and evolves.

Modders know best what modders want, so leave it to the modders. It's not like we have a shortfall of people that can make these utilities, even if we don't have an abundance.

Add the fact that absolutely not everyone plays on PC. I think the majority plays on console, or like 50-50.

Bethesda make the game, and that's it. They give us their tools that they used to make the game, because it's a win-win (the tools are already there so it doesn't take extra time/money to release it, and makes modding possible and therefore a lot of people happier in the future of the game).

Considering the bigger issues with mods is how they can conflict big time amongst themselves,ence the need for load orders and wrye bash advanced features and the like,at least if something is done about that,that alone could helps loads,a system where the game itself would recognize from the active mods any possible conflicts and merge them somehow "wrye bash" like.
This alone i think it would help tremendoulsy.

I think at the very least they will implement load orders. I personally wouldn't be surprised if they made their own mods for testing a new feature after the main part of the game is done. That way none of the base files are accessed directly. I bet they have some kind of way to merge mod files directly into the master if they like how it works.

Again, they won't bother as they'll never use it. And even if they did it would be closed source so if it didn't do everything needed then someone would have to make a new program anyway.




For Oblivion they used http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Version_Control. So people had their own .esps to work on that edits a master file, and the version control basically keeps track of changes so there aren't conflicts etc. This was also how they merged the files.

Ill agree with that, but I still wouldnt say that the Launcher couldnt use a bit of an update. If they could have the base loader do more than just arrange by date, and do things such as merging leveled lists dynamically based on load order(rather than Bashing), then they would also be able to more easily handle DLC.

I mean if they had had something like Wrye Bash there could have been some more involved DLCs that were more than just new areas and quests, such as adding new armours and ingredients or putting in new NPCs to existing areas and shops. Yes they probably could use an installer to modify the vanilla files, but they might have been more inclined to do more interesting DLC if they had the tools right there to do it.

Neat, I didn't know that. Still a load order at least would be nice, seeing how it isn't the most complicated thing to make.

The thing about doing that is that you'll still need Wrye Bash to do more complicated things, so you'll probably rarely use the one that Bethesda provides as it would mean opening up two programs .

75% on console for FO3.

I have personally never, ever used Wyre Bash. I haven't the foggiest what it does. I have never had a conflict in Oblivion, even when using 50-100 mods at once. OBMM has worked well enough, so the .omods and a load order is all I would need to be extremely happy. And just because they wouldn't use it or someone else will make something better is a terrible reason not to do something. I can't understand that mentality, especially when programming.

I used OBMM for a while, then switched to using Wrye Bash(not as complicated as it looks, you just need to do some reading) and BOSS. It would be nice of them to include utilities like these, but I think the modding community might be able to do this if they can't change the data file loading to be more like OBMM or something.. I think they should just focus on making a great construction set and game, and make similar utilities only if they've got time.

... a reminder of why I don't release mods anymore.
Loading a few mods, no matter how big they are, is not a problem. Loading 99 huge mods, problem. There are bound to be overlaps, incompatibilities, etc...

Some people believe because they can think it and sounds perfectly logical to them, it can be coded. But code don't think on its own.
Take for example the OP's suggestion # 2: what exactly constitutes a "dirty" mod? how does code decide whether a change to the vanilla setting is a valid mod setting or is the mod being "dirty"?

Leave it as it is. I make my own mods, I don't want to deal with yet another lil' utility to do something I can easily do myself, manage mods.

I play Morrowind and Oblivion with 250 - 300 mods at a time. In either game I don't think I could narrow it down to just 100 essential mods. Doing this (or even a simpler setup with "just" FCOM) requires a tool infrastructure, and that's asking too much of Bethesda. Though sometimes I wonder how they managed to get by without certain tools...

But it would be really nice if they did some design work to ease the pain. It would be great if they would spend some time planning to help us avoid Leveled List issues, Archive Invalidation, custom race problems, and similar issues.

Better merging capabilities (improvement in record design) and more work to prevent contamination (i.e. accidental duplicate records) would be really nice, too.

Oh, and two more things. One, it would be really great to have a verbose log option in the ini file, like Warnings.txt in Morrowind. It would make tracking down issues easier. The other is smarter error handling in both Skyrim and the Creation Kit. Oblivion and the TESCS crash for really silly reasons, like because you forgot to check a required parent mod, and that could easily be handled with smarter dependency checking followed by a warning and option to change, rather than just silently crashing to desktop.

Well your very lucky then . You probably do have a lot of conflicts, you just may not realise it, and they probably aren't gamebreaking.

To address the point about the fact they wouldn't use it or someone else will make something better as a reason to not do something, that's a perfectly valid reason. Programming time is expensive time, and implementing something like OBMM would require a fair amount of effort, and it is almost guaranteed to come out with bugs/not quite complete for what we will eventually like it to do. Which means either spending extra time and money to keep the thing updated, or leave us with something that isn't exactly what we want. And that thing will inevitably be replaced, anyway.

Bethesda makes the tools they need to make the game, and then they give those tools to us. That's more than enough. The programmers won't just be twiddling their thumbs waiting for something to do, they'll all have incredibly busy schedules, and wasting that time on something that no-one else on the dev team will use, nor will the majority of the customers benefit from, would be a terrible idea, both business wise and in terms of the things they'd have to not program in order to give us something that will get replaced anyway.

Sure it would be nice if Bethesda paid a team to make OBMM/Wrye Bash and keep it constantly updated, but that's never going to happen. Especially considering Wrye Bash is being actively worked on a good 5 years after Oblivion came out, it just doesn't make any sort of financial sense. Better to just focus on something else, and leave us to make a program that does what we want and need it to do.

Just load order changing would be fine. As CCNA said let the modding community do the rest.

I was just about to suggest the same thing. The .esp file is good and all, but a sort of package file supported natively would help incredibly with distribution of content. You could even just do something like Apple with their .ipa app files, which are nothing more than renamed .rar files.

Perhaps it can be like .bsa files even, which store archived content. Just make the format more open and give it greater functionality, make it easy to modify, and so forth. You can just give every mod one, and make the mod file itself come packaged within one.

I was also playing garry's mod the other day (which is almost nothing like the construction set) but it gives you the ability to download content directly from within the game. That's something I do not see Bethesda doing, but that's a cool little feature.

I like manual-installing most of my mods... means I don't have to learn how to unpack & repack omods & bsas when I want to do some of my minor modifications (like editing textures).



(of course, I don't typically uninstall & reinstall different mods in one play of the game. I tend to wipe the install & start again from scratch when I want to make large mod changes. :shrug:)