I'm just curious if people think this is is a good idea, considering how old Oblivion is now, and now that it's been done to Morrowind, would it be a good idea to do something similar to Oblivion?

I say this because there are so many Oblivion mods, some known, others not so much known, that could be put together and tweaked with the help of lots of modders. I think it would be more convenient for people to mod Oblivion if there were a lot of good mods in one place.

There are already a lot of good mods in one place: Oblivion Nexus has most mods released.

This topic has been done pretty much to death, do a forum search for compilation to get opinions.

This.

I can see what you're saying but it's been debated many times before and besides the Nexus as a hub is pretty much breakfast lunch and dinner right there.
This from me though - any compilation would be hellishly difficult to sort out because:
A. What people want as mods is largely subjective aside form the "core" essentials and everyone knows what they are anyway.
B. The amount of effort involved in getting disparate mods to work with each other, let alone with mods from other packs - (which is what would happen) - would, I imagine, simply be too time-consuming and ultimately doomed to beta-hell whilst everyone debated what mod should go where and with what.
C. There are in fact compilations on the nexus for armour, clothing, and the like already - you just need to search for them.

But as said this is flogged topic for which there are numerous threads already...

Generally, I think you will find that most gamers that use Oblivion mods will be wanting a unique experience, tailored just so to their own preferences.

Some huge generic compilation of - allegedly - "the best stuff", just won't cut it, for most.

Therefore, no, I disagree that it is a good idea.

Furthermore, it is very easy to find and download mods. There is even a search engine dedicated to it! Failing that, Google (or whatever one might prefer) will do fine, more often than not. And, if you are stuck as to what you are even looking for, the Mod Detectives thread in this very forum exists for that very purpose. If you want what is popular, you can see that for yourself, for example at the Nexus. You can also sort search results, in many ways, to better suit whatever you have in mind.

And so on. I hope that helps.


edit: If you want just a few examples of what I mean by "their own preferences", have a look at the "top ten mods" thread that should still be on the first page or two. A bit of diversity, you could say!

I feel a lot of negativity toward them.

Oblivion isn't that old, and many mods are still being actively worked on and updated. That's what makes compilations a bad thing--not only has the compilation 'author' republished others' work without permission (in most cases) in order to get his own name up in lights, the content is likely to end up being no more than a collection of old or flawed versions. And any mod that comes from a compilation is unlikely to be supported by the actual author, with good reason--not only might they be sensitive to someone else redistributing their work, but there's no guarantee someone less talented hasn't 'tweaked' it and ruined the whole thing.

If it's a big compilation of "Here's all the mods that I use in my game" then no. For the reasons already stated: What works well for one person, won't for another. It comes down to preference.

That said, I do believe that a graphics overhaul mod similar to http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1339035-relz-morrowind-overhaul-sounds-graphics-20/ would be a great idea. Sure, some people still won't like it, but for the most part we all use the same mods for visuals - OBGE, QTP3 Redimized, RAEVWD, and AWLS. And there are some great new graphics mods like the http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/42400 that stay true to the original visual themes of vanilla Oblivion (unlike the polarizing grass mod that adds bight yellow daffodils everywhere ). If you could create a visual overhaul mod just like the Morrowind one, that ties all these common mods together for an easy installation procedure, with plenty of customization options included (Unique Landscapes mods would be good as optional installs) then I can only see this being a great idea.

For the experienced modders who know exactly what they want in their Oblivion game when it comes to graphics, they already know what to do and how to do it. But for players who want to check out Oblivion for the first time after playing Skyrim, and want a nice easy way to make it look like a modern game, then this should be incredibly popular. I haven't played Oblivion in ages, and one of the factors that puts me off getting back into it is the time it takes to get all those mods downloaded, installed, working and customized. If I knew I could download one single mod with an automated installer that gives me plenty of options, I would probably get back into Oblivion in a heartbeat.

So check out Morrowind Overhaul, and if you think you can do this for Oblivion, DO IT!

A lot of players do not use QTP of any kind (I am one of them), and OBGE is often considered both too complicated at the best of times, and too demanding, hardware-wise. Actually, the latter applies to many graphics-enhancing/altering mods. RAEVWD is likewise seen as too demanding, by quite a few players. And AWLS has a lot of options, some of which will determine the impact on FPS, etc. Only one of those you listed there is simple, in that you copy the files and that is that (however you choose to do that, of course). The others all require some amount of customisation, with regards to hardware, other mods, preferences, etc., etc.


There are also many grass mods (some of which I use, for example), and personally, I would never use that one. So it goes...


No, please do not.

There are so many different ways of improving the graphics of Oblivion (and subjectively, at that, in many cases...), that I do not believe you could get modders to agree on what would be best for every little thing (e.g., grass) - let alone most players...

Yeah I know I posted before in this thread but:
What Arafel said. Darkstorne, your post actually serves only to illustrate the problem. I use OBGE, but by preference my eye-candy is Lush and Gaudy, amongst other things - so I would want my own compilation made, so now you have two.
OBGE absolutely should not be included in a compilation because it has to stand on it's own, anyway.

The concept, whilst outwardly laudable, simply would not work.

For you two it wouldn't work, sure. But you could say exactly the same things about MGSO - "Oh I don't use those textures. That MGE stuff is too intensive for my system. I would never use Vurt's trees and grassland mods." etc. That's fine! Clearly a graphic overhaul isn't for you. But a lot of people out there do have fairly powerful rigs, and if the popularity of MGSO is anything to go by, a version for Oblivion would be used by a lot of folks.

Again, it's clearly not for everyone, and it would still need a lot of customization options. But I would put money down that it ends up on the hot files section of the Nexus. For more casual modders who just want a sixy-looking game with as little hassle as possible, it's perfect. For the rest of us who spend more time modding than actually playing, not so much.

Well. For what it is worth, I spend far more time playing than modding, and always have.

Also, my computer is by most standards extremely powerful.* I am not boasting, but simply stating the fact.

It could be that Morrowind's graphics mods (that are part of that overhaul) are universally (or almost so) seen as either the best, or the only, options in each case. Even if so, that certainly is not so when it comes to Oblivion. Just another thought.


* Modern hardware, overclocked and otherwise optimised where possible, et cetera.

Sorry Arafel I'm not stalking you honest but...

+1 - I would suggest that the range of mods available for Oblivion is far more diverse than those available for Morrowind...

I play Morrowind, I have tons of graphical mods installed including MGE XE with custom and tweaked shaders, and I don't use MGSO.

MGSO is popular because Morrowind has a very bad modding infrastructure:

1) finding mods for MW is pain, due to its age mods are scattered on a dozen of sites, some of them went down, others will be soon, and the rest is a complete disaster to search and make decisions (like PES or MMH) from user experience pov.
With Oblivion there is only 1 place to go - nexus, with good search, sorting, top lists, categories, explicit descriptions, screenshots and user comments including absolutely essential information on compatibility and troubleshooting. Try to imagine what mod you want in Oblivion, and it'll take 5 mins top to find it on nexus and know what mods it probably won't work with. Now try to do the same with Morrowind... I wish you good luck. There is nexus for Morrowind, but it's too young and has probably only 10% of mods.
Like Gabe said "piracy is a problem of service", the same principal applies to modding "mods compilation is a problem of service". Oblivion doesn't have a problem with service.

2) modding Oblivion is much easier, you can swap mods back and forth any time, and there is a very low chance that your savegame gets corrupted. In Morrowind you can't do that due to a format in which references are stored in savegame, you'll get duped objects and other nasty stuff after the first swap if you don't repair your savegame properly. Having a ready and stable compilation in this case is a great advantage. And this again is a problem of service.
The bad thing is, Skyrim took a step backwards to Morrowind with it's brilliant idea of storing the whole papyrus virtual machine stack in savegame, and now people getting CTDs and bloating after swapping mods.

I bet mods compilations will be very popular for Skyrim in future. For Oblivion? Please no.

Speaking of visual mods, I think part of it is that Morrowind has a much stronger visual aesthetic and identity than Oblivion has, so it's less tolerant of things that don't fit in. Oblivions style is more generic and therefore more forgiving of variation so lends itself to more and different mods. Just compare things like Lush and Gaudy with Blood and Mud for example.

While looking at screenshots I've noticed that modded Morrowinds all tend to look like variations on "Morrowind modern" while modded Oblivions can look like anything from "dark and gritty realism" to "bright and colourful fantasy" to "Korean MMO designers wet dream". Makes it hard to create a compilation that satisfies a majority