I've never consistantly used any mods because no mods that I have tried in both Oblivion or Morrowind lived up to my expecations. I also never seem to agree with any of the gameplay changes in mods, with very few exceptions - most make the game either frustratingly hard or your character overpowered etc. Menus, interfaces and the like were never an issue for me, I only learned they were a big issue for some people when I read the forums. Obviously I am an exception, but...just my two cents. I respect the mod community because I know all to well the kind of work and dedication it takes, but most of that stuff just isn't for me.

Most of the things I have downloaded mods for in previous games have been honest design decisions that I just didn't agree with. Often they were design decisions which really ruined the game for me, but design decisions nonetheless, and I can usually see why some people might enjoy them.

Within a few months of Oblivion's release, modders had fixed pretty much every issue I had with the game. :clap:

I can't imagine playing Oblivion without mods, it's just not my kind of game. I love the world and the quests, I just don't like some of the game mechanics, and don't find the game challenging enough. But I can appreciate that it's the kind of game that Bethesda decided to make. Financial concerns probably play a role here, but I also believe that they, as gamers, enjoyed the very mechanics in Oblivion that annoyed me, and I can respect that. That's why mods are great - everybody is happy.

What worries me is the stuff that obviously should be changed for PCs but ends up exactly the same as on consoles. These do not count as 'design decisions', they are prioritizations that tell me that they don't care so much about PC players. The unsuitable UI inOblivion / Fallout 3 is a big one. It's clearly not designed for a high-resolution PC screen.

No DX11 option may well be another horrible prioritization - they are simply not taking advantage of the PC's power (I'd prefer smooth framerates to amazing graphics, but from what I've read, DX11 is good for both, at least compared to ancient DX9).

I'm sure console players are grown up enough to understand that it's natural at this point in time for some things to look different and possibly better on PC, seeing as the consoles are so old. That Bethesda apparently are focusing on making all versions look the same is just strange.

Oblivion, sure, had a lot of issues and IMO needed to be modded to be good. But Fallout, both 3 and NV, were great games in their own right - I mod them not to make them good, but to make them better. Modding can never make a game worse, it's a relatively simple thing that means your game will get better over time. Speaking of Oblivion, you can make it play however you want, and you can make it look *better* than many new console games. That's not wanting mods to excuse lack of features, that's wanting mods because they make the game better.

Modding can absolutely make a game worse, for every great mod, there's a bad one. And mods have the potential to do serious damage to the game if not installed right or if they're just badly made.

Insofar arguing goes, I agree "just mod your game" is an extremely poor argument. Just like "if you don't like it don't use it". We are here to debate and speculate on what we think will make the game good. How do these two arguments fit in ?

@Urge
That's the case when you have people still learning how to mod their games and how to create mods. (or just A-holes doing it on purpose). But usually those are avoided by the majority and the truly great mods shine. So I disagree with you, in the long run mods make it better no matter how you slice it simply because you can customize your experience to your own liking.

yeah ive thought about this too. its annoying. i like mods, but most of them give me the feeling theyre not very professional, and may sometimes ruin the feeling of the game the vanilla version gave me.ive never played oblivion with mods (playing on consoles) and i still think its a great game. id like that for skyrim too.

Great point, made it better than I could have

That's not what you said though, and I was just pointing it out to clarify things. Obviously poorly made mods are usually avoided while the really well made mods are noticed more. Allthough there are many fantastic mods that go completely unnoticed, and many relatively poorly made or designed mods that are wildly popular, though that's a matter of taste in most cases.

No, because you don't install the bad ones. Nobody's holding a gun to your head, if you don't like a mod you uninstall it, and worst-case load an old save.

I loved Morrowind and I never modded a thing on it. Oblivion was my first modding experience. They can only go so far - The base game will always be important. I found most Oblivion mods to simply be outright tacky. However I had about 40 mods installed which fit the vanilla world style quite well, adding minor tweaks and improving cities and the like.

Mods are great, but they are nothing without a strong base game.

When did I say that? Someone who is inexperienced with mods can easily mess up their game, and there are mods out there that make the game worse, at least in my opinion. How is someone completely new to mods going to distinguish the bad from the good?
Anyway, that wasn't my point at all, i was simply pointing out that mods can make your game worse, just like they can make your game better. They are not mutually exclusive.

I agree in principle. I would expand it though to call it the "patch mentality" and the "DLC mentality." Granted, this is a PC game, so patches are a natural expectation, as are mods. I have long benefited from both official and unofficial patches to Bethesda games over the years, and they are a testament to what both developers and the community can do to support a game after release.

That's all well and good on PC, as long as developers don't rely on it to compensate for lackluster official content, but there was a time when console games - not capable of being patched back then - had to be good to go, and game-breaking bugs were a lot more rare. Since becoming integrated with the internet, console games have increasingly been buggy because they can simply be patched. Or, worse still, content is often lacking, because they can simply be expanded through DLC.

That's another thing; the DLC versus true expansion mentality. There was a time when an expansion packs was just that - a true expansion to the game. One thing I loved about Oblivion and Morrowind was that they both received true, sizeable expansions in addition to smaller pieces DLC (imo insanely high priced horse armor notwithstanding lol.) I'm hoping that will be the case with Skyrim, as well. But a lot of games release DLC content that is not worth 1/6 the price of the original game when you consider how short or small they are (at least in my opinion.)

There is also an increasing trend to simply cash in by releasing content either already on the disc, or which could have been implemented before release with minimal effort, as paid DLC - something I hope to absolutely NOT SEE with Skyrim. I also don't want to see NPCs referring to content in the game that we can't access without buying more content (i.e. the Orrery in Oblivion, and certain quests in Dragon Age Origins.)

This smells of the if you don't like don't use it argument to subjective a point to covert with a yes or 'no' answer. Some thinks a game breaks others are passing fancy some of both need in the game some of both can just be mods same with the don't like it don't use it, it's just not possable to tie down thus kind of thing.

I had almost no mods in Morrowind (mostly aesthetic mods too like texture packs), but I had many mods in Oblivion and they were mostly game play changes. Even after its all said and done, like others have pointed out, most of the mods are not professional and they do introduce a slew of bugs and compatibility issues that take hours to sort out even if you know what you are doing. I hope that I won't feel compelled to mod much of anything in Skyrim. Just some personal design features I know I will be modding already are the compass because it really isn't my style to use it (I like the Minecraft visual playing style, and very rudimentary navigational tool that it provides).