I posted this on the niftools forum, but I think it might be useful to pool for opinions here too, since I think most of the users of the blender nif scripts read this forum.

I'm now seriously considering to move to Blender 2.5x properly, and to demote the 2.4x branch of the scripts to critical bugfixes only. Potential issues:

• The conversion may take a long while (but it has to be done at some point, this is hard to avoid), leaving the scripts effectively in bugfix only mode for a long while.
  
• Blender 2.5 is not yet fully feature complete, particularly some features that we now rely on may be missing. I don't have a very clear picture of how much is really still missing and all critical components seem to be there - animation, morphing, rigging, ... Whatever is still missing, I expect that it will catch up pretty quickly (and more quickly than I can port the scripts!) since 2.4x is basically considered as a dead branch by virtually all blender devs, so at the moment all effort goes into 2.5x. And if we find things missing, then it's a good opportunity to contribute back to Blender.

So, effectively, moving to Blender 2.5x would mean that the current scripts will be effectively on hold for a few months, maybe a year in the really worst case. Also, some minor functionality could be lost (at least temporarily, until it gets added back into Blender 2.5x). At the moment, I believe we should go for Blender 2.5x, and that it is for the best, but I don't want to make this decision without also listening to the opinions of those who actually use the scripts.

Any strong informed opinions out there?

I voted YES to move to the 2.5x branch. I don't know about the Fallout3 or DragonAge modding but for Oblivion, PyFFI and Blender NIF Scripts have been solid for quite some time.

For Oblivion modding, I don't see a problem if development of new features were put on hold for a while. (Besides, I am still trying to figure out animation and morphing to get a proper tutorial out on creating bows from scratch!)

EDIT: I saw your link to this thread over at NifTools forum. hehehe.

LHammonds

I have worked my way up to animations now, I need to learn how to import, change and export animations from blender to Oblivion.

A crossbow was going to be my first project(after working the existing tutorials) , then eventually I want to make a Medusa NPC with wiggling snake "hair". I already have the scripts laid out to give her all her combat AI including turing targets to stone if the player looks at her face in combat. But I need a "helmet" with the wiggling snakes on the head to complete this mod.

I am about to make this jump now, so I vote no on anything that would mess me up on this considering all the old Tutorials and tools are for "how it is now".
But if you are telling me that this will have no effect on my using the existing tutorials to learn rigging, animation and exporting to oblivion then ...well I guess OK.