TES Mod Concordance - a site for "recommended" mods? : IV

» Tue May 08, 2012 1:00 pm

This topic is about creating a maintaining a community run "recommended" mod list for new / returning users.

For those of us who spend way too much time on these boards, just about every day someone posts the question: "What mods do you recommend?"
- A flurry of posts and redirects to various links and threads follows.

There's been some discussion about creating a "go to" site for just that very question, one that is designed specifically for that purpose. Based on various discussions that have taken place on other threads, the general feeling I get is:
- It would not cover every mod in the universe.
- It would cover some of the most popular mods, and maybe some of the not so well known alternatives.
- It would cover what are considered "essential" mods that should be in everyone's install.
- There would be various categories to help users identify several elements about the mod (type of mod, how intense the changes are, type of character oriented towards, general fantasy level of the mod, installation complexity).
- It would have links to other sites that cover installing/creating mods so that the same material is not covered again (such as TES Cosi, and the CS Wiki).

My general thought is that it would be a mod "starter" kit, almost like a bain package in which there would be a list of mods in each category that are considered to be stable and "good", and then the user can choose which ones they want to try out. Perhaps only five or six mods per category.

I'm willing to acquire the domain name, host the site, and contribute to overall conceptual design and process, but I will not have time to maintain it myself, nor do I think I should be the only one working on it. To do this properly would require a team of volunteers. My thought is that if there are enough people on board, each person could be assigned to a category as the "expert" and just maintain the recommended mods for that category. There could also be a suggestions page that allow non-team folks to post their personal recommendations so that users can go beyond the "starter kit" mods, as well as help bring new mods to the attention of admins for consideration to add to the "starter kit" lists.

Is there any interest out there from those who mod a lot and those who use mods a lot to assemble a team to work on something like this? Not only for Oblivion, but presumably this will be needed for Skyrim as well.

» Tue May 08, 2012 11:50 pm

I'd be willing to help maintain things if a site is created. Things should be broken into backend and content for maintenance folks... (Just thinking out loud there) I do agree that a single list that is usually up to date would be beneficial. It would greatly help with finding mods for specific categories as basic search functions are only so good.

» Tue May 08, 2012 11:07 am

Your best bet would be to get a wiki - that way you can have multiple uses with edit rights, and different levels of permissions. I put forth the idea of a "mod wiki" some time back, but it kinda floundered because I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do (I was of the mind to do a comprehensive database, but gave it up after some feedback). You can start off with a free site, then if it takes off, buy the domain name and make it permanent instead of jumping right in.

I think it would be an excellent idea - make a series of categories (texture replacers, weather, sound, etc.), take the top 10 or so most downloaded and/or endorsed mods from each, and use them. I can offer my services as archivist and editor, and maybe help lay out the framework for entries.

» Tue May 08, 2012 6:47 pm

I'm all for this. It should have been created a long time ago. In fact, I made my own little guide since it was lacking just yesterday: uploaded it tohttp://www.2shared.com/document/G42ZvMfL/Realism_guide.html (work-in-progress)

» Wed May 09, 2012 3:09 am

I'm in

I was writing a guide to using alchemy in modblivion for a private forum. Figure why not post here too. It's a super rough draft of a draft type of thing I threw together in a few hours:

Spoiler

ALCHEMY
I'd consider myself an alchemist in Oblivion. Every char I ever played, except for my very first few characters in morrowind... have used alchemy. I'm not a fan of watching magicka replenish. I hate selecting and casting spells. I hate having to grab a hotkey then cycle through spells. I'm a physical damagedealer but I need to regen somehow. I needed something to fuel my rage. I discovered alchemy.

The numbers 1, 2 and 3 on my keyboard are hotkeyed to health, magicka/mana and stamina/fatigue potions respectively. Other hotkeys lead to dispel, chameleon/invisibility potions and several poisons. That's a lot of hotkeys. So for hotkeys I use Enhanced Hotkeys by TheNiceOne http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34735. Virtually any key on your keyboard can be set to a hotkey and I have, off the top of my head, at least 10 of them devoted to potions or poisons.

I stopped using vanilla potions or potions I find in game. For a new character these are useful but as my character ages, the amount of potions needed is too much. Potions in the game also come in various grades or strengths and that makes it harder to just hotkey. I'd have 5 different grades of potions and only one hotkey... I'd have to select a new potion all the time. I don't like to be annoyed by that. One solution is to make them all yourself and make them in large batches so you need to re-hotkey them only once in a while. Another solution is to use auto-potion, but more on auto-potion later...

Before everything, check out cobl http://wryemusings.com/Cobl.html I mention it a lot and the online readme does a better job at explaining than I would be able to.
Look for the new ingredients, cobl ingredient sorter, grinder, raw materials for the grinder, alchemy apparatus, etc...

Getting ingredients
Making them in large batches requires industrial amounts of ingredients and a way to process them all quickly. Harvesting them myself by picking flowers is something that gets boring very fast. Some ingredients are only found on monsters so the supply of those ingredients is limited as well.
In vanilla oblivion I would visit every single ingredient shop in the game and buy every ingredient. That requires money... more on "Trade and Commerce" later.

Assuming I have the money, clicking through all those ingredients is a massive drag. I use toggleable quantity prompt by kea and Warrudar http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12859
This turns off the "how many" window and just buys the entire stack. With my Logitech G15 keyboard I've created a macro that auto-clicks so I just put my cursor over the ingredients and hit the key and they are all bought automatically.

This process is repeated every three days because that is the time it takes for merchatns to fill up their inventory again. Note that they only refill if you haven't visited them for 3 days. 3 days takes too long for me so I set my cell respawn time to 1 day. This can be accomplished in many ways.
I made my own personal mod that loads last but a better, cleaner option is to use the bashed patch in Wrye Bash by the Wrye Bash Team http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22368
It has an option to change the cell respawn time to whatever you want. I changed it to 1 day so alchemists merchants will have new stuff for me every day.

But that requires me to actually go out and map travel to all those places… I'm a very lazy person. I went looking for traveling spells, and I found them! Snx Mark Recall or SnxMarkers by Seronis http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29282 adds not just 1, not 8, but… euhm… More than I need actually. It adds a guesstimated 30-40 or so places you can warp to. The first spell is a single marker which I use to go home. The others add a small window that gives you the option to travel to one of 8 different places. You get about 4-5 of those windows/spells depending on your mysticism skill. I have one entire list of alchemy vendors. My home warp sends me straight to my own alchemy room.

I need a potion in real life to unlazy… because I'm still too lazy to get ingredients this way. Why? Because vendors don't have enough ingredients. I'll get 2 blackberries here, maybe, just maybe, a single deadra heart there… a bread loaf? These people call themselves alchemy vendors and they have only sample sizes?
Enter "ingredients in bulk". I used to have a mod that added them in larger amounts to vendors but I cannot find it in my load order. That means cobl probably took over for me. Cobl by the Cobl team http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=21104 does much more than that. But more on that later.

Vendors don't have all ingredients there are. Some are found only in the wild or on creatures. Some of us don't have huge amounts of cash to buy ingredients straight from the vendor. Sure, it trains our mercantile skill and alchemy skill at the same time and selling potions back to the vendor is an interesting way to make money but as odd as it sounds, with all my mark recall and bulk mods and such, doing the alchemy money making scheme feels too much like a cheat… and is very boring. More on making money later…

But vendors don't have all the ingredients, or not the specific ones we need. Or we just want to harvest the entire world… Harvesting the entire world can be done with harvesting mods. Beware though that some cause bloat. And auto-harvesting as you walk by is just asking for trouble. It's too easy. You might as well just console them in for free… No.
I use Gather Ye Rosebuds by Wolfhound http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=14259 . No bloat, no trouble, great balance.
This mod adds 3 spells that can only be acquired once you get good enough at mysticism and alchemy. To balance things out, using the spell stunts your magicka. Besides stunting your magicka it will attract nearby monsters. So you still have to do some fighting to get the ingredients.
I modified the scripting in the mod to harvest an even larger area and thus attract an even larger amount of monsters. I like fighting

Bonus: it helps you home in on nirnroots!

Getting ingredients: the derived ways
Cobl comes with a grinder. Grinders are in all mages guilds and you can even put one (with some minor modding skills) into your own house. I put a big fat one in mine. Grinders can grind things like bones into bonemeal, copper ingots into copper filings, rubies into ruby dust, etc… You can buy these or find them yourself then grind them up and use the ingredients in your potionmaking.

Derive ingredients from ingredients with the Essence Extracter by Haama http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11145
I used to use this until other mods came along that did similar things. More on those later in "making potions".

Getting Ingredients: more vendors
From the start, I was a packrat. I have every armor, every weapon, every junk clutter something item packed away somewhere in my oversized house. I have about 50 cells dedicated to "storing" companions, etcetc. My house grew so big that I started putting shops in various places. My armory guy who repairs my stuff sells some basic ingredients, my barkeeps have some stuff too… my alchemist vendor has a huge collection of both ingredients and raw materials for the cobl grinders.

Alchemy companion Julienne by PaleOrchid http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39036 is a mod that went missing for a while. Now it has returned but the author has put a subtle warning in the description. I don't have it in my game anymore, or should I say, not yet. I restarted and haven't added it back in again.
More vendors, more ingredients and lots of other features to be found here.

There are other mods out there that add more vendors but I won't list them here. Just keep in mind that ingredient vendors aren't always alchemy vendors. I frequently visit barkeepers, innkeepers and bakers too.

Getting ingredients: funding it all
A classic way to make money is by buying ingredients, making potions on the spot and then selling the potions back to the vendor.
I'm too lazy for that. So I'd rather start my own business and let someone else run the shop.
All the stuff I find and don't use, all the potions I find and don't use, all the junk I find and don't use… it all goes into my store and my storekeeper and guard make sure it all gets sold while I'm out questing and hunting bad guys.
Trade and Commerce by Elestat http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39255 is my primary and only way to make money. Dump it all there, have it sold, pay taxes and get the profits to fund my addiction.

Making the potions
We now have an industrial amount of ingredients. We should get cooking.
I don't use the vanilla cooking procedure anymore. I use Alchemy Advanced by Jroush http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=25226
In vanilla, to make a potion, you need to select the ingredients, pick a name,… and then click "create" a few hundred times. Not with alchemy advanced. You can now make big batches in a few clicks and save the recipe for later. You can set the duration of the effect and even select which effects will not be used.
This is also why I don't use essence extracter anymore. Alchemy advanced does the same thing in a different way.

To make the potions I still need the equipment. There are mods out there that add grandmaster grade equipment. And I somehow managed to get it in my game too. I just don't remember how.

Anyway, I don't like bringing along all my alchemy equipment. From the days of Morrowind I have used static alchemy sets in my houses and it just so happens that Cobl has it too.
The way it works is that you get all the equipment in your inventory, click on the empty alchemy stands, let the game take your equipment and from then on you can use that static set to cook.
You can take your stuff back whenever you want but I just leave it there.. It is my house after all.

I use the following naming scheme:

Number main_attribute (for potion)
Zero total_damage type duration (for poison)
1 Health
2 Magicka
3 Fatigue
4 Cure disease
4 Cure paralysis
4 Cure poison
4 Dispel
5 Shield
6 Chameleon
6 Invisibility

Poisons like this:
0 12 fire 30
0 20 frost 15
0 22 fire 15
0 86 frost, fire, shock, damhp, para 15
0 78 frost, fire, shock, damhp, para silence 15
0 silence 15

So, 1 is health and every potion whose main feature is giving health. Durations are shorter, 15-30 secs
2 is magicka. Durations are longer, 60 secs
3 is fatigue. Same as magicka
4 are utility spells that fix me up when bad stuff happens
5 is everything that buffs me. I mostly only use shield
6 is stealth stuff

Poisons are prefixed with 0 and usually have a short duration. I have what I call "spammable" poisons. They deal little damage over time. I can easily make large batches of them because I only need one or two ingredients that are in great supply.
The big damage dealers among my potions often include silence or even paralyze. Getting all the ingredients together is harder and at some point, a 1000 damage paralyzing silencing poison of doom becomes a major cheat. I don't have many of those and I don't use them that often.

Why the numbers? Sorting purposes

Intro
Hotkeys
Cobl
Getting ingreds
storing
Buying
More vendors
Cell reset
Warping
funding
Harvesting
Gather ye rosebuds
Autoharvest
More harvesting areas:houses
Making
Jroush
Naming scheme
Apparatus
Home static
Using
Hotkeys
Autopotion
medic

Cobl
books
Grinder
Sorter
Salmo
Ingred additions
Sorter issues?
Medic!
Trade and Commerce
Autopotion
selection
Using potions
Autopotion
Hotkeys
Companions
Potion chuggers
Medic!
Poison experts
Haamas other mods
Turning potions back into ingredients or potions as ingredients

Things I did not discuss:
Housemods that have alchemy stuff because I never really install housemods anymore because I made my own.
Harvest flora to show what you harvested...
Potion models and textures like alluring Potion bottles…
Archmage chest: I don't use it so I don't know what mods are good that modify it. I'm interested in it though.
Grandmaster of alchemy and similar questmods

It is far from finished, that's why it ends abruptly.

TLDR version: I explain how I use alchemy in my modded game. I go through all the stuff from getting ingreds to making to using. This forces me to sidestep into getting the money to buy the ingreds, the hotkey mods to use the potions, the housemods that help. Oh I should include helpfulhouses that boost your alch skill...

It is probably too expanded for a modlist for beginners.

But I'm in for alchemy and companion mods! (more specifically CM Partners, the big standalones like Vilja, Minionz, Companion master, etc) (Not sure if I'm an expert at companion mods... I only make CM ones... but I collect them in a massive house... )
LET'S DUE IT!

» Tue May 08, 2012 4:26 pm

Such a list would be useful indeed, but would it be possible to see if it could be done on TESCOSI instead? It's probably one of the most referred to site for beginners and it'd make sense to have a list of recommended mods there instead of having yet another site.

» Tue May 08, 2012 2:48 pm

Don_Zardeone: that's great! I haven't touched alchemy in Oblivion yet, so I find your guide to be fantastic~

Omeletted: I think Tescosi even has a guide that suggests some starter mods and shows you how to install them. So that would be a nice start. But is Tescosi editable by normal people?

» Tue May 08, 2012 5:05 pm

@omeletted
On Tescosi, I wrote a PM to Tomlong just the other day to ask about exactly this. Me too I thought Tescosi would be a good place to have such a (sub)site. I have not heard of her yet. I understand she comes on and off OB boards as life stuff permits, so I think we just have to wait until we get some feedback, in private or on the forum.

@seabel
I would be a helper too. But me too I am on and off Oblivion, so any role of mine should be / could be decidedly low key only. Otherwise it would not be fair to the more dedicated contributors.

» Tue May 08, 2012 2:46 pm

Don_Zardeone: that's great! I haven't touched alchemy in Oblivion yet, so I find your guide to be fantastic~

Omeletted: I think Tescosi even has a guide that suggests some starter mods and shows you how to install them. So that would be a nice start. But is Tescosi editable by normal people?

It may just be me, but I have noticed that Tescosi tends to have bandwidth issues fairly regularly. Yes, I realize it does cost money for bandwidth, but a different site may be better so Tescosi doesn't get overloaded too much.

» Tue May 08, 2012 11:31 am

Omeletted: I think Tescosi even has a guide that suggests some starter mods and shows you how to install them. So that would be a nice start. But is Tescosi editable by normal people?

Not certain but think it's not like a normal open wiki. Could still work, what I'd imagine is having an on-going discussion thread here at the forum and then have a handful of people obtain permissions to edit the wiki pages.

@omeletted
On Tescosi, I wrote a PM to Tomlong just the other day to ask about exactly this. Me too I thought Tescosi would be a good place to have such a (sub)site. I have not heard of her yet. I understand she comes on and off OB boards as life stuff permits, so I think we just have to wait until we get some feedback, in private or on the forum.

Great minds think alike?

Yeah hopefully she can chime in.

» Tue May 08, 2012 12:01 pm

Glad to see some others are thinking along these same lines. (Some of you may have seen the simliar post I made in other threads a week or so ago.) I'd be happy to help in any way I can; though I'm pretty experienced with wiki maintenance I've never done website or extensive database work.

One thing to think about: we may wish to limit, at least initially, who can contribute to the "essential mods" or "recommended mods" lists. I previously saw an effort like this on UESP degrade into an "everybody else is recommending the mods they created, so I will too" ordeal. We do NOT want that here. Personally I'd recommend that we as a community "elect" or otherwise decide upon a subset of experienced and active players/modders that can put together the initial list. I'm sure we can all come up with people that should make such a list--TheNiceOne, Arthmoor, Kivan, Migck, CorePC, Kuertee, etc.

EDIT: I'd also like such a concordance or wiki to give (hopefully) unbiased ratings in several critical categories, on a simple 1 to 10 scale. We'd have to determine the categories but I'd think something like {Stability, Lore-Friendliness, Visual Content, Audio Content, Ease of Installation/Uninstallation, Etc.} would work. Also include special notes like "required additional mods/packages, latest version at ANY site, author and version history, etc."

» Tue May 08, 2012 12:07 pm

i was going to say that I don't feel rating the mods is fair, but the categories you list for rating seem fair (aside from Visual/Audio Content as that is preference). Thank you for making that thread btw BFG99. It helped me out

» Tue May 08, 2012 4:44 pm

Perhaps instead of rating things, just simply go with "Author's choice" (or "Most Popular"), then anyone else who edits the page after that can add their alternatives in "Alternative Choices", perhaps with a reason why to go for the alternative instead of the main choice (ie. where they differ)?

I don't think any rating system, on the Internet at least, can stay objective. Better to make it clear that the recommendations are subjective from the word go.

As for deciding what gets listed, how about a three recommendations requirement. Ie. a modder can recommend their mod on the discussion page, but it won't go on the list unless two others also recommend it.

» Tue May 08, 2012 10:35 pm

I think a lore friendly rating is a MUST. Many of the mods that seem super popular pretty much spit in the face of lore. At least from what my limited experience can tell. So it would be helpful to me (who happens to be new to the Oblivion scene) to know how much the cool mods stays within lore. From there I can make my own decision on whether it's worth it. But there isn't a place that tells you that. you have to play it to find out or read 39 pages of posts about the mod to piece together that information as it is now...

And ease of installation would basically tell people that you'd have to work to obtain the awesome mod.

I don't think those are subject as much to popularity or bias quite as much as say, rating the quality of it.

» Wed May 09, 2012 1:04 am

I've had an idea for some time to avoid the whole "This mod are awesome, get it now!" or just " this mod is good, you should get it."

Instead of someone basing their choice on one or more people's opinion(s), they instead get a list of agreed upon tags like: lore correct, combat oriented, necromancer, basic character development, flash oriented, etc. basically honest representations of mods instead of generic PR tag lines. For instance I see some mods with like: "An epic scale romance/adventure quest mod." When neither of those things are quite true, I could go further and quote the features list where it gets even more deceptive, but that'd make it obvious which mod. The problem with recommendations and rankings is that you are telling someone to use a mod when they don't know everything about it yet, and even if they did read the description and research the mod... a lot of times mod authors might lie in their descriptions/readmes or at least have enough bias to where they can't impartially describe their mod.

Anyway I posted about this once before, so I'll put that too:

One list idea I had was to have the list maker and everyone who wanted to contribute "review" the mods, but not like multi-page extremely possitive/negative reviews, but rather a collection of words. Sort of like Tesnexus' "tag" system. people would use tags like:
immersive, lore correct, flashy, short/long/medium, graphically intensive, buggy, dirty, dialogue intensive, riddles, dungeon crawl, etc.

basically whatever word they might think of to describe the mod. Obviously there'd have to be some consensus before a word would be added to the mod's tags, and words like "svcks", and "rocks"/"awesome/" must-have" and such wouldn't be allowed. Also even negative things like buggy, or dirty would take something significant to be included (like the old Five Blind Mice issue)

At least a list like that would be less: "Hey these are what me and some other guys agreed are best!" and more: "Hey here's what these mods are actually like!"

» Tue May 08, 2012 12:31 pm

Perhaps instead of rating things, just simply go with "Author's choice" (or "Most Popular"), then anyone else who edits the page after that can add their alternatives in "Alternative Choices", perhaps with a reason why to go for the alternative instead of the main choice (ie. where they differ)?
I don't think any rating system, on the Internet at least, can stay objective. Better to make it clear that the recommendations are subjective from the word go.
As for deciding what gets listed, how about a three recommendations requirement. Ie. a modder can recommend their mod on the discussion page, but it won't go on the list unless two others also recommend it.

Hmm, good point in regards to the rating system. The biggest problem with any such rating system is that the same person/people would need to do ALL the ratings, or there would need to be a standard metric by which to rate (i.e. what characterizes a Lore Friendly score of 10 versus 5.) Alternatively, we could use a "badge" system like GameSpot uses in their game ratings - a simple up-and-down "This mod is Lore Friendly" (WEPON) versus "This mod is NOT Lore Friendly" (The Lost Spires) versus "This mod has no impact on Lore Friendliness (Oblivion Stutter Remover). Or, we could give up on the ratings entirely

EDIT: Ninja'd on the "badge" idea by Phoenix!

I'd be in favor of the three recommendations requirement. I also have seen a voting system on another site--Newgrounds--that I liked. The weight of a given user's vote would increase on the basis of several factors - how many mods they had released, how active they were in the forums, how many "Kudos" or "Endorsemants" the rest of the community had given them, etc. Frankly, wrinklyninja, your vote ought to have more weight than mine, and mine should have more weight than someone who just started playing

BFG

» Tue May 08, 2012 3:06 pm

Lost Spires Is NOT lore friendly!!?!?! crap. Thanks for that heads up since all I hear is glowing reviews about it but they all failed to mention that. I prefer to stick to a close-to-lore game with some embellishments of course. That shortens my mod list a bit, so thank you!

EDIT: BFG is trying to put me at the bottom of the totem pole with his voting idea

» Tue May 08, 2012 11:54 pm

Frankly, wrinklyninja, your vote ought to have more weight than mine, and mine should have more weight than someone who just started playing

BFG

I don't agree with this, as flattering as it may be. While I may have opened up a mod in the CS or TES4Edit, and so know what's in it/how it works, I'm less likely to have encountered it in-game. On the other hand, a pure mod user may have encountered it in-game, and would give a more knowledgeable opinion on how it works there.

It's probably best to have all votes nominally equal, and leave weighting up to the minds of readers.

On a similar note, perhaps the issue of ignorant people voting could be avoided by having editing access be given to those who request it, rather than just being straight-up open to everyone. That way there is at least an informal screening (ie. "hmm, this person has contributed in the forums before", "hmm, never heard of this guy, he's new").

» Tue May 08, 2012 10:15 pm

On a similar note, perhaps the issue of ignorant people voting could be avoided by having editing access be given to those who request it, rather than just being straight-up open to everyone. That way there is at least an informal screening (ie. "hmm, this person has contributed in the forums before", "hmm, never heard of this guy, he's new").

Works for me, though I still do like the Newgrounds model. :rock:

» Tue May 08, 2012 8:34 pm

Maybe a wiki, with a few big modlists:

- mods for first time players (UOP etc)
- mods for players who played oblivion before and want to play modblivion (overhauls)
- mods to push your system (huge retexes and graphics stuff)
- mods to give your system room to breathe (stutter removers, low poly stuff)
- mods for stuff I forgot...

And then just have people make their own modlists and put them there.

Maybe have an endorsemant system to have lists added to the front page or to the "recommended modlists list".

I'm not a fan of rating mods themselves. I consider them more like works of art. What one guy thinks is beautiful looks like a pig to someone else. Depend on how much you like pigs I guess...

This way we would allow people more freedom to make interesting lists. Like in morrowind: lists for stealth characters, lists for mages, lists for battlemages or my list for alchemy from the perspective of a physical damage dealer or my future list of companion mods and other mods that enhance them.

It would be nearly the same as the modlists we already have on the forums but it would be more accessible for editing and updating and suggestions.

» Wed May 09, 2012 12:57 am

A couple of thoughts based on everything I've read so far.

- whoever is in charge of the category should select the mods based on those submitted, ratified by two other admin members, or thee members if the category admin is selecting their own mod.
- I don't think any mod listed should be scored on an overall scale of 1 - 10. If it's on the list, it's met a certain level of quality.
- The goal should not be to cover everything, just a "starter kit" with enough options to meet what folks are looking for. Mods that have been outdated or superceeded by others could fall off the list in theory.
- in the tagged sub-categories, there should be a different set of expertise. For instance, I'm fairly qualified on picking stealth mods, and can be objective (mostly), but I wouldn't know how to rate how lore friendly they are.
- something I've seen on other "review" sites is a separation from the admin/reviewers opinion and that of the consumer. So we can rate a mod in various categories, and the public can agree/disagree with the rating. example:
Lore : very lore friendly (56% agree out of 12 opinions)
Character type : stealth (100% agree out of 8 opinions)
Set up difficulty : complex (78% agree out of 21 opinions)

TES Cosi was the first place I looked too, but her site is closed to just her. And in all honestu, I think that's a good thing. That site needs a different level of quality control.

more thoughts later

» Wed May 09, 2012 12:47 am

I endorse Saebel's post. That sounds perfectly resonable to me.

» Tue May 08, 2012 8:16 pm

Heh, they should do this at tesnexus... after all, they have the database ready.

» Tue May 08, 2012 10:21 pm

Yeah, but TES Nexus both doesn't cover everything, and it covers too much.

Also, another reason not to have the whole "vote for your favorite mod" as part of the system (as opposed to just agreeing/disagreeing), is that when folks follow the links to the mod locations, there will already be a whole set up of endorsemants there are already. No sense reinventing the wheel here.

The point here is that I really want to avoid mob rule. Just because a mod gets 1000 endorsemants does not necessarily mean that it is better than one that has only 5.

The list needs to be put together by experts for the modding community. Having a combination of mod users and mod makers on the panel is definitely important. Mod makers have the tools and knowledge to be able to accurately anolyze the effectiveness and playability of a given mod, as well as any potential pitfalls of installing it. Mod users play the game way more often than mod makers, and so have more experience with how different mods work together and what settings work best for certain combinations, let alone how a mod comes into play when it comes to character choice and lore.

I like the idea of having different levels, although the levels described in the earlier post pretty much fall into one of the mod categories I was thinking of in the first place. For example, you can have several mods in a category, and one of the sub-categories is complexity of installation. Or perhaps there could be just a general sub-category for "Suitable for modders at this level (novice, apprentice, journeyman, expert, master).
"

So basically, if I was brand new to modding, I would look at the different categories, and try all the novice stuff first, just so I don't get too far over my head. Then I can try adding some of the apprentice level mods that are slightly more complicated. Defining what these rankings mean is of course important. Off the cuff, I'd say:
Novice - Install and not worry about it
Apprentice - Install and tweak a few settings here and there (in game menus?)
Journeyman - Install and tweak settings using .ini files
Expert - Multiple files, multiple .inis, bashed patching
Master - Multiple files from multiple mods with multiple .inis and bashed patching (a.k.a FCOM)

However, even though the folks visiting the site may only rate our descriptions/classifications, I do like the idea of folks posting their favorite load orders (and letting others rate them). We'd just have to establish some clear rules that the user agrees to before they post it, such as they must swear that the load order is completely stable, and provide specific .ini settings (if any) that helped get it that way. They could describe the reason behind the load order, and maybe upload a save game or screen shot of the load order in use. That allows the visitors to be involved and participate without having control. And it would provide examples to other folks of just how a working load order would look like.

» Tue May 08, 2012 2:37 pm

I like the idea very much... except the part about an expert for each category. Many people either know a lot about a lot of different kinds of mods (from experience) or not much about many kinds at all. In other words, if you are going to mod your game (in particular, heavily), then it is likely you will be using a wide variety of the things.

Anyway, though there are a number of users (or modders) I would most definitely choose before myself, my own experience is fairly extensive, in the scheme of things, and I would be happy to offer some time and effort, if it turns out that there is a place for me.

If not, I am equally happy to contribute indirectly (e.g., via suggestions).

edit: And I am (as always) in favour of keeping things simple, particularly for "newbie guides", so I would for example suggest three levels of complexity at most (like SImple, Moderate and Complex), and only enough "badges"(?) as is truly necessary - and yes, lore-friendly is a good one, certainly.