One that adds new graphics / mods / creatures / quests etc and comes with an easy installer?

One where I don't have to spend days configuring and working out 867 steps?

Thanks

I just asked this recently. Apparently modpacks aren't very popular with the Oblivion people for various reasons. :/

Because many mods are updated frequently, one up to date modpack may become out of date soon. It's will be a pain to maintain a modpack frequently, especially when most epic mods are huge in size.

Besides, many awesome mods are incompatible with each other, so you have to decide which to use for yourself due to personal taste.

Moriah, you may want to poke around this:

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Don't ask me if it's any good or useful. Just came up in a google search of mine recently. Most certainly do not ask for support here in the TES forums. I understand you, but generally laziness is not such a good attitude when it comes to modding Oblivion... :grad:

That's also a mighty fine example of how to do it utterly wrong. There's stuff in there I'm 100% sure they don't have permission to be using.

I fully share your concern. That is definitely one point.

Another one is that even if such "pack" works - which is not assured - at some point, beyond all actual troubleshooting, you find out that you still don't like this or that sub-part. And then you do what?? No... modding the game without knowledge is like driving the car with your eyes shut... just not a very smart idea...

Sincerely, I don't understand all this hate for compilation. I use myself Fcom, and I wouldn't have to waste 50-60 hours of my life just to download everything I needed, to search for updates, to search for patches , to learn how to use Wrye Bash and so on. I had to make a topic inside this forum everytime I had a doubt, because there is a serious lack of manuals and instruction, and whenever you got a doubt you don't know where to search for an answer. Also the installation is complex and very-time consuming. Extract, open obmm , make archive, use that omod file, remember to upgrade that, install that patch after I installed these two mods and so on.
I didn't find any source reliable to install as fastly as possible.
I respect the opinion of guys like Shikishima, who helped me fondly on this matter, but once he will be gone from this forum , and this forum will rot to hell, from who should I search informations?

I got three compilation inside my hard-disk. From three different people. Not everything from them suits my taste, but be assured, if I got to install this game once again, I won't do the same troublesome installation, just because compilations aren't allowed for modder's own sake.
And all in all, from all the people I downloaded the compilation it is said that
1- you shouldn't trouble mods makers if compilation isn't working as it should, but you should trouble maker itself for the unworking compilation
2- Most of them are willingly to update their compilations frequently and I saw many make tweaks to mods itself, just to assure compatibility that otherwise wouldn't be seen ( and most of times the patches they make to assure compatibility can't be published because of some mod creators' policy over their works)
3- I don't think you should link that in public. Haters gonna hate. And you don't want to see the forum of the mod compilator to get spread with some babblings just because "BLAH BLAH BLAH"

I'm done.

Well you either accept it, either dig deeper and fix it yourself either dont use the pack? its like you like the car overall but dont like color of the seats.

TES Nexus added an explicit permissions system a little while back. The relevant one here is:

Users can use assets contained in my files in their own files.

Three of my mods are in the compilation linked above. One of them was uploaded before the permissions system was in place, and I hadn't updated it, so it had the default answer to this question: Absolutely not under any circumstances. (I just changed that.) The other two had the answer that I set myself: Not without permission from me first.

These mods are only available from Nexus, specifically so I don't have to worry about managing this sort of info in multiple places. I was never contacted about inclusion of any of them. (I've been contacted about mods before, mind you. But not these.)

Had I been contacted, my answer would have been yes as long as there was a note like Anonimousone's #1 above. I've stated this exact position many times.

But there wasn't even the vaguest effort. I'm not hard to find, I put my email address in all the readme files. And if I wasn't contacted, I can't trust that anyone else was either (even without Arthmoor's similar comment above). This compilation is a perfect example of why nobody here trusts compilation organizers: they clearly have no respect whatsoever for the author. The "contact me, not them" note is courteous but that's not the same thing.

I'm not saying the compilation organizers are bad people with bad intentions. They just have raging superiority complexes. The attitude here is: "I know better than you do, how to properly display your work. I'm sure everyone's better off if it's done my way, and my certainty of that matters more than your opinion on the subject. So I'm just going to take your work, and present it my way. It's for the greater good." I keep seeing accusations that mod authors are elitist, but this behavior is textbook elitism.

Even if I personally agree with their distribution philosophy, I absolutely will not support any project that doesn't care if an author doesn't agree.

BTW Anonimousone, good job editing out your #4. You were going to get flooded with examples.

Reading the latest few posts made me think I should edit my post #4 and take out the link I posted. Now, I see that the moderators did it for me already. So thanks for that!

My apologies.

I know mod packs are a sore spot with everyone, but the the Nexus Mod Manager out of date files arn't really a problem anymore.

Oh boo hoo, it took you 50-60 hours to install a fantastically complicated mod that took some of the smartest people to ever post here thousands of hours to create. Do you have any idea what FCOM would cost to develop professionally? We are talking about tens of thousands of dollars worth of people's free time here.

Color me unsympathetic. The fact that you are whining about 50-60 hours of work when someone hands you the product of thousands of hours of work absolutely free is just the most stunning ingratitude.

It's like someone saying "I will hand you a Corvette if you just sit down, read this, and follow these instructions. It might take you a weekend to get through it," and then you take the Corvette but whine about having to do a weekend's worth of light work to get it. Or whining that the seats aren't your preferred color.

EDIT: I was trying to say something along the following lines, but it wasn't very eloquent:

Modding takes time. There is nothing that you, as a user, can do to change that. You can choose to accept it, choose not to use mods, or choose mods but complain about how long it takes you.

Should you choose the third option, be aware that mod authors invest hundreds of times more hours in creating the mods you use than you do in using them. As such, mod authors are not sympathetic to your complaints, and nothing will be done to allay them.

Using mods isn't always easy. Most of the time it is. Quite often it's complicated. Sometimes it's downright hard. It is, however, worth it, and anyone who doesn't think so is by definition wasting their time.

The issue of mod packs has been done to death. They are simply a way of reducing the time spent setting mods up. At the moment, they are the cause of headaches for mod authors, and have thus far only been an example of disrespect for mod authors. Perhaps this will change with time. Perhaps there may be a day when the community is at the stage for a mod pack to be beneficial to all, or at least not have a negative impact on mod authors. That day has not yet come.

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Thanks for the compliment. I don't tend to get too many of those.
I'm only exploring Skyrim like lots of others and have no intention of abandoning this forum any time soon, so not to worry.
There's also many experienced and very helpful folk that hang around here, so I'm sure you won't be ignored if you shout "Help"

BTW, I'm perhaps one of the major opponents when anyone breathes the words "Oblivion mod compilation"

Having lurked on the forums for a long time, its interesting to see when and why these threads pop up.

I expect that a lot of people will be asking about this in the coming months now that Skyrim is bringing back a lot of TES players. Perhaps this thread, or a new one could be stickied to avoid unnecessary repeats? It could save a lot of time and unnecessary aggravation. These are sore points for a lot of people but it is a valid question.

You are one of most helpful guy on this forum , and I will never stop saying it.


No, you aren't unsympathetic and I estimate you a lot because you mod this game

What I meant to say is that lots of people won't enjoy your work if you won't make your compilation. I had a lot of spendable time , that's why I could install Fcom. Yours is a kinda elitist point of view. I know most of you modders spend a tons of hours into mods and I never said that I don't recognise it. I just said that I don't understand why you shouldn't make your mods easy to install, and being installable by everyone.

That example is great, but another example comes to my mind: maybe it's out of context, I don't know.
As scientist, I made a vaccination. Shouldn't normal people use them because they don't know what the vaccination tecnically does? What did it take to make it ? I think this is equivalent to what you said.

Another thing: If I had a one - click install compilation, trust me, as I play I would watch all over the readme to see what mod does that and what mod does this

My viewpoint is very similar to DW's though my reasons may differ so I won't speak for him, but I will speak for myself. You say people won't enjoy my work if I don't let it get put in a compilation. Well la-de-dah. Big whoop. svcks to be them. I don't mod for other people to enjoy my work, I mod for myself. A lot of modders do, otherwise it becomes just another job. If a user misses out on my mod because they can't invest the required time, then they miss out on my mod. I quite frankly don't care.

That's not to say that I don't spend a lot of time trying to keep things simple and reduce time requirements, etc. I do try, and I spend far more time doing so than is saved (at least individually) by the effort. However, having made the effort, I'm not saintly enough to sacrifice even more for those that cannot handle the bare minimum time that I have reduced it to.

Your vaccination anology fails because modding is a purely recreational activity and as such isn't tied down by the same moral obligations that you might attribute to vaccinations. Nobody will suffer from not using mods.

@ Snargelfargen: I suspect you're right. However, it's not like anybody reads the stickies (or it seems that way). Also, modders' opinions vary, just about the only thing we can agree on regarding compilations is that modders' permissions (or lack of) must be respected. Some are totally dead-set against compilations, and some are totally open to them, and some like me are half-way between, jaded by what has come before but open to the possibility of a new attempt ticking all the right boxes.

Because doing so is an enormous amount of work.

Even letting someone else do so just leads to enormous headaches. So what you're asking for is that somehow, the thousands of hours aren't good enough, you need yet more, because the poor, poor users shouldn't have to read a [censored] readme.

No modder sits there and says "Aha, I'll do this thing to muck with compatibility, just to mess with 'em." — there is simply a limit to how much work they can or are willing to do, and for most, the amount of work that goes into maintaining a mod is more than enough as it is without the added starter of having to deal with an independent distribution about which you know nothing.

Fair points. I understand, and I agree.




Ok, I understood your points, I don't agree about the last part ( why should you bother for a compilation that is taken care by someone else, someone else that surely won't be a total newentry about how mods works? I doubt that someone will put effort into something he doesn't know how to do ) , but I respect your opinion;).


Well thank you to everyone for showing me their points.
I am happy you were patient enough to show me why you don't like compilation.

Actually there's one who does... I doubt I need to mention names.


The thing is, aside from Klaus, what you describe has been precisely how it's happened each time a "modpack" gets generated. Someone who knows nothing about the mods he's including comes along, packages a bunch of stuff because it looks cool, then turns it loose on the masses. Masses who STILL can't seem to get the install to work, thus defeating the purpose. They then turn to the guy who packaged it, who knows jack squat about the contents, who turns the support referrals back to the original authors. Original authors who likely have no idea that their mod is packaged with an unauthorized modpack. So they have no idea what sort of interactions are going on. It just isn't worth the time sink this becomes.

Actually you are generalizing.

There are people like him ---> http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1216870-relz-morrowind-overhaul-sounds-graphics/page__view__findpost__p__18244419 who would be able to do it.

So at least for this part I can't agree.
For the other it is another story

Actually, no, I'm not generalizing. Really. Just because someone knows Morrowind doesn't mean they know Oblivion, and vice versa. I wouldn't presume to know squat about how things operate in Morrowind since the only two mods I ever made for it were very simple in scope.

And really, how many of these topics do people need to keep opening? As I said once before, returning to the subject every two weeks isn't going to change minds.

I'm just saying that as there are people knowing morrowind, there will be others knowing oblivion and you can't simply deny it.
Thank you anyway

No money to be made? No incentive to make it easy. Best live with it.