(Keep in mind, I AM NOT ASKING for ADVICE or for HELP, I'm just stating what my dilemma is with a specific game, in spite of how many times some people feel modding will fix almost all issues, sharing a story of my own, and seeing if anyone else has similar issues)

Alright so, keeping in mind, there's a little bit of a dilemma: No matter how good modding can get, no matter how skilled or dedicated modders are, the fact of the matter is this, there is a limitation to how many compatible mods you can run at once. So if the vanilla game, is extremely different from what you're happy with, it might even be possible, that you cannot run enough compatible mods at once to satisfy yourself. That is, if it would require so many combined mods together to reform the games core mechanics, that no combination of compatible mods can satisfy you. Okay so moving on with that in mind, I'll be making a poll here, to try to investigate what types of mods most people use for the three most recent TES games, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim.

Personally... I've been... TRYING to get into Skyrim but... I've basically been having countless problems with mod compatibility. It's all way too complex to make an essay about here, but just for example, a mod that makes stamina actually important, and important for MAGES as well, conflicts with a mod that adds acrobatics and athletics to Skyrim. And like just about everyone else, I also like using mods that add interesting new lands, or to be able to get a break from a monotonous environment almost entirely revolving around snow, and things that remind me of snowy places IRL. I have to run about 159 mods at the very least, to about 215 mods at the highest in order to even begin with making Skyrim play the way I wish it did... And I'll take a quick look at the NMM... Lets see here.

Anyways... In short... I've just been having, HUGE compatibility issues, to the point where, sometimes I try to play Skyrim, but then the game won't even start up, because of mod conflicts. I guess that personally, I'm so unhappy with the core mechanics of the game that it's possible no amount of combined mods will ever satisfy me, because it would require changing the core mechanics of the game so much, that the mods required would almost certainly conflict.

But this isn't an asking for advice thread, no this is a question thread. And I know that no matter how talented Skyrim's modders are, that the game is just so wildly different in core mechanics from prior games, that it's nigh impossible, to make Skyrim as character skill reliant as some earlier games for example- and sometimes a mod that makes Skyrim more of a character stat based game, will CONFLICT with another mod that does the same thing, limiting just how much you can mod Skyrim to overhaul it's core game mechanics.

I guess I'll try again later, though the past week or perhaps even month, I've been trying to get all the mods I wanted running, but each time the game crashes, which makes me afraid sometimes that what I want requires changing the vanilla game so profoundly, that it's not realistically feasible. I even tried out Requiem- which is an extremely well made totally amazing mod, but sadly, it seems to conflict with OTHER mods, that have things I feel I need to enjoy the game.

And look, I know Skyrim had a lot of professional effort put into it, especially with the level design, and art style- and that these two things were quite well done, the factions in Skyrim imo are much better than Oblivion's factions at least (in Skyrim you could at least make enemies of potential allies from joining factions unlike Oblivion), and even in a tiny way I think Skyrim's Factions did things Morrowind's factions never did, the Stormcloaks vs Imperial Legion thing, even though I still think Morrowind all in all was the best faction wise.

Though the game mechanics are just so... Wildly different from the game mechanics of prior TES games, that I can't even enjoy playing the game, unless I have countless game mechanic changing overhauls running at once, to the point where I sometimes fear, I might never be able to run enough mods at once to satisfy me due to compatibility issues. While I know I've mainly mentioned Skyrim, this thread isn't exclusively or even MAINLY about Skyrim- it's about every TES game with mods, mod compatibility issues, and if you ever had problems enjoying a specific game because of that, and how it happened.

Has something like this ever happened TO YOU? In Skyrim? Or in Oblivion? Or maybe even Morrowind? Where you felt you needed so many combined mods just to enjoy the game, that they were never compatible, and then you just got frustrated? Are you worried about the upcoming TES game ending up this way? And how do you feel such a thing can be prevented in the future?

I cannot really answer the poll since I cannot decide which mods are "primary." Take Morrowind for example . . .

I use MGSO (but selected all the options that were the most vanilla, so none of Vurt's stuff).

I use the most updated beta of MGE XE, but more for the UI overhaul so I can read the text on my HDTV than for the graphical enhancements ( I limit distant land to 2 cells to preserve Morrowind Fog).

I use the Morrowind Code Patch, Timeslip's EXE.Opt and the 4GB patch, as well as quorn's 1.6.6 version of the unoficcial morrowind patch, and the various fixes that come with MGSO and all the various unofficial patches for MGSO.

I use all Abot's real time travel mods and Antares Big Mod and a few of his little mods, Meliand teleport mod, and a handful of other small mods, like Talerans state based hit points.

Oh, and I have Tamriel Rebuilt.

I have no way of deciding which of those are the "primary" mods I am using. I use all of them and, while there may be one or two other mods in my load order that I could live without, I would not want to get rid of any of the listed ones.

Since the listed ones fall into several of the above catagories, I really cannot just pick one as primary.

In Oblivion, I use a lot more mods than Morrowind, and if I ever get around to modding Skyrim, I know that I will need more even still. But I cannot categorize any game as "primarily" this or that type of mod.

I'm with Turija. I run more than one "type" of mod because I consider them necessary. I think the poll would work better if it allowed multiple "check boxes" rather than the one-choice radio buttons.

For example, in Oblivion I run graphics mods, building mods, leveling mod, alternate start mod... In Skyrim, I have a User Interface mod, alternate start mod, character "class" mod, and mods that make the AI smarter, among other things. I would not play these games without them. I suspect that most mod users have multiple things that are all "important."

One other thing I'd change about your poll is the ranges in the mod numbers. You have far too many ranges, and they're too narrow. I'd do something like 1-25, 25-50, 50-100, 100-200, and 200 or more. I think your results would be more useful.

Morrowind: - New lands/buildings/worlds.

Oblivion: - Overhauls that change the very core mechanics of the game itself.

Skyrim: - Other/Explain. New weapons, armor, clothing.

Have you ever been upset, because you couldn't run enough compatible mods at once to make a specific TES game to your liking? No.

In which of the three games could you run enough compatible mods at once to satisfy you the most? I haven't seen much of a difference between them in this regard.

Have you ever had to choose between mods that alter the games core mechanics or mods that add more content? No.

Have you ever wanted to run multiple mods at once that alter core mechanics but not been able to, and stopped playing cause of that frustrating you? No.

Is one of your primary fears, that in the next TES game you may not be able to run enough mutually compatible overhauls to change the core mechanics to your liking? No. My worst fear is that Bethesda will switch to a new engine that doesn't allow modding at all.

What prominent feature do you hope the next TES game has to prevent game breaking mod incompatibility issues for you? Core game mechanics so well done you won't even want overhauls to change it.


Last question, in the game with your favorite mods or least favorite vanilla game, how many mods do you need at once to be fulfilled? Least favorite vanilla game is Oblivion. 30 to 45 mods.

The poll, which requires just one choise everywhere, is pretty damn hard to answer. Please, could you change it to multiple choise?

I can't vote on the poll because of question 4: I'm equally satisfied with my modded Oblivion, Morrowind, and Skyrim.

Also: I'm missing item mods in the mod categories (mods that add armors, weapons or other new items to the game...)

To have multiple choice would be easier. Otherwise, very extensive poll

Leaving the poll aside for a moment, let me answer this question. No, I have never had a significant issue with the mods I wanted to use being incompatible. However, I have only modded Oblivion and Morrowind, not Skyrim. Like you, I would want to overhaul just about every aspect of Skyrim to return it to what the prior games were like in terms of classses, attributes, skills, spells spellmaking, etc, and would want immersion mods on top of that, so when I get around to modding Skyrim I may have the issues you are describing. I know it will be a lot of work to get a heavily modded Skyrim up and running smoothly, plus it is a Steam game, so there will be a new thing or two to learn there, which is why I have not attempted it yet.

But I have gotten a heavily modded Oblivion up and running, with overhauls of just about everything you can imagine from the economy to the weather, to character levelling to world levelling to graphics mods to new worldspaces and overhauls of cities, landscapes and dungeons, and on top of that, I have a bunch of immersion mods.

I have never run into any real compatibility issues of the type you are describing for Skyrim. It took a lot of work to get everything running smoothly, with tools like OSR, TES4Edit, BOSS and Wrye Bash.

And I spent countless hours tracking down patches to make everything work together and had to do some very minor work myself in the CS to tweak a couple mods to make them compatible.

And it took some choices between different mods that do essentially the same thing. I don't run two different magic overhauls (like LAME and Supreme Magicka) or two different world overhauls (like OOO and Maskars), even though you can technically run all those mods together, I chose one mod that overhauled each aspect of the game, and was able to find a collection of mods that did everythign I wanted.

I certainly could not make everything I have work together smoothly without Wrye Bash, both for its ability to adjust install order on the fly and for its ability to merge objects, levelled lists, etc. with its bashed patch.

And I spent probably well over 100 hours, maybe a lot more installing and tweaking and updating my load order to get everything running stable and smoothly.

But by making careful choices about which mods to use and installing and managing them properly I was able to get Oblivion modded just the way I want it.

I was not able to get everything I wanted in my modded Morrowind, but that is not because of incompatibilities between different mods, but rather because of the limitations in the Morrowind engine that prevent certain mods from being made (no fix for stolen item bug for example, nor can you make sneak detection affected by light falling on PC). Once Open MW is out, that will change, and there is even some work being done to update MWSE that is pretty exciting and may lead to new Morrowind mods that will be able to do a bunch of new stuff, so I am really lookign forward to the future of Morrowind modding.

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I think the only time ive hae mods that i wanted that were incompatible with each other was eating/drinking animation mods with mods that changed core mechanics and thus changed the items that the animations woukd trigger. Either it gave the animation but didnt do the items effect, or i would item and it would do its effect with no animation.

To be honest with the newer consoles, its about time we had the options that npcs have had for awhile now with older games for the players with the option to turn off and on.

Morrowind-mods to make it look better
oblivion-to make it tougher
skyrim-gut and replace core mechanics with something totally different and more old school.

Basically graphic mods mostly for Morrowind and Oblivion. Skyrim, though, had lots of room for more than just graphics mods. I have tried some major game changing mods (SkyRE being the latest) and that changes the game too much for my enjoyment. I have had fun with character animation mods in Skyrim, though all 3 could use those.

Usually, the basic gameplay I am loathe to change. Good or bad, that is the essence of the game, to me. Morrowind's clunky combat and "strange" level up design makes it Morrowind to me. Oblivion's very hard level scaling makes it Oblivion to me. Skyrim's generic-ness makes it Skyrim to me, though I seem to have less difficulty changing some basic things about it

For the "Future Games" question, I chose (out of many possible selections) taking things from each of the previous games. The direction I see the games going, I do not think will happen. It seems things get cut, instead of improved or tweaked.