I'm more of a Morrowind player but while I prefer that game I've come to see how great the modding community for Oblivion has become over the years--and also how different it is. Oblivion modding seems to be much more player-centric than it is in Morrowind. Every mod seems to have a 1000 options and an abundance of convenient compatibility plugins. In the Morrowind community the authors pretty much make mods that they want to play and then leave it at that. Although recently I've seen a lot of Oblivion modding procedures leaking over to Morrowind. So my question is why?

This is me thinking out loud:


Advanced tools and scripted installs being available earlier in the games life.

Scripted installs with Bash/OBMM make it much easier to deal with a 1000 esp files.

Overhauls

This is a concept that really took off in Oblivion. The idea of these far-reaching almost essential mods that change many different aspects of the game. I think this mentality stems from the very real possibility that a larger number of people find it necessary to change more things in Oblivion than in Morrowind. So what we get here is a situation where if you want to make a mod you pretty much have to make it compatible with the popular overhauls or many people aren't going to play it. Thus massive compatibility folders were born.

What do you guys think? If you find this topic interesting I'd love a history lesson from the people who know about it. Like I said I'm pretty much an outsider.

With respect to the overhauls, Oblivion introduced level scaling, which a lot of people didn't like, prompting overhauls to address it.

Of course, level scaling was introduced because in Morrowind people said that the game became too easy after a certain point, e.g. higher than level 20, because everything was static. So, I think mods tended to focus on adding more higher level content there, e.g. Wormgod's Morrowind Advanced made things a bit tougher and provided some more challenges at higher levels.

Personally I think rather than implementing level scaling they should have just made more higher level content for Oblivion, but obviously that would have been more work so it's probably why it didn't happen. Unfortunately as implemented I felt it made vanilla Oblivion somewhat ridiculous.

Overhauls happened because where Morrowind was a good game to begin with, Oblivion was merely a pretty game.

Its not just the overhaul mods, there were things that tick players off left and right in vanilla. Interface? Its been enhance, hell, replicated like that of Morrowind. Generic landscape? Unique Landscapes came out of now. Spears and crossbow not in? They are now. ETC ETC ETC.

It also helps that Vanilla Oblivion isn't grounded to lore so well; so lorebreaking mod tend to flow in this game much easier then Morrowind.

Also because Oblivion is more moddable. More of the game facets can be modded.

Combat mods in Morrowind are atrocious not because the mods themselves are bad, but because there are not mechanics to mod.

I can't say that the tools are better. It seems that with morrowind there is more choice of tools. Want to modify a plugin? In Oblivion there is 4 programs (CS, edit, Gecko, Bash) in Morrowind I think there is twice as many if not more.

I can't speak for Morrowind modding, since I've never even played Morrowind, but isn't the real issue what is possible with the tools, not how many different tools there are?

Is there anything that was possible with Morrowind's ~8 programs that isn't possible with Oblivion's 4?

What I was getting at was that with Oblivion more of the game is available to mod - for combat there is far far more detail for modders to get their hands on. This is not true of Morrowind where if you want to add active blocking you have to script it and inject it into the game and since it is not meant to be there - more issues can ensue.

So I would say by this virtue since Oblivion starts with more that is moddable the tools are able to become more complicated.

I'm no expert on Morrowind modding ... but I often hear that Morrowind modding is easier. One cannot exist without the other - on the shoulders of giants so to speak.

By the same token Skyrim modding will be even more diverse because even more stuff should be exposed for modders and the tools used to accomplish this have a massive head start given that the basic data formats are the same, just with new records added. Bash and TES5Edit are poised to hit the ground running by the time the CK is out. We didn't have that for Oblivion from what I can tell. Most tools didn't show up in mature states for almost 18 months.

Is there news on tes5edit?

I wasn't aware.

Skyrim modding intimidates me. All that flash stuff and hex editing seems not just over my head but way over my head.

I don't do Oblivion modding, but I don't think there is a tool like http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Utilities.Detail&id=78 for Oblivion. Various parts of it are replicated in other prior tools, but there are some things that I haven't seen in other tools before. I love this tool.

http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8665 is similar but not near as controlled. As best I can tell from smart merger.

there are some newer tools for Morrowind that seem very powerful ... like TES3cmd ... that are missing a GUI. So using them is not so user friendly.

SmartMerger reads an awful lot like Bash, not Gecko. The example pics on that entry sure seem to be performing the same function.

It is easier to put new dialogues into Morrowind, that's probably why Oblivion's modding wasn't mainstreamed towards quests and dialogue. Then, in Morrowind one takes time to give NPC character, dialogue,..., while in Oblivion to give them proper AI packs.
And I think that in Oblivion there's more area for tweaks, I mean not that it needs to be tweaked, but there's more stuff that can be tweaked.
iirc scripts cause an impact on Morrowind's performance, while in Oblivion they don't.

Other then that, I guess the rest depends on the profile of individuals that make mods.

As a newcomer to Oblivion (I'm a longtime Morrowind player though) I too noticed a difference in the respective modding communities but not in the same way as the OP, almost the opposite.

While both games have a plethora of graphical / body mods, Oblivion seems to come up short in lots of areas. For instance, I recall Morrowind has several mods that try to fix the economy, Oblivion to my knowledge only has two prominent ones, an older one surpassed by a newer version. Oblivion also seems to have a vast number of abandoned mods that haven't been updated in years, making them useless or risky to use because of incompatibilities or bugs.

One example is the Cyrodiil Travel Network (not to be confused with Arthmoor's CTS). This mod was (IMHO) near-perfect except for the fact that it mysteriously compelled NPCs to travel to Bravil's castle where they remained stuck behind a locked door in an attempt to follow a tortuous passage into a monster-filled dungeon connected by an underground waterway into Lake Niben (where they would usually drown or be killed). This bug has never been fixed by its author and has not been updated in several years. I've seen numerous examples of this on TESNexus.

It seems to me that Morrowind has a larger diversity of mods while Oblivion has well-made but a less diverse / smaller pool of mods available. (At least that's what it seems like to me.)

Curious about this myself. Dave Humphries (of UESP) is working on SkyEdit which is basically the same class of tool, but I haven't seen anything from Elminster yet. Granted I'm not going out of my way to look for it.

Hex editing is very simple. The hard part is knowing what you're editing, but there are plenty of people already http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes5Mod:Mod_File_Format.

Elminster told me he wouldn't release a TES5Edit until he had all of the record formats decoded. And that wont happen until the CK is out, but it should be relatively quick after that (a month maybe?)

I'm not that familiar with Morrowind modding but I have noticed that many Oblivion mods are very configurable which tends to block newer ones. After all, why make a new mod when you can get what you want by merely tweaking an existing mods configuration file?

oblivion makes morrowind feel like daggerfall... yet daggerfall makes morrowind LOOK like oblivion!

i less than three morrowind, but it's difficult to get anything done with the CS when it crashes all the time!!! maybe it was the pre-owned boeing dell optiplex i was using at the time? but regardless, i would get SO much done and then CTD!!! game over. also, because i was new to the CS back then, by the time i had finally made something decent, i unfortunately altered many properties of items/statics already implemented by the vanilla game... and then the harsh realization of creating a masterpiece of dirt filth editing sets in! that's when you feel a part of yourself die... like an electromagnetic black hole churning at the core of your soul (for the duration you reflect on the entire time ellapsed on the project)

but that experience has kept me from making a dirty edit since.

tes4edit works magic for cleaning dirt in oblivion mods... haven't tried it on morrowind. then again, i haven't made a morrowind mod since my 1st epic failure was discouraging enough. and maybe that's why there's not AS much out there for morrowind? people just took there experiences to oblivion? because seriously, it feels like if you make even a single wrong move anywhere, your mod = Sugar Honey Ice Tea!

Morrowind modding is simpler, but limited. Oblivion modding is more complicated, but there are more things that can be done with it.

I think you can tell a lot about the differences between Oblivion and Morrowind from the mods that have already been made. Unique Landscapes is, I think the quintessential Oblivion mod, as it focuses on creating lush detailed environments and small self-contained quests. Oblivion's engine and modding tools really lend themselves towards this stuff. Then there are the overhauls to generally fix the level-scaling and ui.

One of Morrowind's most impressive mods is the LGNPC project which adds dialogue, backstory and quests to almost every single npc in the game. It showcases Morrowind's strengths as a dialogue and lore-heavy game. Neither of these two mods could exist in the other game because of simple limitations. Oblivion's reliance on spoken dialogue has made immersive quests and npcs a huge challenge, and Morrowind's graphics engine simply can't support the sheer detail and uh, fertility of Oblivion.

The one thing that ties both of those mods together is that they are developed by the modding community as a whole and rely on small packages of episodic content. I'm looking forward to seeing similiar collaborative content for Skyrim. If I had to guess, I would expect something like a compilation of unique dungeons with a focus on adventure game inspired puzzle solving and short quests, (Riven with swords, yeah!) but it's hard to predict what will prove popular until the creation kit is released.

Actually, I would argue here that Morrowind's landscape was diverse enough that people didn't need to overhaul all the areas.
I agree with everything else though

I'd say the same about Skyrim's landscape as well, so I don't anticipate much of a need for a UL Skyrim project. Though you never know.

I'd say Skyrim could do with some sprucing up with the landscape here and there, but a full-on UL project? Not needed. No generic pre-generated forests this time around.

Yeah, now that you mention it, Morrowind didn't really need more vegetation. The fog and barren landscape really added to the "alien" feeling, especially in some of the stranger environments like the mushroom forests or the ashlands. I don't think Skyrim needs Unique Landscapes either, although there are some areas that could use a good layer of spit and polish to get rid of gaps and floating objects.

Overhauls will probably have their place in Skyrim. I think people have already voiced their desire for a hardcoe winter survival mode, and a lot could definitely be done with the wildlife to make a more varied and dynamic ecosystem. There is also a huge library of modder resources from Morrowind and Oblivion that will slowly be ported over (depending on who can/will give permission). Anyways I should shut up since this is getting off topic. I should be posting in the Skyrim forums but they are so crowded I have trouble keeping up!

Edit: Ascadian Isles, not mushroom forests haha

"Why did Oblivion modding turn out so much different than Morrowind?"

- Different people with different goals with different tools available and a different source to work with.

- When it comes to modding, a single tossed rock can create a landslide. Why do we have so many scaling overhauls for Oblivion? Not because Oblivion was unique with this problem, Morrowind had 80% of the scaling issues that plagued Oblivion, only the most visible ones were absent - which is why a lot of people that got to play Morrowind after Oblivion were surprised that there isn't a scaling overhaul available. No. A few people started to work on the more visible issues, and others picked up from there. Morrowind hat its own landslides that weren't started in Oblivion.

- In Oblivion's first year mods were extremely insular. Take five random mods and you had a pretty good chance that at least one wouldn't work as intended (or work at all). Community developed tools were used to built bridges betweens mods. Morrowind also had (of course) some compatibility issues between mods, but none even nearly as extreme as Oblivion. This made a lot of mod ideas harder or impossible to realize, and made existing mods become more radical in their approaches to the game. I bet if we had had today's tools available from the beginning, modding would have taken a different path. Much more collaborative, integrative. Less insular, overbearing, competetive. Mind you, considering that I'm an early days modder, I'm guilty of this too.
Integration: The Stranded Light would like to disagree.