Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Merusk]

Yeah Janessa.  It's not screechy, it's this throaty-gravelly midrange-tone thing that irritates me.  Most of the elves have it but hers is worse.

[Teleku]

Which reminds me.  From all the story I gather in Skyrim in terms of where things are heading, it seems the next game should be Elder Scrolls: Valenwood.  Or Elder Scrolls: Elf Apocalypse.  Or what ever.  

I can't wait for this game for several reasons.  First, considering how amazing the world of Skyrim was, a province based around deep forest environments (or just lush green environments in general) with even more improved technology should look amazing.  

Second, I can't wait to see what RK47 does with an primarily elf based version of Skyrim.  

[HaemishM]

The world is not ready for such a thing.

[rk47]

I hear woodelfs are cannibals. 

The Bosmer are the major species in Valenwood. Their strict "Green Pact" prohibits the use of wood or other vegetable derivatives as building materials. [4] This pact also has other such rules as that a fallen enemy must be completely consumed before three days pass [4]. They also cannot smoke anything of a vegetable nature. Bone pipes are common, however, and are filled with caterpillars or tree grubs. [4] They also have a deep-seated fear of Necromancy [11]

[Venkman]

Back to playing this over a year later. 81 hours in but never close to finishing even the main storyline. Stopped right at the end of the Civil War, can't even remember the faction I joined. Picked up a few high def pack things from Steam Workshop. As someone said here a few months ago when I asked, VERY much easier this way than messing with individual mods.

What is the best mod on Steam Workshop to improve the Inventory and ability swapping ones? Neither is unusable, but I really dislike leaving the action mid fight to swap L/R abilities. I swap a lot between Destruction and Restoration, particularly against dragons, and mostly because I'm trying to keep Lydia alive.

Also would love something that makes quest progress tracking a bit better. Like, I have a couple dozen quests, but only a few that give me clear guidance. I'm sure i remembered what was needed at the time. But that was a year ago

[Stormwaltz]

Valenwood is bizarre (see "Dance in Fire"), but post-Morrowind you can watch BGS making a steady retreat from the crazier/more interesting (whichever you prefer) parts of the lore. It's very unlikely Valenwood in a game would be like the Valenwood we've read about for years.

[Kail]

Valenwood is bizarre (see "Dance in Fire"), but post-Morrowind you can watch BGS making a steady retreat from the crazier/more interesting (whichever you prefer) parts of the lore. It's very unlikely Valenwood in a game would be like the Valenwood we've read about for years.

Even since Daggerfall, you could argue.  Dark Elves (in the few places that mentioned them) were supposed to be these sex crazed fuck machines and Morrowind was their kinky BDSM dungeon.  In the context of Daggerfall, which had naked women lying around all over the place, this raised a few eyebrows.  But then the industry suddenly started getting leery of media blowback from that kind of thing and what we ended up with was less "whips and leather" and more "bugs and mud".

On the other hand, you could say that the generic-ness of the last two titles has more to do with them being in human territories, and once we get to a weirder race (which we'll have to soon, unless they want to start recycling places) things could easily get interesting again.

[koro]

Though, to be fair, Morrowind is slightly excused in the fact that it all took place on the relatively-recently-resettled island of Vvardenfell, where previously the only real inhabitants were Ashlander natives, a few Telvanni recluses, and a bunch of horrible blight abominations, and not the actual mainland itself. Granted, even if Morrowind proper was playable, I doubt Tear would be a den of naked sex slaves or something. Besides, "sex-crazed fuck machines" who also happen to be huge religious zealots is a bit close to Drow territory, and anything to move the Dunmer away from the Drow is good to me.


I still think the worst bit of lore retconning was turning Cyrodiil from this kind of hardcore jungle-and-swamp kind of area where the Imperials had to be complete badasses to survive (and also gave more reason why Colovia was supposed to be so imporant, since it was the only real decent farmland in the region) into pastoral England.

[Der Helm]

Though, to be fair, Morrowind is slightly excused in the fact that it all took place on the relatively-recently-resettled island of Vvardenfell, where previously the only real inhabitants were Ashlander natives, a few Telvanni recluses, and a bunch of horrible blight abominations cliff racers

[rk47]

When I took Mjoll the Lioness as my companion, she always make a random comment about her adventuring lifestyles.
One in particular made me cringe.

"When I was young, I'd journey with my father on hunting expeditions into Morrowind. The cliff racers made for excellent sport."

[Merusk]

I installed the armor mod RK linked some while ago from the MMO.  RoE, or something?  Interesting armors but they do not go with some of the terrible faces Skyrim forces on its females.

[rk47]

You need CBBE and hair add on. After that install Babes of Skyrim.

[Ceryse]

Personally, I dislike Babes of Skyrim a lot. Really don't like how it makes the characters look. CBBE comes with a face mod that is good enough, imo. I'm using UNPB and Coverwoman with Superior Lore-Friendly Hair to improve how the women look (cause who cares how the guys look).

[rk47]

The men look fine, the wimin look bad because Beth uses the same body, added breast , long hair, removed beard and mustache and call it a day.

[Merusk]

I had the CBBE mod because you need it for a lot of armor mods to work.  I tried babes of skyrim and.. uh.. wtf.  While the faces are better, now all the ladies look like they're 1980s hookers. It's clear a guy created it because, WTF makeup!

Installed a hair mod and but didn't notice anything different. Might have done something wrong there.

I'll say that since getting a vid card that isn't fucked, the game looks even more gorgeous than it did on my 570.  No idea what this 760 is doing differently but WOW.

[rk47]

Yeah the slut looks are kinda overwhelming but I can never go back to Vanilla skyrim looks.
Lydia looks like a man in there. 
I recall there was one massive New Vegas mod where the maker didn't turn every female into a complete slut but instead applied some faint touches and more feminine lines.
Too bad nobody's doing that sort of mod for Skyrim.
I tried Skyrim Redone as a High Elf mage - love the new range of perks, but definitely gotta increase difficulty level to match the super quick power climb.
Also, I hate that they do not make any changes on the loot table, I still get trash loot when I beat a tough dungeon.
But the lighting pre-set they did was really good. I had to light up a torch in Dwemer ruins back then cause I bumped into a fucking Chaurus Reaver while sneaking and died.
Not perfect, but I kinda dig the High Elf mage gameplay with Fire Specialization.

[Ceryse]

There are some armours not available for UNPB that annoy me, but there's a few that are only UNP-based, also. Either way you go you're going to miss out on some, although CBBE seems to have a larger selection (though most armour mods suck, imo, I only use about seven armour mods, I think).

Also agree on the babes of Skyrim mod making them look like hookers. In a similar fashion I'm not a big fan of Apachi Sky Hair. Really don't like a lot of the hair styles/look of the hair; its like they just stepped out of a hair salon in New York during Fashion Week or something. I prefer using a no-makeup version of Coverwoman, or the default CBBE face mod instead. Get better looking female faces without the slut look.

Some hair mods only add more hairstyles, so unless you actually pick that as a hairstyle yourself you'll never see an effect from it in-game. The one I use changes all hair to look slightly different (more realistic, imo) without changing styles. Also has an optional version for a rougher look to the hair.

But, aside from a body mod to make the women look less fugly the most important mods can be the ENB and weather type mods to change the lighting and weather affects of the game. Can add a ton to the atmosphere and feel of the game.

Also, I just started messing around with the Helgen Reborn mod (where you basically rebuild Helgen) and it seems very well put together and one of the higher quality mods I've seen for additional content. Hoping that quality stays high as I get further in.

And damnit.. I still haven't even gone to the Greybeards or kicked off the Civil War and I'm about 60 hours into my current playthrough. Game has too much content.

[Shrike]

 ...and weather affects of the game. Can add a ton to the atmosphere and feel of the game.

Yeah, weather...

I have a number of snow mods installed on my game (it's Skyrim, after all). Man, I'll tell you...this can get interesting. I dread going to Dawnstar anymore because of the whiteout blizzards I keep running into. Seriously.

Most memorable was the first time my wood elf heavy ranger went to visit the Greybeards. Above the snowline, I hit the White Death. I literally could not see a friggin' thing (was at night, of course) and about fell off the mountain twice. I had to use magelight cast head about every 15' to even see where I was going. Mostly, it just attracted trolls and bears. It took me about half and hour to walk up that damned mountain. It's amusing in retrospect, but at the time I was like "holy cats, I can't seeeeeeeeeee." Where's infravision when you need it?

I still feel that way on most of my trips to Dawnstar.

[ajax34i]

I'm using CBBE with the included faces, eyebrows, and armor packs, and the women look ok, with the standard (non-slutty) armor.  I guess the equivalent for men is Better Males (also with its included faces, and no need for armor mods because the default armor fits the bodies, I think).  Both have options to keep the underwear on, plus options on what body shape to use as the default.

I immediately noticed an improvement in the visual quality of everything after installing the Unofficial Skyrim Patch mod.  I guess that mod fixes the high res texture packs to actually work right.  I can now see fiber textures on NPC clothing at close range, it's pretty amazing.  Plus a crapload of bug fixes; their changelog is freaking huge.

[rk47]

This is why a lot of people hate Bethesda you see, they really let the mods do their work after the 10/10 fellatio the game journos heaped on them.

The biggest isssue I had was scaled loot and difficulty level. It is a terrible concept that should've been abandoned and instead loot tables should reflect where and what mob did you kill. Low level area: Riverwood & Whiterun, high level should be northwards and southwards of those zones etc. Don't even gate the Daedric quests behind levels, let players attempt them, but keep the challenge at a static high level so they know they bit off more than they can chew. If they think it's too hard, there's the autosave or run out of the dungeon option.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, loathsome, they should include the ability to assfuck a ghost companion in the original launch.

Come on. A game that's got as much going as this one that can be extensively modded is *bad*? Please to tell me what you think the gold standard is.

[rk47]

Yeah, loathsome, they should include the ability to assfuck a ghost companion in the original launch.

Come on. A game that's got as much going as this one that can be extensively modded is *bad*? Please to tell me what you think the gold standard is.

Let me tell you of their awesome UI at launch.
And their shit texture until they had to release the HD textures patch.
Still, it looked like shit until the Unofficial Patch and modders chip in to fix the face and body scaling.
Difficulty that was completely scaled and made accomplishing everything like ticking a grocery list (tried that Blacksmith to 100 at level 1 yet? Felt satisfying huh)
or Stores that never sold anything good until you were high level enough (like you even need a level requirement to wear anything)

I like Skyrim but the unrealized potential and dumb design decisions with 10/10 journalist verdicts made most RPGs follow suit with this line of thought. 'We should call our players awesome and let them be awesome all the time.'

Look at classic dungeon puzzles and compare it with Skyrim 'look at the claw and match the spinning stone pillar with it. Ages 5 and up.' That's how big the difficulty gap is.

[Ceryse]

I think Skyrim would have benefited from slightly less content (while it is nice that you have so many points of interest, and most of them utterly meaningless, they're so crowded you literally trip over them and a lot of areas are so tightly packed with them you literally move from one to another whether you like it or not) and more time spent refining the rest.

Thankfully mods do a lot to fix and improve Skyrim and the people behind the Unofficial patches deserve a lot of credit for what they do.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Yeah, loathsome, they should include the ability to assfuck a ghost companion in the original launch.

Come on. A game that's got as much going as this one that can be extensively modded is *bad*? Please to tell me what you think the gold standard is.

Let me tell you of their awesome UI at launch.
And their shit texture until they had to release the HD textures patch.
Still, it looked like shit until the Unofficial Patch and modders chip in to fix the face and body scaling.
Difficulty that was completely scaled and made accomplishing everything like ticking a grocery list (tried that Blacksmith to 100 at level 1 yet? Felt satisfying huh)
or Stores that never sold anything good until you were high level enough (like you even need a level requirement to wear anything)

I like Skyrim but the unrealized potential and dumb design decisions with 10/10 journalist verdicts made most RPGs follow suit with this line of thought. 'We should call our players awesome and let them be awesome all the time.'

Look at classic dungeon puzzles and compare it with Skyrim 'look at the claw and match the spinning stone pillar with it. Ages 5 and up.' That's how big the difficulty gap is.

So, how many hours have you played skyrim now?

[Venkman]

I got a few weather things in, and various texture and mesh improvements, but I've been out so long it's hard for me to remember what "vanilla" was.

Still need something that improves the Quest and Inventory UI. I have 'Better Quest Objectives" and "Item Sorting", but I just installed those the other night and can't tell any difference. Probably means I screwed something up.

[Ceryse]

Personally, my mod list is;

And even though Lakov asked RK, I'll say this; Skyrim's a decent game with a lot of flaws. Mods make up for a lot of that. I've played Skyrim for about 470 hours so far, but I probably would have only sunk 40-50 hours into it without mods improving the game dramatically. I'd have rushed through the main content and only explored here and there, instead of mods making the game so much more livable that I just played.

[Kail]

I think Skyrim would have benefited from slightly less content (while it is nice that you have so many points of interest, and most of them utterly meaningless, they're so crowded you literally trip over them and a lot of areas are so tightly packed with them you literally move from one to another whether you like it or not) and more time spent refining the rest.

Thankfully mods do a lot to fix and improve Skyrim and the people behind the Unofficial patches deserve a lot of credit for what they do.

I dunno, I feel kind of the opposite.  The base game was "good enough" in pretty much every way for me, and the wealth of content is what raised it out of mediocrity.  I suspect that they're hitting diminishing returns on a lot of aspects of the game; as the quality of a character model or something goes up, it gets harder and harder to make improvements to it.  The models weren't "HOLY SHIT WHO MADE THESE" ugly like they were in Oblivion or Morrowind, the gameplay was simple and playable, and the overall experience worked pretty well. 

In general, I like it when games play to their unique strengths.  There are already a lot of games I can hit if I want a really polished, focused experience, but there are very few options if I want something as broad as Skyrim.

[Ingmar]

I think Skyrim would have benefited from slightly less content (while it is nice that you have so many points of interest, and most of them utterly meaningless, they're so crowded you literally trip over them and a lot of areas are so tightly packed with them you literally move from one to another whether you like it or not) and more time spent refining the rest.

Thankfully mods do a lot to fix and improve Skyrim and the people behind the Unofficial patches deserve a lot of credit for what they do.

I dunno, I feel kind of the opposite.  The base game was "good enough" in pretty much every way for me, and the wealth of content is what raised it out of mediocrity.  I suspect that they're hitting diminishing returns on a lot of aspects of the game; as the quality of a character model or something goes up, it gets harder and harder to make improvements to it.  The models weren't "HOLY SHIT WHO MADE THESE" ugly like they were in Oblivion or Morrowind, the gameplay was simple and playable, and the overall experience worked pretty well. 

In general, I like it when games play to their unique strengths.  There are already a lot of games I can hit if I want a really polished, focused experience, but there are very few options if I want something as broad as Skyrim.

Yeah, exactly this.

[rk47]

Yeah, loathsome, they should include the ability to assfuck a ghost companion in the original launch.

Come on. A game that's got as much going as this one that can be extensively modded is *bad*? Please to tell me what you think the gold standard is.

Let me tell you of their awesome UI at launch.
And their shit texture until they had to release the HD textures patch.
Still, it looked like shit until the Unofficial Patch and modders chip in to fix the face and body scaling.
Difficulty that was completely scaled and made accomplishing everything like ticking a grocery list (tried that Blacksmith to 100 at level 1 yet? Felt satisfying huh)
or Stores that never sold anything good until you were high level enough (like you even need a level requirement to wear anything)

I like Skyrim but the unrealized potential and dumb design decisions with 10/10 journalist verdicts made most RPGs follow suit with this line of thought. 'We should call our players awesome and let them be awesome all the time.'

Look at classic dungeon puzzles and compare it with Skyrim 'look at the claw and match the spinning stone pillar with it. Ages 5 and up.' That's how big the difficulty gap is.

So, how many hours have you played skyrim now?

2 hours without mods.

[Ceryse]

I dunno, I feel kind of the opposite.  The base game was "good enough" in pretty much every way for me, and the wealth of content is what raised it out of mediocrity.  I suspect that they're hitting diminishing returns on a lot of aspects of the game; as the quality of a character model or something goes up, it gets harder and harder to make improvements to it.  The models weren't "HOLY SHIT WHO MADE THESE" ugly like they were in Oblivion or Morrowind, the gameplay was simple and playable, and the overall experience worked pretty well. 

In general, I like it when games play to their unique strengths.  There are already a lot of games I can hit if I want a really polished, focused experience, but there are very few options if I want something as broad as Skyrim.

I could have lived with the game, graphically, without mods.

But I would have traded 10% fewer meaningless places I could explore for better, more fleshed out factions (Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, etc.) because as is they are fairly poorly represented. A lot of the quest lines are very shallow and its a shame.

[Rendakor]

This game needs something like the Technic launcher for Minecraft. I'd love to play with some of these mods, but just can't be bothered to fuck with them.

[Venkman]

This game needs something like the Technic launcher for Minecraft. I'd love to play with some of these mods, but just can't be bothered to fuck with them.

The Steam Workshop approach is pretty painless. I have bothered with the 14 I use if someone here hadn't mentioned how easy it was. Still some troubleshooting, but so far it's been just "game crashes/start turning them off one by one".

[Rendakor]

They don't all work with the Steam Workshop though, do they?

[Venkman]

They don't all work with the Steam Workshop though, do they?

Probably not. But I only use the ones that are in Steam Workshop, which limits the bug hunting because Steam takes care of all of it. And I only focus on the older ones with the highest ratings. let other people beta for me kinda thing . If this was the only game I was interested in playing, I'd probably go full on rk47 to tweak the shit out of it to and fro and be comfortable doing it after all this time. But this is just a background game between other stuff (like, I just re-patched GW2), so I want easy turnkey solutions. Means I'm really focused just on turnkey "good enough" solutions

[Ceryse]

They don't all work with the Steam Workshop though, do they?

There are a number of mods that aren't available through the Steam Workshop, especially the larger ones due to the size cap on mods on the Workshop.