Modding Conundrum, graphics vs gameplay.....

[Alventiothy]

Hi all, I have just began re-modding skyrim for another playthrough and wanted to ask the opinion of nexus users on whether they prefer modding the game for graphical improvement or gameplay improvement, or a balance of both?

It seems every single time I mod skyrim no matter what Rig I use, I always end up at the point where I either sacrifice a gameplay element for a graphical improvement or sacrifice graphics for a gameplay improvement. Now, I'm not complaining about this, it is after all the nature of modding a game and so is understandable. But I am nevertheless interested in others thoughts and whether other people prefer to get their immersion in the form of better graphics or whether they prefer new quests, lands and city overhauls etc. An example of my latest conundrum is that I bought a new monitor and now play in 4k resolution, which admittedly is great, the problem I now have is that despite upgrading my GPU (gtx 1080) the mods I used together at 1080p now push the framerate below what is acceptable to me at 4k and so it looks like I'll have to make a trade off again at some stage (my monitor's upscaling/downscaling is appalling so for some reason playing or watching anything at 1080p looks far far worse than on a normal 1080p monitor so Im forced to play everything in 4k). This time the culprit appears to be the fact that 4k resolution+skyrim hd+smim+jk's skyrim is simply too much even for a very decent rig to handle, unless I'm doing something seriously wrong during set up. I have stumbled across random youtube channels and forum posters around the web that boast of having the kind of skyrim set up that I wish for, (basically a very pretty skyrim enb at high resolution while adding a ton of npc's and town overhauls and still getting reasonable (40fps+) framerates).

 

At this rate I'll be splurging on a second gtx 1080 in order to have that :) :) :)

[asmox]

I think your question is somewhat misleading - you're not asking about graphics vs. gameplay; you're asking about graphics vs. performance.

 

I make no distinction between graphics and gameplay in my mod list. I have many graphics mods and many mods that alter gameplay in some way. I personally value performance over graphics, however, so if I need to take a few 4k tex replacers and cut them down to 2k in order to sustain a stable 50-60+ FPS, I will.