fftfan

I just wanted to express agreement & support for this, well said. I am convinced that all of my concerns personally are well addressed here.

Great to know! I'm planning to likely get premium over the next month or so, may be likely to use PayPal

Anything that can be bought today will likely be outdated by the time TES 6 releases(unless it's going to be a rush job with half the development length compared to Skyrim/Fallout 4). I expect it around 2024 to 2026, probably 2024 is what is the planned release year since it'll be The Elder Scrolls' 30th anniversary but wouldn't be surprising if they ended up needing longer if they're going to try to do a proper TES. I would say 2026 is the probable cutoff since by then it'll be at the end of the next generation or maybe 2027 if PS5 isn't going to release till 2021 rather than next year but that seems unlikely as it already seems like the current gen is wrapping up soon and rumors point to 2020. About 6 years seems to be the norm for console generations, with the PS3/Xbox 360 being an exception. 7 years ago the GTX 600 series were released, today the entry level GTX 1650 beats the high end GTX 680 from back then so I wouldn't be too surprised if the entry level card in 2026 beats the best stuff from today. People say Moore's Law is dead but I attribute that mainly to lack of competition and it seems like Intel is going to try to seriously compete with their GPUs. High end specs from today likely will still play TES 6 but probably at low settings and similarly to current low end specs, being a possible limiting factor as to how many mods/which mods can be installed without too much performance loss or adding to instability. I wonder if that might be a sign that Creation Club isn't selling spectacularly?

Indeed, quite an incredible addition!

That is what I expect also. Starfield will probably release Fall 2021, get 2 years support. TES VI 2024 for the 30th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls, will be incomplete like an early access game but with promise of significant post launch support. No further mention has been made for 76 modding/private servers since before the game launched AFAIK where it was used as a selling point, I expect that either we will hear about it at E3 next week or it's very likely been cancelled if absolutely no mention is made of it. I think it's reasonable to expect that if it's still in fact coming that some comments should be made during E3, Todd usually does a bunch of interviews during E3 so somebody should be likely to ask about it(unless they are told by PR it's strictly off limits to ask about. Interviewers get briefed beforehand so as to avoid anything too controversial or will make the company look bad). Final Fantasy XV had promised a Level Editor/CK type program before launch only to cancel it later, conveniently for them they only mentioned this after people already would have bought XV on PC for it. Though Square-Enix is known to be dishonest, much more so than Bethesda. Right now I feel uncertain if TES VI will have modding support. My expectation will depend in part on if they will keep their word about 76 modding support. It also depends how they handle it, it'd be bitter for people who bought the game if they say "sorry there won't be any modding support for 76 anymore but here is Nuclear Winter Battle Royale mode instead" but in a way it'd almost be worse if it's just never brought up again and they assume people will forget. I don't like 76, have not and probably will not buy the game(might consider it only if full modding support and self-hostable private servers are actually released and are decent) but I am waiting to see if they will keep their word about that.

I would say that the best solution is a Mod List. If you choose a reputable one it will give you a great curated list of mods as well as an explanation on the overall installation procedure including how to get everything to work well together. I'm fairly new to Skyrim but it appears to have a high need for Merging & Conflict Resolution Patches as well as require some advanced usage of the various mod tools including xEdit, zEdit, Wrye Bash, etc. The best way to get into this as someone new & previously unfamiliar is to follow a detailed guide that includes this part of the procedure. You can learn a ton by following a guide and it can otherwise be pretty hard since making it all work will usually require some specific knowledge on the more complex mods, avoiding problematic mods, both of which you won't already have when coming in as a new player. I use Lexy's LOTD SSE: https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/User:Darkladylexy/Lexys_LOTD_SE But since this is for Legendary Edition there is an (older)version of the same guide for that here: https://wiki.step-project.com/User:Darth_mathias/SRLE_Extended_Legacy_of_The_Dragonborn I wish I could list some more known good guides but all of the ones I know of are for Special Edition. I'm a latecomer to Skyrim and just went with SSE. Additionally, though it might be simply because I have played the game much more, but I find Fallout 4 quite a bit easier to get into and manage as a mod user. I use BiRaitBec's Modlist on Fallout 4, from there I just added lots of settlement stuff. I have been able to get by without merging plugins or other advanced stuff, I generally just use xEdit for almost everything. I hear it's kind of normal, LE has more limitations due to being 32bit and SSE having other engine fixes too I believe. You might want to consider Skyrim Special Edition. It's commonly on sale, I had to buy it due to never bothering with the DLCs on the original but I paid like $5 or something in a Steam Sale last summer. 254 plugins since there are 256 total slots but [00] is reserved for base game, [FF] is reserved for dynamic references generated in game though the number you can add reduced by 4 more for the slots used by Update.esm and the DLCs. This tends to be problematic since for instance my Skyrim SE install before merging had 580 plugins and my Fallout 4 install has 350 plugins. What is on the newer games is the new Light Plugin. They reserved [FE] slot so it's one fewer slot for ESP/ESMs but you can have multiple light plugins with ~2000 or fewer records each.

I only hope for continued moddability and that the engine won't be a 1:1 duplicate of Fallout 4 (Which has been used for a lot of fun mods but there are a lot of technical limitations & issues). I hope for mods like Sim Settlements to be possible on a TES VI/FO5 with fewer of the worst Gamebryo issues and tech getting an overall update. The engine is otherwise going to look very dated in what probably will be 2024 or 2025 and it may not attract as many modders if there will not be any new possibilities compared to now. Realistic expectations: There will be some form of multiplayer or at least co op and the game will be basically Skyrim Lite x Fallout 76. It will probably not have multiplayer elements to quite the same extent as 76 but most likely a cross between Souls and Borderlands. BL style co op with other players invading, towns might be populated with players rather than NPCs, or there may be fewer NPCs who are all for specific purpose like quest giver/merchant. 10 or fewer skills linked to 3 trees(combat/magic/stealth). MMORPG styled story/world design more akin to 76/ESO than previous TES games. Games as a Service, someone had mentioned that TES will have 30th anniversary on 2024 so TESVI may release then. I believe it if they go Games as a Service, it could be released incomplete and have expansions later. Maybe we get High Rock and later Hammerfell/other provinces are added over the next couple years. The timeline also fits for Starfield to get a 2021 release then about 2 years of support if that may be Games as a Service.

Are we able to have the game use different drives simultaneously? Like having Fallout 4 installed on one SSD with a pretty much vanilla Data Folder, MO2/Vortex on another SSD with all mods installed through it? Pretty interesting questions IMO. I expect results might be quite disappointing if some of the game data were on an HDD as the read speed would likely hold things back(assuming this is something that can generally work perfectly fine, using multiple storage drives) but this could be interesting if we could separately use the read speeds of 2 SSDs. I do migrate some of the contents in the MO2/Downloads folder that aren't going to be needed frequently, like mainstay mods that won't get uninstalled and aren't likely to need to be reinstalled. I'm curious, how does that work?

I feel exactly the same. It feels like with these games that there is no creativity or passion whatsoever, with such games no one involved cares even slightly to try to create something great. They are happy to do nothing more than copy/paste the exact same template, even though the template itself is mediocre at best. I used to want to go into Game Development but not anymore since my views on what games should be and what development should aim for could not be further apart from the people who make ME Andromeda, Anthem, everything else EA/Activision/Ubisoft/etc. As a result I buy far fewer games from the AAA giants and increasingly stick to Nintendo / modding / replaying older games. The only AAA I genuinely anticipate outside of Nintendo right now is Cyberpunk 2077. I ignore everything else and only read up on them after the fact so I am getting to read about what people ended up thinking in conclusion about the games when they are finished rather than getting info from the marketing hype blitz. For me it's the excellent development studio CD Projekt RED. I can trust them to be fair to consumers, offer a great value, not shy away from innovation and to not forget that games are supposed to be fun.

I fully agree with this. SLI could be cool but the reality is that the support for it is very poor overall, the vast majority do not take it into account at all since the number of players running SLI is so low.

It'd be a good thing for me since I love Sim Settlements and I generally prefer TES setting over Fallout plus it's likely if they did this it should open up further possibilities for Kinggath / hopefully save him a bit of work since a lot of the code may work without needing changes(especially if the engine is also 99.99% the same as right now). I prefer Fallout 4 mainly because of Sim Settlements and other mods adding to settlement building. I do hope for this since it would mean that TES VI would definitely amount to something for me. Sim Settlements would make the game fun, even if the base game is just inferior Assassin's Creed in an inferior world to Skyrim and virtually no technical improvements(FO4 engine spliced with Skyrim, scaled up a bit for PS5/Xbox Whatever/2025-era PCs). I'm concerned if the game is too lazy / too mediocre that big name modders might not be interested in modding TES VI at all, when I think about TES VI I think about what modders will create.

That sounds pretty cool!

It's very CPU dependent, largely because of Shadows being handled exclusively by the CPU. Other games handle them on the GPU and it shows. They can have shadows with more complexity, much further range and with nowhere near as much impact on performance. Outside of these games there is little reason to go for 9600k over 9400f, it's just that Skyrim/Fallout 4 depends heavily on single core performance. You might need a better CPU than those perhaps for all the bells & whistles. For my own build I just chose a CPU that will do everything, can handle very high FPS like G-sync up to 144hz(Fallout/Skyrim can't have FPS that high though because of engine limitations/Physics), ready for upcoming games like Cyberpunk 2077, can do videos & 3D applications. I went with i9-9900k. I only care about Skyrim SE, Fallout 4, Cyberpunk 2077. Some others too but they're much easier to run anyways. Based on what you said, I would choose RTX 2070 for the sake of getting 8GB VRAM. I haven't played so much Skyrim but on Fallout 4 you can easily use up to 8GB or even run out sometimes if using every highest resolution texture pack you can get plus high quality new outfit/weapon mods. The other 2 should be generally adequate but based on what you said you may be similar to me in terms of mod preferences and easily use 8GB.

I/O is quite interesting, it would explain a lot if that is the bottleneck facing 2080 Ti builds since a friend of mine runs 2080 Ti & Threadripper and still gets drops yet GPU is at less than 50% utilization/CPU even less(Game is on 1440p in their case). Anything that can help is worth investigating though IMO, if this has brought benefits for you then it's fascinating to me. Are you getting pretty reliable 60fps? I will be using Lexy LotD mod list. ENB not sure, probably the one they recommend. I'll probably give PRT a try since I love PRC on Fallout 4. I'd been mildly similar though not for as long and haven't been able to afford proper hardware until somewhat recently. Too true. I don't feel safe to expect anything at all from TES VI or any future Bethesda game, with Fallout 76 & Blades I am getting the feeling we might be left behind. This is what we have and probably have to just make the best of it. I expect Cyberpunk 2077 will be great, and I do hope for modding on there though in general I prefer fantasy settings like TES/Witcher. As far as TES/Fallout goes all I will count on are Skyrim/Oblivion/Morrowind + FO3/FNV/FO4, if any of Starfield/TESVI/Fallout 5 are indeed moddable & good then it's a bonus. I also really hope for engine improvements to be modded in somehow but I feel that probably at that point they would just develop their own game. If they're able to fix Gamebryo then they are no doubt possessing all of the knowledge required for developing a new indie game from the ground up. A Gamebryo Fixes megamod would look absolutely great on their resume though, if they wanted to go into game dev. If you do have some of the knowledge, I would suggest trying to contact SKSE devs &/or xEdit devs. Maybe they might know others who are interested in the same and may also have some of the knowledge A great topic for sure! It is very much worth investigating since these games will likely continue to be the modder's hotspots for years to come. Knowledge that helps 2080 ti users can also help people on future hardware. For suggestions, I will link what appears to me to be very good modlists for Skyrim SE & Fallout 4: Lexy's: Legacy of The Dragonborn Special Edition: My plan is to use this but select 4K texture options rather than 2K textures, and try higher settings for xLODGen/TexGen/DyndoLOD. Can be complicated but I feel it's simply due to Skyrim itself having more complexity involved in modding it plus the whole LE & SSE thing. Seems like there are a lot of SSE guides but this one does tackle conflict resolution, merging, etc so that made the decision easy.BiRaitBec Modlist: I love this, basically the definitive Fallout 4 guide & very easy. Works great for adding to it too, I mainly use settlement mods like the Sim Settlements stuff and I've had no issues doing so.I'm waiting for upgrades(2080 ti/ i9-9900k) to arrive so will be comment again when I get set up.

Oh crap... I didn't even think of that. They can technically say "We support modding", but only in a way that benefits them. Now I'm worried. Creation Club authors probably already get to use the official editor so they will not be affected by the release or lack of one for a public CK, other than that there probably won't be much if any community knowledge or help to draw from. Unless perhaps xEdit can be made a full replacement for CK, including a render view for cell editing, NPC editing(faces/etc). I prefer xEdit for a lot of stuff but I think quite a bit still must be done in the CK. The official editor can probably do a lot more but due to NDA, they probably wouldn't be allowed to use it for anything to be released other than official projects through CC. Oh yeah that is true also. They could get by with the people they have now for Starfield. But likely for TES VI and even moreso for Fallout 5 it will be much harder to find new talent if there will not be a CK on any future games. They could contract out game developers who are unable to find work, though they likely would expect a lot more pay.