hawkfist

agree. Whitespider and a few others have clarified this issue for me tremendously. Thank you. My first understanding: The private area was to encourage more people (good and bad) to create mods, and to "facilitate communication." I perceived the danger (to me and others like me) of missing the coolest conversations, and the danger to the modders that they would miss out on input from us non-modder smart people. I chimed in asking for the idea to be reconsidered. My current understanding: Trolls and morons of every stripe (a group to which readers of this thread have, quite possibly, already added me because of my comments) have ruined the forum experience for the modders and they need a safe-haven to facilitate their work. I support any idea that protects the artists of our community and will allow them to work in peace. I support the idea for this private forum, and no - I won't make a crappy mod with a sexual angle just in the hopes of getting in. I hope everyone will respect this idea and work to make it happen and that the 1,000 DL rule will prove a strong enough "troll-barrier." I understand now that I am the very thing the forum was created to protect the modders from, and I accept that in reality we can't kill all the trolls (they just respawn) so creating a safe-haven is the best move. I love and admire the modders and their work. I am deeply sorry if anything I tried to contribute to this thread made any of the modders feel they had yet another reason not to mod. I'll be more careful in the future.

I'm sorry to keep chiming in on this one, but I feel I represent on some levels the largest faction in this community: non-modders/non-programmers who love the games and live for the mods the modders make. It seems to me that there might be two reasons to create this special forum area. The first is to protect the modders from annoying or hurtful comments. The second is to facilitate the modders' cooperation - cleaner threads that are easier for them to follow. Perhaps both are factors. Regarding the hurtful comments, I think that the most important thing for an artist is to grow a thick skin. Facilitating smooth communication however is a great idea. The problem is how to adjudicate membership in that community, and 1,000 unique DLs may not be the best way. LH says I won't miss anything, but my Spider-Sense is telling me that if there's a private forum for the best-of-the-best than the best-of-the-best conversations will take place there, and nowhere else. Ah, an idea: IF the idea is to prevent feedback from non-modders, perhaps the admins could arrange for the rest of us to subscribe to digests from this forum. Then I can read the coolness, and post in the public forum areas if I have an idea or suggestion I want to share. Thanks again for the great forums, the fun conversations, and everyone's hard work! And please save your strength ... Skyrim is coming and we need you!!!!

My idea is basically sour-grapes, I guess, but of a relevant sort. I imagine a very near future where modders such as yourself and other heroes of mine will be having truly fascinating discussions about what mods you're embarking upon for Skyrim (yeah, baby!!!!!) and I won't be able to read a word of it. As a writer, I imagine subscribing to a forum administered by and for my favorite writers, spending time to learn how they brainstorm, what problems they encounter, what's coming up, etc., and then having it go private so that all that would be left to me (a Premium member who paid to download content from YOU and hear what YOU think, not post my own stupid rants) would be the chance to chat with other fans. Once the writers disappear from the writers' forum, what's left? Don't shut yourselves off from your fans. Label a thread "for serious modders with valuable input only," ask the admins to disintegrate anything posted to that thread by a noob like me, and you're in business. That's my two cents. Deeply sorry if I offend anyone.

I admire the administration's desire to facilitate the communication between the modders who bring the most to our gaming lives. At the same time, though, I worry that this will reduce the content the rest of the forum members can see to some less than compelling discussions conducted between only the less talented or less prolific members. I for one greatly admire the modders who would have access to this private forum and would be greatly saddened to no longer be privy to their dialogues. I don't mean to insult any of the folks I admire who I believe had everyone's best interests at heart with this idea, but I have to say I'm put in mind of Orwell's Animal Farm. "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Thanks bben46. An example of the wisdom that comes from experience. I stand corrected. And, I will become a paid member. I've got a job (when I'm not playing Oblivion) and the least I can do is join this site that has given me so much enjoyment. Thanks for replying to my post! Hmm, now I just have to figure out how to join. (Kidding, I can probably handle it.) Ah, and thanks for the "Great mod I give it a ten. I'll play it as soon as I figure out how to download it for xbox." That's freakin' hilarious!!! :laugh:

I have been playing Oblivion for three years, the first year on Xbox, then for the past 2 years on PC. I joined the nexus forums ... a few months ago ... I've been in the chat room 3 or 4 times, I've endorsed a bunch of my favorite mods (but not nearly all of the ones I've played/still play) and I've given out 2 or 3 kudos to the 2 or 3 members who took the time to comment on my 2 or 3 previous posts. And that's what I want to talk about ... 14,500 downloads for "Enter the Shinobi" (as my most recent example) and 69 endorsements. What's up with that? There is an inequity here that the community might want to address. The new Elder Scrolls V is coming and from what I've read it remains an open question whether the game will have a construction set and be as readily mod-able (new verb?) as TES IV. If it isn't, isn't than an outrage? And might it not be related to the issue I've raised above? As a newbie I'm uniquely (un)qualified to comment on the following: 1) Joining these forums is not sufficiently simple/inviting - it should be made even simpler - every visitor to the download sight should be invited to join. And forum-phobia (I invented that! I think.) should be reduced (Heck, I'm afraid right now that this post will "get me in trouble.") 2) Posting endorsements shouldn't require that you downloaded *that* version of the mod as this has made it too difficult for me to endorse mods I DL'd months ago but have since been updated 3) The admins might want to add a feature whereby non-members can post Non-Member Endorsements (it would be nice for the 15,000 DLs to mean 14,800 endorsements, even if not 15,000 new members). Those-in-the-know could choose to ignore non-member endorsements when choosing mods. Please don't get me wrong. Bethesda rocks. This community rocks. The modders are my heroes. Dark0ne rules. Those are my honest feelings. But I would love to be able to endorse all the mods I DL'd in the past and neglected to endorse (because I wasn't yet a member), and I'd love Bethesda to see mods with tens of thousands of endorsements instead of 20-2,000. I for one probably won't even buy TES V if this community won't be doing mods for it. Just my two cents. Thanks again to this community for 100s of hours of gaming joy. As a P.S. I just realized this might have been better posted in feedback, rather than here. I can't figure out how to move it (newbie) so if an admin can move it for me, or tell me how, that would be great. Sorry if people feel this is indeed the wrong section for this.

Balakirev, you catch me out as fast as my old English teacher. Um, in this case I did move to a new cell, but beyond that was not thorough this time around. However, Viconia is not my first companion to go stiff on me; and in previous occurrences my routine procedure was to go to the test center, wait three days, remove a newest mod or two, rebuild my bashed patch, update NPC levels, only to find my companion still stiff as a board. When this happened to Tess (from Bladesong), she stood propped against the wall in my bedroom in Benrius Manor through all kinds of rebuilds of my mod list, load order, bashed patch, etc., and her mobility never returned. Eventually, Bladesong had to go, as having an incapacitated hottie in my bedroom was becoming disturbing. That having been said, I will continue to experiment and will try the Actor Details suggestion as soon as I can and report back here anything I've discovered. My final note is that this problem used to happen fairly regularly on my game to Krystal and Raven back when my mod list mostly consisted of OOO, Mart's, a body mod, some clothing mods, and not much else. It is one of the first problems I have encountered with mods, began when I had a few mods installed, and has persisted through at least three re-installs of the core game and total rebuilds of my mod lists. The main reason I bothered folks on the forum with my problem was my surprise that it wasn't the MOST COMMON companion problem on the forum, as in my world it is the most mundane problem. I will follow everyone's suggestions and report back if I discover anything worthwhile. Thank you again for taking the time to help me with my problem.

Thanks Smooth613! I will definitely check this out. I don't mod, but I'm really, really curious about how everything works so it sounds like your suggestion will give me the kind of glimpse behind the curtain the curtain that I'm looking for. I followed Balakirev's suggestions, and removing mods and changing load order did not restore Viconia's mobility in that particular game (save). I can't comment on whether continuing forward from an earlier point without certain mods would have changed anything as I have not tested that. To add some new information, my most recent "collapse" was Viconia going down for the count after she accompanied me on the final quest to obtain Hoarfrost Castle. This involves receiving a new lesser power that teleports you (the Hoarfrost Conduit) and I began to suspect that she lost her ability to move after being teleported. By returning to an earlier save, sending Vic home, and completing the quest alone, I have temporarily avoided this problem. In other words, without changing mods or load order, but by not bringing Vic with me on that quest, she has maintained her mobility. I have seen posts about companions being "lost" or losing their "gear" after entering Oblivion gates, so I guess this is a known problem. However, I still haven't seen anyone else posting about immobilized companions. I will check out "actor details." Thank you!

Ah, here's a weird thought. My roommate also plays Oblivion, on his machine in his room. He's a disaster at computers, and tends to mess his machines up badly. His Oblivion directory had become such a tragedy of mis-installed mods, that I actually ported my Oblivion directly to his machine, completely replacing his install with mine. Amazingly, this worked. His game played beauitfully. Now, here's the weeeeird part. I installed all those mods I mentioned (Better Cities, Unique Environments) and did not put them on his machine. Amazingly, while he was off doing something totally different in his world from whatever I was about in mine ... our Viconia's collapsed within minutes of each other! We discussed what we were doing in-game with each other, and found no similariities. I had the new mods, he was doing what he usually does - gardening at the Arcane University or some such. And yet, both Viconia's were down for the count. Based on this, I decided that it had to be some kind of "timer" set inside Viconia ... or something. Actually, I decided I had no idea what the frag was going on, and came to the forums for help. :) Baseed on earlier experiences with Raven and Krystal, I came to believe that companions actually had limited life-spans; that they could exist in a world full of mods and function perfectly, until some combat or travel related or time-related event would blast their ability to move out of their little bodies. Jeez. Who knows? Despite all this, the method you suggested still seems best.

Thanks Balakirev. I will do as you suggest and report back after I've tested it. Just for clarification, my first companions were Raven and Krystal from Tessera, and it strated happening with Krystal, but not Raven. I went through a phase where I was travelling with four or five companions at one time, and invariably this would happen to one of them, eventually. Because of the problem, I did a complete reinstall of oblivion and all of my mods, and at that time I switched over from the CM partners that Tessera had bundled with Raven and Krystal to the original mod, which gave me a world full of NPCs ... again, the problem tended to happen with only one of them. Almost invariably, the problem began after one of three events: 1) a companion left to fend for herself took a severe beating; 2) I fast traveled; 3) I left the companion behind in one cell as I ran to another, then called the companion to me. Again, I reinstalled everything from scratch ... and this time I chose to use only the CM Partners mod (but not hiring any of the companions) and the Viconia DeVir mod. For a long time, Viconia worked perfectly. My CTD frequency was very low, and the game was running great. Deciding to push my luck, I installed all of the Better Cities mods and all of the Unique Environments mods ... at the time, I was working my way towards ownership of Hoarfrost Castle. I noticed pretty early on that a number of my mods were not compatible with Unique Environments, especially some locations from HentaiMania. Climbing mountains on the way to the Inverted Cathedral (itself stuck through a mountainside - apparently due to Unique Environments), Viconia collapsed for the first time. My first thought was that it had something to do with either Hoarfrost, Unique Environments, or Better Cities ... but at the same time, it was the old problem rearing its ugly head again from an early time when none of those mods were installed but companions were still collapsing. Needless to say, you guys are probably right - it's probably a mod conflict and I will do my research to figure out which one following the method you suggested. I guess my naive hope was that someone would teach me a console command that could bring my companion back to full mobility without the ultimate need to choose between Viconia and a given mod - since I greedily want to keep using eveyr mod I have installed. Thanks again.

First and foremost, I need to belive the mod will not mangle my game. I have been seriously mangled in the past, and now I look to avoid it. So if we're at Mangle Factor 12, I'm afraid the dilithium chamber will explode and I'm not going to download the mod. Second, I look for endorsements. Everyone here knows more than me, so I usually don't move on a mod until it's heavily endorsed. While I know this is the same reason no one wants to publish my novel, it's just a fact of life. Finally, I think most of us have been playing Oblivion for a long time, so I think the key for a modder who wants a popular mod is to somehow manage the juggling act of injecting the new without harming the old. Something special, that allows me to experience some aspect of Oblivion in a new way ... that's amazing. For example, the most telling case in point for me here was when I downloaded the Dwemer Skyship mod. Not the skyship, mind you. I don't like the Skyship, don't live on it, never call it to me anymore. But maaaaan ....when I jumped off that skyship wearing the Dwemer Parachute (in a chest, undocumented in the little readme), and all of a freakin' sudden I was FLYING in oblivion for the first time, (well, gliding at least) I was in heaven. Mind you, I had not downloaded the Akatosh Mount at that point, and the Midas Magic Carpet spell is just a horse that looks like a carpet (at least that's how it worked in my world). But with that parachute, I could see the world from the sky for the first time. My first leaps, from Dive Rock, from the Skyship, from the Mage's Sky Home, and later just into combat from higher vantage points ... ahhh, the thrill of it. Give me a tiny power to affect the world in a small but new and special way (like gliding was), and I'll love the mod.

I scanned through your mod list and couln't figure out where you were hanging your hat. There are a lot of great houses and castles. I mean, sure, you got the Frostcrag thing going on, but why not own a nice castle or three? I'm partial to Hoarfrost Castle because the quests to get it make you feel (almost) like you earned your "keep" (no pun intended).

I want to chime in. Colourwheels baby! Colourwheels Sexy Female NPCs and Colourwheels Stock Clothing Replacer.

It depends on your tastes really ... if you're into lore friendly mods or hot chicks, really. All of the Bananasplits Better Cities stuff is sheer genius, best enjoyed after years of milling about in the original cities first. Hoarfrost Castle is great. The Armory Lab is kinda can't live without it coolness if you're a pack rat. Viconia Devir is a super companion mod, especially if you were ever a D&Der. You can go in so many directions ... (spent a week in Storm Trooper armor killing everything in sight with supercool lightsabers, for example.) If you're at all into that kinda manga/hentai style, then anything Colourwheels or Hentai has done is staggeringly awesome. HentaiMania and HentaiMania 2 rock. Ummm ... a really cool idea is to go into the Tesnexus mod site, click on the Categories link, and then choose the category of mod you want. when the list pops up, reset it to sort by Endorsements and Desc to see the mods in that category with the most endoresements. Agruably, these mods will be the best in that category, as determined by this awesome community's endorsements. Anytime a mod has 90 endorsements or something, it's a pretty safe bed that it's very pro. Hope that is somewhat useful. Sorry for not posting links, but everything I mention is easily found on the site. Peace.

Thanks for the tip. Is disabling the .esps in wrye bash enough to test this, or do the mods have to be uninstalled? Thanks again for the tip, and the newbie welcome over in that thread. It's nice to know you. Btw, has it happened to you? I was amazed to see that as far as I can tell from Google searches, no one has had this happen to them. That's pretty weird.