abrahamjpalma

I find some recommended lists in reddit. I suppose this will have to do for the moment. But it's still a lot of work. After all that it's easy to forget to play.

I know there are some projects, like GEMS, and STEP, but they all seem too broad. They ask to install individually so many mods... From other games (don't know if is legit to say the name), I know som mod project that installs itself with a collection of proven to work well together mods. By well I mean balanced and thematic, in addition to being compatible. Those mod projects are a base for other mods, designed to work with the same flavour, that can be added for more customization. For example, an immersion mod project will combine most immersive mods, with reallistic weapon and armor models, improved roads, patrols, more people, better dialogs and optionally improved transport methods (horses, portals). Legacy of the Dragonborn has done a little bit of this integrating mods from different authors in a comprehensive mod, I think. Immersive armors and weapons do the same. Those projects have a group of curators that ensures all those mods in the pack feel coherent, upgrade or switch to other more fitted mods. Projects like STEP are a bit daunting. You need to read a large list of things to do, install lots of programs, and finally you are offered a list of mods that are approved from where you can pick what you like more. This flexibility, while may be appealing for some people, is just too much work, at least for me. It would be so much easier (from the player point of view) to just install a few mod packs and some optional extra mods. What I would like to have is a modpack with base mods everyone need: Unofficial patch, Alternate Start, Cutting Room, SMIM, maybe Immersive Weapons and Armors. Other modpack for perk overhauls, be it Requiem, Ordinator or SPERC, with their recommended mods installed by default (extra perks for ordinator, for example). Environment settings can be added to such modpacks, so Requiem would have a darker and more hardcore settings, true storms and better travel, perhaps another xp-leveling mod, while the Ordinator pack would have more Fantasy elements and some quality of life mods (better quests, more action combat, glowing unread books). From that, add what one may like in Nexus and see if it is compatible, like companions, bigger tits or whatever. Already existing big modpacks are of an impossible size for my computer, and are said to not work correctly.

I'm a fan of classic JRPG, so game script, fun and mechanics always matter most for me. The rest is candy. That been said, I like what you are trying to do with that reallistic lighting. I fully support the idea that the game has to look like you are watching things with your own eyes, not through a lens. A thing that happens when a cloud shadows the view is that it becomes less bright and loses warm colours. But then, our eye corrects the brightness, and what we perceive is just slightly darker and less saturated colours. I have never seen this effect in a videogame (usually they show always a saturated palette for funny games, or unsaturated otherwise). Other thing is that our brain makes that HDR camera effect all the time, so we don't really have those 'too much dark' places that can be seen with ELFX. Even in dark interiors, we usually recognize the shapes, but the red colours of objects are completely gone. Night exteriors are rarely pitch black, it may happen inside a thick forest, or in cloudy nights far from cities, but usually we can see things in a silvery light. This brings me back to the first time I did too much immersion. Not wearing a lantern on such places, or having to look for one, stopped the fun for me. It turned into work. The worst immersion thing for me was the camera that moved with the hero's head (yes, our head is moving, but the brain keeps the image steady for us). But I disgress. On the OP subject, I really cannot complain for the free improvements (other than now we have to wait until mods are ported), and I never thought Skyrim was ugly. The views and objects seemed ok, maybe not gorgeous, but did their work. What I cannot stand is the face models. People really look ugly and this is not a matter of polygons or low res textures. It's best if most people look normal, some ugly and some beutiful. Now, with body/face replacement mods everyone looks pretty, which isn't ideal, but is certainly better.