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I am very intrigued in Starfield's leveling system, I want to get a preview of how it would feel, so I wanted to know if there's anyone attempting to rework Skyrim to match. If a mod with a similar system already exists, I hope someone can point me towards it. If you didn't watch the direct here's how it works as far as we know: When you level up you gain a skill point. If you don't have the skill unlocked, the point unlocks it. If it's already unlocked, you can increase the skill's rank. Every skill has 4 ranks, each rank is an improvement on the base skill, with the final rank always having a neat little gimmick. Unlocked skills can up rank through challenges instead of skill points. These challenges are not really challenging, it's often just something that forces you to use the skill a bunch of times. They call the skill categories "skill trees" but I see no hint of any skill being a prerequisite for anything other than ranks of itself. So I guess think of every skill like a skill tree with no branches. It's possible the 4 "layers" on the skill tree have some significance, but there's nothing in the UI showing how the skills might be connected or gated. This is the biggest gap in my knowledge, but perhaps someone else knows more. Basically translating that to Skyrim means squashing out the depths of the skill trees, and splitting each tree into a few Starfield-like "skills". For example here's how I might approach adapting Skyrim's "lockpicking" skill tree: Lockpicking: Challenge is unlocking doors (Rank 1) = Apprentice locks are easier to pick. (Rank 2) = Adept locks are easier to pick. (Rank 3) = Expert locks are easier to pick. (Rank 4) = Master locks are easier to pick and pick starts close to the lock opening position. Treasure Hunting: Challenge is unlocking chests (Rank 1) = Able to pick locks without being noticed. (Rank 2) = Find more gold in chests. (Rank 3) = 50% greater chance of finding special treasure. (Rank 4) Find even more gold in chests and lockpicks never break. I suppose it's still a bit early to expect a mod like this, it would take work to override the progression system and implement skill UI, and even longer to make it balanced. But maybe someone out there is already started and if so I'd love to join early and see how it's coming along. I am a game designer, and in my own game I am debating on how to tackle skills and leveling. The system Starfield proposes sounds very intuitive and elegant, but I also worry that it is streamlining too much and removing long-term choice. It is somewhat similar to a tree-less skill system I've been brainstorming for a while now, and if I could get a taste of how this system feels early I think it will help a lot in my decision making.

We all know Skyrim Modders love trying to prove that they can keep Skyrim up with next-gen games. Now that we are finally starting to learn more about Starfield, I predict we will see at least some attempt in this community to backport advancements and features Bethesda makes for Starfield. Obviously I'm not talking about starship combat, but instead just the things that would be compatible with Skyrim. Such as a Starfield like skill-tree system where you select a skill then you need to perform specific challenges to rank up that skill. Or perhaps a Starfield like trait system where you have optional perks in character creation that come with permanent disadvantages. Modders love graphics stuff, so it won't surprise me if modders try to mod character creation models and textures to look like Starfield's. As we learn more and more about Starfield, modders will have more and more inspiration to draw from. But I'm sure that's also true for Bethesda. Do you think they will carry over Starfield's skill system over to ES6? Do you think modders are going to be crazy enough to try to remake Skyrim and Fallout 4 in Starfield's engine for some reason?

Modded Skyrim lags behind current-gen graphics primarily in my opinion due to the lack of lightmaps. Lightmaps can look even better than live ray-tracing at a much lower performance cost. The only downside is they are less effective at simulating dynamic light such as moving light sources (mostly the sun) than something like rtx ray-tracing or UE5's lumen. Skyrim has a lot of interior areas where lightmaps would work perfectly, so why haven't I've seen any of that tech in Skyrim mods? I understand such a feature is technically challenging to code, but I've seen the great work ENB and Marty McFly's ray-traced ReShade shaders so baked lightmaps seem possible. Is any talented modder currently working on injecting pre-baked lightmap tech into Skyrim? I even think some basic lightmap could look nice in the overworld if it's only used to create those shadows that aren't well illuminated any time during the day (like under roofs and stairs). If not, is there a technical reason that I'm not aware of that makes this tech impossible to implement? If so I'd like this limitation explained in detail so I can learn more.

I've experimented a lot with Skyrim graphics mods and ini settings, one thing that always bothers me is the grass. A lot of grass retextures look really cool in the screenshots. But that's because the screenshots are taken at low angles in dense grass fields, I've noticed that in places where the grass is sparse there's no natural transition between the grass and the ground texture making it look jarring. It's especially ugly when the color of the grass doesn't perfectly match the ground because it makes grass pop-in extremely noticeable and distracting. And sometimes grass mods don't care about color at all and just put green grass everywhere even in brown landscapes. Another annoyance with the way grass looks is ENB ambient occlusion, I find myself turning off ENB AO entirely just because it makes the shading on grass too dark. I just can't find a grass mod or combination of mods and settings that makes grass look seamless with the rest of the game. Ideally something faithful to the color palette of the vanilla region instead of turning everything bright green. I'm also looking for some dynamic grass features that can be found in modern games. Stuff like: grass wind at different speeds depending on weather, grass reacting to player/enemy collision, grass being cut or burnt, etc. I doubt such dynamic features exist, but if they do I'd be grateful if someone can point me in the direction. Another thing I'm looking for is an ENB that does ambient occlusions and shadows on everything but grass.

Do you use CBBE? Because I always use Body Slide to make my own presets. If you haven't yet, please learn how to use Bodyslide, because it not only affects their naked body but all the armors too if you use batch builds and build the armors. That way you can use stuff like CBBE bikini armors, and you can fit those armors pretty easily to your own custom natural body type. "but it certainly limits the available mods on offer for me" That's why I assume you don't utilize Bodyslide customization to the full extent, because most people only use one body preset and then a bunch of armor mods. With body slide you can make the exact body you want then you can apply that body to basically any CBBE armor mod you download. Specifically, I use a tool called jBS2BG-BodySlide to BodyGen. What does this tool do? It let's me randomly assign different bodyslide presets to all NPCs. I think this is probably the most "realistic" in the sense that women in Skyrim will now have diverse body shapes instead of all looking the same. You can make sure they all look good by making them yourself instead of downloading (it's not that hard, just moving sliders up and down). You can have slim, chubby, natural, and curvy women all walking next to each other and it's probably the most interesting way to use body-slide. And it can even be race specific or character specific, so often I make some body types race specific, like having a broad-shouldered muscular bodyslides to use for orc women, etc. The amazing part is that this BodyGen tool works on armor too. I like all body types, I like the usually curvy types, soft-body chubby types, buff types, and I like the skinny small-breast types. The only body type I don't like for women is bbw or fake boobs, that is the type of unnatural I personally don't find attractive. Something about the stiffness, very creased cleavage, the "push-up" lack of gravity look, not my thing. Oh that reminds me of another way to use Bodyslide, you can make "push up" variants of every body for armor, so that way you get the push up breast effect when they are wearing certain armors but not when they are naked. That adds another level of realism and attention to detail that I don't hear many people putting the effort to do. Although this is a bit more effort.

People often will bring up how mods are "built for men", which is sorta true, but let's not forget that lesbian women also play video games at a disproportionate rate relative to straight women. In gaming circles a surprisingly large proportion of "girl gamers", at least for this genre of game, are lesbians. But yeah, most modders are straight guys, and it shouldn't come as a surprise that when people are going to spend hours looking at some armor, they would also like to be attracted to the body inside that armor. That's why a lot of guys and lesbians play with female characters with female companions, eye candy. Modders do their work for free, meaning unless they are desperate for attention, there really is no incentive to make mods to "cater" to an audience. Almost every modder is catering to themselves. There's nothing wrong with that, it just means their work is very personal. That said, I totally think there is an untapped demand for cool male armor and other male content. I, even as a straight guy, find the lack of male content extreme. I still want cool and even sexy guy armor when playing as a dude, I'm not going through every play-though as a bikini armor shield maiden. If we want this, I suppose we just gotta start contributing, this is the sort of situation where a problem is best solved with our own hands. And it should be said that I do think people underestimate the potential popularity of a really good male / unisex armor mod.

I second this idea, but I don't know of any SFW mods that add such a thing and am too inexperienced in modding to add such a thing. But to add to your idea, I'd like to see some random Jarl's courts where a Jarl decides if a criminal is guilty or not. I'd like to see debt collectors walking around threatening people to pay back their debts. Perhaps some drunken or skooma-ridden NPCs brawling each other. I think there should also be a suspicion mechanic for player crime, which would make NPCs like guards follow you around if you are sneaking or wearing suspicious gear, adds a little extra challenge to crime by forcing the player to be more discreet. I personally would really like to see a mod tackle a player as guard situation quest. Where you can be recruited into the guard position in a city, and you can either use that power for good by stopping a bunch of radian quest crimes, or you can abuse the power by bullying the citizens and getting away with crimes by being buddies with the guards. It would be fun to be introduced into that quest through guard training and protocol. It doesn't have to be any city, as long as the quests are in-depth enough it would be fine if you could only become a guard in one or two cities. Some other ideas could be traveling salesmen which sell you things are low prices. However if you buy a potion from them there's a chance it's actually poisonous. And if you buy gear from them there's a chance it's "cursed" or of very low quality. Expanding on scams, i'd like to see some gambling mini games, with the ability for the opponent to cheap occasionally, so you need to keep a sharp eye.

Yeah, seems like a much better deal than the price they used to be selling those creations. I'm glad I waited.

I know how to avoid the update, just keep it on steam as "only update when I launch" and I avoid this condition by only launching the game with my SKSE launcher. But I COULD buy the upgrade, and I think that would give me ALL creation club content including the new stuff added in the AE. If I don't buy the upgrade, I think I just get 4 free creation kit content instead. The upgrade MIGHT be worth it for me to buy because I've never bought any creation kit content, so to me it would be 20 dollars for potentially a good chunk of content I've never seen.

I went into the Skyrim AE news expecting to rag on Bethesda for reselling the same game again and causing another modpocalypse. To my surprise I find out today that the Skyrim devs actually gave versions of the new edition early to the SKSE devs so that mods wouldn't take as long to update? That was an unnessecary but highly welcome move, and I can't be mad at Bethesda for it. It would have been so easy for them to not care at all and just force the mod devs to just deal with a big update. That's what Mojang devs do, do you think they give upcoming MC versions to Forge devs? Not a chance. While Skyrim AE certainly ain't perfect, at least I want to take a moment to appreciate Bethesda being one of the few game companies who would go this far to support third-party mods. That said, I will probably won't buy the AE version, not yet anyways. I still am not sure exactly how much content is in the upgrade and I'm not sure how many mods will still be broken by the update regardless of the SKSE stuff. But Bethesda doing this gesture would make me feel a lot less stupid if I end up buying the upgrade. So for now I will stick with SE and just wait to see how things play out.

I have tried many grass mods that make my grass look pretty, but no matter what my immersion is broke when my character just completely clips through the new pretty grass. So what I'm looking for a simple, I want a mod that pushes aside or flattens down the grass underneath my character. If it works with NPCs that's even better, but not necessary. It's simple in concept but I'm not a modder so I'm not sure how difficult it would be. If this mod already exists please redirect me to it, if it doesn't please make it. This would make exploring off-road so much better IMO.

What I am looking for is simple in concept. I am looking for a mod that adds a dialogue option for any NPCs that own houses that lets the player choose to buy the home from the NPC and make the NPC house the new player home. It doesn't need to have Hearthfire features, it would be a good mod if all it did was set the house and everything in it to be owned by the player, give the player a key to the house, and kick the current npc out. Although since these NPC houses are often just named something like "Faendal's House" an option to rename the house would also be apprecaited. I'm very new to modding, so although this sounds easy on paper, I am not exactly sure how difficult such a mod would be to create. I'm not sure how easy it is to toggle ownership and trespassing, might require some big scripts. I'm really looking for 3 things, ideally this mod already exists and someone can tell me where to download it, secondly, someone with modding experience really likes this idea and implements it well into the game, or lastly I try a choppy buggy attempt at the mod myself. If I do ever attempt the mod myself, I'd still like to know from more experienced modders what I should be expecting in terms of challenges and what the general route a modder should take to implement such a mod without causing big conflicts. I also have a couple secondary ideas for this mod as additional features. One feature that might be nice is a rent / roommate feature that lets the player live in the house at a cheaper price, but the player has to live with the previous NPC owners. It would also be cool if there was a house selling feature where using persuasion the player could sell houses, or perhaps even give the house away for free to the homeless. I think it could be a really neat mod for immersion that gives the player more to do with late-game money and also a lot more freedom.