End to Skyrim as we know it?

[showler]

Unless those mod makers made DLLs then their mods won't need updates.

[spacedig]

Don't panic bait. Only SKSE and DLL mods are breaking, and SKSE team have already said that it won't take too long for them to update for the new version. DLL mods can wait a bit. But all the good ones will update eventually.

Edited November 11, 2021 by spacedig

[Moksha8088]

Don't panic bait.

If you do panic, at least remember to bring your towel.

[steamteck]

I'll wait . Most of the mods I really love use SkSE and I'm extremely happy with my load order. This nonsense has lessened my waning interest in Elder Scrolls 6 honestly though. I may have to wait years or some of my favorite mods may never get updated. Such a pain.

 

Eventually, maybe. Not an encouraging moment

[showler]

I may have to wait years or some of my favorite mods may never get updated. Such a pain.

 

Eventually, maybe. Not an encouraging moment

Those most upset are the ones who don't actually understand the issue.

[steamteck]

 

I may have to wait years or some of my favorite mods may never get updated. Such a pain.

 

Eventually, maybe. Not an encouraging moment

Those most upset are the ones who don't actually understand the issue.

 

What don't I understand? SKSE mod DLLs will have to be updated. Some of my favorite mods haven't been updated in a long time. Best case scenario if I update before they're updated. I'll need to start over with a new game and sacrifice content ( downgrade) my game.

[showler]

If any of the DLL type mods don't get updated, their functions will be copied into a different DLL type mod. There's already redundancy between several of them. And there really aren't that many to begin with.

[steamteck]

That's a little better but only so helpful to the end user unless some clever and kind folks make it their business to help and clarify what's what. How would one know how to update the literally dozens of mods I personally would use for example. MY friend for example has almost a hundred MCMs

How possible will it actually be to continue with one's current mod order and not have to start a new game and how soon? I do still have a lot of faith in the community but some folks have just moved on. which they have every right to.

 

I can just wait for my current playthroughs to finish. Usually I spend at least six month on a group characters . Hopefully everything will have calmed down by then. If it gets to the point I can update and keep current characters great! I still think this should never have happened or been optional

[hymhym]

The thing with the release of AE is that in should not really affect anyone in any adverse way at all. You do not have to update your current SE build, you can continue chugging along just fine. There are steps you need to take though, and it baffles me how many do not seem to understand these really basic things about this game we spend so much time fiddling with.

 

Now this is a bit blunt opinion, I do admit, but can't help but feel that the state of modding these days has given rise to a culture of complacency. I get the drive to make modding more accessible and easier to get into, but still... a certain level of basic understanding is a must. But what do I know, this is only my opinion after all.

 

As for the release itself, I welcome it even though haven't bought it yet. I will, at some point, but am busy with other stuff so am in no hurry. I never bought any of the CC stuff, and got my SE free as an upgrade and only paid full price for the base game 10 years ago. Got the DLCs when they went on sale. So to me the 20€ price tag is not that much of a biggie, and who knows, come this years Winter Sale, it might be offered at like 20% discount, Might grab it at that point, and by then SKSE is bound to have been updated, as will some of the most crucial DLL based bits too, like Fuz Roh Dah (or someone will have made an alternative.) So for me at least, the price tag is well within reason, when compared to the new content it offers. A lot of it is pointless crap, but plenty enough seems worth playing through, and bunch of the new assets it offers come in handy on personal mod builds.

 

I do understand why someone, who has bought lot of CC stuff already, or is running a build using lot of specialised DLLs, might feel miffed, but honestly though (especially someone who is running a heavily modded build using lot of advanced features utilizing DLLs) veteran modders should know by heart the steps one needs to take to preserve previous builds for personal use. And on that front I fail to see how this is a modapocalypse.

 

The thing with modding is, that modders come and go, and so do mods too. Some mods will never get overhauls needed to make them work with AE, and new ones will appear that wont be available for anything but AE, and your personal build will shift with times. A mod build is never really done. It's something one constantly tweaks and modifies. Unless you are running someone else's build, but in that case, it's the person maintaining it that keeps fiddling with it.

 

I have no reason to expect Skyrim mod scene to die anytime soon, and wont really be impacted by AE. I bet Starfield will have a bigger impact of Skyrim modding than AE will, and even then new stuff will be kept made for Skyrim, and made for all it's editions. Modders do not mod because of Skyrim, we do it because we want to mod, and the avenues available for that are few and far between. Modders mod on the platform that suits their needs the best. Heck, people still mod Oblivion and Morrowind, and when TES6 finally releases, some people will keep modding Skyrim.

 

As for the releasing of the AE itself... Well, again, from personal point of view, I welcome it, since it offers all that CC stuff for a quite reasonable price. But if you have them already... Well it might be less appealing, but thems the breaks. Can't please everyone. It does make sense from a corporate point of view though. Microsoft sunk a crapton of money into the company and want to see some profits, and Skyrim is still the best money maker the studio has. Starfield is still a year away, and TES6 will come in some distant future date, so how does the studio make profit? By re-re-re-re-releasing Skyrim of course!

 

Now I am not fan of this development, but am not oblivious to the current state of the industry to not notice the impetus towards MTX and recurring user spending. As Todd himself noted in that interview some while back, Skyrim is sorely lacking on that front. The CC models doesn't work when it competes against free mods, loot boxes would be pointless in a game where you have access to the console and the frigging game editor itself. So what can you do? You keep re-releasing the game with some minor tweaks and new content. I don't like it, but that is the reality of the industry itself, and despite all the meme-worthy fun it provides and how much we like to poke Bethesda for it, the Re-releases of Sklyrim are far from the most aggravated ways game companies monetize their products. Heck, just look at FO76 for what is considered "normal" these days.

 

On this front, am quite interested to see what sort of model they will adopt for Starfield. They have to add some MTX or recurring spending to it, or it simply wont have margins large enough to make it worth the effort in the modern market. But the whole point of their model, and long long long development cycles is the fact that their games keep selling for 10+ years, and can be re-released several times. Oblivion is still selling for 20 bucks on Steam for efs sake. And you know what, fully modded to modern standards, it is definitely worth that price tag. 15 years after its release. Not a whole lot of games that can be said about.

 

Personally, I think Bethesda will go for a model similar to what Sims4 has. Constant release of content and asset packs and mini-mods that add new features and maybe new world space and stuff. (They did mention in one interview that one of their engines positive features was how fast they can set up new worlds with it.) That way they can preserve the fully moddable nature of the game, but still incentivise people to keep spending money on the thing. I mean, if the latest hot and trending mod uses stuff from the latest asset pack... Well, you are kinda pressured to get it. And it works. Full version of Sims4 costs like almost 900 bucks! And a lot of people have spent that on their game. And the mod scene for that thing flourishes as well. Thore is crapton of free stuff available for it.

 

So 20 bucks for the new features (and any CC you have not bought already) is not that bad. I mean, even if you vector in that a lot of people buy their Sims4 DLCS on sale, you'd still be hard pressed to have spent that kinda of money on Skyrim, even if you bought all the versions, and did so at full price.

 

But enough already, sorry about the novel and all. Jut felt the need to vent my 2 pennies worth on AE and it's release. The bottom line, for me at least, is that it isn't the end of the world. Just relax and chill, in 6 months things will have settled back to business as usual on the modding front. And in the meanwhile, you can still keep playing your old build, or play other games. As for me, I will be playing Oblivion since I just upgraded my computer to latest monster specs, and my new beast of a rig can finally run my 500 mod build, with about 60 gigs of graphic enhancements without crashing. So I'll be busy with that for a while. And come this spring, I'll give AE a spin while waiting for Starfields release.

[showler]

My feeling is that if we were ever actually able to say to Bethesda "you can't release an update to increase your sales, it will mess with our mods" then Bethesda would immediately stop all modding capability for all their games and all their future games. We would have crossed the line from "costs them a small amount of money" to "costs them a large amount of money" and we'd be done.