Overwhelmed by the amount of mods

[scorrp10]

Mods that generally make game look better (better plants, better water, better items/homes/furniture) are fairly easy and generally free of conflict.   Mods that add weapons/armor/simple followers are also easy.   Mods that change mechanics or add quests/new content....   you really got to read the small print.   You generally don't want to mix mods that affect same area of the landscape.  I.e. installing two mods that overhaul Breezehome = bad idea.  

Or say, followers.  Follower manager frameworks (AFT, NFF, EFF) are great, but they can seriously break the logic of advanced followers such as Vilja or Recorder.  Though most such frameworks recognize and don't touch those.   

And of course, it really helps to learn your way around Creation Kit a bit.  For example, I generally don't cheat, but for me, weight restrictions adds nothing but frustration.   So I run a mod that lets me carry as much as I please.   Problem is, Serana with Serana Dialogue AddOn(SDA) mod keeps pestering me about being overloaded.  Solution:  load SDA in CK and change those dialogue options to trigger off much higher encumbrance.  Stuff like that.   Also means you can create your own mod compatibility patches.

[InDarkestNight]

xEdit is better for making patches. The CK only shows you the data as the game see it. In particular this means it won't show files that are being overwritten. You need xEdit to find conflicts. Also, you can do anything in xEdit that you can in the CK. The CK is only really necssary if you're designing npc heads or worldspaces. You can do this through xEdit, but of course you won't have a display showing what you're doing. For instance, I once changed the spawn location for an NPC by placing them at the same xy coordinates of a rug on the floor in Jorvaskr's basement. It worked fine, though clearly it wouldn't be too practical for building an interior.

[lefttounge]

That's actually a large part of one of the reasons why I never switched.

Dude, there's just too many Skyrim SE turkeys that are cramming mods into SE, they don't realize that that's actually hurting the SE modding scene.

It's like going to buy milk. When Milk is just a jug with the words milk on it, then its easy...But when Milk, is over 1,000,000 variants, with different names for different functions and different flavors, each with enhancing and adverse effects, then you question whether you should buy milk, or just stick with water.

Skyrim SE is the same clutterfield.

I'm both paralyzed by choice, and immobilized by where I should start and what should be downloaded first. This is integral, because it makes SE seem uncomfortable, and I don't know what should be downloaded first. That coupled with the fact that Bethesda can 'update' aka f#$k up the game whenever they want, I have no idea which versions will work, or which versions I should downgrade.

Not even Fallout 4 is cluttered with this many mods. The SE community kinda went full ape$#t with the amount of mods they crammed in. 

This also makes making newer more original mods virtually impossible, because nobody in the site knows what's been made before or not, and so they just make a preset or patch. 

This, and the fanbase is generally toxic. Both the users AND the mod authors are equally entitled and toxic, there is no grey area. Even the nexus devs know this, that's why Collections exists. Even they're like screw it, let's just press a button to manually install all the mods at once.

Skyrim LE on the other hand, is way more manageable, and its easy to go on, install mods and not have to worry about an overcluttered mod page, or even a toxic community, as most on there are generally helpful minus a couple of cracked eggs. I recommend leaving SE alone, and just forcing LE to work, I've been on it since 2011, and it still never fails to impress, the mods I have on there are easily just as impressive.

 

Nobody wants to comb through millions of mods just to play a game, it's way too overwhelming. Instead, they need to spread out, make mods for LE, make mods for other Bethesda games, just make mods elsewhere, and let SE RIP.

 

Edited February 24, 2024 by lefttounge

[scorrp10]

Seriously?   Did you actually LOOK at the numbers?

Explore ALL mods:

Skyrim (LE) - 71426 results.

SSE - 83506 results.    Only 17% total over LE.

And the vast majority of that difference?    Translations.     Once you filter out the translations, LE has 62210,  and SSE has 63977 mods left.   Almost even.

But it gets better.   Filter out the Racemenu and Bodyslide presets as well.    Now LE has 59739 left.    SSE has 57150.    I am sure one can filter out some more superfluous categories, but even so, LE already got more 'actual' mods.  

And If anything, picking what to get is much harder on LE, as last I checked,  it supported only  ~250 .esp's .   SSE can load same 250-ish 'heavy' mods, plus 4000+ light ones .    So with SSE, you can happily keep piling it on before running into a limit.

Updates by Bethesda?     Yeah, they happen.    And ways around them are very well documented.    Plenty of folks running 1.5.97 or 1.6.353 or whatever version they fancy, and game updates do not affect them.  I am presently running 1.6.1130  with 300+ active mods just fine.  

Community toxicity?    Well,  if you go by Steam stats, as I write this,  ~22k people are playing  SE.    Only 2k playing LE.   With a community 11 times the size, you are bound to have about 11x more 'cracked eggs'.  LE community is a dead echo chamber, people from there often have to post on SE forums to get any sort of answer.   

[melvinius]

I played Skyrim on XBox 360 and beat it unmodded before I eventually got it for PC and began modding the heck out of it.  There are mods for almost literally EVERYTHING you can think of. Or if there aren't you can make your own or put the idea out there for others to make. I've had modders like powerofthree make my mod ideas a few times.

But generally I would recommend playing the game in a vanilla (unmodded) state for a while first to see what you like and what you don't.  Then look for mods that change aspects of the game you didn't really like.

While you're playing the game in a vanilla state, if you don't like the overall looks of it, install some better textures and flora/water overhauls.  The mechanics will feel vanilla but things will look prettier.  NPC overhauls to make the characters look better are also popular.  Mods like this just improve the looks of stuff and are pretty easy to install.  Just search for them on the nexus.

Eventually the more you mod the more you'll get a feel for it.  Before long you'll be like me... spending more time modding your build than playing it, with thousands of mods, multiple DLL loaders, etc. etc.