So many mod choices. How to choose?

[bjjones]

There are an astounding 108,000+ mods for SkyrimSE on Nexus.  As a fairly recent arrival to the Skyrim scene, that is a bewildering array to choose from.  Now anyone who writes and posts a mod is fairly amazing in my book. My compliments to all of the mod authors.  But I cannot download them all.  The process of selecting which ones to use was, to say the least, involved.  Initially I just went by the number of endorsements. But some of the older, and possibly less polished, mods could have accumulated a fair number of endorsements while the newer more refined mods of similar capabilities would not have acquired as many endorsements. Of course we all have different ideas of what we like in a mod so what may seem desirable to one person may be repugnant to another. But the endorsements do provide overall consensus as to the quality of a mod. To this end I created a spreadsheet listing many of the mods that seemed of interest and recorded their upload date as well as the number of endorsements.  This is of course a snapshot of that one particular day, but it gives me a guideline.  I created a column indexing the mods by endorsement.  Next was to make a column dividing the number of endorsements by age (number of days).  This gave me a rate of endorsements revealing the popularity of many newer mods. I then created a new index for that column SO I could now compare and also rank the mods by both older quality and newer popularity.  But I was not satisfied.  I went one step further and averaged the two indices together and then indexed the average. This gave me a more balanced perspective, balancing new popularity with older quality. Now I can sort for three different rankings for the sampling I typed in (about 2300 entries), mostly follower mods. Not sure if I spend more time actually playing Skyrim, or just trying to figure out how I want to set it up.

I truly with I could do these three sorts in Nexus but only one of them seems to be available.  I am not sure how they calculated "Trending" but that seems to have gone away as well.

I have attached one of my spreadsheets if anyone is curious. It will reflect some of my own perspective and may contain spoilers.

 

Companion Sample.xlsxFetching info...

[JimboUK]

The best way to do it is play the game without mods and then decide what you want to change and go from there, by going for just popular mods you risk ending up with a game that feels like it's designed by committee rather than one tailored to your own preferences. 

[AaronOfMpls]

Yup, I'd start with the Unofficial Skyrim SE Patch (since that's pretty much just bug fixes), and maybe SkyUI, and play through otherwise unmodded for a while, to get familiar with the game.  Gradually add mods that interest you, or that improve some game shortcomings you've actually experienced.

[AaronOfMpls]

@bjjones Also, if you're looking for the Skyrim forums here, they're under Game Communities, either at the top of any forum page (on desktop 🖥) or in the ≡ menu > Browse (on mobile ).  Hit Join Community next to Skyrim and any game forums you want to post in. 

[aleyyiah]

id start with ure own list, how do you want to play, are we screening alot? are we taking personal pleasure, or do we modding or programm, out of this u can select the parts u need, perfomance,pixels,amboyense,scenery

[aleyyiah]

if ure doing mods and do screenshot u want nice pixel mats and textures, if ure doing gameplay u want perfomance, if do more mods that goes into dungeon u want also want performance, texture and reduce of clutter. but if ure just a casual game want to enjoy game do whatever u want and need^^

 

Edited April 17 by aleyyiah

[REGULATORXIII]

See whats been updated,see what works, see if there are script extenders also check out collections because some people usually found out what works for them. Most importantly have fun. Happy Modding friend.

[Morticia01]

Modding Skyrim is like having a relationship you start very basic and developing it continously.