Is Modding Worth It?

[TeofaTsavo]

Mods give me the tools to change the visual things that drive me bonkers in MMOs. So tired of armor and gear that looks like 6th grade notebook cover doodles. Mods allow so much more diversity and lend a little truth to the hackneyed MMO dev lie of "Play your way".

 

Small mods like "The Parthinax Dilemna" solve glaring issues some of us have with the story.. without the forum drama and fan "go play wow" response of daring to dislike an MMO story wreck.

 

Without mods this would have been a very short term game for me. With mods it has become a refuge from the LCD pandering and entitlement that has become entrenched in online MMOs.

 

I appreciate the work of mod authors so much.

Edited November 22, 2014 by TeofaTsavo

[thomriis]

Worth modding Skyrim ?? Are you crazy

 

Skyrim is such a dull and mainstreamed game that its not worth playing WITHOUT MODS!!! sadly i think that goes for a lot of games these days.

 

Ive also started out as a complete noob 5 years ago until i saw the difference between boring console games and how much fun you can have with a modded game And ive never looked back since!!

 

If you have the patience i think you should check out all the great tutorials here on the nexus,Or just ask away.

 

Ask me! and i will try to do the most noobish step by step tutorial youve ever seen :laugh:

[GhostOfYork]

I think it's hit or miss, really. I feel like if you're the type of person that wants the grand tour 100% modded Skyrim experience in one click, you've come to the wrong place. I agree with Nivea, there's a literal degree of blood, sweat and tears that these authors have burned through to churn out what essentially are just labors of love -- no one is paying them to give you this experience; the least you can do is follow the bread trail and educate yourself a little.

I've been modding less than two weeks and for the most part I get the basics, intermediate and some of the advanced methods that are used in this form of medium, and only an hour or so of it was spent reading tutorials. It's a mantra and ritual of sorts; you work for what you get, and the community here seems very understanding of this.

 

I posted a couple CTD issues here in the past week and was actually content to find that no one responded, because it forced me to find the issues and kinks myself, and I'm now all the more knowledgeable because of it. I wasn't expecting a one-click quick fix; it took time and understanding. I waded into some seriously unfamiliar waters, but I'm better off having made the leap in the long run, as it wasn't as difficult as I had initially thought and I walked away feeling triumphant of my victory.

 

It's an experience I really think every modder or mod user here should go through (or has gone through) at least once, because that's all it takes. In all the time people spend posting issues without considering anomalies in their loadouts or knowing what it means to clean dirty edits, they could've surfed the forums (or the rest of the web as I did) and addressed both issues.

Do you know that it took me two full days from my first vanilla Skyrim install just to tweak the preferences and ini files to get it to run comfortably the way I wanted? I hadn't even touched mods yet and I was already dedicated. It's a deeper spirit that stems from the love of the game that drives you to put work into it so you can revel in the eventual payoff.

 

So again, if people really want a quick fix/one click modded Skyrim, I say they've come to the wrong place with the wrong attitude.

Edited November 23, 2014 by GhostOfYork

[Lurker101]

Modding can sometimes take a lot of work but it doesn't always create headaches, a CTD fest or force everything to be lore unfriendly. I'm about to do a FULL let's play of Skyrim on Youtube and I've got it modded so much, it'll be interesting to see if there are any default textures left.

If you want to see how the let's play turns out and how transformational modding can be without destroying the lore, basically, to see just how worth it modding really is, I'll be starting Tuesday on Lurker101 Gaming on Youtube.

[DurtyNelly]

Personally, for me, it is worth the work. It's worth the time and frustration it takes to get everything working in harmony, and the risk of it not being so harmonious by the end of a playthrough.

 

I came into this with zero knowledge. I played on PS3 for ages, saw a trailer for Falskaar and decided I wanted to be able to add that to my game. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. hahah. Gopher (bless that man!) taught me the basics by watching his youtube videos and he was right, it requires a willingness to learn. Oh, does it ever. I'm still what I would call a newbie. I know a little now, enough where if something goes crazy I can figure it out or know where to look for the answer in most cases, but I still get very confused sometimes. It takes time and a huge amount of patience to mod any game, let alone a game as cantankerous as Skyrim.

 

Also, I think people new to this or who don't really care to make mods take for granted just how much work it takes to MAKE a mod. I didn't realize myself until I had to work on a follower mod I'd downloaded to make him compatible with the overhaul I'm using. Holy cow! How does anyone work in the Creation Kit for extended periods of time? The wind blows the wrong way and the thing crashes. But I got it done, and came out of it with a new kind of respect for mod authors.

 

But, yes, totally worth it. :wink:

Edited November 23, 2014 by DurtyNelly

[neomy2]

with mods, Skyrim will be ...

 

"A world of endless possibilities and infinite outcomes" - Charles Xavier

[Lord Garon]

It's a completely subjective question. Is programming worth it? Is mowing your lawn worth it? Is a double hot fudge sundae worth it? Depends upon the reward you get from doing it, versus whatever downside you perceive. It cannot be answered by someone else.

 

I'm a card carrying geek gamer; I like both game play and the technical side of gaming. Modding, both creating and using, is win-win for me. Hell, just getting Skyrim, or most Bethesda games, to play how I want them to, or just to run well with other mods, is a geek gamer exercise.

 

There's only one way to find out if "modding" is "worth it" to you; do it and find out.

[OpenWorldAddict]

I hear a lot of people are actually against modding Skyrim, as well as other games.

I want to get this down first,

If you've come looking for arguments against modding, you won't find it here on the Nexus. I don't think that a single person here would have anything against a user modding their game (otherwise why would they be here?).

 

With that said, adding mods to your game is just as much a hobby as building collecting trains for your train set, getting all the rulebooks for D&D, or getting all the expansions to a board game, etc. Like other hobbies, when you add things to your game, sometimes you'll have to make a choice of what to add and what to give up, but the overall affect is a more enjoyable experience.

 

And yes, hobbies take time to learn ropes. Don't think you'll be modding your game. Troubleshooting and learning from mistakes is just asmuch a part of the hobby as anything else. If you are not willing or able to spend the time and effort that it takes, then this hobby is not for you.

 

For me, computer gaming would be nothing without modding. The biggest question i ask before I purchase a game is: Can it be modded? I even got Skyrim with the full intention of modding it. And the mods that are out there for the different games including Skyrim are so much fun. Thank you to all those mod authors who have taken mod making as their hobby.

[squid937]

Modding can be difficult and frustrating, especially with very complex mods like FCOM for Oblivion. In any case, though, it's basically a hobby activity and there's nothing wrong with doing it, as long as you think the results would be worth the time that might be spent doing troubleshooting. The more time you spend troubleshooting, though, the more you learn about how the system works and the less time you need to spend doing so in the future. For instance, if you get some experience with troubleshooting CTDs you start to get some ideas about likely causes and you can deal with issues like those much more quickly.

 

There are similar principles at work with doing things like programming and learning the ins and outs of Linux, incidentally. If you don't mind some troubleshooting, you can really get into activities like these. If you reach this level of proficiency with modding, you can easily modify your mods or make your own. Why would you want to do this? Quite simply, it gives you a greater level of control and power over your Skyrim game. You don't need to play the game in a way that someone else tells you you should. You don't even need to use a mod exactly as the modder intended. There aren't really consequences to making your own personal (not uploaded anywhere) modifications to mods. This means your game can be highly customized according to what you want out of it. Does a mod add item A to the game and you don't want it? You can remove it and any references to it. Does a mod modify NPC B when you don't want it to do that? You can remove that reference from the mod. Fundamentally, you get to play as you want within the limitations of the game engine. That's a very empowering thing and can make it take much longer for a game to lose its fun factor.

[Terra Nova]

Is it worth it, for me?

 

Speaking as a Mod Author, No. I just do it now because it's a major time sink that I need to get through my days. For about a year after release, I was all into modding. But setback after setback after setback, especially not improving in areas I wanted to improve in, despite so much effort, was really wearing me down. This is on top of the rising standards other mod authors are setting with their work(to be specific, it is what mod users are expecting out of other mod authors now).

As a mod user, oh yes sir it is worth it.