Will skyrim nexus beat elderscroll nexus on number of mods ?

[hymhym]

 

but it sure as hell is dead now.

 

and Skyrim is definitely more popular than oblivion so there would be more modders and thus more mods

 

dead? Bunch of new mods were released today, just as they have been released for the past 5 years, just as they will be for several years to come. Oblivion modding isn't going anywhere - lot of people have invested a lot into modding Oblivion. Just because a new game got released doesn't change that.

 

Whether or not Skyrim is more popular than Oblivion is impossible to say at this stage. Skyrim has been out for 1 week - it is the new game in town, so obviously a lot of people are playing it right now. If people are still playing it 5 years down the road, then you can make your case for it being more popular than Oblivion.

[seweryn]

It might, or it might not. It depends on so many variables that are difficult to gauge at this point. Certainly the engine of Skyrim is an improvement over Oblivion, which is only natural, since it is a newer game. At the same time, however, the basic mechanics of the game are worse than those of Oblivion. (Aside the obvious UI issues, there are the reduction of equipment slots, lack of spell making, the horrid character generation and so on and on.) Whether or not these are real issues, is something that can only be answered once we get the editor. If they are easy to work around, then no worries, but if these issues should prove to be PITA to work with, then that will lessens modders enthusiasm for tweaking the game. Which in turn will lessen the draw the game has, and shorten it's lifespan. All of which will translate to fewer mods over all.

 

Another important factor, and in my view the most important, is the difference in base assets between the two games. Skyrim's greatest strength as a game, is it's greatest weakness as a modding platform. Thematic atmosphere. It is something that Oblivion was totally lacking - no wonder people adopted vanilla as the term to describe out of the box Oblivion, since it was plain, boring and non-descript. (which I've always found funny, since vanilla is anything but plain as a flavor... but I digress.

 

The point I am trying to make is this: Oblivion was an empty canvas void of anything distinctive or exiting. Skyrim provides a very strong and powerful vision. You could add just about anything into Oblivion and it was fine, but people are already complaining about stuff like how sleeveless apparel in the cold harsh climate is an immersion breaker. Adding random stuff into Skyrim will be a much harder fit.

 

Also the vast nondescript void, that was the wilderness in Oblivion, gave birth to such mods as the Unique Landscapes series, and plethora of great town and village mods and additional wild life mods. But in Skyrim there is little need for such mods. The landscape is bustling with stuff and wildlife as is. (It even has bunnies and foxes out of the box! In Oblivion those had to be added by modders.) In fact, you can hardly take a step in any direction in Skyrim without stumbling on some forgotten ruin, temple or burial mound. And you'd be hard pressed in finding a spot in the game, where you would not be surrounded by breathtaking and evocative vistas. So apart from the usual game tweaks and god item cheat mods along the ubiquitous house mods - what is there to mod in Skyrim? Well, there's alway bouncing boob animations, and I'm sure we will think of something else as well. But at the moment, I am not seeing much to do, where as walking in Oblivion, I couldn't take a step in any direction without having several ideas on how to improve the game world.

 

Another thing to consider, is that oblivion came prepacked with relative wide and varied set of assets - different ruins types, different building styles, and several sleek high fantasy buildings as well. Where as Skyrim is prepacked with barbarian huts, more barbarian huts and pretty barbarian huts. It's answer to the IC architecture are the massive and heavy stoneworks of the fortresses of Solitude and Windhelm. - which are different, but feel similar. Even the "exotic" tile set of Skyrim - ie. the Dwemer ruins are just another variety of massive heavy stoneworks. Oblivion had it's fair share of massive heavy stone works, but it also had the rounded shapes of Anvil and the sleek delicate forms of the Ayelid ruins. Even Morrowind had a greater thematical diversity in it's prepacked assets than Skyrim seems to.

 

Of course having logged just 82 hours of game play, and only having seen about half of the world so far, I might yet be proven wrong, and find different buildings styles. Perhaps Riften has something else to offer... From the very start of playing Skyrim, I have kept an eye on building and landscape meshes, and have been thinking on how to utilize them in mods. At the moment I find the available assets to be lacking, and find myself missing those elegant Ayelid meshes.

 

But who knows - perhaps porting stuff to Skyrim is easy, perhaps making new worldspaces is not as poorly implemented as it was in Oblivion. Perhaps most of the things we used and like are still present in the engine, even though "vanilla" Skyrim chooses not to use them. If so, I see no reason why Skyrim would not develop a strong modding community.

 

But for the moment, I am hard pressed to find anything really interesting to mod. The first batch of mods, besides the flood of high-res re-textures, is going to be game mechanical in any case, followed by a slew of immersion mods. It is what happens after that, which will determine the longevity and, therefore, proliferation of Skyrim mods. As for me, I will return to modding Oblivion once I have finished the vanilla content of Skyrim. I don't plant to return to Skyrim until the UI is fixed, the mechanical restrictions have been dealt with an I have TES5Edit at my disposal - along with Wrye Bash based mod manager. I am fairly confident that those will become available sooner than later, but without them I just see no real reason to start modding Skyrim.

 

I agree with some things that you said. Oblivion had a lot of empty places, I would risk a statement that 70 or 80% places in Cyrodil weren't populated.

But I must disagree on some things for example: there is a quite large room for making landscape mods for example like in fallout for changing the sky, changing the snowy Skyrim to grassland Skyrim to look more like Cyrodil or Morrowind.

Any DLC haven't been released yet we may find some good things this time, Shivering Isles for a great expansion and it was a bow to Morrowind ( for me at least. )

 

Oblivion had also a lot of ruins but you have to look for them.

It is a pity that they haven't removed fast travel system. It really breaks the immersion for me.

 

For me Oblivion have too little content, 3 main guilds ( 4 with dark brotherhood ).

 

I remember how many things you could do in "vanilla" Morrowind. Damn I finshed as Master of Fighter's guild, and still have to do Morag Tong, Mages guild, Imperial Legion, Imperial Cult,Temple and yet haven't touched either the main quest or any of the great houses and haven't checked any of the vampire clans.

So there were a lot to do. I remember when I learned that I have to go to shrines of deadra that are scattered all around Vvanderfell.

Plus I haven't yet touched my personal settlement.

 

Morrowind had Bloodmoon and Tribunal who were quite good so I am expecting for the same thing from Skyrim.

 

Oblivion had unexpected crashes, Skyrim have horrible UI. I think I prefer horrible UI over crashes.

 

Isn't Nexus Mod Manager very simillar to Wrye Bash by the way ?

 

As I said Skyrim is better then Oblivion when it comes to immersion but worse the Morrowind.

 

Cheers,

[Grunthex]

Doesn't really matter. 99%+ of all mods released are crap. It's the few good mods for each game that matter, and that generally numbers under a hundred. Maybe double that if you're generous.

[fenderkid8]

Excuse my ignorance, but why is there a seperate nexus for skyrim? It is a TES game as well, surely it should be part of tesnexus?

[minngarm]

Because they decided each game should get its own catagory probably, and Morrowind/Oblivian were already grouped, so rather than risk losing mods, they left them as is and made the new one.

[Shantih]

I have been thinking around this, but not about Skyrim, nor Oblivion: Rather World of Warcraft and the Expansions. Skyrim will be a lot of fun and awesome mods will be developed by AWESOME people who take their time creating these for us for free. But as with WoW, Skyrim will never beat Oblivion! When TES: IV came, we saw a totaly new RPG, with a ton of new features none had seen before. Same goes for WoW, it will never be the same!

 

I get that you love Oblivion but IMO Morrowind deserves more credit (both for its gameplay and it's setting).

 

There were other ground breaking games before Oblivion. I don't mean to say that Oblivion and Wow for that matter weren't landmarks (if only because of how successful they were) but so were many other titles like the Ultima Series, the Might and Magic series, Diablo, Baldur's Gate, the original Fallouts and of course the previous Elder Scrolls (including Morrowind).

 

I think we shouldn't underestimate the attention that Skyrim is getting. One thing is for sure Skyrim is getting more players everyday and I'm confident that once the Creation Kit is released we're going to be facing a really huge number of new mods on a daily basis for quite some time.

 

Many players may love Oblivion but once they'll be able to get what they like from Oblivion in Skyrim it isn't hard to imagine that many (if not most) are going to switch to the newer game.