Quick Question Steam vs Buying a hard copy

[Sallyo]

This might be a dumb question.. I remember someone saying something along the lines of Not being able to Mod or make mods or even Use or download a mod for any game you bought and downloaded on Steam.

I would rather buy the hard copy disk of Skyrm. WHY?? I dunno... I have my concerns about downloading it from a web site. If the file gets corrupted its not like you can just pop the disk back in and do a fresh reinstall you know? You have this huge hassle of having to log into steam which is not been user friendly to me.

However... It seems like you need to buy it on steam in order to get the creation kit. I have googled creation kit and those links lead to no where.

 

Advice please!

[iXenite]

The disc version of Skyrim is just a Steam installer. Most of the game will not even be on the disc. Regardless of how you buy the game (digital or physical) you will be getting it on Steam. Either "version" can be modded. As for the Creation Kit, you obtain it through Steam. Once you have Skyrim installed you will be granted the right to obtain the Creation Kit through Steam. Hopefully that clears things up for you.

[BipolarOne]

Um, your thinking is all wrong. Steam is essential. This isn't GFWL XD One thing, once Steam has downloaded a game, it will make backup install discs in various versions of a game, and that can be writen to DVD or Blu-ray, flash drive, ect. Steam sale, which there are a lot of, puts hundreds if not thousands of games on sale, and for the cheap. News comes from Steam on games, links go off to the web, friends group an socialize, it really is pretty huge. You though, or really anyone new, wouldn't have the slightest clue just how big or important Steam became. There are plenty of retail disc PC games that won't work, some won't even patch, and the reason why, is because it's not on Steam. Steam links to Email an phone which locks up the account pretty tight, it will auto log in upon execution online or offline, and the app can be put in offline mode why only hypothetically would ever need a internet connection if the app an O/S glitched out an forgot the log in. Gamers love Steam because the people that made it understand what gamers want and need, pretty much all the other stuff is missing, else we wouldn't use it. You should use it, enjoy it, explore it, and as much as possible.

[panurgy]

This might be a dumb question.. I remember someone saying something along the lines of Not being able to Mod or make mods or even Use or download a mod for any game you bought and downloaded on Steam.

I would rather buy the hard copy disk of Skyrm. WHY?? I dunno... I have my concerns about downloading it from a web site. If the file gets corrupted its not like you can just pop the disk back in and do a fresh reinstall you know? You have this huge hassle of having to log into steam which is not been user friendly to me.

However... It seems like you need to buy it on steam in order to get the creation kit. I have googled creation kit and those links lead to no where.

 

Advice please!

People have pretty much covered this but:

• Skyrim is always installed by Steam.
• Steam has a simple option to fix corrupt files. You should rarely need to use it, though. This may slightly mess up a mod setup, which requires a little manual work after to resolve.
• You can set Steam to play specific games offline, which mostly "protects" you from their management. They occasionally change the interface and how options work which is frustrating, but 99% of the time it "just works".
• Overall Steam is great, but they don't really get modding, so you might occasionally have a little bit of hassle with the software, though that's mostly on new games that are getting updates.

 

The first point in your post is insane. Whoever said that has no idea what they're talking about. Steam provides the Creation Kit, and has it's own modding section - which most people ignore, because the nexus, NMM, and MO are vastly superior.

 

Also: you should set Steam up to install games in a custom directory rather than it's default. Otherwise you get into hassles with Windows security. You bypass all that by just using a custom dir, like "C:\Games" or whatever: anything outside of "Program Files" or similar special folders.

[Sallyo]

Thank you all for answering this! I hear the creation kit is kind of a nightmare compared to the old construction kit. I am going to try anyways. I will just go buy Skrm off steam as you suggested and maybe somehow put the orginal .exe file in a seperate folder besides the root one and make copies incase it fudges up somehow. Im a Mod lover, so there were a few times Ihad to do a reinstall due to mods whacking it all out. I was surprised everything was still there in the data files direc. when I uninstalled and reinstalled everything. Ok enough jibber jabber. Thank you all.

Ohh I am logged intomy steam account.. No I have not bough Skyrm just yet.. I tried to search for just the creation kit.. its not listed.. 0.0 woooo hooo Ummmmmmmmmm

[panurgy]

You may only be able to see the CK after purchasing Skyrim. The download is weird, too. It's half-hidden somewhere in a tools menu.

 

If you like to play different characters with different mod setups, you should look at Mod Organizer, which is like a more powerful version of NMM. With MO, you can have different profiles with different sets of mods. You can duplicate them to other profiles, etc. Mods get installed individually into their own directories, then overlayed as a virtual filesystem onto the Skyrim directory. This means that you can switch between a vanilla skyrim, and multiple completely different modded versions with a couple of button clicks.

 

The downside is that you have to launch all Skyrim apps through MO, because otherwise they can't see that any mods are installed. You also have to configure ini files, etc. through MO. Look for Gopher's videos on youtube. It's more hassle, IMO, to get setup than manual installation, but it's very flexible and powerful after you've got your base setup working.

[iXenite]

The Creation Kit is not in the store. It is located within the Steam Launcher under Tools or something like that. It's hidden somewhere in a very long list of other stuff that Steam provides. Like the user said, I highly suggest using Mod Organizer as it keeps your load order pristine no matter how many mods you may have in there. It's an amazing tool and my personal choice when modding this game.

[BipolarOne]

What they mean is install steam to C:/Steam it's own folder, though the game installs will create other Steam folders on other drives, like D:/Steam for your older games on SATA II interfaces because of the MOBO, where new games you liked could be on the windows install an steam install drive, that's SATA III and faster. Then going with that you got E:/Steam or F:/Steam old HDD for storage based games/media.

 

Something else is screenshots, Steam plays a camera sound which is nice, but it can also save uncompressed personal copies, though ENB does this as well. With the Standard screenshots it can be uploaded to cloud for storage, and they are fairly high quality while having significant compression, which over time will build a history of fun pictures for a gamer. There is also forum boards an friends to make there on Steam or in groups/games. Don't forget the game specific news pages or links to popular external sites.

[Sallyo]

Thank you all for the info esp the Mod manager system.. Nexus Mod manager for oblivion has been a life saver!

[agerweb]

There are two reasons why you might want to have the game on DVD:

 

1. You like stuff you own to be on your shelf at home

2. The Skyrim DVD contains 6Gb of Skyrim and installs a damn site quicker because it only needs to download updates from steam. You need to run the install from the DVD though otherwise Steam will download the whole thing anyway.