skyrim mods to add depth

[ringgold99]

I am not writing this to be critical, but for me Skyrim and the mods I am aware of lack the depth of vanilla Morrowind and heavily modded Oblivion. I would really like to get into Skyrim, but after playing Oblivion with so many mods I cannot count anymore (if you count merged mods, etc. it must be well over 450 by now), and with mods that could do anything I wanted (no limitations by the CK/CS), I just find Skyrim very very very very boring and very very very very limited. I have enough clothing and armor mods......what I want are the equivalent of OOO, COBL, etc. as well as mods to simply extend and make more enjoyable the questlines, etc. in Skyrim. Not so much "Fetch", and a little more thinking. Any suggestions?

[AnkhAscendant]

Give it two or three years :P

 

Seriously though,I want what you want (except that I never modded my Oblivion so I don't know what the acronyms stand for) but after less than a a year with the CK there aren't many options.

[ringgold99]

OOO=Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul

 

COBL=Common Ovblivion

 

as well as Better Cities......ah, there are just so many with Oblivion that make it so good. Morrowind was the best with quests and questlines, Oblivion was next, and Skyrim is......well.......not even on the map. So shallow.

[nakakita]

I haven't seen anything like COBL yet, and there isn't a whole lot of variety on the whole, but as far as enhancing vanilla gameplay goes, I do have a few suggestions for you to at least look at, if not try.

 

For gameplay:

The scaling stopper. It's not quite OOO, but it's probably the closest that's been released at this point. It has numerous patches for armor/weapon compilations you might already have that integrate it more with the world.

Dual Combat Realism can also help make combat a bit more engaging. I like what it does with sneak especially.

Skyrim Perk Enhancements and Rebalanced Gameplay is relatively new, and very stable. It feels more like it's part of the game than certain other mods that also overhauled the perk system, (SkyRE, ACE) and it's creator is doing his best to avoid unwanted feature bloat.

 

General stuff:

Nernie's city and village expansion, thief pack, and ranger pack all integrate small things into the world that make it feel a little less empty. The thief pack is probably my favorite here. It expands Windhelm's Gray Quarter, adds a couple shops and a cute player home. It also adds new gems and jewelry crafting recipes for them. It all fits in with the world, it doesn't feel like a random out of place addition. It's like a condensed better cities.

Atvir Dres. You may generally hate companions. You may think that 'Hoth' is a great companion, when he is only unique looking. Atvir will change your expectations for a companion if you try him out. He's very chatty, opinionated, and you can literally sit down and have a conversation with him. He's also fully voiced (and I quite like his voice). In addition, he has the light foot perk, and doesn't generally break your stealth. His creator also has lots of plans for expanding him (and he'll have his own custom skin and armor in the future.)

 

But I totally know what you mean about lack of depth. I'm homesick for Cyrodill. There's only two things keeping me from switching back. A- Atvir. B- Skyrim crashes less.

 

Ah! I can think of one more possible mod. I haven't tried it yet but I've been meaning to. Interesting NPCs. There is some voice acting (but I don't think it's fully fully voiced yet), but that should help relieve the 'NPC lacks any kind of personality unless they have an associated fetch quest' problem that Skyrim NPCs suffer.

[ringgold99]

Thanks, I will give your suggestions a try!

 

I guess one problem is that I have played heavily modded Oblivion for far too long and have so very many mods installed that I surprise even myself sometimes when I stumble across something in some ruin or another that I had completely forgotten about. I have far too many clothes and far too many major quests! I love it!

 

But my main problem is that I just cannot get into the "clay-haired", "slo-mo" bumbleton that is supposed to be me. And how am I supposed to get into the quests when they don't seem to matter at all as far as how others treat me. There isn't even a page showing my ranks in the various guilds, etc. Yawn.

[nakakita]

This makes most guards able to recognize that you're important at least. The guilds need help. Serious. Help. The Companions fail because of forced-werewolfism. The Thieves guild is long enough, but you're stuck doing 20 fetch quests in addition to the ok-ish main quest. They've lost all honour. The Dark Brotherhood has that stupid end-quest where you're still going out to kill nameless gook #387 for nameless individual #654. If you're the listener, you should be above doing crap jobs. The College is just short and meh. I like how there are different lecturers every day, and the way you attend class at first is nice, but then it's just lame afterwards.

I have been able to make cute characters though. Unfortunately they prettymuch always look like that. And I've never been able to play a dude for an extended period of time because the male animations are silly and ape like.

[ringgold99]

LOL! You just put it better than I ever could!

[TheUninvitedGuest]

I can second the vote for interesting npcs. It's a great mod - something like 200 new npcs around skyrim, 60+ of whom have really nice voicing.