Heartfire - worth it or not?

[Snowsong]

Would you kindly elaborate? What potential for modding do you see?

I own it, and see a lot of ways you can mod the new player houses. For one thing, you can build gardens near your Hearthfire houses, but they are insanely small and don't allow you to put many plants in there. I'd love a mod that increases the size of the garden and allows for more plants.

 

Also, for some stupid reason, Hearthfire has options for separate alchemy and enchanter's towers, instead of just putting both an alchemy lab and enchanter's station in the SAME tower (which would have been the intelligent thing to do). I'd love a mod that fixed it so the alchemy lab and enchanter's station were in the same tower.

 

I also can see ways that Hearthfire can be used to mod things other than the houses, but my 4-year-old is wanting a drink right now, so I have to go. LOL.

Edited October 7, 2012 by Snowsong

[Gafgar Adolis]

PC users should love the mod potential once they really sit down and think about what you can do with it.

 

Would you kindly elaborate? What potential for modding do you see?

 

More buildable houses, for one. Larger ones too. I expect one of the first mods we'll see in the next month or two is one that makes the Main Hall much larger to allow for all nine wings to be added at once. Custom wings, too, around the same time. Later I expect to see buildable fortresses or castles - or even towns - using the same new Hearthfire resources. Bethesda's sprinkled far more stone and clay around that would be needed for just the vanilla buildable homes, too, so clearly they were hoping for modders to pick up where they left off and run with it. The people who keep saying Hearthfire has nothing to offer modders are either short-sighted fools or are lying through their teeth.

[JanusForbeare]

The people who keep saying Hearthfire has nothing to offer modders are either short-sighted fools or are lying through their teeth.

 

I choose not to engage you on this point again, but I will refer anyone who wants to understand why HF doesn't offer significant new modding possibilities to this thread.

 

What it does give us is a cookie-cutter approach to making "buildable home" mods for those modders who can't be bothered to learn how to use Papyrus. And that's all I'm going to say about the matter, because I don't want to derail the thread.

 

Ultimately, it's up to you, the player, whether or not HF is worth your money. It's certainly not expensive, but it doesn't give you many features that you can't find here on the Nexus, either.

[Georgiegril]

Thank you Snowsong, Gafgar and Janus, for your opinions and responses.

 

I appreciate that there are people who lack the skillset and/or the inclination to create mods using the CK, and buildable house mods do seem to be a nice middle ground for them. And there probably are traditional mod authors who may find it interesting to create more build-your-own house style mods. I guess I was hoping for something that could be more broadly extrapolated-- something that this mod could provide to skyrim mod creation that was not so related to build-a-house. However, as someone else posted, it is a small, inexpensive addition, so I guess it is what it is.

[StayFrosty05]

I voted 'No...but'....Reason being, I have zero interest myself and the reports on what Hearthfire offers only confirms my dis-interest....but I also have no inclination or wish to play a Dovahkin who adopts kids, builds houses, farms or bakes bread...I use some small simple mods that do fit his dietary needs better.....But for those who want to play house, farm, bake, adopt kids....Hearthfire sounds like a rather good DLC for them.

[AnkhAscendant]

I voted yes, because it's only five dollars, and that means I get to build, play house, farm, bake, and sort my stuff all day long ^^ But I'm more into crafting than fighting, and I really like making stuff and organizing my things, so it appeals to my specific wants. It's not perfect, but if you want a more domestic character, it's pretty good. If you want a brawny caveman who hits things with sword all day and never sleeps because it's a waste of game time, then no, it's probably not worth it.

[Spawny86]

I voted: Yes, but...

 

Here's why: as stated by others, this DLC is certainly worth the 5 € price and will be a great resource for future mods. That being said, I was disappointed with the limitations placed on my supposed "dream house".

 

Let's take Lakeview Manor for example. It has, as the name suggests, a nice view of a lake. Ideal for a patio you might say. The only problem is, that the only useful room (for me) with a patio is the armory. Unfortunately the armory is placed in such a way, that would I be out on the patio, I'd be looking straight against a mountainside - and not in a good way. So I had to add the storage room to get said patio with the lake view. Only I have no use for the storage room. There are so many containers you can add to the house already, that a dedicated storage rooms seems like a huge waste. It also meant that I couldn't get the trophy room I'd rather have had.

 

The underlying problem here is that there are three types of wings, i.e. the additions to the main hall: two-story tower, single-story with patio, single-story with angled roof; but each wing has a preset function, with predefined locations for every piece of furniture. It would be better, if we are allowed to simply choose the type of addition, then change the preset to something we like or even better: let us place our furniture the way we actually want. Now I know that this would cause problems, since that way nothing is navmeshed, which would make npcs bump into stuff all the time, but I can live with that, since I don't plan on having any npcs around anyway.

 

Hopefully some modder will be able to "fix" this at some point.

 

Just my two cents.

[Elsarian]

I bought Hearthfire the day it released and for 5 bucks, I believe it was well worth it. Sure there are other FREE mods out there that allow you to build your own home, or to just download pre-made homes that suit your interests. However, I wish to use Hearthfire because it is Bethesda quality. Now I am not saying that the housing mods out there are not of good quality, it's just that they feel sort of clunky from time to time because we do not have unparalleled access to the game like the Devs do, so Hearthfire, for me, feels more smooth, polished, and an overall better experience.

 

Now that we have Beths creation, mod authors can now BUILD upon what Beth has already laid out for us and mod authors can make Hearthfire so much more epic than what it already is. They can use Hearthfire to better their own popular mods and what not. Hell, I think that we will start seeing a boost in mods that allow us to build our own houses. And I can not wait to see what will be done!

 

-Elsarian

[queenbee21283]

Only reason i got heartfire was to have a stable safe place to hold all my stuff and my family from the nexus adoption mod.

 

As well as to be the center peice to my tundra defense gameplay and so far working out AWSOME! love it nice house no fiddling with object placement etc. and can hire an npc to do the work for me hahah. granted i built the first one my self took me a weekend to finish.

[littleork]

I think the worth of the dlc depends how you play the game, if you aren't interested in building houses, better farming and having a family, then it might not worth it. I am someone who likes to play for immersion, so a dlc like that is good for me. People should read about it and decided if it's worth it depending of how they like their gameplay,at least, that's what I did.