Evolution of Taste and Style

[Brittainy]

This is a matter of pure curiosity for me:

 

How has your taste in mods changed over time - for any game - and how has your playing style altered, if at all?

 

Personally, as far as playing style goes, I bathed in the orgy of free-roam delights ever since GTA 3 came out and until fairly recently my style was entirely haphazard and totally lacking in interest in following any sort of linear path. I skipped quests and essentially anything that had a 'must do things this way' stamp on it. I was more interested in just wandering aimlessly and exploring the scenery. (Probably a reaction to years of 2D gaming all its constrictions.)

 

Oblivion - which I bought quite a few years after it was released - was the start of a new and more conventional playing style for me. I think it's the first non-linear game that actually got me interested in quests and dungeons. (And I must admit the dungeon exploration has only been in the last year...before that I skipped anything that resembled a ruin or a dungeon and stuck with the main quests.)

 

I've also forced myself to slow down a lot of late. Often I'd rush through main quests and skip any frills or optional side-quests, but now I'm actually bothering to ease up and enjoy things more.

 

I still tend to knock over the biggest quests first though. For one convoluted reason or another, I can't relax to enjoy many of the smaller quests if - for example - Oblivion Gates are open all over the place. Feels a bit ridiculous and unnatural to worry about finding someone's lost daughter when the Daedra are on Cyrodiil's doorstep, so to speak...

 

As for taste in mods, mine has changed radically...again, a very recent event. I initially dived in and grabbed any and every mod I could lay my hands on. Quests, houses, new landscapes, clothes, armour, mounts, all the UL's, etc. You name it. My load order was filled to the brim.

 

In the last few months I've cut back on everything. I've returned to Vanilla clothing and armour (albeit with some personal tweaks) and scrapped literally every armour and outfit mod I was previously running. I've tweaked up my weather, water and camera into a few esp files and scrapped all the fancier ones. I've 'closed' my cities.

 

Almost all the things I once considered essential are now scrapped. Of course, this mostly came with the change in my playing style. The more interested I became in all the things I'd once skipped over, the less extra clutter and enhancement I needed.

 

Nonetheless, I'm a highly visual person, so a race mod and some nice hairstyles were a must. And some better looking flora and fauna will always be a top priority, second only to having the 'right' look for my character. But a lot of the visuals I once went mad to improve (NPC faces and outfits, armour, etc) I just don't care about anymore.

 

Essentially, I'm probably far more linear now than I used to be. 90% of a tiny list of mods I run are my own and my Oblivion seems to have become a much simpler - but very satisfying - place.

 

So, how has your taste changed - if at all - since you started gaming in these very non-linear realms? And how full is your load order looking these days?

 

I'm presently sitting at 40-odd mods, which is the least I've ever run for Oblivion. (The other games I play are probably sitting around 2-10 mods each, which again is very minimalist for me. 90% own mod bias still applies.)

 

8 'essentials' - camera fixes, no more annoying messages, invincible horses, etc.

10 pose mods - I like my screenies.

14 of my own mods and tweaks. (I like my scenery gaudy and my wild animals passive and my ammo painful.)

8 non-essential but nice additions. (Sirens and Tritons, Natural Habitat, etc.)

 

What about you? :cool:

Edited March 16, 2013 by Brittainy