Improving Skyrim / Recommended Mods thread (Mostly about Requiem)

[ERYFKRAD]

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Well this person has clearly never played modern Requiem

How 'complete' of a mod would you say that Requiem is atm (both in terms of planned scope and of balancing)?

As complete as it gets. I don't think they're doing any more than minor tweaks on it.
Though you will have to score the dragonborn patch to have it apply to the full game.

 

[Grunker]

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Well this person has clearly never played modern Requiem

How 'complete' of a mod would you say that Requiem is atm (both in terms of planned scope and of balancing)?

It's very complete in terms of the primary scope, so that would be loot and core systems. But you need other mods for content, quests, aesthetics and such, but also if you're interested in secondary systems (like survival systems, just as an example). If you just want to play vanilla skyrim with better loot, no scaling and new RPG systems, going with Requiem is pretty much a complete, fully functional experience.

Otherwise look into Wabbajack lists. The big ones are very easy to work with in my experience, due to the massive amounts of autism their creators put into them.

 

[racofer]

Now I get the Skyrim appeal.

 

[Lambach]

If Internet c00mers were capable of directing their determination and energy to something productive, we'd have commercially available Cold Fusion by now.

 

[Nikanuur]

Believe it or not, there are players who like both Skyrim and Morrowind, Fallout and Underrail, Grimoire and Wizardry VIII and so on. Please DO make threads like this.
On topic:
TK Dodge can make your combat feel 215.44x better*. Some of combat mods strive to improve million things at once and can still fail to deliver the impact this simplistic mod alone has.
Especially because with it you can now do stuff that looks and feels alright. Stuff like:

https://youtu.be/khM6jssjHt4?t=55


*very roughly estimated

 

[throwaway69420]

Is there any mod that fixes the animation locked awful combat, or is that determined to be a permanent core engine issue at this point? How about making NPCs more engaging to talk to (no voice acting needed, just much more dialogue options). If I'm being honest I'll still turn it into a porn game, I'm just curious if modders ACTUALLY "fixed it" or if that line of thinking continues to be a cope from fanboys.

I want to understand what made Skyrim so beloved but the base game is legitimately a bad game in my opinion and I can't get through more than the intro before dropping it entirely, hoping modern mods fix that, because when I tried years ago it still sucked. I enjoyed Oblivion more. (Both gameplay and porn wise)

 

[racofer]

Is there any mod that fixes the animation locked awful combat, or is that determined to be a permanent core engine issue at this point? How about making NPCs more engaging to talk to (no voice acting needed, just much more dialogue options). If I'm being honest I'll still turn it into a porn game, I'm just curious if modders ACTUALLY "fixed it" or if that line of thinking continues to be a cope from fanboys.

I want to understand what made Skyrim so beloved but the base game is legitimately a bad game in my opinion and I can't get through more than the intro before dropping it entirely, hoping modern mods fix that, because when I tried years ago it still sucked. I enjoyed Oblivion more. (Both gameplay and porn wise)

Skyrim has not, will not, and can not be fixed by mods.

Everyone claiming modded Skyrim makes it a playable game are coping because their turd of a game now looks like a shinny, chocolate sprinkled, glaced turd of a game. The underlying issues like terrible quests, unrewarding exploration, stiff animations, forgettable characters, floaty and weightless physics, lack of any skill checks in dialogues, are all still there and cannot be fixed. By applying 500 mods on top of the game, all the player is doing is extending the illusion of depth this game so cunningly sells with its potential of a never-ending game, where you will create your avatar and live in that game world with limitless radiant content. While it's true that the game does not technically ends, it also never begins, as there is no involvement of the player with anything related to the game world.

 

[WhiteShark]

unrewarding exploration
stiff animations
floaty and weightless physics

All of those have been fixed, though. As for quests and dialogue, I know there are some mods that fix specific vanilla quests or that give extra options, but I'm not aware of any sweeping vanilla quest overhauls. I'm still pretty new to the mod scene though, so I might just be uninformed.

TK Dodge

From what I've read The Ultimate Dodge Mod (TUDM) is regarded as the best of the bunch: zero latency and natively supports NPC dodging.

Is there any mod that fixes the animation locked awful combat

I'm not sure what you mean by this. One of the problems with vanilla combat is that it doesn't lock you down in any way, so you can just slide around freely while swinging your sword with zero commitment.

 

[Lemming42]

The underlying issues like terrible quests, unrewarding exploration, stiff animations, forgettable characters, floaty and weightless physics, lack of any skill checks in dialogues, are all still there and cannot be fixed.

These are all Elder Scrolls hallmarks.

 

[Nikanuur]

From what I've read The Ultimate Dodge Mod (TUDM) is regarded as the best of the bunch: zero latency and natively supports NPC dodging.

As far as I am concerned, you may have heard the right thing. I don't know. I only know that a dodge makes a Skyrim player much happier. Whatever that dodge system is. Cheers, man.

 

[Funposter]

unrewarding exploration
stiff animations
floaty and weightless physics

All of those have been fixed, though. As for quests and dialogue, I know there are some mods that fix specific vanilla quests or that give extra options, but I'm not aware of any sweeping vanilla quest overhauls. I'm still pretty new to the mod scene though, so I might just be uninformed.

Skyrim has very few mods which attempt to overhaul its vanilla faction questlines, while having quite a few high quality original quest mods. It's unfortunate because it means that a game packed to the brim with CONTENT~! just ends up being flooded with even more, instead of what's already there being refined. A highly modded Skyrim playthrough usually results in the player ignoring vast swathes of the game's actual content and I often feel that the whole experience becomes a bit disjointed, or disconnected, since your progress through the game world is never really reflected. Even the vanilla questlines feature the bare minimum for reactivity that make you say "wow, an NPC noticed that I finished that quest" or whatever, but mods can't really replicate this due to everything being voice acted.

 

[Ravielsk]

but mods can't really replicate this due to everything being voice acted.

That is really a secondary concern. The main issue is that unlike the Oblivion or Morrowind modding scene the Skyrim modders legit do not understand Skyrim as a game but as an engine. This is why most "overhaul" mods are barely cosmetic tweaks that add nothing of actual substance and why gameplay mods fail to address any of the games core issues. Skyrim modders simply operate on a different (and for the most part defective) level that does not lend it self to anything like quest expansions.

The lack of voice acting is really just an excuse not a reason.

 

[Hirato]

The lack of voice acting is really just an excuse not a reason.

xVASynth just further illustrates this point.

 

[Funposter]

The lack of voice acting is really just an excuse not a reason.

xVASynth just further illustrates this point.

I've used xVASynth a little bit and while it's a fantastic tool, it requires a lot of tuning and re-writing of lines to get anything verging on "natural" and not too robotic. It can certainly be done, but it heavily depends on the chosen voice and what words that voice has access to and in what intonation. This, then, requires a pretty decent knowledge of the base game's dialogue, who says what, etc. I also found that it works best when limited to simple sentence of under 15 words or so, because anything more just ends up sounding like a garbled mess, although this is also a in-built limitation of Bethesda's own dialogue UI.

The main issue is that unlike the Oblivion or Morrowind modding scene the Skyrim modders legit do not understand Skyrim as a game but as an engine. This is why most "overhaul" mods are barely cosmetic tweaks that add nothing of actual substance and why gameplay mods fail to address any of the games core issues. Skyrim modders simply operate on a different (and for the most part defective) level that does not lend it self to anything like quest expansions.

I definitely agree that it's a matter of priorities and than most Skyrim modders are more interested in creating wholly original content that's vaguely TES-themed than they are in actually fixing the game in any meaningful way, which is quite strange given how much the Skyrim modding community loves to wank over stuff that's "lore-friendly" compared to what the Oblivion and Morrowind modding scenes looked like in the 2000s. Morrowind, in particular, has so many more mods focused on actually trying to fix the bad parts of the game while sticking to the original spirit of it. It probably helps that Morrowind is a good enough game that you'd want to try and "fix" it while Skyrim simply isn't.

 

[Ravielsk]

It probably helps that Morrowind is a good enough game that you'd want to try and "fix" it while Skyrim simply isn't.

I have to disagree with this. Skyrim is a good 10-20 hour game that was simply stretched over 100-200 hours of "content"(a.k.a copy pasted crap). In terms of actual gameplay its not actually that much different from say Gothic 1 or 2 but where Gothic had the good sense to not overstay its welcome and wrap up in under 20 hours, Skyrim simply goes on and on with no real end in sight.

The "no end in sight" is particularly a problem because when you have no idea when the game is actually supposed to end it makes it insanely difficult to write a story or even design gameplay around anything. FNV demonstrates this absolutely brilliantly where the only real change it makes over FO3 is that it sets up a couple of goals for the player and (more importantly) the designers/writers to follow. That way not only does everything loop around to provide a decent sense of roleplay and choice but it also makes it easy for the designers to compress the choices into a couple of variable checks in a handful of quests and stories.

 

[Semiurge]

From what I've read The Ultimate Dodge Mod (TUDM) is regarded as the best of the bunch: zero latency and natively supports NPC dodging.

Does it touch the issue of 100% chance of instant death when you get cornered by a two-handed wielding bandit chief that outranks your level by a considerable amount? I found that infuriatingly ridiculous, a bandit approaches you and you get a finishing move cutscene of the bandit ripping your head off and fucking your corpse, without having the chance to dodge the attack organically.

 

[WhiteShark]

From what I've read The Ultimate Dodge Mod (TUDM) is regarded as the best of the bunch: zero latency and natively supports NPC dodging.

Does it touch the issue of 100% chance of instant death when you get cornered by a two-handed wielding bandit chief that outranks your level by a considerable amount? I found that infuriatingly ridiculous, a bandit approaches you and you get a finishing move cutscene of the bandit ripping your head off and fucking your corpse, without having the chance to dodge the attack organically.

No, but there are other mods that allow you to disable kill moves either one-sidedly or for everyone. I'm not sure if there's any other solution for that particular scenario.
EDIT: An example is VioLens, which for sure lets you turn off kill moves entirely.

 

[None]

Besides a few hours over the years, I've never really bothered with Skyrim. Because I'm postponing my annual Morrowind modding ritual for the next release of TR, I decided to give modding Skyrim a shot. I knew I couldn't fix everything with mods, but it's been 11 years so there is bound to be something rather comprehensive, right?

A couple of days of browsing, installing, and tinkering has left me disappointed. Not with the process, I'm autistic enough to enjoy this, but with the state of Skryim's modding community. There seem to be no comprehensive or sweeping attempts to take Skyrim, tune what is untuned, mitigate any weaknesses or flaws, and reinforce its strengths. Mods like Requiem put forth an admirable effort, but they only deal with the gameplay side. The limiting dialogue system, the uninspired worldspace, diluted mechanics (no stats), lack of quest choices and outcomes, etc all remain relatively untouched. There have been some attempts made to fix these areas, but I'd end up having to stitch solutions together from authors with competing ideas resulting in an unfocused product.

I guess all I can say is that after 11 years I expected more. The only that really impressed me was the absolute breadth of settings available to tweak if you use ENB.

Maybe I missed something, it's hard to say when half of Skyrim's modding community is interested in adding things like menstrual cycles for women.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

i dunno about modding this skyrim game..... tsk

 

[gurugeorge]

This new mod looks interesting - Precision - Accurate Melee Collisions.

Physically accurate, true Havok collisions for melee. Procedural, physics-based hit reactions. Weapon trails. Hitstop and camera shake. Recoils when hitting certain materials. Supports both first person and third person, as well as other NPCs and creatures. Custom collisions for new movesets. Supports SE/AE. Includes an API for other SKSE plugins.

Haven't got Skyrim up and running at the moment, so I don't know how good it is, but I should imagine this would go very well with all the 360 degree 3rd person animation mods (Nemesis is in the requirements, though it's optional). It's probably a little bit janky but mostly serviceable (as most of the combat and animation related mods for the game are, as they're really stretching the capabilities of the engine).

That brings Skyrim combat pretty much up to date with other modern 3rd person games.

It's amazing what modders have been able to do with the game.

 

[Eyestabber]

Average Bethesda fan: agonizes for weeks installing hundreds if not thousands of mods, then spends another few weeks to get everything to play nice with eachother then, plays the game for 3 hours and uninstalls it.

This is so gonna happen to me. Since I never played Requiem or Skyrim SE, I decided to give serenity 2 a try. The download process is taking ages, even with auto wabbajack. I hope I really enjoy this, but realistically it's probably gonna end up being played for a fraction of the time it took me to set it up.

Edit: also, does serenity feature quick start by default? If I see that cart again I might just instantly uninstall...

 

[Eyestabber]

Phew lads, after only 12 hours and 40 minutes, wabbajack has finished downloading! Now it only has to extract 991 files and I'll soon be able to experience Serenity 2!!! Can't wait, it's gonna be so fun and totally not a waste of time!

 

[Lambach]

Phew lads, after only 12 hours and 40 minutes, wabbajack has finished downloading! Now it only has to extract 991 files and I'll soon be able to experience Serenity 2!!! Can't wait, it's gonna be so fun and totally not a waste of time!

Don't get discouraged by everyone and everything dick-slapping you across the face during the early game and give up. This isn't Gothic, it doesn't have interesting non-combat quests you can do to level up until you're combat ready, so depending on how you start, you might find those first couple of hours pretty tedious*. Push through it for at least as long as it took you to download it, Requiem (and Requiem-based mods, I guess) gets really fun once you're no longer an anemic tuberculosis patient and can hold your own in a fight, it's not likely you'll just give up at that point. At least not before you get too powerful later on and there are no more worthwhile challenges to tackle other than 2-3 areas specifically designed to filter those who haven't reached godhood on their character. Assuming Serenity doesn't modify vanilla Requiem too much, that is.

*Conjuration and Destruction are the unofficial Game Journo difficulty, so go with that if you want to be not completely helpless early and get to action right away instead of chopping wood for gold to train Skills. Two-Handed with Light Armor (Evasion) is also a solid choice if you don't like Magic.

 

[Crispy]

It's funny because in Shoutbox, Eyestabber has been complaining about the "grind" in Enderal SE required (in his mind) to be able to improve your skills. It sounds to me like he's going to be in for even more of that -- ironically -- with this Serenity 2 monster mod list he's trying.

 

[Lambach]

It's funny because in Shoutbox, Eyestabber has been complaining about the "grind" in Enderal SE required (in his mind) to be able to improve your skills. It sounds to me like he's going to be in for even more of that -- ironically -- with this Serenity 2 monster mod list he's trying.

Mostly just early on, and also depending on what you start with. Skills are not balanced in terms of power and usefulness in the slightest and your choice in which ones to focus on is effectively a difficulty slider.

Crafting skills are a serious grind, though, specially when it comes to reaching the highest levels. Can't jump from Smithing 95 to 96 by crafting 20 Iron Daggers anymore, you either have to craft 20 of something much more valuable instead or craft a couple dozen thousand daggers if you're a madman.