Paid mods for skyrim

[Draco18s]

I've only ever had one "game breaking" bug which was the guards killing everyone in whiterun due to me being a werewolf and the guards thinking I was still a friendly. The only other bugs I can remember is an invisible dragon and khajiit tails stretching out like crazy for their ragdolls.

Stealth skill.

QED

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

Most of Skyrim's bugs weren't "game-breaking", they just made the game really suck compared to the previous ones. I am firmly in the "Morrowind is amazing!!!!" camp, but I also really liked Oblivion for some reason, despite the cartoony graphics.

Skyrim is not a good game out of the box.  It's broken, unfinished, and lackluster.

This. The game was good for a short time, then it really just fell apart. The entire Civil War questline, the main quest, the Dark Brotherhood, nearly all of the questlines were all of those. The only exception was the Thieves' Guild.

[Cyborg]

What's with all the kvetching over one of the best games in recent memory- even out-of-the-box? Seriously, I thought it was awesome even without mods. There was so much to do, so much to see, so much to experience. Yeah, certain things were better than others, but overall, were you not entertained?

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

What's with all the kvetching over one of the best games in recent memory- even out-of-the-box? Seriously, I thought it was awesome even without mods. There was so much to do, so much to see, so much to experience. Yeah, certain things were better than others, but overall, were you not entertained?

My problem with it is it just fell way short of my expectations from the rest of TES series and the Fallout series. While yes, it was entertaining, it faded really fast. It was mostly pretty graphics (Which I loved, don't get me wrong) with a lot of shallow substance in the world. Even the immersion was horribly murdered after you beat the main quest and go to join the Companions.

[Cyborg]

What's with all the kvetching over one of the best games in recent memory- even out-of-the-box? Seriously, I thought it was awesome even without mods. There was so much to do, so much to see, so much to experience. Yeah, certain things were better than others, but overall, were you not entertained?

My problem with it is it just fell way short of my expectations from the rest of TES series and the Fallout series. While yes, it was entertaining, it faded really fast. It was mostly pretty graphics (Which I loved, don't get me wrong) with a lot of shallow substance in the world. Even the immersion was horribly murdered after you beat the main quest and go to join the Companions.

I felt immersed. I didn't realize that this was as big of a problem as it apparently is. I didn't realize people were installing so many mods to make things playable. I thought it was all fun stuff, like extra characters and whatnot.


To each their own I guess, but for me, I enjoyed my stay in skyrim, and I don't think it would be hard to go back with all of those adventures sitting in the workshop.

[TheVampire100]

Elder Scrolls are general very buggy games. To be fair, they have a sandbox approach on the roleplaying game genre. And more possibilities means more chances for bugs. People are trying crazy stuff in the game just because they want to find shortcuts, exploits or other stuff that can help them. When people literally brute force a game there HAS to be a tons of bugs to be discovered.
If you play the game normally without going out of the tracks you will encounter rarely bugs and they will be nothing more than annoying minor stuff.

[Draco18s]

What's with all the kvetching over one of the best games in recent memory- even out-of-the-box? Seriously, I thought it was awesome even without mods. There was so much to do, so much to see, so much to experience. Yeah, certain things were better than others, but overall, were you not entertained?

Sorry, I can't agree.
I have been more immersed, more enthralled, and more entertained by Hand of Fate.  And that's including the fact that it crashes on me due to running out of memory transitioning between scenes forcing me to start over (took eight or ten attempts to beat the first scenario, maybe even more).

Even Firefall got me more into exploring the world and looking at the scenery than Skyrim did.

Story wise?  Banner Saga and Broken Age, hands down.

[chemical_art]

Elder Scrolls are general very buggy games. To be fair, they have a sandbox approach on the roleplaying game genre. And more possibilities means more chances for bugs. People are trying crazy stuff in the game just because they want to find shortcuts, exploits or other stuff that can help them. When people literally brute force a game there HAS to be a tons of bugs to be discovered.
If you play the game normally without going out of the tracks you will encounter rarely bugs and they will be nothing more than annoying minor stuff.

This.

I hear many complaints about how "buggy" Skyrim is, but they involved circumstances that the vast majority of players will not experience. Even then, the effects can be beneficial sometimes for new avenues of play.

The vast, vast majority of "bugs" are not experienced by most players. In addition, most players do not experience mods because many of them are on consoles. To call skyrim a buggy mess with it being amongst the best selling games of recent memory insulates:
1) The vast majority of players are stupid
2) Players do not nitpick over minor details.

Now I won't argue which is important and/or right. I will just say the facts hold true. Skyrim sold well on consoles, very well. It continues to sell well on steam. This didn't happen by pure luck, something drove it. Whatever explanation you believe at least one fact holds true:

More people view it more highly then many other games. It did something right. You can argue that those people are wrong. But you cant argue more people supported something in place of skyrim. In short, Skyrim was right in some way, regardless of the pain the naysayers might claim.

[Cyborg]

It just shocks me to see something that was that incredible… is that incredible… to be thought of as less than Broken Age. Makes no sense.

[chemical_art]

It just shocks me to see something that was that incredible… is that incredible… to be thought of as less than Broken Age. Makes no sense.

Broken what? Who? If I as a video game enthusiast doesn't know what you are talking about, but I can ask random co-workers about a game (skyrim) and they say it was "good"  then one game was more influential then another. Complain about pop culture all one wants, it still drives facts.

[Draco18s]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atg-5Nqszxw

Replace "beer" with "video games."

"Being the best, on average, rarely works in all cases."

Skyrim is a "best on average" game.  The problem is, I don't look for "above average" games, I want something that stands out from the bland mediocrity of "just average."  I'd kind of question the "best on average" of Skyrim as well, as it clearly wasn't as good as Morrowind.

But I digress.  My point was that people want to play Skyrim, not for Skyrim, but for the Skyrim-mods.  People seem to get Skyrim and mod the bejesus out of it before they've even launched the game and made a character.

When I ran into trouble just traveling to the next quest location, I was given two practical options and one impractical one:
1) Whore stealth by crouching in the middle of town and leaving the game running overnight. (Bug/Balance Issue)
2) Installing a mod that lets me craft armor. (Modding to provide missing feature)
3) Going to [place] and beating [dungeon] for [specific armor]. (Impractical, given my issue surviving a pack of wolves)

None of these solutions speak of a game that is out of the box playable.

[chemical_art]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atg-5Nqszxw

Replace "beer" with "video games."

"Being the best, on average, rarely works in all cases."

Skyrim is a "best on average" game.  The problem is, I don't look for "above average" games,

With all due respect, I don't think anyone claimed anything was good for everybody.

I'm just saying something was more influential then another.

I am a HUGE micro-craft beer buff, to use your example. I go to my favorite brewery at least twice a month. However, I wouldn't say in the history of beer making those micro brews made more an impact than the major ones. They just haven't to date relative to the larger ones. They are for a niche that the major ones haven't touched, and just because YOU may think they appeal better doesn't mean in the bigger picture they have.  Those micro brews have to gradutate to a larger audience to truely drive a narrative, otherwise they just manage to pick up markets that larger companies viewed to small.

Similarly just because a game doesn't drive YOU, doesn't mean you can't recognize its impact. I loath the game model of starcraft (1 and 2). Its a micro fest I find...unenjoyable to put it pleasantly. However if I was ever to make a game list of important games I would put it at the top of the list. It simply is influential due to its popularity. It drives game development. To simply say "I don't like it" isn't enough in the face of popularity. In talking about game development one has to acknowledge all impactful games even if grudgingly.

[Coppermantis]

I loved Skyrim unmodded. I put in almost 500 hours before adding in anything that changed the core of the game (Frostfall and Realistic Needs were the biggest plus a bunch of graphic mods.) If there were no mods, I probably wouldn't still be playing but that's more due to me having explored all the content than to not enjoying the game--much of what I have in ways of mods is simply new quests and such.

PC sales only account for 14% of the total, though admittedly that doesn't speak for longevity of the console players. Anecdotally, all my friends who've played Skyrim have done so on console without mods and enjoyed it as well.

1) Whore stealth by crouching in the middle of town and leaving the game running overnight. (Bug/Balance Issue)
2) Installing a mod that lets me craft armor. (Modding to provide missing feature)
3) Going to [place] and beating [dungeon] for [specific armor]. (Impractical, given my issue surviving a pack of wolves)

I'm unsure how you ran into this issue. Skyrim has a lot of problems but being blocked from progressing by a tough enemy on the world map has never been one I've ever heard about except for the singular case of the oft-cited frost troll on the 7,000 steps. Playing on the maximum difficulty with self-enforced permadeath common mobs are a little scary but there are many solutions other than what you describe.

- It's open world--if one path is giving you trouble, find another.
- Just run past them. Skyrim AI isn't great (a problem of its own) but you can exploit it to get out of tough situations.
- Approach the situation more tactically. Wolves are literally the second weakest enemy in the game, and hardly require any sort of good armor or weapons to defeat. To say that you need to "mod to provide a missing feature" because you can't beat them is an exaggeration. And with the exception of special named loot, you don't need to beat a specific dungeon to get good armor. The game gives you more than enough to survive at the start during the intro quest.
etc.


Skyrim is far from perfect. It has a lot of issues that could stand to be improved. But it is hardly "unplayable out of the box," and especially not for the reasons you describe.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

What's kept me from Skyrim all these years is one particular view of it:

"It is the size of an ocean but a puddle deep".

Well that and I have no time for these grand-scale RPGs that are sandboxy. Way too many games and way too little time to invest into any of them.

[kasnavada]

It just shocks me to see something that was that incredible… is that incredible… to be thought of as less than Broken Age. Makes no sense.

The whole of the elder's scroll series is bland, boring and based on mechanics that make no sense and don't work. The only thing they did in that series for about 20 years is trying to balance the scaling of enemies from the player's level, trying to balance the player's level up, trying to balance the crafting, writing a world, and making it moddable.

The only part where I find any significant improvement are the two last ones. Actually, I was surprised when I heard they removed some of the scaling in Skyrim, but it's still mostly and yes, out of the box, created bugs (like early dungeon enemies giving loot according to your level instead of according of its level).

Skyrim is not a good game out of the box.  It's broken, unfinished, and lackluster.

The whole series really.

It's based on flawed level up which constantly need using the same skills over and over again, have to be min-maxed, and is ultimately pointless because of the enemy scaling making all parts of the game the same "weak" compared to you. In the elder's scroll series you can finish the game at max level or at near min level, and enemies are still weak because they scale. They attempted to change this in skyrim with fixed level dungeons though. But from what I've seen it has mostly failed, again.

The story aims to please most. Meaning it's like a summer blockbuster. It's nicely written - something that you can follow with little thought and being sure that it won't shock nor surprise you much. But, alas, way too based on what's "right" in the US for people like me.