So what's the goal with all them mods? Why do you go in for it so much?
Better character building, adding objects from lore and fixing said retconned lore. AI that's actually competent in fighting and uses everything they have at you. Updated visuals that were lack-luster compared to games even released few years prior. Adding and augmenting existing game mechanics to add more variety. Skill system that makes more sense, for example training in one-handed also gives flat bonuses to two-handed. Content for early/mid/late game. And best of all alternate starts.
What if? We weren't Dragonborn... and simply start as a companion while during quests with actual consequences.
There are so many things that I wanted the game to have from the start but it didn't, and that is why I couldn't enjoy it past the first time I played it. I can get best armor in the game without trying. It feels like I achieved nothing. The biggest problem I have with the vanilla game is the main quest. Within the first hours of the game you find out you are bad-ass dragon slaying Nord (canon?) that has the soul of a Dragon. You can avoid the main quest and do other things, but everyone constantly references the dragons and Dragonborn, that's all the game focuses on, apart from the civil war it's like nothing else really matters or has consequences.
Everything looked the same, I met the same people, I killed the same creatures, I did the same quests and I got the same unbalanced rewards with enemies that are sponges on higher difficulties. It just turns into a grindy unenjoyable game. I crave variety and that runs out pretty quick in the un-modded version.
Without the lore the game has nothing for it to be fair... And even that is being run into the ground for the power-fantasy. Good for those kinds people that like being a bad-ass with an immortal dragon soul all the time.
But what about the people that like
actual role-playing? It doesn't have to be hardcore like some of the overhaul mods. But they didn't give us an option. There's little choice. For something that calls itself RPG Sandbox it was lack-luster and didn't live up to the hardcore audience, mainly the people who really enjoyed Morrowind and games in similar spirit.
I love the lore to bits, it's very interesting, but the current game director made the Skyrim and Fallout 4 do not have much in common with it's lore anymore...
Remove the Dragonborn and some other quests, and Skyrim becomes a cookie cutter RPG that might as well be named something else. Fallout 4, it's not a Fallout game, not by a long-shot. It caries the name but none of the spirit that made the first 3 main titles. It's a good game, but
it's not Fallout.
Bethesda Game Studios lost almost all of what made it unique, due to ZeniMax, now they follow the footsteps of Ubisoft and EA. They'll probably find some way to mess up their new IP too. I lost all hope, when I found out the Creation Engine is same old ****.
I'm not saying game development is easy, but with the time and resources BGS has, they could can do much, much better.
What mods do is give you the tools to fill that sandbox and build something wonderful in it. And even re-shape it to your heart's desire. This is just a single example for one of their games. I can play Morrowind with using just a few mods and visual updates, that's it. It's just right as is. Skyrim always had a bunch of missed potential, and barely fleshed out game mechanics that had a lot to be desired. Your choices and achievements are a footnote. The game holds you by the hand and treats you like an infant. Shouts are just powers that is just an updated spell system from Oblivion that isn't useful anymore past a certain point because they do not scale, the ridiculous cooldown amount makes most of the shouts useless, a lot of the "new" game mechanics came at the last minute from games that already had them, so they weren't anything "new". The list goes on, but the biggest travesty is the departure from roleplaying.
Mods are literally able to remedy that, it's a band-aid. But a very powerful one. I put blood, sweat and tears to try and get close to what I envisioned some of these games to be, but they never lived up to my expectations. They didn't even bother to re-add the cut content for the re-releases. Something that mods do.
I'm not playing full-price for an unfinished game. End of. That is why I bought them on sale, I vote with my wallet.
Developers just don't seem to listen, they say do, but they don't. Bethesda used to have their own forums where they took community feedback! That was a lot of inspiration for a lot of things including the lore itself for TES! I wonder what happened to that!?
Slightly unrelated but, Hell you could play the modded Lost in Nightmare chapters in RE5 PC port before the PC Gold Edition was ever released. It took Crapcom years to add something that we already had!
My whole motivation to modding is creating. It's much easier to simply destroy something or ignore it. No wonder there are a bunch of peed-off people (myself included) on forums ever since Internet was conceived.
TL;DR - Mods breath life into a corpse that developers parade around and saying it's the new and better experience. Not a lot is really new, everything else is recycled.
What a simple question, and a confusing answer. No regrets.
(okay okay ... we can mod the "remaster" ... but well for now ... not all mods i like in Skyrim are ported to SE or working with SE, thus: inferior product.)
You guys had some good points and I appreciated the input.
