Such a chore searching and lurking for the best mods, and see which mods are compatible with what.

Plus, playing Skyrim completely a fresh for the first time with these mods already uninstalled would have made playing Skyrim oh so much grander.

Oblivion, nor Morrowwind had something akin to this? Where a copy of the game had many of the popular compatible mods installed?

Bethesda has never released a game with mods already on it. They have incorporated modder's ideas into the titles as they go along.

Besides, why would you want someone else to pick the mods for your game?

This.

Plus mods are only an option and too many mods make the game very unstable, you would be paying alot of money for a potentially broken game.

Bethesda will never play favorites and sell mods. Not only would it explode the community, but as CCNA said, why would you want someone to pick mods for you? The entire point of mods is that each and everyone of us can pick exactly what mods we do and don't want.

It sounds to me like you simply don't think the reward of mods is worth the effort it takes to get them, that's all.

And I would add that if you don't invest the time in learning the ins and outs of how to properly install, read readme's, use utilities, etc. you won't have a very good experience.

Mods move and evolve. Investing the time to search them out and get them up and running is part of the fun of it IMHO.

uh oh, a mod compillation topic. We had one of these failed topics once a week on the oblivion modding forums

Walk away and let it die.

Edit: @ DatDude, if you want more info on why such topics are a bad idea, heres one that was un-usually quite civilized http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1402329-how-do-people-feel-about-compilations-of-tons-of-mods-in-one-download/

Skyrim is even more complex and problematic for stability than Oblivion was, and modding is relatively in its infancy for this game engine.

I started one of those topics on the Oblivion forums! And quickly learned not to... Also, only Bethesda could do this because if anyone else did that it it would be against the eula as that person would be making money off mods (which isn't allowed).

What bethesda might do is include some cool idea from mods in their dlc.

And once a week in in the Morrowind modding forums before that.

Except that Morrowind has a very successful compilation that actually works very well.

Not saying it would work for Skyrim, but just saying.

On Steam, the Collections are somewhat similar. Allow you to pick an easy to download massive mod package. I for one, love the aspect of setting up mods and what not. My brother who is a massive Skyrim fan, just doesnt have the patience to wade through the [censored]storm that is 50 different readmes, find the appropriate patches, clean his ESM's and then play. So I do up a package for him. Simple drop and play. His experience is quite a lot better with minimal fuss. Thats obviously the benefit.

That is a rather new thing (the Overhaul). There was Balmora Expanded (or what it was called) before that, but that was years after release. For Oblivion, FCom didn't go all the way to provide a comprehensive installer, but it's essentially a similar thing, and it took some years to get there, as well.

So for Skyrim, there might be some compilation.
In 5 years' time, when things have settled down, clear favourites have been established, and many people have moved on.