Many of us who play Elder Scrolls games on the PC don't just play because we love the story and the world of Tamriel. No, we also play because we can modify the game to make it more appealing to us. Some might think that modding would be a horrible idea for this game, but I wanted to post some of the reasons why I think modding might be not just a good idea for TESO, but a perfect idea.

1) Modding can help bring more money into the game. If you implement a store which sells mods it not only can make more money for Bethesda, it can encourage more people to play the game. You'll get people coming that might not like a visual aspect of the game, or maybe want a new armor or skin added.

- You can further encourage people to submit new mods and skins by giving them points to use on the market, points that can also perhaps use towards buying more time on their subscription in case they don't want to buy mods or anything else on the market. They could earn a comission for each purchase of their upload, example: A new sword with decent stats goes on the market for 150 points, these points bought on a Bethesda website and (or) earned as part of a subscription fee. The person who created this mod could earn ten percent for each download, 15 points for each download which can be given each night at a set period, like servers being given maintenance.

2) Sometimes people just don't like who a species looks, most commonly I've seen reskins of Elves but sometimes Argonians and Khajiit have been reskinned for games as well and these new skins can look -incredible-, and they only encourage people to play more because their characters and those around them will be much more improved.

-I wouldn't think this would actually be as hard to implement as some might say. People have been altering skins in MMO's for years, nvde patches being a prime example. Of course, I'm not suggesting this be something sold of the market, but it wouldn't hurt.

3) Modding makes people feel even closer to the game and its universe. I once made a mod for a Bethesda game and I felt great helping even a small amount of people to enjoy the game more, it also gave me a deeper appreciation for the game.

4) This market could also be a great place for Bethesda to sell content they develop themselves. Microtransactions and F2P are the future of MMO's, a market like this would give them a leg up if and when they decide to go F2P. (I've read this will be a subscription based game, forgive me if I'm wrong.) Having a market like this set up early on would give them time to perfect the system and make it a viable alternative to subscriptions.

Anyways, those are my thoughts. What do you all think?

You might as well put modding out of your head now. You might get a UI mod or some minor adjustments but if you are thinking modding like in the SPTES games then you can forget about it.

Yep.

Its just common sense that this being an MMO you won't have the same kinds of mods as you do in the single player games. MMO's are really services that you access so changing game files and environment textures is seen has hacking and bannable in MMO's.

UI mods and info displaying mods are all you get in MMO's.

Maybe a "greenlight" style modding community... Where everything is PURELY cosmetic, and has to be approved by the devs... Otherwise we're going to have people modding opposing faction skins to stand out like a sore thumb to make it easier to kill them in RvR(Imagine an army of bright colours, colour sorted by "archetype"... bright red is tank, bright pink is healer or some such... this crap would ruin the game). All and all, I would say no... but with a greenlight system, only the mods that are purely for improvement of the game would be accepted anyway.

Cosmetic modding perhaps- though I'm sure the art department would be furious when people start modding in anime-doll women and the like.

However, the first feature makes it unfair. Buying gameplay mods turns it into Play-2-Win. It could work for PvE but then I think - what's the point. Why not have everyone on a level playing field?

Your idea doesn't fit into the MMO context one bit. First of all you can't have modded armor skins because then everyone would have to download every single skin, now add the possibility of glitches that they would need to iron out, and you've got a perfect recipe for a disaster. Game client would be like 100GB with thousands of players adding their mods. Otherwise if you could just slap your skin on and run into the world everyone who sees you would have to download the data on the spot, now imagine 100 people with their "special" skins running around and over-tasking the connections.

Secondly, "modded" weapons with good stats are a pay-to-win component and promote opening-your-wallet-ism which makes every game [censored].

Thirdly, modding in its original sense means adding stuff that's not there such as new spells, powers, weapons (with powers) and that simply doesn't fit with an MMO.

So no, I'm sorry but your whole idea can never work. It could possibly work with having special groups of "armor designers" that would submit their skins to Zenimax, but never directly implement them into the game.