I'm one of those in it for the long haul, so I don't necessarily feel pressure to rush myself and get my project released. I'm of the mindset that I'm going to do the best job I know how to do, and try my best to release a quality product. So, whenever I get it finished will be what it is. My progress has been slower than I would really like however. Partly due to other commitments on a huge, soon to be released project for Fallout New Vegas, partly because of life and work in general, and partly because it just takes me longer to do things as I have to learn everything as I go. That can be frustrating, but I have to give a HUGE shout out to the modding community, because for the most part, everything I've needed to learn so far has been greeted with plenty of help from you fine folks. And I can be a pretty hard student to teach because scripting is hard for me to comprehend. (Some folks are great at literature but svck at math and others vice-versa.) I'm one of those not so good at writing scripts. The other thing that has slowed me down at times is the navmesh bug. If it's not fixed, and I have serious doubts that it CAN be fixed, my mod is pretty much fubar. So part of me has been dragging my feet because of that. But, I've picked up the pace in the last week or so, and am rolling right along, so I'm still at it!

Navy seal ?

errm.. sorry

I most certainly will not.
There's a lot more to the Navy than just the Seals... Something tells me a highly trained special services operative wouldn't spend his free time making computer modding utility programs. Then again, I've been wrong before....

I thought the majority of modders were highly trained commandos or expert marksman.... with names like TopEliteKiller....
and erm... Gunmaster95
Sorry for the diversion please return now to your scheduled mod discussion.

Overall, I feel pretty good. I've been working on two pretty ambitious projects and I feel like the need to learn Papyrus has alienated some people, but at the same time, it is so powerful that I cannot really imagine going back to Oblivion. I feel like working with the CK to add new game mechanics is really rewarding, I just need to be careful not to burn out as it is easy to sink a lot of time into projects.

No sorrys allowed Mr lizard your scaley slightly moisturey looking skin shall find no pitty or forgiveness here we demand Grilled Lizard legs!

Shh! What blasfamy do you speak of!?

After some frustrating attempts, I'm currently just planning for my future mods, trying to learn more about the scripting language, playing with other mods and gathering ideas and patiently waiting for a less painful modding environment.

Hopefully Bethesda will correct the problems and/or modders will find workable work-around and correction tools for a more manageable environment for modding.

It's going. I'm trying to make good use of my new mic by figuring out the dialogue system of the creation kit. After about 2 hours of messing with various settings, I was able to create a basic NPC with multiple random greetings. I might make a few of them and release it all. Probably won't bother with a thread for it, though.

I agree with those that stated that modders properly just aren't using the forums too much anymore. There's tons of content on Nexus and Workshop, so we know the community is still pretty huge. Just because people don't post here a lot doesn't mean modding is dead.

To me it feels like the mods forum is dead. As Emma said, it used to be exploding in the old Oblivion modding days. Perhaps part of the flare to Oblivion modding was that Oblivion was the first sandbox game with normal mapping, specular lighting, and many still used current gen rendering features. Plus I think Oblivion needed a lot more modding than Skyrim too.

Part of the appeal though for me with Oblivion was that it was the perfect game to mod. The variety of areas (swamps, the beautiful coast of Anvil, Bruma area, colovia, the scummy bravil, etc) plus it was a classical medieval setting with proper castles and a wide variety of cities that all had their own feel. Skyrim is sort of a great big Bruma with very little variation on that, so if you don't like snow and mountains your pretty well screwed.

For me, modding is coming along great. Papyrus kicked me in the ass and teeth in the beginning, but with patience and persistence, most things I want to do come fairly easily now. With functions it's so much easier to keep your scripts organized.There is still much to learn, but I have to wonder what kind of amazing mods I can do next year or two, if I'm learning this much this early on. I remember Oblivion took a long time to learn too, at least scripting did when you don't know anything about it. Now I can at least read other people's code and understand it, which is a good step towards progress also.

Perhaps Papyrus scared off quite a few people. I think the delay in releasing the CK hurt them too.

The other thing to keep in mind is it is summer. Most people say F the computer, and they are off to the outdoors and won't touch much of any games or modding until this fall when it's cold and they have nothing better to do.

My final thoughts are, that the community is sort of split up into 4 or more factions now. BGS forums, Skyrim Nexus, Steam, and then a place where you can get/discuss more mature themed mods and half a dozen other sites. The amount of mods being released daily on the Nexus proves that modding is still popular, as it usually takes me a half hour or so to look at all the new mods that comes out each day. These forums don't do themselves any favors by "over moderating", not allowing screenshots or IMG, imbedded videos and a 200 post limit make promoting/discussing your own mods a chore. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy these forums, but sometimes its just a lot more convenient to post elsewhere.

Steam is ok I guess, but my time is limited, so why should I have to keep track of 4+ sites now just to post my mods and make sure everyone sees them? Then it's hard to support 4+ discussion threads when you release it too. So for me, it's a matter of how convenient it is to discuss/support my mods, and then a matter of popularity. Since this forum seems dead/deadish... I tend to look elsewhere, like the nexus. But it's still valuable. Like I go to Nexus to see all the new/most popular stuff, and come here for specific opinions, like which food mod is best, scripting support, etc.

• http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1375562-to-my-fellow-modders-how-do-you-feel/page__st__30
  
  Let's just hope that the Navmesh bug is fixed before or with the Dawnguard release. Many potential modders might reconsider starting modding again if that DLC is appealing enough. If major bugs are still around then, they are shooed away again.
  

EXACTLY!

i started modding when oblivion was the big cheese in town, and i became hopelessly addicted to it.

all through fallout 3 and NV i made my own mods for personal use, as i felt i wouldnt be able to create anything that other people would want. then i took a long break from bethesda games, to try and get some social life back.....

it didnt work, as im back to the same old situation with skyrim. spending all my spare time on this forum or on the nexus.

the one thing that has changed is that i keep breaking stuff. when i started out in oblivion and fallout/NV i made a few mistakes, but most of the time the things i made were stable, i dont remember a time that i managed to crash the game with something i made......

with skyrim its totally different. everything i try to do, every idea i have for a mod causes the game to go into meltdown. i think this is what is making the modding community smaller than it should be.

i remember someone in a old thread on here describing skyrim as "a delicate flower that needs constahnt attention" and i have to agree. make one small mistake and your whole project can go up the swanny.

couple that with the large amount of negative nancies who like to tear other peoples mods to shreds when something doesn't work quite right, and you end up where we are today. a small community which is getting smaller by the week as modders give up and move on to other more stable game engines.

maybe things will be different in a years time.

This part specifically is a large reason why most modders I think get pushed away in the end.

Coupled with my lengthy dissertation about Steam Workshop and the Ck discussion taking up most of this thread the modding community as a Whole is tearing apart.

Example of this is In Deadly Dragons we split off into Armory and Spells Recently alot of you might or Might not have noticed that. but Immediately when we did both Armory and Spells were Swarmed with a large amount of people with this sentiment. Mind you Armory has been the same for well over 3 months now because it wasnt changed in the split off.

50% of Spells discussion and alot of early armory Discussion comprises of this. "Hey you plagerist arseholes Youre ripping off WoW get your own ideas and stop ripping off other games!" *rage rage rage*

Now then thats a small example of what Happens but Like I said Armory hadnt changed for over 3 months then suddenly it becomes its new Mod and bam first week is the WoW Rage Rage Rage people.

THeres a Reason Places like Direct TV Comcast Cable and the other Companies like that Have a High Turnaround rate and this is a prime example of why they do. Unlike Those companies though Skyrim Doesnt have Hoards of people Scrambling and Climbing over others to get into the Modding business.

Yes, i belive it does, but i haven't bothered to find out how to setup the SVN client required to get it. And i like to have as few programs installed on my PC as possible.

You don't have to do that at all. All you need is the link to the SourceForge page which is provided in one of the spoilered sections of the first post of the Wrye Bash thread. I'll make it easy for you, http://oblivionworks.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/oblivionworks/Programs/Wrye%20Bash/ is the link, Bookmark it so you don't forget it. Click on Download GNU Tarball and as long as you have a program like 7-zip you can easily extract the files to where you have installed Wrye Bash.

Artorius.

You also Need to Have Wrye Bash Fully Downloaded (python and everything else) Not just the Standalone.

Maybe not yet but bugs in the creation kit, such as the Navmesh bug that should have been fixed, have not helped.

Me personally, I have taken a leave of absence from the ck for a while.

My mod project was coming along nicely. Admitedly i was slowing down working on it after hitting the navmesh bug. Then I found out about how tesvsnip is causing bugs in other peoples mods, I finally decided to bite the bullet and start over.

But at the moment I cannot actually bring myself to making a start in the interior cells.

As a result, I've actually started PLAYING the game again, something I hadn't done since the ck was released. Every cloud has a silver lining so they say.

I see myself turning into one of those long term modders, so I will get back to the ck, I just need to get myself motivated a bit first

- Hypno

Well, let's see......

Navmesh bug.
Papyrus scripting.
Flash menus.....
No fix for bugs that have been in the game since oblivion. (morrowind?)
Little to no information coming from beth on what they are planning on fixing......

No, I don't have any real desire to mod for Skyrim.

Not happy. I stopped trying.

Man, that hurts because you are a good veteran modder. I remember you since MW. I don't blame you, I feel the same way about Skyrim. I'm getting the feeling that I'm at the end of the road with the TES franchise.

I'm not giving up quite yet.

3jious not giving up yet eithers Hes recently Started on his newest work Dynamic Loot

its working to be something awsome

I wanted to make a debut mod (instead of just guides and helping other modders with their files) ... But the above sums up why I didn't start anything ambitious / time consuming.

Went for a useful but safe option instead with just a texture replacer for us old schooly machine users. Anything else I have considered is just faced with a wall of un-certainty, bound to be problematic for users generating a merry-go-round of bad vibe comments when x mod mixed with y mod and z patch = poo is not a happy bear x 20000 users ( in my dreams )

I just can't get into Skyrim like I used to modded Oblivion. Skyrim's guilds and quests aren't that great...but I think its more along the lines of I need a complete overhaul in the vein of Oscurs or Frans to really get me excited for Skyrim again. I couldn't play Oblivion without them. Vanilla Skyrim is much better, but something is still missing?

Maybe the next batch of dlc will spice things up around here.