After the big wave of mods at middle time after the launch of the game and b4 dawnguard seems tomme there are less and less people on the boards checking mods or doing mods, just an impressionor the interest in skyrim is quickly dropping?

Can we please stop with the these threads? There is at least one a week like this one.

I wouldn't say the interest is dropping quickly, it might look that way because less mods are released daily now then in the beginning/middle, but the mods that is in the pipeline now also seems to be bigger and with a lot more detail put into them.

I follow the mod community ant the nexus site and my impression is that while there are fewer new mods being released people seems to focus more on quality on the mod, rather then the mass production we saw earlier. Also Dawnguard will arrive and most likely it means that quite some of the mods out today will need a remake to fix possible conflicts that will occur and this also could put a stop for some people releasing their mods until Dawnguard arrives.

It has been a while since Skyrim's original release. I see its on sale on Steam again, so I think numbers will pick up again soon. When DG is released for PC I'm sure you'll find a lot of old players returning, with new wave of mods as well.

Overall I think Skyrim is a more balanced game than Oblivion was, so less mods in general was NEEDED, in my mind the majority focussing on visual enhancements. Remember as well that OOO and MMM and all those took a while after Oblivion's release to really take off, and in our case SkyRe and ACE as the two more major overhauls in my mind are doing a good job and progressing nicely.

There is nothing weird about the numbers.

It's mostly just that the big mods are being worked on now more than before, because people now know the engine, the scripting, etc.

The wave of minor mods are always bigger in the beginning, while in the end, only the ones with the most interest in modding are left, so it is only natural that the amount of new mods dwindles a bit as time passes. The wave of new, BIG mods, on the other hand, is not yet upon us.

I agree with this. For Oblivion, there were a lot of "casual" mods that could be made. I find that it's less so with Skyrim, things are done better and less needs changing. I'm still using barely any mods, where as Oblivion really needed 30+ to make it usable for me.

Also, like stated, the mods that are being released are generally higher quality, bigger mods. Now that the novelty of the Steam Workshop has gone, it's when the "serious" mods start coming out. Activity here is pretty big, and there's still a lot of activity in the CK forum.

I hope those bigger mods actually release. Looking at the current ones out now, there are virtually no real mods out there with any kind of plot, story, or even minor quest of note.

Oh, and as for modders, any question of creating mods is turning out to be "just use xxx mod" instead of actually being helpful.

Not really. The Beyond Skyrim projects are just about ready to start (High Rock already has) and a lot of mods are constantly being updated with new stuff. Just because you see less mods coming out doesn't mean there's less modding goin' on.

All the low hanging fruit has been handled already. Every simple mod that 'fixes' something has been created. Though the opportunity to do it better still exists, as well as chasing and fixing bugs, if you want a successful mod right now you need to be at least somewhat more ambitious than before. There is a wide player base still playing and appreciative of new mods.

But modding definitely is still happening. New toys like SkyProc which is a godsend for mod compatibility is opening huge new possibilities, as well as the promising revived TES5Edit project which should allow mods unthinkable before to be made. Though we don't have a proper fully featured Bashed Patch maker yet, development is active on this, which should further enhance mod compatibility.

Unfortunately it is true that since all of the tools to do really ambitious modding projects needs to be developed by the community and that takes time. And once tools are created then the mods actually need to be made by hobbyists (noone is getting paid for this) and that takes as long. It is unfortunate, but as was true for Oblivion, those who replay the game over a year later are the ones who will most benefit from the modding community.

But it is true, some modders only mod while they are still playing. Once they move on they no longer mod or maintain mods. This is an unfortunate reality, but not an issue at this time with so many talented devs still among us.

Not talking much of mods n general but number of peopleinterested in them as well .....sure hardcoe modders now stand on among the rest but seems to me less from what was morrowindnlike.... Perhaps justsummer....

Unless my memory fools me this isn't the first thread from you with a similar question, so I start to think why is it so important to get this answered? It almost seems like a kind of obsession for you.

Well, lets see... Morrowind apparently boasts over 4 million sales according to the big wiki. Skyrim has well over 10 million.

Now for modding stats... according to the Nexus...

Skyrim has over 18k mods with over 52 million unique downloads.
Oblivion has over 27k mods with over 62 million unique downloads.
Morrowind has just under 2.5k mods with 1.4 million unique downloads.

Okay, the Morrowind numbers seem a little low, perhaps they havn't been tracking downloads for that long, but it definitely suggests that Morrowind's mod volume and mod consumption is way lower than Skyrim or Oblivion.

On the Skyrim and Oblivion side... Oblivion was released in 2006, so that is 6 years of stats. Skyrim? Less than a year. I'm pretty sure that the unique downloads will overtake Oblivion by November. Mod volume might take a while longer, but as mentioned Oblivion needed a LOT of mods just to render it playable, while Skyrim is fine in vanilla. In addition a lot of the popular Oblivion mods were made standard in Skyrim, there is a post somewhere where someone went and identified them, but not gonna find it.

So what I'm getting at, its your imagination. As big as Oblivion was, Skyrim is turning out to be bigger, even if it hasn't had as long yet.

EDIT: Okay, I can think of one reason why Skyrim has a lower mod volume. Oblivion had the CK released with the game release, Skyrim we had to wait MONTHS. That I'm pretty sure skewed the mod numbers a bit.

EDIT2: This doesn't include SW subscriptions btw, with those included I'm pretty sure Skyrim has already overtaken Oblivion on the mod download metric.

Oblivion mod community has existed for many years longer then Skyrim modding community, so it is natural the mod number there is higher then with Skyrim. It would be strange if it wasn't...

Well yeah, that's my point. In 9 months Skyrim has created 66% of the total volume of mods that Oblivion has after 6 years. And Oblivion's modding community being hailed as one of its largest strengths. And 83% of the unique downloads. That does seem to point that there are less mods ratio-wise, but they are downloaded far more often. This is what I try and explain by the CK being released late. We have less 'OMG I just got SKyrim lemme make something in CK and upload and forget about it!' mods, so if anything a higher average quality level than Oblivion due to late CK release.

Any claim that interest or community of Skyrim mods is less by Oblivion or Morrowind standards is absolute hogwash. All signs point to it being stronger than ever. Time will tell I guess, real test is seeing if still as active after 3 years that Oblivion was, but right now plenty strong.

Well, Oblivion modding wasn't Nexus exclusive either, I remember back when I got started with modding my Oblivion, I got at least half my stuff from PlanetElderscrolls, and also lots of mods had their own sites, I used to see that a lot more than I'm seeing with Skyrim now. So those numbers aren't really representative of the total downloads / number of mods. But it does give you an idea, Skyrim modding isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

why you say this ? I dont remember to have made another thread about this.... It just looks like few people browse the forum.... I actually expected 100 or more ppl around all times instead perhapsn skyrim modding is just a small fanbase niche?

It's called "the silent majority". probably 80-90% of users don't comment anywhere. They try something, and if they like it, they keep it, and if they don't like it, they delete and never tell anyone.

As for authors, I think there's still plenty of activity. I know I've got plenty to keep me busy.

This isn't the only Skyrim modding forum; look at the Nexus or the Workshop as well.

Seriously, this is getting obnoxious. Why do people care so much if these forums aren't as active as they expect? Mods are still being made, and good ones at that. What's there to complain about?

im working on one now, it'll be out maybe late september, thats a "Maybe", people must be on here a decent amount, coz i add something in my thread, and 5 minutes later its on page 3.
i dont get what the issue is really.

I suppose because modders dont like to feel that they are wasting their time. Why do people feel the need to jump down the throat of anyone who posts something they dont like. Do people sit and watch TV they dont like just so they can complain. Just dont answer if you dont like the thread.

For my part I have ceased with Skyrim until it is more modder friendly simply because porting across the hundreds upon hundreds of meshes I have made for my mod are beyond a chore. Modding here will no doubt pick up steam when the nif exporters and importers and nifskope are capable and don't require tweaks and fixes and other faffing around.

Those are my personal reasons for no longer modding Skyrim. I will return to it when modding it is more a pleasure than work. Currently there is no enjoyment in modding it. The game is fine, everything is fine, except the modding tools.

Please feel free to entirely ignore my post if you dont like the fact that I had the audacity to post something that you don't think should be posted. Clearly Prometheus has concerns, be gracious enought to give people a platform for their concerns in a public forum.

I was going to make a thread the other day requesting someone to gather all the bigger mod projects listed into one thread so everything is easily trackable.

I can for sure say there are at least 7+ to look forward to. Sounds good to me.

{edit} also, some projects slow down because some people prefer to put half-effort into it somewhat along the way.