The great thing about that screener is that you hardly notice the bloodied corpse sprawled across the rocks in the background, and it's entirely possible to not see it at all, due to the distraction center-stage. It's a powerful artistic statement that speaks volumes about the state of our society.

-Loth

mods = real life alteration magic. And no alteration spells are bad spells.

This, I doubt I'll see a smarter post than this. Modding is what makes old games on par with new games.
Example of Morrowind, a 2002 game that has so much mentioned water than Skyrim does:
http://www.freewebs.com/aldanaril/MGE%20Screenshot%2034.jpg - Oblivion style water
http://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/1/36/Morrowind-MGE-Crysis.jpg - very transparent water
http://static.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/23606-2-1238971669.jpg -version with strong reflection
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/1641/waterwaveetwatercaustic.png -version with good transparency and real 3D waves.

So you see, it doesn't only make the water better, it also gives us a choice to match our tastes in case I don't likle my water too shiny, or too dark or transparent etc etc.

Same with Skyrim's interface. I find it really good myself, they didn't do anything wrong with it. Someone might simply not like the design. For those people mods will be done, and they will be using interface they like better. So it's not just about fixing the bugs, it's about customization of the game to totally fit your playing style and aesthetical preferences etc etc etc.

One incredible simple thing like categorization in containers and alphabetic sorting in them,
Trying to store items of difrent use in an container without SkyUi is pretty hopeless.
together with showing weight, value and armor rating or damage.
No idea why it was in the original probably as it made the design less clean, however also very little user friendly, an inventory is to move things around, a clean nice look is way less important after spending 10 hours in it.

Thats a bit ignorant to say...

The main reason why people like to mod their game is because we all have different tastes. We love Skyrim at its core, but feel it should be different in some aspects of the game.

SOme people mod because they can.


Bethesda made the game they wanted, and with modding being a big part of their community, they don't incorporate mods that change the game unless its things like SkyBoost. To them, the UI is fine (which I agree, sue me) so they have no reason to incorporate it. If you like the mod, then use it. To incorporate the mod themselves, they are basically forcing a mod on someone they may not want.


From a personal standpoint, I just love the ability to make things and put them into a game. To be able to realize things from my imagination in a videogame is like smoking crack... except its legal and not harmful to my body... I love seeing my creations on screen. Its like virtual legos.


Mods like texture packs are made because people feel the texture quality of the game is lacking. But this isnt because Betheda is incapable of making high quality textures. They have consoles to think about so they have to optimize textures for performance reasons. If the game were PC only, then the texture quality would have been far better. So that is where modding comes in. People made these textures on their own time because Bethesda cant do it because its 1. Not monitaraly benefitial to them and 2. They have to be realistic and consider the time it would take and the gain. They have to consider game performance rather then the realistic look.

Note, this is not trying to start a console/pc war, so please don't start one.


So in the end, its all about personal taste, and modding allows us to tailor aspects of the game to our liking, but its not limited to that. The CK will allow us to make new content like quests, dungeons, and landscapes. Its a dandbox and we are just having fun building out own castles.

I cannot comprehend why you dislike modding.. Its free Add-Ons and if their PC is powerful enough they can make it look nicer.. Nothing more.. I play on consoles and sometimes PC.. Their is no reason to hate on Modds because you don't have a PC.. I wanted to make that clear..

I don't mod my games as much as some folks do, and when I do I make my own, but those mods I do use are there to make the game play the way I want it to. For example: I like my weapons to behave more or less realistically, so once the CK comes out I'll be consulting some folks in the Mods forum for the proper values and then plugging them in.

I make my own mods because that way the changes therein are the ones I want, rather than the ones someone else felt were appropriate. I also have the time to do so, unlike some folks.

I do not criticize mods; most of them are useful to some point and they are a good challenge for people who are simply curious about video games. It's just: why buying a game if you don't want to play it? If you want to use it your own way, wouldn't it be more challenging to build up your own game from scratch (and sell it if it works)?

As for RPing, you can do that within the game; it'll just require a little more thinking to achieve this. If you find that Skyrim is not open, try these other games that won't let you do anything out of the way.

People mod the game because they like it, or part of it, enough that they see some potential they want it to fulfill. Nobody would have gone to the trouble to make something like SkyUI if they thought Skyrim was a worthless game. SkyUI takes a good game and makes it a better game.

Bethesda doesn't use all these ideas for several reasons: they might not work on all platforms, maybe only a small percentage of users will like them, maybe they don't have time/money, or maybe they just don't like a lot of them.

The number of mods for a game, and the fact that people add loads of them, isn't worrying at all. Take an old game that everyone loved; my favourite example is DOOM. Everybody who was around in the 90s has seen it and it was very well loved. That didn't stop us from making countless thousands of mods for it. The reasons were the same: sometimes they fixed something that svcked, sometimes they just added more maps to play, sometimes they were technically interesting, and sometimes modders build silly things just because they can. These things don't diminish id's work on DOOM at all -- if anything, they flatter id. Not many companies make games that keep active communities for 18 years.

Regarding reverse engineering: it's not illegal. Many of the best mods for a lot of games were created through reverse engineering. This includes mods for Skyrim. You'll see most softare licenses have a clause prohibiting it, but they also say "except where prohibited by law" (ie. many places, including the USA don't permit them to prohibit reverse engineering). The reasons for these things aren't relevant here, except to mention the obvious: reverse engineering helps lead to better mods, or even any mods in the case of games with no mod support.

People gave various reasons for modding here. They're all good. If you're not interested then that's cool too.

You must be under the impression that people only download one mod, ever. Nudie mods are popular, there's no doubt about that, but most people who dl mods get dozens of them that affect all kinds of gameplay and quest stuff. Why is reality TV so popular? I haven't the faintest idea. But I don't make a blanket assumption about people who own TVs that all they have them for is to sit slackjawed in front of Jersey Shore.

I say this as a hetero female who has zero desire to see naked pixel toons, and once there are good mods to make the female armor less skeevy, those are the ones I'll be downloading. In the meantime I'm tweaking my player homes, crafting a variety of things you can't normally craft, and adding options to the character creator.

Same. How about we try the opposite question. Why wouldn't you mod your game if you had the chance?

There all kinds of great mods out there that fix issues and improve gameplay elements that wouldn't be lore unfriendly, and more release all the time. Console users don't have the ability to add mods, so that's understandable, but why would a PC user limit themselves to the vanilla game? I don't see why people would stay vanilla just to play the same exact game as the retail version, if the devs were insulted by improvements they wouldn't allow modability.

And why put up with the flaws of their version if they could be fixed? Sure, they should ideally be fixing it themselves, but you suffering through the bugs and ignoring a community-made fix isn't going to encourage them to patch, they just either will or they won't.

For me, customization is king. If I can download some mods that help my RP and aid in my character concept, I will. If there are mods adding more options in various parts of the game, I'll use those too. A modded game still Bethesda's game for the most part, except it has more of the things I wanted and less of the things I didn't.

Since the release of Morrowind, where a constructionset is included, modding has been a part of the TES games and is also the reason why a 10 years old game is still alive.
With modding the lifespan of a game can be increased. And from some mods are even full games made, like DotA and counterstrike. With mods you have more options, you have a choice how to play.
I don't agree to adopt a mod as standard by the developer, like that UI mod. Let people decide itself if they want to use the mod or not. Some made it find a good mod, while others dislike it. That's also the advantage of a mod; it's optional.

Modding is the reason Morrowind and Oblivion still sell after years... huge profit.

To be fair, only 500,000 people, (cut that down by 150,000 because some may had lost their account,) had downloaded that Mod.

Those other 1,000,000 downloads were re-downloads from the same people.

--

And not everyone is a pervert or even heterosixual. I've no reason to download something such as that.

People like to mod, simple as that. It's the reason I alwasy check retextures to make sure that they're actually BETTER. (over 50% of them aren't or are a mixed bag). Yes most of the mods currently aren't compulsory, but Skyrim would benefit from a lot of mods once the CK is out. Wouldn't you rather be able to ride horses with your companion?

Bethesda didn't have a problem putting it in the stock game =/

I personally don't give 2 hoots what anyone else uses in the way of mods, so long as everything is within the law. (obviously, some content could break the law)

Heh, is that a no on both? I have nvde mods for both genders installed, just on the principle that people should not have modern underwear glued on. Nor does it make sense for the bathing npcs to remove their clothes to wet their underwear. I wish we had Morrowind's system where you could actually wear underwear under armour and clothes.

You're right though, the nexus is hopelessly perverted, at almost any time the top or popular files will be something stupid and tasteless- armour that provides just nipble protection etc. The top files even have an advlts only category.

This is probably the first TES game where I will not be using mods made by others on a large scale. Just mostly mods that fix issues. Everything else will be made by me. And the reason IM doing it because I know exactly what it takes to entertain me.

It's just a search function (advlt-only, etc, whatever other category you want,) just a way to index things for everyone. There would still be an advlt category even if there were no advlt mods. Lol

And... everyone who plays games is typically considered a nerd; or at least games such as Skyrim or anything else that immerses you into the game itself to some degree. And not to sound prude, but nerds are typically very sixual because often enough "we" haven't really been all too sixually involved with other people. Lol

Myself? ... eh, people can do what they want. Anyone in their late 'teens is going to look for some kind of pormography.

--

But to base all Skyrim mods and other mods to be driven by sixual intentions is completely ridiculous.

Exactly some of us just like an open world with which to work in.

Nope, outside of that there's top-100(I think) advlt mods. Same with images. I've been with nexus with the start, that wasn't always there, PES doesn't have it. I'm sure the need for it arose when 80% of the mods started becoming advlts. In a way it's useful for finding more useful mods I suppose.

I'm not lambasting pormography, just, time and a place. Skimypy armour's a bit of a pet peeve for me.

Skyrim like most sandbox games are like your own home, you buy them, live in them and grow to love them, but you still want to make changes to them to suite your tastes.

I can upgarde how the game looks, texture mods, ini mods, skimpy armours etc to suit myself.
Even the devs probably would have liked to make versions for for powerfull PCs just so they can show off their game in all it's glory but unfortunately they are trapped within the constraints of producing a multi platform game and have thier hands tied by the publishing companies.

Modding also develops future game producing talent, talent who make things that people want to see or use in their games.
Modding is essential for the games industry or it will go stale, turning it into every other regulated media peice of junk that is out there.

Or entire new racing tracks.

I do this and can also start the mq anytime I wish. Console is pretty flippin handy

or better looking drivers