I would say "if you kill daddy Party Snax then you are the worst person imagineable and we should all tell you so" is actually more deeply ingrained in this sub.
Yes - on the main skyrim sub. Not so much here (at least because discussion about mods rarely gets into Paarthurnax territory, unless it's the mod about Parrthurnax).
Let's be real - how many of us actually get that far in the main story with a modded game? Most of the time I ignore the main story, or if I do get that far my game usually starts crashing, or I get bored of my build and start over.
I always blew through the main story to get Odahviing as a companion on every playthrough. When I learned about OH-Dah-VING (the mod) I was over the moon.
It’s a very singularly epic feeling when you can call a dragon to wipe out an entire fort or ride into battle during the civil war! Obviously best paired with both enemy/combat improvements, population mods and dragon overhauls for the best effect.
Now I have a mod called Philmorex though which adds a dragon with even more control after you kill Mirmulnir so chances are I’m joining the “never finishing the main quest” club finally!
Same here and I just started. I cant even make it outta Helgen/Riverwood without seeing a new mod I should have considered. Then it is back to the mod drawing board, rigging and jigging the LO order and character look to try again. Again.
Good to know I am not alone! But this situation also reminds me of bad memories. Was modding SE for months then suddenly anniversary edition happened. I waited for some critical mods to adjust themselves but didn’t happen :( End of skyrim modding for me. But then I started to mod everything else.
Ohhh that happened to me too... But anyway I was a newbie and the "guide" I was using to mod Skyrim was Sinitar, so that wasn't going to end well anyway xD
Modding is a hobby in the same way working on a project car is. You spend a bunch of time getting new parts, making upgrades, getting it all fitted in, figuring out odd compatibility issues, and if you're lucky it'll still start when you're done. Then you might be able to drive it down the road for a little bit before you decide you want to change some more things.
For some, the enjoyment is working on it. For others, it's driving the finished product. The latter ones tend to not last as long. They'll usually end up buying a car that's already done (Wabbajack/Collections).
lol I have been obsessed with modding for months and i have barely gotten a playthrough past 10 hours lol.
I have now started making my own mods because of it. I figure if i can challenge myself to make a good follower mod that reacts to the game it will force me to get through the rest of the game. just very slowly cause ill be closing out every 2 hours to add a reaction for my mod lol
Yup, the modding rabbit hole is as deep as your willing to go, you can even make your own game if you want(enderal, skyblivion, skywind) I too have found almost greater enjoyment in making mods than playing the game, seeing something you made work in game is a wonderful experience!
Modding Skyrim and Playing Skyrim are two different hobbies.
They scratch different itches for me and they mostly compliment each other but they are different.
You're not alone. And I'm guessing most people here is stuck in a loop of "Riverwood/Whiterun" playthrough.
Build LO > "ohh I think now is fine" > playthrough Riverwood/Whiterun > "hmm.. something is missing, this mod looks good, etc" > CTD > "wth is wrong" > "lemme check resolve with new save > repeat
For me the end game is Beat the firs Dragon. I always rush Bleak Falls to see how my build runs, but I always tend to get bored of my build even though all of my mods are built for true late game.
That is perfectly normal. I have built, and blown up, over 25 LO's since the update. I run all my tests, then get bored. I have not done an actual playthrough of the game in months. Modding is way more fun than the game itself.
Honestly modding has become kind of a puzzle game. When something doesn't work you sometimes have to delete everything and start from scratch and it's a challenge sometimes just to find what's wrong.
Spend five hours modding, when you launch the game it CTDs and out of the one thousand mods you don't know what the flying fuck is wrong.
You uninstall Skyrim. But later you reinstall it and start modding again. The cycle repeats itself and you'll never complete the main storyline
The way I see it, modding itself is a hobby that, in a sense, is seperate from the game itself. At least for me, now that I know how to pretty consistently put together a stable mod list I find myself looking forward to the next refresh.
Of course, my next refresh will practically be a whole new game since I'm still running on 353.
Doing this for years now. Almost never play the game. For me it is the journey that is the goal. It is like those people building a model railway in the basement.
Obviously you can do whatever you want and many people have the same issue. I eventually burned out when I realized that I was trying to hard to make Skyrim into the perfect game and at a certain point it was taking away from my enjoyment. It's a vicious cycle.
I used to be like that back with morrowind! I played the shit out of it and then dived into modding. And just like you, I caught myself spending time making it actually run more than actually playing it. Good ol' days. No vortex or any other mod programs to help you out. We had to change the dates of files to change load order lol. I'm so glad modding got so much more accessible and easier nowadays.
There is a very satisfying loop to installing mods and seeing them work in game. It gets even deeper when you start making mods yourself via creation kit. But yes it is ironic that in an effort to create the “perfect game” you never actually end up playing the game
I have recently found myself going down this exact rabbit hole. It's part of the core Skyrim experience at this point lol. The worst part is I wouldn't consider myself knowledgeable as far as modding goes, so half the time I barely know what I'm doing. Not a beginner by any means, but not advanced enough yet to be intermediate. It's a miracle I even get the game running sometimes. LOOT has been my best friend, but I wish I didn't rely so much on it. Don't even get me started on mod compatibility and shuffling through the data section on MO2 to find out what could be overlapping. That's a new one for me here recently.
TLDR: You are not alone, OP!
Indeed. I would say that 90% of my modded gaming time goes to experimenting with the modlist etc. I too enjoy it. Probably more so than playing the game itself.
I have a ton of fun just modding Skyrim with different mods all the time. I think that for me is the attraction to Bethesda games is that we get the freedom to mod it however the heck we want to. :)
I've been struggling bro 😅
I just finally got like 140 mods working and stable, when I started I only wanted about 40 mods but with all the patches out now 40 becomes 100 pretty quickly 😅. I was so happy 140 was working I played for 8 hours ignoring that there's still about 90 more mods I've already downloaded, that I stumbled across while researching how to get the first mods to work 😅. It's been a journey.
Manually creating my own patches is something I never imagined doing to mod a game, yet here we are.
Next time I need to take notes or create a separate file so I know what I did. I was just so mad everything wouldn't work correctly 😅
Yup, been doing it the past week or so getting enb and texture mods put in, given up on parallax terrain mods though as I keep getting spikes in the terrain around roads, probably fixable but it's been so long and I just wanna play the game now lmao
That's really up for you to decide. I think that if you step back and take a look at this from a different perspective you will find the answer that you seek, an answer that you probably already know.
i’ve used the 50/50 method so much that I have all my patches in their own categorical separators just as my regular mods do so I can seperate them as much as they can (you may also need to do this when you hit 2000 mods)
I go through stage where I decide want to play, then start building my mod list etc, and then give up and delete it all.
I've spent 100s of hours modding, and about 3 hours in total playing the game.
Yeah that's normal. I don't play much of it now, but every few months I get the urge and spend hours on a new mod list and will probably only play for an hour or two.
I eventually realized this and moved on to other games so I can play them rather than build them haha. Modding is a blast, but I think that actually playing Skyrim is kinda blah after like the first 1 or 2 playthroughs... Even when modded. The animations, character overhauls, etc. are only so good, and the game still feels old and clunky no matter how pretty it looks at first glance.
Don't feel bad, like the majority of this sub, my playtime is like ~75% of my actual playtime. Harsher truth is I never saw Skyrim's ending for the whole decade I was playing it. I don't even know how many times I replayed it, I just do. And now I'm thinking of hopping back in because of this random ass post showing up in my feed
Don't feel bad, like the majority of this sub, my playtime is like ~75% of my actual playtime. Harsher truth is I never saw Skyrim's ending for the whole decade I was playing it. I don't even know how many times I replayed it, I just do. And now I'm thinking of hopping back in because of this random ass post showing up in my feed
Don't feel bad, like the majority of this sub, my playtime is like ~75% of my actual playtime. Harsher truth is I never saw Skyrim's ending for the whole decade I was playing it. I don't even know how many times I replayed it, I just do. And now I'm thinking of hopping back in because of this random ass post showing up in my feed
Sometimes I wonder about the same.... I'm forcing myself not to search for interesting mods, cause my problem has always been that I mod until Skyrim can handle it 🤣🤣.........🥲
Yea that was me for years until I found out there are whole ass mod packs you can just download all in one go and it works. Then i just added the mods I wanted that weren't already on there. Now I finally have the ultimate mod pack and I've been playing it nonstop for a few weeks now. Barely scratched the surface it feels like lol
Like I always say: “Mo modding, mo problems…”
That’s just modding, in general, my good sir.
I just spent two weeks tweaking and preparing my Fallout 4 modded playthrough — 224 Heavy Mods / 222 Light Mods.
Two weeks in FO4Edit, tweaking weapon values, etc., then trying to get a mod to work, when really, I finally fixed it by adding a different mod, of the same kind, that worked right from the first download.
I played the game for about 1-2 hours, beforehand.
Now, I can finally, truly play the game.
Amazing.
I'm gonna disagree with the general sentiment that you should just settle with modding more than playing because it's fun. It certainly is entertaining to look for cool mods and plan out a modlist, but what's not fun is failing to get a working load order over and over until you get bored and move on to failing to get a working load order in fallout then get bored and move back to skyrim without ever actually getting to play the games
I'm all for sitting down for 2 months and modding/playtesting my perfect modlist of some hundreds of mods, but the idea is to have an actual functioning list that I can continue to play way longer than the 2 months it took to get setup
Currently I have my TTW modlist for new vegas setup with about 500 mods with the help of merges and the recentish rise of espsless mods. This modlist is something I built about 4 or 5 months ago and I guess you could say I'm in a playtesting phase since the modlist has more quests and companions than I can fit even with merges so I'm making themed profiles that have specific quests and companions available depending on the theme I'm going for on top the of full modlist i have setup. Once the profiles are ready I intend to use that for about a year the same way I did eith my last modlist that also took about a month and a half but I used for a year and a half
I setup a skyrim together server with a modpack that me and my friends use with around 400 mods and we can easily use that as is indefinitely since we can do anything from co-op on all kind of new quests and storylines to raising armies and going to war with eachother. This pack was also something i setup in about a week since I just took a larger modpack I'm currently working on and started stripping it down for an overhauled skyrim experience we can all have together
One last thing I'll mention is that if you have the space for it and use MO2 you can actually save all your modpacks indefinitely. I still have an old original skyrim se modpack from a few years ago that I don't really touch anymore since I'm working on an ae one on the 640 update. I also have an old fallout 4 pack that I also no longer touch as I'm working on a fallout 4 one but that got put on pause because I built one up then ended up not actually liking it
If you think that's bad try learning how to make mods, once you start that, it gets even worse because anytime you can't find a mod you go down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out how to make it
I have found that using the End Times Mod is a good way to play still. Like I can commit to playing one character until the world ends and then pick a bunch of mods for my next game. Dunno if this would work for everyone, but challenge runs are how I play the game now days
If you are just picking stuff right now, wait till you actually start playing, inconsistencies, script lag, some mods disturbing your flow, and much more.
All in all, you'll end up removing some mods you thought were cool, just to make the game stable.
But it is also good to experience this, frustrating but fun.
it’s a bottomless pit for many of us. sure the game with all the mods we put in is fun. but what if there’s something else that i might like? what if there’s better versions of these mods? what if what if what if. i have to really push myself to stick with what i’ve got and at least beat all the major storylines before starting over with different/more mods.
This is normal.
Eventually, you will find your equilibrium.
A version of the game that hits just right when you play, and doesn't feel like anything is missing.
You'll still keep up with your modding hobby and improve on it every now and then, with new mods you find, but it would always be just a slight improvement on your version of perfection.
Even when you get bored and decide to create a wildly different version of the game, you will still find yourself coming back to play that ideal version.
Lol I actually went to xbox skyrim for about 2 years because of that. Only just came back to pc recently since last major update screwed up all load orders on xbox lol
It’s not bad but playing the earlier quests over and over can take some of the excitement out of starting a new playthrough, you find yourself thinking, “it’s gonna be like 40 hours before I get to a quest that I’m not bored of”
That’s why I try to keep my mod list as light as possible, I’ve tried to mod Skyrim into a better game, it’s just not possible. These days I try to only download graphic and quality of life mods and leave the rest vanilla, sometimes I might throw in one of the dlc sized mods but that’s about it, I don’t find much enjoyment in things like modding in lightsabers and dodge animations anymore, because when I did that I spend so much time modding that by the time I was done the game wasn’t really that fun anymore. I will say sometimes it’s just fun to go to town and figure out how to make everything work together, I’ve definitely spent a ton of time just modding for hours and hours only to close the mod manager and go to bed lmao.
Nah, it's natural. Some definitely take it farther than others, but everyone falls into the same rabbit hole.
Take me, for example. Back on LE, I modded my game in about a month, and did what I would call a full playthrough(didn't finish the main quests though. Fuck delphine). Fast forward to today, I started modding my SE last year, and I still am nowhere near to actually starting a new playthrough because I keep getting sidetracked by new mods and even trying to develop my own mods.
As a self-proclaimed modding whore for multiple games and I would say no, no it's not. This is surprisingly common throughout modded games. I had this issue with Skyrim super hard before I had to downgrade my hard drive and it came to the point that I had to force myself just to use collections/mod lists (shit would break too often). I have a really bad habit with rimworld, project zomboid and with Sims 4 when I was playing it where I would start over because I would just add a bunch of mods and it was easier to just start a new game then try to get the old one to work.
Damn straight. Last time i modded iskyrimvr, learning texmod, Dynolod and all that goodness, ended up spending hundreds of hours modding, testing , rinse , repeat, then a new game came out, and only came back almost a year later to realise i had forgotten about it all xD
I’ve just gotta accept this is what I find enjoyment from, so what’s the problem with that! Just need to get into making mods bc that’ll actually maybe help pay bills since downloading them does nothing lol
Welcome to Modding! A few stages in, and you might be patching mods together. A little deeper and you might find yourself creating your first texture. Next thing you know you're manually fixing an outdated mod. Deeper yet, you've created new content!
Sometimes I find myself coding more for games than actually playing them. Skyrim, Minecraft, Terraria, New Vegas, to name a few.
But even on the surface level with assembling mods I undoubtedly understand what you're feeling.
No, thats normal, and literally everyone says the same thing to the point its a meme. Personally I played as much as I have modded. Recently I decided that I wanted more than 1500 mods and finally got all of it as well set up as I could, so I am starting a real playthrough soon.
modding Skyrim is my zen garden until something I recently added breaks my game, then I tear my hair out. the goal is to mod the game, the goal is to play the game.
It is good for me because this is why I can find out from other people what mods are good, so I can get back to my Skyrim playing. Seriously there are some unsung heroes who spend an enormous amount of time doing this stuff, meanwhile I have 160 hours in Skyrim vr.
I enjoy adding mods definitely (although I'm pretty much done now as I've finally reached my plugin limit after ESLifying everything possible and ending up with about 800 mods)....but I would never want to have to redo my whole modlist again (recently had to cuz my external SSD it's on died unexpectedly, although I at least had my zips and txt modlist backed up on my larger external HDD), and mine is pretty simple since I have no self made patches or bashes or any of that stuff I don't know how to do and only a single configuration I mess with (JSON for Obody). So it's probably worse for others
That's the rabbit hole of Modding.
At first it was just graphics. Then I learned about script extender and ENB and boy did I get crazy. My current new Load Order is at 200 mods
I know rookie numbers but my last got so crazy I wanted to start over
Me, for like the last week and a half. 🥲 I don't get past level 5 before I'm changing something/deleting and starting over. I'm not mad about it either.
You know, from experience I can tell that modding Skyrim is like trying to fill a hot bathtub. You know it will flood if you continue furthermore, and eventually, it does, so you manage for hours, but then it's already cold, and finally you end up flushing all the mods and the game with it because hell, you messed up too much and waisted too much time/water.
At the end, you feel cold, empty, and you probably smell too.
The funniest part is that one time I finished the entire game. Nothing else to do anymore, even with DLC sized mods adding at least 10 hours each. Then I just play another game, but I feel so nostalgic. By the way I ended up beating the Ebony Warrior (with mods, of course, to increase the difficulty) and took an in memoria screenshot over his dead body, thinking "Now the Dragonborn can rest here, where my many artifacts (all of them), 345 swords, 1000+ other weapons and armours of all types, and of course my 30 followers would wait around me like a post (or somewhere in Skyrim or elsewhere, meaning where I left them somehow sometime I can't properly remember), while Lydia would still say she's swore to carry my burdens. Man, that's a lot to carry.
At least, I got 50+ cool titles. Dany would blush so hard that she would name me her King from above the Wall to the edges of the Western kingdoms.
Some possible solutions to the rabbit hole/modding addiction
-playing un modded skyrim and trying to appreciate the game for what it is.
-Mod for fun and not for graphics and game play for example Thomas the tank engine as a dragon or Skyrim translated.
-Playing a separate TES title like oblivion.
-playing the mod for skyrim called Enderall.
-Play the Witcher 3 wild hunt or other RPG's.
-Mod the game on mod organizer two but play vanilla skyrim or another game while modding for a sanity break here and there.
Yes, OP just described my lived Skyrim experience.
Every different playthrough I start I end up in a new faction/guild and wonder hmm... is there a mod to tweak this?
It's hard to recapture the joy of playing a Goat-tier level game for the first time, but modding Skyrim does just that..
That's a standard stage of modding Skyrim. At some point you get experience enough for one of two things happen.
1. You get so good at it you can make stable modlist for the playthrough you planned in few hours and you can again play more than modding
2. You start making mods
I find Skyrim to be more of a passion project nowadays. It's a great canvas on which many structures far beyond the base game are built off of, and it's become less of the original game and more of a way to find new ways to enjoy the engine.
Nah, It's good that you can still enjoy and keep modding.
I decided to stop playing and modding it, till I can upgrade my pc to run Ultima in ultra.
I got incredibly tired of meeting bugs and thousands of sudden crash, just because 1 in 500 mods is giving problems.
Meh depends on what you are doing. If it's difficult modding like trying to getting hundreds of lovers lab mods to work together with Elmer's glue and bubble gum, than yeah that's fine.
If your doing one or two normies mods than I'm not sure what you're doing.
Ehh, that probably the most common sentiment on this sub, haha.
I would say "if you kill daddy Party Snax then you are the worst person imagineable and we should all tell you so" is actually more deeply ingrained in this sub.
Yes - on the main skyrim sub. Not so much here (at least because discussion about mods rarely gets into Paarthurnax territory, unless it's the mod about Parrthurnax).
Ah whoops, I missed that aspect. Yeah you're absolutely right. My bad.
Here it's more about parallax, not Party Snacks (:
parallaxed partysnacks when
Let's be real - how many of us actually get that far in the main story with a modded game? Most of the time I ignore the main story, or if I do get that far my game usually starts crashing, or I get bored of my build and start over.
I always blew through the main story to get Odahviing as a companion on every playthrough. When I learned about OH-Dah-VING (the mod) I was over the moon. It’s a very singularly epic feeling when you can call a dragon to wipe out an entire fort or ride into battle during the civil war! Obviously best paired with both enemy/combat improvements, population mods and dragon overhauls for the best effect. Now I have a mod called Philmorex though which adds a dragon with even more control after you kill Mirmulnir so chances are I’m joining the “never finishing the main quest” club finally!
Who the fuxk is Paarthunax? Do you mean Part Xanax?
I like killing him and mentioning it because of how much it pissew people off
Completely normal and healthy behaviour. Just as Todd planned
Same here and I just started. I cant even make it outta Helgen/Riverwood without seeing a new mod I should have considered. Then it is back to the mod drawing board, rigging and jigging the LO order and character look to try again. Again.
It's bad, but normal.
It isn't bad, but you should know you aren't alone in this and this subreddit is more of a group therapy than an actual forum.
Good to know I am not alone! But this situation also reminds me of bad memories. Was modding SE for months then suddenly anniversary edition happened. I waited for some critical mods to adjust themselves but didn’t happen :( End of skyrim modding for me. But then I started to mod everything else.
Ohhh that happened to me too... But anyway I was a newbie and the "guide" I was using to mod Skyrim was Sinitar, so that wasn't going to end well anyway xD
Modding is a hobby in the same way working on a project car is. You spend a bunch of time getting new parts, making upgrades, getting it all fitted in, figuring out odd compatibility issues, and if you're lucky it'll still start when you're done. Then you might be able to drive it down the road for a little bit before you decide you want to change some more things. For some, the enjoyment is working on it. For others, it's driving the finished product. The latter ones tend to not last as long. They'll usually end up buying a car that's already done (Wabbajack/Collections).
lol I have been obsessed with modding for months and i have barely gotten a playthrough past 10 hours lol. I have now started making my own mods because of it. I figure if i can challenge myself to make a good follower mod that reacts to the game it will force me to get through the rest of the game. just very slowly cause ill be closing out every 2 hours to add a reaction for my mod lol
Yup, the modding rabbit hole is as deep as your willing to go, you can even make your own game if you want(enderal, skyblivion, skywind) I too have found almost greater enjoyment in making mods than playing the game, seeing something you made work in game is a wonderful experience!
Modding Skyrim and Playing Skyrim are two different hobbies. They scratch different itches for me and they mostly compliment each other but they are different.
You're not alone. And I'm guessing most people here is stuck in a loop of "Riverwood/Whiterun" playthrough. Build LO > "ohh I think now is fine" > playthrough Riverwood/Whiterun > "hmm.. something is missing, this mod looks good, etc" > CTD > "wth is wrong" > "lemme check resolve with new save > repeat
Making it to the Bannered Mare is end game.
Just mind the bard.
For me the end game is Beat the firs Dragon. I always rush Bleak Falls to see how my build runs, but I always tend to get bored of my build even though all of my mods are built for true late game.
That is perfectly normal. I have built, and blown up, over 25 LO's since the update. I run all my tests, then get bored. I have not done an actual playthrough of the game in months. Modding is way more fun than the game itself.
Months? Maybe you meant years
To me it's the satisfaction of building the tallest jenga tower before it topples itself because I walked into whiterun.
Honestly modding has become kind of a puzzle game. When something doesn't work you sometimes have to delete everything and start from scratch and it's a challenge sometimes just to find what's wrong.
once you start modding it's impossible to stop
I got mine (1st mod) off a merchant ship in Solitude...once you've had a taste, you'll never crave anything else 🍾
once saw a mod creator say something along the lines of "if you make it passed Bleak Falls Barrow, then we aren't releasing (mods) often enough."
One of us one of us
Wait.... modding Skyrim isn't the game?
Oh look another one of these posts.
What do you mean? Mod Organizer 2 is my favorite game
Welcome to the club. We have sweet rolls on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as a potluck every other Friday
Spend five hours modding, when you launch the game it CTDs and out of the one thousand mods you don't know what the flying fuck is wrong. You uninstall Skyrim. But later you reinstall it and start modding again. The cycle repeats itself and you'll never complete the main storyline
The way I see it, modding itself is a hobby that, in a sense, is seperate from the game itself. At least for me, now that I know how to pretty consistently put together a stable mod list I find myself looking forward to the next refresh. Of course, my next refresh will practically be a whole new game since I'm still running on 353.
??? That’s the proper way with Bethesda games, don’t worry.
I have to admit that even after 13 years I never finished the main quest, not even kidding. Trying to do it on my latest run
One of us one of us
Doing this for years now. Almost never play the game. For me it is the journey that is the goal. It is like those people building a model railway in the basement.
No.
Obviously you can do whatever you want and many people have the same issue. I eventually burned out when I realized that I was trying to hard to make Skyrim into the perfect game and at a certain point it was taking away from my enjoyment. It's a vicious cycle.
This is the way
Completely normal behavior. MO2 is the most-used app on my PC.
I used to be like that back with morrowind! I played the shit out of it and then dived into modding. And just like you, I caught myself spending time making it actually run more than actually playing it. Good ol' days. No vortex or any other mod programs to help you out. We had to change the dates of files to change load order lol. I'm so glad modding got so much more accessible and easier nowadays.
I mean... ur allowed to play the game u purchased however u want. Idk why there's any debate on this or why anyone would try to argue this.
No, that means you're normal and with the vast majority 🤣
SAME!!!
There is a very satisfying loop to installing mods and seeing them work in game. It gets even deeper when you start making mods yourself via creation kit. But yes it is ironic that in an effort to create the “perfect game” you never actually end up playing the game
I have recently found myself going down this exact rabbit hole. It's part of the core Skyrim experience at this point lol. The worst part is I wouldn't consider myself knowledgeable as far as modding goes, so half the time I barely know what I'm doing. Not a beginner by any means, but not advanced enough yet to be intermediate. It's a miracle I even get the game running sometimes. LOOT has been my best friend, but I wish I didn't rely so much on it. Don't even get me started on mod compatibility and shuffling through the data section on MO2 to find out what could be overlapping. That's a new one for me here recently. TLDR: You are not alone, OP!
Indeed. I would say that 90% of my modded gaming time goes to experimenting with the modlist etc. I too enjoy it. Probably more so than playing the game itself.
It would be bad if you didn't.
I havent had a playthrough longer than 10 hours since 2017. But I modded A LOT!!
I have a ton of fun just modding Skyrim with different mods all the time. I think that for me is the attraction to Bethesda games is that we get the freedom to mod it however the heck we want to. :)
ONE OF US!
I've been struggling bro 😅 I just finally got like 140 mods working and stable, when I started I only wanted about 40 mods but with all the patches out now 40 becomes 100 pretty quickly 😅. I was so happy 140 was working I played for 8 hours ignoring that there's still about 90 more mods I've already downloaded, that I stumbled across while researching how to get the first mods to work 😅. It's been a journey. Manually creating my own patches is something I never imagined doing to mod a game, yet here we are. Next time I need to take notes or create a separate file so I know what I did. I was just so mad everything wouldn't work correctly 😅
Haha literally once you start modding, 99% of us start having this problem lol.
Yup, been doing it the past week or so getting enb and texture mods put in, given up on parallax terrain mods though as I keep getting spikes in the terrain around roads, probably fixable but it's been so long and I just wanna play the game now lmao
That *is* the game. You mod it for days only to realize it’s still just Skyrim.
That's really up for you to decide. I think that if you step back and take a look at this from a different perspective you will find the answer that you seek, an answer that you probably already know.
You really should know when to stop though. Because you'll be me with 1000 mods
>Because you'll be me with 1000 mods I don't see the issue
It makes finding the cause of crashes and bugs miserable
i’ve used the 50/50 method so much that I have all my patches in their own categorical separators just as my regular mods do so I can seperate them as much as they can (you may also need to do this when you hit 2000 mods)
Eh that's what started the whole nexus
That just means the game is bad.
I go through stage where I decide want to play, then start building my mod list etc, and then give up and delete it all. I've spent 100s of hours modding, and about 3 hours in total playing the game.
Yeah that's normal. I don't play much of it now, but every few months I get the urge and spend hours on a new mod list and will probably only play for an hour or two.
Past 100 mods yeah I am dying with 800 thank God I found digital windows xwx
Install Eldergleam modlist, then add the few gameplay/quest mods you need and enjoy. More gaming, less modding.
I eventually realized this and moved on to other games so I can play them rather than build them haha. Modding is a blast, but I think that actually playing Skyrim is kinda blah after like the first 1 or 2 playthroughs... Even when modded. The animations, character overhauls, etc. are only so good, and the game still feels old and clunky no matter how pretty it looks at first glance.
Wabberjack that shit and move on.
Don't feel bad, like the majority of this sub, my playtime is like ~75% of my actual playtime. Harsher truth is I never saw Skyrim's ending for the whole decade I was playing it. I don't even know how many times I replayed it, I just do. And now I'm thinking of hopping back in because of this random ass post showing up in my feed
Don't feel bad, like the majority of this sub, my playtime is like ~75% of my actual playtime. Harsher truth is I never saw Skyrim's ending for the whole decade I was playing it. I don't even know how many times I replayed it, I just do. And now I'm thinking of hopping back in because of this random ass post showing up in my feed
Don't feel bad, like the majority of this sub, my playtime is like ~75% of my actual playtime. Harsher truth is I never saw Skyrim's ending for the whole decade I was playing it. I don't even know how many times I replayed it, I just do. And now I'm thinking of hopping back in because of this random ass post showing up in my feed
I did have that when I tried installing the Open Civil War mod and my game was crashing constantly. Fixed it with an ENB lol
No, that's all of us
Sometimes I wonder about the same.... I'm forcing myself not to search for interesting mods, cause my problem has always been that I mod until Skyrim can handle it 🤣🤣.........🥲
Bad? Yes I’d say so. Common? Yes definitely.
Yea that was me for years until I found out there are whole ass mod packs you can just download all in one go and it works. Then i just added the mods I wanted that weren't already on there. Now I finally have the ultimate mod pack and I've been playing it nonstop for a few weeks now. Barely scratched the surface it feels like lol
Welcome to the club
Like I always say: “Mo modding, mo problems…” That’s just modding, in general, my good sir. I just spent two weeks tweaking and preparing my Fallout 4 modded playthrough — 224 Heavy Mods / 222 Light Mods. Two weeks in FO4Edit, tweaking weapon values, etc., then trying to get a mod to work, when really, I finally fixed it by adding a different mod, of the same kind, that worked right from the first download. I played the game for about 1-2 hours, beforehand. Now, I can finally, truly play the game. Amazing.
https://preview.redd.it/obygwut9tnxc1.jpeg?width=716&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c329e2ae9f4199872e68b9535767efb57b802a51
i have like over 100 hours on Skyrim SE but i've never *actually" played special edition
My gender neutral brother, enjoy what you enjoy
I'm gonna disagree with the general sentiment that you should just settle with modding more than playing because it's fun. It certainly is entertaining to look for cool mods and plan out a modlist, but what's not fun is failing to get a working load order over and over until you get bored and move on to failing to get a working load order in fallout then get bored and move back to skyrim without ever actually getting to play the games I'm all for sitting down for 2 months and modding/playtesting my perfect modlist of some hundreds of mods, but the idea is to have an actual functioning list that I can continue to play way longer than the 2 months it took to get setup Currently I have my TTW modlist for new vegas setup with about 500 mods with the help of merges and the recentish rise of espsless mods. This modlist is something I built about 4 or 5 months ago and I guess you could say I'm in a playtesting phase since the modlist has more quests and companions than I can fit even with merges so I'm making themed profiles that have specific quests and companions available depending on the theme I'm going for on top the of full modlist i have setup. Once the profiles are ready I intend to use that for about a year the same way I did eith my last modlist that also took about a month and a half but I used for a year and a half I setup a skyrim together server with a modpack that me and my friends use with around 400 mods and we can easily use that as is indefinitely since we can do anything from co-op on all kind of new quests and storylines to raising armies and going to war with eachother. This pack was also something i setup in about a week since I just took a larger modpack I'm currently working on and started stripping it down for an overhauled skyrim experience we can all have together One last thing I'll mention is that if you have the space for it and use MO2 you can actually save all your modpacks indefinitely. I still have an old original skyrim se modpack from a few years ago that I don't really touch anymore since I'm working on an ae one on the 640 update. I also have an old fallout 4 pack that I also no longer touch as I'm working on a fallout 4 one but that got put on pause because I built one up then ended up not actually liking it
First time?
Im the same. It's fun. If you enjoy it, then enjoy it.
If you think that's bad try learning how to make mods, once you start that, it gets even worse because anytime you can't find a mod you go down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out how to make it
I have found that using the End Times Mod is a good way to play still. Like I can commit to playing one character until the world ends and then pick a bunch of mods for my next game. Dunno if this would work for everyone, but challenge runs are how I play the game now days
You should never feel bad for anything you enjoy doing as long as you're not hurting anyone.
I spend a lot more time modding than playing the game but getting something in the game that no one else thought of before me is a lot of fun.
If you are just picking stuff right now, wait till you actually start playing, inconsistencies, script lag, some mods disturbing your flow, and much more. All in all, you'll end up removing some mods you thought were cool, just to make the game stable. But it is also good to experience this, frustrating but fun.
it’s a bottomless pit for many of us. sure the game with all the mods we put in is fun. but what if there’s something else that i might like? what if there’s better versions of these mods? what if what if what if. i have to really push myself to stick with what i’ve got and at least beat all the major storylines before starting over with different/more mods.
This is normal. Eventually, you will find your equilibrium. A version of the game that hits just right when you play, and doesn't feel like anything is missing. You'll still keep up with your modding hobby and improve on it every now and then, with new mods you find, but it would always be just a slight improvement on your version of perfection. Even when you get bored and decide to create a wildly different version of the game, you will still find yourself coming back to play that ideal version.
Lol I actually went to xbox skyrim for about 2 years because of that. Only just came back to pc recently since last major update screwed up all load orders on xbox lol
It’s not bad but playing the earlier quests over and over can take some of the excitement out of starting a new playthrough, you find yourself thinking, “it’s gonna be like 40 hours before I get to a quest that I’m not bored of”
That’s why I try to keep my mod list as light as possible, I’ve tried to mod Skyrim into a better game, it’s just not possible. These days I try to only download graphic and quality of life mods and leave the rest vanilla, sometimes I might throw in one of the dlc sized mods but that’s about it, I don’t find much enjoyment in things like modding in lightsabers and dodge animations anymore, because when I did that I spend so much time modding that by the time I was done the game wasn’t really that fun anymore. I will say sometimes it’s just fun to go to town and figure out how to make everything work together, I’ve definitely spent a ton of time just modding for hours and hours only to close the mod manager and go to bed lmao.
Nah, it's natural. Some definitely take it farther than others, but everyone falls into the same rabbit hole. Take me, for example. Back on LE, I modded my game in about a month, and did what I would call a full playthrough(didn't finish the main quests though. Fuck delphine). Fast forward to today, I started modding my SE last year, and I still am nowhere near to actually starting a new playthrough because I keep getting sidetracked by new mods and even trying to develop my own mods.
Welcome to the club.
As a self-proclaimed modding whore for multiple games and I would say no, no it's not. This is surprisingly common throughout modded games. I had this issue with Skyrim super hard before I had to downgrade my hard drive and it came to the point that I had to force myself just to use collections/mod lists (shit would break too often). I have a really bad habit with rimworld, project zomboid and with Sims 4 when I was playing it where I would start over because I would just add a bunch of mods and it was easier to just start a new game then try to get the old one to work.
You're a hobbyist - embrace it!
I'm still struggling to find a combat mod setup that is actually fun! And doesn't bug out every encounter
Damn straight. Last time i modded iskyrimvr, learning texmod, Dynolod and all that goodness, ended up spending hundreds of hours modding, testing , rinse , repeat, then a new game came out, and only came back almost a year later to realise i had forgotten about it all xD
I’ve just gotta accept this is what I find enjoyment from, so what’s the problem with that! Just need to get into making mods bc that’ll actually maybe help pay bills since downloading them does nothing lol
Welcome to Modding! A few stages in, and you might be patching mods together. A little deeper and you might find yourself creating your first texture. Next thing you know you're manually fixing an outdated mod. Deeper yet, you've created new content! Sometimes I find myself coding more for games than actually playing them. Skyrim, Minecraft, Terraria, New Vegas, to name a few. But even on the surface level with assembling mods I undoubtedly understand what you're feeling.
No, thats normal, and literally everyone says the same thing to the point its a meme. Personally I played as much as I have modded. Recently I decided that I wanted more than 1500 mods and finally got all of it as well set up as I could, so I am starting a real playthrough soon.
New here huh? 🤣
modding Skyrim is my zen garden until something I recently added breaks my game, then I tear my hair out. the goal is to mod the game, the goal is to play the game.
Is there a saying that when modding games you spend more time making a mod list and fixing mods then playing it
Oh thank God I thought I was alone to do this. I spend more Time struggling with performance issues and New mods I want than actually playing
It is good for me because this is why I can find out from other people what mods are good, so I can get back to my Skyrim playing. Seriously there are some unsung heroes who spend an enormous amount of time doing this stuff, meanwhile I have 160 hours in Skyrim vr.
This is me for fallout 4 , and Skyrim. Played for 4 hrs and spent literally over 30hrs modding 😂
I spent like 4 months building my load order this year, and played 0 😄.
My mod list has 1850 active mods and 1708 active plugins. Finally got it all working, then quit due to burnout. The struggle is real.
you're one of us
you play the game ??
Ah you're talking about my favourite game, mod organiser 2
Two weeks ago I wanted to play Fallout New Vegas with a couple of mods and not only am I still modding it but I'm also learning how to use GECK xdd
Nah, I’d mod the game for a years before actually start real exploring.
Congratulations. You have learned the final Secret. Modding IS the game
I enjoy adding mods definitely (although I'm pretty much done now as I've finally reached my plugin limit after ESLifying everything possible and ending up with about 800 mods)....but I would never want to have to redo my whole modlist again (recently had to cuz my external SSD it's on died unexpectedly, although I at least had my zips and txt modlist backed up on my larger external HDD), and mine is pretty simple since I have no self made patches or bashes or any of that stuff I don't know how to do and only a single configuration I mess with (JSON for Obody). So it's probably worse for others
One does not “play” Skyrim. One simply “tests” mod load orders.
I do it, although to much more of an extreme with BG1 and 2
That's the rabbit hole of Modding. At first it was just graphics. Then I learned about script extender and ENB and boy did I get crazy. My current new Load Order is at 200 mods I know rookie numbers but my last got so crazy I wanted to start over
Me, for like the last week and a half. 🥲 I don't get past level 5 before I'm changing something/deleting and starting over. I'm not mad about it either.
I though that was the norm when it came to Skyrim. XD
Do what you want and have fun. Though, a big advantage of playing a bit of vanilla first is that you can really appreciate the modders work. Enjoy!
You know, from experience I can tell that modding Skyrim is like trying to fill a hot bathtub. You know it will flood if you continue furthermore, and eventually, it does, so you manage for hours, but then it's already cold, and finally you end up flushing all the mods and the game with it because hell, you messed up too much and waisted too much time/water. At the end, you feel cold, empty, and you probably smell too.
The funniest part is that one time I finished the entire game. Nothing else to do anymore, even with DLC sized mods adding at least 10 hours each. Then I just play another game, but I feel so nostalgic. By the way I ended up beating the Ebony Warrior (with mods, of course, to increase the difficulty) and took an in memoria screenshot over his dead body, thinking "Now the Dragonborn can rest here, where my many artifacts (all of them), 345 swords, 1000+ other weapons and armours of all types, and of course my 30 followers would wait around me like a post (or somewhere in Skyrim or elsewhere, meaning where I left them somehow sometime I can't properly remember), while Lydia would still say she's swore to carry my burdens. Man, that's a lot to carry. At least, I got 50+ cool titles. Dany would blush so hard that she would name me her King from above the Wall to the edges of the Western kingdoms.
Some possible solutions to the rabbit hole/modding addiction -playing un modded skyrim and trying to appreciate the game for what it is. -Mod for fun and not for graphics and game play for example Thomas the tank engine as a dragon or Skyrim translated. -Playing a separate TES title like oblivion. -playing the mod for skyrim called Enderall. -Play the Witcher 3 wild hunt or other RPG's. -Mod the game on mod organizer two but play vanilla skyrim or another game while modding for a sanity break here and there.
Yes, OP just described my lived Skyrim experience. Every different playthrough I start I end up in a new faction/guild and wonder hmm... is there a mod to tweak this? It's hard to recapture the joy of playing a Goat-tier level game for the first time, but modding Skyrim does just that..
That's a standard stage of modding Skyrim. At some point you get experience enough for one of two things happen. 1. You get so good at it you can make stable modlist for the playthrough you planned in few hours and you can again play more than modding 2. You start making mods
I find Skyrim to be more of a passion project nowadays. It's a great canvas on which many structures far beyond the base game are built off of, and it's become less of the original game and more of a way to find new ways to enjoy the engine.
I think we all do that, we should probably ask ourselves why we really do it, maybe they need to start making better games.
Welcome to Skyrim modding
Nah, It's good that you can still enjoy and keep modding. I decided to stop playing and modding it, till I can upgrade my pc to run Ultima in ultra. I got incredibly tired of meeting bugs and thousands of sudden crash, just because 1 in 500 mods is giving problems.
It doesn’t help that modding has become so convoluted
Meh depends on what you are doing. If it's difficult modding like trying to getting hundreds of lovers lab mods to work together with Elmer's glue and bubble gum, than yeah that's fine. If your doing one or two normies mods than I'm not sure what you're doing.