Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim [post-launch thread]

[Brenil]

Every patrol on patrol fight I've seen (with 370+ hours played, I've seen more than a few), Stormcloaks always win with 1-2 members left due to their heavier weapons and shields.

Nevermind any balance issue, it is stupid watching legionnaires derp around with a short sword attempting to parry a fuckin' warhammer. There's very few legionnaires that actually carry shields and that makes no sense to me. All the more reason I want the Construction Set so I can make a mod that re-equips both sides for starters and maybe make different classes (and races) of soldiers too. There's a distinct lack of Orcs, Dunmer, and Redguard in the Legion, when they've always been staple specialist troops supporting the Imperial-dominated light infantry commanded by heavy armored officers.

P.S.

Where are the Imperial Battlemages? The only one I've seen in the game was in the begining sequence at Helgen. Since then, zip.

[Ewokz]

Well with the redguards having left the imperial empire and the with agronions having invaded the remains of morrwind its hardly surprising there's a distinct lack of both Dunmer and Redguards. I'd probably attribute the vast losses in the great war as reasons for there being less Orcs, as they have a far smaller population pool than the other races.

The lack of imperial mages may be due to the Imperial army not wanting the college at winterhold to take any part in the war, which it might do if the Imperial mages took to the field.

[Jopax]

If I remember correctly the College has nothing to do with any of the official Imperial guilds, the archmage himself says that I belive. So no real reason to not have them, but it might be more of the Nord mistrust for magic, seeing as the Empire is trying to portray themselves as benevolent protectors of the realm it really wouldn't help them to bring about something most of the population hates and fears.


Also Thalmor advisors, especially the one on the college, was I the only one who FUSRODAH!!!-ed his ass into the wall every time I saw him?

[Malachi]

Thalmor are cool, the best portrayal of Altmer pride and arrogance in the series so far.

[Jopax]

And that is the main reason I hate them, especially since I'm playing a paranoid Argonian who thinks everyone who offends him is a racist prick who needs to die >

[Misiok]

I can't get myself to play anymore Skyrim. I finished the game once, and am trying a second playthrough, but it stopped feeling fresh and awesome. Now it's just 'good'. I hate single-player games for this.

[Malachi]

I don't think I'm even close to half of my first playthrough (yes, really, it's a combination of not using fast travel and me generally being slow in comoleting games), but I will definitely take a couple weeks break after it, before starting a second one. Although I am kinda looking forward to playing as a mage.

[RexOmniaLupus]

So I think the named vampire I just killed in his lair had some kind of foot fetish. There were boots everywhere, far more than he and his minions could possibly need. There was even a whole shelving unit just filled with a dozen or so pairs of boots.

[Brenil]

Well with the redguards having left the imperial empire and the with agronions having invaded the remains of morrwind its hardly surprising there's a distinct lack of both Dunmer and Redguards. I'd probably attribute the vast losses in the great war as reasons for there being less Orcs, as they have a far smaller population pool than the other races.

Hammerfell was abandoned by the Empire, yes. But there's still a significant Redguard population within the Empire outside of Hammerfell. Not only that, Redguards, by their very nature, are mercenaries at heart and individuals would still probably join the Legion just for spoils.

Morrowind being invaded after the Red Year would actually drive more Dunmer into the Empire's hands than previously. They had no where else to go. Infact, the vast majority of the Morrowind population went into exile within the Empire. The old ruling body of Morrowind now resides in Solstheim and are generally a self-ruled client state of Skyrim (and by extention, the Empire). It stands to reason that there'd actually be more Dunmer in the Legion than there was before the Red Year, due to a lack of places to go and to escape the squalor that many Dunmer exiles live in (Windhelm being a prime example). It should also pointed out that one of the random encounters are 'farmers' that are heading to Solitude/Windhelm to join the Legion/Stormcloaks; the 'Stormcloak' farmer is a Nord (some say Redguard, he's dirty and of dark complexion) and the 'Imperial' farmer is a Dunmer.

Orcs... that's a point I'll concede. I've yet to find a direct source on this, but I've seen hints that Orsinium was sacked (again) by a joint force of Redguards and Bretons at somepoint prior, during, or immediately after the Great War. This would go towards explaining why so many Orcs have reverted back to living in Strongholds. Yet, they still serve the Legion as is said many times by several orc NPCs, usually as heavy auxillary infantry and/or blacksmiths.

As for the Mages, Jopax is correct, the College of Winterhold has nothing to do with the Empire. It is an independent organization that somehow resisted the Mage's Guild pull of everything magic for hundreds of years. The Imperial successors to the Mage's Guild are the Synod (who are in the game) and the College of Whispers (who are not, but mentioned). These two organizations are the result of a schism within the Mage's Guild immediately after the results of Oblivion's Mage's Guild main quest. One would assume this has to do with the Champion of Cyrodiil's fate after The Shivering Isles main quest, leaving a power vacuum and infighting within the Guild that lead to its split. The two organizations are bitter rivals, but do serve the Empire as a whole. Just usually not cooperatively.

Although I am kinda looking forward to playing as a mage.

While still on the subject of mages, I've been reading through numerous forums (I can't remember if this one is included and can't be assed to go back through 35+ pages to find out) and a common theme keeps cropping up about the power of magic and mages in the game. The contention is that, unless you 'exploit' the 100% mana cost reduction from enchanting, that Destruction magic is 'useless'. By that, the spells do too little damage and you must chain stun with Impact ontop of the previously mentioned enchantments to be able to kill anything beyond level 35-40.

I myself currently am playing a full mage that specializes in enchantment, destruction, alteration, and conjuration, in that order and I am having no problems killing much of anything. Currently, I'm level 49 and blasting most things apart with 50-60% mana reduction (which seems reasonable for a master enchanter, without exploiting the system). Even Ancient Dragons get bitched by a few Incinerates, Ice Spears, or Thunderbolts... and I'm not even 100 Destruction yet. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I don't see magic as weak as all the forums are going on about. Maybe I'm missing something.

With that said, I would recommend playing a full mage, as it's definitely a different experience. While I still prefer the old system of magic where spellmaking helped define your character, there's still a pretty significant 'oomph' to being a mage in Skyrim that is very satisfying once you learn the quirks of it. There's certainly a bigger emphasis on magicka management and spell diversity than there was in any of the previous games and that's certainly a good thing overall.

[Malachi]

I have heard the opinion that destruction spells are that way to encourage mixing them with other schools. If you could just burn/freeze/shock everything to death with AoE spells, other schools would take a back seat. Meanwhile, you're still gonna use destruction for your basic attacks, after you applied crowd control and/or defenses by using other schools.

That's pure theorycrafting though, as I haven't tried playing a mage yet.

[Brenil]

To an extent that's true, but most of the time a dual casted Incinerate/Spear/Thunderbolt would kill or severely cripple most enemies. Draugr blobs are really the only thing that are a big challenge at the moment. This is especially true when there's a Deathlord or two, or three, within the usual rabble. But most of the time small groups of enemies can be dealt with by simply throwing AoE shit at them and then strolling through their steaming remains like a boss.

I honestly think that maybe this complaint is more aimed at playing on Expert/Master difficulty where most mobs have stupid amounts of hitpoints and one-shot you with every hit.

[Nalkor]

@Brenil - Master Destruction spells require both hands, take several seconds to get casting, and root you in place. Hope you got the perks for two Dremora lords out at once to act as tanks if you're gonna use those spells.

[Brenil]

Are you trying to imply that you agree that magic is weak?

I know how master level spells work, they're situational and you can use other spells beyond summoning to crowd control. Calm, Frenzy, Fear, Paralyze, and Slow (Frost Wall, Ice Storm, and Ice Runes come to mind) are all viable ways to give you time to get off your spell-o-doom without resorting to a minion screen. That's to say nothing of Shouts like Whirlwind, Time Stop, Frost Breath, Dismay, Ice Block, and a little known shout by the name of Unrelenting Force.

[Ewokz]

My point on the lack of Mages was that if Imperial Mages got involved in the war and were killing Skyrim citizens the college at winterhold might take note and end up supporting the stormcloaks, keeping the imperial college's out might have been a smart move to stop the war potentially escalating.

With Morrowind being invaded and the Redguards succeeding there still would be a drop in recruits I imagine, as they were both Imperial provenience's before (I think, if Morrowind wasn't then I'm definitely wrong on that count). The death of many Dunmer would result in less for the army, plus with them not being protected I doubt many would join up. Many of the Redguard in the Empire would probably feel likewise, plus there wouldn't be the huge amount of recruits from Hammerfell (?).

But yeah your right there would still be a decent amount of dudes other than white guys in the legion, just pointing out there wouldn't be as many as Oblivion. They may have sent soldiers that were closer to Nord's they were fighting as well, in order to win the support of the sometimes backward and traditional northfolk, though that's just wishful thinking TBH.

[Brenil]

The College of Winterhold has no real ties with Skyrim's population. They're independent in every sense of the word. After the Great Collapse, no Nords will have anything to do with them and that's how they prefer it. They do seem to snub their noses at the Imperial organizations, but beyond that aren't hostile. It seems to me that the College of Winterhold could give a toss whether the rest of Skyrim fell into the ocean, as long as they were left alone. So there seems to be little reason why the College would get involved in the war under almost any circumstances.

[Starblade]

@Brenil - Master Destruction spells require both hands, take several seconds to get casting, and root you in place. Hope you got the perks for two Dremora lords out at once to act as tanks if you're gonna use those spells.

You have plenty of time to cast those spells with Become Ethereal's first word too.

[Nalkor]

@Starblade - But, that means no hamfest from dual-Dremora summons....

[RexOmniaLupus]

While still on the subject of mages, I've been reading through numerous forums (I can't remember if this one is included and can't be assed to go back through 35+ pages to find out) and a common theme keeps cropping up about the power of magic and mages in the game. The contention is that, unless you 'exploit' the 100% mana cost reduction from enchanting, that Destruction magic is 'useless'. By that, the spells do too little damage and you must chain stun with Impact ontop of the previously mentioned enchantments to be able to kill anything beyond level 35-40.

You'd think the developers at Bethesda would learn after making the same mistake in other games. This probably isn't as broken as 100%+ Chameleon in Oblivion (infinite sneak attacks with no danger of retaliation is pretty damn broken), but you'd think they'd figure out that this could be exploited. They really ought to have someone go through all effects that can be Fortified and ask themselves "Is this broken if you get it to 100%?", and if the answer is yes, then they should probably implement a cap. The funny thing is they already do this with Armor Rating (80%) and in Skyrim now Magic Resistance (85%), but apparently they didn't think it through on some other things.

On the other hand I can see how some would claim Destruction is useless. Weapon skills keep increasing the damage they do throughout the game as the governing Skill mechaincs for weapons not only directly increase damage, but better weapons are found and there are Perks, Smithing, and magical Fortify effects to increase damage further. There's really no downsides to more powerful weapons either, except a slight increase in weight that makes power attacks take a little more Stamina. Meanwhile the Destruction Skill mechanic only decreases the cost of spells, you only get a few iterations of more powerful spells, with higher Magicka costs to go along, and only two Perks to increase damage further (three if you count the Aspect of Terror Bug with Fire Spells), plus dual-casting, which while more powerful, is less Magicka efficient. The only way to make targets weaker to magic is through the use of poisons, requiring you to use a weapon to deliver it.


Also, has anyone else noticed how terribly the merchants in the game rip you off? At low Speechcraft levels buy and sell prices diverge from the inventory value of an item by a factor of about three, meaning that merchants charge you nine times more to sell to you than what they would pay you for an item. The Nine help you if you misclick and accidentally sell some valuable equipment and have to buy it back (thankfully most merchants are in areas where you will have autosaved just moments prior to the transaction.) And apparently the best you can do with 100 Speechcraft and all relevant perks is a factor of ~1.4 off base value, meaning sell prices are still about double buy prices. So even though you're a master merchant and orator, some two-bit innkeeper can still manage to completely swindle you.

This has consequences for activites like Smithing. While most item Forging will result in an increase in value of the finished material relative to the raw materials, you'll still probably lose money overall on the sale if you bought a significant portion of the raw materials from a merchant (there are some exceptions, such as turning Iron Ore into Gold jewelry through use of Transmute.) Note I'm talking only about Smithing here, I'm pretty sure Enchanting can still profitable if you buy empty Soul Gems, fill them yourself and use the most profitable enchantments. As for Alchemy, I'm not really sure of it's profitability.

Well that all came off a little longer than I intended. Still love this game overall, and these minor balance issues are kind of expected from Bethesda. I just wish they could get everything in sync for once!

[Brenil]

I'd just like to point out real quickly that Alchemy is the biggest cash cow in the game if you sell the right potions. The silly troll potions that poison magicka regen while fortifying something else (block or conjuration, I think), are worth anywhere from 300 gold base to 1k+ if you have enchanted alchemy gear plus perks. Invisible potions and slow poisons also sell extremely well while the slow poison having pretty common ingredients. Add to this that you can make all of this in bulk, I've quite literally run through merchant gold in three cities with still some potions left to sell. And my mage doesn't even have points in alchemy, just a set of boss alchemy gear.

[Malachi]

Yeah, I was just going to respond that the buy/sell mechanic thing doesn't matter, since you don't have anything to do with your gold since level 30 or so, then I realized my character is an alchemist.

Still, while not really making much sense, that balance issue might be intentional and aimed at encouraging players to go out there and play if they want to make money, rather than simply sitting in the town, forging and enchanting stuff.

Money is the main motivation for most quests after all, if you could make it without leaving the city, there wouldn't be a point to completing them.

So, while I agree with you on the subject, I can also understand why Bethesda has made it this way.

[Misiok]

What? You can make money without leaving even the first village you're told to go. Just chop that wood or collect vegetables and stuff. You live the dream. It's easy to retire after living as an adventurer for your whole life and taking an arrow to the knee.

[Kronoch]

The mages guild doesn't exist anymore. I'm quite sure I read that in one of the ingame documents or books, though I can't remember which one. It said the guild was either disbanded or it collapsed after the Oblivion crisis.

I just can't bring myself to finish this game. The main quests are so boring compared to the sidequests, and the sidequests are dull compared to the sheer enjoyment I get out of just exploring. But those fucking dragons, my god. If they would just show up for once I might be able to unlock those dozens of power words I've been gathering, but I haven't seen a single dragon attack since I started this game. I've completed the Thalmor embassy quest, so they should show up. In my last unfinished playthrough dragons were constantly attacking towns. I couldn't go anywhere without meeting 6 dragons on the way there, and had to murder a dragon in town before I could shop. Did I run out of dragons?

By the way, in my last playthrough I had the most epic dragon battle I've ever had. I was about level 35 and fast travelled to Winterhold when 3 frost dragons attacked the town. I specialized in two handed weapons and heavy armor, and the only thing I had for ranged combat was the flames spell. I must have spent a half hour dodging their breath attacks between buildings and picking up the bows and arrows from dead guards to shoot at them. The bastards never landed of course until their health was about 40%, but luckily winterhold is so cluttered they couldn't land near each other. One beserk rage later they were all dead.

I think that was when all dragons attacks stopped. They're afraid of me :P

@ Misiok. But what about when you had a sword through the chest?

[Nanaki]

I just can't bring myself to finish this game. The main quests are so boring compared to the sidequests, and the sidequests are dull compared to the sheer enjoyment I get out of just exploring. But those fucking dragons, my god. If they would just show up for once I might be able to unlock those dozens of power words I've been gathering, but I haven't seen a single dragon attack since I started this game.

Dragons do not appear until you finish the whiterun thane line, if I am not mistaken.

[Jopax]

You should still have enough souls for most of your shouts since every dragon monument (or whatever it's called, it's marked by a dragon head on the map) comes with a dragon, I usually don't kill them but then again I've never felt a lack of souls since I'm very picky about which shouts I use.

[Brenil]

The mages guild doesn't exist anymore. I'm quite sure I read that in one of the ingame documents or books, though I can't remember which one. It said the guild was either disbanded or it collapsed after the Oblivion crisis.

Yeah...

As for the Mages, Jopax is correct, the College of Winterhold has nothing to do with the Empire. It is an independent organization that somehow resisted the Mage's Guild pull of everything magic for hundreds of years. The Imperial successors to the Mage's Guild are the Synod (who are in the game) and the College of Whispers (who are not, but mentioned). These two organizations are the result of a schism within the Mage's Guild immediately after the results of Oblivion's Mage's Guild main quest.

The general information of this was on one of the loading screens.

I don't know why Dragons aren't showing up for you. They should be everywhere at that point in the main quest (which isn't very far at all).

Honestly, I thought the main quest was fine and better than Oblivion's main quest in terms of objectives and story. You're only roughly 1/3 through the story at this point and it gets fairly interesting, especially some of the set pieces you'll visit. I will admit that a certain two characters in the main quest are annoying, judgemental, and generally have an inflated view of their own importance. But you do meet one absolute badass character that in of itself makes it worth getting to, in my opinion.

[RexOmniaLupus]

@Misiok: I never said that you couldn't make money, in fact it is somewhat easy. It's just that some ways you'd think would make money in fact do not due to the excessive difference in buy/sell prices of items. Stranger still is that in Oblivion you could buy/sell at 100% if you had 100 Mercantile Skill. Adding to the absurdity is that the 'Honest pay for honest work' item collection quests do pay full value for what you harvest. So you can sell two pieces of Gold Ore to the quest-giver for 100g, or smelt it into a Gold Ingot, and craft that Ingot into two Gold Rings which you sell for a little over 50g. Makes you wonder how much the mine bosses get paid for that ore you sell to them.

[TheWickedGerman]

Does anyone know if´t possible to play with english voices but german text and subtitles? Even though the German voice acting is well done, I like the english one better, but playing in english in a game where is plenty text and speech, it´s a bit tiresome and I fear that I often don´t get some bit´s or misunderstand the meaning.

Maybe someone tried this for his language?

[Saberdark]

I'd imagine there's a way to do it. Probably involving copying files out, then switching the language and redownloading from steam and copying back the other files. That's usually how it goes. I'm pretty sure I saw someone do this when watching some gameplay videos on Youtube.

Ah, found it. Instructions in the description. It's for the japanese voices but I imagine you can do the same for any language.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVkYfxxe2fE

[RexOmniaLupus]

So apparently "It looked like a wolf from that distance" is not considered a valid reason for shooting someone's hunting dog. Who knew?

[Brenil]

Can I insert, "He/she looked like a bandit from a distance." as an excuse for murdering Hunters?

More than a few times I've had Hunters firing arrows in my general direction, I responded with much murdering, only to find that they were Hunters firing at game that was in my general area. More the fool them, honestly.

[Pocktio]

There is clear need for an orange hunting vest mode.

[TheWickedGerman]

Ah, found it. Instructions in the description. It's for the japanese voices but I imagine you can do the same for any language.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVkYfxxe2fE

Thx for the hint, I will try it tomorrow.

I wonder what happens if the game updates. I really wish they would have implemented the option to set up text and voice acting language separately.

[OhJohnNo]

Think I'm gonna go hunting game tomorrow. Not for the meat - I want to make their hides into leather, so I can boost the forsworn armour up to a rating of 35 and make Lydia wear it. If anyone has any less annoying ideas on how to do this, I'm all ears.

[Brenil]

Make Lydia wear Forsworn armor or obtain leather?

You could buy leather from smiths or use the NPC editor mod to remove Lydia's default Steel Armor. Although, I think Lydia has far better stats in heavy armor than light, but I don't think that's at the top of your priorities if you want her to wear Forsworn armor in the first place.

[FriendlyFire]

Unless you absolutely never do enchanting, make sure to use soul trap as much as possible while hunting, John. Animals are like free lesser souls (or greater if you find bears and other large creatures) which can dramatically boost your enchanting level.

I know I hunted many times for the sole purpose of filling soul gems.

[OhJohnNo]

Lol friendlyfire, so naive... I never use soul trap anymore. I use Bound Sword, since I have the perk that makes it automatically cast Soul Trap on anything it hits. STEAL ALLL THE SOULS!

@Brenil: Making her wear the Forsworn armour, silly. Mind you, for a few bits of fur just barely covering the necessary parts, Forsworn armour has faintly ridiculous stats, being only 5 armour points below full steel plate if the wiki is to be believed. Come to think of it, their swords don't make much sense either - they're made of wood with a few teeth stuck to them, and yet they do more damage than steel swords.

Also I'm on the Xbox, no mods for me.

[FriendlyFire]

I never use conjuration, it's for wussies (I also never use companions)

And you remind me. I need to see whether the mods are sufficiently advanced to prompt me into playing Skyrim again.

[SquidDNA]

I was about to suggest that on of the crafting mods allows you to harvest leather from forsworn armor at a tanning rack. The Skyrim Script Extender makes SkyUI possible, which is a REALLY NICE inventory mod. Combined with one of a couple of mods that rename items and spells to more sensible things to help keep things organized, and allow you to view container contents by category, getting at your stuff is a lot easier than it used to be.

[Brenil]

I still wouldn't recommend using significant mods until the Construction Set is released. Any problems that manifest from mods in these types of games usually do it several hours into gameplay where most people will be irreversibly screwed. I'm not saying any specific mods will cause this, but in my experience (which is not insignificant), it's better to be safe than sorry.

@Brenil: Making her wear the Forsworn armour, silly. Mind you, for a few bits of fur just barely covering the necessary parts, Forsworn armour has faintly ridiculous stats, being only 5 armour points below full steel plate if the wiki is to be believed. Come to think of it, their swords don't make much sense either - they're made of wood with a few teeth stuck to them, and yet they do more damage than steel swords.

It's the rule of cool. Less coverage on females equals more protection. Same goes for bone/wood/teeth swords.

Also, you must take into account that armor values are misleading due to the perks and skill level you have defines the amount of protection. In general heavy armor, with all the skill and perks, will be better than light armor with the same. But not by a lot. Forsworn armor, I think is basically 'glass lite' in terms of armor value. Which is still pretty good for being a bunch of feathers and fur strung together with duct tape.

As for getting Lydia to wear it without mods, yes you'll have to resort to smithing to improve its armor beyond that of Lydia's default Steel Armor. Exquisite should be sufficient.

[Iamme]

I don't see what you have against mods. Any of them are quickly vetted by the thousands of people who download them.

[Malachi]

I'll second Brenil about mods. I had to reinstall or at least verify the game's files multiple times allready because of some of them.

[OhJohnNo]

Wabbajack. Wabbajack. Wabbajack. Wabbajack. Wabbajack. Wabbajack.

Killing a necromage and 2 dragons within the space of 10 minutes is just priceless.

[Brenil]

I don't see what you have against mods. Any of them are quickly vetted by the thousands of people who download them.

Exerience is what I have against them. I've played Bethesda games for quite a many years and mods made with a valid Construction Set can severely fuck up your character several hours down the line where you'll have a hard time attributing where the problem is coming from. Then there's the mods that can actually screw up your game by overwriting other mods and creating cascading conflicts where you'll have little choice but to reinstall or spend hours picking through each mod to find the offender. All of this - again - is with an official Construction Set, which hasn't yet been released for Skyrim.

Most of these mods released so far are texture/mesh replacer and assorted non-esp requiring mods, which can still screw up the game of someone who doesn't know what they're doing, but are generally harmless. The risk comes from using some of these more ambitious projects that have 'cracked' esp files. That can create problems and they're generally untrustworthy to me.

Also, I've found over the years, the more awesome a mod sounds and claims to change a ton about the game, the more skeptical you should be. Because the more a mod changes, the greater possibility for it to complete screw up your game.

[konfeta]

http://kotaku.com/5875474/a-popular-...omes-to-skyrim

Heh.

As for dah magic thing, ripping apart Ancient Dragons in a few casts means you aren't playing on highest difficulty. It would appear that Skyrim simply isn't fun to play at high difficulty because it's not actually harder, but grindier. I suspect Magic is a lot more enjoyable at the normal setting, but the ease of winning fights with it would make the game grow boring in the other direction. Personally, gonna shelf skyrim until expansions and difficulty mods of the non-"give enemies a billion HP" variety.

[Mantaray]

Then there's the mods that can actually screw up your game by overwriting other mods and creating cascading conflicts where you'll have little choice but to reinstall or spend hours picking through each mod to find the offender. All of this - again - is with an official Construction Set, which hasn't yet been released for Skyrim.

call me crazy. but isn't it horrendously hopeful to believe that you can mishmash mods together until it works?

Also, I've found over the years, the more awesome a mod sounds and claims to change a ton about the game, the more skeptical you should be. Because the more a mod changes, the greater possibility for it to complete screw up your game.

personal experience != norm. if a big mod has made it to a non-beta release then chances are its written by competent people. sounds to me like you've been playing beta builds that.. well. are meant to be buggy

[Brenil]

Konfeta, I already stated I wasn't playing on master difficulty, so... yeah. That was a given. I judge a game's balance based on the 'normal' difficulty setting. As most games in general do a very poor job of making hard mode not bullshit mode.

Mantaray, your entire post seems to suggest inexperience with Bethesda games and serious modding. The entire point of modding for their games is mishmashing them together. That's why there are third party tools called Wyre Mash and Wyre Bash. These tools are there to slap conflicts together by 'patching' the mods to get along with each other. This is why seriously modding Bethesda games requires a lot of time, research, and patience. Just throwing mods that sound cool together is the best way I know to completely fuck up your game.

personal experience != norm. if a big mod has made it to a non-beta release then chances are its written by competent people. sounds to me like you've been playing beta builds that.. well. are meant to be buggy

Yeah... no. Again, you show your ignorance on this topic. Every Bethesda major mod has bugs. Every. Single. One. Some are more serious than others, some have more conflicts than others. But all of them have the potential to dick up your game if you don't do research before hand. If you don't believe me, head on over to Bethesda's forums for Morrowind and Oblivion and look up some of the more popular large mods such as Morrowind Graphics Extender, Obscuro Oblivion Overhaul, and Deadly Reflex, and read the innumerable troubleshooting posts. And that's only three out of hundreds of examples.

I've been playing Oblivion since it was released and still play it to this day with 200+ mods. Getting those all to work together properly is a chore, but does work fine for me and many others. Simply explaining away any errors as being 'beta builds' is, quite frankly, laughable. Modders aren't professional designers, and Bethesda's games aren't exactly known for their stability. Add to this the ability to add tons of custom content and you're just asking for trouble. And all of that is with an official Construction Set. Trying to use mods that were hacked together by third party means and voodoo is like playing with fire while drinking gasoline.

[Mantaray]

Mantaray, your entire post seems to suggest inexperience with Bethesda games and serious modding.

thats a nice WRONG assumption you have there, think twise before you label people. its plain nasty.
instead address my points.
you didn't state you were using a piece of doubling-prevention software. you could have replaced that whole paragraph by just saying that and i would happily conceed

Yeah... no. Again, you show your ignorance on this topic. Every Bethesda major mod has bugs.

bolded for your convenience.
lets just put your insults asside.
where in my post did i say i was specifically referring to Bethesda?
your personal experience seems to be limited to Bethesda games. and i stand by the point that its NOT the norm.

[Starblade]

Why are you guys even arguing this? Basically every project of sufficient complexity is going to have bugs. It's a given.

[Mantaray]

all i'm arguing is that having an experience of every elder scrolls mod shouldn't bias an opinion against mods in general.
i went to france once and had a horrible time.
all foreign countries must be horrible.
homeworld complex is pretty complex (hurr hurr) and incredibly stable.

[Starblade]

I don't know what that is but "stable" and "bug-free" are not synonyms.