kryptopyr

I would love to have the option to trade endorsements for premium access. I don't even care for full premium benefits (I honestly don't even know what they are), but I could really use more messaging space. I don't want to delete the messages I have because many of them are communications with various other mod authors regarding permissions or compatibility. I feel I need to keep those messages on record, but the limited messaging space has made it very difficult for me to continue contacting other authors to initiate and/or coordinate on any type of cooperative project. I really wish Nexus would take some steps to encourage and make it easier for modders to work together on projects. As it is, Nexus is set up to encourage only individual mod projects. There really does need to be some way to publish mods as a team, where all team members can feel like they are still getting equal recognition for their effort. @DocClox. I think see what you're saying, but I don't think SkyUI and Cheesy Hosts would ever have equal endorsements, even if everyone who downloaded them endorsed them. I certainly agree with you that downloading should not equal endorsing. If I had to guess, I'd estimate that I actually use (and have hopefully endorsed) maybe 20% of the mods I've downloaded. There are mods that I try and decide I don't like; there are mods that I download and check out in TES5Edit or the CK and decide that the way they work or the number of records they're impacting is just not worth the benefit they might possibly provide; and there are mods that I download purely to examine them in response to questions about compatibility or to make patches or for other troubleshooting purposes (sadly this is probably 40-50% of the mods I download). So, yes, I can agree with you that just because I download a mod doesn't mean I want to, or should, endorse it. I guess then the only issue we're really in disagreement on is how intrusive or pestering the new Nexus message is. I still feel that it's easy enough to ignore (and most people probably will...I would be utterly astonished if this feature led to something as high as even a 50:1 average download to endorsement ratio). I don't think it's even a new message box. They just added the message to the download box that has always appeared when you download a mod, so you don't even have to spare an extra click of the mouse to ignore it. To me it's no more nagging than the little icons in MO, but in comparison, I really like having only a small selection of mods presented to me at once. It's just easier to quickly glance at them to see if there are any that I want to endorse without having to take the time to go through my entire list of mods. As far as pestering, I guess I'm so use to all the ads and junk and everything that we encounter on a regular basis that choosing to ignore the stuff that doesn't interest me is almost second nature. I'll continue to support this feature, but I also wouldn't object if there were a way for users to opt out of it.

I don't really think a 0-10 rating system is needed (or even particularly helpful) in determining the relative value of mods like SkyUI and "Cheesy Game Show Hosts". SkyUI has over 76,000 endorsements. Let's be generous and say Cheesy Hosts has 350 endorsements. If you were looking at these mods and trying to decide between the two, would it really be more valuable if SkyUI had 80% 10 star ratings, and Cheesy Hosts had 100% 10 star ratings (because lets say that Cheesy Hosts is a well constructed mod, just aimed at a somewhat particular niche audience). I guess I take a very different approach to endorsements on Nexus than ratings on a commercial website. I tend to be very stingy with my ratings of commercial products. A product really has to impress me with it's design and functionality or a business with it's efficiency and customer service before I'll give it a good rating. But the difference is that I've paid money for the product and I feel that my obligation as far as ratings go is to either warn people away from a bad product/experience or else to tell them that I think their money will be well spent. For mods, I see endorsements as directed toward both the mod author and the users. I feel that endorsements are a way to thank a mod author for their work, while at the same time telling other people that you feel the mod is good enough to include in your load order. It really is a black and white decision to me. I don't need a scale from 0-10. The formula is simple: The mod is valuable to me if I use it in my game. If the mod is valuable, it's appropriate to endorse it. What would a rating of "5" mean on a 0-10 scale? That I like the mod but only use it for some characters? That I think the mod is well done, but not to my taste? That I like the idea of the mod, but think it's poorly executed? It's not at all clear what middle ratings even mean, and every person would have a different system for rating mods. This doesn't provide more clarity for users, it provides less. And it ends up being disheartening for the mod authors. There's already a lot of negativity on Nexus. The last thing it needs is a way to give mods poor ratings. This would only hurt the community. The first mods that I made have never received many endorsements. They fill a certain niche, and some people really like them. However, if people who didn't care for those mods, instead of simply not using and not endorsing them, gave them bad ratings instead, then as a beginning mod author, I probably would have grown frustrated, wondered why I was even bothering to share my work and thereby expose myself to such criticism, and there's a pretty good chance that I wouldn't have thought it was worth the effort to release any more of my mods. There is not a lot of validation or reward for sharing mods. It's a lot of time and work, and then you release it and have to deal with all of the complaints, both from people who like the mod but think that you should do something differently and from people who seem to find their own validation in life by telling you what a piece of crap your mod truly is. As a mod author, the endorsements are nice, but I don't really pay much attention to their numbers. I look at them occasionally (such as when this thread was started), and I tend to be pleasantly surprised to see that they've grown. However, negative ratings (and pretty much anything that isn't a 10 is at least partially negative) have a disproportionate effect on most people relative to good reviews. It's human nature that criticism tends to hurt more than praise will reward. If you don't want to endorse a mod, that's perfectly fine, you have no obligation to do so. But I don't see any reason to provide a system of negative feedback on a site where people are willing to share their work for free.

I like the feature. I certainly always try to endorse the mods I like and those that have a more or less permanent place in my plugin list. However, when I first got this new message, there were a few mods on the list that I've been using for years and hadn't yet endorsed. I was only too happy to be reminded that these great mods hadn't received my endorsement. For the other mods (those I had downloaded to test and hadn't bothered keeping), it was easy enough to ignore. Also, Nexus doesn't allow you to endorse a mod immediately when you download it (a policy I agree with), which for many people makes it easy to forget to go back later to endorse. Many mod authors spend a lot of time providing support for their mods (not to mention the time it takes to create them in the first place). I can't really see where this new feature, which only requires one click to ignore, is putting an unreasonable burden on the users who get to freely enjoy all the effort that goes into making and maintaining these mods. It's always puzzled me how stingy and possessive some people are about their endorsements. Obviously just because you download and try a mod doesn't mean you should endorse it. But I feel that if you enjoy a mod enough to keep on using it, then you're getting benefit from someone's freely given work. Why wouldn't you want acknowledge that in some small way? It's not like endorsements cost the user anything, and yet some people act as though they're giving you a $100 by endorsing your mod.

It's only ever happened for me in a heavily modded game. I've never been able to recreate the problem with only a handful of mods or with only SSR installed (I spent a lot of time trying to identify and recreate this issue with SSR). I could create a file editing the player's default outfit to the prisoner clothes. If anyone is interested enough and would like to try it, just let me know.

I think Aiyen has the right idea. It's probably easiest to just wait until you enter Helgen keep. However, I suspect that this problem could probably be solved by editing the default outfit for the Player (of course that means editing the Player record, which may or may not be worth whatever potential mod conflicts that might cause). The player character's default outfit is actually a full set of iron armor. The prisoner clothes are given to the player via a quest alias in MQ101.I've not been able to find a correlation between this bug and any mods that edit either the Player or MQ101, but the problem has to rest in how those two records are getting implemented in the game. I know that the quest alias is getting filled because it also controls the player walking to the chopping block, but for whatever reason either the alias inventory is not getting set properly or is getting overwritten and reverting to the actor's default outfit.I wonder if having a bunch of mods all starting up at once and trying to simultaneously fill a bunch of different aliases with the player character might cause this issue. There are a LOT of mods that create player-filled aliases. Player aliases are suppose to help prevent conflicts when making edits to the player; they're also the best way to add scripts that are intended to trigger off of certain events, such as loading the game (for this reason, every mod with an MCM menu has a player alias). But this means that there are a ton of mods that are all starting up at the beginning of the game and force-filling their aliases with the exact same actor.

Most of the aMidianborn armors are also a pretty significant shift in "color, contrast, tint, brightness, etc" generally with very different accent details than what's on the vanilla items. SMIM textures completely alter the designs on certain items. Whiterun Trellis Redesigned is a significant departure from the design of the vanilla trellis. Jewels of the Nord and Gemling Queen both add designs to the rings that aren't present at all in vanilla. Several of the rug designs in Detailed Rugs are complete departures from the vanilla design. Etc. The degree of rigidity in applying this rule does seem highly variable from one mod to another. I think some further discussion and clarification would be nice.

Is there a way I can simplify all this when I update WAF? I made the replacement files (for WAF and CCO) in order to help people reduce the number of .esp files, but it sometimes seems as though it's just creating a lot of confusion. The reason I don't include the meshes and other assets along with WAF is not because I can't handle them, but due to the permissions I have from the original mod authors. Requiring users to install the meshes/textures from the original mod page is basically just another form of mod dependency. I could have just made patch files, which would still have required installing the original mod, but would have also been that many additional .esp files. Anyway, I know most of you guys understand this, but I'm just not sure what the best approach is. I'm trying to make the installation of my mods easier, but I also don't want the result to be less efficient. Any suggestions? EDIT: Would it be preferred for me to include the small record edit from the Imperial-No cloth around Neck in the Legendary file?

I actually just noticed the smoke as well in the new game I started recently. For some reason it never really jumped out at me before, but as soon as I started this new character the appearance of the smoke has been bothering me. I even thought I might be missing textures for the smoke since it looked so blue. I've been trying Vividian as well (first time trying an ENB, so it's been a bit of a learning curve for me), but even without the ENB active, I still feel that the vanilla smoke looks too bluish-gray. Wood smoke, when it's burning well, should be whiter than that. Is it possible to actually make the smoke whiter (with or without Vividian)?

"Would smiths be more likely to cast thick, durable glass using their smelters (glass that would both insulate and provide better protection from the harsh land that is Skyrim), or would they choose to blow thin panes of glass (a much more specialized skill than casting it) that would take more time and be more likely to break?" The logical conclusion is that they would choose the most effective product for their environment, which also happens to require less time and training to provide. I agree with you that I don't think mages would be bothering with windows, and I don't see any reason to bring magic into it, but the thicker glass just seems more appropriate and logical to me. At this point, I think we've probably given the glass in Skyrim far more thought and consideration than Bethesda's designers did. I don't really think they thought all that hard about their design choices for the glass in the windows and whether or not it was appropriate for the climate, times, lore, etc. I think they had many more (and presumably more important) things to concern themselves with. Maybe I'm high, but, no, I don't think they sought out examples of medieval glass. Yes, I'm sure they drew inspiration from our world, but I don't think they went to the trouble to research every aspect and detail from a historical (even quasi-historical) perspective. It's been fun, but honestly guys, I really don't have a horse in this race. I like this mod, but I also like VW. I think either are fine for STEP. I'll probably end up using a combination of the two. I just don't care for the way the argument is being framed as for/against realism, when I don't really see that as the primary issue here. I think you can logically justify either type of glass based on what we know (and don't know) about the technology of Skyrim, so just decide what looks better in game and when used with other STEP textures.

The problem with your argument for "realism" is that your definition of realism here is not based on the real world, but a subjective sense of what should or should not be real for Skyrim. So when others feel that something else seems appropriate to the TES world, something that doesn't meet your subjective standards of "realism" then they are suddenly opposed to realism? It's not like thick textured glass doesn't exist in our world.

Realism, huh? Then why are we even looking at glass textures? Let's find some translucent hide or horn textures for the windows because, realistically, no one living in a medieval time period except the very rich (say the Blue Palace and a few other noble homes or temples, and only the very wealthiest of those) would have glass windows. Also, I suspect that few of the glass windows currently in castles are original. It seems unlikely that glass panes, particularly thin ones, would survive that many centuries. In my experience with older homes, after about a 100 years the glass starts slumping and falling out of the panes. Now small pieces of leaded glass might fair better, but not some of the larger panes of glass seen in Skyrim (the larger of which I don't think would even have been technologically possible in medieval times, realistically speaking). ;) EDIT: Actually, I think it was the technology to make thin, clear glass that was difficult and expensive. Romans and Egyptians did have some glass windows, but they were thick, dark, and not at all transparent. Making glass is an ancient technology, but it took a bit of time before people figured out how to make it thin, flat and transparent.

Okay, I re-downloaded and reinstalled the mod. Everything appears to be fine now. Sheesh, sorry about that, I guess the initial download was corrupted. Thanks for helping me figure it out.

For what it's worth, here are my thoughts. I haven't had a chance to look at them extensively in game, but from what I've seen so far, I really like them. I don't see them as so different from the vanilla style that they wouldn't work for STEP. As several others have also said, the Riften windows are the only ones that seem a bit off to me. I think the thickness and texture of the glass in most cases makes a lot of sense. I also like that this mod provides a very reasonable explanation for why you can't actually see through the windows in the game. I'm in favor of including this mod in STEP.

The author of Diseased has given permission for others to modify or update the mod, so maybe someone else will come along and update it. Note: I'm just pointing this out, not volunteering. ;)

Without looking at them, I don't know. I would probably give SkyRe priority since it's going to be more sensitive to changes in the weapon stats potentially throwing things way off with SkyRe's own system of balance.

Yeah, I noticed that the column for AOS was missing too, that's why I was confused about what was actually conflicting between GDO/WAF and AOS. At least you can see why I'm scratching my head over these patches. Thanks for showing me what it should look like. I have no idea why it's not recognizing AOS for me. TES5Edit doesn't give me any error messages upon loading the mods (if I select the individual mods and check for errors then a whole list of unresolved errors comes up). AOS.esp IS actually listed as a master for the patches, but apparently those records just aren't being read properly. I've never experienced anything like this with TES5Edit before. In the last image, I wasn't worried about the BNAM values conflicting, but rather the Error in the GNAM record. Sorry for the small images. I can never seem to get images to appear properly in forums. I won't be able to mess with it this weekend, but as soon as I can, I'll try reinstalling the mod again, maybe try downloading it manually this time or something.

I reinstalled AOS 2.1 via the installer to make sure that I hadn't done something along the way to mess up the files. I made sure that all the respective mods were checked and loaded in TES5Edit. If I'm the only one seeing these errors, then it must be something on my side, but I'm not having problems with any of the other mods/patches that I have installed. Here's what I'm seeing: AOS is listed as a master for both the GDO and WAF patches, but it doesn't actually appear to conflict with any of the records in these two patches. Every record in these patches contains an error for me. Realistic Water Two does actually appear to conflict with AOS, but I'm still seeing errors in all of the records. I've double checked my load order and the order that the masters are listed on each of the patches, and the ordering of the mods correspond properly to the patches. Also, before someone mentions it, I did notice while taking the screenshots that my version of TES5Edit was out of date. I updated it to the current version, but the results when I load these mods are still exactly the same.

Specifically, I was looking at the GDO and WAF patches when I noticed the errors. All the Impact Data records were unresolved references. After that I looked at a handful of the other patches as well (sorry, I don't remember exactly which ones... I think Realistic Water Two, WetandCold, and maybe Dragon Combat Overhaul), and those had various records that were throwing up errors as well. With the GDO and WAF patches, there doesn't even seem to be a conflict with AOS, so I'm not sure what change the patch is even trying to forward. Yes, they were from the AOS 2.1 installer.

Oh, I didn't mean it as a negative against using any of these followers. But since thiausmle mentioned EFF and you mentioned AFT, I wanted to bring up this point since the particular multifollower mod in use probably won't make any difference or have any impact on these followers. I've used Vilja and have to say that her comments to and conversation with the vanilla followers is very well done and a really nice feature. Overall, though, I don't really care for Vilja because her personality tends to conflict too much with the type of characters I play. However, the mod is exceptionally well done, and I was impressed with the level of detail and thought that went into creating her.

Do any of those followers actually work with the features from AFT or EFF? My understanding is that all of those followers have their own unique follower structure and might work alongside, but they won't actually be affected by, the features from the big multi-follower mods. As far as which one, I would recommend reading whatever information is available on their personality and story. Depending on what type of character you're playing and what you want that character's back story to be, you might find some of them are more compatible than others. I believe Indigo is actually suppose to have a shared history with the player; Hoth might be a bit abrasive as a companion for less barbaric characters (or could provide a good counter); etc. I'm not familiar with Mirai or Bijin, but I believe that all the others are very well done, so pick the type of companion you think you might want.

I'm seeing a bunch of errors in the AOS2 patches. It looks like maybe the master files were edited at some point and the form ids for the records didn't change to match?

I believe that as of the last update, all of the markers are activated by default (but like vanilla they aren't visible until discovered). If that's the preference, then there's really no need for a special preset.

I heard back from Kronixx: So it turns out that there is a way to remove the Flagon door, it's just buried in the menus a bit. I also proposed creating a simplified MCM to reduce the amount of work it would take to create. My idea is to allow the user to toggle the settings for the various groups of markers, but only at the group level. A button could also be added to the MCM that would bring up the existing menus, through which the player could control the markers at an individual level if they wished. Kronixx thought that sounded good, and gave me the go ahead to design an MCM for this mod. For those of you who use this mod, would having MCM controls at the group level, but not for the individual markers, be a sufficient compromise? Again, the individual markers will still be toggleable via the existing menu scripts, just not through the MCM interface. I should, however, be able to add a toggle to disable the Flagon door (and if Kronixx will allow me to, I'll probably have it disabled by default). Also, if there are any specific settings that STEP would prefer, I could maybe add a STEP preset to the MCM that would automatically adjust the settings to use the STEP recommendations (again, assuming Kronixx approves).

I always think of runes as magical traps. Traps should be subtle and at least somewhat difficult to see. While I like many of the new designs in V2, I can't imagine actually playing with them in game. They stand out too much, and if the NPCs had an ounce of real intelligence they would simply see the rune and avoid it, which makes it rather immersion-breaking when they don't.

How many mods do you have, and where is IA in your load order? I think I've seen somewhere that the MCM menus don't register properly if the mod is too far down in a long plugin list. So maybe try moving it higher in your load order?