baronaatista

I understand the distinction, my point was just that these are only terms and there is no meaningful difference. Sure, there's a development cycle involved and perhaps some of the way this stuff will be implemented will be 'cleaner' ... one of the 'DLC' they showed (as an icon in a shot of a menu) was 'survival mode' for Skyrim. Is anyone tempted to think that the Creation Club 'survival mode' 'DLC' will be as nuanced, detailed, and complete as Chesko's suite? I'm not one of the 'outraged' but I will say that... to say 'not paid mods' and then show off crab armor 'DLC'... seems pretty disingenuous. One of the major complaints with the previous paid modding system was the the quality/substance of mods available for purchase vs. that of free mods (if I remember correctly). To the consumer, this is literally the exact same thing under a different name. Does it matter that crab armor went through a development cycle? Other than to call into question the decision-making capabilities of the people that approved and developed it?

I find it odd the confusion in the community about - is this paid mods? If it's contracted work, is it a mod? I mean I suppose you can say that this will be DLC. However, going from what they showed so far - we're talking new models maybe? New weapons, Armors, maybe some creatures. Probably the odd gameplay tweak - I'd bet Chesko makes a new version of 'The Art of the Catch' for CC. Horse Armor was a DLC, and Immersive Armors is a mod. ? The terminology doesn't matter a whole lot to me - this is indeed paid modding, it's just that Bethesda has decided to implement this curation process and have actual dedicated members of their team to oversee it, and apparently to create content for it. I personally applaud the concept - this is the proper way to do paid mods. And I'm also very happy to pay for more content, so long as that content is a)quality and b)either extends the life of the game or enhances my experience of it in meaningful ways. I'd really love to see some of the talented, driven, creative modders that create content for these games be able to make a living (or at least profit) from the fruits of their labor. However they also seem to be starting off with a couple key limitations that I think might affect the potential output of the 'Creation Club' (ie. only new content, no existing mod conversions, must be new-game friendly). In addition, as I was perusing the reddit Mator linked, EnaiSiaion brought up the interesting point of compatibility and whether or not Beth really understand what that means when you talk about the huge mod lists that large portions of the community (at least for PC) are using. ie - is the broader community now going to be forced to make hundreds of compatibility patches for people with different versions of the 'DLC'? Beyond all of that, my general feeling is that - despite what I believe are mostly good intentions, I believe that Beth's ambition for this will be fairly small. I don't see how any real DLC gets created through this program (though I suppose they do mention new worldspaces). My guess is that it will be as Essarrbee said - mostly neat little additions; game-jam type stuff. And then of course there's questions about the script extender (almost certainly will be treated as though it doesn't exist), modding tools, scope of projects, voice acting? And so on. * just watched this video from Gopher on the subject where he points out something interesting - this Creation Club is apparently open to outside developers; does this mean say Obsidian could make FNV2 and release it as CC DLC? Or say the Enderal team?

Unfortunate that this is the big news from BGS this year... nothing on a new Fallout / Elder Scrolls / or Game of Thrones / Skyfall rumors. Seems like a step in the right direction though? I suppose the devil is in the details - what type of content will they be curating? what will the relationship be with modders / the community? I want to believe that they're going to assemble an all-star cast and create some full-size DLC content, but I imagine it will be mostly weapon / armor mods and maybe some light gameplay stuff.

Discussion topic: Enhanced Vanilla Trees by somerandomguy83 Wiki Link Just have to say I love this mod. I know STEP won't use the bigger trees option, but I absolutely love it. Aside from that, the textures are really beautiful and far superior to anything else. It also incorporates the snowy pine trees from SFO, as well as Realistic Aspen Trees (lots of optionals in fomod). This + Verdant + Unique Flowers and Plants trumps SFO for me. Seems suited for STEP as it is literally an enhancement of vanilla.

The point is that - for my money at least, they look better than the HRDLC, or Bellyache's textures. I'm certain that's why paul and jd are using them, and it's why I decided to post.

I really love these moon textures, installed them long ago and I can't see them ever being replaced. Non-STEP Screenshot as a quick example;

Bethesda Performance Textures - Animals and Creatures (by Gamwich) Only took notice of this as it was part of jdsmith and Paul666Root's SRLE Extended / Requiem guide, and later adopted by Darth Mathias/Nozzer/Lexy in the SRLE Extended LOTD guide. They use this and Gamwich's BPT - Armor/Weapons/Clothing mod combined with Optimized Vanilla Textures and do away with the HRDLC altogether. Tried it out on my new install and was really impressed by the quality - far and away better than Bellyache's Creatures, which I believe STEP is currently using? Not aware if SRO covers creatures? If so, compares might be warranted.

Sounds like you guys are going with SRO, which is also excellent, but I have to say this is my personal favorite landscape retexture. I also feel like the size of textures in SRO is a bit of a problem for a baseline mod in STEP, especially with lots of people encountering the Win10 / DX9 issue. Though I suppose this pack is on the large side as well... I did a LOT of testing different snow/ice textures a while back and I've landed solidly on the snow, snow road, and glacier textures from Cabal as being the absolute best there is. All that being said, SRO is probably closer to vanilla.

I'd take Verdant over SFO any day, as well as over Unbelievable Grass Two. Can't remember if I ever used the grass from EL, but I definitely used the rest of it in the past. For me what really kills it is how the colors of Verdant complement the various environments in Skyrim. I use it alongside Unique Flowers and Plants and Enhanced Vanilla Trees and said goodbye to SFO completely a long time ago.

Rustic Clothing also covers this and is superior IMO.

Been using this for a long time in a rather large modlist (encompassing STEP:Extended, with some minor variations) and as far as I remember outside of the provided patches there isn't a ton to worry about? (It's been a while). Functionally it's excellent, does exactly as advertised. Makes a big difference in a lot of small ways, with a detailed, comprehensive execution. This one will stay in my LO.

Lol guess it's not necessary. Somehow missed Tech's screenshots, which look better than the ones I took anyway.

I've been using this with NB Scars, Painterly, Beards, and SLFH for a short while now and really like the effect. I personally use the Occidental UNP + Better Males version, not sure why STEP would only install the females (not UNP of course)? Wish I could use FadingSignal's male body textures with this, but as it still isn't finished! I'm looking at Vitruvia, as per SRLE Extended LOTD.

Played with this for a short while now... I too was skeptical based on screenshots, but find that I really like the look in-game. At work right now, I'll put up some screens tonight.

Just found this video tutorial on how to build pre-combined meshes with the CK by mod author Trosski... Don't know if there's any news or anything helpful there to you in your worldspace patching efforts, just throwing it out there.

A video tutorial on how to build pre-combined meshes with the CK by mod author Trosski.

bUseCombinedObjects=0 will disable using pre-combined meshes, which may help some of the issues that arise from using conflicting worldspace mods, but one way or another there will be issues. If you're playing with this loadout in your game right now I'd wager you're experiencing heavy frame drops in certain areas (with that many worldspace mods, probably lots of areas), regardless of how killer your PC is, or how optimized your setup is. In addition, there will likely be a lot of texture/object flickering, certain items (the world, buildings, doors) disappearing entirely, etc. Compatibility patches for this need to be made in the CK, but its a laborious and time-consuming process. I'm not at all an expert on the subject, I've just done some peripheral research. For my own LO I've opted to use as few mods that edit worldspace as humanly possible. Sad, but I don't have the technical know-how or desire to spend the time to make it all work together, and occlusion culling (the flickering) / horrible frame rates on my beastly machine is no bueno. An interesting (if dated) thread on the topic. Redditt post from FadingSignal that I hadn't seen before. So yeah. I'm actually less clear on the specifics after that FadingSignal post...

Just looking the guide over... you've put a lot of work into this clearly... wondering if you're doing anything to deal with pre-combined meshes in world space mods? Small note, the 'glass glare fix' mod... while labeled a fix, is dubious as to the nature of the 'fix'... it may deal with the issue of glare, but it does so by completely removing reflectivity on glass, which leaves those objects looking rather odd IMO. I used to use 'better fake reflections but removed it for that reason - it was also causing said materials to pick up lighting and colors from the environment with NAC.

Oh hey by the way all that business with Everyones Best Friend and Start Me Up... may have been just a weird glitch? Everything with the Codsworth convo went as expected on a new game. That being said, I hadn't realized it edits the HC_manager script (packed in BA2), and I'm using a mod for Sleep Healing Removal which edits that script. So I ditched it for Unlimited Companion Framework. I'd imagine you're aware, but thought I'd throw it out there - pretty sure Horizon edits that script as well, though I don't know if you're still working on that Survival/Hardcore addon? EFF was always my favourite follower mod for Skyrim, and Expired is just plain an amazing, trusted author that has been making seminal mods for a long time now. So far have recruited Dogmeat and Codsworth and everything is peachy. I've finally completely nailed down my survival overhaul and am actually playing and really enjoying it. I was absolutely wrong about food healing in Survival mode btw. It's critical that all healing is completely removed from food if you ask me. Otherwise it doesn't really feel like 'Survival'. Unsure of a mod that did that, and not really wanting to get rid of Wastelanders Cookbook, I actually went through and hand-edited every vanilla food item as well as everything added by WCB to provide a small buff to health rather than healing.

Agreed, the process of learning enchants in Skyrim is less than ideal. Really, I think just about everything related to enchanting is kind of tedious and poorly executed. For me it's soul gems. How many times I've missed harvesting a soul because I didn't have the right gem available. I'd love to see souls just disperse amongst available gems personally; ie. a grand soul will fill say 5/7 (whatever amount of 'points' it contains/gems are able to hold) lesser soul gems, or a couple medium gems. Additionally one grand gem could be filled by multiple smaller souls. There may be lore reasons why it's like this? I'm no loremaster. It's damn inconvenient though and doesn't lend itself to any gameplay system/mechanic that I can think of. I'm also just gonna say it one more time. I would push even harder except I haven't had THAT much experience with it to get really excited, but the somewhat limited time I've played with it (equivalent to a short playthrough or two - 2 char's to level 20/30ish) I have loved everything I've seen. Ordinator. I mean, apocalypse is the definitive spell mod. This is a perk overhaul made by the same guy and there are lots of synergies between them. I was always wary of perk overhauls as I felt stuff like PerMa, Requiem, SkyRe departed too far from vanilla, and seemed to make some big changes that I wasn't really onboard with. Ordinator leaves most (all?) of the vanilla perks/functionality intact, while adding tons of new possibilities and re-working the vanilla stuff to eliminate the redundancies & broken mechanics. It still feels like Skyrim, just a Skyrim with so much more depth and nuance to the character builds. a tiny example of some of the cool, interesting perks available (This is in Enchanting) 90 - You Shall Not Pass - Simultaneously (within 1 second) using an enchanted staff in your left hand and striking with an enchanted weapon in your right hand releases a flash of light that staggers enemies and deals damage based on your Enchanting skill level. Destruction: 50 - Shatter - Frost spells that hit a frost resistant target fragment and explode in a 15 foot area, reducing frost resistance by 25% for 15 seconds. This effect stacks. I think he does away with the stagger perk, and just turns it into a pure damage boost...

@Shadriss - my comment was more to those that chimed in after our exchange but seemed to have missed it. Consider also - every time you swing your sword or shoot your bow as a 'mage' you are actively making yourself less effective. You gain levels from all skills, and the enemies in the world adjust to that level. Every skill point gained in One-Handed is one NOT gained in Destruction, Conjuration, Alteration, etc. The world gets more dangerous and you haven't advanced the skills you need to deal with that as a mage. If you're carrying around and using weapons/armor, then you are not playing a mage, you're playing a hybrid class. I would argue hybrids are the most difficult classes to play, as they tend to use more skills to get by, and thereby are generally less skilled compared to their level than straight warrior/mage/thief classes. They can tend to feel a little more comfortable in the early game, but by the time you get to level 30-40, because you haven't focused on the skills you intend to primarily use, you tend to be under-powered in what is now a much more dangerous world, and it will take much longer now to correct for this. As this next bit is pretty off-topic I'll put it in a spoiler but I'm posting it anyway as I feel it's worthwhile generally in the discussion and perhaps someone will find it useful.

I won't keep hammering away at this, but I feel the need to repeat myself a little as the thread discussion seems to have overlooked my earlier points. Magery isn't anywhere near as broken in vanilla as everyone seems to be suggesting. I have seriously played almost every possible build/combination the vanilla game offers to 'completion' (fully developed with skills &perks, usually around level 50-60). I keep hearing people describing 'having to resort to using weapons' and such, and I really can't help but think that you guys are playing mages with one foot out the door. You absolutely can play a pure mage character in vanilla to great success. You just have to actually play a mage. Obviously Altmer, Dunmer, and Breton are your best choices for race if you're really trying to optimize (specifically Altmer as their racial ability is incredibly powerful). From there - wear mage gear. Take either the Atronach or Lord stone (Mage stone early) Use the Alteration mage armor perk, and the Restoration recovery perk. Carry a staff or two for some magicka recovery time, and as many magicka potions as you can carry. Finally if you're still struggling recruit a tank follower like Lydia or Kharjo, and give them the best armor and weapons you can get. Yes there will be tense moments but I find that's true of any class - and desired. If you could just walk into any confrontation and expect to be triumphant (especially on early levels) without planning, preparation, gear, etc. It would defeat the purpose and interest behind half the games mechanics. Again, there's that tough spot around level 10-25/30ish that is present in all builds - you start to face the higher level variations of enemies but don't have your build fleshed out enough to deal with them easily, and tactics, gear, preparation and so on become the key factors in your success. The only build that isn't very susceptible to this is a pure stealth/assassin type build. Everyone else is going to have hard time facing certain types of opponents. When I play a pure mage - I play a pure mage. I'm not carrying around a sword or a bow. I'm not wearing armor, unless it's specifically an 'armored mage' build - and if that's the case I'm going to invest in enchanting early, because not wearing mage clothing with its powerful enchantments is a huge drag on your potential power early on. This reminds me of people making 'weapon balance' mods for Fallout 4 right now, that all increase the damage of weapons to 'realistic' levels. I can almost guarantee these people are playing without taking the associated damage perks, and then complaining weapons are under-powered. Yes, if you completely ignore the in-game mechanics for using weapons effectively, you will find success difficult. This should not be surprising. I'm not arguing the magic system is awesome. Just like every other skill, it is under-developed, lacking in options for tactics, with overly simple/uninteresting mechanics, redundancy and exploitative/game-breaking mechanics. However being severely under-powered is not the major issue here, and I feel any attempt to 'fix' THAT problem is bound to drastically un-balance the game.

No reason to hide man... these games are so big it's pretty easy to overlook significant parts of them, and easy to get stuck in familiar patterns. I'm guilty of the opposite a little bit, and learning that it's just as grievous an error - I was a bit of an over-planner and a mechanic-abuser. Not to cheat-y extents, but to the point where most of my playthrough was about getting the build fleshed out. I wouldn't stop to smell the roses, which is my favorite way to play now. ie. If you ask me, the single best standing stone in the game is the Lord stone. 25% magic resistance and 50 armor rating. For the magic resistance alone... it's relatively easy, even early on to get a piece or two of +10% magic resistance gear - you now have 45% magic resistance just resting. If you're a Breton, that's 70%. Do the Mara quests in Riften and that's an extra +10% passive magic resistance. 55/80%. If you're a mage grab the Alteration mage armor (and wear mage clothing!) and magic resistance perks, and you will be sitting at threshold for magic resistance even without being a Breton, and have decent armor rating as you level, and threshold at the highest. You then have most of your available enchant slots to put towards either eliminating spell cost from a school, buffing your magicka or magicka regen, or some mix of all of them. Nothing can touch you and you have basically unlimited magicka to just blast fools away with either crazy AOE spells or pick them off with projectiles. You will literally walk through everything in the game after level 40 with this setup, and it works for pretty much anything other than a stealth based build. Just cause I'm having fun thinking of them right now - other builds I've played in vanilla to level 50-70;

I totally get the arguments, and am certainly not saying that magic is 'fine' in Skyrim. I've put 3000+ hours into vanilla Skyrim back in the day on Xbox360 and played pretty much every build the vanilla game allows for to 'completion' (ie. the build fully fleshed out, usually around level 50-60). The most 3 most overpowered builds I ever made were 1) Sword and Board Warrior. No question, if you get good magic resistance you are basically an unstoppable killing machine. Really the same goes for two handed. The key points are just weapon skill + block + heavy armor (even light armor works but doesn't quite function the same until the end... thank you mechanic breaking perks! (not)). 2) Destruction / Conjuration Mage. Two high level elementals, and it's pretty easy to make at least one school of magic cost absolutely nothing to cast - either go with Destruction for unlimited flame spam, or Alteration / Restoration for defense. Even scarier, a necromancer - you can have two undead conjurers, who can themselves each summon an undead. 3) Illusion/Sneak/Marksman Assassin. Yeah sneak around in the shadows, cause your enemies to attack each other and then rain death on them while they're confused. This is probably the most deadly of them all, but doesn't manage well in direct confrontations. Thankfully, it's nearly impossible to get in such a confrontation you didn't plan with this build. I feel like the example you gave was really just an example of the 'hump'. I feel like on any of these builds - and any other I've played, there is almost always, a 'hump'. Early game is stupid easy. As long as you don't go wandering dangerous places, and take a little care about confrontations and your gear, it should be a cakewalk. Right around level 10 though, until around 25/30ish, the game can be quite challenging, even on vanilla. I find this really is true regardless of build - mages tend to have a problem with groups and higher level warriors, where warriors tend to have a problem dealing with mages. Stealth is generally the least prone to this 'hump', but can also be tricky as while they are deadly to both warriors and mages, that only applies as long as you are able to sneak or stay at range (in which case both are deadly to you), and there are many situations where that is difficult/impossible. I find what makes the difference in these moments is preparation, planning, etc. and that's actually a pretty good balance if you ask me. And no, I don't resort to out-of-character behavior to get past these moments - if I'm playing a mage, I'm not carrying a sword around, and I'm not about to pick one up and use it (unless in some dire, hopeless situation). I do agree that magic is a little under-powered compared to Marksman & One/Two Handed. But honestly that's as far as I'd go. Even a pure destruction mage (which yes I have played)... I mean, by not too far in - say level 30 if you're really pushing for it, you can have almost cost-free (or alternatively just incredibly quickly regenerating magicka) casting of area-of-effect fire, ice and lightning spells. Plus that horrible stun-lock mechanic. None of this is to suggest Skyrim magic is awesome though. Just that it's not as terrible as people tend to claim it to be (in my opinion). My point is more that the same problems that exist in the magic system are present in all the skills (ie. lack of diversity/strategy, mechanic/gameplay-breaking elements, redundancy, etc.), and it's a comprehensive overhaul that's truly needed to deal with the situation as a whole. thus, Ordinator. The most comprehensive perk overhaul that isn't a compatibility nightmare. It makes each skill feel more distinct and has many more potential paths to advance, and does away with most of the redundancy of vanilla - all without ruining balance. Add in Apocalypse for even more variety + tactics in spellcasting, and honestly I don't think you can get a much better experience out of Skyrim without rebuilding it from scratch. I've played with TTRSO, SPO, SSR, and Better Magic (Only modules of TTRSO) as my overhaul in the past, though not enough to give worthwhile commentary about it other than I was underwhelmed and certain aspects turned me off. The consistent and expansive vision of Enai Siaion is the strength of Ordinator, and the weakness of any cobbled-together set of mods to overhaul skills.

I honestly question the original premise here. I agree that magic is not particularly interesting in vanilla, but severely underpowered? I have played multiple straight mage characters in vanilla without any problem dealing with multiple or powerful foes. A couple enchantments, maybe bringing along a couple potions/staff... Even without the extras, the worst problem with magic is simply spell scaling and the fact that on higher levels you have to spam spells to whittle down enemies. In my opinion the problem is more to do with flexibility and diversity of tactics, and that's a problem that affects just about all skills. To me, Ordinator + Apocalypse is the answer here. Played with both for quite a while and love them, specifically for that - the amount of diversity added to character builds and potential tactics offered. Toss in a good combat mod - Vigor or Wildcat, and maybe some additional weapon/armor mods and you're good to go.