@Fatality The Patreon is just for beta. Full release will be free.

And I hear ya, that said, it’s prolly the prettiest list out there and the funnest to play.

 

This is gorgeous.

What most interests me, though, is that the combat seems better? Has that been improved? Site is unclear.

That was my biggest complaint about Skyrim, the combat controls were clunky with very little depth.

 

I don't know about that modlist in particular, but combat in Skyrim has gone through an evolution in the past few years. With the right combination of mods, it feels like a recent released game like God of War, Dark Souls, or the Witcher.

Some relevant mods for that:
- True Directional Movement
- SkySA
- Valhalla Combat
- EDIT: Some new animations also help, like the different ones made by Verolevi

 

It’s modded but yes it feels much more dark souls like.

with nolvus there are also stances so you can switch between styles. Here’s a longer stream if you’re interested:

https://youtube.com/live/MfZjG9hwLGw?si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE

I’m having a blast in the beta. There are def issues and bugs (always will be) but very stable.

He has a redux version as well if you’re not running a high end gaming pc. Plus just a super friendly guy in general and super helpful with questions.

 

Good to know, I'll check these mods out next time I've got the itch to play Skyrim.

 

Also a response to this sorts thing was actually posted this morning on discord. Here’s Vektor’s stance:

“
@everyone So guys (and girls), i've seen a bit of exitation about v5 on the channels. Don't worry Nolvus v5 will be released to public soon. The list seems to run pretty good and i still have few bugs to fix for the "open" beta (free and for everyone).
I will now answer the 1 million dollard question "why nolvus is not on wabbajack" one last time : despite the fact that WJ is way better than my own little thing, i wanted to create my own custom tool and challenge myself. I wanted also a full package for nolvus (web site, app,...). Programming is my passion and i like to have my hands/control on what i'm doing. Don't look for drama here, i just wanted to create my own stuff. The dashboard code is open source, it's not paywalled (you can check that in the provided source code). Concerning the "early access", i always did an early access for nolvus since v3, i never take this for a "pay to play my list" and i don't force people to pay (i always spend time on helping people that are not contributor or patreon), but more "you supported nolvus here is my gratitude". I've seen also posts about the "Nolvus bad reputation". I would say that nolvus has always had this "bad reputation" but i see that the community has never grown so big since v4, my thoughts on that is just because sometimes people are not just sheeps and instead of believing everything they can find on the net, they just come here, play the list and see by themselves. I hope i will not have to start muting people or channels because of drama, there is drama only if you want to create one. Be patient, i'm hard at work to finialize this closed beta and bring nolvus to everyone. Thanks a lot for reading this.”

 

That sounds promising and I hope the public launch goes well, glad to here you're enjoying it too - the combat animations and graphics definitely look nice. I think the concern originates from the fact that quite a few of the more groundbreaking mods for Skyrim of late have had Patreon only "early access" periods of over a year and counting, it's viewed as a way of trying to circumvent Bethesda's TOS and the community's dim view on paid modding. Not saying Vektor has the intent to drag out this closed beta like that but I can see where the suspicion comes from these days.

I can see both sides of things cause I largely agree with the idea that mod authors should be able to profit if people are willing to pay for the service they're providing (I don't blindly hate the Creation Club like a few in the modding community do for example) but I can also see the damage it does to the modding scene when large parts of it are hidden away on patreon. That's not even getting into the mod piracy scene that has sprung up as a result, and the resulting attempts at amateur DRM from a few modders with paywalled content that can be extremely invasive to users computers.

It may be a slippery slope fallacy, but I think the more mod authors see these patreon schemes being accepted and normalised, the more those who would be modding for nothing other than their passion for the game feel like they should be charging if others are making a lot of money off doing the same thing. Once paying for mods becomes the norm rather than the exception, the whole scene gets stifled and the less successful the modding community is the more likely it is Bethesda decides not to invest so heavily in providing mod tools for their games. Or potentially even worse, they see how much money is being made and decide to try to get a cut like they have previously as with the Steam workshop and Creation Club, but in more aggressive ways. I imagine Bethesda would also probably take a dim view on people using their own tools to compete for the dollars of their customers that could otherwise be spent on DLC, in the instance of a game they're still actively developing like Starfield.

For Wabbajack, the topic is a bit of a sensitive one because when they were first starting out there was a lot of tension with mod authors (some of whom believe they should see the bulk of donations and that putting a list author between them and their users would siphon those dollars away) over the concept of an automated list installer. Most previous attempts at such a thing were paywalled and had involved using stolen assets (another reason for Nolvus' use of Jedi trees - a mod using tree meshes from the Unity store it doesn't have the rights to use - is a bit of a bad look) from a bunch of different mods, so the concept was not popular for a long time in the Skyrim modding community. When Wabbajack was announced the Nexus' private mod authors forum had some insane hate going on from some pretty prominent mod authors, which looks a bit silly now that most will agree it's one of the better things to happen for the modding scene in years. Unfortunately when paid mod lists do something controversial, some mod authors will still get angry with Wabbajack even if the list isn't associated with them. Not as much of a problem now that the Nexus stopped letting people make their mods inaccessible, but can still make things difficult for mod list authors when they try to work with mod authors on things like bugs.

That was a lot of words for a pretty niche issue, so I'll finish by saying after all this I'm keen to check out Nolvus when it becomes free to see what it's like. Also, not sure I'm a big fan of the whole 'calling people sheep for being dubious' thing, as I've explained there's a bit of a mixed history with this topic and that sort of language reminds me a bit too much of Sinitar (don't get me started on that topic). It can be stressful dealing with these sorts of things and all the associated anonymous internet hate though so I can see where he's coming from.

 

Yeah agree on the sheeps thing.

And honestly, the whole thing is truly fascinating in general. Skyrim modding has it's celebrities and drama like every other community.

 

Definitely agreed, the amount of drama in the Skyrim modding community can be hilarious sometimes. Especially when it feels like at least 50% of it revolves around one guy (Arthmoor, guy who made some of the biggest mods around for Skyrim like Alternate Start/Open Cities/Cutting Room Floor, and leads the current Unofficial Patch team - also banned from the Skyrim mods subreddit for being a massive asshole. He once illegally DMCA'd an open source license version of the unofficial patch people were using to play Skyrim on VR because of some weird power trip he's on).

 

And it has begun...

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/89931?tab=posts

 

SkyClimb.

Procedurally generates ledges with EVG's animated traversal. Basically we have Assassin's creed climbing now.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/97253?tab=posts

 

Full OpenAI Integration has arrived with Voice Generation and Whisper.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/98631?tab=description

 

Update: if you have a modded Skyrim, make sure to go into steam and make Skyrim only update when you launch it from steam. Then only load Skyrim from mod organizer2. Bethesda is rolling out an update in the next few days that’s gonna break the current version of skse.

 

So. We don't really have a thread yet, and I'm feeling meh as fuck, so I'll use the extant Skyrim thread.

Starfield.

Bethesda has often, unwillingly? willingly?, embodied the quaint, and troublesome, responsibility shucking little phrase that, "the modders will complete it." rather than, "the modders will improve it." Skyrim. Fallout 3. Fallout 4.

I haven't played it yet, only watched videos and read threads. Does Starfield have the... je ne sais quoi that is firmly rooted enough that mods can, quote/unquote fix it? With Skyrim, I can't even fucking imagine playing it vanilla. I can't even imagine playing through the Mass Effect trilogy vanilla at this point. Or Dragon Age: Origins and Inquisition. Or Fallout 4. Expanding, I would cut my own dick off before I played a Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas run without Tale of Two Wastelands.

Thoughts?

 

I've been a massive fan of Bethesda games since Oblivion so I put quite a few hours into Starfield, trying to find the enjoyment I've had with all their previous titles barring Fallout 76. I've also been part of the modding community about as long, so I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what the community is capable of. So with that context, I'm of the opinion that the game isn't likely to be "fixed" by mods.

People often attribute much of Bethesda's success to the fact that their games can be so heavily modified (and I can understand their point of view entirely) but the truth is that something like 90% of the people to have ever played a Bethesda game never installed a single mod. At least for a long time before console mods, that statistic might have changed by now - but the point stands that Bethesda games have been very much enjoyed for a long time on their own vanilla merit. I don't believe that to be the case for the most part with Starfield, and I think the reason why is hard to address with mods.

Largely, that's because Starfield's story and world is written just downright awfully, because it commits the ultimate sin of storytelling by being horribly boring. Not to say Skyrim or Fallout had Pulitzer prize worthy main quests, but they were serviceable (F4 less so) and the interesting background lore more than made up for it. Emil Pagliarulo - Starfield's design director and senior writer for Bethesda, infamous for this speech that highlights why his writing is so bad - is in my opinion clearly nothing without standing on the shoulders of giants like those who wrote the original lore for Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

To go into some detail about the issues of writing, I'd probably highlight the fact that despite being an M rated game, many have described Starfield's atmosphere as being somewhat puritan or lacking any edge that it ends up feeling bland and unrealistic. Bloodthirsty pirates that don't swear or do much on screen evil at all, drug city nightclubs with middle aged men in wacky alien outfits dancing on stage, that sort of thing. I worry that this will be a constant going forward as they now have to worry about damaging Microsoft's image, I believe they've held the Halo franchise back from getting as mature as the original trilogy (evident in the absence of the Flood in the 343 games). The main companions in Starfield could very accurately be described as sticks in the mud that spend large portions of their dialogue lecturing you for entirely benign choices. I don't want to spoil the main quest and thankfully I'm honestly am not sure that I could if I tried, it's very convoluted. In short, it's all kinda cringe.

Reworking the story is an area mods have historically struggled to address. Skyrim: Extended Cut is an upcoming mod that attempts to make changes to Skyrim's main quest, there is still no release date and we're 12 years out from Skyrim's release. Fallout 4 has a couple of mods I believe make alterations to the main quest by one weird modder, I never tried them because I heard they had timetravelling Hitler or something like that. Kris Takahashi made some cool additional content in the form of Interesting NPCs and Tales from the Commonwealth, but he now works for Bethesda on Starfield so I don't expect anymore mods from him.

The fact of the matter is making new story content is hard, although thankfully there isn't a voiced protagonist to work against this time. But it involves a lot of different aspects of modding (writing, quest design, programming/scripting, expensive voice acting or controversial AI voice acting, new textures and models for original content) coming together that generally necessitates a team, and that can be difficult to organise for hobbyists. You also need people passionate enough to want to all that work (historically unpaid although I guess that might be changing, potentially not for the better) and I'm not sure I'm seeing that passion in the existing Bethesda modding community right now.

Some might have seen the recent news that the main guy behind Skyrim Together has announced he's abandoning work on a Starfield version despite being 70% finished, because in his words the game is "fucking trash" and he's "not gonna put my heart and soul into a mod for a game as mediocre as this." While harsh, the sentiment is a somewhat common one I've seen reflected by those in some modding discords I'm part of. Not helped by Bethesda pouring oil onto the flames with deciding now is a good time to patch Skyrim to have another go at paid mods, which has always inspired a lot of toxicity in the community - it's left some bigger mod authors quite annoyed at Bethesda by my understanding.

Gameplay wise I think mods will make Starfield a lot more interesting on that front at least so I would wait for those to play it, Creation Kit release is potentially not that far into next year. EnaiSiaion, author of Ordinator perk mod for Skyrim, has talked about intending to overhaul the currently pretty awful imo perk system, and there is a lot of vestigial systems in the game for an announced survival mode that I think could make space travel/outposts at least a little bit interesting. Some of the INI edits people have done have also showed some potential for the spaceship flying/travel between planets to be improved from the current loading screen frenzy.

It's kind of hard to predict how things will shake out here without knowing the details of how robust this version of the CK will be, though I have heard some worrying things about bad coding people have found while reverse engineering to get unofficial tools running. Despite that my run was remarkably lacking in bugs (though I've seen reports there might be some save corruption happening) so I don't believe the game needs to be "fixed" in the more literal sense as much as previous BGS games have, at least now that they're patching in basic settings and features like DLSS.

That was a lot but it's something I've been thinking about a fair bit myself. I definitely do hope I'm wrong, and I hope Bethesda can get their act together for Elder Scrolls 6 - Emil seriously has to go, though. Oh and the soundtrack has nothing on the Elder Scrolls music, dump Inon Zur too he clearly reused a lot from his Fallout track on this one, and no radio here to distract from how boring his stuff can be.