@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).