Skyrim isn't good without mods. Period.

[Ruenis]

Skyrim can be beaten without a single mod. It can be stabilized with the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch, and have its cut content restored with Cutting Room Floor to essentially turn it into a mostly fixed "Director's Cut" of itself. This already presents a truth I've wanted to deny for the 7+ years this game has been relevant: Skyrim isn't good without mods.

You 'only need' USSEP and CRF for a comprehensive vanilla experience. Then you end up adding SkyUI - the most endorsed Skyrim mod of all time - to fix the horrible UI. Then, if you're into screenarchery, or just want a clean interface, you install Gopher's iHud. You're pretty much set, even though now you're obligated to rely on SKSE64 updates since Bethesda changes SkyrimSE.exe every time they churn out pathetic Creation Club content, meaning you can't even continue your game without breaking things.

You're not done.

How about the infinite woodcutting mod "Lenhador.esp", "Continuous Chop Wood" on Nexusmods.com for Oldrim? It works out of the box with SSE, but if you feel inclined, you can re-save it in SSE's Creation Kit for good measure. 5 extra plugins total, for a total of 10 plugins in your game counting vanilla ESM files and the official three DLC ESMs.

Are you done? You wish it were that simple...

The vanilla perks...suck. If you argue against this, Skyrim veterans will laugh you out of the room.

- Master level Destruction mage casting Firebolt power at the same magnitude as a Level 5 Destruction mage
- Inviability to roleplay largely pacifist builds without suffering in the long run due to enemy level scaling

...so you roll with Ordinator. Or S|P|E|R|G (Wow Steam, censoring that? Lmfao). Or other ideal perk overhauls, to make the leveling feel even remotely rewarding. Then you also download EnaiSiaion's Sacrosanct to give the same treatment to vampire leveling. Then you download Moonlight Tales, or a different werewolf mod you find ideal, to give werewolf leveling the same treatment.

You already saw where I was going with this a long time ago...

That Skyrim, even after a 64-bit stabilization upgrade, isn't any better than it was in its old iteration (save for framerate issues and - let's face it ENB Oldrim users - far better lighting handling, sans believability in some areas), is a travesty. It's probably statistically correct to state that most of its players play, or played modless when it was first released, when you factor in console players (and SSE console players who don't have much taste for relying on mod loads), but even if that is still true, it's time to face the music; The mod community is the main reason why this game is still alive. Why else would they have allowed mod additions on consoles, or have stepped in to monetize modding via the Creation Club?

I gave up believing this wasn't the case long ago, yet lived in denial for years. I concede.

[Hammer Of Evil]

if you didn't get skyrim till like... yesterday, then yeah i guess you wouldn't be happy with the terrible graphics of 2011 lol, but that's on the player. buy a 10 year old game, get graphics from 10 years ago.

bethesda is partly to blame for this, marketing it as a 'totally new skyrim' bahahaha i don't think so. ♥♥♥♥ is from 2011! it's just the SE version lets you use the almighty ddr4 ram to it's proper extent, which is the definitive point of getting it, so you can just faceroll mods willy nilly (compared to oldrim32) and not crash your game.

for its time skyrim rocked. if you're just picking it up now, i kind of feel bad for you guys. bethesda shouldn't be allowed to charge as much as it is for this old-ass game =p

its aged well, but its old af, lets be real here.

[Grumpy]

Originally posted by Hammer of Evil:

it's just the SE version lets you use the almighty ddr4 ram to it's proper extent,

???

Originally posted by Hammer of Evil:

its aged well, but its old af, lets be real here.

be real here? skyrim was not even that good in 2011 lol and it is only aged well because of 8 years of very active modding support.

[Hammer Of Evil]

Originally posted by Grumpy:

Originally posted by Hammer of Evil:

it's just the SE version lets you use the almighty ddr4 ram to it's proper extent,

???

Originally posted by Hammer of Evil:

its aged well, but its old af, lets be real here.

be real here? skyrim was not even that good in 2011 lol and it is only aged well because of 8 years of very active modding support.

it was a sweet game. it wasn't nearly close to unplayable. it's aged well because the vanilla content is great. even the op admits to dumping 1k hours into the vanilla version. a bad game doesn't get that.

if you don't know what ddr4 means, i don't have time to give you a lecture, you can google it and use your critical thinking ability.

[abcd]

SSE got me to play without mods on Legendary, which I've been doing for about 200 70 hours now.

The mods I used before were Psyrim, SkyUI, Better Dragons, spooderman, Interesting NPCs, and the unofficial patch.

There isn't a version of an unofficial patch that hasn't wound up making cookie-cutter creative or balancing decisions in the course of interpreting what is or isn't a bug, which is annoying even if it's like 1 or 2 changes per 200 fixes.

An ENB would be nice, but I don't care enough to tweak my own profile and don't like other people's. All it would add is some AO anyway, and the antialiasing fixes would re-weaponize loose bones.

I miss my trance music and macho man randy savage, but that's it. SkyUI is a new font with sorting options that induces bugs. Better off just treating my inventory like something besides a portable cupboard in the first place. The Morrowind/Oblivion-style spell timers were kind of jarring too, considering the game's minimalist UI.

Digging through hundreds of mods just to find one that is well made, properly maintained, doesn't affect the balance, doesn't introduce bugs, and doesn't fundamentally rework the game is not really worth my time. This is especially true if I'm trying to evaluate what Bethesda made as a game, rather than a modding platform.

Their DLC has always been a lame attempt to compete with community content though, and it's been held back by simply costing too much to make. So creation club just makes sense from a business perspective. The exploitative nature is par for the course in the freelance creative market, and giving mod authors an avenue to be exploited is unfortunately a step up for them.

[DJCaseyD]

I don't know. I enjoyed the game when I never ran the patch, mods or anything else, and I'm enjoying it on this playthrough with the patch and mods. I personally really enjoy the game for what it is. One of my favorites.

[Humble]

I had fun playing skyrim without mod and even done with main quest, but Mod do make better but only because Bethesda still didn't not improved and do bugfix, even they still use old game skyrim to sell and I knew very well they making ton of money but won't use money and time to improve gameplay and bugfix, I'm not sure they are lazy or greed or both. It's no excuse because they keep selling and resellling for 7 year at least and sold very well yet not forced on gameplay improved (like need some magic rework in high level) and bugfix in quest and NPC with dragon attack or vampire attack breaking some quest because quest giver killed by a.i, need to respawn quest giver in order not quest break, or improved choice of roleplaying like join mage guild but not other guilds, so go on.

[ULTRA]

Originally posted by Docsprock:

lightly modded now. (40 mods).

u wot

Skyrim is the first TES game I even touched mods on and I only play with Ordinator, Imperious, and Live Another Life

Yes they're buggy but I don't buy $30 games to become a mod curator. If I thought the game were unplayable without mods I'd just have never bought it because that's consumerist cancer.

That said...

Yes the UI is bad, yes there are bugs galore, yes stupid stuff like chopping 2 logs exists, yes perks are boring and mainly scale numerically, yes graphics are unoptimized, yes there are 1-2 best races without mods, etc. etc.

My number one complaint is still that multiplayer was never attempted though, and that WILL BE a mod that I insist on running (unless the team are murdered by the SKSE guys before they can finish).

[jreese46]

Everybody has an opinion.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by Mountain Man:

My number one complaint is still that multiplayer was never attempted though, and that WILL BE a mod that I insist on running (unless the team are murdered by the SKSE guys before they can finish).

There was a mod for oldrim that did multiplayer, it was extremely buggy, and most people avoided it.

Multiplayer can be overrated, and for Skyrim this would certainly be the case, the mechanics are simply geared towards solo play, and not multiplayer. If they did have a multiplayer mode, I think most people would be complaining that the multiplayer bit was essentially another game entirely.

[NickySins]

But... But i loved skyrim without mods ):

[Ruenis]

Originally posted by Bandit:

But... But i loved skyrim without mods ):

It's still a great game, and I believe things in its gameplay can be worked around through specific play styles.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by Bandit:

But... But i loved skyrim without mods ):

I myself said it's more a case that it isn't as good as it should be, it's a good game, it's just a bit underdeveloped in parts.

[GD2X]

Better yes, though still good.

[evertebrate]

I can't agree with this. It's a myth spread by the modding community that the game is unplayable without x "patch" mod or incomplete without y content mod. The old version of skyrim was very successful on consoles where modding was impossible and even on PC mods were only used by a minority. When the game came out it didn't even have the creation kit with it. I liked it perfectly fine, and never came into any game breaking moments. And even now I mostly use my self made mods, where I change some things to be more to my taste. That's what I like about it. But it's not broken or incomplete or not a great game without mods. I played the elderscrolls series from titles 2 to 5 and this is the best of them, no mods required. And if mods really make anything "better" is purely a matter of taste.

[Ruenis]

I think it's good to note that even without mods, the game offers different avenues of play. You don't just pour everything into one type of combat method and win, but combine your abilities to pull through. Several people have legitimately completed all 3 of its story-based DLCs, so that says something.