Highly Regarded, But Overrated Mods

[Fear2288]

Just for fun and some inevitable debate/disagreement.

What are some mods you feel are a bit overrated or just plain bad despite the fact that they have high endorsement/download numbers on Nexus and/or get spoken highly of and why?

My first two contributions:

1. Helgen Reborn

The idea of this mod is nice - a questline that results in Helgen being rebuilt into a functioning fortress town again - but the experience isn’t all that enjoyable.

A storyline that just isn’t very exciting or engaging, an unnecessarily long section where you have entirely generic guards accompany you on six different dungeon clearing missions, a lack of new unique assets (weapons, armor, clothing, spells, items, etc), some poorly designed new locations, a few unimaginatively named areas (“Fight Cave”, “Personal Tower”), and the realization that another town between Riverwood and Falkreath just isn’t as helpful as it seems…

It was just a “meh” experience that was interesting to go through once but I have no desire or need to keep this one in my mod list.


2. Taunt Your Enemies and that other one where you can call to NPCs at a distance.

I like jayserpa, and I like nearly all of his mods for the minor immersion or gameplay additions they introduce. He’s one of those mod makers that when he releases something - it rockets to the Hot Files page and gets endorsed and downloaded into oblivion within hours.

But I just couldn’t see the point in these two.

TYE seems like it would be useful but it’s kind of not. The benefit it gives you is minimal, it uses your power/shout slot, and the reality is that you don’t even need another boost like it to dispatch most enemies. The time it takes you to switch to the taunt, activate it, and then switch back to your preferred power/shout could just be better used to strike your enemy.

The name of the second mod escapes me but it allows you to get an NPCs attention from afar by calling out to them.

I can’t think of one instance where this feature would be truly beneficial or have a practical purpose in this game other than to make an NPC walking away from you stop so you can catch up to them to speak, or coaxing an enemy to come running at you.

[Ffabbia]

Originally posted by alexander_dougherty:

Originally posted by Ffabbia:

Sheesh, this is like someone casually dismissing Jimi Hendrix as 'an inept, incompetent musician who has clearly never bothered to learn his instrument.'

I would just like to point out that people HAVE said that about Jimi Hendrix.
Not me personally, because despite my age I have never actually heard him.
But people have said it... people have said it of every musician, from Bach and Mozart to Billie Eilish... and some have even meant it...

They may say it, as is their right under freedom of expression - but even someone who is completely tone death would quickly deduce that their conclusions are objectively wrong, given how obvious his skills were.

[Fear2288]

Originally posted by genu:

Originally posted by Fear2288:

Highly Regarded, But Overrated Mods

Legacy of the Dragonborn

While I 100% disagree with that statement, I can see how someone who really doesn’t care for collecting things and being a loot goblin would feel that way.

If you’re not the kinda player who genuinely finds collecting and displaying things fun - LOTD has nothing to offer you.

[Drunk Was Papi]

skyui
the fact it hasn't been updated in ages and needs 100 patches just to work

[Abisha]

OStim feels overrated.
the animations etc are really good but the UI is clumpy and it have less then interesting additional mods to it.

making it a boring experience

99% of the follower mods not because they are bad but they are buggy many times. or to overpowered. and i not see any problems with the original followers especially with additional content.

interesting NPC. to buggy should be uninstalled directly.

Lux, to many plugins

[VR.IX]

SDA. Personal preference, just no Serana without Laura Bailey. The VA is good but still feels a little off.
LOTD; 100% completed, starts fun later feels like chore, unnecessary long dungeon, bloated features, too many world edit + clashing with many mods that need esp(not espfe/esl) and so on.

[Fear2288]

@Abisha

I think I have to agree with Interesting NPCs and Lux.

Interesting NPCs tried to “fix” the abundance of shallow, one dimensional NPCs in Skyrim by adding ones that far too often turn into 45 minute conversations as they reply to your one sentence questions with with full-on 3-page monologues.

I had the mod installed for quite awhile but removed it when I finally noticed that I was actively avoiding speaking to any of the added NPCs because I didn’t have the time to devote 30+ minutes to listening to their whole life story.


Lux I only started using recently when I switched from Rudy ENB to Cabbage ENB.

I had been using ELFX for years before this and I had always heard that Lux was either just as good or just a bit better than ELFX.

Having now put in about 100+ hours with Cabbage ENB and Lux I’m not sure about it. I don’t know if it’s Cabbage, Lux, or the two combined but I’ve been encountering issues with nighttime, caves, barrows, and dwemer ruins being just as bright as vanilla or maybe even moreso. I’ve also been having issues with too visible rim lighting and some other lighting related annoyances but again, I don’t know if that’s all Lux’s fault, Cabbage’s, or the combo’s.

Daytimes and daytime interiors look absolutely fantastic though.

Either way, when I retire this current character I’m going back to Rudy + Obsidian Weathers + ELFX. It was more performance heavy on my rig but I had far less lighting-related issues.

[Fear2288]

Originally posted by p a p i:

skyui
the fact it hasn't been updated in ages and needs 100 patches just to work

Because it’s pretty much done?

I think there’s only one true unresolved issue with SkyUI and that’s it not saving your difficulty selection with the current game version. I think someone made a third party patch for that, but otherwise you can just change it in your Prefs.ini

100s of patches to make it work right? What?

The only reason you’d need a patch for SkyUI is if you’re using other mods which change/alter the UI in some way.

Thats kinda a given when you’re trying to use multiple mods that touch the same stuff.

[Mugiwara]

Originally posted by Fear2288:

@Abisha

I don’t know if that’s all Lux’s fault, Cabbage’s, or the combo’s.

I have been using Lux for years with various ENBs and haven't seen this other than with Pi-Cho (which while we are on the subject Pi-Cho looks beautiful, but it's not for me). Not used Cabbage ENB either yet but plan to. Best guess is it's the combo. I have seen wild variations when Lux is paired with different ENBs.

[Fear2288]

Originally posted by Mugiwara:

Originally posted by Fear2288:

@Abisha

I don’t know if that’s all Lux’s fault, Cabbage’s, or the combo’s.

I have been using Lux for years with various ENBs and haven't seen this other than with Pi-Cho (which while we are on the subject Pi-Cho looks beautiful, but it's not for me). Not used Cabbage ENB either yet but plan to. Best guess is it's the combo. I have seen wild variations when Lux is paired with different ENBs.

It could very well be mostly Cabbage’s fault.

The impression I’ve gotten from the more recent comments on Cabbage’s page is that many people preferred one of the previous versions of it over the latest one. Complaints about the lighting seem to be common - especially when talking about nights and interiors are that supposed to be dark and gloomy.

[-={LG}=-]

Originally posted by Fear2288:

I think there’s only one true unresolved issue with SkyUI and that’s it not saving your difficulty selection with the current game version.

That's been fixed. There's nothing wrong with SkyUI that I'm aware of. And even if it did take 100 mods, I wouldn't play Skyrim without it anymore. Some temptations you must avoid, because once you've dabbled in them you can't live without them.

[Abisha]

Originally posted by Mugiwara:

Originally posted by Fear2288:

@Abisha

I don’t know if that’s all Lux’s fault, Cabbage’s, or the combo’s.

I have been using Lux for years with various ENBs and haven't seen this other than with Pi-Cho (which while we are on the subject Pi-Cho looks beautiful, but it's not for me). Not used Cabbage ENB either yet but plan to. Best guess is it's the combo. I have seen wild variations when Lux is paired with different ENBs.

my solution to the "light issue" Skyrim have

LoSII (to add light sources)
Cathedral weather (can adjust light strength on fly)
Embers XD Parallax
Community Shaders (latest inc additional addon)
Reshader Darenis

Pros,
less mods, more stable and a ton of FPS gain.

cons
do this makes it as pretty as super heavy ENB-Lux combo.
no but it's very close to it.

[SpeedFreak1972]

LOTD is a special mod for sure everything revolves around the mods it's a great mod, but it will mess with the pacing of your game due to the museum quests

[Fear2288]

Originally posted by SpeedFreak1972:

LOTD is a special mod for sure everything revolves around the mods it's a great mod, but it will mess with the pacing of your game due to the museum quests

That’s true.

Once I started using LOTD I quickly understood why it’s commonly said that you should build a mod list around it.

Not only because you’ll likely need various compatibility patches for your other mods and may want to download/install additional mods supported by LOTD, but because filling out the museum, and doing the Explorer’s Guild questline more-or-less becomes the true Main Quest of your game.

Odyssey is just gonna cement that with its expanded EG questline that takes you all over Tamriel via a series of smaller world space maps you travel to.

[Fear2288]

New addition:

Moonpath to Elsweyr.

I get it. It was one of the earliest quest mods for Skyrim, but this thing still gets talked up as if it’s a GOAT.

The best thing about it is that it’s only maybe 2 hours of content and doesn’t drag on forever like some other quest mods.

The writing isn’t great, the choice to make the map a series of cells instead of a world space made some of the back-and-forth in the Forest area tedious, voice work is sub-par and audio is bad, environment designs are poor (each cell looks and feels like it’s taken from an early MMO), it looks bad if you’re using an ENB even with the later lighting and sky patches, there’s very little custom assets and even fewer new items (a torso armor, a couple alchemy ingredients, and maybe a book or two)…

I knew it was old, and I expected some of the traits that usually come with early Skyrim mods…but I’m not even sure how this was considered good when it came out, how it was deemed good enough to be implemented into the LE version of Legacy of the Dragonborn, and why some people continue to hold this up as a great quest mod.

[Von Faustien]

well i agree moonpath doesnt hold up compared to a lot of newer quest mods i still enjoyed it when used it.

its like Vilja sure other mods might rival or surpass it now but it helped set the standered and it deserves some respect for that even if its no longer the GOAT