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.

[Fear2288]

Origineel geplaatst door 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

That’s sorta the point though, how was this even considered a “standard”? The writing, the quests, the location design, etc is WORSE than the vanilla base game.

You start it by walking up to some Khajiit and just asking for a ride to Elsweyr. They drop you off in the forest where you get told that some Sabrecats retextured to look like tigers think you’re pretty cool and special and so they give you a whole ass encampment.

Someone then tells you you should go talk to a Moon Sugar dealer down the river and she passes you off to another cat who has you help his brother kill some Thalmor.

Then a different cat shows up at your encampment with the air ship left behind by the Thalmor you killed and he wants to go help a supply station out in the middle of the desert supposedly being attacked by Thalmor.

So you go do that but get told that the leader of the anti-Moon Sugar Thalmor death squad must’ve retreated so you should find him.

You attack his tiny camp only to find him not there either but he left behind a journal babbling about wanting to hit more supply stations.

You get back on the airship and on the way back home you get attacked by the Thalmor leader and his four goons in their own airship. You kill them and go back to your encampment where Captain Kitten tells you his buddy is being held prisoner by a gang of Argonian pirates on an island in the middle of the sea.

So you go and kill like 6 Argonians in their tiny island base and rescue Captain Kitten’s friend who’s supposedly a guy but uses a female Khajiit model and has a female voice.

The gender confused Khajiit then tells you they’re not coming with you and they’re gonna turn the pirate base into a new outpost for the New Elsweyr anti-Thalmor resistance group…but you should check back later.

So you go back to your encampment in the forest and turn around and talk to Captain Kitten who tells you it’s time to check in with his gender confused friend.

You go back out to the island where there’s one Khajiit who literally tells you to go away, another who’ll sell you low level weapons/armor, one who makes a joke about being an adventurer until they found a ball of yarn, and one that tells you they don’t get the whole arrow in the knee thing.

You speak to gender confused cat who tells you they built the base.

Thats it - mod over.

There’s two side quests - one where you collect some ingredients and get the single custom made torso armor, and another where you find a Sload, go back to the quest giver, gather some ingredients, go back to the quest giver, and then go back to the Sload and kill it for an enchanted sword.

There’s no exploration, no dungeons, no followers (though there’s one that seemed like it was meant to be), a player “home” that’s 100% useless once you finish the quests, repurposed assets that make no sense for something that’s supposed to be Elsweyr, and all of maybe 8 new items (6 alchemical ingredients, 1 sword, 1 torso armor).

I’m sorry but even if I had played this when it came out - I would’ve thought it was bad.

[BottleCap]

Ordinator, it has some cool and unique perks, like the one that gives you a lot of attack speed or the one that summons a wolf from the two handed tree and the entire steal tree is very cool too, but i feel like the balancing went out of the window and at a certain point you end getting lost in the perk trees

[St✩rlight]

Origineel geplaatst door milk drinker:

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

I've always preferred the default UI, the only thing I like about SkyUI is being able to filter by value per weight.

[SpeedFreak1972]

I use skyui and then I overwrite it with Dear Diary (dark) I need SkyUI for the mcm

[Bleurei]

Vigilant. I wish there's more horror element and less dark souls inspired.

[StreamWhenGuy]

All of the JK's stuff.
The author simply puts a lot of clutter in one cell, which leads to FPS loss due to increased amount of draw calls. Without a significant reshape and increase in size of the whole game map and its boundaries, as well as landscape and indoor locations, you cannot really do it right. As a result it gets overcluttered and just looks weird and even claustrophobic. Why JK's mods are highly praised is beyond me.
Yeah, yeah, whatever strikes your fancy to each their own different strokes for different folks and all of that, I get it.

[PL@YER]

Origineel geplaatst door Bleurei:

Vigilant. I wish there's more horror element and less dark souls inspired.

imma be real man horror in this engine is eyerollingly bad and it makes act 3 the worst act of the whole mod series.

the dark souls inspiration is barely surface deep that the armors have been getting replaced slowly over a couple patches now with 0 uproar or care. the actual inspiration is the Divine Comedy, Christian history (allesians having popes, inquisitors, ect) and Kirkbride lore

I'd say vigilants actual weaknesses are it's age and how later mod entries in the soon to be quadrilogy are just better designed and more tightly interwoven with the narrative.

[Fear2288]

Origineel geplaatst door PL@YER:

Origineel geplaatst door Bleurei:

Vigilant. I wish there's more horror element and less dark souls inspired.

imma be real man horror in this engine is eyerollingly bad and it makes act 3 the worst act of the whole mod series.

the dark souls inspiration is barely surface deep that the armors have been getting replaced slowly over a couple patches now with 0 uproar or care. the actual inspiration is the Divine Comedy, Christian history (allesians having popes, inquisitors, ect) and Kirkbride lore

I'd say vigilants actual weaknesses are it's age and how later mod entries in the soon to be quadrilogy are just better designed and more tightly interwoven with the narrative.

Isn’t Vigilant the third and most recent of Vicn’s series?

I thought it went Unslaad > Glenmoril > Vigilant

He’s got a fourth in the oven too? Any info on what that is?

I’ve never actually played any of them but was always intrigued. The departure from the lore towards more DS/Bloodbourne flavor sorta kept me from jumping in.

Also, in regards to horror, the very start of Clockwork is pretty creepy as you move through the underground sections before you get to the mansion. Definitely doesn’t vibe with the rest of the mod though as it just becomes a standard mystery story.

Beyond Reach also has some unsettling bits.

One of my favorites is when you take out the Orc stronghold and find a couple human women who’ve been raped, tortured, and murdered. You find one still alive who’s clearly mentally shattered and goes on and on about the abomination growing inside her. In the background, standing on a peak, is the spirit you encounter later in the story - just watching you…on first playthrough you don’t know what it is and you may even ask yourself if you even actually saw it because it appears and then vanishes if you look away.

[PL@YER]

Origineel geplaatst door Fear2288:

Isn’t Vigilant the third and most recent of Vicn’s series?

I thought it went Unslaad > Glenmoril > Vigilant

nope its the first and the oldest being a remake of Art of Mercy which was part of a trilogy of mods he made back in 2012-2013 that have been taken down as theyre not up to his standards anymore. The actual story order according to him on his blog is Vigilant > Glenmoril > Unslaad but glenmoril is still unfinished with its 14 endings not implemented as of version .95

I’ve never actually played any of them but was always intrigued. The departure from the lore towards more DS/Bloodbourne flavor sorta kept me from jumping in.

wouldnt compare the lore to ds/bb its just grounded in the wacky dubiously canon side of the lore. were talking like c0da, loveletter of the 5th era, KINIMUNE and the The Seven Fights of The Aldudagga.

He’s got a fourth in the oven too? Any info on what that is?

its called daC0DA and its probably gonna be out in august or September. it came into existence because he wanted to try to incorporate Ithelia into glenmoril (did not work out) and took a break from it to see how he would do that and its about the underking, manimarco, the numiduim and probably landfall but I cant tell from google translating his blog.

[Von Faustien]

Origineel geplaatst door PL@YER:

Origineel geplaatst door Bleurei:

Vigilant. I wish there's more horror element and less dark souls inspired.

imma be real man horror in this engine is eyerollingly bad and it makes act 3 the worst act of the whole mod series.

the dark souls inspiration is barely surface deep that the armors have been getting replaced slowly over a couple patches now with 0 uproar or care. the actual inspiration is the Divine Comedy, Christian history (allesians having popes, inquisitors, ect) and Kirkbride lore

I'd say vigilants actual weaknesses are it's age and how later mod entries in the soon to be quadrilogy are just better designed and more tightly interwoven with the narrative.

wait quadrilogy? i thought there was just 3

[PL@YER]

Origineel geplaatst door Von Faustien:

Origineel geplaatst door PL@YER:

imma be real man horror in this engine is eyerollingly bad and it makes act 3 the worst act of the whole mod series.

the dark souls inspiration is barely surface deep that the armors have been getting replaced slowly over a couple patches now with 0 uproar or care. the actual inspiration is the Divine Comedy, Christian history (allesians having popes, inquisitors, ect) and Kirkbride lore

I'd say vigilants actual weaknesses are it's age and how later mod entries in the soon to be quadrilogy are just better designed and more tightly interwoven with the narrative.

wait quadrilogy? i thought there was just 4?

dac0da is the fourth entry we havent got released yet

[Von Faustien]

oh and well were ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on popular mods

Elnora's house mods way to much clutter and decorations, less features than a lot of the other big house mods and just generally kind of meh. if you like them neat but i dont get the apeal

[Silamon]

Origineel geplaatst door BottleCap:

Ordinator, it has some cool and unique perks, like the one that gives you a lot of attack speed or the one that summons a wolf from the two handed tree and the entire steal tree is very cool too, but i feel like the balancing went out of the window and at a certain point you end getting lost in the perk trees

Ordinator was the one that adds a bunch of fancy abilities to use in combat right?

I stopped using that overhaul because I very rarely actually used the abilities it had. It's a cool idea I just never really felt like I actually wanted to use the abilities. I prefer a perk tree that has more passive traits personally.

[Silamon]

Origineel geplaatst door StreamWhenGuy:

All of the JK's stuff.
The author simply puts a lot of clutter in one cell, which leads to FPS loss due to increased amount of draw calls. Without a significant reshape and increase in size of the whole game map and its boundaries, as well as landscape and indoor locations, you cannot really do it right. As a result it gets overcluttered and just looks weird and even claustrophobic. Why JK's mods are highly praised is beyond me.
Yeah, yeah, whatever strikes your fancy to each their own different strokes for different folks and all of that, I get it.

Which world overhauls do you use then? I just picked JK's and great cities because that seemed to be the standard.

[St✩rlight]

Origineel geplaatst door Silamon:

Origineel geplaatst door BottleCap:

Ordinator, it has some cool and unique perks, like the one that gives you a lot of attack speed or the one that summons a wolf from the two handed tree and the entire steal tree is very cool too, but i feel like the balancing went out of the window and at a certain point you end getting lost in the perk trees

Ordinator was the one that adds a bunch of fancy abilities to use in combat right?

I stopped using that overhaul because I very rarely actually used the abilities it had. It's a cool idea I just never really felt like I actually wanted to use the abilities. I prefer a perk tree that has more passive traits personally.

Yeah too many mods change the balance in ways i don't like, even the unofficial patch does things that I find unnecessary. Right now I'm using some kind of clutter fix that came recommended with another mod and I won't be using it again because it messes with stats and arrow trajectories which mean kill cam shots often miss. i mostly prefer visual mods like hair and eyes and armours.

I'm also not usually keen on amateur written mods like the guy just mentioned about women tortured and murdered. That's just kind of cringe and sordid to me. It just seems distasteful and immature so I wouldn't enjoy that.