SSE Criticism Thread Reloaded

[Trykz]

Currently playing (and modding a little) SSE. Also still have my LE version installed and ready to play should I so choose.

 

SSE is definitely more stable side by side with a near equal number of mods (around 220ish). At 200 or so mods you begin to get some deja vu moments with random CTDs for no apparent reason, fps drops in the oddest of locations, and some other minor glitches (lod and whatnot). My Skyrim LE still looks a lot better than SE, but as noted, doesn't perform quite as well.

 

That said, if you're pressed for drive space, I still can't qualify one as superior to the other. So at this point, I don't think it much matters.

 

Other than that, the CK is still a POS (worse, since it's tied to Bethnet), the new archive tool sucks (again, Bethnet), and even simple SSE modding takes up to twice as many steps to accomplish than it's predecessor thanks to the new BS file structure.

 

Trykz

[FauxFurry]

Thankfully, at this point, most of my complaints have been fixed both by modders and by Bethesda Game Studio themselves so SSE is looking pretty favorable compared to the original release at last. The current Creation Kit allows for easy conversion of the simpler older mods to Special Edition and the ESL format for smaller files gets around the 255 mod limit handily.

 

I suppose that I can still complain that the original release wasn't 64-bit to begin with. If it weren't for BGS's shortsightedness, we would even need to worry with two versions of Skyrim (and the bifurcated modding community that comes with them) in the first place.

[Champis]

Ive come around to SSE this last month. Have not completely removed classic yet, but looking forward to freeing up all the wasted HD space running two versions of the same game!

 

 Still hate the way SSE handles save games, racemenu and a few other issues. SSE still cant compete visually with classic overall, but it has improved a great deal of late and looks good enough that it is no longer the deal breaker it once was.  It certainly runs far better, and right now, I think I have 95% or my classic load order or, better. 

[Hayleyrose2323]

Love SSE, so far I'm not really missing anything other than HDT equipment, I got additem menu working, got customizable UI working with less intrusive hud and fiss ect ect. And with ENB and Reshade together you can make some beautiful stuff. Super happy with SSE. I just wish I had HDT equipment XD.

[FauxFurry]

One of the biggest advantages that Skyrim 32-Bit has over Skyrim Special Edition is the bug fixes. Skyrim is such a big game that many bugs go unreported or people find work arounds rather than fixing a problem outright. One such game breaking bug seems to be one in Riften Jail which causes a guaranteed crash to desktop if one attempts to enter through the main door without any alternate entrance mods or console commands to teleport past it.

[khumak]

The only complaint I have left now is that I still need my CACO...  A full release of Racemenu would be nice as well but it's playable as an alpha already.

[LeFlemard]

My complaint will a bit nitpicky.

In Fo4, we had armor modules right? I think it was neat, I would have loved if they also implemented it for SE tho. Would make armor mods with lot of parts so much more compatible with mods that remove equipped items...

Twould be neat if we could do it by dll tho...

[Hayleyrose2323]

Went back to SSE. I just love the stability and for me, all the mods I use are for SSE now OR I can just bring them to SSE myself which I have. I love overhauling skyrim, making it look like a totally different game and even making it play like a total different game, I always had to hold back though as Skyrim would crash of course at some point, usually sooner than later due to memory, but I don't have that problem in SSE. For me personally, if SSE crashes then I have done something dumb, otherwise I have no issues.

The only downside I have with SSE is the ENB's just aren't there yet and might never be. 

Oldrim's enbs are amazing and you can do so much with them, and you can do a lot with SSE but not as much and I'm not sure if it will ever be due to how the game runs compared to how oldrim runs.

[Darkpig]

It seems like many mods are still not converted. Ah well, I will wait a bit longer until for a few more good ones to come out.

[Guest]

I like the stability it is as it should be. And I have two questions.
Is it good ENB or should i look for smth else? (mediocre PC: R9 290x/i5 2500k@4.2)

Spoiler

I rly dont see alot of mods for SE. There are some mods, but the most of them are just ported, and the most of them dont work well.
So Im just wondering why? Is the skyrims SE mod engine that bad to make a mod? Sb can please explain me the situation?

[Hayleyrose2323]

13 hours ago, bl444st3r said:

I like the stability it is as it should be. And I have two questions.
Is it good ENB or should i look for smth else? (mediocre PC: R9 290x/i5 2500k@4.2)

  Reveal hidden contents

I rly dont see alot of mods for SE. There are some mods, but the most of them are just ported, and the most of them dont work well.
So Im just wondering why? Is the skyrims SE mod engine that bad to make a mod? Sb can please explain me the situation?

I have to disagree. I've seen a lot of mods and yes a lot of them are ported which is the point. Thats what people want. LE mods for SE. 

A lot of mods don't even need porting. You can simply put them in you're data folder and have them work, sometimes needing to unpack the bsa files if they have one or maybe run the nif optimizer or perhaps for animation mods just simply convert them which takes only a few seconds.

On top of that I like the speed mods are being made. I think SSE is going pretty good.

 

Of course there will always be draw backs. A lot of modders are simply either gone or don't want to move to SSE. Hence why we might be missing some mods. But at the same tiem that hasn't stopped the modding community, which is why I must disagree with ya. I see the exact opposite of what you see.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Hayleyrose2323 said:

I have to disagree. I've seen a lot of mods and yes a lot of them are ported which is the point. Thats what people want. LE mods for SE. 

A lot of mods don't even need porting. You can simply put them in you're data folder and have them work, sometimes needing to unpack the bsa files if they have one or maybe run the nif optimizer or perhaps for animation mods just simply convert them which takes only a few seconds.

On top of that I like the speed mods are being made. I think SSE is going pretty good.

 

Of course there will always be draw backs. A lot of modders are simply either gone or don't want to move to SSE. Hence why we might be missing some mods. But at the same tiem that hasn't stopped the modding community, which is why I must disagree with ya. I see the exact opposite of what you see.

 

Im little changing my mind. I just fixed by my self the racemenu and had to downgrade to the 4.2 XPMSE. Stil i have the big lags in the zaz anims mcm.
I guess that the creation/conversion of mods dependent on SKSE which appeared in the correct version ~ two months ago? So i just don't look at mods from March+ (without update) that are for SE. But in the other way its interesting that some mods like for example SL Deadly Drain 1.7 just works.
Yesterday i was just entering the SE topic and I did not know anything I did not know where to start.

 

 

[Bif_Mandrake]

The rumors that Boris is going to be implementing parallax for the SE ENB have been circulating for weeks, and SSS is looking better pretty much with every binary update, so it's looking better graphically all the time.

 

There are all ready at least a couple handful of SE mods on Nexus that are SE exclusive and not ports of LE mods.  The modding for SE really seems to be cyclic, and ebbs and flows with something I haven't been able to ID (not the moon I don't think), but it's pretty amazing that mods are being ported regularly, and new mods continue to pop up.

 

Sex mods?  Not so much, but there's some great other stuff.  Recent discovery: Solitude Docks.  Glad I had a look as I always liked the idea of Solitude Dock District in LE but it was a navmesh nightmare, and a frame-rate killer and broke immersion if I looked any closer than things at my feet.  Solitude Docks for SE is solid, and basically what I'd really wanted on LE.  Can't get it for Oldrim though.  Wasn't built on the 32bit framework.

 

How old is Skyrim now, anyway?  SE is still Skyrim - not a lot of room for novelty at least not at the base level.

 

CBP may not be HDT, but by the Eight there are bounces and jiggles (nice ones) in the land again - and while OSA and OSEX may be purely in alpha-port stage, SE seems to have brought CEO out from the Abyss once again.  

 

There's all kinds of nice stuff for SKSE64 that works great.  Simply Knock, A Closer View, Better Camera, etc., etc.

 

It's crazy stable compared to LE.  I've been working on a LO rebuild recently in preparation for another attempt at a new play-through, and have added and removed literally dozens of mods in over a week.  Greatest way for rapid instability - I've had exactly 1 CTD and most of my in-game sessions run from 90 minutes to 2 hours.

 

 

[Champis]

Re: Mods and SSE comments

 

When it comes to mods and SE, it is important to understand something. A good % of the so-called 'ports', conversions are not done very well. I call them direct-to-SE conversions, and often get handed off to shmoos who often(but not always), have no modding background, got permission from a careless author, and simply use the export tool to send the page to SSE.

 

 

Now, some of these so-called 'ports'  did not necessarily work all that well in Skyrim classic to begin with, or were abandonware, had bugs the original author never bothered to fix. and so on. This happens more often than you would think. Anyhow, they pass their mod off to some no-name, who they seldom bother to vet, and after the ESP is saved in the CK, these zombie mods are now free to gimp an entirely new version of Skyrim. IoW, there is somewhere between zero and no quality control for SSE mods, or for classic for that matter. Many of these 'ports'  authors, have no intention, or ability to fix the mods they are handed even when they are aware there is a problem. It is a very mixed bag out there when it comes to mods and quality. I have seen cases where the actual author sends their mod to SSE, but makes ZERO effort to see if their mod needs to updated in some way for SSEs new features. This can happen as well. 

 

Of course, the Nexus weird stance on permissions does not help matters either. This prevents old, abandoned but fixable mods from ever bring fixed and re-released. Because, you know, someone who refuse to answer their email, or grant permissions might someday come back and....I don't know get mad? because someone modernized that 2013 mod they haven't thought or cared about in years w/o express consent (which they made impossible to obtain).

 

Just because a mod appears in SSE, is no guarantee of quality, that any issues it may happen to have had in classic, or new problems SSE creates, have been addressed, or ever will.  I have also noticed cases where these garbage 'ports' are more or less abandoned soon after they are 'ported'. Now of course, some mods DO get extensively reworked for SSE by capable modders doing good work, of course that IS happening as well, but, be aware it is not the exactly the norm. 

 

 

I had to learn more or less what to look for when it comes to mods through trial and error over the years, and had to fix, update, or rework almost every single mod I have except for a handful that are actually  properly made. I am still learning new things even now. What I can say is this, SSE did not (necessarily) raise any bars when it come to mods and quality just because the engine itself has been greatly improved.

Nothing has really changed from classic. At least,  the SSE site is not overrun with mindless loli-follower mods to the extent classic is.

[khumak]

On 6/6/2018 at 11:09 PM, Champis said:

Re: Mods and SSE comments

 

When it comes to mods and SE, it is important to understand something. A good % of the so-called 'ports', conversions are not done very well. I call them direct-to-SE conversions, and often get handed off to shmoos who often(but not always), have no modding background, got permission from a careless author, and simply use the export tool to send the page to SSE.

 

 

Now, some of these so-called 'ports'  did not necessarily work all that well in Skyrim classic to begin with, or were abandonware, had bugs the original author never bothered to fix. and so on. This happens more often than you would think. Anyhow, they pass their mod off to some no-name, who they seldom bother to vet, and after the ESP is saved in the CK, these zombie mods are now free to gimp an entirely new version of Skyrim. IoW, there is somewhere between zero and no quality control for SSE mods, or for classic for that matter. Many of these 'ports'  authors, have no intention, or ability to fix the mods they are handed even when they are aware there is a problem. It is a very mixed bag out there when it comes to mods and quality. I have seen cases where the actual author sends their mod to SSE, but makes ZERO effort to see if their mod needs to updated in some way for SSEs new features. This can happen as well. 

 

Of course, the Nexus weird stance on permissions does not help matters either. This prevents old, abandoned but fixable mods from ever bring fixed and re-released. Because, you know, someone who refuse to answer their email, or grant permissions might someday come back and....I don't know get mad? because someone modernized that 2013 mod they haven't thought or cared about in years w/o express consent (which they made impossible to obtain).

 

Just because a mod appears in SSE, is no guarantee of quality, that any issues it may happen to have had in classic, or new problems SSE creates, have been addressed, or ever will.  I have also noticed cases where these garbage 'ports' are more or less abandoned soon after they are 'ported'. Now of course, some mods DO get extensively reworked for SSE by capable modders doing good work, of course that IS happening as well, but, be aware it is not the exactly the norm. 

 

 

I had to learn more or less what to look for when it comes to mods through trial and error over the years, and had to fix, update, or rework almost every single mod I have except for a handful that are actually  properly made. I am still learning new things even now. What I can say is this, SSE did not (necessarily) raise any bars when it come to mods and quality just because the engine itself has been greatly improved.

Nothing has really changed from classic. At least,  the SSE site is not overrun with mindless loli-follower mods to the extent classic is.

 

The thing is, most oldrim mods don't actually need to be converted other than maybe unpacking a bsa.  They already work.  The main issue I've run into are meshes or textures that don't work in SE or mods that depend on DLLs that absolutely MUST be converted to work.  Most oldrim meshes and textures work fine in SE without needing to be converted.  The few that don't can cause CTDs though.  I generally run all of the meshes except for facegen through NIF Optimizer just in case.  I probably should run NIFScan as well to conver textures but I didn't know about it til recently and I'm not sure I've actually ever had a texture cause a crash for me.

 

I keep hearing that eventually playing with mods that haven't been properly converted is going to blow up my game but I've played for over 1000 hours without it happening so if the timer on that time bomb doesn't go off for thousands of hours then I really don't care and personally I don't believe there's any issue with using unconverted oldrim mods as long as there isn't something like a mesh or texture that causes a CTD.

[Tortex]

Textures can cause crashes in SE, it's rare, though. Certain meshes can't be fixed for SE with that model wizard guy's automated tool, also very rare (I only found three out of thousands and thousand thousands.)

 

Oldrim will probably always look better, and on an OS without the vram limit stack bug (Win7) will be more stable if it's properly set up, but it's very time-consuming to get to that point, (massive mod list req, Enboost+all the DLL fixes and fiddling with lodgen, the forty-thousand separate texture packs needed for the game itself, the fixes for those and chasing down individual broken normal space maps, yadda yadda yadda)and I doubt most users will go through it all to do so.

 

Out of the box SE is more stable and handles it's memory allocation and all that fun stuff (which is like 98% of Oldrim's problems) very well, but it's lacking years of fixes that Oldrim got mod-side, ENB (kind of necessary for eyecandy these days. Reshade is mostly buzzword garbage.) But looks "okay" and runs fairly well.

 

In short, my two septims:

 

Properly set up Oldrim > SE on the best of days.

 

General use SE > Oldrim if you don't want to spend weeks tinkering with every aspect and ironing out issues.

[27X]

Argument p much over:

 

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/steam-data-leak-reveals-precise-player-count-for-thousands-of-games/2/

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim     13,235,488 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition     4,398,897

[Kaarinah]

15 hours ago, 27X said:

Argument p much over:

 

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/steam-data-leak-reveals-precise-player-count-for-thousands-of-games/2/

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim     13,235,488 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition     4,398,897

Not quite, as it says: the number of Steam users who have played the game at least once. It says nothing about currently active players, which still might be higher on Skyrim than SSE, I have no idea. It just is useless to check active players. Considering that Skyrim came out first, and was out for years before SSE it's bound to have more players that has played it at least once since it came out.

[27X]

That's not the takeaway.

 

This metric is active libraries installed and used. SSE on steam was free, so that whole argument of SSE has a base equal or greater than 32 is frankly completely blown the fuck out.

[FauxFurry]

On 7/6/2018 at 10:51 PM, 27X said:

Argument p much over:

 

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/steam-data-leak-reveals-precise-player-count-for-thousands-of-games/2/

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim     13,235,488 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition     4,398,897

Most players are done with Skyrim period. They had their fun and they've moved on to new games.

Yes, the number might have been different if some people knew that is was only for a limited time (judging by some people complaining about missing the window of opportunity) but most people aren't going to come back or swap versions because there is greater modding potential,free or no.

[Ahris]

So I've installed and modded SSE quite extensively for a few weeks since SKSE64 is out and to be honest I've had an easier time setting up SSE than Oldrim.
At first i had a lot of problems and i blamed all the beta mods and bad convesions etc. but now that i have everything working well my conclusion is that most problems were caused by:

- Myself messing up installations (Causing missing resources)

- LOOT needing a lot of help (You're probably not going to get away with not setting up custom rules for some mods, especially when it comes to USSEP patches etc. leaving LOOT to it's own would crash my game or prevent Skyrim from starting up.)

- XPMSE causing pretty much all seemingly random crashes i had until i reverted to 4.20 even though they didn't seem related at all.

 

The SKSE64 dependent mods i use are obviously all to be considered beta but they are stable and while there are some bad conversions of mods, most of them are ok and at least the bad ones don't cause crashes but simply cause stuff to lag or not to do anything (Script problems).

You could argue that there are not as many mods for SSE as there are for LE but you could also argue that there is less crap released for SSE overall.  A lot of things are in the works though, this time of year is obviously slow because of holidays. Also the release of Skyrim VR is helping the SSE mod releases.

I've found pretty much everything i need and successfully used a few Oldrim mods when i was missing something, many are easy to convert if needed and it seems oldrim modders often use SSE compatible texture compression nowdays, also some popular advanced mods have SSE versions in functional beta if you keep your eyes open.

Of course there are always desireable mods you can't get yet because they do require properly done conversions but they are all secondary to me. My game looks and runs far better now than it ever did in Oldrim so i'm pretty happy.

I do have problems with animation lag and occational slowdowns that are obviously related to Sexlab and HDT-SMP not being complete yet but i had those problems in Oldrim too because of the limited engine, at least in SSE they can be fixed.

[Champis]

Several Mods that address several key annoyances introduced by SSE, that were NOT present in Classic

 

Stay at  System Page

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/18397

 

A Change of Face

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/10508

 

This one introduces a key fix, and addresses a major annoyance in SSE. When you are done modifying your character in Racemenu, it does not create an entirely new set of saves, while hiding all your existing ones. ?

 

And , a new No poison Dialogue plugin by the author of Stay at system page.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/18497

 

Better implementation and new code, features, than the old existing one from Classic.

 

 

 

 

[jyotai]

It's kind of a frustration for me that this situation still exists even years after SSE came out.

 

Not because of various preferences. I have no statement there as I don't even own Oldrim so I can't make a judgement call.

 

Rather because I don't Oldrim, and the reason I don't own it. I just bought skyrim around the end of June, 2018. At the time I had no idea it had various versions, I'd heard of the game for years but I've managed to avoid single player games since the end of the 1990s / early 00s. Sims 2 was my last single player game - though I only played abut 15 minutes into install.

 

So when I finally decided I wanted to try out this thing I'd heard about for years... I went to bethesda's website and it told me I had to get Steam... I got that, and I went looking, and only SSE was up for sale. I looked into why this was called 'special edition' and where 'regular might be just in case it was cheaper and had or lacked some DLC or well... what was up... and found out I couldn't find it for sale anywhere where I was sure my install key would actually work...

 

So... yes Skyrim is old and people like me are probably pretty rare now... being a 'brand spanking noob'...

- But the community division frustrates me because anytime I see something that is Oldrim only... I'm cut off from it. I can't even make the choice to go try it out. If it's a simple mod I can try converting it on my own. That sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. I've actually learned a lot more than a player only one month into a new game should know as a result of trying to get things working 'on my own' that weren't there for me in the game I was able to buy. Even my failures in porting have taught me a lot of tricks (and I hope to be uploading some mods of my own soon as a result - but don't get mad when they're SSE only, I don't have the ability to back-port them).

 

 

I kind of wish everyone had just 'moved on to SSE' when it came out - but I get that if for no other reason mods not being cross-compatible "out of the box" stalled that process enough that other reasons also developed for people. But it means I'm 'partly out of the loop' until the day we "mostly" move on to TES6.

 

 

So... Why I play SSE and ignore Oldrim? Because that's the only choice Steam gave me when I finally showed up in ya'lls yard.

 

[revthex]

On 7/29/2018 at 10:50 PM, jyotai said:

It's kind of a frustration for me that this situation still exists even years after SSE came out.

 

Not because of various preferences. I have no statement there as I don't even own Oldrim so I can't make a judgement call.

 

Rather because I don't Oldrim, and the reason I don't own it. I just bought skyrim around the end of June, 2018. At the time I had no idea it had various versions, I'd heard of the game for years but I've managed to avoid single player games since the end of the 1990s / early 00s. Sims 2 was my last single player game - though I only played abut 15 minutes into install.

 

So when I finally decided I wanted to try out this thing I'd heard about for years... I went to bethesda's website and it told me I had to get Steam... I got that, and I went looking, and only SSE was up for sale. I looked into why this was called 'special edition' and where 'regular might be just in case it was cheaper and had or lacked some DLC or well... what was up... and found out I couldn't find it for sale anywhere where I was sure my install key would actually work...

 

So... yes Skyrim is old and people like me are probably pretty rare now... being a 'brand spanking noob'...

- But the community division frustrates me because anytime I see something that is Oldrim only... I'm cut off from it. I can't even make the choice to go try it out. If it's a simple mod I can try converting it on my own. That sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. I've actually learned a lot more than a player only one month into a new game should know as a result of trying to get things working 'on my own' that weren't there for me in the game I was able to buy. Even my failures in porting have taught me a lot of tricks (and I hope to be uploading some mods of my own soon as a result - but don't get mad when they're SSE only, I don't have the ability to back-port them).

 

 

I kind of wish everyone had just 'moved on to SSE' when it came out - but I get that if for no other reason mods not being cross-compatible "out of the box" stalled that process enough that other reasons also developed for people. But it means I'm 'partly out of the loop' until the day we "mostly" move on to TES6.

 

 

So... Why I play SSE and ignore Oldrim? Because that's the only choice Steam gave me when I finally showed up in ya'lls yard.

 

it may be a bit late now to bring this up for you, but you can still download oldrim by downloading it from g2a, or green man gaming and activating the key on steam

[Havik79]

I don't really have much of a problem with the vanilla game per-say, coming from fallout 4 to this, I enjoyed this, I had oldrim and on a cruddy pc, and looking at the world after that cave from Helgan blew my mind, and not having loading issues like the nightmare of getting Cait I had in fallout 4 was nice.

 

My only problem has been soon as I go to WinterHold after doing Hard Questions the game CTD no matter what, think its due to taking custom followers with me during the Speaking with silence quest.

 

What for me is more annoying is sex in the game, after coming from fallout 4 I was expecting so much, but ended up so disappointed, nothing is straight forward and simple and no guides for anything, I mean it took like 2 seconds in fallout to set up having a pregnant body, 20 seconds to convert armours, its like a month and still can't get any where doing the same thing in skyrim.

 

I suppose the big difference is it was done properly in fallout out, you got looksmenu and cbbe, that is it, no ece vs racemenu, no cbbe vs 50 bazillion versions of unp.