Skyrim - just an overglorified version of Minesweeper?

[teitogun]

Remember Minesweeper? If you're using Windows you likely have it preinstalled. If you have been a PC gamer since childhood, it's likely one of the first games you have encountered.

 

In Minesweeper you click empty cells to reveal them. Each cell has a chance to be a mine, if you click on it, you lose the game and have to start over again. With every cell revealed, your chance of "setting off" a mine increases.

 

The objective of minesweeper to to reveal all cells that don't have mines on them.

 

In skyrim you install one mod after another. Each mod has a chance of permanently FUBARing your save, even your entire game. If you run too many seemingly conflicting mods, your save will get corrupt and you will have to start a new character or reinstall the entire game from scratch. Yet the more mods you have the more you are tempted to install just one more, increasing your chance of "setting off" a total game wrecking bug.

 

The objective of Skyrim is to finish the game with the maximum amount of mods that you have installed up to that point, without any one of them permanently screwing up your save.

 

I currently have 141 mods running and I feel that my character is slowly going insane.

[Thulas]

You didn't made a playtrough without any mods first, did you?

 

Well, 'collecting' mods may be fun, but calling it "an overglorified version of Minesweeper" isn't really accurate since you you don't really try to make everything as incompactible as possible, though this might happen if you don't care what the modders say.

[Rax]

how dare you assume i dont know how to play minesweeper

 

[lordofthedread]

I dont know what mods you are using but I went up to the limit (255 mods) and never fucked up my saves until I intended to (deciding to install a new Overhaul).

 

There are few things you need to consider :

 

- Avoid alpha and beta mods

- Avoid mods that modifies key NPC / main quests unless you finished that (dont install a mod that modifies the dark brotherhood until you finished the main dark brotherhood quest for example).

- Avoid script extensive mods when you might have a better option without that many scripts.

- Avoid mods that might conflict with each other by doing something similar, try one or the other.

 

When I see a new mod coming out I usually track its developpement before jumping in, check on the first comments and what bugs are encountered and I also take the time to read the whole description.

 

If you download every mod out there like clicking mindlessly on the tiles of minesweeper you are guaranteed to make it blow.

[« Broken ‡ Mirror »]

Remember Minesweeper? If you're using Windows you likely have it preinstalled. If you have been a PC gamer since childhood, it's likely one of the first games you have encountered.

 

In Minesweeper you click empty cells to reveal them. Each cell has a chance to be a mine, if you click on it, you lose the game and have to start over again. With every cell revealed, your chance of "setting off" a mine increases.

 

The objective of minesweeper to to reveal all cells that don't have mines on them.

 

In skyrim you install one mod after another. Each mod has a chance of permanently FUBARing your save, even your entire game. If you run too many seemingly conflicting mods, your save will get corrupt and you will have to start a new character or reinstall the entire game from scratch. Yet the more mods you have the more you are tempted to install just one more, increasing your chance of "setting off" a total game wrecking bug.¹

 

The objective of Skyrim is to finish the game with the maximum amount of mods that you have installed up to that point, without any one of them permanently screwing up your save.²

 

I currently have 141 mods running and I feel that my character is slowly going insane.

Yes, I have played Minesweeper, pretty good at it too.

 

Now, time to get to the actual portion of the post.

 

Superscript 1: What!? No, no, nononononononono. This is the reason most people don't bother reading mod descriptions and then comes running back to the modder(s) and complaining that it's creating CTDs or killing saves and what-not. This is all you (the gamer's fault) not the modder's fault. Every time you install a mod, make sure of it's incompatibilities with other mods, NOT ALL MODS HAVE A CHANCE OF "permanently FUBARing your save, even your entire game" as you say. This just happens when you don't take anything into account and just install everything on a whim and then comes back crying because your Skyrim doesn't work.

 

Superscript 2: I reiterate, what the fuck?!?! Nononononononono, the objective of Skyrim is NOT "finish the game with the maximum amount of mods that you have installed up to that point, without any one of them permanently screwing up your save." Where in the fucking world did you hear this? You obviously have never played any of the Elder Scrolls game before have you? You have never heard of a vanilla play-through before have you?

 

You are obviously an ignorant cry-baby gamer that probably fucked up your game many times and just decided to rant on Skyrim,

 

By the way, calling it an "overglorified version of Minesweeper" is just so stupid and idiotic, I literally fell off my chair laughing before even clicking on this post.

[leddis3]

 

 

 

In all serious though, using mods is a choice. A choice to access the awesomeness of what the community can do at the price if it maybe screwing up your game in ways you may not even have thought of.

I myself run 255 mods, need to find ways to sacrifice what I want when a fancy new armour or dress comes out that I MUST have (because I shop vicariously through my avatars which is NOT hyper geeky so shut up) and am always teetering on the edge of disaster as a result, with so many mods to balance and mod patches and patches for patches.

 

It's still my choice, and while I still criticise Bethesda for using an engine that isn't as robust as it could be, Skyrim is still playable and stable enough without mods, unlike say Oblivion.

[Deep Red]

 

 

 

In all serious though, using mods is a choice. A choice to access the awesomeness of what the community can do at the price if it maybe screwing up your game in ways you may not even have thought of.

I myself run 255 mods, need to find ways to sacrifice what I want when a fancy new armour or dress comes out that I MUST have (because I shop vicariously through my avatars which is NOT hyper geeky so shut up) and am always teetering on the edge of disaster as a result, with so many mods to balance and mod patches and patches for patches.

 

It's still my choice, and while I still criticise Bethesda for using an engine that isn't as robust as it could be, Skyrim is still playable and stable enough without mods, unlike say Oblivion.

 

The diagram you got there sums up how my time is spent when "playing" Skyrim. But yes, the game's engine is a huge improvement over Oblivion, which was so easily fucked up if you installed the wrong mod or loaded it in the wrong order. At one point before reinstalling my game, I had hit the 255 mod cap. Right now I'm at around 190-205 mods running at the same time.

[Phygnos]

I don't think OP was criticizing anyone or any mod, it's just a light-hearted post to vent some frustrations.

I keep a carbon copy of my base Skyrim installation with "basic" mods on my 1TB storage drive for this exact reason.

 

I also only use installers like NMM unless I know what I'm doing with the mod, the "go back" feature of it is invaluable.

[lordofthedread]

I don't think OP was criticizing anyone or any mod, it's just a light-hearted post to vent some frustrations.

I keep a carbon copy of my base Skyrim installation with "basic" mods on my 1TB storage drive for this exact reason.

 

I also only use installers like NMM unless I know what I'm doing with the mod, the "go back" feature of it is invaluable.

 

The problem is, even if you can easily remove a mod using a mod manager and even if it makes it clean (properly removing all files and folders installed by the mod) if there are scripts involved you can be pretty sure they will stick into your save and cause problems, the ClearInvalidRegistrations while a good option is not enough.

 

Thats why choosing what mod you want to install, reading the mod descriptions and so on is often the best way to keep a stable game. A mod by itself (apart from a really few coded by monkeys ones) has nothing to do with "FUBARing" your save, the main problem with Skyrim is how easy it is to mod and because it is so easy most people wont take time to assess the mods, if it looks pretty it will probably go into their data folder.

 

I am not saying Skyrim is perfect, far from it in fact and I even think many core game problems were fixed by the modding community itself, just saying that this is possible to have a quite stable game with many mods if you took time to choose them (not only because it looked pretty).

 

As for the OP comparing Skyrim to mine sweeper was a bald move .... and again if you mod Skyrim like you play mine sweeper by picking up random mods (tiles) you will end up with problems (mine blows).

[Rayblue]

Reading the fine print and knowing the caveats before using any mod is a must.

[leddis3]

In any case with SKSE being able to clean scripts and a save game cleaner available it's easier than ever to recover from bad or conflicting mods.

I was able to continue my main character thanks to these.

[lordofthedread]

best way to play skyshit don't use any mod   , but even then its full of bugs 

 

I tend to disagree, some of the mods have corrected a lot of bugs you have in the vanilla game, the best examples are the Unofficial Patches series but they are not the only ones.

 

And also if you start by naming it skyshit the best way is not to play it at all

[Koko.Hekmatyar]

Anyone who can play with the vanilla faces for their PC and NPCs has got one hell of a strong stomach the faces are so damn ugly they make me want to puke. I honestly can't see myself ever playing the Vanilla Skyrim now that I have gotten a taste for mods.

[Siouliusn]

That's why I do a 100% vanilla run on game release to enjoy later the improvement brought by mods (and UOP)

[Cherrypop]

I have a habit of making a backup every single time when I want to install a new mod.

 

So that if it fubar up my copy, I delete it and put the backup in the place of fubar'd copy. Problem solved. Can be as easy as copy/paste the whole folder onto the desktop.

[teitogun]

For one thing I just want to make it clear that in no way am I trying to criticize the modders (well not the majority of them, at least). Neither am I trying to criticize Minesweeper, oh god forbid. I'm making light of the fact that we've all, despite every precaution taken, have run into frustrating bugs, crashes and problems. There's also a lot of times where we don't follow instructions, forget some precaution or other, or just run a mod for the heck of it. Nobody's perfect (well some are, but I certainly do not claim to be). It's not just the amount of mods, but their scope of game changes is what matters as well - for instance I like expanded spawns and greater difficulty so I run ASIS along with DD and SkyRe and Monster Mod and on top of that the Sexlab mods to boot. Sometimes you feel like the whole world has come crashing down and you need to reinstall. Sometimes it's just a matter of toggling on and off a single peripheral mod or moving it about in the load order. Getting all of them to work without the feeling it's held together by a hair-strength is a challenge on its own, and it sometimes takes ingenuity on the player's part that isn't found in any readme or instruction manual. It's not as if I'm ungrateful to the significant availability of mods for this game (in fact modding is a huge reason why I'm a PC gamer) rather when it comes down to actually playing it, setting up a comfortable level of playable stability feels itself a wholly different game. Hence the comparison. In case you wondered whether  this thread was anything but pointless venting of gamer frustration, you were probably wrong.