Discussions on the old cat's Reviews

[smr1957]

Sometimes, smaller builds are better - at least better than some large builds we see people making - LOL!

I will stick to my small build, Steve, unless a mod improves my game, but doesn't change the original taste of the game too much. Most of the time that will probably be environmental, apart from Northbourne, TS Children and AI Overhaul. I hope Southpawe will do the remaining holds someday!

Yeah, sometimes players see the large builds and think "Oh! I want one like that!" When really, it's not needed in order to enjoy the game. Like anything else, the focus should be on what suits a person best and what is most enjoyable for them - and not what others may or may not be doing. Heck, the first 400 hours of my play in Oldrim was vanilla - with just the 3 DLCs! And I loved every minute of it - in fact loved it from the opening scene - which is why I became so involved and passionate about it. Everything after, as far as my modding was concerned, was just to create the game world according to my vision - a world that had all the options available in it that real life has. But that was and is MY vision - and no one's else's, and as far as I am concerned, I've done a good job of it - tailoring everything to what I wish. But, in a very real sense, my game is no longer Skyrim - nor has it been for quite some time. So, the only right way to play the game - modded or not - is the way that YOU want - if it not what you want, then that is definitely the wrong way.

[Avrie]

I agree Steve. I reduced my build over the weekend while in the final stages of destructive testing... I'm down from 903 mods to 894

Honestly I can't understand why I haven't crashed yet, I've removed, swapped, and added dozens of mods in the last few days "KNOWING" I'd destroyed the save and the restart was imminent. For some odd reason I can't explain in any way, the game is acting "MORE" stable, but the damage done is obvious and baked into the save. Half my braziers are empty, provide no warmth, but still have light and smoke. That won't be fixed until the restart (Rain extinguishes fires / Bos mesh swaps...)

I'm a little wary of even mentioning what I'm doing in prep for the next restart seeing as it looks like a case of "do as we say not as we do" I'm probably not going to mention too many of the changes I'm doing until after I restart again. I don't want to give any noobs the wrong impression.

[ScytheBearer]

Hello.

I have reviewed your reviews, and am disappointed. You review only mods hosted on NexusMods. Since the diaspora from NexusMods following the change of policies and practices on that site, a good number of mod authors began hosting their mods on alternative sites. Most notable among these alternative sites is Bethesda-dot-net and AFKmods.

Perchance you could branch out and look at mods on these alternative sites for review.

[Selene310187]

I admit, It would be a good idea to have an overview about the best Skyrim Special Edition mods of the day from multiple mod download sites. But I can very well imagine that sifting through the daily mods on Nexus alone takes a lot of time. If Avrie takes the other mod download sites into account, then the mod reviews might not come daily.

At the beginning of the big exodus from Nexus Mods, I checked all the alternative download sites I came across to find new mods. Then it became too much and I stopped it altogether. A well maintained repository with links to different mod download sites including Discords, blogs and Patreons would make the work much easier for all of us. Do you know such thing?

[ScytheBearer]

I in no way meant to imply that EVERY hosting site needed to be reviewed. However, I also believe we do ourselves a disservice if we take a myopic approach and only review mods from a single site. There is more to the modding world than NexusMods, and there has to be room in this realm to accommodate that diversity.

That being said, there is a tiny number of highly active hosting sites. Periodically reviewing those few; or even just one, shouldn't be too large a burden. Especially if one considers that quite a bit of the new content on these few sites will be redundant with what is published elsewhere, as these sites are often used as mirror sites for each other.

I would also add that asking people what platform they play on becomes meaningless if the focus of the reviews is NexusMods, which hosts PC only Mods. Yes, some of the mods on NexusMods do get ported to other platforms, but there are an increasing number of mod authors who release their mods exclusively to Xbox or PS. By ignoring those platforms in the reviews we dismiss that audience and minimize their existence.

slides soapbox back under desk and slinks away quietly

[Avrie]

Feel free to review other sites. I have no ego issues, but I do this for myself over morning coffee. What you propose would require much more commitment than I intend to make to a decade plus old game. I actually do have other interests, and a business to run. Going through 50 or 60 new mods a day on the nexus is work enough LOL. Feel free to contribute. My time is finite.

[Avrie]

I'm wondering if there's a way to exclude specific words from the idiotic censer bots? Turdas (t urdas) is not a curse it's a bloody day of the week

[Selene310187]

I removed the wildcard character (*) at end of the word t u r d so only this word will be censored.

The forum uses a list of censored words instead of bots.

[Avrie]

Thanks, That should help some. The censors are bad enough on the Steam forums LOL

[Avrie]

Well it's now officially the one year anniversary of copying my reviews Hard to believe it's been a year already.