Oblivion Mod talk:Recommended Mods

Getting StartedEdit

Mod recommendation lists are fairly important -- players moving past the novice (modless!) stage want some advice to help guide them through the huge number of mods that are available to them.

As a result, mod lists become well known and powerful resources in their own rights. Experienced modders know that making it onto the leading list of recommended mods will likely drive a x10 number of users to their mod. Which means that the subjective biases of mod lists creators can have a huge impact on the success of modders. But of course, mod recommendations are inherently subjective.

So ideally there should be several different well known mod lists. That means that the lists still have a "best of" filter applied to them, but that room is left for different sets of standards.

Going forward, it would certainly be useful to have more lists -- I'm just not familiar enough with others to list them. Possibly such lists could be hosted here -- but if so, my inclination is that the list should start somewhere else (e.g., on the forums) and then if popular, move or be copied here, and be somewhat "owned" by the creator/editor(s). I think that a good list will needs a dedicated effort by a small set of editors. (I.e., I suspect that our own Oblivion:Must Have Mods list is too open.) (For my prior suggestion on this topic, see: Proposal: Recommended Mod Lists.)

--Wrye 21:58, 14 April 2007 (EDT)

Nice page! I added a few more good lists here and updated my entry. --Dev akm 14:06, 5 July 2007 (EDT)

Another List IdeaEdit

Another idea that came to mind for a way to create a list of recommended mods is to have a page that summarizes mods that are popular with UESP editors. The basic idea is that any UESP editor could add info on mods that they regularly use, and the page would then summarize how many editors use various mods. It wouldn't provide any details on why editors like certain mods, just a count. Readers would then be able to scan through, see which mods are used by a lot of editors, and use that as one starting point for mods they might want to look into.

One reason this came to mind is that I've noticed several editors posting mod lists on their user pages. It seems like that information would be much more useful if collected into one central list. This would provide a way for anyone at UESP to contribute to a community-created recommended mod list, but it would also reduce some of the issues of biased lists brought up by Wrye.

To prevent someone from "stuffing the ballot box" I'd suggest that only registered editors should be allowed to vote. Also, I think that setting up some type of template to take care of the details would probably be necessary. My first thought is to set up a template so that the edited version of the page would look something like

 {{Mod Count | mod=Wrye's Awesome Mod
 |Wrye |Nephele |Ratwar |TheRealLurlock
 }}

 {{Mod Count | mod=Nephele's Useless Mod
 |Nephele
 }}
 

Which would then be translated by the template into something like:

Wrye's Awesome Mod: used by 4 editors
Nephele's Useless Mod: used by 1 editor

By having editors add their name to each mod they use it would make it easier to keep track of who has contributed and prevents problems with duplicate votes. But I don't think readers need to know the details, so the template would convert those names into a basic count.

Since I don't use mods myself, I can't do too much other than provide the idea and set up a template. Does anyone else think this is worth pursuing? If there is interest, having a few people provide me with their mod lists, so I could have a starting point for creating the template, would be useful to get the ball rolling. --Nephele^Talk 13:52, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

Thanks, but... I think that's probably not that useful. It would take a lot of edits and names for the rating to be useful, so that's a fair amount of work and a mild system drain. Besides, that sort of info is already provided (in spades) by mod download sites. E.g., go to Tessource, look for most popular mods. That's definitely a useful measure -- and based on actual downloads, so it's pretty accurate. --Wrye 14:30, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

Wrye's Cool Video ListEdit

Okay, another experiment. Here's a recommendation list that I would have liked to see somewhere -- cool videos. Some of these are just awesome -- (if nothing else, the dominoes are very cool.) First problem is that it's not actually recommending mods (falls under broader category of Oblivion Recommendations). Second problem -- it's by me, so I can't be counted as objective on this one. However, I would like this to be treated the same way as what I suggested earlier for mod recommendations lists. E.g., a limited editor page, where the editorship can be passed on.

Question: What namespace should it go in? "User" doesn't make sense if editorship might be passed on. "Oblivion" is a possibility, but I think a better choice is the so far unused "Review" namespace?

Again, what I'm trying to encourage is a few more good recomendation lists. But for this list, obviously I'm biased, so I'll leave it up to fellow admins and editors: stay or go? (And no, I won't hold it against you if you thumbs down it.) --Wrye 02:07, 20 April 2007 (EDT)

Moved it to Review namespace. --Wrye 20:04, 20 April 2007 (EDT)

Aelius' ListEdit

The article mentions two problems in regards to Aelius' lists: 1) he's not playing, and 2) he doesn't read readmes if they're long and complex. Since that has come into question in an edit, here are some supporting quotes from his OOO, Francesco's and MMM topic.

• On Not Playing the Game
  • "I haven't played Oblivion in almost a year, I don't plan on playing it anytime soon either. And since I know what FranOOOMMM does, I know that I would not want it, so there's not much reason to even read about." -- Aelius
  • "Hehe, I get that a lot. Honestly, I don't really need to constantly play the game in order to get an idea of what mods are needed. I've played the game over 200 hours (though, suprisingly, I've never left the Imperial City island, except for mod testing purposes) so I know about the level scaling, and all that. Albeit, my experience in magic is poor. I've never casted a spell or used a scroll in my game, not even for mod testing." --Aelius
• On Not Reading Readmes
  • "I find that many readmes are mostly "New in version x.xx: ..." Or "New features" or something that's useful only to those who have been following the mod. It's hard for people new to the mod to find information about the whole mod, not just a new version. Martigen's readme would be one of those." --Aelius
  • "Because reading a readme incorrectly can cause a lot of undesired misinformation. It's better to get someone to put it in terms I can understand rather than risk confusion. If you don't want to spend time answering my questions, well... no one is forcing you." --Aelius
  • "I don't think you're hearing me, I'm not saying I don't read the readme, I'm saying I don't bother reading and confusing myself with readmes that are too complicated for someone new to the mod to understand." -- Aelius

That forum topic itself was a demonstration of his failure to play and read readmes -- he just didn't understand some of the basic ways that modding (e.g., leveled list merging) had changed since he had last played (a year ago). After this came out on the topic, there was a fair amount of irritation from modders that they were having to explain stuff to him "in person" that was already covered in depth in their readmes (which he wasn't reading).

Now, despite that, I regard his list as the number one Oblivion mod list. He works very hard at reviewing posted mods, and collecting opinions, and he does ask questions and is moderately open to suggestions and explanations on the forums. And yet, there's no getting away from the fact that not playing and not reading readmes when they get too complex is going to severely qualify the quality of his recommendations.

Of course, if he has since started playing and/or started reading all readmes despite complexity since, then article should be changed -- but I see no evidence of that yet. --Wrye 19:01, 20 April 2007 (EDT)

Response from Aelius in ESF forum discusison:

"This certainly implies that I don't get any information about some mods before adding them to my list, but you failed to mention a key point. If a readme is, in essence, incomprehensible to me, I may decide not to waste my time reading something over and over again trying to understand what doesn't make sense. So instead of wasting my time reading that readme, I would likely choose to contact the author and have him explain the mod to me. Under no circumstance do I not find out what a mod does, whether through a readme or through contacting an author. Dev_akm did just that...

"So while you're right in that I don't always read readmes, I do get the information. Whether that's from the readme or the author himself. So to the end user who reads my list, he is getting the information, regardless of how I got the information, understand?" --Aelius

I've clarified text of article in response. This still comes down to not reading readmes, but it's true that he does offset it to a fair degree. --Wrye 16:16, 21 April 2007 (EDT)

---

This has come up again in again in another edit. While this page is a bit different in making some judgements about mod lists, if you have questions about those judgments, you should rais them here. Re the "FUD" (Fear Uncertainty Doubt) comment. There's no fear nor uncertainty or doubt. Aelius states pretty clearly that he's not playing the game. The main factual question raised recently was to what degree he was reading the readmes. That's discussed here, and also here. This statement "Aelius' list is well worth using, but its recommendations or failure to recommend certain mods should be considered in light of his limited play experience." is reasonable summation of the impact of that. If you disagree argue it here. --Wrye 15:33, 26 April 2007 (EDT)

Proposing my listEdit

This is just a suggestion, which you are more than free to ignore. I started my Recommended Mods page (http://princess.elricm.net/RecommendedMods.htm) because of the sheer volume of topics on the subject, and because at the time there wasn't a list of just a dozen or so mods that could be downloaded by a novice user who could know that they had been tested and worked together without fighting. All the existing lists were, in my mind, either too long and confusing, or very out of date - the same was certainly true for Morrowind. Anyway, I still suggest my list every time someone asks, and continue to update it and use the very mods I recommend. -- princess_stomper

Hmmm, I'm afraid the competition from the other lists is pretty fierce, princess. I think that you need to pretty much be obsessive about list building and/or come up with a different themed approach that's very well done in itself to compete with others. I understand point about smaller lists, but for that it's probably better to have a larger list and then include a "best of" section in it as several of the lists do.--Wrye 19:38, 30 August 2007 (EDT)

Another List ProposalEdit

I've just started a new list on my user page. I was wondering if I could add my list here. Its quite short now, but I spend alot of timing playing mods, I started using mods about a week ago, and have about 70 of 'em installed. Please reply via my talk page, thanx.-Relic Kylias 07:06, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

Aelius' List of Recommended Mods should be removed from the listEdit

This mod site now points to the old TES Source, which is old and useless now. I've already added a warning on the page. Thoughts? — Unsigned comment by 124.180.160.56 (talk)

We could host an updated version of the list here in the "Review" section. (Review is a small section for subjective articles -- pretty much limited to things like "recomended lists" -- e.g. Wrye's Fun Videos.) With the list in the review section it would go into maintenance mode -- no new entries -- just updated links and notes on new versions.

I've sent an email to Aelius, and unless he says no within a week or so, I'll proceed with that. Once the list is hosted here the links can be updated. If you don't see me doing this within two weeks, just drop me a reminder on my talk page.

I should note that from forum profile, Aelius has not been even present on Bethsoft forums for since August 2007. Last post indicated that he was ill. So that might be it. Or it could be that he reprioritized. And obsessive guys tend to be all or nothing. --Wrye 16:10, 31 May 2008 (EDT)

Done. --Wrye 00:32, 7 June 2008 (EDT)

MODEdit

but how do you install them on a ps3? — Unsigned comment by 84.66.16.91 (talk) on 24 May 2009

You can't. Sorry. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 04:41, 24 May 2009 (EDT)

ProblemEdit

I have a huge problem with my oblivion. I uninstalled a mod,and after that,my Oblivion started crashing every time I launched the game. I tried to delete all my mods,and reinstalled the game twice,but it still keeps on crashing. I have run out of ideas...please help me! :O --Neekerisanni123 16:50, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Mod questionEdit

Please does somebody nows a mod that lets you see your character eating?(you now like the NPCs animation when they eat)is there a mod that lets you do that?can somebody tell me please?Sayonara 23:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6239 ;) SDarktimesX5 23:30, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

What happened to the old "Must have mods article"?Edit

Hi there,

I checked this article a while ago and it was an awesome, awesome page, with lots of sweet recommendations. Now all I can see here are these user lists, which are not nearly as useful. What happened to the old article? Does someone have a copy of it? I can't find it in page history, has it been deleted? (here's a link of what the page used to look like: Webcache) Thank you for any help in advance, --89.132.242.20 18:07, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, it seems to be on a subdomain of UESPwiki: content3.uesp.net But it's still not the old list, it misses the flying Ayleid Palace! And no history again. What happened? --89.132.242.20 18:14, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

It got redeveloped into user based pages as part of a process of removing all highly subjective content. Users are encouraged to create pages in their user space listing there own favourites, and it may end up that a kind of summery of very popular mods across pages will be created at some point. If you need to see the old version, the history should be at accessible through the following link [[1]] (its hard to navigate to because of a redirect pointing to the new layout). Jadrax 18:27, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Just to make it easier to find, you'll want to look at the July 26 version, which is here. – Robin Hood↝talk 20:00, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I thought the article was deleted or something and that's why I couldn't find the proper history page. Guess this solves it - thanks a bunch! And although I do understand the reasons behind having user based pages instead of a single Wiki page, it would still be a great help for people to have a solid, reliable and comprehensive article on this subject: modding is one of the most important aspects of Oblivion, after all, and browsing through all those user pages is just a pain. And then I can't even be sure whether they are listing good mods or mods full of bugs or if our tastes simply differs. I could place more trust in a community maintained list, but such an article, I suppose, is just too much work, isn't it? --89.132.242.20 20:23, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

The "work" per se isn't that much; the problem is the varying opinions. I think Kobu's Character Advancement system is a "must-have", for instance, yet I've met plenty of others who either use another similar mod, or disparage the use of advancement mods altogether. Who gets to decide what's "must-have" in those instances? The best way we found to resolve the dilemma was to just let each person keep their own list. You can see the main discussions here and [[here if you're interested. There were also some mentions on the Community Portal and Admin Noticeboard (just search for "mods" on those pages). – Robin Hood↝talk 20:57, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Suggested Addition to Must-Have Mods ListEdit

Given that adding to this page a mod Spiney, kriscrash and I just released would be self-serving, I thought I should offer it up for discussion here instead. The mod in question is WEPON (Weapon Expansion Pack for Oblivion Nthusiasts). Part of the mod adds new Amber, Madness, Mithril, and Orcish weapons, which clearly don't qualify for "must-have". But another major point of the mod is that it addresses no fewer than 250 mistakes made by Bethesda in vanilla Oblivion or SI weapon stats and leveled lists, which are not addressed by anything else including the unofficial patches. Because of this, should this mod be considered a "must-have"? BFG 03:55, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm on the fence about this one - not to mention that I don't even know if anything I say should be counted except from the point of the effect on the site since I not only don't run mods for Oblivion, I can't; I'm on the PS3. So, at this point, at least, take everything I say with a hefty pinch of salt. But anyway let's get to how I feel about this: I think that if the only point of your mod was fixing those then yes, it should go here. But since it includes the new weapons... I'm wary about letting this on the list. What if someone goes "Hey! Look! This guy got onto the list because it fixes bugs!" So s/he makes a mod which fixes 200 unique bugs (unique in the sense that other mods don't fix them), plus whatever else s/he wants on the list. Then the next guy makes one that fixes 150. And the next guy makes one that fixes a 100. And 50. And 40. And 30. And finally 1. My concern is that if we let this one in it's that many fewer bugs, right? And then - where do we stop?--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 04:21, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I think that we as a community could show restraint about what mods are recommended (good God, did I say the Internet can show restraint?) based on what number of bugs are fixed. For example, if a mod only fixes one, or even just a handful, of unique bugs, then those had better be some pretty major bugs - and I doubt the major fixable ones are yet to be dealt with (except, I believe, the one that comes about with games that have huge amounts of hours clocked, but I don't know if that one can be fixed). Of course, being an Xbox360 player, I don't really know much about mods either, but in my opinion, if these are 250 clearly beneficial fixes that make the game easier to play, or play more as it should, then I don't see why it shouldn't be able to be recommended. --^Darkle ~ _Talk 04:44, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Good point... Too much redditing recently.--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 04:48, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, to be fair, some of the fixes are rather dubious, but others are major flaws that I uncovered while scouring through the vanilla game. For example, the Durable Iron Bow could never show up in-game...that's not documented anywhere on UESP or anywhere else that I'm aware of. Another is the Steel Battle Axe which is supposed to be purchasable at level 3, but vendors couldn't carry it until much later. And I found two major bugs with the Knights of Order's (SI) weapons...first, in the leveled list (the level 1, 2, and 3 swords were in the wrong place), and second, in the fact they were all supposed to have Frost enchantments but those were never assigned to them. I also found a couple of staves with the wrong enchantments. Etc. Etc. Anyway, I have a list of the bug fixes made by WEPON posted to WEPON's download section on TESNexus, if anyone needs to look at it. BFG 05:13, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

None of these are game-breaking bugs. It sounds like a useful set of fixes, but it should go on a personal mods list rather than the main section of the page. rpeh •T•C•E• 09:17, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

There's that game-breaking phrase again :). That's the same reason the author of the Unofficial Patch Supplemental gave for not including these changes in their file. I'm fine with this decision, but keep in mind that many of the changes made by this mod are exactly the same as changes that are made by the Patches. For example, the Unofficial Patch fixes the Elven War Axes so they have the correct reach and speed. But the USIP doesn't make the same fix in Elven War Axes added by Shivering Isles. This mod does.

Would it make a difference if the fixes were spun off into a separate file, without the additional weapons? BFG 14:12, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd be more open to including it if it were a separate file, yes. rpeh •T•C•E• 14:24, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense to me. I've posted a version on TESNexus that contains only the fixes and nothing else. (Look for WEPON to find it.) I'll leave it up to you as to whether it belongs here :) BFG 01:52, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

A nervous person's guideEdit

I recently bought Oblivion for the PC, so that I could have mods. Now that it's ready to go, I find myself very anxious to actually add anything. Is there any tips regular mod users can offer about choosing safe mods, that don't mess up your game. --Zefiewings 19:15, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Start with the official plugins and the unofficial patches (UOP, USIP, UOMP and UOPS). They're all pretty much safe. After that, it pretty much depends on what you want to change. Graphics-only changes like Book Jackets and Alluring Potion Bottles are totally safe and can be removed without messing anything up later on. Generally, if a mod has a large number of Likes on TESNexus, it'll be safe, but there's really no way of telling. rpeh •T•C•E• 08:26, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I decided on a few things from the user favorites lists, now I just need to stop being so chicken and push the download button. I appreciate your help. --Zefiewings 17:05, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Unofficial Patch Supplementals v3.3.7 gone missing?Edit

The link on this page lead to a 404 and it is nowhere on the tesnexus site. If anyone has a copy of this file they should upload it and link it to here to replace the broken link. "The USIP now integrates Arthmoor’s changes in the Supplementals which updated the UOP, USIP and UOMP while Quarn and Kevin were away, plus adds a new more fixes as well; thus the Supplementals are no longer required" - this is listed in the Shivering Isles patch notes, possibly the answer to the disappearance?

This Page Has Become An EmbarrassmentEdit

All of these links are garbage. You should at least half-way monitor this because almost all of these links are complete crap. — Unsigned comment by 24.0.199.114 (talk) at 06:22 on 22 April 2012

The only link I found on the article page that was broken was the official Oblivion patch, which I've now fixed. The ones on users' pages are up to those users to maintain. – Robin Hood↝talk 09:21, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

CTD and Memory patch ENBoost for OblivionEdit

[2]is worthy of mention. Running in Full Screen Borderless works well for Win8.x --Lmstearn (talk) 13:34, 3 July 2014 (GMT)

Checking of WEPON mod still covers bugs not fixed by the Unofficial PatchesEdit

Hello. Going through the mods on the page, I noticed that the Unofficial Patches still get updates while the WEPON mod page has not been changed since 2012. Can some dedicated UESP editor check and see if the bugs that were addressed by WEPON are now addressed by the Unofficial Patches? Thanks! --184.21.3.77 03:25, 21 May 2015 (GMT)

Considering Oblivion has been out for nearly 10 years, I'm pretty sure that they haven't updated the Unofficial Patch in several years and that the information is up-to-date. •WoahBro^►talk 03:34, 21 May 2015 (GMT)