• Blizzard@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    Skyrim isn’t beloved for the vanilla experience

    I beg to disagree.

    • LadyLikesSpiders@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Not saying there aren’t people who don’t like the vanilla experience, but it’s success would be nowhere near as huge if not for the modding community. Skyrim is the two biggest mod communities one Nexus, and the top 5 are all Bethesda games. In the top 8, 6 of them are Bethesda games. Skyrim has been on top since I’ve been using nexus, and I’ve been using it for a decade or more, and that’s to say nothing of the other sites out there. Clearly modding is a tremendous part of Skyrim’s appeal

      • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Modding plays a role.

        But people also happily bought it on consoles with no/negligible mod support. How much do you think they sold on switch where it doesn’t go on sale below $30? Because I’m betting they made plenty.

        • LadyLikesSpiders@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Bethesda games are the only ones I can think of that have mod support for consoles. It’s way less than PC for sure, but I wouldn’t call it negligible

          Considering most console games require a whole lot of work-around, even when their PC versions are more easily modded, I’d say just the existence of console mod support on Bethesda’s part is a recognition of the importance modding has on those games

          Again, I’m not saying that Skyrim would have been a failure without mods, only that it’s incredible success would not have been achieved without them

          • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            It’s absolutely negligible. There isn’t a mod available on their official mod platform that anyone involved in the PC mode scene from actual mod distribution sites is installing.

            • LadyLikesSpiders@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Mod support on consoles is borderline unprecedented. The fact that the devs made sure that consoles got that goes to show just how negligible it isn’t. Skyrim is practically the face of game modding. Without any other context, if you bring up game modding, you’re most likely going to be conjuring skyrim in people’s heads. Modding is absolutely not negligible to Skyrim financially or even to its identity

              • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                It’s nothing but an excuse to pretend their distribution platform is legitimate.

                There’s nothing remotely interesting available on the official Bethesda mod platform. It didn’t sell them any extra copies. It’s complete and utter trash.

                There’s no connection and no commonality between that nonsense and the modding ecosystem that kept people playing on PC.

      • Marin_Rider@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        I would agree if we are talking longevity, but it was a success well before modding took off for it

    • TheDankHold@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I haven’t been interested in playing vanilla Skyrim since 2011. I still fuck around with mods every year or so. The game is somehow incredibly simplistic while also super clunky and every character has one of four voices.

      Mods are the only reason Skyrim stood the test of time so far because my position is very popular.