L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
OK. I have one of the age-old questions.
Can anyone recommend a decent ENB preset for OG Skyrim?
I would like one that 1) doesn't fucking kill my computer 2) makes caves somewhat dark 3) doesn't make inside of houses pitch black 4) makes it so that when you're outside in the sunlight, it doesn't look foggy, clouded or otherwise faded out.
Does such a thing exist?
Not an ENB so I'm probably not helping, but I am a fan of Enhanced Lights and FX. Given your requirements you may want to skip the optional weather part as it does make fog a lot foggier. When it's clear though you can basically see forever and it's so bright and nice.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
I'll give ELF another shot.
Should I just leave ENB installed without a preset?
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NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
So the SKSE page hasn't had any updates in forever, has there been any news on that in other locations or is Special Edition basically never getting a functional script extender?
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Pretty sure SKSE is functionally dead, the guys don't have time
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
IIRC, on a post on a board somewhere that they post, it's a huge technical hurdle to overcome to make it for the SE.
Since Bethesda had been basically using the same engine since forever, they really only had to do some porting and bug fixes. But this bringing it up to 64-bit is basically a whole new engine, for once, and it requires a lot of time to get it working.
Also, ELF makes everything turbo dark all the time always.
I think I'm just going to run default ENB with no darkeners. I shouldn't need a fucking torch in Breezehome in order to not trip on the stairs.
My understanding is that the technical challenges aren't insurmountable, but they're reliant on a particular, very talented, coder who isn't really available any more. It's probably pretty boring for someone like that to essentially remake their old work for a new release five years later.
ESO gave me plenty of what I wanted from an Elder Scrolls game. All the questlines and dialogue would fit right in with a game like Skyrim. Explore in a random direction, find the ghost of somebody telling you not to pick up the book by his own corpse, explore somewhere else, find a small town wracked by a sudden plague where all is not as it seems, on and on. It's a great game and feels like it might as well have been ES6. Especially being free to play...you might as well turn off chat and pretend it's a single player game, because it works as such.
I wish I could see it the same way, but I just can't. ESO is a good game and I can see the allure, but it (for me) lacks the magic of something like Skyrim, where I can not only do what I want and go where I want, but which I can mod to change things I don't like or enhance things I do. I suppose for people who aren't into modding that part doesn't matter, which might be what makes ESO easier to think of as "the next" Elder Scrolls game, but it's just not.
I do still have ESO installed, and once in awhile I'll try to get a character going, but I almost always get bored with the janky combat before I can really get into the more exciting adventures that there are no doubt to be had.
It's important to remember that 1) ESO does have addon support though it's obviously more about UI stuff than, say, better penis models and 2) A lot of people played Skyrim on consoles with no mod support. A place like this where we can go into in depth discussions about modding tends to skew the idea of what Skyrim was like for people.
It's also important to remember that, even for people who play Elder Scrolls games completely without mods, whether that be on console or PC, that the allure of Elder Scrolls games comes from their modability. The modding fan base of this series may not represent the majority of all people who play the games, but they are the vocal proponents of the games, the evangelists who keep talking about them and making YouTube videos, and prevent them from so easily dropping into obscurity the way most games do, even those who are big smash hits at launch.
ESO, I would say, suffers from a complete void of these evangelists, because while it appears on the surface to be an Elder Scrolls game, and uses the lore and iconography of an ES game, it just isn't one. It's still a fun game and one of the few good MMOs to come along in years, though... which is saying a lot.
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Eh. IMO Skyrim has had such a lasting presence because it was absolutely massive on launch, even before high-end modding was a thing, and is just the sort of game that you can come back to over and over and still find new ways to have fun--even in the base game (I still haven't bothered to figure out mods after my first attempt failed). And Bethesda's insistent constant rereleases to remind us that it exists. Sure, the modding may have played a part, but I doubt it was actually that big of one.
As to why ESO didn't catch on? Well, for starters, they started out as a paid MMO which completely and utterly killed any launch momentum they could have had. There just wasn't much of a reason for people to move over there from Skyrim. They solved that (I assume) with expansions and the like, but by then it was too late to achieve anywhere near the status Skyrim had, even if it was technically deserving of it.
Eh. IMO Skyrim has had such a lasting presence because it was absolutely massive on launch, even before high-end modding was a thing, and is just the sort of game that you can come back to over and over and still find new ways to have fun--even in the base game (I still haven't bothered to figure out mods after my first attempt failed). And Bethesda's insistent constant rereleases to remind us that it exists. Sure, the modding may have played a part, but I doubt it was actually that big of one.
As to why ESO didn't catch on? Well, for starters, they started out as a paid MMO which completely and utterly killed any launch momentum they could have had. There just wasn't much of a reason for people to move over there from Skyrim. They solved that (I assume) with expansions and the like, but by then it was too late to achieve anywhere near the status Skyrim had, even if it was technically deserving of it.
Let's not forget the fact that ESO was an awful game at launch too.
I picked it up a year ago after it had gone through major improvements such as level scaling so you could freely wander like you would in a mainline ES game instead of being pasted by a level eff-you mob because you went to the wrong area and the crimes and justice system so you could spend an afternoon murdering and stealing from townspeople while evading guards if you wanted to. A lot of other people picked it up then and some would wonder why they hadn't tried the game sooner at which point the diehard veteran fans who had been around at launch would waste no time in answering "because it used to suck."
There's still a lot about the game that feels like a step backwards from other MMOs, but it certainly has a much higher tolerance for being able to dick around and being rewarded for it. You may not be able to pick up every cheese wheel and dump them in your home or steal the pants off of non-essential NPCs like in Skyrim, but it will let you build a model train out of odds and ends to display in your home's front yard.
There's still a lot about the game that feels like a step backwards from other MMOs, but it certainly has a much higher tolerance for being able to dick around and being rewarded for it. You may not be able to pick up every cheese wheel and dump them in your home or steal the pants off of non-essential NPCs like in Skyrim, but it will let you build a model train out of odds and ends to display in your home's front yard.
Even so, you can still do some pretty awesome stuff these days.
Sadly it's not like, literally every thing you pick up as in recent Elder Scrolls games, they have to be "decorations" but you can still find a lot of that same spirit.
I actually think that "you can pick up everything!" is one of the big missteps they've made with the modern TES games. It doesn't add much and causes a bunch of broken physics shit. The Law Of Conservation Of Detail should be in effect.
I really liked decorating in Morrowind. Shit stayed where you put it. Decorating in Skryim is frustrating. I once made a box with gems. Needless to say, that box exploded and threw gems all over the house.
I really liked decorating in Morrowind. Shit stayed where you put it. Decorating in Skryim is frustrating. I once made a box with gems. Needless to say, that box exploded and threw gems all over the house.
So the SKSE page hasn't had any updates in forever, has there been any news on that in other locations or is Special Edition basically never getting a functional script extender?
I really liked decorating in Morrowind. Shit stayed where you put it. Decorating in Skryim is frustrating. I once made a box with gems. Needless to say, that box exploded and threw gems all over the house.
Turning vsynch on helps a lot with this for some inexplicable reason.
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
*open drawer to loot*
*candles, books, skulls on top fly around the room at Mach 2*
"YOU DIED"
I really liked decorating in Morrowind. Shit stayed where you put it. Decorating in Skryim is frustrating. I once made a box with gems. Needless to say, that box exploded and threw gems all over the house.
Turning vsynch on helps a lot with this for some inexplicable reason.
The reason it helps is because the way Bethesda's antiquated engine handles physics is based on the framerate at which the game is running. In general, low framerates don't seem to hurt anything, but if you go over 60 fps, well, shit goes bananas. Vsync, at least on a 60 hz monitor, prevents the game from running over this limit, so generally keeps things calm. If you happen to have a 144 hz monitor, however... well vsync is obviously not going to help you.
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited September 2017
I find Jaxonz Positioner to be quite useful when it comes to decorating your home. It allows you to 'lock' an item once you placed it preventing it from shooting off in to the stars if you accidentally breeze past it.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Also, ELF makes everything turbo dark all the time always.
I think I'm just going to run default ENB with no darkeners. I shouldn't need a fucking torch in Breezehome in order to not trip on the stairs.
Obviously, if it's not for you it's not for you, but I'm confused because it makes dark things turbo dark for me, but anything else is lit rather well. Did you install the "hardcore" version or whatever? Apparently that makes things stupid dark.
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
I'm running the base remaster and things were really dark. Like if I went into the basement of a built home (I always do the one southeast of Solitude first because I'm imperial scum), even if the smelter room was lit, I had to pull out a torch to see anything in the shrine room.
I've gone through setups where shit was just real dark all the time if I wasn't either outside or in a really well-lit area at night. Like, I couldn't walk around in the wilderness at night because it was too dark. In dungeons, I couldn't see anything without a lantern or torch.
This might seem cool and realistic, but it isn't because it only affected me. Bandit archers, for example, could still headshot me from 100 yards and I'd have no idea where they were. Mods came around that attempted to correct this, but they were unreliable and also script-heavy, so in the end I've gone for a balance where things are pretty dark when they should be (unlike Bethesda's norm where it never gets darker than "sun just dipped below horizon" level), but never impenetrably dark because I actually want to play the damn game.
Also, ELF makes everything turbo dark all the time always.
I think I'm just going to run default ENB with no darkeners. I shouldn't need a fucking torch in Breezehome in order to not trip on the stairs.
Obviously, if it's not for you it's not for you, but I'm confused because it makes dark things turbo dark for me, but anything else is lit rather well. Did you install the "hardcore" version or whatever? Apparently that makes things stupid dark.
Those look pretty good, Blackjack!
For my tastes, I think that your Whiterun is too dark. I get that it's not supposed to be daylight inside the city, but once I run away from the sconces, it gets too dark for me, and I end up getting lost if I can't exactly see another sconce or torch to align myself with. Unless using my own. To me, it's more immersive to be able to navigate the tiny cities without need of flashlights.
Your Breezehome seems fine, but it depends on how dark it gets once you're away from the fire. I've modified mine to have candles away from the fire in all the rooms because of that. It's been so dark in the past that I think I've gotten lost on the upper floor, and I don't think that should happen in my house! I shouldn't need a torch in my house!!!
But anyway.
There was one unfortunate configuration I had where you could only see, kinda, inside some of the houses.
Dragonsreach may as well have been a cave. And caves were so dark, I don't know how any human could realistically survive in there.
Part of the problem was that I installed CoT with the dark settings, which made it better after a reinstall with the default brightness.
Some mods are so bad that Dark Souls is brighter by comparison. And that's supposed to have a healthy dose of horror and the unknown. If you're running around outside, with a lantern on, you can see more than 3 feet away from you!
But, man, some of the guys who make the ENBs have apparently never been camping. Sure, it's not perfect, but you can fucking see at night!
I've ended up getting True Vision, I think it is - maybe without a space, which is a bunch of mods and an ENB, and then I've just messed with the ENB to make it so that it's not super turbo dark.
I also like having to use lanterns and Candlelight and the like in caves! But not have it be so fucking dark in them that there isn't any semblance of realism. Like, humans don't like the pitch dark! We are not Bane or Batman! We do not naturally have night eye or heat vision. We can see when it's dark-ish out, by comparison, but we will always need and like a little bit of light
I realize this is mostly a to each their own kind of thing. That's why we have the ability to tweak ENBs to our preference. I can make torches and sconces and everything brighter, and make maybe caves more or less turbo dark, or get rid of the eternal Civilian Twilight that Skyrim claims is the darkest hour of the darkest night of the darkest month.
I should take some screencaps and share them when I get it all figured out.
I'm one of those weird people who likes Skyrim vanilla and I don't overhaul anything or use ENBs, modify foliage or towns, change out character models or anything like that. Haven't even played Special Edition because the few mods I do have seem like less hassle to deal with in a tried-and-true setup. I have like...stones of Barenziah tracking, a world map with roads that show up better, a mod that announces when a named NPC dies so I know if somebody's getting vamp'd off screen, SkyUI and SkyComplete.
So I actually can't wait to play vanilla Skyrim yet again when the Switch version comes out. And I was getting so impatient that against better judgement I started playing again a couple days ago. But this is a little different than before, because I'm doing a "fuck it" run where I finally decide to not care about breaking any particular quests or opportunities in the game and just finish some of the major questlines I never did before. I always want to be really completionist and not cut myself off from alternate possibilities but I'm just making a run for it to see things through. So I took my level 88 guy who had just done most of Dragonborn last year, and grinded up to level 96 for a few more perks, and did the whole civil war in favor of the imperials, and the whole main quest in favor of the greybeards. Screw the blades wanting me to kill Charles Martinet. I don't think I will ever do that, there's no good reason to.
Civil war was really really underwhelming. I had always been worried about important people possibly dying in the cities you assault, didn't know they went into a new "war" instance full of nobodies and then back to business as usual immediately afterward. I think the whole thing was like 2 hours because I could fast travel everywhere and killed everything in one hit.
Next I think I'll be trying Dawnguard finally, and at some point the Companion questline. It's nice to just attack it without distraction, no scouring every location for money and gems and secrets, just beeline the stories just to finally experience it.
I don't think I'm going to be burnt out for the Switch version because that'll naturally be a new character. Thinking of trying a punchcat since people say they're fun and I've never done too much melee in the past.
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
You're level 96 and you're surprised that things are dying in one hit? I think Civil War is balanced at doing it around like level 15, when I do it in the mid-20s it's just an exercise of how quickly I can kill the Stormcloaks to minimize Imperial casualties.
I never said I was surprised. That was kind of a separate statement from what came before, I didn't mean it was underwhelming because it was easy and quick. It was underwhelming because it was just taking a couple forts and storming a city and killing the opposing leader, and everything returning to normal instantly. I have no idea how holds apparently got taken over in the background and had their jarls replaced...I never had to go talk to any replacement jarls. Maven's probably on the throne in Riften cackling, I haven't been there yet, all I did was kill a dozen guys at a nearby fort. And people post-war have been talking about the ongoing war and Ulfric's cruelty etc. like nothing has happened.
I had heard before it was kinda like that, and that much more had been planned earlier, and the whole line was pretty gutted for release.
L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
If you take your time, and not run through it, the territories randomly change hands.
And Sporky, I know too many people that are just flat out allergic to mod it, even with the unofficial patches. Really, I don't think anyone here will judge anyone else if they do no modding, or ALL THE MODDING!!! Less mods means it's moderately more reliable!
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
It's actually criminal that they didn't release the "destroy the Thieve's Guild with Mjoll" storyline with the Special Edition, imo. Fleshing out Civil War more would have been nice as well.
I never said I was surprised. That was kind of a separate statement from what came before, I didn't mean it was underwhelming because it was easy and quick. It was underwhelming because it was just taking a couple forts and storming a city and killing the opposing leader, and everything returning to normal instantly. I have no idea how holds apparently got taken over in the background and had their jarls replaced...I never had to go talk to any replacement jarls. Maven's probably on the throne in Riften cackling, I haven't been there yet, all I did was a dozen guys at a nearby fort. And people post-war have been talking about the ongoing war and Ulfric's cruelty etc. like nothing has happened.
I had heard before it was kinda like that, and that much more had been planned earlier, and the whole line was pretty gutted for release.
TES games have never been great at depicting grand battles. They simply haven't had the ability to put enough actors into the scene without tanking things so the climatic fights never match their buildup. The big battle of Bruma in Oblivious was like 9 guys so I'm not surprised Skyrim's civil war was disappointing too.
Fallout 4 was actually a bit better in this regard due to all the involved groups that could fight being pretty small so a few decisive skirmishes and critical objectives better matched up with the background information.
The Civil War quests aren't great. However, they're deliberately tuned so that you'll knock soldiers out in a few hits so that you feel like a cool guy,.
I'm one of those weird people who likes Skyrim vanilla and I don't overhaul anything or use ENBs, modify foliage or towns, change out character models or anything like that. Haven't even played Special Edition because the few mods I do have seem like less hassle to deal with in a tried-and-true setup. I have like...stones of Barenziah tracking, a world map with roads that show up better, a mod that announces when a named NPC dies so I know if somebody's getting vamp'd off screen, SkyUI and SkyComplete.
Skyrim on its own is a pretty amazing game for sure, but for those who are aware of mods, I guess I am a little surprised when people choose to go completely without them, since some just make Skyrim, y'know, an actual PC game instead of a shitty console port. SkyUI is chief among these, but other mods like Better Dialogue Controls, which fix the weird 'stickiness' with dialogue choices, are other lightweight choices which seem to be all benefits with no downsides. Further, even when the game was first released, I was absolutely disgusted by how terrible the lighting engine is, particularly the saw-blade shadows chewing their way across the ground at janky intervals.
Not that I'm criticizing; play the game how you enjoy it. Modding is part of the fun for me, and it's what has kept me playing for so many years, and I would say that while the vast majority of people who played Skyrim probably did so without mods (even not including console players), that the vast majority of people who still play the original Skyrim do so because of mods.
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
edited September 2017
But SkyUI is ugly and the default UI is actually totally fine, I never understood that complaint. Well apart from the stickiness but that happens like once a play session in Special Edition so whatever.
Also actually getting mods set up for the first time is annoying because there's so little to go on for troubleshooting. I thought I'd followed the NMM directions closely, and it was just one small mod (parrying while dual wielding), but the game just failed to load and I didn't have any errors to look up to figure out what I did wrong. Maybe that was just a side effect of my crappy old computer, though.
Edit: Okay I'll admit a hotkey mod would probably be nice, now that I think about it.
The Escape Goat on
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Default Skyrim UI makes me sad in my heart's place.
Actually UI in general is a pretty consistent Bad in Bethesda games. Like, PC gamers complain that the UI is consolized, but I gotta tell ya their UI is awful for console players too!
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
I carry too much stuff so the smaller text and more information on screen plus sorting is invaluable. Plus features like an eyeball on books and stuff I've read.
However I can still hang with the default if I need to.
Default UI in Skyrim is a crime against humanity.
It can't decide wether it is keyboard only, or part keyboard part mouse, inventory management is unnecessarily difficult, and favorites menu is borderline useless (not sure why i bother using it, regular menu is actually quicker if i know what i am looking for).
That said, once you put UI aside, the major flaw in Skyrim is how easily the game breaks at higher levels unless you go out of your way to gimp yourself.
And the game is so large (well, map is not really that large, it's just so full of things to do), that unless you really laser focus (both into major quests, or in what skills you use), you will get to higher levels really quick.
But SkyUI is ugly and the default UI is actually totally fine, I never understood that complaint. Well apart from the stickiness but that happens like once a play session in Special Edition so whatever.
Also actually getting mods set up for the first time is annoying because there's so little to go on for troubleshooting. I thought I'd followed the NMM directions closely, and it was just one small mod (parrying while dual wielding), but the game just failed to load and I didn't have any errors to look up to figure out what I did wrong. Maybe that was just a side effect of my crappy old computer, though.
Edit: Okay I'll admit a hotkey mod would probably be nice, now that I think about it.
Ugly? What the hell is this even? I mean, I suppose if shown next to modern games made by developers who put actual work into making their UI attractive, SkyUI is bland by comparison, but compared to the original Skyrim UI?
(spoiled for large)
SkyUI is sleek, it is functional, and it has amazing features never thought of before in a Bethesda game like the ability to keyword search, to sort by categories (including weight-to-value), and keyboard shortcuts to quickly navigate through categories while also being very friendly to that other little-known PC peripheral that Bethesda tends to forget about, the fucking mouse.
The default Skyrim UI is usable. It works and isn't broken, which I suppose is something of an achievement, but it sure as hell isn't good or other words I could put into italics. It was also clearly made for a controllers which, while controllers are usable on the PC, they are not the default method of user input.
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Can anyone recommend a decent ENB preset for OG Skyrim?
I would like one that 1) doesn't fucking kill my computer 2) makes caves somewhat dark 3) doesn't make inside of houses pitch black 4) makes it so that when you're outside in the sunlight, it doesn't look foggy, clouded or otherwise faded out.
Does such a thing exist?
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Should I just leave ENB installed without a preset?
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Since Bethesda had been basically using the same engine since forever, they really only had to do some porting and bug fixes. But this bringing it up to 64-bit is basically a whole new engine, for once, and it requires a lot of time to get it working.
Also, ELF makes everything turbo dark all the time always.
I think I'm just going to run default ENB with no darkeners. I shouldn't need a fucking torch in Breezehome in order to not trip on the stairs.
It's also important to remember that, even for people who play Elder Scrolls games completely without mods, whether that be on console or PC, that the allure of Elder Scrolls games comes from their modability. The modding fan base of this series may not represent the majority of all people who play the games, but they are the vocal proponents of the games, the evangelists who keep talking about them and making YouTube videos, and prevent them from so easily dropping into obscurity the way most games do, even those who are big smash hits at launch.
ESO, I would say, suffers from a complete void of these evangelists, because while it appears on the surface to be an Elder Scrolls game, and uses the lore and iconography of an ES game, it just isn't one. It's still a fun game and one of the few good MMOs to come along in years, though... which is saying a lot.
As to why ESO didn't catch on? Well, for starters, they started out as a paid MMO which completely and utterly killed any launch momentum they could have had. There just wasn't much of a reason for people to move over there from Skyrim. They solved that (I assume) with expansions and the like, but by then it was too late to achieve anywhere near the status Skyrim had, even if it was technically deserving of it.
Let's not forget the fact that ESO was an awful game at launch too.
I picked it up a year ago after it had gone through major improvements such as level scaling so you could freely wander like you would in a mainline ES game instead of being pasted by a level eff-you mob because you went to the wrong area and the crimes and justice system so you could spend an afternoon murdering and stealing from townspeople while evading guards if you wanted to. A lot of other people picked it up then and some would wonder why they hadn't tried the game sooner at which point the diehard veteran fans who had been around at launch would waste no time in answering "because it used to suck."
There's still a lot about the game that feels like a step backwards from other MMOs, but it certainly has a much higher tolerance for being able to dick around and being rewarded for it. You may not be able to pick up every cheese wheel and dump them in your home or steal the pants off of non-essential NPCs like in Skyrim, but it will let you build a model train out of odds and ends to display in your home's front yard.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Even so, you can still do some pretty awesome stuff these days.
Sadly it's not like, literally every thing you pick up as in recent Elder Scrolls games, they have to be "decorations" but you can still find a lot of that same spirit.
SKSE64 got an alpha release today! Not really fully there yet or useful for most people at this point, but it's something.
BEARD GROWTH MOD
Turning vsynch on helps a lot with this for some inexplicable reason.
*candles, books, skulls on top fly around the room at Mach 2*
"YOU DIED"
The reason it helps is because the way Bethesda's antiquated engine handles physics is based on the framerate at which the game is running. In general, low framerates don't seem to hurt anything, but if you go over 60 fps, well, shit goes bananas. Vsync, at least on a 60 hz monitor, prevents the game from running over this limit, so generally keeps things calm. If you happen to have a 144 hz monitor, however... well vsync is obviously not going to help you.
Also re: SKSE64: FUCK YES IT'S HAPPENING.
Here's my Breezehome (please ignore the dead man in the corner)
Whiterun at night
Above the Solitude docks on a clear day
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
This might seem cool and realistic, but it isn't because it only affected me. Bandit archers, for example, could still headshot me from 100 yards and I'd have no idea where they were. Mods came around that attempted to correct this, but they were unreliable and also script-heavy, so in the end I've gone for a balance where things are pretty dark when they should be (unlike Bethesda's norm where it never gets darker than "sun just dipped below horizon" level), but never impenetrably dark because I actually want to play the damn game.
Of course it helped that I was playing an axe-you-in-the-face character so the stealth penalty didn't really matter.
Those look pretty good, Blackjack!
For my tastes, I think that your Whiterun is too dark. I get that it's not supposed to be daylight inside the city, but once I run away from the sconces, it gets too dark for me, and I end up getting lost if I can't exactly see another sconce or torch to align myself with. Unless using my own. To me, it's more immersive to be able to navigate the tiny cities without need of flashlights.
Your Breezehome seems fine, but it depends on how dark it gets once you're away from the fire. I've modified mine to have candles away from the fire in all the rooms because of that. It's been so dark in the past that I think I've gotten lost on the upper floor, and I don't think that should happen in my house! I shouldn't need a torch in my house!!!
But anyway.
There was one unfortunate configuration I had where you could only see, kinda, inside some of the houses.
Dragonsreach may as well have been a cave. And caves were so dark, I don't know how any human could realistically survive in there.
Part of the problem was that I installed CoT with the dark settings, which made it better after a reinstall with the default brightness.
Some mods are so bad that Dark Souls is brighter by comparison. And that's supposed to have a healthy dose of horror and the unknown. If you're running around outside, with a lantern on, you can see more than 3 feet away from you!
But, man, some of the guys who make the ENBs have apparently never been camping. Sure, it's not perfect, but you can fucking see at night!
I've ended up getting True Vision, I think it is - maybe without a space, which is a bunch of mods and an ENB, and then I've just messed with the ENB to make it so that it's not super turbo dark.
I also like having to use lanterns and Candlelight and the like in caves! But not have it be so fucking dark in them that there isn't any semblance of realism. Like, humans don't like the pitch dark! We are not Bane or Batman! We do not naturally have night eye or heat vision. We can see when it's dark-ish out, by comparison, but we will always need and like a little bit of light
I realize this is mostly a to each their own kind of thing. That's why we have the ability to tweak ENBs to our preference. I can make torches and sconces and everything brighter, and make maybe caves more or less turbo dark, or get rid of the eternal Civilian Twilight that Skyrim claims is the darkest hour of the darkest night of the darkest month.
I should take some screencaps and share them when I get it all figured out.
So I actually can't wait to play vanilla Skyrim yet again when the Switch version comes out. And I was getting so impatient that against better judgement I started playing again a couple days ago. But this is a little different than before, because I'm doing a "fuck it" run where I finally decide to not care about breaking any particular quests or opportunities in the game and just finish some of the major questlines I never did before. I always want to be really completionist and not cut myself off from alternate possibilities but I'm just making a run for it to see things through. So I took my level 88 guy who had just done most of Dragonborn last year, and grinded up to level 96 for a few more perks, and did the whole civil war in favor of the imperials, and the whole main quest in favor of the greybeards. Screw the blades wanting me to kill Charles Martinet. I don't think I will ever do that, there's no good reason to.
Civil war was really really underwhelming. I had always been worried about important people possibly dying in the cities you assault, didn't know they went into a new "war" instance full of nobodies and then back to business as usual immediately afterward. I think the whole thing was like 2 hours because I could fast travel everywhere and killed everything in one hit.
Next I think I'll be trying Dawnguard finally, and at some point the Companion questline. It's nice to just attack it without distraction, no scouring every location for money and gems and secrets, just beeline the stories just to finally experience it.
I don't think I'm going to be burnt out for the Switch version because that'll naturally be a new character. Thinking of trying a punchcat since people say they're fun and I've never done too much melee in the past.
I had heard before it was kinda like that, and that much more had been planned earlier, and the whole line was pretty gutted for release.
And Sporky, I know too many people that are just flat out allergic to mod it, even with the unofficial patches. Really, I don't think anyone here will judge anyone else if they do no modding, or ALL THE MODDING!!! Less mods means it's moderately more reliable!
TES games have never been great at depicting grand battles. They simply haven't had the ability to put enough actors into the scene without tanking things so the climatic fights never match their buildup. The big battle of Bruma in Oblivious was like 9 guys so I'm not surprised Skyrim's civil war was disappointing too.
Fallout 4 was actually a bit better in this regard due to all the involved groups that could fight being pretty small so a few decisive skirmishes and critical objectives better matched up with the background information.
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Skyrim on its own is a pretty amazing game for sure, but for those who are aware of mods, I guess I am a little surprised when people choose to go completely without them, since some just make Skyrim, y'know, an actual PC game instead of a shitty console port. SkyUI is chief among these, but other mods like Better Dialogue Controls, which fix the weird 'stickiness' with dialogue choices, are other lightweight choices which seem to be all benefits with no downsides. Further, even when the game was first released, I was absolutely disgusted by how terrible the lighting engine is, particularly the saw-blade shadows chewing their way across the ground at janky intervals.
Not that I'm criticizing; play the game how you enjoy it. Modding is part of the fun for me, and it's what has kept me playing for so many years, and I would say that while the vast majority of people who played Skyrim probably did so without mods (even not including console players), that the vast majority of people who still play the original Skyrim do so because of mods.
Also actually getting mods set up for the first time is annoying because there's so little to go on for troubleshooting. I thought I'd followed the NMM directions closely, and it was just one small mod (parrying while dual wielding), but the game just failed to load and I didn't have any errors to look up to figure out what I did wrong. Maybe that was just a side effect of my crappy old computer, though.
Edit: Okay I'll admit a hotkey mod would probably be nice, now that I think about it.
Actually UI in general is a pretty consistent Bad in Bethesda games. Like, PC gamers complain that the UI is consolized, but I gotta tell ya their UI is awful for console players too!
However I can still hang with the default if I need to.
It can't decide wether it is keyboard only, or part keyboard part mouse, inventory management is unnecessarily difficult, and favorites menu is borderline useless (not sure why i bother using it, regular menu is actually quicker if i know what i am looking for).
That said, once you put UI aside, the major flaw in Skyrim is how easily the game breaks at higher levels unless you go out of your way to gimp yourself.
And the game is so large (well, map is not really that large, it's just so full of things to do), that unless you really laser focus (both into major quests, or in what skills you use), you will get to higher levels really quick.
Ugly? What the hell is this even? I mean, I suppose if shown next to modern games made by developers who put actual work into making their UI attractive, SkyUI is bland by comparison, but compared to the original Skyrim UI?
(spoiled for large)
SkyUI is sleek, it is functional, and it has amazing features never thought of before in a Bethesda game like the ability to keyword search, to sort by categories (including weight-to-value), and keyboard shortcuts to quickly navigate through categories while also being very friendly to that other little-known PC peripheral that Bethesda tends to forget about, the fucking mouse.
The default Skyrim UI is usable. It works and isn't broken, which I suppose is something of an achievement, but it sure as hell isn't good or other words I could put into italics. It was also clearly made for a controllers which, while controllers are usable on the PC, they are not the default method of user input.