Vanilla Skyrim was decent. It was always a beautiful world, with fantastic music, and very interesting lore and story-- even if told through an immersion-breakingly small amount of voice actors.
But then there was bad level-up world scaling, where you level too quickly and attain gear upgrades before you even get a chance to enjoy the last bit of gear you earnt. EG, if you purchase/craft a full set of iron/hide and then go and do Bleak Falls Barrow, the first major quest, you will come back either wearing an entirely new set of gear, or it'll be available for purchase when you get back to town.
Clunky difficulty modes, where novice = Godmode, Legendary = Enemies will 1 shot you via execution cam, and you will take unrealistic/boring amounts of time to kill them.
Woefully balanced skill trees. Become a God with broken alchemy/enchanting, enjoy a reasonably balanced playstyle as a warrior, 1 shot everything as a stealth archer, or cast 30 fireballs at every opponent as a mage.
And most importantly, there were SO many glitches. Some just comical, some game-breaking, locking you out of entire quest chains and stories.
All of these factors made Skyrim an extremely enjoyable experience for a good chunk of time, but it becomes very obviously mediocre if you dedicated a lot of time to it.
But mods fixed these issues. The modding community turned a game that was a solid 7, patched all of its weak parts, and strengthed the parts that were already good. A well-modded Skyrim could very easily be called a 10/10 game.
The latest patch, by Bethesda, which has put a lot of mods behind a paywall on Console, has completely broken the game. A good 2/3rds of the mods I was using in my games no longer work, and nearly all of them won't be updated because they are several years old. I have saved files which have a few hundred hours of playtime, completely corrupted and unplayable. All because of Bethesda's greed.
PC gamers can at least avoid this issue by reverting to an older patch of the game, but console users are just screwed. What was once a beloved game is now unplayable.
Bethesda, you should be utterly ashamed of yourselves. I will never purchase another Bethesda game, even if they fix this mess.
But then there was bad level-up world scaling, where you level too quickly and attain gear upgrades before you even get a chance to enjoy the last bit of gear you earnt. EG, if you purchase/craft a full set of iron/hide and then go and do Bleak Falls Barrow, the first major quest, you will come back either wearing an entirely new set of gear, or it'll be available for purchase when you get back to town.
Clunky difficulty modes, where novice = Godmode, Legendary = Enemies will 1 shot you via execution cam, and you will take unrealistic/boring amounts of time to kill them.
Woefully balanced skill trees. Become a God with broken alchemy/enchanting, enjoy a reasonably balanced playstyle as a warrior, 1 shot everything as a stealth archer, or cast 30 fireballs at every opponent as a mage.
And most importantly, there were SO many glitches. Some just comical, some game-breaking, locking you out of entire quest chains and stories.
All of these factors made Skyrim an extremely enjoyable experience for a good chunk of time, but it becomes very obviously mediocre if you dedicated a lot of time to it.
But mods fixed these issues. The modding community turned a game that was a solid 7, patched all of its weak parts, and strengthed the parts that were already good. A well-modded Skyrim could very easily be called a 10/10 game.
The latest patch, by Bethesda, which has put a lot of mods behind a paywall on Console, has completely broken the game. A good 2/3rds of the mods I was using in my games no longer work, and nearly all of them won't be updated because they are several years old. I have saved files which have a few hundred hours of playtime, completely corrupted and unplayable. All because of Bethesda's greed.
PC gamers can at least avoid this issue by reverting to an older patch of the game, but console users are just screwed. What was once a beloved game is now unplayable.
Bethesda, you should be utterly ashamed of yourselves. I will never purchase another Bethesda game, even if they fix this mess.