The Elder Scrolls XV: This is my Thu'um Stick

[Resileaf]

I like the Oblivion gates. Sure there are only a few layouts, but the enemies in them are not always the same ones, and I'm not even sure they're always in the same places.

They mostly are always in the same place. Or at least, they spawn in the same place, but they might wander around and you'll find them somewhere different than where they were last. The different enemies depend on your level as well. There are two unique Oblivion maps, the first one, and the big Bruma gate with the city destroyer.
Not that I minded that much, personally, I suppose that as long as you don't farm them over and over, they don't get old that fast. Plus I liked seeing what enchantment the sigil at the end would have.

Or even do what the Dark Brotherhood did and just say "We're working on setting up the next quest, go level up and we'll contact you when were ready" and then just send a courier the next time youre in town after hitting the level requirements.

Or even the Morrowind road, you need a certain rank to unlock quests, and you need proper skills to rise in rank.

[halfeye]

They mostly are always in the same place. Or at least, they spawn in the same place, but they might wander around and you'll find them somewhere different than where they were last. The different enemies depend on your level as well.

That's plausible.

There are two unique Oblivion maps, the first one, and the big Bruma gate with the city destroyer.

There's at least a third unique one, the Cheydinhall one, you never in my experience see that one again.

Not that I minded that much, personally, I suppose that as long as you don't farm them over and over, they don't get old that fast. Plus I liked seeing what enchantment the sigil at the end would have.

The temptation is to save before taking it, and keep retaking it until you get the feather sigil stone. Which does somewhat break the game, but it's definitely a temptation.

Or even the Morrowind road, you need a certain rank to unlock quests, and you need proper skills to rise in rank.

There were some quests in Oblivion (Daedric quests in particular?) that were gated by rank.

[Keltest]

That's plausible.



There's at least a third unique one, the Cheydinhall one, you never in my experience see that one again.



The temptation is to save before taking it, and keep retaking it until you get the feather sigil stone. Which does somewhat break the game, but it's definitely a temptation.



There were some quests in Oblivion (Daedric quests in particular?) that were gated by rank.

Not by rank, but by level. Some NPCs simply wouldn't spawn until you hit the right level. And while Daedric Quests were gated that way as well, they also had other specific requirements. One required low personality, for example.

[Resileaf]

There's at least a third unique one, the Cheydinhall one, you never in my experience see that one again.

Now that you mention it, I think you're right, because that Gate has a quest to rescue the city's leader's son and friends.

There were some quests in Oblivion (Daedric quests in particular?) that were gated by rank.

Gated by level. And so were Skyrim's Daedric quests. I think they were the only gated quests in the two games.
Morrowind's Daedric quests were not gated, but were extremely well hidden.

[halfeye]

Gated by level. And so were Skyrim's Daedric quests. I think they were the only gated quests in the two games.

Rank <> (~= (not equal)) level?

[Resileaf]

Rank <> (~= (not equal)) level?

The rank I was refering to was rank in the guild.

[The_Jackal]

The different builds don't need to all be focused around a core skill set like they are in the Witcher. Bethesda has already demonstrated that they can make wildly different playstyles instead of just "click them with a sword" and "click them with magic".

And do you know what those secrets only available to a mage character add? Replay value. You aren't just doing different things, youre seeing different things.

Look, I'm not arguing against the feature, just that it's a hard sell. Money is fungible, every feature comes out of the budget, and Witcher III vs Skyrim is an apples to oranges comparison.

I love how The_Jackal is completely ignoring that I said earlier Elder Scrolls games did this too. In Morrowind there were strict skill requirements for becoming leader of the various guilds, for instance, so someone who was rubbish at fighting couldn't become head of the Fighter's Guild. That effectively gated off the quests associated with that Guild if you were playing mage, and I had no problem whatsoever with that--if I wanted to see that content I just had to play again with a fighter character.

So, this isn't a matter of trading Skyrim for The Witcher 3. It's a matter of taking the best aspects of both games and producing the best RPG ever made. I don't think ES6 will do that, but I can dream.

Sorry, I don't necessarily scour every post in every thread for content. If ignored an opportunity to argue with you, I sincerely apologize. :P

In all seriousness, sure, Morrowind had features which Oblivion dropped, and Oblivion had features which Skyrim dropped. Games change over time, and for better or worse, Bethesda's decision to focus heavily on the gameplay elements and production values over more nuanced story, and presentation of more depth in terms of the way content is presented to the player has been one of those changes. I personally don't think that the decision to go fully voiced and animated was a very good trade. I would happily see a return to a more moderated approach to voicing and animation, one where the high production costs of voice work and animation is more judiciously applied, and, in exchange for which, we got more interesting, branching stories. But I do think the improvements to art, combat, and gameplay have been unalloyed successes, and would be loath to see those features compromised to shim in more 'choose your own adventure'. You're right, and a game that's fully animated, voiced, has great gameplay, and an awesome branching story, with lots of things to discover with each replay, that would be the best RPG ever made. But everything has a price. Are you willing to pay $150.00 for a copy of that game? Can you find enough other players to pony up their share, and so fund the years of art, writing, and software development which would make such a game a reality?

Sporeegg... I hope they take absolutely none of your suggestions. Skyrim already had the issue of ensuring every single character could do absolutely everything and as much as I love Skyrim, it's one of the few bad design decisions I think they made. What you're suggesting sounds infinitely worse.

I think there's room for compromise here. Look, I think we can all agree that Skryim's story foul is that every quest arch felt artificial. Detached from reality, and all blatantly designed to pander to the player, coating everyone in a level of flattery which would make all but the least self-aware players blush. You're the savior of the land, Harbinger of the Companions, Archmage, Leader of the Thieves' Guild, Lord of the Underworld, Master of all you survey.... yawn. I'm surprised they didn't have you become Emperor after you snuff Titus Mede II. It's not necessarily the accessibility that was the problem, it was the sense of each quest line just being little more than a roller coaster ride. You get on, complete your objectives, knock out a completely linear set of quests, and are proclaimed 'Boss of this part of the game', and yet nothing really changes. Being Archmage or Harbinger doesn't *mean* anything. Heck, even the smart-mouth companions never quit giving you lip once you're the Harbinger. You'd think that after you install Vignar as Jarl of Whiterun, Nazeem would have the sense to stop sassing off to you in the street.

I don't think you need to sandbag anyone's progression or come up with arbitrary barriers to lock players out of accessing content if they want to do it. I just think the designers need to put more thought in making the game's quests and story make the world appear more coherent. Even if the player's role in that world is less vainglorious, it's going to be way more satisfying to have the player's accomplishments throught their play actually mean something. Instead of making you Archmage, have the grateful mages provide you with discounted resources or services, or a cool, genuinely useful magic artifact (instead of wall decorations, which is what virtually all of the unique items wound up becoming).

Take a look at Arvak, the horse you get from the Soul Cairn. There's an example of a quest reward that's consistent, useful, makes sense within the context of the story, and doesn't resort to patting the player on the head and giving them a sash reading "Best Heroguy/gal Evar". Those are the kinds of rewards that engage a player. Not 'yo, dawg, here's a bed you can sleep in for free, and some soul gems and herbs'.

[Balmas]

It pains me to admit it, but I agree with Balmas. :P

It is kind of a weird sensation.

I think it's a net positive that your aesthetics are just that: aesthetics. If you want to wear robes, you can, and you don't, you don't have to. Maybe it's my experience with City of Heroes, but I have always felt that how your character looks should be one of the most personal decisions you make, and in my opinion, the more you're able to personalize your character in a video game, the more attached to that character you can become. If I were designing some immersive game, I'd do transmog on steroids: Your look is up to you, within the context of the rewards you've unlocked/earned.

I find myself myself in a bit of a pickle for how to express myself. On the one hand, I agree that character aesthetics are incredibly important--perhaps not so important to me as they are to you, admittedly. Your character's appearance influences a lot of how they interact with the world. It's part of the reason that my mage playthrough had a mod specifically to change mage's hoods into wizard's hats, and why there's some gear that I simply refuse to use: because how my character looks is genuinely important to me, and impacts how I feel about the character in general. My Nord ex-imperial legionnaire, Chadwick, is better protected in Stahlrim, but there's just something about the set of Nordic armor he's had since Bleak Falls Barrow that speaks to his trust in tradition and well-used gear, and there's a part of me that is tempted to go back to the old gear because it's just part of who he is at this point.

At the same time, there's a part of me that argues that if you make character gear purely aesthetic, you lose a lot of the differentiation that comes from having, well, different stats. With purely aesthetic gear, there's no functional difference between light armor and heavy armor, or between iron and daedric. There's less feeling of progression, less excitement at finding a new piece of kit. I dunno whether that's a tradeoff I'd be willing to make, just so that my characters can wear whatever they want.

Perhaps a compromise would be to allow players to have the stats of one thing, but the appearance of another? I'm not a game dev, so I'm not sure how difficult that would be to pull off.

And I liked not being a superhero, but just a reasonably average person caught up in events. In the end there is quite a lot of choice in how you complete the game, but you're never really making things happen, just - trying to help them end favourably. It's much, much more convincing - and thus immersive - than this Chosen One nonsense that all Bethesda games have going.

What I didn't like was the melee combat. It was thrilling to never be sure that you could win (and be reasonably sure that you would definitely lose when faced with more than two opponents, even unarmed) - but the mechanics were a bit too Street Fighter for my liking. Hold the mouse this way, then flick it quickly over there and press... no. Too much like hard work for me.

Aye, that's what initially drew me into the game. It's the thrill of being weak, and struggling to overcome that weakness, that really made me enjoy my time in KCD.

I think you might be overselling the difficulty of Kingdom Come's combat. I'll admit that the combos are stupidly annoying to pull off, but they get a lot easier when you realize that most of the combos flow naturally from where the weapon already wants to go. Or, you can do what I wound up doing, and just equipping the weapon with the biggest stab damage and repeatedly jabbing them in the face.

Witcher 3 has no problem gating off content depending on how you complete certain quests, and neither did earlier Elder Scrolls games (e.g. Morrowind and earlier). If you have enough content, making some of it only accessible to certain characters isn't a problem. That's the real issue here, as we can see from Fallout 4--Bethsoft really can't be bothered to put all that extra content in, so they just make sure what little content there *is* doesn't get gated off for any character.

If we're being entirely fair, I don't think that the quests in Morrowind and the quests in games like Witcher 3 or Kingdom Come: Deliverance are exactly comparable in terms of effort or quality. Looking back, most quests in Morrowind are your bog-standard RPG fetch-quest fare: easily assembled, self-contained, with not many branching choices that would have a lasting effect on the world as a whole. By comparison, Witcher/KCD quests are fully voice-acted, usually have at least one branching choice, and can have immediate and long-term consequences. That's a lot more effort to put into a quest than "Go here, kill thing, bring back macguffin."

I do wish shielding would raise the armor skill along with block.

Wait, it doesn't do that? That seems kind of... stupid?

[veti]

The thing is, with the story-based questlines of the various guilds, it wouldn't really make sense for it to be locked behind skill requirements. "Oh no, Ancano has unleashed magical entities all over Winterfell! But wait, you have to go level up one of your magical skills to 50 before we can let you take them out." "Cicero betrayed the Dark Brotherhood and took the Night Mother! But your Sneak isn't good enough, so we can't do anything about it."

But that's just another design decision - make each quest line "urgent" to, I dunno, ramp up tension or something. It's not hard to write a gap of arbitrary length into a quest line, but Bethesda chose not to.

The mages could spend weeks studying the Eye, before Ancano makes his move on it. Mercer could take weeks to locate Karliah, and Enthir could take weeks to decipher Gallus's journal. There's no coherent reason for the breakneck pace of all the lines, it's just how Bethesda rolls.

[factotum]

Sorry, I don't necessarily scour every post in every thread for content. If ignored an opportunity to argue with you, I sincerely apologize. :P
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You're right, and a game that's fully animated, voiced, has great gameplay, and an awesome branching story, with lots of things to discover with each replay, that would be the best RPG ever made. But everything has a price. Are you willing to pay $150.00 for a copy of that game?

Um, the comment about earlier Elder Scrolls games was in the same post you responded to, and in fact, part of the same sentence mentioning the Witcher 3? Did you just see the word "Witcher" and respond to that without reading the rest of it?

As for your second comment, the reason I keep bringing up the Witcher 3 is because it did the whole thing about being fully animated and fully voiced, with branching quests that can have multiple outcomes, yet it didn't cost $150? You keep implying that these things are impossible, but CD Projekt Red has already proved you wrong!

[Triaxx]

I mean... yes, but it's pretty easy when 90% of the writing is already done. Yes, it doesn't exactly follow the books, but there's already a loose outline there to be followed.

I'd personally prefer to compare to New Vegas, which had the same thing but also with significant character customization. Yes, true, there's a single 'shining path' involving only a small subset of the 'best' weapons in the game, but it allowed the freedom to give it both middle fingers and run around beating things to death with golf club if you were inclined to do so. And still had quests with multiple solutions, quests with moral choices, and things locked out only as a result of your choices.

I will agree firmly that the quests feel very rapidly rushed. I have arrived at the companions, told to pick a bed and oh, here's a starter quest, before you even finish talking to Farkas. Look, all I wanted was a free bed. Or at least one of Aela's quests. On the other hand, I'd prefer to make them organically take long enough that when you finish, you've reached the point you're ready for the next bit. On the other hand, if they feel rushed... play without fast traveling. The game's pace feels a lot better without teleporting everywhere, jumping over the journey to reach the destination.

[Resileaf]

I think some quests could use having a delay in how long it takes before the next step is given to you. Maybe have a "Go meet everyone then we'll talk business" kind of thing, so you can at least pretend you're interacting with the organization.

Thankfully that's something I can do in my own RP, so I guess that if you want to play RP, you can pretend things on your own.

[Manticoran]

On the other hand, if they feel rushed... play without fast traveling. The game's pace feels a lot better without teleporting everywhere, jumping over the journey to reach the destination.

This was personally my biggest problem with post-Morrowind Elder Scrolls. It feels weird to teleport everywhere, but also the world feels *bad* to just... Walk through territory you already walked through, and the options for going to somewhere you want to without fast travel also just feel bad, at least to me.

[factotum]

I actually liked the way fast travel was implemented in Morrowind, because it not only felt more part of the world but also required you to think about what you're doing rather than just clicking on a map icon. For those who don't recall, these were the fast travel options in Morrowind:

- Silt striders which only travelled between certain cities, akin to the horse and cart in Skyrim.
- Divine Intervention spell, which would recall you to the nearest Imperial temple.
- ALMSIVI Intervention, which recalled you to the nearest Tribunal temple.
- Mages in each mage guild could teleport you to any other mage guild.
- Mark and Recall spells, which allow you to mark a place and then teleport back to that place from anywhere.
- Propylon Indexes, which would teleport you to the associated Dunmer fortress, and the Master Propylon Index, which would teleport you to any Dunmer fortress.

A lot of these aren't available at the beginning of the game and have to be found somewhere on the world map, so your mobility would increase as the game went on, exactly as you'd want to happen. Then, if you wanted to fast travel somewhere, you might have to Recall back to your Mark in the Mage's Guild, teleport to another Guild, use an ALMSIVI Intervention from there to the nearest Tribunal temple, and finally walk the last little bit (using a speed boost if necessary).

[Manticoran]

I actually liked the way fast travel was implemented in Morrowind, because it not only felt more part of the world but also required you to think about what you're doing rather than just clicking on a map icon. For those who don't recall, these were the fast travel options in Morrowind:

- Silt striders which only travelled between certain cities, akin to the horse and cart in Skyrim.
- Divine Intervention spell, which would recall you to the nearest Imperial temple.
- ALMSIVI Intervention, which recalled you to the nearest Tribunal temple.
- Mages in each mage guild could teleport you to any other mage guild.
- Mark and Recall spells, which allow you to mark a place and then teleport back to that place from anywhere.
- Propylon Indexes, which would teleport you to the associated Dunmer fortress, and the Master Propylon Index, which would teleport you to any Dunmer fortress.

A lot of these aren't available at the beginning of the game and have to be found somewhere on the world map, so your mobility would increase as the game went on, exactly as you'd want to happen. Then, if you wanted to fast travel somewhere, you might have to Recall back to your Mark in the Mage's Guild, teleport to another Guild, use an ALMSIVI Intervention from there to the nearest Tribunal temple, and finally walk the last little bit (using a speed boost if necessary).

Also in the late game walking was much faster...

[Balmas]

As for your second comment, the reason I keep bringing up the Witcher 3 is because it did the whole thing about being fully animated and fully voiced, with branching quests that can have multiple outcomes, yet it didn't cost $150? You keep implying that these things are impossible, but CD Projekt Red has already proved you wrong!

You're really not being fair in your argument. The_Jackal isn't saying that it's impossible to do these things; he's saying that anything the game does comes at the cost of something else.

F'r'example, the Witcher 3. It has dozens of quests, which are voice-acted, have branching paths, and interact one with another in interesting ways. The conversation system is brilliant, with motion-capture allowing for an unprecedented amount of emotion to be displayed. These are pros, and good ones.

However, they come at a cost. In order to pull off that mocap acting, Witcher 3 has virtually no character customization beyond what beard and hairstyle you want. Witcher 3 is third-person only, which spares CDPR the expense of animating everything in first person and figuring out a smooth way to transition between first and third person modes. Combat is limited to four basic attacks, ten spells, and two types of dodging; no daggers, no equipping shields, no sneaking, no archery beyond 'press q to auto-lock-on crossbow.' And, perhaps most crucially, CDPR can have more people for the same budget because the average Polish game dev is paid about a third of what a comparable game dev in the US is paid.

Now, are these tradeoffs worth it? For me, absolutely; I value story far more than I do customization. If customization is your thing, though, Witcher 3 won't do the trick. You might value the tradeoff enough to want the game, but it's not really fair to sit there and say the tradeoff isn't there.

[Manticoran]

You're really not being fair in your argument. The_Jackal isn't saying that it's impossible to do these things; he's saying that anything the game does comes at the cost of something else.

F'r'example, the Witcher 3. It has dozens of quests, which are voice-acted, have branching paths, and interact one with another in interesting ways. The conversation system is brilliant, with motion-capture allowing for an unprecedented amount of emotion to be displayed. These are pros, and good ones.

However, they come at a cost. In order to pull off that mocap acting, Witcher 3 has virtually no character customization beyond what beard and hairstyle you want. Witcher 3 is third-person only, which spares CDPR the expense of animating everything in first person and figuring out a smooth way to transition between first and third person modes. Combat is limited to four basic attacks, ten spells, and two types of dodging; no daggers, no equipping shields, no sneaking, no archery beyond 'press q to auto-lock-on crossbow.' And, perhaps most crucially, CDPR can have more people for the same budget because the average Polish game dev is paid about a third of what a comparable game dev in the US is paid.

Now, are these tradeoffs worth it? For me, absolutely; I value story far more than I do customization. If customization is your thing, though, Witcher 3 won't do the trick. You might value the tradeoff enough to want the game, but it's not really fair to sit there and say the tradeoff isn't there.

As someone who personally couldn't get more than 20 minutes into Witcher 3 because I had a hard time immersing myself AS the Witcher... Yeah, I'll take the Elder Scrolls tradeoffs every day.

[veti]

For those who don't recall, these were the fast travel options in Morrowind:

And boats. You forgot to mention boats. Yay public transport!

It becomes really exciting when you acquire the option to fly anywhere you like at ridiculous speed. (Actually that's one of the few combos that feels genuinely overpowered. It allows you to bypass the whole phase of exploring Red Mountain.)

[Resileaf]

And boats. You forgot to mention boats. Yay public transport!

It becomes really exciting when you acquire the option to fly anywhere you like at ridiculous speed. (Actually that's one of the few combos that feels genuinely overpowered. It allows you to bypass the whole phase of exploring Red Mountain.)

Just gotta be careful about how long your levitates last. Wouldn't want to be stuck floating for several in-game centuries.

[LibraryOgre]

Just gotta be careful about how long your levitates last. Wouldn't want to be stuck floating for several in-game centuries.

1% Dispel on Self. Cheap and easy and now you're on the ground.

[Resileaf]

1% Dispel on Self. Cheap and easy and now you're on the ground.

What does 1% even mean?
I've always found it weird that it was a percentage.

[The Jack]

See, Being able to do everything's dumb.

But needing to be able to do everything's the real crime.

Every player in skyrim knows lockpicking, Nobody's ever Kicked down the door regardless of how munchkin they were, because you just can't kick down the door. Heck, one of the old lore books said the Thum was used to blow apart castle-freaking-walls, but you're helpless to a door or wooden chest if you don't know how to lockpick.


I never felt like a real character in skyrim cause I just couldn't do the things I wanted to do. I couldn't kill Maven, I could only escort Serena, I couldn't properly loot a shop without finding a secret invisible chest under the map. I was pushed through the dumbest of stories with the worst of choices.

and to me, RPGs are about being someone else of your choice and doing things you wanna do.

[Rynjin]

What does 1% even mean?
I've always found it weird that it was a percentage.

It's the chance of working. 100% Dispel always works, 1% Dispel works...1% of the time.

If you put it on an item though as a Constant effect it apparently ticks pretty rapidly, so it will remove any spell effect in under a second most times.

Source: UESP Wiki

[LibraryOgre]

What does 1% even mean?
I've always found it weird that it was a percentage.

It's the chance of working. 100% Dispel always works, 1% Dispel works...1% of the time.

If you put it on an item though as a Constant effect it apparently ticks pretty rapidly, so it will remove any spell effect in under a second most times.

Source: UESP Wiki

But, IIRC, the 1% chance on self ALWAYS worked.

[Vinyadan]

Skyrim's four big guilds: Companions, College of Winterhold, Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood.

My personal complaints are:

1. That most of the Guilds were unappealing to me. The Thieves Guild asks you to start out a protection racket. The Companions ask you to turn into a wolf (??? why not to simply make a Hircine cult guild then? What's the point of the Skyforge, if you end up fighting naked? And why force you to be a wolf to go forward?). The Brotherhood is justified in that you know what you are getting into, but it's weird that you need to perform a murder before you can destroy them. And, if you find the other Sithis door, you can't tell the Penitus Oculatus.

2. That the Mages Guild ending is weird. "Oh look, you are a powerful mage! You study magic all day! Pfff, you guys will never be as cool as us PSJJJJ anyway. We grown ups are taking the eye now. Bye!"

The thing is, with the story-based questlines of the various guilds, it wouldn't really make sense for it to be locked behind skill requirements. "Oh no, Ancano has unleashed magical entities all over Winterfell! But wait, you have to go level up one of your magical skills to 50 before we can let you take them out." "Cicero betrayed the Dark Brotherhood and took the Night Mother! But your Sneak isn't good enough, so we can't do anything about it."

The solution I've personally thought of is to separate the storyline from the guild progression. The former would be like Skyrim- your missions are related to the guild, but don't require that you use magic, or sneak around, or use melee weapons. Even if you don't know a single spell, maybe the Mage's Guild just needs a convenient mercenary who ends up getting caught up in a magical adventure. The latter would be more like Morrowind, having skill requirements to climb the ranks, and having missions that are closer to the purpose of the guilds, like the radiant quests. Maybe some parts of the latter could be locked behind the former; you can't become the guildmaster until they die in the storyline.

In Morrowind, the quests were gated by rank. Before you got the quest, you needed the rank. So you could simply have the story on standby, and have the event trigger when or after you get the rank.

[factotum]

Now, are these tradeoffs worth it? For me, absolutely; I value story far more than I do customization. If customization is your thing, though, Witcher 3 won't do the trick. You might value the tradeoff enough to want the game, but it's not really fair to sit there and say the tradeoff isn't there.

The thing is, I really can't think of any reason why you couldn't have the multiple branching quests without also offering decent character customisation. CD Projekt Red *had* to have their main character be mostly fixed because of the story they based him on, not because that was a requirement for setting up the quests just so--in fact, a lot of the choices in the quests were based on customising the *character* of Geralt as you wanted, even if you couldn't change his appearance.

I guess there's also a Bethesda example which proves this point: have you ever played the Far Harbor DLC for Fallout 4? That DLC had a huge variety of ways to play and possible outcomes, yet it's a Bethesda game with Bethesda customisation. If they could only maintain that level for a whole game (e.g. ES6) then I'd have no complaints whatsoever.

[Lord Raziere]

currently I'm trying to play Skyrim mod inverse jenga, a game where you take skyrim Special edition, add a bunch of new mods, start up skyrim only to find it doesn't start, then you constantly switch around mods until you the one jenga mod that when put in, makes the whole thing collapse. FNIS, skyrim UI and skyrim script extender doesn't seem to want to work properly even when the game runs, so.....yeah.

[Triaxx]

Are you remembering to start the game through Script Extender's launcher?

[Rynjin]

Are you remembering you need to run FNIS every time you install a new mod?

[Lord Raziere]

On Scrip Extender Launcher: do you mean that thing I was told to create a shortcut for after downloading the script extender? not always, I guess its that important to always do it through that then. learning experience.

as for FNIS: you mean literally every single one? well I tried sometimes, but every time it doesn't change what it actually says so I'm not sure if its actually picking anything up? its weird.

so I just disabled FNIS and Script extender and the mods that supposedly require them I've been using without them just fine, turns out the not starting problem was me getting the wrong version of a mod, I play special edition and the mod was previously for classic, so I fixed that and its working fine. still not sure how to solve the FNIS and script extender problems though, they're just not as bad as I thought.