Oblivion Oblivion mods - current selection?

To be honest, Bethesda's games are already far more mod-friendly than the vast majority of RPGs out there, or any genre for that manner. It's really not overly difficult to install mods and is quite simple in most cases; all it takes is a little bit of patience for following mostly easy-to-use instructions. If you think about it, attempting to run 150+ mods(!) without running into any issues is asking for more than any program can handle in a completely clean manner, and it would be impossible to create a mod-system that could do this in just a few simple clicks; with that many mods running at once (and some that accomplish very similar things and potentially "run into each other" in the code), its inevitable that some mods are going to conflict with at least a few other mods unless there are very specific compatibility work-arounds - and the responsibility to ensure compatibility falls on the makers of the mods themselves, not the mod-system.

I used to make mods so I know how they work and how they install. And I still think they are a pain in the ass.

I do think there are things Bethesda could do to improve the situation like include a finer degree of granularity in interpreting mod settings. Right now if you say, make a mod to change Fargoth's hair and another mod to change his inventory they conflict, but I don't think that necessarily needs to be the case. Wrye Bash essentially takes those two mods and makes a new one that changes Fargoth's hair and inventory but I think the game could be made to interpret those changes on a more specific level.

That said, I'm a realist and know the bulk of their sales is on the consoles. I don't think they have a whole lot of incentive to spend any extra time and money on mod features so if they include some improvements it would have to be something that was done at the time of creating the current engine. It would also have to have been something that could be done easily and not take much extra time or expense.

I'm really curious to see how it handles modding because this engine was made in-house at Bethesda while Gamebryo was not. In that case they had to work with what was already there and there were limitations.

Here is what SmkViper (aka Jeff Lundin, Systems Programmer) had to say about modding and the improvements or changes to the Creation Kit:

SmkViper said:

I think you guys will be pleasantly surprised by the scripting system.

Or at least I hope you will be

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SmkViper said:

Learning Oblivion/Fallout scripting will probably help with some of the concepts - like how things are organized and manipulated in game. But the system is a completely new one created from the ground up for Skyrim. It still takes a lot of cues from the old system though, the designers would kill me if they had to re-learn everything from scratch or type in a bunch of curly-braces!

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SmkViper said:

If you're familiar with Oblivion/Fallout scripting you'll be able to get up to speed rather quickly. But there are definitely things that you can do now that you couldn't do before.

Can't really go into much detail about how that stuff works (half cause it's not really my area, and half cause I'm playing it safe in terms of disclosure) - but expect similarities to previous games.

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SmkViper said:

…what one of the other posters said about "If we don't need it ourselves it doesn't get put in" has some truth to it. However it's also true that we always try to improve the CS/GECK/CK every iteration since whatever makes our designer's and artist's lives easier will generally be useful to modders as well.

I'm looking forward to see what you guys will do with the new engine and features!

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SmkViper said:

I wish I could say more, but I can't, sorry! Though I don't seem to remember Bethesda intentionally making hooks for the OBSE, I was under the impression that they hacked it in themselves. The OBSE guys will probably have their work cut out for them with Skyrim, though it's my hope that they will be less 'required' for people to do awesome stuff.

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Source:
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1201776-creation-kit-needs-and-wants/
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1151711-modders-plea-with-bgs/
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/forum/118-skyrim-general-discussion/