You have a good point but you also have to realise the fact that community modding is a huge positive for current ES games and charging money or restricting access to full modding capabilities will have negative impact.
What makes you think I don't realise that?
As Aerth pointed out, there is no way I will play vanilla Morrowind or Skyrim - it's bland and just not good enough to get me engaged. To think I will have to pay for the game itself PLUS mods = no purchase. It's like trying to think of NWN1 without modding tools/player made campaigns. NOT WORTH IT. Unless of course, Bethesda can finally make something decent without needing to heavily mod the game.
That changes exactly nothing about how much work any Skyrim experience is due to Bethsoft versus modders.
That's all I'm saying.
I know some people have a really hard time enjoying the content of these games unless a few mods are applied.
That's fair enough - but what you're enjoying is STILL 99% the work of Bethsoft - not any modder.
Also, I have to say that completely nullifying the quality of Morrowind and Skyrim from the outset - and claiming mods will magically make the content delivered by Bethsoft super attractive smacks of exaggeration and pre-disposed nonsense.
Sure, these games suffer from a variety of balance and mechanics issues - but the core experience is much the same no matter how many mods you apply.
So, I'd say it's more about a psychological barrier that some anti-Bethsoft gamers need to cross to have an open mind when experiencing the game. If mods are enough to make them suddenly enjoy the same content that was always there - then whatever floats your boat.
Personally, I've greatly enjoyed the vanilla experience of all TES games. Even Oblivion, until the level scaling issue became obvious.
That was particularly glaring - but it was easily fixed.
I would never - EVER - pretend that changing the enemy levels from dynamic and scaled to static represents more work than developing the entirety of the rest of the game. That's just laughably ignorant - and that was my original point.
Yes, level scaling was blatantly bad in Oblivion - but it was just one issue and I greatly enjoyed the game for an entire week before it became an issue.
Then someone spent a few hours editing the spawn tables and released a mod.
Cool - and that was great work.
But let's not discount the entire game for that reason, ok?
Personally, I think these games NEED scaling of some kind. They just went a little overboard and didn't think it through with Oblivion.
For some reason, that has stuck with a lot of people - and they don't even entertain the notion of how scaling might actually not be the wrong answer. It's potentially more about how scaling is done.
A lot of favorites around the Watch have scaling - it's just that people don't always notice it.
