Is BWS "Recommended" Quest mods a good selection?

I'm going to be making my second playthrough of the series and am looking for some additional quality content but don't want my game to become "bloated." BWS "recommended" option includes:

For BG1:
DSotSC
Lure of the Sirine's Call
The Grey Clan
The Stone of Askavar

For BG2:
The Darkest Day
Alterantives
Assassinations
Dungeon Crawl
Eilistraee's Song
Fading Promises
Innershade
Tales of Anegh
Tales of the Deep Gardens
Tower of Deception

Is this a good selection of mods? Thanks.

I'm going to be making my second playthrough of the series and am looking for some additional quality content but don't want my game to become "bloated." BWS "recommended" option includes: Is this a good selection of mods? Thanks.

Bloaded... with what ?
You can alwasy skip the content if you don't want to use it, you know.

I'm going to be making my second playthrough of the series and am looking for some additional quality content but don't want my game to become "bloated." BWS "recommended" option includes:

For BG1:
DSotSC
Lure of the Sirine's Call
The Grey Clan
The Stone of Askavar

For BG2:
The Darkest Day
Alterantives
Assassinations
Dungeon Crawl
Eilistraee's Song
Fading Promises
Innershade
Tales of Anegh
Tales of the Deep Gardens
Tower of Deception

Is this a good selection of mods? Thanks.

DSotSC and The Darkest Day are large, old mods that in my own opinion fall sharply below the quality level of the base game. Alternatives and Lure of the Sirine's Call are fine. Most of the rest are probably fairly high quality, on the basis of who wrote them though I haven't tried them myself. If you're worried about quality, I'd strongly suggest reading each mod's own description and skimming its forum. BWS aims at technical compatibility, it doesn't pretend to apply a quality filter.

You can't get help for The Grey Clan or Tower of Deception without paying money, and even then the only help you're likely to receive is 'lern2plei noob'.

You can't get help for The Grey Clan or Tower of Deception without paying money, and even then the only help you're likely to receive is 'lern2plei noob'.

Well, well. Friendly folks, aren't they?

Edited by JohnMoonlord, 09 March 2011 - 04:05 AM.

The ToD author is a good fellow, he was just unlucky enough to be stuck on that forum.

Eilistraee's Song
Innershade
Tales of the Deep Gardens

Most of the rest are probably fairly high quality, on the basis of who wrote them though I haven't tried them myself. If you're worried about quality, I'd strongly suggest reading each mod's own description and skimming its forum. BWS aims at technical compatibility, it doesn't pretend to apply a quality filter.

Those three above I would vouch for, for what that's worth. I haven't played them, but I'm biased perhaps because I helped proofread them (sloppily no doubt). Actually, it has nothing to do with that, but rather in the course of proofing I found them to contain well-considered material worthy of further exploration. The others probably aren't bad either. I just don't have any real knowledge of them beyond the repute of their authors.

The ToD author is a good fellow, he was just unlucky enough to be stuck on that forum.

Then I'm happy to have picked up ToD for my current install while ditching Grey Clan!

If you think that some mods need to be moved from recommended to standard and have a few causes why you'd say so, there should not be a problem to move it or have a little discussion with Leonardo.

If you think that some mods need to be moved from recommended to standard and have a few causes why you'd say so, there should not be a problem to move it or have a little discussion with Leonardo.

I think there's a philosophical issue here. My own view is that the great majority of large mods available are lower-quality than I'd play with; indeed, it's that the great majority of mods, full stop, are lower-quality than I'd play with. (This is totally unsurprising: writing is difficult; it's hard to approach the quality of a professional software company. What's more surprising is that some people nonetheless do.) Whereas the BWP philosophy is to combine as many mods as possible together, and to exclude mods only for good reasons. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's sufficiently different from how I play that it doesn't reduce to just some suggestions about moving specific mods.

I think there's a philosophical issue here.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but the BWP/BWS actually has several levels of "default" installation choices, and one can further customise those by selecting/deselecting mods. What dabus is suggesting is an opportunity to suggest moving some mods from the "Recommended" mod install path (supposedly only quality mods) to "Standard" which (from what I understand) includes mods that are reasonably bug-free but may not be top-of-the-line in all respects. Then there are a couple of choices beyond that ("Tactics" and "Expert" installs, which could probably be named better, as those labels are a bit misleading). On top of that, there are actually "user's choice" options, such as "Arkenor's Mod Picks" or "DavidW's Mod Picks" (it might be interesting to see the latter, as I think dabus has offered to add these from e.g. a WeiDU.log).

writing is difficult; it's hard to approach the quality of a professional software company

I disagree. There are many software companies that turn out routine rubbish (that the huddled masses eagerly consume and dispose of). It isn't, in fact, hard to meet or exceed the average software company's standards. What's difficult is the time it takes to do this for the average modding team (i.e., one person) as opposed to a team of dozens or hundreds.

I think there's a philosophical issue here.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but the BWP/BWS actually has several levels of "default" installation choices, and one can further customise those by selecting/deselecting mods. What dabus is suggesting is an opportunity to suggest moving some mods from the "Recommended" mod install path (supposedly only quality mods) to "Standard" which (from what I understand) includes mods that are reasonably bug-free but may not be top-of-the-line in all respects. Then there are a couple of choices beyond that ("Tactics" and "Expert" installs, which could probably be named better, as those labels are a bit misleading). On top of that, there are actually "user's choice" options, such as "Arkenor's Mod Picks" or "DavidW's Mod Picks" (it might be interesting to see the latter, as I think dabus has offered to add these from e.g. a WeiDU.log).

OK, I'm a bit out of date in that case. I should look sometime.

DSotSC and The Darkest Day are large, old mods that in my own opinion fall sharply below the quality level of the base game.

I can speak for DTotSC as unfortunately i still don't have experience about TDD.

I would recommend to play it as it is one of the largest but cool mod for BG1. Very old one indeed but at least it has a comprehensive plot, not as NTotSC which I really don't recommend.

DSotSC could be very difficult to play due to some tough enemies (especially is played with the great SCS mod), but it doesn't have many bugs, so it's really enjoable.

At the end ... i'm a romantic, i would never say to someone that the very first big mod of this great game should not be played

Just my 2 cents,
mm75