I don’t plan to use reddit anymore if I can help it, other than to find specific answers to things. I’ll no longer just browse. That said, up until now I exclusively used RiF. I refuse to touch the official app, and use old.reddit and ad blockers.
There is actually an advantage to being part of a larger instance if you want to browse everything, actually. An instance is federated with another when a user from Instance A subscribes to a community from Instance B. The more users in an instance, the more people to subscribe to other instances, federating that instance with more instances for all users.
I’m not on an instance with no downvotes, as I do think they have SOME purpose (though you’re right that it is usually a bit of a disagree-so-shut-up button rather than anything else), but I agree with the rest. The content here is certainly slower. On reddit, I could just refresh the main page and have dozens of new posts to interact with- here, not so much. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, though. I still get my mindless scrolling when I’m poopin or something like that, but I’m spending a lot less time online than I did. I’m reading more, I’m working on my novels, I’m WAY more productive at work. I used RiF exclusively on my phone, and so I decided pretty soon after the API announcement that I was done. All the protest and reddit’s hilariously mismanaged response has done has cemented my resolve.
The only reason federation wasn’t working was because they had to turn on CloudFlare protection just to keep the site from crashing. That interfered with federation. Assuming they’re able to upgrade enough to handle the traffic, they’ll federate as easily as lemmy does.
Mods. I know that’s not really helpful, but it really is how many of us continue to enjoy it. That said, there are still things you can do to spice up your gameplay on vanilla. The biggest one is this- try a different playstyle. Archery is incredibly effective, so try making a character who absolutely refuses to use one because his whole family was slaughtered by a rogue sentient bow that laughed at him while it did it. Recruit different companions and try to keep them alive in different situations. Be an absolutely evil sonofabitch and kill everyone the game allows you to. Try Oblivion, for a similar, but distinctly different (and in my opinion, slightly superior, despite Skyrim’s many advantages) experience. Or, most simply, stop trying to get blood from a stone, and put the game down until the itch actually returns, not until you feel like it should’ve. Best of luck to you.