Are Mods that Good or are Games that Bad?

[KoolHndLuke]

2 hours ago, Ankahet said:

Some games I have played, dont need mods, as in, I have never felt the need to mod or change it

Like what for example? I can't really think of any games that wouldn't be better with some mods- not because they always need things fixed, but more because some good ideas weren't taken far enough, the soundtrack or sound effects weren't the best (splorting through water instead of splashing for FO4), more options for character creation, things like that.

[RitualClarity]

1 hour ago, KoolHndLuke said:

Like what for example? I can't really think of any games that wouldn't be better with some mods- not because they always need things fixed, but more because some good ideas weren't taken far enough, the soundtrack or sound effects weren't the best (splorting through water instead of splashing for FO4), more options for character creation, things like that.

I see your point and understand where you are going with this. However a counterpoint:

 

there are games that are well developed and feature rich. yes, they might not have everything and come a bit short, but they are full rich games with a pretty solid foundation and few glitches. (which wasn't any Bethesda game ever ... lol)  One example is Witcher III. Lord knows there are issues and points where they could have done more. One issue is one that they even joke about themselves, Roach and how he enters the scene when called. They couldn't get that to work properly all the time.  Spawn on barns, in water, in air, spawned in items. They tried. Early versions were way worse than later as they fixed some of the issues. As for this game just look at the 100's of awards that was won, and won for different reasons. This isn't Bethesda or some other Juggernaut of the industry, This is an up and coming company from a area of the world that doesn't have a lot of gaming companies, at least not any AAA level. As far as SJW... they approached it with style and completed any event with great writing and the characters had depth and weight when interacting.

 

Witcher III is one that I don't mod with the exception of the console command so that I can get some supplies or some other effect I am desiring. Mostly not because of their game or game play but because I suck at playing games... lol

 

There will always be things to add, adjust and even alter. Story points to expand on and characters could be deeper and events more meaningful. Yes, 100% true. However, I am satisfied if a game can be played that has been properly bug tested, great writing, meaningful characters where needed. Reasonable player character development and features to use. All the above to the level that is expected for a game released based on today's technology and the level of the companies experience and resources. Bethesda, EA etc they need to release games at the highest state... some Indy game company starting out with some unique idea etc that are truly doing their best.. can be given some allowances.

 

This is the reason Witcher III to me is the best of CD Project Red's work. They have shown game after game in improvement. Each release raising the bar in quality and execution. It will be interesting in their next product to be released.. (major project that is) Will they continue? When will they get big enough that they start to go the way of other AAA companies. Would one consider them AAA level yet? (with the release of Witcher III, various different projects going on now at the same time ... lesser releases along with a major release, level of quality and execution... I say yes ) 

 

 

[ISNAN]

Games used to be good before the business model evolved into what we see today. It's just like any other product. Make it as cheap as possible and sell to as many people as you can to make share holders even more money. If you think about entertainment in the past 40 years, it was all an unknown. They didn't know what worked, so they put more effort into what they were selling, whether it be a movie, TV show, game or music, and it came across as quality. Now that they know what works, they cut corners and skimp on quality to make as much money as possible. They also know that we don't fight with our wallets like we used to. It's why customer service has went downhill. If you sell to a lot of people, it doesn't matter if a small percentage complains. We allowed this to happen and it will get worse once we allow them to use micro transactions.

 

As for modding, I think it was a fluke tbh. I remember a time when modding was something only tech savvy people did. Not only did you have to understand the back-end of a game, but you also had to know how to install it and that took someone who understood the back-end enough so that they could explain it to non tech savvy people. It was only when Bestheda came along and offered the Construction Set along with Morrowind that made it really spring off. They didn't have to do that. They could have just released the game and went on to something else, but they wanted to stand out and attract more people. That game was their last gamble and they understood the concept of replay ability. It's moves like that is what we are missing today. 

[ISNAN]

1 hour ago, endg4me4ddiction said:

 

Which is why Bethesda surpassed all these petty insults and threats when Creation Club was announced and went ahead and injected it into FO4 and SSE anyways. Bethesda made a gamble with all this internet fuss and went ahead and implemented the Creation Club calling out their bluff. Who do you think won?

 

 

 

There was a time when feedback was all a modder needed for recognition. Then came endorsements and eventually through the era of social media, that became high demand/needs by those who have come out and said that their endorsements don't match the downloads. By their standards, everyone who downloaded their mod is obligated to give them an endorsement. One cannot simply try it and not like it just like going to the movies and seeing a new film out and not liking it.

 

The days of modesty are more and more coming to an end. Welcome to mainstream modding.

Ah, good points. That never even crossed my mind. It's kind of annoying because some of these mods start off good in theory but wind up becoming some monstrous heap of crap that change way too many things. I guess they never heard of "less is more". Some are even too lazy to even fully mod. Half assed mods are prevalent. Like clothing mods that stick a non lore friendly chest from some other game with all of the economy breaking, overpriced clothes in some area where a chest shouldn't be, making you have to toggle collision to get to it. But hey, at least I don't need a map marker because I can see the chest from 3 cells over. Then you look around and notice all of the guards are female and some script error is spamming the console.. It's like wtf, there's a script? You spent all that time doing that but couldn't just make a merchant that sells the shit and let it be? They then have the audacity of wanting to be paid for their mod. It's like they create a mod that gains traction and now they see themselves as game devs......um no.

[Darkpig]

38 minutes ago, ISNAN said:

Ah, good points. That never even crossed my mind. It's kind of annoying because some of these mods start off good in theory but wind up becoming some monstrous heap of crap that change way too many things. I guess they never heard of "less is more". Some are even too lazy to even fully mod. Half assed mods are prevalent. Like clothing mods that stick a non lore friendly chest from some other game with all of the economy breaking, overpriced clothes in some area where a chest shouldn't be, making you have to toggle collision to get to it. But hey, at least I don't need a map marker because I can see the chest from 3 cells over. Then you look around and notice all of the guards are female and some script error is spamming the console.. It's like wtf, there's a script? You spent all that time doing that but couldn't just make a merchant that sells the shit and let it be? They then have the audacity of wanting to be paid for their mod. It's like they create a mod that gains traction and now they see themselves as game devs......um no.

I guess id beat the superego to that one. Speaking of oversized mods one mod in particular- >.> oh look at the time. Looks like Bethesda made another mess.

[KoolHndLuke]

13 hours ago, ISNAN said:

Some are even too lazy to even fully mod. Half assed mods are prevalent

Yup. Can't say if that's true for mods on patreon or other "donation" sites, but a good chunk of free mods are poorly made and/or poorly implemented. Like one modder I like does excellent work in Blender/Gimp and then they just drop the shit in the game somewhere not caring about how it should fit into the game menus/leveled lists/whatever in a logical/lore friendly way. Some other mods put new weapons in Skyrim for instance, but they just drop them all in a chest somewhere with no recipes for forging or tempering and they're usually always over/under powered and the prices too high/low, etc. I mean, if you're going to spend days or weeks (or months) making the stuff, then why not take a little extra time to put it in the game so that it fits/works well? I've had to "fix" so many of these mods that I just don't bother downloading them most of the time anymore. Overdoing it is almost as bad. Like I already had a mod that changes that follower! Why? It wasn't in the mod description. But that's just me ranting about some mods. Many others are very smartly made.

 

 I understand some of their attitudes of just "Fuck it! I made this and YOU figure out how to fit it into the game/make it work!" after they've been modding awhile and have dealt with all the entitlement, bitching and complaining for what is mostly a thankless endeavor. Not saying that's how I feel, but maybe they do.

[DoctaSax]

48 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

It is really cool when MA's go the extra mile and make a "finished" mod and continue to work on/support it.

It is, but it's the extra mile. If all you want to make is a cool sword, then that's all you really need to do. In fact, you could stop with just creating the mesh and texture and be done with it: let people park it in the game themselves. There's no way to guarantee your choice of stats, price, or how you put it in the game will please everybody, so you're bound to get complaints no matter how you go about, so why bother at all.

 

The misconception here is that users think mods are made for them, personally. We're all just slaving away in their workshop making mods to spec for them. Not so. The user's responsible for his own game, so if he thinks it needs tweaking, he should start tweaking. It's how we all started.

[KoolHndLuke]

56 minutes ago, DoctaSax said:

The misconception here is that users think mods are made for them, personally. We're all just slaving away in their workshop making mods to spec for them. Not so. The user's responsible for his own game, so if he thinks it needs tweaking, he should start tweaking. It's how we all started.

So it's a "meet me halfway" kinda thing you think? I guess I can see that. But, you seem to forget that most people don't even know how to make their game run right, let alone make changes to a mod. Like you say, we all started somewhere.....and it takes a lot of study and practice that some people don't have the time for. AAANNNNDDDDD, let's be fuckin' honest- not everyone has the skill/talent to do this shit no matter how bad they might want to. Just sayin'. Obviously, this doesn't oblige an MA to make as complete a mod as they can or anything at all for that matter. But, TBH, it is sometimes easier to make a mod to just drop in their game and "go" rather than having to explain a thousand times how to install it and get the stuff- if you know what I mean. 

[gregathit]

27 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

So it's a "meet me halfway" kinda thing you think? I guess I can see that. But, you seem to forget that most people don't even know how to make their game run right, let alone make changes to a mod. Like you say, we all started somewhere.....and it takes a lot of study and practice that some people don't have the time for. Just sayin'. Obviously, this doesn't oblige an MA to make as complete a mod as they can or anything at all for that matter. But, TBH, it is sometimes easier to make a mod to just drop in their game and "go" rather than having to explain a thousand times how to install it and get the stuff- if you know what I mean. 

Meeting halfway would be a start, but the endgame would be to get more people tinkering with their games/mods.  

As to the install it instructions being given a thousand times.........that happens if you make a complete mod or not.  Trust me on that one.  I've made mods that are stupid simple to install and the tech support questions roll in thick as ever.  People thinking they can hit the easy button is the root of the problem.  Mod makers can't solve that.  Not ever.

[KoolHndLuke]

1 hour ago, gregathit said:

the endgame would be to get more people tinkering with their games/mods.

Aren't you worried that some of them might make some mods and cut in on your ☝️$$$ EXPOSURE $$$?!!? 

 

But, seriously, how would you rank each aspect of modding on a scale of 1- 10? But first, how would you define what the differences are in both using mods and making them? Like is animating the very hardest thing to do? Or is it building something like a large quest/new land mod using mostly vanilla assets? Is it creating a framework like what Ashal did? What are the most technically/artistically challenging mods to make in your opinion? I'm genuinely interested since no one ever writes about these kinds of things. Also, if "the endgame is to get more people tinkering with their games/mods", then wouldn't providing some frame of reference help them to understand what they might be getting into better?

[Veladarius]

One of the biggest issues with many current games that shipped in a broken state is their development team did not have a clear direction when making the game to start out. Anthem is a perfect example of this, they were in development for 6 years but the game that shipped was produced in the last 18 months of that. The developers had no real direction on what they were supposed to be building until the 2017 E3 game trailer came out. This was supposedly made from in game footage but was completely staged and the development team had never even seen it before it was presented and were then stuck trying to develop the game that was presented. They fell flat on their face.

 

Unfortunately the 'games as a service' model is becoming the standard and most of these ship in a broken or unfinished state with a 'road map' of where it will be some day. Tod Howard talked about this in a recent interview about Fallout 76 and they knew it was going to be bad when shipped but said it would probably be a good game sometime later (about a year is usually cited by most companies). Some actually manage to make the crap they released into a decent game while others should just be killed and put out of their misery. I think as far as Fallout 76 is concerned Bethesda is used to modders fixing their shit and they can't on this.

 

This is why I don't buy a game when it comes out, will never pre-order a game and generally refuse to pay full price for them (I don't pirate games but I will wait until they are ridiculously cheap).

[gregathit]

1 hour ago, KoolHndLuke said:

Aren't you worried that some of them might make some mods and cut in on your ☝️$$$ EXPOSURE $$$?!!? 

 

But, seriously, how would you rank each aspect of modding on a scale of 1- 10? But first, how would you define what the differences are in both using mods and making them? Like is animating the very hardest thing to do? Or is it building something like a large quest/new land mod using mostly vanilla assets? Is it creating a framework like what Ashal did? What are the most technically/artistically challenging mods to make in your opinion? I'm genuinely interested since no one ever writes about these kinds of things. Also, if "the endgame is to get more people tinkering with their games/mods", then wouldn't providing some frame of reference help them to understand what they might be getting into better?

I've never charged or accepted so much as a penny for anything I've ever done and all of it is free use.  I'm old school that way.  If someone can take what I've done and make it better, then why not?  I'm human, so a little recognition is nice, but in the end, it is not why I mod.  I mod for me and for the reward of accomplishing something.

 

Some aspects of modding can be extremely tough.  I'd say the hardest couple of things to do would be scripting and creating objects and texturing them (at least for me).  Animating is hard, but has been greatly helped by the creation of rigs.  The hardest part of animating (which can be said of creating/modifying meshes) is learning how to use blender or 3dsmax or whatever texture making program you use.  Modifying things with nifskope isn't difficult to master and neither is making small changes with the CS.  

 

If you'd told me how hard it was to learn to do "X" and that I'd fail many times before I'd succeed, I probably would not have started modding.  As it is, the learning curve for modding has been greatly lessened as there are 100's if not 1,000's of wiki's, youtube videos and other types of guides out there.  I'd recommend everyone start by making small changes/mods to benefit them and then let things go from there.  Modding like playing games should be a fun hobby.  If they aren't, then you probably should be doing something else that fun for you.

[gregathit]

31 minutes ago, Veladarius said:

This is why I don't buy a game when it comes out, will never pre-order a game and generally refuse to pay full price for them (I don't pirate games but I will wait until they are ridiculously cheap).

I applaud you.  I keep trying to take this stance, but more often right after a game comes out I cave in and scream at game companies to take my money already.  LOL!

I've managed to do better at holding out until at least until the game is released and I can see if it has a ton of bad reviews.

All of it is ridiculous of course.  I have so many games already and can only play one at a time and only for a few hours per weekend.  I really have no excuse to ever buy another game period.

[KoolHndLuke]

13 minutes ago, gregathit said:

If you'd told me how hard it was to learn to do "X" and that I'd fail many times before I'd succeed, I probably would not have started modding.

LOL! You still would have I think. Something tells me you like a challenge.

 

Would you say it takes a certain something to keep at it after failing so many times? Are most people just not that passionate about gaming/mods, or do they just give up too easily? I can take defeat for only so long and then I gotta put it on the shelf and maybe come back to it later.

[KoolHndLuke]

46 minutes ago, Veladarius said:

This is why I don't buy a game when it comes out, will never pre-order a game and generally refuse to pay full price for them (I don't pirate games but I will wait until they are ridiculously cheap).

Same here. It would have to be some completely awesome title for me to think about paying full price. I pre-ordered exactly one game in the last 10- 15 yrs- and it wasn't worth it. Oh, it was DA Inquisition.

[Veladarius]

1 hour ago, gregathit said:

I applaud you.  I keep trying to take this stance, but more often right after a game comes out I cave in and scream at game companies to take my money already.  LOL!

I've managed to do better at holding out until at least until the game is released and I can see if it has a ton of bad reviews.

All of it is ridiculous of course.  I have so many games already and can only play one at a time and only for a few hours per weekend.  I really have no excuse to ever buy another game period.

I end up just buying games during Steam's big sales. Their last big sale I picked up GTA V for $12, still have not installed it. Best I have done is 11 games for $45 with all being AAA titles, just older ones I wanted but was not willing to pay their prices for. I think I have just over 100 games in my Steam account but have not even installed let alone play half of them. I won't be getting Borderlands 3 until it comes to Steam and is on sale for cheap even though I am a big fan of the franchise.

[gregathit]

I'm with you on Borderslands 3.  That game and the new Metro are getting a hard pass for their release nonsense.  I'll buy the game of the year edition, with all the DLC included for once it is in the clearance bin.  Don't care how cool they are or what I may be missing.  

[gregathit]

1 hour ago, KoolHndLuke said:

LOL! You still would have I think. Something tells me you like a challenge.

 

Would you say it takes a certain something to keep at it after failing so many times? Are most people just not that passionate about gaming/mods, or do they just give up too easily? I can take defeat for only so long and then I gotta put it on the shelf and maybe come back to it later.

It definitely takes someone who has the right combo of passion and stubbornness.  That is a certain fact.  Keep in mind, it also takes someone who has the time to devote to it as well.  That is my current problem.  I just don't have much free time anymore.

[KoolHndLuke]

Hey, fuckin' pre- order or buy when it first comes out if ya wanna be the first kid on yo block to brag about dat shit! I mean it sucks when yo friends beat ya to it and you ain't got no fuckin' clue what they yakin' bout. 

[Darkpig]

11 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

Hey, fuckin' pre- order or buy when it first comes out if ya wanna be the first kid on yo block to brag about dat shit! I mean it sucks when yo friends beat ya to it and you ain't got no fuckin' clue what they yakin' bout. 

Sounds like a socialite problem.

[KoolHndLuke]

8 minutes ago, Darkpig said:

Sounds like a socialite problem.

I wouldn't know. Didn't socialize much even as a kid. THEY had the "problem", not me. 

[Darkpig]

7 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

I wouldn't know. Didn't socialize much even as a kid. THEY had the "problem", not me. 

Cheers. To a long um acquaintance.

[KoolHndLuke]

3 hours ago, Alkpaz said:

I would recommend you play the storyline in GTA 5, it is fantastic. 

The whole thing was one helluva hilarious romp!-

 

 

[Pork Type]

Games are that bad.

 

I drove 15 miles to purchase Skyrim @ Midnight, 11/11/11. Got home, couldn't play the fucking game because hotkeys were perma bound to the numpad keys.

 

Yes. I'm a southpaw. I'm numpad-wired WRT muscle memory going back to 1996. I had to download and figure out AutoHotKey before I could enjoy the content everyone else was.

 

Eventually, appropriate mods came out, but still...

 

Come Fallout 4, I learned my lesson. Key Remapping Done Proper. (That's the name of a mod.)

 

Mods are that good.

 

Bethesda doesn't even care about accessibility,

[JimKhan]

I think it's both. Skyrim for example is a good game but it's so incredibly buggy that without mods it needs patience to squeeze fun out of, something that other game companies unlike Bethesda, actually think about. People are always on and on about Skyrim being so great and all but I firmly believe that only through the modding community did it achieve true greatness.

 

Another thing that I once talked about in a group of.. irritating Skyrim fanatics, was whether it's better than the Witcher 3 or not, which is a dumb argument if you ask me because TW 3 came out 4 years later but anyways; I said that my humble opinion was that the Witcher is just better and someone tried to convince me otherwise by using mods as proof. They claimed that Skyrim is better because there are tonnes more mods for it than the Witcher 3 even though many Skyrim mods are meant to fix problems or improve crappy mechanics, issues that The Witcher 3 has not, no need to fix something that isn't broken. Even so, I think it's a dumb argument, better to compare Skyrim to the Witcher 2 because both came out the same year and yet again, I believe the latter is better.

 

But despite all that, mods are just nice to have, you know? They give you something to spice up the game, make it different. I wholly understand why some people would rather enjoy a pure vanilla Skyrim and good for them, but even then I can't help but recommend they at least get the Unofficial Patch mods. You want to enjoy Skyrim the way it is, but the bugs, broken quests, crashes and other issues don't have to be part of that experience.

 

My experience was the same with Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, an old, wonderful but very buggy FPS horror game. I downloaded some Unofficial Patch kind of tools for it and it helps avoid some of the game's annoying bugs, including one that is at the very end of the game and could potentially stop you from completing it.

 

I hope my rambling offers something to your thoughts.