Are Mods that Good or are Games that Bad?

[RitualClarity]

20 hours ago, KoolHndLuke said:

Yeah, with what every other dev is doing to the originals, I highly doubt they will do that. I'd actually be damn surprised if they leave most of it alone.

 

What I meant is that I'm ashamed of myself for playing a vanilla Skyrim and thinking it was fine. It SO wasn't. The sheer volume of quality mods just blew me away. I remember the first question I asked was why they were all free. Got about 20 different answers. 

 

Not surprising. Seems like artists and programmers are more guns for hire nowadays.

Shame that they have to mess with success. However, if they can just keep the SJWs out of the game, it still might be decent.

 

As for being ashamed of not knowing something.. don't.  It is wonderful when someone discovered something great. I love to show somebody something that they later learn is terrific or wonderful addition to their life. A new idea, help with a project something that changes their life.  I also have great joy in learning something terrific as well that was perhaps obvious to others but not to me. Recently I learned how to get my shortcuts to have the icon I want .. something many tech savy people have learned a long time ago but... I recently learned a nice way to do this and it is great! A little world opened up to me.  In your case, a HUGE world opened up to you (related to mods and the modding world)  I experienced the same. I had Fallout 3 on Xbox. Didn't learn about mods for a long time, then learned about LL and their mods which blew me away. (Didn't know it could have so many different animations and such)

 

Sometimes it is the people that make the company.. Sometimes it is the environment and "culture" that make the company. People can leave a company and it can still be the same if the culture has been en-grained into the current employees. Personally I am impressed with the videos I have been able to see on OuterWorlds and am interested in purchasing it. Only thing is I don't want to use yet another game manager, so I will wait until it drops into Steam / Origin which will be October if my info is correct. A nice fall game to get and play. ;D Something to look forward to.

 

[KoolHndLuke]

10 minutes ago, RitualClarity said:

In your case, a HUGE world opened up to you (related to mods and the modding world)

Too bad that didn't come with a good set of instructions. I swear everything about learning to mod seems like an uphill battle.......and then you find out you were on the wrong hill. 

[RitualClarity]

1 hour ago, KoolHndLuke said:

Too bad that didn't come with a good set of instructions. I swear everything about learning to mod seems like an uphill battle.......and then you find out you were on the wrong hill. 

In time, that can be settled. If you have the patience. that is an issue with games that allow mods. They are essentially "breaking" the game. Work around that are often times quite complex and confusing to those just starting.

[2dk2c.2]

On 5/26/2019 at 5:06 AM, KoolHndLuke said:

I've been thinking about this for awhile while downloading mods to fix technical issues, game-play mechanics, shitty models or textures without much variety, "special" items/armors/weapons that are special only in name and stats maybe, almost non-existent plots or stories so cliche as to make a gamer cringe, etc. How many times have you downloaded or made a mod and thought

 

"Huh, this should have been fixed or in the game all along!"?

 

The more I learn about modding, the more I see in some games what I can only describe as laziness on the part of the devs or impatience on the part of the publisher and their failure to make as good a game as they possibly can (I'm looking at you, Beth/Zen). It's not they can't make a better game, it's that they don't want to do as well as they can or aren't allowed the time they need that really bothers me. I can forgive a few lingering technical issues or flaws in game-play mechanics so long as the rest of the game is conceptually sound and was well tested. And damn, would it really kill them to hire some good writers and (more) voice actors? What do you think? Which games did it right and which did it wrong?

I play a modded version of "control" that is ok, if your ultimate fulfillment in a game is killing monsters.

Previous protagonists in your position committed suicide.

Actually, most of your supposed colleagues go insane doing what you attempt to do

(like shooting protuberances off of biggie balls, that grow back faster than you can shoot them off, making the whole thing pointless and tedious or remarkably easy, depending upon the game's mood)

I bought "Alan Wake" from the same company, lotsa voice acting, boring as watching paint dry, and unless you play exactly like the game wants, you die, a lot.

"Control" (I keep putting it in quotes because it's so generic it looks like a typo)

is modded so I have unlimited ammo, reasonably good health (I can still die) and lots of minor powers I don't have to work much for.

But no mod can save the overall game, at least the set of mods I have.

 

I despair making it clear to whoever reads this that I'd rather have a fun game than mods.

I enjoyed "Bioshock Infinite" which had no mods.

I liked a few others and hated some popular picks.

If your game spawns random uglies every few minutes to kill me, and then spawns more (and more) I hate your game.

If it has a satisfying storyline from beginning to end (except bioshock didn't at the very end, the protagonist is doomed).

 

My "control" game allows me to finish most of the game and then yells "What did you DO?!"

Hell, I don't know, I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do, life sucks and then you die.

There's no mod for that.

 

--------------------

PS I'm killing time writing this, don't get all PO'd or anything.

 

[0wnyx]

i feel like games nowadays are made for a specific target group... the teenage pvp screaming lootbox opening lunatic. they bring in the money - the games are made for them. thats why most games suck despite looking good. its not enough to produce a good game... u have to guide the crowd towards ingame shops... cant get exited for that. i see mods as the opposite to that scam system. at this point mods are the deciding factor if i pick a game up...

[KoolHndLuke]

7 hours ago, 2dk2c.2 said:

If your game spawns random uglies every few minutes to kill me, and then spawns more (and more) I hate your game.

Oh man, that really bothers me with some games. One I've been playing lately will respawn enemies in an area when I move just a short distance away- making it seem like the five minutes or so I spent clearing it out to have been for nothing. It's much more realistic imo to set the respawn timer for at least a few in-game days or maybe not at all. Makes sense if it's an ambush but, not everywhere all the time.

 

Another is weather in some games like rain or fog that limits your vision so you might walk right up on enemies, yet the same handicap doesn't apply to them at all seemingly. I also turn down the blaring music to a low rumble.

[wokking56]

On 4/18/2020 at 11:42 AM, 2dk2c.2 said:

I despair making it clear to whoever reads this that I'd rather have a fun game than mods.

I enjoyed "Bioshock Infinite" which had no mods.

I liked a few others and hated some popular picks.

If your game spawns random uglies every few minutes to kill me, and then spawns more (and more) I hate your game.

I couldn't agree more. Being an "old fart" I got my gaming start on the early tabletops in the mid 70s like DnD (Dungeons and Dragons) and TnT (Tunnels and Trolls) a simplified DnD rip-off. So story out the wazoo maybe lacking in gameplay by today's standards. My introduction to videos games were of course things like Pac Man, Galaga and the like. Not much on story but fun a** gameplay.  Some of the more recent games (Well not that recent) I have found that had either great gameplay or great story heck sometimes both of those, would be several of the later Zelda games (can't remember the names my son has all the systems and a s***-ton of games), a few of the double digit FFs (Final Fantasy) and Dragons Dogma. Excellent game, good engaging story decent gameplay (a bit difficult at times) but no overwhelming walls of baddies.

 

These days I shy away from most MMORPGs because of "loot boxes" and the like. Hell if I bought the f***ing game why should I have to "actually" pay for better equipment and so forth just to enjoy it. Shit even if you get to a loot box half the time what's in it is crap anyway.

 

Now while I do enjoy my Beth/Zen games they do leave quite a bit to be desired. Usually unpolished, buggy as h*** and just asking for some mods to finish them off.

[DesertDancer]

Depends on the game and mod. I feel a lot of mods are extremely overrated and don't really add anything that changes the game for the better as some people like to claim or if it does, often gets boring fast or break/have bugs which actually creates issue. If the game is so bad that I feel I need mods in order to actually play it (not wanting mods just for fun), then what's the point of buy the game in the first place?

 

Technically I can play Skyrim,  etc...fine without mods, I usually just use mods to change how I want my characters to look personally and more for fun then a necessity. If needed, I can still play the villain versions with little problems.

 

The majority of games I played are not modded though. 

 

The only game I don't play is Sims 3. I just can't. Even mods couldn't save it or fix the animations to make the sims seem less stiff, make the game stable, etc....I don't really know about MMORPGs either. I am used to just buying console games. I didn't really get into modding until a few years ago. 

[Swanky]

I'd say the OP statement really depends on the game.

 

There are still games that neither have mod support nor need it. There are games that have mod support but are still good without it. There are games that absolutely need mods to function and there are games that are bad and have no mod support. And of course, there are games I don't play and therefore cannot judge.

 

First category, I'd say most of them are indie titles or smaller titles that run on creativity and often on shorter playtime. Games like Darksiders (only mods I found are reshade presets, not a direct mod in itself I'd say), Amid Evil, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Each title mentioned really stands on its own legs and is rather well thought out.

 

Second, there are all kinds of games falling in this category since most games can be broken up and modded. Most of the time the changes are either visually (by modding appearances of characters for example) or offering QoL changes or the games are simply engaging enough not to need any additional content but have it anyway. All types of games fall into this category anyway, and I'd say it's also the main (if not only) category for DLC to fall in.

Examples: Resident Evil 2 Remake (additional outfits), Grim Dawn (more classes, gameplay enhancements, more maps etc.), Subnautica (mainly QoL stuff), SOMA (like taking enemies out of the game).

 

Third, there are games that actually work but are somewhat flawed that mods basically fix the game. Most Bethesda title fit this category, really.

Examples: Fallout 3, Fallout 4 (also, lots of content additions to these), Dark Souls (first PC port needed a resolution / FPS fix to run properly).

 

Lastly, there are games that are just... bad.

Last one I played in this category was RE6 which would need a complete overhaul but on the short time I spent with it before returning via steam store I wasn't willing to dive into deep modding the controls to Mars and back to make this one decently playable. Also, NBA2k20, probably, given the negativity of the reviews of this game; I haven't played it. Mostly games that are either too bad in its creation or creative direction to be remedied by mods.

 

Of course, there's also games that I haven't played, like most if not all AAA games of the past few years, Lootboxing not withstanding. I've had more than enough games to play and aside from RE2Remake the last AA(A) game I bought was X-COM 2 and that was... 2 years back? So I can't judge whether games like COD, Fortnite or whatsercrap would be better with mods, or need it in the first place.

 

 

So no. Games have not gone this bad. We've just expanded what a game should and could be by mods that we think all games should be like what we perceive it can be. There are however games that shouldn't be a shitshow in the first place, like Fallout 76 demonstrated quite eagerly.

 

[Asura Scorpion]

Sometimes both, sometimes neither, oftentimes a good game receives good mods, other times a shitty game gets no mods at all.

Worst thing a game company can do is disrespect the modding community the way Bethesda did.

Modders keep a game interesting, worth buying years later, modders work under no pressure and out of passion, no middle management telling what to do... I think the environment of big game companies is very shitty and plenty of game devs complain about how frustrating it is to get on with their work.

Best idea for a game company wishing to succed to do is release as much mod support in the early stages to consolidate a loyal fanbase, and then just step aside and let magic happen, maybe even endorse mod teams to co-create DLC...

[Ernest Lemmingway]

5 hours ago, Turtle Sandwich said:

Worst thing a game company can do is disrespect the modding community the way Bethesda did.

What makes things worse is that Bugthesda's games are the gold standard for modding. They have no real competition and they've let it go to their heads. I keep saying it would take just one other company to make open-world games that are just as easily modded to steal their thunder. The Unreal Engine, among others (I think), could easily be used. So it's really more a question of, "why?" Why hasn't some other company done that yet? I'm not going to speculate on that because I don't know enough to make any educated guesses.

 

And before anyone points out CDPR, I'll say this again: don't hold your breath. They failed to release the tools for TW3 despite promising such and I doubt they'll change now.

[Asura Scorpion]

I really don't have high hopes for the next elder scrolls game, it took the Skyrim modding community a long time to get to where it is now, and that says a lot, I have strong faith that Skyrim LE will continue to get better and better with time thanks to many mod tools currently worked on and the three greatest mods in development, Skywind, Skyblivion and Apotheosis... Skyrim LE can surpass in gameplay experience and graphics due to the latest combat and animation mods, as well as ENB's... What I didn't discover yet is a modding community where there are clear step by step tutorials... I have big problems working with Nifskope.

[Swanky]

12 hours ago, Ernest Lemmingway said:

What makes things worse is that Bugthesda's games are the gold standard for modding. They have no real competition and they've let it go to their heads. I keep saying it would take just one other company to make open-world games that are just as easily modded to steal their thunder. The Unreal Engine, among others (I think), could easily be used. So it's really more a question of, "why?" Why hasn't some other company done that yet? I'm not going to speculate on that because I don't know enough to make any educated guesses.

 

And before anyone points out CDPR, I'll say this again: don't hold your breath. They failed to release the tools for TW3 despite promising such and I doubt they'll change now.

Unfortunatly, ever since UE went to cooked content it got a lot harder to modify.

[Asura Scorpion]

10 hours ago, Swanky said:

Unfortunatly, ever since UE went to cooked content it got a lot harder to modify.

So that explains why there are so few mods! Mmmm, but there's plenty of tutorials on creating assets for UE, at least there's no shortage and it seems many indie developers are using UE.

[Swanky]

3 hours ago, Asura Scorpion said:

So that explains why there are so few mods! Mmmm, but there's plenty of tutorials on creating assets for UE, at least there's no shortage and it seems many indie developers are using UE.

Yes. UE is - as far as I know - free to use (at least UE3 was) and it is relatively easy to create content with it. Expanding content like stand alone maps or skins is quite easy given the complexity of the tools. These are complete developer tools after all. Depending on the game they were a bit annoying to manage though (UT3 needed to have all additional content in your local user files). With UE4 I haven't seen any of these yet so it seems another leap forward. However, modding existing content is off because the content itself is cooked into complete files that cannot be modified themselves. So you have a dev build and a cooked build and to make a modification you'd need to access the former and reupload the latter.

 

Pretty sure not all games use that system, though. XCOM 2 uses a modified UE 3.5 build with is pretty customizable with tons of mods, whereas Killing Floor 2 uses a modified UE3 engine with cooked content with mostly additional maps and a few skins available as community content.

[Guest]

The truth is in the middle. 

 

Yes, BGS neglected certain aspects of their games.  Yes, the modding community is filled with very creative and talented individuals.

[Papitas]

On 5/26/2019 at 10:29 AM, DocClox said:

 

That was something that was brought home hard when I first started modding. Things that at first glance looked simple enough turned out to be insanely complicated to try and implement, not because the game is badly written, but because that's just how complex some real world behaviors are. 

 

Well, to be honest, many things are needlessly complicated because the engine programmers don't expose their APIs to scripters for... reasons.

And I'm not talking just about us modders, because their APIs are hidden even for their own co workers who script the actual game.

 

And I don't think they do that for "stability and performance reasons", because if that was a problem, any single mod using SKSE/FOSE/whatever would be an unstable and dangerous mess, because all those Script Extender projects just do that: exposing to us things the game engine is already perfectly capable of doing but are hidden for... again, reasons.

 

And I'm not bashing engine developers. Quite the contrary. I think they are underrated.

Whenever you think about a buggy game, most likely than not you are thinking about a game with broken quests, broken balance... you know, things made by scripters (almost always in a hurry, granted). But you don't usually think about a game that tends to CTD because of null pointer exceptions or bad assertions, or one that doesn't even correctly loads its own assets; things that actually belong to the realm of the engine programmers.

 

My point here is: of course there's always trade offs whenever you design and program a large system, like a game engine, but those systems are so well designed you can almost throw anything at them and they still keep running.

 

I think games are becoming bad because of corporate meddling, not lack of talent or passion on the developers side.

When the clueless idiot that only kind of understands profits (but no business) and is paying you tells you to do stupid shit, you only have the option to do as he says or find another job.

[Celedhring]

Betheseda can be summed up thusly.  "Great ideas, great concept, terrible execution"

[SacredDatura]

Slightly different tangent from the more business/gamedev-focused discussion going on, but: in the context of Skyrim I think the very things that make vanilla a bit shit - the way it allows you to ignore and cheese 90% of the content if you want to, the way it pulls its narrative punches, the way it insists on making it almost impossible to screw up - are also what make it a perfect environment for the modding community. The core vision of the game is so diffuse that it gives "permission" in a way for modders to think about what they really want in their quasi-medieval sandbox.

 

Thinking outside the box is easier when the box itself is so patently soggy and riddled with holes. No one can dismiss a mod by saying "this disrespects the intent of the devs" or "this trivializes the game's difficulty", because the vanilla game does it to itself. I think about more tightly-designed RPGs like the Witcher games and I feel a lot less inclined to seek out mods for them, even if there are things that really annoy me.

[KoolHndLuke]

6 hours ago, Buridan said:

Slightly different tangent from the more business/gamedev-focused discussion going on, but: in the context of Skyrim I think the very things that make vanilla a bit shit - the way it allows you to ignore and cheese 90% of the content if you want to, the way it pulls its narrative punches, the way it insists on making it almost impossible to screw up - are also what make it a perfect environment for the modding community. The core vision of the game is so diffuse that it gives "permission" in a way for modders to think about what they really want in their quasi-medieval sandbox.

I get what you're saying and agree. But, do you think that is a design choice by Beth or just a happy coincidence? That means that they're either brilliant or somewhat lazy and incompetent. I've heard Todd state that one of the reasons they still use the Gamebryo engine is because the modding community knows it well.

 

 Cyberpunk may be a good sandbox game to mod in if CDPR ever makes good on their promises and it will really be the first such game for them since the Witcher series of games is much more story driven without as much replay value.

 

 One thing I still don't understand is why some game engines are more "mod friendly" than others. Is the coding that much different? Can every dev release modding tools for their games if they wanted to? Surely more have noticed that the modding comm can help extend the life- and sales- of their games over many, many years. Hell, decades maybe.

[SacredDatura]

1 hour ago, KoolHndLuke said:

I've heard Todd state that one of the reasons they still use the Gamebryo engine is because the modding community knows it well.

I don't believe that for one second, lol. They still use it because their team knows it well. I'm not sure Skyrim was designed that way with the modding community in mind, the very deliberate blandness of vanilla Skyrim feels more them trying to pander to a wider gaming audience. But I did get the strong impression that Fallout 4 left a lot of gaps where they expected mods to fill in. I haven't played FO4 since release but I remember a few parts that made me go "hm, this feels like a placeholder for mods to fill in" (the cooking system iirc?).

[KoolHndLuke]

2 hours ago, Buridan said:

They still use it because their team knows it well.

Maybe both, Idk. I think it goes without saying that they like it- along with liking shit that just "works".......as in barely, lol. 

[Swanky]

8 hours ago, KoolHndLuke said:

 

 One thing I still don't understand is why some game engines are more "mod friendly" than others. Is the coding that much different? Can every dev release modding tools for their games if they wanted to? Surely more have noticed that the modding comm can help extend the life- and sales- of their games over many, many years. Hell, decades maybe.

They can be very different. Huge amounts of mappers dropped out when UT3 hit. Most were accoustomed to the friendlier UE2 / UE2.5 engine of UT2k4 and UE3 was vastly different in how it handled things, shaders, materials, cooking processes etc. Also, I'm not sure whether it was from UE1 to UE2 or later to UE3, but at first UE was having its own language (uscript) that was later changed to c++, I think. Not sure how Gamebryo / Creation works in this regard, but yes, it can be finicky and will require learning from either developer and modders.

[Swanky]

I'm trying to find my jaw. It's a tutorial / showcase by Hourences who learned the unreal engine some 20 years ago and went from fan mapper to unreal staff. The usability of the engine is amazing, seems very easy to get into and to use, and realtime preview on this scale. Amazing. So if you could use this with an open file structure so as people are able to mod the game...

 

€ Of course, developers need to make smart use of the engine. Doesn't make a good game by itself.

 

 

[Nymra]

I discovered mods very early in my time with PC games. I think the first "MOD" I ever used were texture/model replacers for games like half life and UT (anybody remember the naked female hostages for CS, lol!)

But there were more, like CS basically a mod itself in the beginning, Dota etc. just wow. 

I can barely play unmodded games anymore without cringing. And Skyrim changed everything virtually. I cannot look at even current AAA titles anymore without noticing this and that missing or just beeing lazy bad or plain wrong. 

Latest example was Conan Exiles which was just a very very big letdown, looking both bad and having almost no gameplay, the worst of MMO combat systems and yeah, even Mods lack there, haha. 

Skyrim is also the first game that really excells in melee with all the nice combat mods out there. Mount&Blade feels so lacking in comparison. 

Mods forever... 

On the other hand, the most games I see that are developed by modders from scratch (Slaves of Rome and stuff like that) are just so bad, even compared with basic mod fucntionality in Skyrim. I really dont get it.  
No offense, I appreciate the effort and I really would LOVE to do this myself, but when I simply compare the independent games to what is possible with Sexlab alone is just breathteaking. While the individual games ofc dont need the effort of the user to install all the mods.

While of course it would be easy to offer a fully optimized basic Sexlab Experience with a lot of mods and even prebuild Bodyslide. But for some reason our weird ethical or legal system prohibits that. a real shame.... 

Just imagine a big bundled Sexlab + Co. Download on Steam. 1 Click to get it all and also working right away. When u make it paid for 20 bucks and distribute the money between the modders I bet they all would still get rich.