modding scene Avowed: Skyrim Killer

[NekroShapiroPhiladelphia]

"Avowed" is Obsidian Entertainment's new IP based on the same world as "Pillars of Eternity". People are saying that it could compete with the Elder Scrolls series hence the title "Skyrim Killer". Reputable leaks say Avowed is being designed with modding as a feature and alot of the info is comparing it to Skyrim in terms of design. If you go on YouTube you will find alot of coverage about the leaks and they explain the legitimacy.

My question is this: how many Skyrim LE/SE modders will jump on the Avowed Bandwagon? and if your one of them, what will you try to create? Sky's the limit since the game will be made in UE4!
 

 

 

[27X]

27 minutes ago, s520864 said:

My question is this: how many Skyrim LE/SE modders will jump on the Avowed Bandwagon? and if your one of them, what will you try to create? Sky's the limit since the game will be made in UE4!

Oh hey, this thread again... again.

 

1. Obsidian is dead. Obsidian has been dead.

2. Obsidian is now american dev woke central, even over Naughty Dog. Unlike Naughty Dog, which will see rape and sexual assault cases crop up over the next year unless they start paying out Sony money under the table, Obsidian actually believes the bullshit that comes out of their mouths and spews onto twitter, and they still may have a couple of MeToo moments waiting in the wings even then.

27 minutes ago, s520864 said:

Reputable leaks say

False. Simply false.

 

3. If you think Obsidian is going to openly support the kind of modding that appears on LL, you're an idiot. That's not even an insult. You're just not very bright if you think Namira's Goat is going to be a highlight of the Avowed experience, and Obsidian has factually DMCA'd mods with whom's content they have issue with.

 

The supposition that UE4 = WildLife + Dragon Age is wishful thinking of a distinctly child-like nature.

 

4. TESV's community is almost a decade old, if you seriously think avowed is going to last that long, I've got some sweet Phoenix airport view coral reef, super cheap, limited time only.

[Mez558]

8 minutes ago, s520864 said:

"Avowed" is Obsidian Entertainment's new IP based on the same world as "Pillars of Eternity". People are saying that it could compete with the Elder Scrolls series hence the title "Skyrim Killer". Reputable leaks say Avowed is being designed with modding as a feature and alot of the info is comparing it to Skyrim in terms of design. If you go on YouTube you will find alot of coverage about the leaks and they explain the legitimacy.

My question is this: how many Skyrim LE/SE modders will jump on the Avowed Bandwagon? and if your one of them, what will you try to create? Sky's the limit since the game will be made in UE4!
 

 

*Yawn*

 

That trailer inspires me to never look at that game again, it didn't tease much.

Hardly compares to Max von Sydow's naration... "..But, there's one they fear..."
Sounds like GW2 voice over. From that I get the.. We've not bothered with a story you that you could get invested in, we're going for pretty graphics and fancy combat/magic system.
(At least I hope it has a decent Combat and Magic system, it needs something going for it)

 

Also looks like it might 1stPerson only. Eugh.

 

And... Calling your new game a Skyrim Killer? I should fucking hope so, Skyrim came out at the end of 2011, it's almost 9yrs old. If your game works straight out the box without the need for patches from the Modding community then that makes potentially a better game already.
Call it a TW3 killer if you want to brag and even that is 5 yrs old.

 

I'd need to see a lot more before I was vaguely interested. Also, heard that modding friendly line before. Think that is planned until someone points out that making your game modable means Nudity and Sex and every perversion known to man will be added.

 

[NekroShapiroPhiladelphia]

6 minutes ago, 27X said:

Oh hey, this thread again... again.

 

1. Obsidian is dead. Obsidian has been dead.

2. Obsidian is now american dev woke central, even over Naughty Dog. Unlike Naughty Dog, which will see rape and sexual assault cases crop up ovber the next year unless they start paying out Sony money under the table, Obsidian actually believes the bullshit that comes out of their mouths and spews onto twitter, and they still may have a couple of MeToo moments waiting in the wings even then.

False. Simply false.

 

3. If you think Obsidian is going to openly support the kind of modding that appears on LL, you're an idiot. That's not even an insult. You're just not very bright if you think Namira's Goat is going to be a highlight of the Avowed experience, and Obsidian has factually DMCA'd mods with whom's content they have issue with.

 

The supposition that UE4 = WildLife + Dragon Age is wishful thinking of a distinctly child-like nature.

 

4. TESV's community is almost a decade old, if you seriously think avowed is going to last that long, I've got some sweet Phoenix airport view coral reef, super cheap, limited time only.

Those are some serious claims against Obsidian, do you have proof of these allegations? 

[NekroShapiroPhiladelphia]

Yea i just took a look and couldn't find anything referencing Obsidian Entertainment being Anti-Modding or being publicly "Woke" at the expense of others, they seem very respectful on twitter and their forums

[green_shade]

@s520864

 

There's a lot of things to consider about this.

 

1. How powerful and easy to mod is it? Skyrim has incredibly powerful tools while still being somewhat easy to mod, it also has many user-made tools (especially SKSE) to further help. Meanwhile something like Mario Maker is extremely easy to mod, but you're limited to only making levels and can only use pre-made assets. Most games that "support" modding have neither of these in abundance.

 

2. The Elder Scrolls has been growing its modding community over decades. With that comes experience. The handful of mods for Daggerfall were limited and didn't have any official tools, but with the official CS releasing with Morrowind, modding exploded. Some of the tools we use now got their start back in those days, like MASH, NIFSkope, or OBSE. Pillars of Eternity (Obsidian's series that Avowed is spinning off) has some few mods, but it is not nearly as user-friendly or powerful, so I wouldn't count that as much of a community.

 

3. Will the game have endless gameplay loops? Traditional games that have clear progression and sometimes an outright ending rarely develop the same level of modding as games where you can keep diving in and playing more. Obsidian's past RPGs (New Vegas excluded) don't have any vanilla things to do once you're done. You just complete all content and that's it. The most successful modded games have gameplay separate from the writing and choices. Look at some of the most popular games to mod in the present day; Skyrim, Minecraft, Terraria, Starbound, The Sims, Grand Theft Auto... Outside of some notable exceptions, like Doom (which open sourced the engine as well as having levels easy to edit) and Neverwinter Nights, linear games don't get as many mods. Obsidian primarily makes linear RPGs. (Not referirng to the amount of choices you have.)

 

4. Will the game let players off their leash? Directly relating to the previous thing, heavily modded games tend to not tell the player where to go, or lock areas of content behind progress walls.

 

5. As for UE4, not sure what games in UE4 have been modded much. It's certainly possible that many could, but it's like Unity, the engine isn't innately designed for easy modding (particularly on the user end). Skyrim lets you copy files into a folder, check the box, and that's it. 

 

6. How popular will it be? Obsidian's previous first-person RPG, The Outer Worlds, seems to have had about 10% the amount of sales as Skyrim has had. In comparison The Witcher 3 has had about 60% the amount of sales as Skyrim (numbers may not be accurate due to time passing since statements were made), yet the community isn't nearly as strong even considering the sales. GTA in comparison only has modding because it is so popular, with 2K/Rockstar actively working against modding on occasion.

 

The Witcher is an interesting example. They've been putting out modding tools since the first game, but there's been very few mods for the series compared to TES. The first two games were fairly linear and didn't have endless gameplay. The third game has comparatively more mods, but still nothing close to Skyrim. Modding in a ghost town isn't fun for many sorts of people, and it means you can't ask other people for help. Plus there's far fewer people interested in what you're doing.

 

In conclusion, unless Avowed is the most popular Obsidian game of all time, is easy to mod with powerful tools (official and fan-made), and isn't focused on story progression, I don't see it taking the modding community by storm. 

[NekroShapiroPhiladelphia]

5 minutes ago, green_shade said:

@s520864

 

There's a lot of things to consider about this.

 

1. How powerful and easy to mod is it? Skyrim has incredibly powerful tools while still being somewhat easy to mod, it also has many user-made tools (especially SKSE) to further help. Meanwhile something like Mario Maker is extremely easy to mod, but you're limited to only making levels and can only use pre-made assets. Most games that "support" modding have neither of these in abundance.

 

2. The Elder Scrolls has been growing its modding community over decades. With that comes experience. The handful of mods for Daggerfall were limited and didn't have any official tools, but with the official CS releasing with Morrowind, modding exploded. Some of the tools we use now got their start back in those days, like MASH, NIFSkope, or OBSE. Pillars of Eternity (Obsidian's series that Avowed is spinning off) has some few mods, but it is not nearly as user-friendly or powerful, so I wouldn't count that as much of a community.

 

3. Will the game have endless gameplay loops? Traditional games that have clear progression and sometimes an outright ending rarely develop the same level of modding as games where you can keep diving in and playing more. Obsidian's past RPGs (New Vegas excluded) don't have any vanilla things to do once you're done. You just complete all content and that's it. The most successful modded games have gameplay separate from the writing and choices. Look at some of the most popular games to mod in the present day; Skyrim, Minecraft, Terraria, Starbound, The Sims, Grand Theft Auto... Outside of some notable exceptions, like Doom (which open sourced the engine as well as having levels easy to edit) and Neverwinter Nights, linear games don't get as many mods. Obsidian primarily makes linear RPGs. (Not referirng to the amount of choices you have.)

 

4. Will the game let players off their leash? Directly relating to the previous thing, heavily modded games tend to not tell the player where to go, or lock areas of content behind progress walls.

 

5. As for UE4, not sure what games in UE4 have been modded much. It's certainly possible that many could, but it's like Unity, the engine isn't innately designed for easy modding (particularly on the user end). Skyrim lets you copy files into a folder, check the box, and that's it. 

 

6. How popular will it be? Obsidian's previous first-person RPG, The Outer Worlds, seems to have had about 10% the amount of sales as Skyrim has had. In comparison The Witcher 3 has had about 60% the amount of sales as Skyrim (numbers may not be accurate due to time passing since statements were made), yet the community isn't nearly as strong even considering the sales. GTA in comparison only has modding because it is so popular, with 2K/Rockstar actively working against modding on occasion.

 

The Witcher is an interesting example. They've been putting out modding tools since the first game, but there's been very few mods for the series compared to TES. The first two games were fairly linear and didn't have endless gameplay. The third game has comparatively more mods, but still nothing close to Skyrim. Modding in a ghost town isn't fun for many sorts of people, and it means you can't ask other people for help. Plus there's far fewer people interested in what you're doing.

 

In conclusion, unless Avowed is the most popular Obsidian game of all time, is easy to mod with powerful tools (official and fan-made), and isn't focused on story progression, I don't see it taking the modding community by storm. 

I wasnt aware of some of those nuances you mentioned. We'll just have to wait and see, but regardless its big competition for Bethesda IF Avowed meets the criteria you mentioned. The Creation Enigine isnt as friendly as some would hope since it has limitations, whereas UE4 requires the Game Devs to create custom tools if my memory serves me right. If done right UE4 could surpass the Creation Kit tool set because of said limitations, it's up to Obsidian if they go that far.

[nebellious]

58 minutes ago, green_shade said:

@s520864

 

There's a lot of things to consider about this.

This was an impressively in-depth analysis..

 

One thing I think you're overlooking about the community though. Obsidian is piggybacking hard off of Bethesda's.

I can't tell you how many friends of mine enjoy Bethesda games but have found that they prefer Obsidian's writing over much of Bethesda's recent stuff. People see them as the spiritual successor, and that Bethesda is suffering now that they're "corporate".

I wouldn't be surprised if younger audiences that grew up on Bethesda flock to Obsidian if they manage to strike the balance just right with a new game.

[Moncoyoule42]

40 minutes ago, s520864 said:

I wasnt aware of some of those nuances you mentioned. We'll just have to wait and see, but regardless its big competition for Bethesda IF Avowed meets the criteria you mentioned. The Creation Enigine isnt as friendly as some would hope since it has limitations, whereas UE4 requires the Game Devs to create custom tools if my memory serves me right. If done right UE4 could surpass the Creation Kit tool set because of said limitations, it's up to Obsidian if they go that far.

The creation engine isn't real user friendly, but because Bethesda has used it and GECK for so long, a lot of old forums for creating bethesda mods still work, making mod research a hell of a lot easier. A lot of the tools used are injected with other modder created tools, like nifskope in bodyslide. Plus even in the creation kit itself it's easy to mod just a few things for yourself, like deleting characters or shifting just a few hairstyles into place.

 

Meanwhile, UE4 dev tools require a good portion more time and effort to get into (IMO, from XCOM and Freeman: Guerrilla Warfare modding scenes), even for some small changes. The real big modders will hop on if it interests them, but I fear the smaller ones who are legitimately trying with their first mods will be way-sided. We need more motivated folks rather than just tits and guns.

[green_shade]

2 minutes ago, s520864 said:

I wasnt aware of some of those nuances you mentioned. We'll just have to wait and see, but regardless its big competition for Bethesda IF Avowed meets the criteria you mentioned. The Creation Enigine isnt as friendly as some would hope since it has limitations, whereas UE4 requires the Game Devs to create custom tools if my memory serves me right. If done right UE4 could surpass the Creation Kit tool set because of said limitations, it's up to Obsidian if they go that far.

The TES Construction Set / Creation Kit is a custom tool made by Bethesda too though. Just compare it to Divinity 2 (not Original Sin 2)'s modding tools, completely different tools. All engines have limitations, and while UE4 is by all counts a very powerful engine. But the limitations most often happen when you try to do something Skyrim wasn't designed to do. I imagine it'll be the same story with any other game. As games are developed to do what they're supposed to do, not more stuff. And Unreal appears to be primarily developed for shooters, as much as it can be used for all sorts of other games. (A lot like Bioware's use of Frostbite for Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda, despite it originally having been made for Battlefield.)

 

Say what you will about limitations, but the Creation Engine is designed specifically for system-driven open world RPGs, and is likely the most advanced engine out there for this specific type of game. Though it's not the best for more focused, scripted RPGs (as you can tell from how broken every heavily scripted interaction ends up being when the systems do what they're supposed to do and break scripts). Hopefully the REDengine will end up with this level of systemic interactions, their dialogue tech is already some of the best on the market.

 

Still, my hope is that Avowed does become super successful, because Pillars of Eternity was fantastic (both in the world, design, and my nostalgia for the Infinity Engine) and having some solid competition for Bethesda would be great. I'm just not sure that Obsidian is the one to do it given their track record of making great, but traditionally-structured RPGs.

[Potato_Skill]

Skyrim Killer? Why does it have to kill a 9 yo game? I'd prefer seeing the competition/comparisons between this game and TES 6.

[green_shade]

13 minutes ago, nebellious said:

This was an impressively in-depth analysis..

 

One thing I think you're overlooking about the community though. Obsidian is piggybacking hard off of Bethesda's.

I can't tell you how many friends of mine enjoy Bethesda games but have found that they prefer Obsidian's writing over much of Bethesda's recent stuff. People see them as the spiritual successor, and that Bethesda is suffering now that they're "corporate".

I wouldn't be surprised if younger audiences that grew up on Bethesda flock to Obsidian if they manage to strike the balance just right with a new game.

Bethesda's writing pales in comparison to Obsidian's, but I don't think people play Skyrim because it has a great story. If players want a great story, there's many, many superior games to The Elder Scrolls for it. Much like there being many games that have better role-playing and depth of choices, or even games with better first-person combat.

 

There aren't many games that offer what Skyrim does though, which is an easy RPG to pick up which you can keep playing and expanding your knowledge of how the game works in a natural fashion, no hand holding but also no browsing through manuals. Think about the entire perk system, all you know about perks is a single line of text describing it. Likely by the point you're looking at that perk, you already understand what it will offer you and why you would want it.

 

I love me a good classic RPG where I can dig deep into stats and abilities, browsing through all the description text, but I'm an enthusiast and I expect that I have to learn when I start up a new RPG. Skyrim doesn't expect people to want to learn, but lets them learn by playing.

[green_shade]

27 minutes ago, Moncoyoule42 said:

The creation engine isn't real user friendly, but because Bethesda has used it and GECK for so long, a lot of old forums for creating bethesda mods still work, making mod research a hell of a lot easier. A lot of the tools used are injected with other modder created tools, like nifskope in bodyslide. Plus even in the creation kit itself it's easy to mod just a few things for yourself, like deleting characters or shifting just a few hairstyles into place.

 

Meanwhile, UE4 dev tools require a good portion more time and effort to get into (IMO, from XCOM and Freeman: Guerrilla Warfare modding scenes), even for some small changes. The real big modders will hop on if it interests them, but I fear the smaller ones who are legitimately trying with their first mods will be way-sided. We need more motivated folks rather than just tits and guns.

One side note, the old TES Construction Set was much easier to use and more user friendly than the Creation Kit. There was a fraction of the complexity the modern CK has, but there were a fraction of the tutorials and help that the modern ones have as well. Making a mod for Morrowind is easier for me than making a mod for Skyrim (though I first started modding with Morrowind, so perhaps that's part of it.) There were far fewer options and nothing complex to consider. No aliases, the scripts didn't have the same boilerplate and ran constantly (bad practice, but it sure made things consistent compared to Papyrus), and things were pretty simple all around.

[NekroShapiroPhiladelphia]

30 minutes ago, Potato_Skill said:

Skyrim Killer? Why does it have to kill a 9 yo game? I'd prefer seeing the competition/comparisons between this game and TES 6.

"Skyrim Killer" is a jest since people are already comparing it to skyrim, Avowed is already being compared to what could be TES 6 even though we know nothing about TES 6 besides the rumored location,

[FauxFurry]

According to IGN, Dark Souls was supposed to 'eat Skyrim's face'. In the end, rather than be some kind of predator which fed upon TES' corpse, it was not even part of the same ecosystem and would likely find it unpalatable if it even tried.

Count on the same being the case for Avowed.

 

If there is an analogue to the cult of Dibella in Avowed's canon, it will likely be an evil faction in need of reform or destruction if it is not strictly anything but reserved for non-male/female pairings. The modding scene will probably look about the same as the one for The Outer Worlds, as well.

[green_shade]

46 minutes ago, FauxFurry said:

According to IGN, Dark Souls was supposed to 'eat Skyrim's face'. In the end, rather than be some kind of predator which fed upon TES' corpse, it was not even part of the same ecosystem and would likely find it unpalatable if it even tried.

Count on the same being the case for Avowed.

 

If there is an analogue to the cult of Dibella in Avowed's canon, it will likely be an evil faction in need of reform or destruction if it is not strictly anything but reserved for non-male/female pairings. The modding scene will probably look about the same as the one for The Outer Worlds, as well.

I don't know of any analogue to Dibella in Eora, but prostitution is a common enough part of the world and I haven't encountered any occasions where it was treated as evil. Not sure that anything in the series has been treated as completely good or evil (except Edér, but Edér is perfection). You're given options on how to approach things.

 

Romance in Deadfire also included the option for same-sex pairings when romancing companions. And your companions might even end up romancing each other if they end up liking each other. PoE1 didn't have any romance options.

 

I can't know ahead of time how Avowed will handle it, but this is my takeaway from Pillars of Eternity (Obsidian's previous two games set in the same world of Eora.)

[PinkyAndTheBrain]

On 7/30/2020 at 1:19 AM, green_shade said:

5. As for UE4, not sure what games in UE4 have been modded much. It's certainly possible that many could, but it's like Unity, the engine isn't innately designed for easy modding (particularly on the user end). Skyrim lets you copy files into a folder, check the box, and that's it.

Unity isn't designed for modding, but it's a dream to mod. With almost every developer doing all the game code in C# suddenly something like SKSE which requires reverse engineering experts for C(++) engines can be handled by anyone with a bit of C# knowledge, dnspy and harmony. Of course if they use some expensive third party animation/meshing plugin or their own closed source C++ tweaks for that without releasing it, that will still make model and animation mods somewhere from hard to impossible ... but that's true for any engine.

 

Unity is best case, for this and for TESVI too.

[green_shade]

4 hours ago, PinkyAndTheBrain said:

Unity isn't designed for modding, but it's a dream to mod. With almost every developer doing all the game code in C# suddenly something like SKSE which requires reverse engineering experts for C(++) engines can be handled by anyone with a bit of C# knowledge, dnspy and harmony. Of course if they use some expensive third party animation/meshing plugin or their own closed source C++ tweaks for that without releasing it, that will still make model and animation mods somewhere from hard to impossible ... but that's true for any engine.

 

Unity is best case, for this and for TESVI too.

Engine changes can be awesome, but at the same time it increases complexity for the end users of mods. SKSE is so successful as a framework because it's easy to use and and there's no "should I use GSKSE or ZSKSE?", with lengthy forum posts about the benefits and negatives of each. The mods that would be possible might be beyond imagination, but there's a lot of even open source projects out there that already theoretically offer that. I'd be perhaps more worried that it would make the barrier to entry of modding for end-users higher and result in fewer people using mods overall.

 

For hardcore modding fans it has potential to be a great thing, I'm just concerned about the long term effects. A new engine could also result in Bethesda dropping a lot of the complicated sub-systems built into the current engine ("Do we really need a faction reputation system or can we just make it a global variable and player-only?"). Plus it would also render all current modding knowledge, experience, and tools null and void, modders would be starting over basically from scratch. Likely the official editor, if it was released, would look similar to the current Creation Kit, since many of the needs are the same. So that would help at least.

 

There's some real benefits, but I'm not sure that for one of the most mainstream and large-scale modding communities it's a good solution. For Avowed none of these issues exist of course, so that's a separate thing. I'd say it's fairly unlikely that it'll use Unity, because while Pillars of Eternity used Unity, The Outer Worlds used Unreal, and Avowed seems to be taking after The Outer Worlds with its first-person perspective and fully 3D. But we shall see.

[Dude2000]

If it will be really only first person a significant part of potential customers is already excluded (I am one of them). I also had no interest in Outer Worlds because of this fatal decision. A Skyrim killer without 3rd person view? Pfft! Dream on!

[Guest]

https://www.cbr.com/bethesda-obsidian-rivalry-revealed/

 

The crucial point for me is if it have something similar to Bodyslide (big tits and asses) and CBP (moving tits and asses). If there is no support for these tools, then the game will fall flat, as it happens with any other generic RPG.

Other thing to consider, is that Obsidian was bought by Microsoft. Even if they aren't woke at heart, they will be forced to follow the leftist agenda, delivering ugly women as a result.

 

They might kill TES VI, though, as Bethesda will surely compete as to which company is more woke.

[me3]

hope you can rest well with all that wokeness coming your way

[Alienated]

Please stop whining about """woke""" companies. I know there are many manbabys out there, getting triggered over Jill's skirt or some other inconsequential bs, but I at least have never seen a game ruined by """the left agenda""", whatever that means..

Everybody is so on the edge nowadays, If ASOIAF was released in 2014, people would cry about it being ruined by SJW culture.

 

Just wait and see, dont get triggered and cry before anything even happened.

 

[nuria1]

Whatever good things PoE had, Deadfire killed it off, i yawned that game out of my HD.

Obsidian has been on a creative blocking streak ever since Fallout NV, PoE although reasonable wasn't anything special but at least it was ok, i honestly don't expect anything exceptional or even average from them, taking into consideration their last releases.

 

So unless the game comes from day one with stellar mod tools and is actually good, the only thing it's going to kill is Obsidian, definitely this time.

[27X]

12 hours ago, Alienated said:

Please stop whining about """woke""" companies. I know there are many manbabys out there, getting triggered over Jill's skirt or some other inconsequential bs, but I at least have never seen a game ruined by """the left agenda""", whatever that means..

Everybody is so on the edge nowadays, If ASOIAF was released in 2014, people would cry about it being ruined by SJW culture.

 

Just wait and see, dont get triggered and cry before anything even happened.

 

Cool story; meanwhile I've actually worked with several people at the company and the moniker is applied because it's truth. You haven't the faintest and should probably quit while you're way way behind.

 

Feargus Urquhart has his grade school aged daughter on the payroll, including retirement and insurance.

[green_shade]

1 hour ago, 27X said:

Cool story; meanwhile I've actually worked with several people at the company and the moniker is applied because it's truth. You haven't the faintest and should probably quit while you're way way behind.

 

Feargus Urquhart has his grade school aged daughter on the payroll, including retirement and insurance.

Nepotism doesn't sound at all related to the original comment about Obsidian putting ugly women in their games, but it's still a cool story. Or is the relation that having his daughter at work means he doesn't want attractive women to be seen by her? Assuming that she's even at the company, because if she's not, I see even less correlation.