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Why do people continue to mod Bethesda games?


BeowulfMKII

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"Why do people continue to mod/play Bethesda games?"

 

Most people have no idea about what kind of game they really want, they just play whatever is popular. Some people, on the other hand, do have an idea about what they want, but can't find it and settle for the closest thing available and try to ignore the obvious flaws and try to achieve the game they've imagined by using mods. So everyone has his/her own reasons I suppose, and that will not change until someone has made a better game and put it in front of them.

 

By the way, if there's one thing that's worse than a Bethesda game, it has to be a Bioware game, and judging by the design of FO4, Bethesda is also going in that direction...

 

Been playing NWN recently and if you want to know where the "illusion of choice" (aka. Yes, (Sarcastic) Yes, Later (Yes)) in FO4 came from, then you really should play it.

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Been playing NWN recently and if you want to know where the "illusion of choice" (aka. Yes, (Sarcastic) Yes, Later (Yes)) in FO4 came from, then you really should play it.

I suppose the illusion of choice thing has been around forever, really. I mean there are a limited number of paths you can implement and most of the time the player is going to want to do the quest. It's not always a bad thing.

 

As an example, in QAYL there's a line where someone is trying get you to take part in a cross country race and he says he doesn't think the you'll have a problem with the money. The repllies for that have options for a nerdy mage ("I'm not exactly the athletic type") a heavy armor type ("I'm built for power more than speed"), a light armour/thiefy type ("I'm quick enough, but distance running...?") and an option to ignore the race and focus on what's been left unsaid ("So what WILL I have a problem with?") All those lead to the same single response but the player gets a chance to express themselves.

 

And that's wha FO4 doesn't do. It's not that all the options end up with me taking the quest or at least leaving the door open - that's pretty much what I'd expect. The root of my problem is that every one of those responses makes me into Mister Chipper Chipmunk, who is determined to remain cheerful even after the recent death of his wife, and who is never too busy to help out in a good cause even if it means putting the search for his recently abducted baby son on hold for a week or two. And if you try and find a conversational choice that leads away from that, they use misleading keywords to drag you back again.

 

Hell, the game won't even let you do one of Preston's radiants without crediting the Minutemen. My first run through I wanted to do those quests because it was the right thing to do - not to try and rebuild Preston's rag-rag army about which I knew next to nothing. But every choice you make, the minutemen come up, and if you manage to avoid having it mentioned on the way out, you can bet they'll be name-checked when you turn the quest in again. And that's where the illusion of choice really burns to my mind.

 

It's like "Roleplaying is hard, so we do it for you!"

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Been playing NWN recently and if you want to know where the "illusion of choice" (aka. Yes, (Sarcastic) Yes, Later (Yes)) in FO4 came from, then you really should play it.

I suppose the illusion of choice thing has been around forever, really. I mean there are a limited number of paths you can implement and most of the time the player is going to want to do the quest. It's not always a bad thing.

 

As an example, in QAYL there's a line where someone is trying get you to take part in a cross country race and he says he doesn't think the you'll have a problem with the money. The repllies for that have options for a nerdy mage ("I'm not exactly the athletic type") a heavy armor type ("I'm built for power more than speed"), a light armour/thiefy type ("I'm quick enough, but distance running...?") and an option to ignore the race and focus on what's been left unsaid ("So what WILL I have a problem with?") All those lead to the same single response but the player gets a chance to express themselves.

 

And that's wha FO4 doesn't do. It's not that all the options end up with me taking the quest or at least leaving the door open - that's pretty much what I'd expect. The root of my problem is that every one of those responses makes me into Mister Chipper Chipmunk, who is determined to remain cheerful even after the recent death of his wife, and who is never too busy to help out in a good cause even if it means putting the search for his recently abducted baby son on hold for a week or two. And if you try and find a conversational choice that leads away from that, they use misleading keywords to drag you back again.

 

Hell, the game won't even let you do one of Preston's radiants without crediting the Minutemen. My first run through I wanted to do those quests because it was the right thing to do - not to try and rebuild Preston's rag-rag army about which I knew next to nothing. But every choice you make, the minutemen come up, and if you manage to avoid having it mentioned on the way out, you can bet they'll be name-checked when you turn the quest in again. And that's where the illusion of choice really burns to my mind.

 

It's like "Roleplaying is hard, so we do it for you!"

 

Well, in NWN you get dialogue options like this:

 

1. I'll do it for you. (good guy)

2. I'll do it for money. (mercenary)

3. I'll think about it. (returns to previous dialogue page)

4. I won't do it! (returns to previous dialogue page, after telling you that you have to do it)

 

At least in Bethesda games you can still wander around and kill/loot things, or have sex with Deathclaws, in Bioware games (like NWN, DAO) there's nothing else to do in the game other than doing the quest. If you don't like it, well the only option you have is to quit the game and not play it, which I often do, at least until I've gathered enough patience to go through this shit.

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Well, in NWN you get dialogue options like this:

 

1. I'll do it for you. (good guy)

2. I'll do it for money. (mercenary)

3. I'll think about it. (returns to previous dialogue page)

4. I won't do it! (returns to previous dialogue page, after telling you that you have to do it)

 

At least in Bethesda games you can still wander around and kill/loot things, or have sex with Deathclaws, in Bioware games (like NWN, DAO) there's nothing else to do in the game other than doing the quest. If you don't like it, well the only option you have is to quit the game and not play it, which I often do, at least until I've gathered enough patience to go through this shit.

It's a long time since I played NWN, I must admit. I did run through most of a Dance With Rogues, but even that was a few years back now.

 

That said, I don't ever remember swearing at NWN for not letting me play the character I wanted. I don't know; maybe I just have higher expectations of Bethesda.

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That said, I don't ever remember swearing at NWN for not letting me play the character I wanted.

Did you always care about that this much though? When I was younger, I would always roleplay the "hero" that the game designer expected me to be and not being able to roleplay complex characters in a game never really bothered me that much. NWN is an old game, so perhaps you were like me when you first played it.

 

RPGs haven't changed that much in that aspect, but my expectations of them have. These days I play games not just for entertainment, but to escape from the restrictions and the responsibilities of the real world and you can probably imagine why I get very irritated by things like "must be the hero", "must find my son", "must save the world" and so on, when they are forced upon the player. This is the reason why I'm more interested in sandbox RPGs.

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That said, I don't ever remember swearing at NWN for not letting me play the character I wanted.

Did you always care about that this much though? When I was younger, I would always roleplay the "hero" that the game designer expected me to be and not being able to roleplay complex characters in a game never really bothered me that much. NWN is an old game, so perhaps you were like me when you first played it.

 

I think I did. My first roleplay experiences were pure pencil and paper games, and when a computer game allowed, I tended to think in terms of characters and backstory. That wasn't very often in the early games; dialogue was rare and when it happened it was more often a puzzle to be navigated than a role-playing opportunity. But over time more and more games allowed me some scope to add my own spin to the narrative, and I treasured that.

 

I mean I don't mind a mission-driven game with a pre-set character. Dishonored and the Witcher games fit this format and I've had great fun with them. It's just that's not what I look for from Bethesda and not what I look for from Fallout, so in that respect Fo4 wa a double disappointment.

 

RPGs haven't changed that much in that aspect, but my expectations of them have.

In general, no. But the best of them have been a lot better than this. The original Fallout games had multiple solutions baked into the design bible; Planescape:Torment let you gave you plenty of room to play nice or nasty, and also to play clever. I like smooth-talking clever-clogs types and PS:T scratched that itch for me nicely. I'll grant, there are probably some rose-tinted lenses at work here, but even allowing for that, I think we've seen better RPGs than FO4.

 

These days I play games not just for entertainment, but to escape from the restrictions and the responsibilities of the real world and you can probably imagine why I get very irritated by things like "must be the hero", "must find my son", "must save the world" and so on, when they are forced upon the player. This is the reason why I'm more interested in sandbox RPGs.

I'm basically the same. My favorite game of this sort is still Morrowind, and that really doesn't care if you never engage with the story. It never tells you who you are, what you want, how you feel or where to go. That's something that's been sorely missing from late Beth games.

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A lot of people here probably don't want to hear this but NWN1 or NWN2 modding scene never took off likely due to its graphics.  Back then I remembered the only people got really excited with NWN were coding geeks.  I rather replayed KOTOR again than read through the crappy NWN quest mods. 

 

Skyrim is the game changer because with mods screen archery can get the wow reaction from within the game for the first time.  I didn't bother with FO3/NV/Oblivion mods because Beth games sucked at telling stories and while mods did improve their graphics substantially they weren't very impressive to worth the time investment.  Based on the relative size of player/modder community of these games I think my experience is fairly representative. 

 

People are attracted to pretty things... 

 

Modded Skyrim was THE game for DX9 graphics wise and it wasn't even close until the recent crop of DX11 games.  It enjoyed a very long window for the modding community to grow.  What is FO4's graphics potential?

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A lot of people here probably don't want to hear this but NWN1 or NWN2 modding scene never took off likely due to its graphics.

I don't think anyone is holding NWN up as the be-all and end-all of modding, to be honest. We're just talking about how it handled player dialogue and the differences and similarities with Bethesda games in general and FO4 in particular.

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I thought NWN2 and Oblivion were pretty close in terms of graphic quality. They were released around the same time for better or for worse.

 

But yea in terms of legacy of modding support, an user base, and actual modding capability Bethesda is still ahead of nearly everyone else despite constant moaning from people.

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Coming from the 90's 2D RPGs (such as BG, FO, JA etc), I completely dismissed the early 3D RPGs, such as NWN and Morrowind back in the early 2000s. They all looked ugly as hell to me. The reason why I bought NWN a few years back was the adult mods for it, such as ADWR (see, the benefits of being a moddable game). I also bought NWN2 hoping to find some adult mods for it similar to ADWR, but there wasn't anything decent. Its graphics was fairly close to DA:O though, and wasn't all that ugly.

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I guess modders and "hackers" share a similar mentality on some points where the question is not "what can this do?" but rather "what can I make this do?" *

And with Bethesda's games being sort of messy there is plenty of things to fix and improve/add-on.

 

Other mentioned game don't really need mods,

Dark Souls had a shitty port, so DSfix was made to almost eliminate that and allowed for textures to be replaced and was all that game really needed to be great.

Witcher 3 have mod support but don't really need them apart from maybe a few quality of life ones like being able to fast travel from anywhere and ladies no longer wear panties. 

 

 

*I mean the white-hat side of things, not the ones who leak your nude selfies and steal bank info etc.

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One reason could very well be that when comparing to other games made by other companies, Bethesda titles are obviously the "easiest" to create things for. We are given the foundation tools to build with, and the rest just rolls on in. Importing and exporting meshes, textures, scripts, writing scripts, all of that, is more accessible and and on a more user friendly avenue compared to other companies games out there. 

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Even Witcher 3, even if it had as big modding support, would probably have a hard time catching up to Bethesda games, as Geralt is the character and this is his story, unlike Skyrim, where the Dragonborn can be anyone. You don't even have to be Dragonborn, where Witcher wouldn't make much sense if Geralt just stopped being one. Witcher 3 is openworld, but not a sandbox. And as far as moddable sandbox game, the only concurrent is what, Minecraft?.

 

I'm going to expand on this a bit. Normally I don't post in forums anymore, but here goes... >^..^<
 
Some people look for video games where they can either be the protagonist or at least identify with the protagonist on some level. My husband and I, as anecdote both cannot play games where we cannot fully become the protagonist. This limits our enjoyment of many games.
Skyrim is very inclusive, FO4 is more exclusive as your married in a the classic 1950's marriage with a son. As an example of this dichotomy, Skyrim allows you to ignore the predefined protagonist story line, for the most part, and make the character more identifiable to you. In contrast, a game like Witcher 3 may not allow the player to identify or "become" the character, as it has a strictly defined character. As a result, modifiable and customizable games are inclusive for everyone, where strict and locked characters are exclusive. The problem is that sex, gender, race, mentality, etc, are what defines humanity. Locking them forces the nuance out of who we are and hinders role play. While this is my supposition, it may be that the inclusivity of games like Skyrim has been a contributing factor in how long they have lasted and their success. In addition, though unrelated to my original point, games like Skyrim have extensive modding tools available, freely.
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Easy as most said one they got the longest history of handing out tools for mods, because of this company other games are now following suit, and still to this day you can do more in these games then any other game. I mean I love M&B (Mount and Blade) it has a bit of modding community but shit I want can't even be made on its engine. I mean I would kill for sexlab for M&B so I could make a harem if I join one of the more eastern nations, and have my wife do a couple more wifely duties around the keep, but shit like that just isn't doable in those games, well maybe in the next one.. but the next one is getting redone for mod tools because of skyrims huge success. I mean only in skyrim can I play this game 80 times an each and every time get do it different. I mean last thing I started doing I reinstalled it now I am slaver farming soul gems out of bandits I caught, have trained ones whip the new ones into submission in my homestead, and I am using them to incubate gems, and horde milk to sell so I can be a master enchanter archer. I got hunter born as well so I am running around in the woods working on my gutting skills with critters to get quality pelts, while taking breaks to pick on bandit camps I pass wishing I had a mod for blunt arrows to knock down and not kill my victims and I think if  look hard enough I can find that as well lol

 

I can't find that in any other game even with mods, best I could do is capture slaves in Fallout 3, and Oblivion all same company. But I can't make my whitcher go into the slave trade any more then I can install a mod to play him as a silent archer who stalks his prey with a longbow lol. I mean come on no game I could do all that, then when I get bored I can go make a fisticuffs toon, using skyre I could make another one master the art of punching my enemies into submission or death, or go all in and be a bad ass warrior in full heavy armor like a damn Juggernaut with enchants, and sharpened weapons. Hell or go to magic route go to college and sleep my way through it fuck my professors to learn how to do magic, resurrect people as zombies then fuck them and turn them to a pile of dust when I am done. Then you got added bonus I could be a damn vampire, or go werewolf, and ride freaking dragons with just base game stuff, but I got stuff that tweaks the vampire system making it better as well.

 

I can't do half that shit with any other game on the market, even in New Vegas its got some cool mods too much of a pain for my tastes to reinstall it and set it up, I can only do a portion of that. Granted when that vault life comes out this month I will be sad that I still can't fuck people in my settlement as I would kill to play overseer and arrange accidents for my male vault dwellers, to insure there is a huge ratio of women to men for me to fuck with at my leisure. Granted going one step further which won't happen probably ever would be to fuck them and have babies to fill the vault up, like in the app game except I got an avatar to play either good overseer or bad, and another reason to keep a few males around so its not super inbreed in like 2 generations, even though it will never get that far in that game lol.

 

Even with out sexlab and trust me I played these games with out its existence the mods just hugely increase the realm of possibilty. I mean standard issue I run hunterborn, frostfall, and skyre. I also ran a mod that redid the vamps into more vampire like state made it feel more complete to me. Then you got so many armors, weapons, followers, quests hell I saw some one make an entire expansion for free a little island or something you go to off the original map with brand new everything.

 

That is why moders love these games, you can't do that modding GTA, Witcher 3, M&B or any any other game I heard of, its just not feasable, where these games there is no real limit. I mean Fallout has less but you can change allegiances more in that go join any number of bad guys or good guys, punch shit in the face with a power fist, use a lazer rifle, flaming sword, mini gun, mini nuke launcher, while be able to talk you way out of shit or just blast your way through, while still being sneaky if you want. Except now you can robots, got to admit forgot till now another thing I really really wanted to see, a sexbot mod, oh so much potential in that new one, but its miles away from being unlocked... Meanwhile best case, maybe some one might do a mild sex mod if doable for the M&B, so I can fuck my wife in my keep, after that its just some poltic mods, then weapons and armors, maybe redo factions and the map. But all the same in the end, where as I can play bethesda games do none of the core story line at all, and do tons of shit that was never intended to be done by the devs

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TBH I don't even know other games that are as modable as Bethesda games use to be.

With the support of stuff like script extenders, FNIS or stuff, there are things possible, even Bethesda couldn't have thought of when releasing the initial game. And with all the modders out there and their ideas nothing seems to be impossible at all.

 

Plus, I think Bethesda games aren't hard to mod if you know what you're doing. I started modding with Oblivion which I found was very easy to understand and to get into, without having to study guides for months. Skyrim made it a little harder for me, as they changed a couple of things - and then there's Win10 preventing CK from loading Skyrim.esm at all but yeah, first world problems over here. :D

 

Games like Oblivion or Skyrim just hit my taste (they have Dark Elves damn it!) And with all the possibilities I wouldn't want anything else. I could spend hours and hours for weeks, even months in these games and forget about my MMOs completely - while singleplayer games are more relaxing anyway. :D I'm thankful for everyone who puts their effort into modding these games, I love how I can adjust mods to my own taste, changing their meshes or textures for my own satisfaction.

 

In every game there is stuff that the developers simply forget to add, or they don't want to. With Bethesda games it doesn't matter anymore. Just as every player does have their own taste, there are mods made by the community to fit it or not. It's up to the players how they want their game to be, or to look like, and as Bethesda games are fully customizable in that direction, I don't se any reason why people should stop modding them.

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Sadly there are no other games like skyrim and fallout we are stuck with crap games that end in five hours or less. We are also stuck with a non adult game mindset in the gaming industry. Nobody wants to make a whatever goes game that doesn't have to be made for consoles. Game development goes where the money is so we will most likely never see a really good adult game and we most likely never see another game like skyrim or fallout from some other company. The only way to make lots of money with gaming now is online and just copy all the other big money games like those RTS games played in korea.

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