State of Fallout 4 Modding Community as of June 2017

[Guest]

The creation kit was released more than a year ago. At its inception, the Fallout 4 modding scene received major blows due to the extended delay in CK release. Many mods did not proceed past early stages and got abandoned by their authors. Many more never saw the light of the day. Granted, since its release we have seen some great mods (Sim Settlements, Transfer Settlements, etc.) that are huge in scope and simply genius. However things just seem... dead these days. I know that the Fallout 4 modding community was never as large and active as skyrim (the golden age of modding) but I can't help to notice the general lack of enthusiasm/activity and the dearth of cool mods. It's saddening to see so many cool mods being abandoned at their 0.1 version. Not just here on LL but also on Nexus. So what do you think? Will there be a resurrection any time soon? Are there any reasons to expect something like that? Should we just go back to playing Skyrim?

[Dmouse52]

I think it's the game itself. for my money it's really not doing anything better than skyrim and just not grabbing the imagination for me the way FNV/Fallout3 did. Bethesda has mproved on the other fallout games but it does not seem to shine through IMHO

[Sarge Misfit]

I like Fallout 4, but it just seems kinda small. In Skyrim, you get the feeling of traveling to different places while FO4 is just one place, Boston. Now, if Bethesda were to come up with a FO5 that connected 4, NV and 3 together, that would be pretty cool.

[Guest]

I think it's the game itself. for my money it's really not doing anything better than skyrim and just not grabbing the imagination for me the way FNV/Fallout3 did. Bethesda has mproved on the other fallout games but it does not seem to shine through IMHO

 

Not to mention the horrible restrictions written into the game engine like the mandatory 4-choice dialogue system, lack of meaningful character customization, and voiced protagonist. Nevertheless I actually prefer F4 in terms of exploration and location design. Also the gameplay 'feels' better (smoother etc.). I do think the settlement system is very worthwhile (specially with Sim Settlements). Some of these issues can be fixed. In skyrim there are mods like PerMa and Requiem that completely overhaul the skill trees. The same could technically be done for F4 and that would make a real impact for sure. No one has stepped up to take the mantle tho.

I like Fallout 4, but it just seems kinda small. In Skyrim, you get the feeling of traveling to different places while FO4 is just one place, Boston. Now, if Bethesda were to come up with a FO5 that connected 4, NV and 3 together, that would be pretty cool.

In terms of actual map size F4 is smaller than skyrim for sure. But taking into account the size of interior cells then I would say they are on par. I think the bigger issue here is that there is not much to do besides collecting scrap for your settlements. 

[Kimy]

I guess a big part of the problem is/was many modders "waiting for F4SE", which to this day isn't much more than a stub and the next best thing to a dead project (and before anyone feels the need to point that out, yes, I know it got a few updates lately, but at this pace, humanity will invent the warp drive long before F4SE is even half completed).

As a result of the scene basically sleeping through the crucial time (6-12 months) just after CK was released, waiting for a script extender that never made any significant progress, we never saw the initial push of high profile mods we had on Skyrim, so people played F4 and then put it away, for there was nothing new to explore anymore. If a game doesn't get this "critical mass" of mods while it's still fresh and new, it tends to never get going.

 

I am still cautiously optimistic that more modders will eventually give up waiting on F4SE and just start modding. F4 might never become as popular as Skyrim, but it's got one thing going for it - lack of competition (other than the much older Skyrim itself). I am not aware of another modding-supported RPG in the pipes from any publisher anytime soon. So we could see modders eventually feel the urge to mod something not called Skyrim.

[Guest]

Bethesda definitely dropped the ball on the CK issue. I can't actually remember how rapid SKSE development was but I get sense that it was much faster than F4SE (correct me if I'm wrong). I absolutely believe that F4 has some of the cooler mods made for any game. Sim Settlement by itself completely changed how I approach the game in terms of looting and gave me a reason to explore. I am optimistic that whilst we might not get tons of smaller mods, we will get more larger projects that have significant impact.

[DigitalP]

Meh

 

There is fully voiced companion mods. 

 

Some really insane quest mods. 

 

Sim Settlements anyone?

 

There are new "worlds" 

 

Now that said. 

Is the dialogue limit really an issue here? I mean how many more decisions do you want a character to be able to do? Even at 4 you can end up with overly complicated dialogue and decision trees. Even with a simple 2 choice system you can end up with overly complex choices. 

 

There is a heap of options already for mod making. There is a fuckton of mods and compared to Skyrim the rate of mod production is roughly on par to what Skyrim had at a similar time. 

Also consider. FO4 has guns. Most modern militaries have standardised military hardware. IE the US uses M16/M4, Russia/China use AK/AKM varients, Germany H&K and so forth so the scope of vast amounts of different primary weapons is quite low. It's the same for melee weapons. Go to your local hardware store. How many different pipe wrenches is there? It's not like today's soldier has an individially customised broadsword.

 

Homemaker and SOE have more or less taken care of settlement building and decoration. 

 

So the only mods left really that open up for a lot of customisation from base game is clothing and armour mods. 

 

Also one final thought. 

 

The Sarkisian factor. It could very well be that game companies deliberately made certain game modifications harder to achieve due to the whole Gamergate thing. 

 

[Sarge Misfit]

 

I like Fallout 4, but it just seems kinda small. In Skyrim, you get the feeling of traveling to different places while FO4 is just one place, Boston. Now, if Bethesda were to come up with a FO5 that connected 4, NV and 3 together, that would be pretty cool.

In terms of actual map size F4 is smaller than skyrim for sure. But taking into account the size of interior cells then I would say they are on par. I think the bigger issue here is that there is not much to do besides collecting scrap for your settlements. 

 

 

I was thinking more along the lines of the fact that it feels smaller.

[Expired6978]

I guess a big part of the problem is/was many modders "waiting for F4SE", which to this day isn't much more than a stub and the next best thing to a dead project (and before anyone feels the need to point that out, yes, I know it got a few updates lately, but at this pace, humanity will invent the warp drive long before F4SE is even half completed).

As a result of the scene basically sleeping through the crucial time (6-12 months) just after CK was released, waiting for a script extender that never made any significant progress, we never saw the initial push of high profile mods we had on Skyrim, so people played F4 and then put it away, for there was nothing new to explore anymore. If a game doesn't get this "critical mass" of mods while it's still fresh and new, it tends to never get going.

 

I am still cautiously optimistic that more modders will eventually give up waiting on F4SE and just start modding. F4 might never become as popular as Skyrim, but it's got one thing going for it - lack of competition (other than the much older Skyrim itself). I am not aware of another modding-supported RPG in the pipes from any publisher anytime soon. So we could see modders eventually feel the urge to mod something not called Skyrim.

Not sure if you've looked at F4SE's source code recently, but to call all the work I've done a stub is pretty offensive. There is arguably more decoded in F4SE than there ever was in SKSE. 

 

Nobody should be waiting for me to do anything in particular, if there is something you want to see in F4SE you have to ask for it or do it yourself. I only implement things that are requested or I wanted to see myself. It was the same for Skyrim, the difference was that Skyrim had a lot less functions to work with from the beginning. Many of the functions that didn't exist in Skyrim were later added to Fallout 4.

 

SKSE development was faster because there were 2 people contributing regularly, now it's basically been just me for F4SE since the initial release.

[Veladarius]

"Waiting on F4SE" is just an excuse as far as I'm concerned as there are lots of mods out there already. Too many modders have been spoiled by the work of people who have made a number of the utilities for Skyrim that make their work easier. There are also a lot of new things that they have to learn and some limitations to overcome (dialogue in particular). If people are waiting for FO4 to have everything that Skyrim does they are in for a major disappointment as many of the people that made a number of the major frameworks for Skyrim are not doing so for FO4. People are better off looking to FONV or FO3 for a comparison instead.

[gregathit]

If modding FO4 were only as active as folks creating threads talking about it...........

 

Please use the existing thread to debate if the mule is dead or alive.....or just to stop by and kick it.  

 

Link:  http://www.loverslab.com/topic/63464-status-of-fo4-scene-almost-dead/