The Upside of Bethesda's Bad Attitude?

[Shadowhawk827]

I was talking to a friend who helped playtest my Dawnguard Sentries mod for OldRim when we came to a realization:

 

Yes, Bethesda has gone customer hostile since Zenimax has taken over.  Pushing paid mods, badmouthing the free mods community, sabotaging FOSE & SKSE64, refusing to release a new Elder Scrolls game...  That last part is all about Zenimax wanting to milk Elder Scrolls Online for all it's worth.  Expensive new content pours out for it faster than new mods on the Nexus.

 

Anyway, that realization of an upside is that modding is proceeding farther with Skyrim and FO4 than it ever did with earlier games.  Skyrim's release cut short the development of Morroblivion as a prime example.  No new releases means the Skyrim Expansion Project has got Bruma finished and released.  Skywind is farther along than Morroblivion was, and may just see the light of day yet.  New armor and weapon mods are getting better in terms of detail, just about every aspect of Skyrim & SE can be upgraded to even 4k textures now.

 

If Bethesda and Zeni keep up their current approach, we could end up with a completely free mod created Tamriel with NO need or desire to buy a new Bethesda release until it hits the bargain bin.

[DeadFish__]

I think these feats could be achieved regardless of Bethesdas attitude.

[27X]

I too would like to believe in world of puppies and rainbows but as someone whom has been ass deep in the realities of game shenanigans for many moons can proffer a little reality to go with your super upbeat romcom prognostications.

 

Modders and devs are people, and we all know what people are about cause cause Agent K told us in Men in Black.

 

So.

 

Will 64 eventually overtake 32 generally speaking in current active use?

Yes.

 

Will 64 sell as many copies as 32?

No.

 

Will 64 modding ever be as numerous and diverse as 32?

No.

 

Is TESVI coming in less than five years?

No.

 

Will that give modders an assload of time?

In theory.

 

Will modders use that to build a thriving base of content like 32?

No.

 

Why are you saying no?

Because that's how communities as fractious and narcissistic as this one work, and that's actually in general how SP RPG communities tend to work.

 

But 64 is the new jesus of everything is perfect in every way!

You're adorable.

 

The golden heyday of Skyrim modding is actually right now and has been for about two years, and how much longer that is depends on both modder and user interest levels, but again expecting a community this fractious to just hum along  for another half decade of continually waning popular interest a continual deluge of MTX sewage is pure hyperbole, as folks like the Beyond team already dropping support for 32 shows, and the further stoppage of several other mods by authors whom are now paywall and cc only is just beginning.

 

So you should prolly enjoy it while it lasts, cause an increasingly fractured community and a dev/pub combo that only see users as portable money deposits tend not to stand the test of time.

[Darkpig]

The good side? It stopped the SE fanboys from speculating the "Future of Skyrim". Oh wait! No it didn't. Fans of the series want bigger better things or at least something different than the buggy, lousy designed game that is Skyrim. My two cents.

[Shadowhawk827]

The name calling in the first paragraph doesn't change facts I used as examples.

 

Bruma IS out, and it's a FREE mod.  Work continues on the rest of the project too.  Same is true with Skywind.  Progress is crazy slow on that, but it's still moving forward.

 

The only thing you for sure got right is that SE will not sell as many copies.  Just because Bethesda GAVE IT AWAY to players to keep them hanging.

 

Modding being as numerous in SE....  EVERY mod in OldRim can now be converted.  My mod's SE version was released less than a week ago and is already over 10 pages back on the Nexus's chronological listing.  How many of hundreds of mods is that in just a week, on one site?

 

"But 64 is the new jesus of everything is perfect in every way!  You're adorable."  

 

That is just trolling.  I never said that.  If you took the time to actually comprehend what I was writing is that my OPINION is that IF Bethesda keeps up it's poor business practices and further alienates it's player base, the modding community will be a BIG part of Bethesda's suffering the consequences of it's actions.  That's how pure, non-crony capitalism works:  A company alienates it's customers, it loses sales, and profits drop.  Keep it up long enough they go out of business.

 

So, one of two things WILL happen. 

 

1) Modders will keep expanding the Skyrim world and keep it entertaining for us.  Maybe not at a pace fast enough for you.  People WILL argue about this and that also.  Contrary to what SJW fascists will tell you, disagreement and the ability to have and discuss differing opinions rationally is the mark of healthy free society.  Modders going paid?  Who cares?  Capitalism says they'll either crash and burn like last time OR turn out good products and further the community.

 

2) OR Zenimax and Bethesda will realize they're alienating their customers and start turning out products people are asking for, including TES6

 

Third option of course is they crash and burn completely, in which case another company will rise to take their place that does understand customer service.

 

 

Free Advice also; being overly insulting doesn't make you right, just obnoxious.  It also furthers the community division you're complaining about.

[Shadowhawk827]

7 minutes ago, Darkpig said:

The good side? It stopped the SE fanboys from speculating the "Future of Skyrim". Oh wait! No it didn't. Fans of the series want bigger better things or at least something different than the buggy, lousy designed game that is Skyrim. My two cents.

Yep, no denying its buggy.  If Bethesda was a decent company, they wouldn't use Arthmoor's group for free labor to fix the vast majority of those bugs also.

 

My overall point is that we ARE slowly getting that bigger and better via the modding community, and maybe that will help force a newer, better TES game from Bethesda.

[27X]

The fact you think anything in the post is personal and anything other than the first paragraph even address your direct points rather than to cover the usual lifecycle of game's modbase says quite a bit more than your overly defensive retort.

 

Quote

SJW fascists will tell you, disagreement and the ability to have and discuss differing opinions rationally is the mark of healthy free society

 

That is some amazing backseat projection, in addition to being completely irrelevant. (As a personal aside, as one of the few devs to throw in with #GG until it became a political shitfest courtesy of milo yippieyapolis and internet aristoscats, the amount of irony in your statement is literally biblical) Also LL wisely frowns on political diatribes so you might wanna dial it back to something less than 11.

 

Your 100% binary digital array of apparently preordained and immutable options also doesn't cover remotely the kind of actual userbase and purchasing spectrum this product is currently enjoying, much less what those might be in the future. You're also abjectly ignoring that console purchases make up the vast bulk of Skyrim's and BGS's userbase, and thus will inform content creation and asset leverage.

 

Arthmoor

 

is currently being paid four figures per project by the publisher.

 

Bruma

 

A fixed and 100% crash free version will never be available for 32 and neither will anything else from the Beyond team.

[johntrine]

20 minutes ago, 27X said:

Quote

Bruma

 

 

A fixed and 100% crash free version will never be available for 32 and neither will anything else from the Beyond team.

you sure?

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/84946/?

[Shadowhawk827]

Some people just like to troll and try to brow beat people and can't deal in facts, johntrine.   They have to tear people and ideas down to make themselves feel better.  

 

That's what the ignore list is for.  27X just made mine.  I don't have time for self-righteous children.

 

 

 

EDIT: As a correction, since I believe in accuracy, I checked my mod on Nexus for SE.  It's actually at the start of the 4th page on old layout, which means 90 mods have been put out by modders since I re-released mine 6 days ago.   I was going by what a friend told me about 10 pages back.  I think he was looking at my swords mod.

 

Including at least 1 free mod by Arthmoor also.

[khumak]

Game companies will do whatever they think makes them the most money.  What the executives THINK will make the most money doesn't necessarily match reality though.

 

In my case, I demand good value for my entertainment dollars.  Any company that doesn't provide it simply doesn't get my business which probably explains why I'm still playing games that are 5, 10, 20 years old rather than whatever came out this year.  I think as long as Bethesda games remain easily moddable there will always be plenty of free mods for them even if paid mods are successful enough to become a permanent part of their business model. 

 

That said, the mentality of console gamers seems to be different.  They don't seem to mind being milked for as much money as possible.  I don't personally understand it, but business models that depend on microtransactions and overpriced "mods" would fail immediately otherwise.

[Knaeggchen]

If only Skyrim wouldnt be a fucking buggy mess. I have 0 gameplay experience and only 300h of skyrim + another 300h in creation kit, yet the amount of bugs in the game is keeping me away from it. Seriously, I don't even know how a game like this could actually get that "popular" in the first place.

 

Anyway, what I actually wanted to say: There are things modders just can't do (or at least it's not realistic to actually do it). Thanks to the awful modding support (yes, no matter what you say, but skyrim vanilla HAS awful modding support) and all the other shit around it, the amount of possible great mods is probably very high. I at least myself had dropped a couple of mod ideas simply because I got annoyed by the retarded limitation of the engine and/or the bugs and I simply didn't feel like it's worth the effort.

 

Yes, thankts to the longivity of skyrim a couple of long-time-delevopement mods had seen the light of day. But they might had come even faster with a properly working game. And they might had still been finished if a new game had been released too. We don't know. And again, who knows how many mods we had "lost" thanks to the bad practices of bethesda?



At the end of the day, it's all just speculation. We don't know what would had happened if Bethesda would get their shit together. We don't even know what they would had done (maybe they would had decided to keep supporting skyrim and bring more huge DLCs instead of releasing an entirely new game?)

[Fox_]

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Posted Thursday at 04:57 AM

If only Skyrim wouldnt be a fucking buggy mess. I have 0 gameplay experience and only 300h of skyrim + another 300h in creation kit, yet the amount of bugs in the game is keeping me away from it. Seriously, I don't even know how a game like this could actually get that "popular" in the first place.

 

Anyway, what I actually wanted to say: There are things modders just can't do (or at least it's not realistic to actually do it). Thanks to the awful modding support (yes, no matter what you say, but skyrim vanilla HAS awful modding support) and all the other shit around it, the amount of possible great mods is probably very high. I at least myself had dropped a couple of mod ideas simply because I got annoyed by the retarded limitation of the engine and/or the bugs and I simply didn't feel like it's worth the effort.

 

Most games have absolutely zero mod support and that's clearly the general trend. Frostbite, CryEngine, Dunia, UT Engine, - almost all engine have zero tolerance for modding (sometimes you can replace some textures, not more), so calling the mod support for Skyrim "awful" is simply wrong. It has quite a large API and an ingame interpreter, I haven't seen this feature in an AAA games in years (except F4). So if you call the mod support "awful", you might want to show some statistics to strengthen your statement. 

 

Only when OpenMW reaches the Creation Engine in some years every bug can be eliminated. Distant land looks almost already better than in Skyrim. 

[Zanan]

There is often an upside of most things that happen. The upside is that yes the longer a modded game is the latest title, the more modded it can be, and the more you get for your money.

I don't see the fracturing of the community between three sites, steam | nexus | bethesda in some cases being healthy for modding personally, it makes it like the old days which had upsides but makes the tools harder to use. Steam auto update for example kills any steam exclusive mods for me, as it breaks load order and bashed patches. I like that mods are hosted on multiple sites as it will mean they stay around longer, I hate that some great mods are exclusive to one site however, historically those disappear.

I don't like how long it has been since the last single player elder scrolls release. People cite a lot of reasons for this, some of them good. My own personal thoughts are, elder scrolls online pretty much killed the single player game development for several years. People argue but that seems the most likely, them not wanting to compete against themselves. I still find it odd though on the back of the success of skyrim, that no sequel was planned earlier, but there you go. I know they have teased there are other games in development, and we'll see on those. If the latest GoT rumor is in fact true, and you can mod it, i'll not have minded the delay in the slightest.

One thing is certain and not often considered, a lot of the people who bought skyrim have grown up and moved on from gaming, or are just too busy for it. So rather than release a sequel they are going to have to win over substantial new player base to make a new AAA+ TES title successful. Which is a gamble they never had to make.
 

[finalx31]

I don't think any of that will come to pass. like above, it's definitely possible with the skills and talent of amateur artists. but realistically the modding community is a very small niche of gaming.

 

the mass majority will continue to pay for any new games that come out without a second thought or consideration for a company. and that is what will really matter in the end, voting with money. take for example the recent EA battlefront loot boxes, people were livid. i don't see how anyone could have been surprised when they have a history of being scummy mass effect 3 ending to andromeda, dragon age 2 recylables, simcity always online and lying about all of it. none of that matters and they are thriving in the industry. i can only see the same happening if zenimax and bethesda continue down this road.

[Zanan]

8 minutes ago, finalx31 said:

I don't think any of that will come to pass. like above, it's definitely possible with the skills and talent of amateur artists. but realistically the modding community is a very small niche of gaming.

 

the mass majority will continue to pay for any new games that come out without a second thought or consideration for a company. and that is what will really matter in the end, voting with money. take for example the recent EA battlefront loot boxes, people were livid. i don't see how anyone could have been surprised when they have a history of being scummy mass effect 3 ending to andromeda, dragon age 2 recylables, simcity always online and lying about all of it. none of that matters and they are thriving in the industry. i can only see the same happening if zenimax and bethesda continue down this road.

The mass majority buy what they know, good or bad. ME and DA aside, i've never touched an EA game since sim city and the way as a customer I was treated. I had no impetus to go look at any new title they did. They had my custom because of their previous titles, which have now come to an end more or less. Beth won't have that as much with skyrim's sequel, as it has been so long, it'll have to be good enough to get new people interested which is a gamble as a company they didn't need to take.

Modding isn't however anywhere near as niche as it once was, having a moddable game sells a lot of copies these days.

[Nazzzgul666]

On 23.11.2017 at 4:57 AM, Knaeggchen said:

Anyway, what I actually wanted to say: There are things modders just can't do (or at least it's not realistic to actually do it). Thanks to the awful modding support (yes, no matter what you say, but skyrim vanilla HAS awful modding support) and all the other shit around it, the amount of possible great mods is probably very high.

Good and bad are relative, so... for which games did you make mods because of their great (or at least reasonable) mod support?

[Knaeggchen]

On 11/27/2017 at 10:32 AM, Fox_ said:

 

Most games have absolutely zero mod support and that's clearly the general trend. Frostbite, CryEngine, Dunia, UT Engine, - almost all engine have zero tolerance for modding (sometimes you can replace some textures, not more), so calling the mod support for Skyrim "awful" is simply wrong. It has quite a large API and an ingame interpreter, I haven't seen this feature in an AAA games in years (except F4). So if you call the mod support "awful", you might want to show some statistics to strengthen your statement. 

 

Only when OpenMW reaches the Creation Engine in some years every bug can be eliminated. Distant land looks almost already better than in Skyrim. 

Soo? Because you have something that 90% of the people around you don't, this thing is absolutely awesome and in highest possible quality? No.

Yes, most games don't even have mod support to begin with, but that doesn't affect the quality of support skyrim has for mods. It just sets it above the rest.

 

But I must admit, I didn't made myself clear. What I meant by "awful mod supprt" isn't the game or engine. In fact, it actually has a really good "support" for modding and such (thought there are still a couple of problems and limitations). What I meant is support from Bethesda, primaly in the form of tools and such. Look, we didn't even get a tool to create nif files, the only file format the game accepts for game models, until FO4. And even THAT is pretty much shit, as it requires an outdated version of 3DS Max, which is basicly unaffordable if you aren't a student or something. And don't let me get started about that huge buggy crashfest called "creation kit" (honestly, if THAT is the official tool they used to make the game, I'm not surprised that the game is a buggy shitfest that it is).

 

Yes, Bethesda gave us a game with very good support for mods, but they don't give a fuck about providing us the tools we actually need in order to really make mods for it. It doesn't help if the game easily can work with all mods created for it without much of a hassle, but we don't have any working tools to actually create the mods. Instead, have a look at Starbound. They basicly have only one tool released for their game: One that can pack and unpack files into a mod package. And thats basicly all the fucking things we need to make pretty much any kind of mod for the game! Sure, there are still a couple of engine limitations (e.g. not being able to extend the amount of changeable body parts for character creation), but the amount of things you can mod in the game is far exceeding what you could do with skyrim without having to rely on community made tools just for this game/engine  (SKSE, nif exporter, TES4Edit, etc). And I'd say that even with those tools, Starbound still has much more potential.

And yes, Starbound isn't a AAA game, but that doesn't change anything here. Other examples would be: Hammerwatch, Don't Starve, Dying Light (which is AAA).

[Whizkid]

well at least bethesda has not jump onto the lootboxes bandwagon or releasing DLC priced at half the cost of a new game as in xcom and now civ 6, imo comparing bethesda to these greedy EA,Activision,2k,blizzard they have lots of catching up, but their model i.e. with paid mods is modest as compared to the other scheme of things.

 

my 2 cents

[Knaeggchen]

45 minutes ago, Whizkid said:

well at least bethesda has not jump onto the lootboxes bandwagon or releasing DLC priced at half the cost of a new game as in xcom and now civ 6, imo comparing bethesda to these greedy EA,Activision,2k,blizzard they have lots of catching up, but their model i.e. with paid mods is modest as compared to the other scheme of things.

 

my 2 cents

Personally, I think that paid mods are far worse than just cosmetic lootboxes. As long as those lootboxes ARE just cosmetic. You aren't left out from any gameplay or whatsoever by not buying those lootboxes, as they are simply that - skins.

 

I'm perfectly fine with any game that offers paid lootboxes for cosmetics only.

[allfather123]

Oh look, another thread of a completely different subject that turned into Oldrim > Special Edition. How nice.

[finalx31]

On 11/29/2017 at 10:19 AM, Knaeggchen said:

Personally, I think that paid mods are far worse than just cosmetic lootboxes. As long as those lootboxes ARE just cosmetic. You aren't left out from any gameplay or whatsoever by not buying those lootboxes, as they are simply that - skins.

 

I'm perfectly fine with any game that offers paid lootboxes for cosmetics only.

lootboxes for starwars battlefront 1 increased aim etc (seriously default aim is stormtrooper aim xD), lootboxes for shadow of war was orcs, basically soldiers in your army. both have a direct effect on gameplay. it's not industry standard yet, but it's realistically only a matter of time.

 

a similar trend that's been around for a while even in older games is day 1 dlc. like i mentioned before in mass effect, there was some alien guy that had a full story and everything. Those still carry over to games today. loot boxes are just another method for games to be cut into bits and pieces to be sold. and like someone else said that bethesda is no where near EA standards, it's actually really lucrative to be an asshole....so why would they stop?

On 11/29/2017 at 2:20 PM, allfather123 said:

Oh look, another thread of a completely different subject that turned into Oldrim > Special Edition. How nice.

wtf are you talking about?

[Guest]

Another upside is that Bethesda just saved me money from buying their future games c:

[Knaeggchen]

On 12/1/2017 at 6:24 AM, finalx31 said:

lootboxes for starwars battlefront 1 increased aim etc (seriously default aim is stormtrooper aim xD), lootboxes for shadow of war was orcs, basically soldiers in your army. both have a direct effect on gameplay. it's not industry standard yet, but it's realistically only a matter of time.

 

a similar trend that's been around for a while even in older games is day 1 dlc. like i mentioned before in mass effect, there was some alien guy that had a full story and everything. Those still carry over to games today. loot boxes are just another method for games to be cut into bits and pieces to be sold. and like someone else said that bethesda is no where near EA standards, it's actually really lucrative to be an asshole....so why would they stop?

That's why I said cosmetic boxes. I am very well aware that there are plenty of games that offer lootboxes with direct or indirect affects to gameplay. And these are complete bullshit, no matter how you do it. Being able to buy alternative gameplay elements or even a direct upgrade just kills the whole fun of a game. Even more so in competitive oriented games.

 

And while it's true that microtransactions and/or lootboxes can be a reason to cut a game into pieces, it doesn't mean that it always is. Dedicated fans that want to further support the game/studio can spend more money (as much as they feel like) on it, which gives the studio the necessary funding to keep supporting and expanding the game. For example: I'm pretty sure that Overwatch wouldn't had been able to have that many skins and cosmetics if it weren't for the lootboxes. And I don't see how they would had cut the game into different pieces that forces you to spend more money to get all the stuff you want. I haven't paid a single cent for any lootbox in the game, yet I have most of the items in the game already. Nor would I feel excluded or something if I were forced to only use the standart skins.

But at the end of the day it's up to the developer and how they design the game. It's true that you could easily just cut out some of the content and make it day1dlc. But the very same thing could also be used to reduce the price of the base game, making it more accessable for more people without bloating the game and the price too much. It's all up to the execution of it, but that doesn't mean that microtransactions, lootboxes and DLCs are a bad thing on their own.

[xbrrrty]

The entire point of Skyrim for me is the modding and the spirit of making mods for free. The completely vanilla game is poor imo but add many mods that you enjoy and it becomes an absolutely fantastic experience that you can keep coming back to for years and years. Creation Club mods are just rubbish, they are also very poorly introduced and as such are immersion breaking. Free mods are not going anywhere as at least on PC we generally don't accpt the lazy and greedy milking for sub-par DLC that ends up being seriously inferior to free created mods.

 

 Having put time into SSE, it's clearly superior in so many ways except of course having to convert mods that won't work with SSE and maybe some ENB features that have been lost. SKSE64 will improve and mods like Racemenu will make their way over and Sexlab will be back to what it is with classic Skyrim. It'll just take some more time which is totally fine. Bethesda can continue selling their stupid CC crap, that's their decision just as it is mine to say no thanks, not going to happen. "CC" like Dawnguard (back when it was released and not in the legendary edition) etc is a different story and totally worthwhile. More of that quality and less of the lazy and thoughtless CC.

 

 

[RickenMorty]

Call me optimistic, but I got into modding simply because 64 is so much more stable, the tools are well established, the community is still large and active, and I finally built a computer. I just hit a major milestone in my first project ever. And while it was an incredibly modest project, a simple conversion of another mod, doesn't mean that I won't keep doing this stuff and others don't seem to be wanting to stop any time soon either. If more people gain interest in the same fashion that I did then when we all start learning the tools as well as the old guard the mods will continue to flow. I'm brimming with joy playing Skyrim again this last year, I certainly can't be the only one that not only enjoys the game but is willing to take the time to learn the necessary skills to continue modding and keep the game alive. Idk, new here, just my $.02