MCM is out! - modders awake!(?)

[Lifty]

So we finally have a genuine MCM (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/21497/?) for Fallout 4. Remembering that this was the main inhibition for modders to develop their ideas and projects, why not start now? If you were gonna do it, now seems the right time.

[Stuzy44]

i find my balls the best place to start.if i can reach..a good sniff..then a lick...sorry got off subject..mods will follow on this..time tells

[Chosen Clue]

It's been out for a while. But there are several reasons as to why there are no big ideas and projects using MCM (or big and ambitious mods for FO4 in general)

 

There's less interactions that papyrus can do with the newer MCM than with the older one from skyrim. All that I can see that you can do through papyrus is update int, float, bool, and string variables, which isn't enough to make mods just as extensive as skyrim mods. As it's menus are made via JSONs, it's a different beast that needs to be handled differently and will take some training for mod makers to be able to use.

 

Not to mention that there are limitations to this new MCM that the old one didn't have. If you wanted to add a list of a bunch of actors affected by a mod into the MCM menu itself, it's just not possible without some hacky page preallocation workaround. You'd have to have a MCM page that has loads of blank slots so that papyrus can fill them with values, and all of the things you'd want to load into the MCM menu would have to be written down in the settings INI file for MCM to read and then display in the menu. That would make the settings INI for the mod look goofy as heck and fill it with lots of blank spaces, and it'd cause some minor bloat in the ModName.ini MCM file if the mod make didn't understand that they'd need to do manual garbage cleaning on the file to remove the temporary settings.

 

There just needs to be more kinds of papyrus functions that can dynamically change and add to the MCM pages to make MCM complete in a way like skyrim was, and just enough to make it superior to it's predecessor in the fact that it'd be easier to set up.

 

 Another reason for the lack of big mods is because there just isn't the modderbase at the moment for fallout 4 here on LL. It just isn't growing as fast as skyrim did. The fallout series is something I guess the LL community isn't as interested in as Elder scrolls. And if this survey for an in-development LL community game is indicative of anything, it shows that LL users like fantasy more than post-apoc. Which might contribute to the fact that there are just less FO4 modders than there are Skyrim ones.

 

It also doesn't help that the quality of the base game and the type of game helps determine how many modders stick around. And from what I've seen, people consider Fallout 4 to be the second worst "Fallout" game, only beaten out by, ECH, Brotherhood of Steel.

 

Not to mention that it's technically still the "early" modding phase for FO4. However, it's been (WOW) two years since it's come out. Which is 1/3 of the lifespan of skyrim's modding.

 

So to compare to skyrim's modding popularity. Lets assume that both games' modding communities grow linearly (which it definitely doesn't). If Skyrim's modding linearly scaled in growth, and we're using the total amount of posts here on LL for skyrim's section (roughly one million posts) as a baseline for how popular skyrim is here, Fallout 4's modding on LL should be 1/3 the size of Skyrim's popularity or more right now, or basically 333k posts. Right now Fallout 4's LL section only has 50k posts, so it's waaaaaay behind where it should be.

 

However, if we were to apply that linear growth model to compare the amount of nexus downloads for skyrim and fallout 4 mods, we'll see only a slightly similar trend over there. Skyrim has 1.3 billion downloads (roughly) and fallout4 should have 400 million, but has roughly 300 million, which is only behind the growth estimate by 100 million. So it's definitely less popular over here, but more popular over there, I think.

 

Non of this is fully scientific, so please take it with a fist full of salt (I haven't taken statistics class in a while :P). But I do believe it to be indicative of how active the game's modding communities are for each game, and it seems that Fallout 4 has staggered behind skyrim. I don't think Fallout 4 will pass the same modding popularity that skyrim has, simply because the games are just different and appeal to different audiences.

[Guest O.Cobblepot]

SKYRIM... damn,i am looking at that game from time to time and trying to understand WHY people love it so much,and i never find answer...

[Jazzman]

5 hours ago, burbis said:

SKYRIM... damn,i am looking at that game from time to time and trying to understand WHY people love it so much,and i never find answer...

Well, @Chosen Clue above is pretty much into statistics, so lemme give you a statistical explanation for Skyrim's extraordinary 'popularity'. It took the Nexus some eight years to reach four million members. Though between 2010 and today the number of their members has almost quadrupled, meaning, up to twelve million additional members have (or have not due to a massive increase in the offered game palette on site in the past years) played Skyrim as their first fantasy RPG made by Bethesda. You see? We're dealing with an army of 'noobs' that became fans (and modders), and as usual, the very first game of a genre is, if one likes it, the one played most extensively and over a longer period of time than anything that came before or might come after. So, if ever, we should compare Skyrim (2011) with a (by many longstanding post-apocalypse fans not well-received) Fallout New Vegas (2010)...

 

Have a good one 

[Veladarius]

MCM isn't as necessary in Fallout as you can always use terminals and the pipboy to run a holotape that has all the settings in it.

 

I think the difficulties come down to these things:

- Bodies were drastically changed and the tools needed to make/convert outfits generally uses some expensive software. This is why there are so many retextures of things, as soon as someone releases a new outfit you tend to see a bunch retextures of it within a week or so.

- Dialogue system has completely changed compared to Skyrim. From what I have seen all the dialogue is handled within the scenes instead of scenes and dialogue being separate as they have been up until now. I think a lot of people are not used to using scenes as most Skyrim mods have few of them and primarily just use dialogue or use scripting to do movement.

- Too many major things happen only through the main quest advancement and it is hard to ignore it as it blocks off a lot of things. Skyrim's main quest is fairly easy to ignore, I have not gone more than the fight in Karthwasten in years.

 

There are some good mods out there and frameworks for things are starting to appear though most are somewhat rough but it is a start. There are a lot of places to go to but most all of them are used in a quest in some way or another so available space for things is at a premium. FONV was empty and boring (my opinion, I like to explore) and FO3 had lot of places that were not used for anything other than someplace to find (perfect for me).

 

I would make mods for FO4 but the first one I feel that would need made would be to rewrite the main quest and the second is to finish all of the plot opportunities that were left hanging in the wind.

[Guest O.Cobblepot]

2 hours ago, Jazzman said:

Well, @Chosen Clue above is pretty much into statistics, so lemme give you a statistical explanation for Skyrim's extraordinary 'popularity'. It took the Nexus some eight years to reach four million members. Though between 2010 and today the number of their members has almost quadrupled, meaning, up to twelve million additional members have (or have not due to a massive increase in the offered game palette on site in the past years) played Skyrim as their first fantasy RPG made by Bethesda. You see? We're dealing with an army of 'noobs' that became fans (and modders), and as usual, the very first game of a genre is, if one likes it, the one played most extensively and over a longer period of time than anything that came before or might come after. So, if ever, we should compare Skyrim (2011) with a (by many longstanding post-apocalypse fans not well-received) Fallout New Vegas (2010)...

 

Have a good one 

Got it :) I have no further arguments.
For respect to all Skyrim players out there ;)

[allsunday]

I have over 800 hours in Fallout 4.  8 hundred.  About 80% of that time is modding the game because it's really a pathetic game in all honesty.  Even if there's an official MCM menu for Fallout 4 now, the game is so shit that I doubt any of the more popular or creative modders will take time to develop mods for it. The more people who play the game, then the more modders for that game, and the more modders we have, then the more creative and amazing mods we will all see. 

 

Unfortunately, with Bethesda effectively over-complicating the modding process for Fallout 4 and the poor reception of the Creation Club, Fallout 4 is just going to continue getting more unpopular.  Did I mention it's also a shit game?  Not to mention also all the drama that surrounds the modding community when people take other people's mods and abuse them.  Many great modders have disappeared altogether, I'm not happy to say this but I doubt even the next Elder Scrolls game would have the crazy awesome modding community that Skyrim had in its heyday.  The only reason why Skyrim is still popular even today is because of the modding community.  Modding was so good that it even got the console treatment, further increasing the lifespan of Skyrim.  Bethesda milking the fuck out of this for all its worth.

 

I'm not asking for too much, all I really want is for Fallout 4 to get an HDT High Heels or a Net Immerse Override.  Every high heel mod I see for Fallout 4 looks ugly AF.  Cankles anyone?  Fucking cankles.  If Fallout 4 ever fixes the high heels I'd definitely go back to the Commonwealth again.