Battlefield 4 Won't Support Mods

[el derpenburgo]

Let's recap:

·Battlefield 1942 comes out to a general 'meh' from the audience, and horrible bugs

·A Modding group creates Desert Combat and Bf1942's popularity skyrockets

This is a really good point. Everyone aged > 20ish(?) today will remember the thriving mod community that 1942 and (to a much lesser extent) Vietnam had and it was certainly the game that got me interested in mods and PC gaming in general. BF1942 should have died very quickly, but it persisted because of that aspect, and the same goes for BF2. This wasn't a bad thing, it was just good games becoming great, in modern terms it was awesome and free DLC that was constantly being updated. I guess EA looked at this and thought it meant less of a market for newer iterations of a franchise.

I dislike how PC gaming is slowly becoming console gaming with a mouse and keyboard. Even RTSes, once the go-to genre for modders, have been dropping mod support for pricey DLC. I'd start gaming more on consoles if games weren't so much cheaper on PC, seriously, that is almost the only difference nowadays.

edit: But yes, I know I'm living in a fantasy dreamworld and big companies need to keep on recouping their huge operating costs annually with assembly line sequels. But I need to rant at this issue, it sucks.

 

[afroebob]

I don't see this as a big deal. I mean seriously, its not like I really need another reason not to buy this game, there are already more than enough.

 

[josemlopes]

Pretty sure Bad Company didn't support mods, and pretty sure Bad Company 2 didn't support mods. BF3 doesn't support mods, and now BF4 isn't going to support mods.

How are we surprised by this? Feels like a lot of grasping at straws to get a 'news' story together.

It sort of is, but people have wanted a moddable Battlefield game for a while and EA seems to completely ignore them, claiming they will look into it later down the road with each new release. Personally, I've never ran any of their games on PC ever since Origin became a required download for them.

honestly the only mod I ever liked for a Battlefield game was the Star Wars mod for Battlefield 2.

everything else just added new maps or weapons, they could hardly be called a mod. More like an item pack. Very few actually added game assets to the mix, and the number of Total Conversions was in the amazing single digits.


I remember the days when mods actually changed gameplay, like turning Quake 3 Arena into a tactical squad based shooter akin to Counterstrike.

Dude, Forgotten Hope 2 and Project Reality both shit all over Battlefield 3 in terms of game design, in a game where jets can glide incredibly slow and chase infantry with their machine guns then there isnt much else to expect from it. Mods are really good to tweak things if they are needed and BF3 really needs a lot of tweaks, unfortanly BF4 looks like it will have the same flaws.

EDIT:

 

[Lazy Kitty]

They want to protect their engine?
Then give the people modding tools.

Not doing it will only result in people cracking open the engine to be able to make mods.

 

[Jamous]

Not going to lie, things like this always disappoint me. It doesn't matter how big the community is, so long as there are a handful of people modding the game there should be support there. Limited support, maybe, but support all the same.

 

[UltimatheChosen]

Maybe I'm underestimating the amount of work it takes to allow users to do things in their own time.

It depends a lot on how things are set up.

Remember the whole Battlefield 3 thing where DICE said the game was too complex for mods, and the community said "nuh-uh, we can handle it", and then DICE explained that you'd need multiple high-end computers just to compile a map, and even then it would take days, and even then it would probably crash and require multiple attempts. And that they'd need to pay millions of dollars for different licensing agreements for the middleware they use (like physics engines). And that it would take up to a year of development time to get the development tools into a user-friendly state. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.299016-DICE-Says-No-to-Mod-Tools-For-Battlefield-3?page=3#11875552]

What you need to keep in mind is that in a lot of cases, the tools that companies use for internal development are not designed to be used by anyone outside of the company, meaning that they may be incredibly confusing or have horrific bugs that you need to know how to avoid. It's not as simple as saying "here, the game is open for mods, have at it"-- it's incredibly difficult to pull it off without building the engine to support it from the ground up, and the Frostbite engine... well, it wasn't designed for that. Even the BF3 mod that's referenced in the news post only claims to unlock pre-existing dev tools that allow you to do things like adjust lighting, and are not full-fledged mod tools.

I think this is what they're talking about when they say "we don't want to do it unless we can do it 100%". Any mod tools they released would either be extremely limited, leading to complaints, or so convoluted and buggy that people would complain even more. Or both.

That's not to say that they shouldn't support mods, but it's far from trivial to do so, and saying "how hard can it be" is not an effective argument to make.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

This is an EA game, why is anyone surprised that this doesn't support mods? EA don't want a community of dedicated fans who enjoy their games, keep their games alive for years after release, expand the game beyond the original scope, add new ideas and polish it to a mirror finish. What publisher wants that?

EA game development cycle:

- Develop game
- Remove 10% from game
- Sell game
- Sell previously removed 10% in 5x 2% increments
- Develop same game again with new maps, increment number on box
- Repeat Steps 2-5

Skyrim has a great modding community and the professional DLC still sells by the boatload. By keeping their games off Steam and not giving us toolsets, they're hurting themselves more than us.