Modding communities that place developers to shame

[irani_che]

Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines
The mods and Fan patches are worth a whole game themselves


anyone else sad that now mods will basically be stopped by DRM or just be DLC

 

[Avaholic03]

No mention of the Starcraft/Warcraft modders yet? Some of the SC2 mods are better than the actual game. Didn't someone make World of Starcraft inside SC2? That's impressive. Some of the mods are good enough to be full games (i.e. DOTA).

 

[Worgen]

Can't believe everyone forgot "Black Mesa". That's gonna put Valves attempt at "Half Life: Source" in the bin.

the problem with black mesa is that its never going to come out

 

[DasDestroyer]

This is true of most games that are:
- good
- realtively easy to mod

As a result there are usually way more modders than developers, the modders don't have a time limit, they can create a mod with absolutely any theme - unlike the developers they aren't bound by the game's original ideas. And as time goes on the mods become better and better.

 

[jonyboy13]

Warcraft 3. The custom games are... Well, epic. Footies, dota, all the orpgs, hero line wars, TD(!) and most important, run kitty run

 

[ruben6f]

I don't believe that the modding communities place developers to shame, modders don't have deadlines among other chalenges that developers find, also the games you mentioned have great mods because the games are very easy to mod if you know how, and this happens because the developers made a easy game to mod so modders can go nuts with their projects.

You need to add total war mods to the list, the mods for the total war games are awsome.

 

[Wintermoot]

Oblivion,s THEY ACTUALLY FIX BUGS!

 

[SenorNemo]

Command & Conquer: Generals is not a bad game, but by far the best part of it is the fact that it's very modder friendly, and still has a pretty nice community. There's at least one mod out there that I would not hesitate calling better than the actual game.

 

[Marter]

When it was still around, DoubleMinor was a great community for NHL mods. NHLDepot is still around as far as I know, and it's fine, but it wasn't quite as good as DoubleMinor was.

As for a reason, well, they can put as much time and resources into a specific mod as they want, while developers need to put specific time and resources into each part, given time and budget restraints. Basically what the first responder said. XD

 

[AnnaIME]

The Sims - all iterations. From looks to objects to new gameplay. And lots and lots of bugfixes. Sims 3 would be unplayable without the community bugfixes.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

The Knights of the Old Republic 2 modding community. They saved the game from oblivion.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Going to have to put a vote in for the Total War Community. Why?
Two words.
Europa Barbarorum.
There are plenty of great mods for the various games in the series but that one is pretty special.

Also, Oblivion has plenty of great mods too.

The only mod that has come close to EB is Roma Surrectum 2. The advances with the engine their team made were absolutely stunning. They added bloom, realistic trees and forests, rolling hills, and downwards flowing water.

 

[The-Epicly-Named-Man]

Cue Mojang hate!

OT; Probably Oblivion's. The amount mods that fix every little problem with the game is staggering.

Edit; Oh, I just remembered that Starcraft 2 mod that turns it into an MMO. I'll pick that then.

 

[Halceon]

Pretty much any mod that has been later developed into a stand-alone game deserves to be compared to the original devs. Or rather, the designers.
Because mods have one extremely significant shortcut - they never need to develop an engine. The difference is between building an awesome fort on top of a wild mountain amid a swamp and building an awesome fort from stack of bricks on a levelled mountain with some scaffolds already in place.

 

[zehydra]

Yes, to the first two
Never played the third
And hell no. I've never seen a good mod for Oblivion or Morrowind.

 

[The Funslinger]

I guess the best explanation comes on two fronts.
Firstly, that modding communities don't have a deadline for release, and most of the best examples are released many years after the game is already out.
Secondly, modding communities focus and work on one particular mod or element, or a certain piece to improve on. So instead of building and polishing a whole game their focus is on buffing one piece of a puzzle.

Not to say developers shouldn't take a few lessons from their modders.

Plus, a lot of them do it because they love the game. So money isn't really an issue, and when it is, it's usually a very negotiable deal done over PayPal. Shame a lot of big products get slammed by the companies, such as the Morrowind in Oblivion's engine thing. Shame, because it wouldn't have hit sales much (people are excited for Skyrim) and if they'd acknowledged it and let it slide, it would have been great publicity.

 

[The Funslinger]

Going to have to put a vote in for the Total War Community. Why?
Two words.
Europa Barbarorum.
There are plenty of great mods for the various games in the series but that one is pretty special.

Also, Oblivion has plenty of great mods too.

The only mod that has come close to EB is Roma Surrectum 2. The advances with the engine their team made were absolutely stunning. They added bloom, realistic trees and forests, rolling hills, and downwards flowing water.

I was greatly pleased about Westoros: Total War for Medieval 2.

I like to think that word of that had some influence on the up coming Song of Ice and Fire game.

 

[Blunderboy]

Going to have to put a vote in for the Total War Community. Why?
Two words.
Europa Barbarorum.
There are plenty of great mods for the various games in the series but that one is pretty special.

Also, Oblivion has plenty of great mods too.

The only mod that has come close to EB is Roma Surrectum 2. The advances with the engine their team made were absolutely stunning. They added bloom, realistic trees and forests, rolling hills, and downwards flowing water.

Just looked that up, could not believe it was for RTW.
Guess what I'll be downloading later?

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Going to have to put a vote in for the Total War Community. Why?
Two words.
Europa Barbarorum.
There are plenty of great mods for the various games in the series but that one is pretty special.

Also, Oblivion has plenty of great mods too.

The only mod that has come close to EB is Roma Surrectum 2. The advances with the engine their team made were absolutely stunning. They added bloom, realistic trees and forests, rolling hills, and downwards flowing water.

Just looked that up, could not believe it was for RTW.
Guess what I'll be downloading later?

Just to warn you, it is a BIG mod. You either have to download it in seven parts, or as one multi gigabyte torrent.