Poll: Are all mods doomed?

[NeverAiling]

The latest completed MOD I played was Djipi's retexture of Ocarina of Time, to a delightful cell-shaded look.

OoT foes really well with the cell-shaded look. I liked it. But parts of the game were not fully-re-textured. Large parts. The texpack was complete only in the sense that Djipi had redone all the texture that he/she had planned on redoing.

Is that the best a mod can ever be? A finished, but incomplete reskin? What happened to Zelda Online? To Starsiege: 2045. To Project Revolution?

Are all mods doomed?

 

[sirdanrhodes]

That was merely a retexture, not a full blown mod.

 

[Kiutu]

I never liked user mods, one of my lesser reasons for lacking interest in PC gaming. They do not always work, and when online is involved, can make the game very chaotic and distorted. I doubt that mods are doomed though, since people will always want some other thing that some guy can just make themselves and have as a mod download. I know my friend who plays Morrowind on PC alot has modded it beyond belief.

 

[Simriel]

Half. Life. Two. Nuff said.

 

[Mariena]

Who are you kidding? Take a look at Half Life's mod list. Or take a look at Rome: Total War's mod list (or medieval 2 for that matter). Or Mount and Blade's community which is pretty much all about mods. Operation Flashpoint and Armed assault..

Mods are the game in many cases. They take the vanilla game and improve it on all sides. Without mods, many games would have died out. There's a reason people are still playing games from the year 2000.

This is one of the main reasons I'll never invest in consoles.

 

[NeverAiling]

Ok. Half-Life 2 has mods going for it. But come on, how many others? Morrowind? There were at least 500 TINY little piece mods. I think the most significant content I could find was a patch that let my tiger man walk around with realistically swinging balls.

And my point with retextures was how basic they are. Let me ask you this:

Why hasn't Team Gizka released the Restoration Mod yet? Why haven't they posted in 2 years?

That's what I just don't get. Why do things get abandoned? Its weird how the internet is littered with the corpses of failed mods. They just stay there, forever undecaying, forever incomplete.

 

[Mariena]

Ok. Half-Life 2 has mods going for it. But come on, how many others? Morrowind? There were at least 500 TINY little piece mods. I think the most significant content I could find was a patch that let my tiger man walk around with realistically swinging balls.

And my point with retextures was how basic they are. Let me ask you this:

Why hasn't Team Gizka released the Restoration Mod yet? Why haven't they posted in 2 years?

That's what I just don't get. Why do things get abandoned? Its weird how the internet is littered with the corpses of failed mods. They just stay there, forever undecaying, forever incomplete.

Honestly. Look up the games I listed. I'll add Oblivion to it, as well. Mechwarrior 4. Warzone 2100. Falcon 4. Enemy Engaged series, which has become open source (OpenEECH), just like OpenFalcon 4 and OpenTTD.

Why do things get abandoned? Simple:

Guy has great idea. The idea of making a chronicles of Riddick mod for Medieval 2 Total War! Awesome, he thinks. I love Medieval 2, and I love Riddick. He has an idea, and is excited about it. However, he did not think things through. He doesn't have a team, no leadership, no goal. He needs modellers, texturers, storywriters, mission makers, balancers, testers.. A whole team.

There are mod teams that can pull this off, and they are organized. Obviously, there are a lot more unorganized mods that just die off because they lose interest.

The only way for things to improve is when mod teams cooperate, join together, work together. But hey, getting a community on the internet organized is going to be as easy as telling xbox live players to have their balls dropped and stop saying sexual and racist slurs.

 

[McMo0^]

Theres a large chance the guy didn't realise all the work that was involved with retexturing a full game. The fact he didn't release it as a beta and just shoved out an incompleted retex is nothing short of stupid.

As its been said the half life series of mods is rediculous. As i recall Jedi Knight outcast and academy had a very strong modding community. Don't know if it still does, as the game doesn't work with my new gfx card

Theres also some cnc 3 mods in the pipeline, and i'm pretty sure that every other game that can be modded, is being modded. The problem really is most game developers don't allow people to tinker with thier game.

 

[Booze Zombie]

There's a website entitled "The mod DB", this site alone is the evidence that modding is not dead.

 

[JemJar]

This ended up being far longer than I meant... sorry

Mods are free projects with likely no commercial game done for nowt but love of a game and a bonkers idea (don't flame me, some of the best innovations in any field are bonkers).

Like all free projects people do though, it's hard to keep the motivation up. Most people, when undertaking a project which isn't work or education based, struggle to find the motivation to follow through to completion.

Similarly, as noted by Mariena, most mods are solo efforts and one person is more likely to give up than two or three - which is why one of the most common bits of advice for a fitness regime is "get a buddy to exercise with". As soon as someone else's effort is on the line, people feel guilty about letting the other guy down. Especially since it'll invariably be a close friend.

But, as so many people have already said, good mods do get finished. Look up almost any PC game and you will be able to find mods for it, whether purely functional, interface customisation, new rules (armies/abilities/weapons) or just a map pack. They'll range from the truly worthwhile to monumentally crap, granted - new rules are generally totally unbalanced - but they're there.

The main thing really affecting the modding community is the rise of DLC. Now that developers can release their own mods for their games and make money, there's less space for shoddy mod work and less demand for the good stuff.

Other side issues cause some problems, such as the rise of console gaming and Oblivion-esque "port to PC" attitudes - on the one hand leading to greater demand to make the interface remotely useable (still bitter) but on the other often reducing effort in providing support for mods, like the modlaunchers built into certain games.

 

[NeverAiling]

Everyone does have a point. There are alot of mods out there. I guess I never took a survey to see if they were all completed or not.

But I honestly can't remember ever playing a large mod that didn't end with "So basically of x,y,z, we accomplsihed... w... and yeah that's it."

Half Life is a good example of large mods completed, for both you know. And there are open source games, (i was just playing Forsaken, or Project X), I guess.

But come one, am I the only one that didn't see Project Revolution coming? I though starcraft and warcraft are more popular than jesus, surely this mod will get completed.

And then it died a horrible death. Like so many other mods. A few of which I mentioned.

 

[itsnotyouitsme]

Ok, if you said "most mods" then i would have said yes. But every now and then there is a good mod. For instance, Zombie Panic, a mod for Half-life 2. And if that's not what your talking about theirs several oblivion, morrowind, and Fallout 3 mods that are just peachy.

 

[AlphaOmega]

www.blackmesasource.com

Nuff Said.

 

[McClaud]

There's also like a ton of completed mods for Tribes as well.

But come one, am I the only one that didn't see Project Revolution coming? I though starcraft and warcraft are more popular than jesus, surely this mod will get completed.

And then it died a horrible death. Like so many other mods. A few of which I mentioned.

That project was way too ambitious for its own good. That's why it died, if you ask me.

 

[S.H.A.R.P.]

www.blackmesasource.com

Nuff Said.

Agreed, though not finished, I can't see this project failing. I'm really looking forward to this mod!

 

[zebrin]

Depending on the effort put into a mod, and the skill of the modder, some mods are actually rather impressive.
Mind you, there is a LOT of ... well... Crap, out there. But every so often a good mod will come out that just shines.

 

[Sketchy]

There are some mods that are better than full retail games, and much cheaper.

So nah, they're not doomed, as browsing ModDB I still find mods I want to play every time.

 

[Eipok Kruden]

My favorite game, Star Wars: Empire At War, has more mods than I can count. Tons of total conversions. Also, if you're looking for a professional full mod, check out Black Mesa at http://www.blackmesasource.com

 

[L4Y Duke]

Mods... dying out?

Not a freaking chance in hell.

True, some games are easier to mod than others, but its also true that modding is significantly easier than making a game from scratch, particularly if you only want to add objects to an already released game.

Thus, if people want it, it shall be modded.

 

[Remleiz]

i think the best mod i ever played was a mod of Quake 1 called 'Malice'
that was awesome, new enemies, new weapons, new game mechanics