Valve Hasn't Given up on Paid Mods

[Magmarock]

Mods are awesome and games are awesome. But if one must mod a game to enjoy a game then said game mustn't be very good.

Not quite. A terrible game game can't really be improved by modding (most of the time). If it's bad, you're not going to be able to fix that by tweaking minor values.

An excellent game can be improved, but it sets the bar very high for modders. It doesn't mean they can't improve a title, but most of the time the kinds of mods you're looking at are ones that skew for specific demographics.

Far Cry modding is a good example of this. The basic games play pretty well. The popular mods tend to push the game towards much more brutal game. On the whole, this is not something most fans want from the franchise (as evidenced by the hatred for Far Cry 2). They make the game better for people who want that experience, but they're in a minority.

This is a "not for everybody" argument, but it's also a major part of where modding can really improve a game for people. It's not about making the game "better" but fine tailoring it to your tastes.

Skyrim... is not an excellent game. It's okay. Modding allows players to custom tailor the game to their tastes. You'll see people say, "oh, yeah, Skyrim absolutely needs mods to be playable." You'll see people who will say Frostfall is an absolutely vital mod, while I look at that and say, "fuck that; I'm playing a fantasy superhero with the ability to breathe fire, who heals off injuries like Wolverine. Why would I want to freeze to death?"

The universal must have mods are trimming up the egregious problems with the game, like SkyUI. But, after that, the things you "need" depend on your preferences.

This does two things. One you can keep swapping a game around to keep it fresh. Yeah, it's still the same game, but the way you actually play it can change drastically depending on how it's been modified. So you're playing a game years after you would have abandoned if it was a fixed experience. That's not hyperbole, we're coming up on 5 years out from the game's release, and still talking about it. How many 2011 releases can you still find in the PC games isle (or what's left of it anyway)? Second, it creates an incredibly tailored experience that will sync up with your tastes. When people are saying, "you need these mods," what they really mean is, "I need these mods to turn it into my dream game." And, that's honestly pretty impressive.

I never cared for Skyrim always thought it was boring. Nothing against modding but if a whole lot of mods start appearing for a game shortly after its release, it's not a good sign.

 

[Lightknight]

Sure, and a good reward for picking cotton can be the satisfaction of seeing people wear the shirts made from it. I'm unsure how the satisfaction of a job well done means we shouldn't pay people for their labor or even allow them to ask for pay.

Making mods does NOT equal picking cotton, or really any physical labor. That's a bad analogy.

Your argument was that because there is the reward of a job well done then they should be deprived of being paid for said labor. You may not like the analogy but that's a pretty valid reduction absurdum showing the conclusion of your premise. Being able to enjoy one's work does not mean that compensation is optional unless the worker wants it to be.

They can ask for anything they want, anyone should be allowed to beg for money. Trying to insist on being paid is the problem, and what won't be allowed to happen.

If street performers suddenly decided that they wanted a salary from taxes, I'd have the same reaction.

You believe that them being able to charge x dollars for a product they are selling is equivalent to street performers demanding a salary?

Street performer's works are not generally transactional works. Like, you don't pay them $2 to perform smoke on the water in G. They just play music, good or bad, and if someone walks by and likes what they hear then they have the option to put money in the hat. Their work isn't even necessarily consumed. It is just out there in the ether in the desperate hopes that they'll be rewarded for it.

Now, if someone recorded their music and gave it away for free online then they'd have every right to complain about it being done without their consent. They would also be expected to have the right to sell their works online because that IS a transaction-based process.

Modders have produced a good. They have every right to ask whatever amount they want to charge for it. They just aren't guaranteed that anyone will buy it for that or any price. But they should not have to give it away for free for the same reason a street performer should not have to play music for free if they don't want to.

I can't tell if you're not understanding what I'm saying, or ignoring it. There's a difference between asking for money, and demanding it.

? If you walk into a store and they have $1 as the price of their good, do you think they're "asking for money" or saying you have to pay that if you want their product? Asking for money is what beggars or street performers do on the street. It isn't what people who are selling a product for a specified price are doing. Are you imagining some sort of scenario where the forces that be are reaching into the wallets of consumers and taking money out of it? No one is advocating forcing consumers to buy any product. But there is nothing wrong with consumers having to pay for the products they consume.

 

[Lightknight]

1. Good luck with legal action against Bethesda. I'm sure if you are allowed to put up your work for sale, you'll have to agree to not taking any legal action against Bethesda.

Contracts preventing legal remediation aren't legal or honored in court where negligence is at play.

2. You're taking my comment too literally. I called it lazy because by the way things are going, they are just going to cut out more content from the base game and sell it. Hence, they don't have to work so much on expansion, other DLC, or whatever.

3. It may not benefit them to do shoddy work, but that doesn't stop them from doing it all the time.

You're talking about the AAA publisher? Right now they're in a situation where mods are doing exactly this but for free. I'm not sure how paying the modders would impact the AAA developer.

 

[Frankster]

Of course they haven't. Called it on Day 1, these fuckers are gonna keep trying to sneak it past until they finally succeed.

We must be eternally vigilant here, but tbh they will inevitably get their way eventually :/ Gamers are fickle and easily distracted with the right tools, and valve is a master of psychological fuckery.

 

[Frankster]

hopeful snip

I really hope your right man. Gives me chills every time I see someone in threads like this passionately trying to convince us that being screwed over is a fantastic thing and we will totally love it.

Maybe that's why business types don't "get" modding. It has more in common with a hippe commune system then a capitalist one, with modders frequently using each others work and ressources, doing it for their own personal passions and the greater community because financial gain is the not their motivation. No wonder some people here compare modders to slaves due to not being paid for a "service", they really can't fucking understand what makes modding so beautiful and special.

 

[Starke]

Mods are awesome and games are awesome. But if one must mod a game to enjoy a game then said game mustn't be very good.

Not quite. A terrible game game can't really be improved by modding (most of the time). If it's bad, you're not going to be able to fix that by tweaking minor values.

An excellent game can be improved, but it sets the bar very high for modders. It doesn't mean they can't improve a title, but most of the time the kinds of mods you're looking at are ones that skew for specific demographics.

Far Cry modding is a good example of this. The basic games play pretty well. The popular mods tend to push the game towards much more brutal game. On the whole, this is not something most fans want from the franchise (as evidenced by the hatred for Far Cry 2). They make the game better for people who want that experience, but they're in a minority.

This is a "not for everybody" argument, but it's also a major part of where modding can really improve a game for people. It's not about making the game "better" but fine tailoring it to your tastes.

Skyrim... is not an excellent game. It's okay. Modding allows players to custom tailor the game to their tastes. You'll see people say, "oh, yeah, Skyrim absolutely needs mods to be playable." You'll see people who will say Frostfall is an absolutely vital mod, while I look at that and say, "fuck that; I'm playing a fantasy superhero with the ability to breathe fire, who heals off injuries like Wolverine. Why would I want to freeze to death?"

The universal must have mods are trimming up the egregious problems with the game, like SkyUI. But, after that, the things you "need" depend on your preferences.

This does two things. One you can keep swapping a game around to keep it fresh. Yeah, it's still the same game, but the way you actually play it can change drastically depending on how it's been modified. So you're playing a game years after you would have abandoned if it was a fixed experience. That's not hyperbole, we're coming up on 5 years out from the game's release, and still talking about it. How many 2011 releases can you still find in the PC games isle (or what's left of it anyway)? Second, it creates an incredibly tailored experience that will sync up with your tastes. When people are saying, "you need these mods," what they really mean is, "I need these mods to turn it into my dream game." And, that's honestly pretty impressive.

I never cared for Skyrim always thought it was boring. Nothing against modding but if a whole lot of mods start appearing for a game shortly after its release, it's not a good sign.

No, if mods start springing up immediately after a game launches, that's actually a very good sign. Because it means the game and community support that kind of customization.

Again, modding is something that works for players who don't want their games as a , "one size fits all, off the shelf." It lets you get access to styles of games that just don't sell well enough to exist as their own genres (either anymore, or ever).

So, when you look at Skyrim mods and find one that will kill your player through starvation, sleep deprivation, and thirst, you could choose to say, "well that should have been in the base game." But, no, it really didn't belong there. This is a feature for a kind of open world RPG that doesn't end up incredibly successful. Someone wanted it. (Judging by the downloads) quite a few people want that, though not enough to sustain a commercial release with that feature.

Also, and this one may sound self serving, they do point the developers where to go, and what to look at. Granted, New Vegas was by Obsidian and not Bethesda, but one of the frequent criticisms of that game was the incorporation of community mods into the base game design, and with Fallout 4 we (or at least I) can already see features they're touting which came from the mod community in Fallout 3 and NV.

That's not just a developer getting extra sales from mods, it's one saying, "you guys had some good ideas, and we're going to polish them up into something professional."

All of that said, Skyrim wasn't a great game. I enjoyed it, but I'm not going to pretend it was fantastic. But, modding is what lets you change it from a technically competent game into "exactly what I was looking for." The existence of mods doesn't mean a game is shit. It just means people in its fanbase are creative.

Also it lets you do irredeemably stupid things, like stick bolters and powered armor into a pseudo-medieval world, or turn every dragon into the late Randy Savage. 90% of everything is shit, this is just as true with mods.

 

[Starke]

My biggest concern with having paid mods - And I will admit it is a bit of a selfish one, is this:

I have 135 mods on my Skyrim Nexus account, 95 of which are currently active, and I have completely deleted about 100 other mods that I tried out and didn't like/didn't work.

I managed to do that all for free, and have made my version of Skyrim highly optimised to my own personal taste.

If mods were all pay to use I would probably only be prepared to purchase about £15-20 worth of mods, which would probably get me about 5-10 mods to load into my Skyrim game. Not only would this cost me more. It would vastly decrease the flexibility and customization of my game, and I would have probably stopped playing it a year or two ago.

Demanding payment for mods instantly puts a price on the number of mods you can use in the game. It puts a price on the amount that you can manipulate the game, and sadly that means that I'm not going to shell out a pound or two every time I see a minor mod tweak in the Nexus that would make the game better - I would stop modding my game if Skyrim got paid modding because I wouldn't stomach paying again and again and again for minor changes.

3. Mods can break your save files and destroy hours and hours of progress. Ever hear about a mod called "Civil War Overhaul"? Well you see its made by a real asshole who unfortunately was given a talent for modding, but absolutely no talent for anything else. He can't balance a mod, he can't write an informative description(he just fills it with memes and deliberately leaves out important stuff), he can't even gracefully accept criticism of his complete lack of understanding how to balance a mod(I half expect him to come into this thread after I invoked his name). All that is important because uninstalling the Civil War Overhaul will completely and utterly destroy your save file and there is no fix, this wouldn't normally be a problem but the modder deliberately hides things that you might not want in your Skyrim install in his mods. So you pretty much have to go in blind and when you find out inevitably what sucks about his mod tough luck that save file is garbage.
Imagine if 15 days after you installed a paid mod that has lots of shitty hidden features you find out that you can't even get a refund for it and your entire save file is strapped to that one mod.

This is a huge issue, and the Civil War mods are a great example of the issue here;
There are several similar mods out there that add civil war battlezones throughout Skyrim, with varying degrees of severity in the scale and type of battles depending on the mod you choose to install.

Luckily, because modding is free, I have downloaded and trialed ALL OF THEM, choosing the one that I liked best, and was the most stable. I used a mod called "Warzones" for a while, but it was too buggy and kind of broke the game so eventually I changed back to another mod called "Immersive Patrols". However, for all it's promises Immersive Patrols didn't really have the large scale battles of Warzones, and was a little too quiet and lighthanded.

About a month ago I discovered that Warzones had been completely rewritten to remove the bugs and update it, so I decided to download the new improved version of the mod, and have been playing with it for a week now.
My game has gotten really buggy, I've been getting Orcs with pale faces, haven't been able to interact with any furnace/mining point/grindstone/smith etc. it's completely incompatible with my Expanded Towns and Villages mod, and much more. I'm currently reverting the changes and probably going to go back to Immersive Patrols if I can't get anything better and can't iron out the bugs.

The point is that with free mods I have the ability to chop and change these buggy, incompatible mods at the drop of a hat. I can mess about with them, install and uninstall on a whim, dick up my .ini file and have to completely reinstall Skyrim and all my mods (which has happened twice) and it's all fine because the mods are free.

Introduce a charge for all these mods and first of all I will never again have a game with the freedom and customisability of Skyrim. That will be gone - Killed. Never again. I won't be able to try out competing mods, I will just have to pick one and hope for the best, which will turn out badly eventually. Secondly, because I can only pick one, and will be paying for it, I will expect a professional service. I will expect updates to keep the mod bug free. I will expect that the mod has been properly tested and that I will be informed beforehand of compatibility issues.

We are talking about taking an amateur hobby and turning it into a professional marketplace here. This is not a small thing, it will create the need for accountability, customer service, quality control etc. and it will vastly curtail the ability of the end users of these mods to enjoy as many as possible because they will be limited by how much they are prepared to pay for extra content on top of a full price game and it's DLCs etc.

Yeah, the Civil War mod issues are due to one inconceivably stupid thing in Skyrim's architecture. When a mod adds a script, it is fully recorded in the save file. Meaning, the only way to get rid of them is either through tedious manual editing of the save game files, writing your own mod that overwrites the script with a null (and hope that doesn't cause other issues), or start a new game and trash that save.

Most of the time, that isn't much of a problem, because when a mod is put together by a competent developer, your scripts are going to be limited, and there will be a method to shut them down permanently before removing the mod. They'll still be in the save game, but they won't execute.

But, when you have a derp who's doing the modding, they can fuck up your saves, through shitty coding. And, even a competent modder can accidentally trash your saves if you pull their mod out of the game after using it.

To be honest, this is one of the things that hobbled my own mod work on Skyrim, because I was actively avoiding scripting as much as possible, to avoid precisely that issue.

 

[Lightknight]

Sure, and a good reward for picking cotton can be the satisfaction of seeing people wear the shirts made from it. I'm unsure how the satisfaction of a job well done means we shouldn't pay people for their labor or even allow them to ask for pay.

Making mods does NOT equal picking cotton, or really any physical labor. That's a bad analogy.

Your argument was that because there is the reward of a job well done then they should be deprived of being paid for said labor. You may not like the analogy but that's a pretty valid reduction absurdum showing the conclusion of your premise. Being able to enjoy one's work does not mean that compensation is optional unless the worker wants it to be.

They can ask for anything they want, anyone should be allowed to beg for money. Trying to insist on being paid is the problem, and what won't be allowed to happen.

If street performers suddenly decided that they wanted a salary from taxes, I'd have the same reaction.

You believe that them being able to charge x dollars for a product they are selling is equivalent to street performers demanding a salary?

Street performer's works are not generally transactional works. Like, you don't pay them $2 to perform smoke on the water in G. They just play music, good or bad, and if someone walks by and likes what they hear then they have the option to put money in the hat. Their work isn't even necessarily consumed. It is just out there in the ether in the desperate hopes that they'll be rewarded for it.

Now, if someone recorded their music and gave it away for free online then they'd have every right to complain about it being done without their consent. They would also be expected to have the right to sell their works online because that IS a transaction-based process.

Modders have produced a good. They have every right to ask whatever amount they want to charge for it. They just aren't guaranteed that anyone will buy it for that or any price. But they should not have to give it away for free for the same reason a street performer should not have to play music for free if they don't want to.

I can't tell if you're not understanding what I'm saying, or ignoring it. There's a difference between asking for money, and demanding it.

? If you walk into a store and they have $1 as the price of their good, do you think they're "asking for money" or saying you have to pay that if you want their product? Asking for money is what beggars or street performers do on the street. It isn't what people who are selling a product for a specified price are doing. Are you imagining some sort of scenario where the forces that be are reaching into the wallets of consumers and taking money out of it? No one is advocating forcing consumers to buy any product. But there is nothing wrong with consumers having to pay for the products they consume.

I still can't tell, but I also don't care. Goodbye.

I'm beginning to suspect that you can't/won't articulate what you mean as the difference either since you just keep acting aghast that you think your meaning is misunderstood rather than taking the time to explain it which would have required far less input from you.

What do you call putting a price tag on a good or service you're selling. Do you call it asking for x dollars for the product or do you call it demanding x dollars for the product? Isn't doing so simultaneously asking for and demanding at the same time in that the consumer doesn't have to buy the object but if they do they MUST pay that price?

If you can't be bothered to answer that then goodbye indeed.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I think this idea is horrible and will never buy a game that has the option of paid mods as the idea is not going to work in the long run. It is a terrible idea and the sooner Valve get it out of their head the better

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

3. Supply and demand. If they produce shitty work there will not be any demand. The financial incentive of making something great should motivate them to work harder. You forget that the large AAA companies have already made their money once you have the game and them charging you for DLC is just them getting extra monies. For modders, this "DLC" is their entire revenue stream and it does not benefit them to do shoddy or lazy work. It is ridiculous to claim that making money means you stop trying to make money.

OK I'd like to point out that mods on steam, the more complex they are the worse it gets. Steam workshop has zero support for what is required to distribute mods of a quality that you should pay for. It doesn't have support for choosing which files to overwrite, choosing what order to install them in, uninstalling mods that have overwritten files for other mods, or pretty much anything the NMM does. So what we'll end up with is a whole service where you can either choose to make mods that aren't worth paying for(smaller mods with less conflicts and scripting) or make larger mods that simply through being installed via the steam workshop are more incompatible and crappier than mods installed from elsewhere.

Simply put they need to revamp the steam workshop support entirely if they want to sell mods that are worthwhile on it at all. If you think I'm kidding try putting together a medium complex mod install of Skyrim and see how far you get if you use a random order(whichever mods you find first) and overwrite everything the NMM asks you to(I'm trying to emulate how the steam workshop works here). You won't get very far in the end you'll have master file errors that cause the game to crash on startup, the original mod overwriting patches and undoing anything the patches did in the first place, and even if you get the load order right installing and overwriting the wrong things will just FUBAR your Skyrim install. Animations will be in T-pose, textures will have fugly looking seams everywhere, any mods that change leveled lists will randomly overwrite each-other.

Steam workshop also doesn't have any support for install menus which give options when you install things so modders will either have to come up with their own .exe(which I'm not even sure if the workshop will allow them to distribute) or just make multiple versions of a mod. Can you imagine if every option combination for Arrows Bolts and Tweaks(ABT) was a separate entry on steam that you had to either go into your files and disable or pay for separately? No seriously there are something like 46 different options in ABT alone imagine all the permutations involved in that, in NMM its all just checkboxes that are easy and self explanatory, on steam it would either be one size fits all or a nightmare of manual labor for the user.

Or you can just read through the list of problems listed in the second post here about a botched Skyrim install:
https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/1yo6sj/to_all_the_magicians_that_can_run_150_mods/
Most of the conflicts are caused by mods you could probably release on the Steam workshop(less complicated, less script heavy mods)

Keep in mind I'm not trying to say that modders shouldn't get paid for their work(in this post, my arguments on that are elsewhere) I'm trying to say that Steam is the worst case scenario for paid modding and actually worse than installing the mods manually.

And that's not even counting the ways that modders themselves could fuck with us, the Steam workshop also doesn't have support for older versions of files, so if you wanted an older version of that mod without whatever new features are being added in you're out of luck. Or if a beta build of that mod was pushed out and its too unstable and you want to play Skyrim with the mods you have paid money for, oh well, steam updated your mod and you're just gonna have to wait til they fix it, there is no reverting back to older versions and you are completely at the mercy of the modder here after the two week refund period.
OR and this is a really big one, new features in the mod make it incompatible with other mods you have(paid or not) again you're at their mercy and if the mod its incompatible with is too obscure they have practically no obligation to fix it.

TLR;
worthwhile paid mods on the Steam Workshop are a nightmare, either for the user to work around, the Modder to make or the game to not crash because of. Either they will be not worth paying for or not worth installing.

 

[Sarge034]

I started reading, saw that, stopped.

Next time, use a : or ;. Proper punctuation is your friend. It's the difference between "help your friend, Jack, off a horse," and "help your friend jack off a horse."

... Are you serious right now? You say to use a ":" or ";" but your own example uses "," ... just like mine did.

It's one word, creep.

Yup, der she be. ^

Slippery Slope is a fallacy because you're assuming that just because the worst possible outcome could happen, therefore it must be the outcome, even if it is unlikely.

I would agree with that assessment except that these companies have a history, a pattern of behavior, we can look at. It does not fall into the "unlikely" category if it fits in with the known modus operandi. At that point it's an educated guess.

 

[Atmos Duality]

TLR;
worthwhile paid mods on the Steam Workshop are a nightmare, either for the user to work around, the Modder to make or the game to not crash because of. Either they will be not worth paying for or not worth installing.

Steam's reputation of non-existent quality control is one thing, and a valid fear, but I can see this nightmare scenario happening ANYWHERE that tries to sell mods.

Any system that wants to sell mods would have to adopt a QA screening system, (for many reasons, but I'll just focus on compatibility assurance) meaning anyone that wants to sell mods would need the publisher's approval and pass whatever standards they set.
After all, it only makes sense that the content being sold will play nice with each other.

This comes with a horrible catch: Free mods would have to be locked out or banned by necessity, because they could (and one inevitably would) interfere with mods that were paid for. Why? Free mods aren't subjected to the QA process and the publisher has no incentive to QA test mods they aren't making money on.
(which is an oversimplification, but I don't want this to be some 4 page odyssey of techno-lingo)

And that's just the tip of the iceberg where compatibility concerns lie. That doesn't even get into mod hooks, inter-dependencies and resource monopoly (Mod C requires Mod A and B, but Mod D doesn't work with B, yet relies on Mod A...)

Very few game developers have ever tried to tackle those issues in design.
To wit, Epic's Unreal Tournament 99' and UT2004 stick out to me as two the best attempts, but even those were far from full solutions. (I still have nightmares of sorting through "ServerPackages=" priority lists; I did a LOT of workaround solutions at LANs back in the day)

TLDR; Anyone that claims paid and unpaid mods would coexist in a formal market system is talking straight out of their ass. Only if the number of mods is so tiny that compatibility isn't a concern, maybe, but for any game where modding takes off? Not a chance.

 

[Starke]

I started reading, saw that, stopped.

Next time, use a : or ;. Proper punctuation is your friend. It's the difference between "help your friend, Jack, off a horse," and "help your friend jack off a horse."

... Are you serious right now? You say to use a ":" or ";" but your own example uses "," ... just like mine did.

It's one word, creep.

Yup, der she be. ^

It is an example of how improper punctuation changes the meaning of a sentence drastically. Actually, a classic example. If you've never seen it before, then you may be beyond my help.

With a comma, it's just an insult.

Slippery Slope is a fallacy because you're assuming that just because the worst possible outcome could happen, therefore it must be the outcome, even if it is unlikely.

I would agree with that assessment except that these companies have a history, a pattern of behavior, we can look at. It does not fall into the "unlikely" category if it fits in with the known modus operandi. At that point it's an educated guess.

There is not some special case of fallacies when dealing with video game companies. It is a fallacy because the logic does not play through.

You've failed to offer sufficient evidence that this specific outcome will be the inevitable result. As a thought process goes, it's right up there with the people who believed the military budget reauthorization in 2008 (I think) would lead to mass roundups and concentration camps throughout the country. "This happens, therefore that will be the outcome." Without any real evidence to back it up beyond, "shit flows downhill." Or, in your case, more specifically, "corporations are greedy."

 

[Sarge034]

It is an example of how improper punctuation changes the meaning of a sentence drastically. Actually, a classic example. If you've never seen it before, then you may be beyond my help.

With a comma, it's just an insult.

Then I question your understand of English grammar. Just like in your example, the comma isolates a word. Just as it would have had I said, "It's one word, "creep"." However, had I said, "It's one word creep." then creep isn't isolated or indicated as the subject of the sentence. That sounds more like, "It's one word creep, -word-."

But perhaps the biggest lesion you can learn from this is that context matters. Had you bothered to look for context instead of just finding a reason to justify your feelings then this would be a non-issue.

There is not some special case of fallacies when dealing with video game companies. It is a fallacy because the logic does not play through.

You've failed to offer sufficient evidence that this specific outcome will be the inevitable result. As a thought process goes, it's right up there with the people who believed the military budget reauthorization in 2008 (I think) would lead to mass roundups and concentration camps throughout the country. "This happens, therefore that will be the outcome." Without any real evidence to back it up beyond, "shit flows downhill." Or, in your case, more specifically, "corporations are greedy."

I cited expansions being cut down and chopped up to be sold for DLC, games themselves being stripped of features/content (and possibly being sold as DLC), the evolution of draconian DRM, ect. All things that show a slow progression of devs and publishers to not only try to reduce content to make additional revenue streams, but also the pattern of starting small and letting people warm up to the ideas so there isn't a huge consumer backlash like the Xbone and paid mods got. Just look at the evolution of expansions. They used to be massive additions worth the $30 they cost and they used to be the norm. Then they slowly started introducing the idea of DLC, at that time you still had expansions, a la Oblivion's Shivering Isle, but they were also running DLC that added one quest line to other games. Then when the one quest line was accepted they started pushing individual missions, a la Deus Ex HR, and cosmetic packs for up to $15. Cheats, skins, alternative modes... all things that used to be free little easter eggs or prizes in game being cut out and sold for up to half what a fully fleshed out expansion was being sold for. Publishers have proven time and time again that if there is a way to do less work and make more money they will. I mean hell, even the Skyrim "expansions" pale in comparison to the Oblivion expansions and are trivial compared to Morrowind's. So I'll stick with educated guess, industry specific patterns are indeed enough proof to be weary.

 

[Magmarock]

Mods are awesome and games are awesome. But if one must mod a game to enjoy a game then said game mustn't be very good.

Not quite. A terrible game game can't really be improved by modding (most of the time). If it's bad, you're not going to be able to fix that by tweaking minor values.

An excellent game can be improved, but it sets the bar very high for modders. It doesn't mean they can't improve a title, but most of the time the kinds of mods you're looking at are ones that skew for specific demographics.

Far Cry modding is a good example of this. The basic games play pretty well. The popular mods tend to push the game towards much more brutal game. On the whole, this is not something most fans want from the franchise (as evidenced by the hatred for Far Cry 2). They make the game better for people who want that experience, but they're in a minority.

This is a "not for everybody" argument, but it's also a major part of where modding can really improve a game for people. It's not about making the game "better" but fine tailoring it to your tastes.

Skyrim... is not an excellent game. It's okay. Modding allows players to custom tailor the game to their tastes. You'll see people say, "oh, yeah, Skyrim absolutely needs mods to be playable." You'll see people who will say Frostfall is an absolutely vital mod, while I look at that and say, "fuck that; I'm playing a fantasy superhero with the ability to breathe fire, who heals off injuries like Wolverine. Why would I want to freeze to death?"

The universal must have mods are trimming up the egregious problems with the game, like SkyUI. But, after that, the things you "need" depend on your preferences.

This does two things. One you can keep swapping a game around to keep it fresh. Yeah, it's still the same game, but the way you actually play it can change drastically depending on how it's been modified. So you're playing a game years after you would have abandoned if it was a fixed experience. That's not hyperbole, we're coming up on 5 years out from the game's release, and still talking about it. How many 2011 releases can you still find in the PC games isle (or what's left of it anyway)? Second, it creates an incredibly tailored experience that will sync up with your tastes. When people are saying, "you need these mods," what they really mean is, "I need these mods to turn it into my dream game." And, that's honestly pretty impressive.

I never cared for Skyrim always thought it was boring. Nothing against modding but if a whole lot of mods start appearing for a game shortly after its release, it's not a good sign.

No, if mods start springing up immediately after a game launches, that's actually a very good sign. Because it means the game and community support that kind of customization.

Again, modding is something that works for players who don't want their games as a , "one size fits all, off the shelf." It lets you get access to styles of games that just don't sell well enough to exist as their own genres (either anymore, or ever).

So, when you look at Skyrim mods and find one that will kill your player through starvation, sleep deprivation, and thirst, you could choose to say, "well that should have been in the base game." But, no, it really didn't belong there. This is a feature for a kind of open world RPG that doesn't end up incredibly successful. Someone wanted it. (Judging by the downloads) quite a few people want that, though not enough to sustain a commercial release with that feature.

Also, and this one may sound self serving, they do point the developers where to go, and what to look at. Granted, New Vegas was by Obsidian and not Bethesda, but one of the frequent criticisms of that game was the incorporation of community mods into the base game design, and with Fallout 4 we (or at least I) can already see features they're touting which came from the mod community in Fallout 3 and NV.

That's not just a developer getting extra sales from mods, it's one saying, "you guys had some good ideas, and we're going to polish them up into something professional."

All of that said, Skyrim wasn't a great game. I enjoyed it, but I'm not going to pretend it was fantastic. But, modding is what lets you change it from a technically competent game into "exactly what I was looking for." The existence of mods doesn't mean a game is shit. It just means people in its fanbase are creative.

Also it lets you do irredeemably stupid things, like stick bolters and powered armor into a pseudo-medieval world, or turn every dragon into the late Randy Savage. 90% of everything is shit, this is just as true with mods.

You misunderstand. The witcher 3 has open modding and there are mods for it, but nothing drastic nor are most people interested in playing a modded version over the default version. If the majority people ware jumping on mods as soon as your game is out then it usually means that something is wrong with the default game.

 

[Starke]

Then I question your understand of English grammar.

Meh. You're so far off base here, I know the rest of the post isn't going to be worth reading. You can stop. I'm past the point of caring.

 

[Starke]

You misunderstand. The witcher 3 has open modding and there are mods for it, but nothing drastic nor are most people interested in playing a modded version over the default version. If the majority people ware jumping on mods as soon as your game is out then it usually means that something is wrong with the default game.

Yeah, that I can understand. It sounded like you were saying that any game with a voracious modding scene is inherently a bad thing.

Bethesda's weird. They've never managed to turn out a top notch game, out of the box... yeah, no, never. So that's where the modding starts. And the end result is pretty unique. But, it's kinda like those shit cars you have to rebuild to turn them into something top tier. Yeah, the base product is crap, but after you've put in the time and work, you'll get something utterly amazing. If you're into that kind of tinkering, it's great. If you just want a game, that runs right out of the box, it's not the right place to be.

And, for that, you're right.

With Bethesda, half the game is modifying it to suit your interests. Which, it's a niche appeal. If tinkering with a game isn't fun to you, then spending half your time modding it and half your time playing won't be enjoyable, and it'd be a bad purchase for you. If it is... then, holy crap is this a fantastic developer for you.