Survival Instinct

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Welcome. Come and discuss selected Role Playing Games with us. Primarily Dragon Age Origins, Dark Souls 2, The Elder Scrolls. General Discussion encouraged.


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    Skyrim Paid Mods Fiasco

    Maigrets
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    Post by Maigrets Thu Apr 30, 2015 2:40 am

    I'm posting this in the Other RPG's section because it's highly unlikely I will add a forum for Skyrim.  Not particularly because of this debacle, but for several reasons I don't care about the game anymore.

    So, before I add some of my own comments I suggest watching this entire video which although it is quite long, explains very well what went wrong and who should be blamed.  And that is not the modders.




    It's my opinion, and I'm not alone, that Skyrim, and Oblivion to some extent, are both bland and uninspiring games which to this day have only been redeemed and continue to be popular, by the selfless work of modders who add a plethora of amazing things to enhance our games as well as fixing the bugs, unfinished and glitched quests, and other problems that Bethesda never bothered to address.   This is more prevalent in Skyrim however.  At least Oblivion had meaningful and interesting quests and not so much of the annoying Radiant filler quests that took you all over Skyrim to attempt to extend gameplay.  

    Despite promises of continued support for Skyrim, Bethesda abandoned it and left it to modders to stabilize and patch.  Yes, they provided the toolkits to enable mods to be made in the first place, but even they have bugs that have never really been addressed.  The papyrus scripting engine is the cause of many of the problems.  It's why we are advised to never, ever remove a mod with scripts that has been in gameplay because it will ruin your saves forever.  You may not notice it immediately, but somewhere, sometime, your game will fail and you have to start over. Again and again.  Sometimes just trying to finish the main Quest was a trial, especially if it wasn't approached linearly and other quests were started or you just wanted to do something else for awhile.

    I have 100's of hours played in Skyrim which don't show on my Steam profile because I used to always played offline.  Now I'm always online for dark Souls 2:Scholar of the First Sin, a game that takes all of my free time and then some. Many of those hours in Skyrim however are from having to start over because something went wrong.  Corrupt saves, the out of the blue CTD's and unexplained crashes and freezes, and that was only in the vanilla game. I lost my first character after 110 hours to corrupt saves after one of the official patches.  To say I was angry is an understatement.  That was before mods even existed for Skyrim.

    People might say, and I have heard this from people who don't know any better...it's the mods.   Mods cause instability, mods cause crashes, etc, etc.  Not true.  If users educate themselves and learn to manage load orders, use Bashed Patches, use LOOT and other tools Skyrim can be very stable.  Not to mention the memory fixes and Unofficial Patches which any sane person should be using.

    And the most important thing users often don't do...read the damn Readme and understand it before complaining.

    Bethesda, and Valve, had to take a huge step back from this after the massive backlash, but if they had communicated with their fan base beforehand and not after the fact, this may not have turned out to be the disaster that it has turned out to be.

    If for one minute people think this won't come back when, and if Fallout 4 and TES6 arrives, they are fooling themselves.   It's my opinion that this was an experiment on Bethesda's behalf to test the waters on an already released game and on seeing how it failed, and how the modding community has come together against it as presented, they will be working on a new model for their next games.  They are a business and as such they need to make money.  Giving a damn about their player base comes way down the list of priorities, no matter how much they admit to getting it wrong this time.

    That's pretty much all I'm going to say.  I could go on and expand on several points and I will if anyone is interested, or wishes to refute what I've said.  I will say that any future games from Bethesda will need to be on sale a year or so after release before I consider buying them.  And, no, I'm not one of those who rants about one
    game and then happily hands over money for the next installment to find it's no better, or worse.  I have a longer memory than that.

    It seems to be the trend for AAA developers these days to release unfinished, buggy, and in some cases unplayable games and the end consumer is either stuck with it in the case of unmoddable games, or modders have to clean up the mess.

    THIEF and Dragon Age: Inquisition I'm looking at you as well.  And they are not the only ones, just two of the games I purchased and are now gathering dust.
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    Post by Ailsa Thu Apr 30, 2015 6:00 am

    He makes a lot of good points. I do wish the language was more temperate though Razz I am so sick of hearing swear words everywhere I go.

    I definitely agree that large DLC quality mods could well be worth paying for if they meet certain criteria, however Bethesda (and other companies too) should meet the same criteria themselves in any new games. I actually feel that if they abandon a game after 4 or 5 years they begin to lose the respect of the community that is the target audience.
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    Post by Maigrets Thu Apr 30, 2015 7:47 pm

    Ailsa wrote:He makes a lot of good points.  I do wish the language was more temperate though Razz  I am so sick of hearing swear words everywhere I go.

    Unfortunately, many people seem to think this enhances their content in some way.   Rolling Eyes   I watch a lot of Let's Plays on Youtube, (mainly Dark Souls 2 though) and I hate the screamers and profanity.  I tend to stick with a few lesser known Youtubers who can get their point across intelligently without the theatrics.

    It's not so much I dislike cursing as it has it's place in moderation, but in everyday language it's unnecessary and just shows a lack of understanding of language and vocabulary.  I'm often dismayed at some of the common words that some of these people don't know the meaning of.
     Skyrim Paid Mods Fiasco 1793038098

    I definitely agree that large DLC quality mods could well be worth paying for if they meet certain criteria, however Bethesda (and other companies too) should meet the same criteria themselves in any new games.  I actually feel that if they abandon a game after 4 or 5 years they begin to lose the respect of the community that is the target audience.

    I couldn't agree with this more.  I could imagine paying for mods like Falskaar, Wyrmstooth and some others...I would definitely pay for a companion like Inigo.  Skyrim Paid Mods Fiasco 301061887

    Bethesda abandoned Skyrim a lot earlier than a few years though and yes, they should invest more into quality assurance.  Dawnguard is very buggy and even breaks a vanilla game main quest relating to the actual Elder Scroll.  I don't like that DLC much.  It's another time waster, having you travel all over the map for stupid reasons.  Dragonborn was better if you didn't have the problem of actually getting there. Another thing fixed by mods.

    One thing that I think is a BIG problem is the publishers who are only in it for the money.  They force early releases so we effectively get unfinished beta games to test for them.  Many developers have become too scared to challenge players as if we are of low intelligence and need to be guided at every step.

    I also dislike the console vs PC wars.  It shows immaturity when people stoop to these levels when laying blame.  Neither platforms are perfect.
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    Post by Ailsa Fri May 01, 2015 12:05 am

    Game producers rushing release dates is one of the most irritating things imho opinion. That is why I have a great respect for Red Project (The Witcher games) - they take the time to do the very best they can.

    I have never understood the "need" for a debate between PC and console. They are different tools for playing games, entertainment etc. End of subject as far as I am concerned. You make your choice and enjoy what you have Very Happy

    I could only manage to afford one so I chose PC as I also use it for work and for designing clothes and embroidery.
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    Post by Maigrets Fri May 01, 2015 8:18 pm

    EPIC Games who make the Unreal engine have decided to let people download Unreal4 for FREE, no strings attached.  All updates are also free.  The only thing they ask in return is 5% of gross royalties after the first $3000 every quarter. If a game made with the engine makes less than that they take nothing.
    https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/ue4-is-free

    Considering what the Unreal engine can do that's pretty amazing stuff.

    Developers like this and CD ProjectRed deserve respect as they respect their consumers in return.  Not so much the rest of the AAA developers though.

    Also, this interview by TotalBiscuit on Youtube re the Skyrim paid Mods is very interesting.  He interviews Brumbek who made the SIMM mod for Skyrim and DarkOne from the Nexus.   They both made a lot of good points which I agree with.

    The video is nearly 2 hours long...well it's only audio, but I actually found it interesting enough to listen all the way through.  

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    Post by Ailsa Tue May 05, 2015 5:07 am

    Many well thought out ideas there. Very interesting and thank you for sharing.

    I have never understood why some people are so anti DarkOne (Robin) though I do sometimes feel that the Nexus admins are a little bit quick and indiscriminate with their "ban hammers", and occasionally miss people who should be banned. I don't blame him for that as there are a huge number of people on Nexus at any point in time. I personally would hate to be an admin on such a huge site Evil or Very Mad
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    Post by MasterAub Thu May 21, 2015 9:38 pm

    Paid mod or not paid mod, gready or not gready...those are the questions.

    Below some imagineray quotes that can very well exist and probably do. Those quotes explain my feeling about this story.

    From a player point of view:
    1) I bought Skyrim for 60$ and I should pay even more for things that fixes the darn game or things that should have been included in the release, why?
    2) Should I pay for a buggy mod that might never be fixed?
    3) This mod is even better than the last official DLC and I paid 19$ for the last official DLC

    From a modder point of view:
    1) I spend hours to make this mod that would be nice if I got some "financial recognition"
    2) How much can I sell my half naked female elven armor?
    3) I loss my "love" / Job over this mod and now I am broke. If only I could sell this mod?

    To me the answer of those legitimate Wink questions is: the DONATE button.

    Steam has no rights to get a single peny for a mod. Yes I know they host the mods on their servers and advertise it but Gals and Guys the traffic they get because of the workshop is an opportunity for selling one of their distributed game. And steam platform or any game platform's economic model is based on traffic.

    Bethesda has no rights as well because if I choose to give money to someone in order to support his/her creation it's my decision.  But only through a DONATE system this statement works.

    I have donated and will donate again to support modders. I don't think that any other way, even for DLC sized mod should be supported otherwise than through a DONATE system. Donation were bigger and more frequent for Skyrim than for Oblivion and will be probably more frequent in the next TES VI game. I feel the community is becoming more and more aware of the support it can provide to talented modders. I feel it should stay that way.
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    Post by Ailsa Thu May 21, 2015 10:02 pm

    There are a few mods that have inspired me to use the Donate Button, and I am sure that over time there will be more. It always seemed the most practical way to show appreciation for all the work done.

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