zanity

Why do you care? Unless you mod for clout- the very worst motive- isn't it up to the people using mods whether they care about updates or not? I know if a mod is updated because if I care about a mod, I read its description. And what people want is a good description section. But any mod is just one of a million mods, and no-one who uses mods wants any mod bothering them after install. I guess the assumption here is that great mods are really self promoting, in the sense that the more people use a mod the higher it rises in the popularity system. As for communication with the users of a mod, well only a tiny section of downloaders probably even go to the posts section, and fewer would consider making a post themselves. Now you said "maximum visibility"? Which means MORE visibility than the mods of others, by definition. Can you figure out why that facility does not exist? If your mod is updated but otherwise is the same mod, it would be an ABUSE of the system to release it as a new mod. How do you shout louder than the other people around you who all want to shout louder? That's a marketing paradox. SEO is the Internet term you are looking for. The correct use of tags so your mod appears in the appropriate section. A good mod 'title' that catches people's attention. The kind of mod people actual track and would care to update. The use of language matters, and so does the use of images. How you 'present' your mod may be as important as the mod itself. And as anyone in marketing would tell you- if something is failing, move on, if numbers are all you care about. PS in the early days of mods for a game, I personally wouldn't rate the scene as worthwhile or valuable - so the early 'customers' you get won't be the 'brightest' or the 'best'- most likely they mod their game for all the wrong reasons. Sane informed people know it takes along time for the mod scene to reach a useful level, and won't even really start until the official tools release. Apart from a tiny number of 'essential' mods like widescreen support or FOV adjustment, most of the people using early mods do so thru boredom, to grief their own game, or in the curious belief that mod-ability was part of the purchase price.

Er- the fact that modding is NOT official supported yet, current 'mods' are mostly hacks for clout, and that anyone using early mods needs to take full responsibility for reading EVERYTHING that the modders doing deep code hacks tell you is important. You have a problem like this = you probably shouldn't be trying to use early mods.

So let me get this right- YOU put mods into your game despite you not having the first clue, and the fact that mods are NOT officially supported. And now you want someone else to fix you problem? Here's a clue. Find where your save game is. Make a copy. Then WIPE all of your (Starfield) game install directories and then reinstall the game. Then copy back your save game into the location where your saves are stored.

Yeah, yeah, yeah- we all know why virtually every form of RPG choice in Starfield is utter rubbish. Asking why is daft. This was a game for normies where you take the obvious path in every respect, plow thru what passes for a story, and then move on to your next game. People who say "if only this was tweaked, or if only that were modded" make me howl with laughter. The game would still be utter rubbish. Starfield needs tearing down and rebuilding. Unarmed combat needs this- everything you may wish to be in the game needs this. Not a series of pathetic hack mods released for clout. But total new systems created from scratch with complete awareness of how and why people role-play, and continue to invest time in a game. Luckily it seems that this will be more than possible, given time. The BAD NEWS for those of you with poor impulse control, who thought Starfield was sold with "mods included", 'given time' means between 2 and 5 years. I'm reminded of when the dreadful Cyberpunk released. Every promise broken, and all actual adult content (out side of one cut scene) removed. But normies bought it in record number, then engaged in all kinds of mental gymnastics to 'defend' the game. Of course 3 years later, CDPR did actually release a very feeble 'overhaul' but the sad effort remained essentially the same. Day One, Starfield is much worse than Cyberpunk. But unlike Cyberpunk, Starfield is going to be truly moddable in almost every way. And strangely, space SF is probably the absolute best open world genre to get modders doing their best work. There are people who will want to focus on a great unarmed playthru. Hopefully they'll be supported by great new frameworks in the direction of animation, visual effects, perks, stat systems etc. In the meantime, if one must play starfield, play it in the way Todd wants. That is all the game is made for today. It is the only way to experience a disappointing adventure to the extent Starfield functions as well as it can. What is the point of a play style where your head is banging against a wall all the time?

VATS was a core part of the Beth game design philosophy, but came under sustained attack from too many normies. Todd sees his dreadful efforts as normie games now, with the requirement that a vanilla playthru can be done as dumbed down as Humanly possible, with his rubbish side systems (settlements, upgrades etc) as a sop to those who expect a more involved experience. In a just world, Starfield would have been a massive sales failure- but as we have seen at this year's film boxoffice- no matter how much trash bombs, there will always be some just as bad trash that gets a good audience. Can VATS be modded into Starfield? Only if the old hooks are still there in the engine (which knowing the lazy and incompetent people at Beth, they almost certainly are). Once again everything really awaits the release of the official mod tools and dox.

You do know the official mod tools ain't out yet? You do know what a bad idea it is to try to hack such changes WITHOUT the proper tools. Here's a clue. Many many years after the release of Fallout 3, I was using a home mod from a very experienced modder. He had a tiny bug in his code. End result, every one of a certain type of switch in the game vanishes when you try to use it. You DID NOT buy a game that comes with mods as part of the purchase price. Yes it can be modded. Yes it will be modded. But NO, mods are not part of the purchase contract. What I mean is you should take the time to UNDERSTAND the modding community, and how it works. The modding tools and modding documentation have NOT been released. That doesn't happen until early 2024 (if Beth doesn't put back the release). NOTHING is "easy" until that happens. The early mods are mostly hacks created for clout. Even the ones messing with .ini settings don't really understand the consequences of messing with those variables. But when the official modding begins- well yes it should be quite simple to add locks to doors - tho it also depends on whether NPCs are scripted to also use locks. A better solution, and one that will turn up, is a complete overhaul of ship and settlement systems. But they're probably at least two years out.

As was said- running from an HDD is 'wrong'. Is it really 'wrong'?- well later discoveries suggest DirectStorage was inserted into Starfield under pressure from MS to 'normalise' this rather broken memory/storage system. There is a mod that RE-ENABLES the natural file cache system that usually runs in Windows for every application. Even with an HDD, this mod restores a LOT of real-time fluidity, after the first time any storage asset is accessed by the game. However, file caches, because it uses your spare 'unused' RAM, needs spare RAM- ie., having at least 32GB of RAM helps. Anyway, maybe you are not too technical, so let me explain the SSD issue a little. A 512GB SSD device has never been cheaper, and is child's play to insert into almost any PC- no tech skill needed. You open your case, and then you need two things. A free SATA port on your Motherboard (the massive flat rectangular thing everything is plugged into), a SATA cable and a free SATA style PSU (power cable). You simply plug these two cables into your SSD (which is a smallish flat plastic box), and then place the SSD into a free case bay OR simply tape it in place somewhere where you have space in your case (it ain't mechanical, so it doesn't care about orientation). In Windows you will then need to Format and activate the SSD. To complex to explain how here. Both these stages can be witnessed in many Youtube videos. Visual guides to give anyone confidence to do this addition. Adding an SSD to a PC (or even a laptop- though the process there is a bit more involved) is cheap, safe and easy- with no risk involved (on the PC- a laptop may involved replacing a boot HDD with a boot SSD- something that does need some skill). It is possible to use an SSD externally via a USB-3 connection (never USB-2 = too slow). However, it is hit'n'miss whether Starfield works well from external flash storage. I wouldn't like to bet on it. The issue is down to problems with how chips implement USB-3 standards, both in your PC and in the external caddy that holds the SSD- and DirectStorage doesn't play well with external devices.

All great observations and ideas. My memory tells me Todd's own brother is in charge of 'animation' and NPC design. Need anything more on that subject be said? Rest assured that space fanatic modders have a vast number of things they are chomping at the bit to take on, but all depend on tools. When the official tools release, the possibility of using them for quality mods will become apparent. More important will be the documentation, and then reverse engineering so as far as possible, new systems and frameworks are introduced into the core game. I honestly believe we'll eventually see almost everything external to the core re-coded, redesigned, and as many new frameworks as possible created on which future mods can depend. This is a lot of work. It won't be a matter of how skilled the best modders are- they'll be leagues ahead of anyone on the current Beth team. It will be a matter of doability, for the one things mods will not do is recode the core. The core game must be capable of supporting new frameworks that fix combat, animation and body work, and the general travel system- most particularly space. As most know here, most games are almost unmoddable to any decent degree. This was certainly the case with Cyberpunk and GTA. Both these titles were much better in their core systems than Starfield, but then again mods could do little to nothing to change the game experience in those worlds, save for mostly visual tweaks. Starfield is a rotten game, as most have now concluded, and a massive out-of-the-box disappointment. BUT peeps do love some SF and space gaming, and Starfield is at least coded for modern multi-core systems with decent amounts of RAM and a modern GPU. This means the inherent limits in its version of the Creation Engine should be much better than earlier Beth games. Not great- certainly not great, but "better". Little hacks to the vanilla game are a WASTE of time. For sure, everyone would have liked them to be there in their first play-thru, but terrible as the game is, one could still witness the game as Todd intended unmodded. What we now want from the modded Starfield is the real Star Citizen. Or a true space version of Skyrim or Fallout. I have long dreamt of a time when Nexus hosted a fully crowd-sourced title, almost wholly made by the modding community. Sadly Nexus lacks the vision to do such an obvious project. Starfield looks like being a second best to that idea, where the over-hauled version in say 5 years time will bear little resemblance to the form the original released as.

Riiiggghhht...Because YOU couldn't respect the weight limit. YOU couldn't resist carrying far more than you should. You have poor impulse control. Here's the thing- with this system it is the player's CHOICE as to whether they play to a weight limit or not. The other way round, and every player is stuck with the consequences of one system. Anyway, when modders can, someone will make an extreme survival mod, with this limit, and worse- a declining weight ability based on sleep, food eaten etc. But today the game is vanilla which means accessible which means not arbitrarily annoying. PS in general the rules in games are designed to make them fun within the challenge. There is no such thing as a 'real' simulation, for good reason. Any fool can rant "this isn't realistic' about any form of art, clueless as to what constitutes successful art.

UI overhauls are early mods WHEN the official mod support begins (clue- early next year). For so many of you here, with the desire for basic changes, please consider putting the game away and playing other games in the meantime. It really isn't that long til Beth begins to officially support mods.

Er- yes- when the official modding tools are released.

This is the concept of "GOOD LOOT". A good game revels in giving the gamer good loot, while ensuring the game challenge isn't ruined by the same. A BAD game (just about anything Beth touches) nerfs all loot, no matter how hard you work to get it, in order to prevent the internal 'economy' from being 'ruined'. It gets worse. Beth bought massive into GaaS and exploiting whales via dirty gaming psychological tricks. Then the bottom dropped out of GaaS for all but the most skilled manipulators. However, GaaS was baked into the DNA of all games Beth has worked on in the last 6+ years, even if in their release form the GaaS elements have been somewhat hacked out, and micro-transactions are missing. The non-exploitative gaming loop always has the reward matching the effort of the mission, so you end the mission with a smile on your face. However it takes actual game design talent to achieve this. And even much better teams than Beth find it hard to do. When a team masters the art (like Fromsoftware), their games get bigger and bigger and their fan-base loyalty never stops growing. If being honest, Todd would proudly proclaim "we make games for normies- people for whom quality is the least important factor". And he is right. Hype sells his games, hype that comes with a PR spend in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Then the unique fact that his games are open-world frameworks with unprecedented ability to be modded keeps the more discriminating gamer interested.

WRONG- it is EASY work, but only with the right kinds of tool. When the official mod support begins with tools and dox from Beth in early 2024, the framework will either make such mini-games trivial to mod in or it won't (down to a lack of decent scripting functionality). If Beth fumbles the ball (inevitable), then such mini-games will need to wait on new script systems which will be created if possible. They are needed for almost everything advanced modders want to achieve in Starfield.

Absolutely, but when I was a kid I read a lot of SF. 90% of the authors did not know the difference between planets, stars, solar systems, galaxies and the universe. For every Asimov, there were a ton of chancers who wrote in the genre merely because it was profitable, and believed readers of the same to be simple-minded morons who enjoyed the 'funny' big words and strange situations. Even today, most TV/film SF treats galaxy and universe as interchangeable. You only need an IQ in double digits to know otherwise. Personally I now agree that most people drawn to SF are scientific illiterates who merely enjoy the 'funny' words and strange situations- and then the ability to go to events where they can cosplay. The adoration of the utterly atrocious remake of Lynch's very disappointing adaptation of the novel Dune illustrates this perfectly. Present day Beth, minus the genius talent behind Fallout 3 and Skyrim, is a very cynical company. In this regard, it has similar opinions of its customer base as all big publishers do. Fools that exist to be milked with any old codswallop. Todd would reply "why be accurate- what does that get you? And anyway the 'wrong' type of employee would spot the mistake, and we most certainly don't hire such people" But I would remind everyone that Steam has created a wonderful marketplace for every type and form of 'indy' game- most of which are crafted with the greatest respect of the potential customer. With their tiny dev teams, hundreds of times smaller than at Beth, they are somewhat limited in scope, but a lot less than one might have anticipated. Valheim, for instance, even for a lone player, gives one an utterly mind blowing open world experience. Beth's advantage- paying for hundreds of thousands of lines of voiced dialogue, vanishes with AI. The things that used to take time, the dull-witted work of a massive team, and a lot of money, can now be done with AI in the service of a small team with a very modest budget. AI can even generate all the CORRECT scientific ideas for the game world.

Either the Beth body system allows the flexibility modders need, or a new body system framework will be created to replace it. Given the technical atrocities in the vanilla game, I'd bet on the need for all starfield systems to need replacements.