metaphorset

Followers in Skyrim pretty much are the same as in real life - meaning they are pretty much useless. I'd prefer to have real friends instead but this is not likely to happen in a Bethesda Game. On a side note, they can be quite funny in some of the trap-heavy dungeons ;-) The only Skyrim NPC followers I enjoyed so far are Inigo and (on the Vanilla side) Katria. The latter is quite an exception because she is actually useful in Vanilla Skyrim without any AI altering mod. (Having said that, I just realized that her whole quest line is one of the few that aren't horribly broken). I will never get the follower boom on the Nexus, nor I will ever get why people seem to be so damn obsessed with make-up heavy "beautification projects" or stumbling around in a medieval environment in high heels and Bikini armor, with breasts the size of a cow udder and huge anime swords on their back that do (or should do, regarding their size) instakill giants. But hey - in the end that's what modding is all about. You can have all the things you want.

Originally I planned to install Skyrim SE as soon as we would have a working version of SKSE64 but it seems that the new microtransaction club feature has broken again pretty much every mod that I'd prefer to install to enjoy the game at all. SkyUI, ImmersiveHUD, Frostfall, Campfire... Is this a repeating "feature" in future updates then? If so, should I even bother to install it at all? Do all the original bsa files change with every update? Thanks to a broken version of the Nexus Mod Manager (profiles...) I only have a botched version of Oldrim on my HDD but I'd rather fix that than having to mess around with Newrim and Bethesda's broken Idea of how to handle the integration of microtransactions.

Still not convinced. I watched the patched version, because watching the unpatched version felt like watching an adult version of Teletubbies. They're better now but still look like a bunch of dead people giving their best impression of talking humanoids. And the patchy thing, back then we could do that, too. The point is that the games are 10 years apart, yet the mass effect faces still feel like a year or two to go until they reach Fallout 3 quality.

...and suddenly I don't believe that Vanilla Oblivion's faces are that outdated anymore...

Maybe. Pretty much the same discussion as in the FO4 forum. In the end it's not a decision Bethesda Game Studios is going to make, at least not single-handed. Zenimax is involved into it, as well as the stockholders. For simplicity's sake let's call them "they/their/them". Regarding sales, about 70 to 80% of the money from Skyrim as well as from Fallout 4 was made by console sales. That's "their" interest. It's money, not good games - or even decent games anymore. On the other hand "they" got a lot of bad reviews on Steam over the Paid Mods debacle and the trend continues with microtransaction club. A huge amount of backlash comes from PC Gamers alone, which is totally understandable. Compared to other Distributors "they" have time on their side. If "their" distribution model would be more like what EA and Ubisoft do (have a half-arsed but highly successful franchise and distribute at least one new game every year) "they" might have a bigger problem. But releasing a major title every 5 to 10 years... in this period a whole new gamer generation grows up and is happy with whatever bone "they" throw at them. The old fans... ? Who cares. My prediction goes like this: We might still get mods, but not in the way we used to get them with the last games. The age of the script extender might come to an end and maybe there will be other restrictions like file sizes. You can't get everyone happy but you can get everyone to stfu by presenting a compromise. And we all know that compromises rarely result in bigger portions, right? So even if Good Guy Todd talks about the huge success and how the modding community had a huge part in it, he and his merry band of 100 or what not nice guys can't change a thing, because it's not their decision (alone). And as long as people buy (or even pre-order) the next round, it does not matter what we think or do.

Regarding the load of serious spanking they received during the last two years with the steam debacle (which I still believe was some sort of community reaction test) and now with Horse Armor 2.0 it's still possible that they take a complete u-turn on modding no matter what they were telling us about it. In comparison to other game studios they have time on their side. People don't expect them to release new TES or Fallout titles on an annual basis. The Creation Engine (which is in its core still based on GameBryo) either needs some serious overhaul or gets replaced with whatever can handle the type of games they want to create in the future. The Engine itself is buggy as hell (despite the huge amount of work they put into it to make it modular and replace outdated stuff ) and the Editor is just horrible to use. In any case, there is a huge amount of work to be done. The thing is that with every new Bethesda Title a new generation of gamers is there to play them. If the next game is decent enough but has no mod support at all, they might lose a whole lot of the old customers but in return will gain a whole lot of new ones. It's the same as with the term "RPG". If you ask me, an RPG is more than choosing the race and the gender of your character, assigning a few (more or less meaningless) stats and being thrown into a (more or less) open world chasing McGuffins and performing fetch quests. The average 13yr old console gamer might go completely mental (and verbal) about my arguments, because they never experienced something different. And those are the valuable customers of tomorrow.

Well, it's not like I want to create a completely new settlement in the center of Boston from scratch. I'm interested in Hangman's Alley as a Settlement. It's not that I am completely new to creating FO4 mods. All my other mods are running perfectly stable in every combination with or without other mods. In some of them I did quite a lot more than just adding a navmesh.

@chucksteel, I kept the base mod without any navmesh additions and tried to use some navmeshed workshop floors ingame. Works like a charm. So I thought I'd use the same floors in the CK. I just started with a single floor piece on the top roof of FensRaiderCamp01 (roughly at the same spot where I put one of the +20 floors in workshop mode before), and loaded up the game. At first I thought I succeeded but after saving and reloading the game, the crashes start again. It's reproducible. I could load the last safegame (done with the no-navmesh version of my mod) with the floor object active and run all the way to Sunshine Tidings. I saved there, restarted the game and boom! CTD after five seconds. Tried the same procedure but went to Parson's Creamery - the same result. I was able to run around Vault 111 and Diamond City for a while, but five to ten seconds after re-entering the world map the game would crash.

So after many hours of messing around with the navmeshes and objects I give up. Either I'm too stupid to navmesh correctly or the cells there are just buggy. It's Bethesda software after all... Last thing I tried was to create new roof meshes and give these base objects navmeshes for themselves. No crashes, but my companions wouldn't access the area either. I'm starting to believe that this strange behavior is the reason why Hangman's Alley is such a crappy Settlement in the first place. Looking at the layout, I believe that the designer initially planned roof access but in the end abandoned the idea because of the crashes. Sometimes I wonder why this game runs that stable at all...

Ok, confirmed. My game runs stable until I start creating the navmesh to the roof section. Even adding a single triangle results in a crash, no matter where I am in the Commonwealth. Is it because I create islands? Shouldn't be a problem, right? Maybe I do something wrong with finalizing? It seems to me that the engine as well as the CK gets more buggier with every game...

chucksteel, thanks for the answer. Yes, I use xEdit since the Oblivion days, so it's my first shot whenever installing or creating mods results in problematic behavior. According to FO4Edit my mod is clean, besides from some undeletable Navmeshes. I started recreating the mod, putting in changes one at a time, then playtest the mod. So far I had no CTDs and all that remains doing is navmeshing the roof sections. I suspect that either something went wrong during my first attempt (before navmeshing) or the problem is the navmesh itself (although no errors were indicated after finalizing the navmeshes in both cells). Back to work, then...

Hello fellow mod creators, I'm not quite completely new to mod creation for Bethesda Games, I created some mods for Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3/NV. I completely missed out the whole Skyrim period, due to life and also because the CK wouldn't run stable on my Rig, no matter what I tried. Now, with the Fallout 4 version of the CK I want to get back into mod creation. I already created some mods that do some minor changes to settlements and surroundings (Beantown Bridge, for example. I moved the Train and re-navmeshed the bridge) and I didn't ran into major issues with them . Now, I started with a mod that changes Hangman's Alley. I slightly raised the hight of the buildable area (FensRaiderCampBuildableArea01) and added another one that covers one of the roofs. I also navmeshed the missing areas, so settlers would be able to use them. No scripts where edited, no other major changes were made. At first everything seemed to be ok. I managed to solve all problems that generated warnings and I could load the mod successfully into the game. I even started building and managed to get Dogmeat and ADA on top of the roof. Then I left because I ran out of materials. And here's where my game starts to get unstable. Sometimes my savegames wouldn't load and when they do, my game would crash within a period of seconds or minutes. No matter where I am, could be in another settlement, could be somewhere in the wilderness between Sanctuary and Sunshine Tidings... I also tried to deactivate all other mods and tried to run the base game only with my mod loaded - it's always the same. CTD without any warning. When I deactivate my mod, everything's back to normal. I can play for hours on end and never get a CTD. What could I have done wrong in my mod? How can I narrow down the problem without having any logfiles at all? Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance

@TheGreatFalro - young people tend to have reading issues ;-) So no easy refunds, there.

Essential NPCs are just a part of the problem. Say, have you ever been on a Dark Souls forum? This is the place to be to witness the real problem first-hand. Even on Reddit you'll find people asking questions like "I'm still at Firelink Shrine, don't know where to go. Halp plz!" "Where do I go after b0ss?" "What should I level to be the best?" "I leveled wrong, how can I fix it?" (For me, it's one of the classic BS questions, that make me laugh the most). "Which is the strongest weapon/the best armor/the deadliest spell?" They waste their time with worrying about the game instead of enjoying and playing it. Way back, about half a year after Morrowind's release on XBOX, I stumbled over a post from a guy that managed to break the main quest by selling Sunder and Keening. He complained about how this god-awful game continued to waste his precious life. He ranted about how he once killed Caius Cosades because he didn't like his face and how he had to replay three hours because of this "game-breaking bug". I looked at his profile and lost it completely after reading another thread from a month earlier, where he complained about how strong all the people in Seyda Neen are, because he wasn't able to kill all of them, after getting off the ship. This guy was an extreme example, but I clearly remember some not-so-positive reviews about Morrowind, which listed the potential of killing quest-givers or selling vital items as the main problems of the game. Do not underestimate the level of stupidity in a game's player base. Bethesda or any Company in that Business don't create games for the die-hard fans of the genre anymore. Even Witcher 3 felt flat at times, because you were able to kill most side quest enemies with 3 hits after a while. Companies want to increase the sales figures thus creating games that appeal to a broad audience, because they need more money for the next AAA title, which should appeal even more people - rinse and repeat. I'm still not over the fact that you couldn't kill some completely unnecessary Alik'r Prisoner but a Dragon nearly depopulating Riverwood because Granny and the townsfolk would try to fight it with their brooms and potatoes is totally fine. I really don't want to discuss the dumb-down of a whole genre, because there's simply nothing to discuss, when there is so much evidence.

NPCs can have voices, but they aren't required to have voices. In any case, NPCs, PCs or narrative characters aren't voice-overs, they often tend to have voice-overs. Big difference. A voice-over is simple a voice given to a character by a voice actor. If you don't see the character on screen but only hear his voice (prologue section in Fallout games, e.g. "War never changes"), then you have a narrative character who is played by a voice actor. If you see a character on screen and he talks but you are not able to play it, then it's an NPC (Non-Player Character) whose voice-over is spoken by a voice actor. If you see a character on screen and you are able to control his actions as well as his dialogue (in a limited way), than it's a PC (Player Character) , whose voice is spoken by a voice actor. Voice-overs even don't need to be understandable language. Even Pikatchu's voice is a voice-over.

In my FO3 rant I referred to the Pre-DLC version, which had different outcomes, defined by the player's actions. Those weren't the best but it was still much more than FO4 has to offer (only hearsay, because I haven't finished the game and I probably never will. Played 6 hours on a friend's PC who brought it over for me to fix it). There were many complaints about the fact that FO3 (again - pre-dlc) had an ending in the first place. Some said "It doesn't match the roleplaying idea", others complaint about the fact that "it doesn't match the Sandbox idea". So in the end, Bethesda "learned" the lesson and delivered Skyrim, where there is no karma, no choices in general (besides of "Gray-Mane or Battleborn") and all the major quests in this open world would lead you in circles until you follow the exact path they had planned for you to take. There is no "perfect open world RPG" and there never will be one. In the end, it's not even the question if Paarthurnax survives or dies, since we will read about that in some lore book in the next TES game and even then it's not sure if they stay in the chosen track. In my opinion, role playing has nothing to do with "have it my way", but it should at least feel rewarding instead of only time-consuming.

There is a mod, "The Paarthurnax Dilemma", that tries to address the problem differently. And not too bad, in my opinion. In Morrowind and Oblivion, the Blades were just members of an elite Order of the Empire. While they actually were descendants of the Akaviri Dragonguard, their only true connection to Dragons seemed to be the protectors and servants of those who are blessed with Dragon Blood by Akatosh. As such they actually should follow the lead and answer to the Dragonborn. Even if the Dragonborn might not be "Emperor Material" (for whatever reason, at least he seems to be no Pelagius, but again - this is a TES Game, oh well... ), he is the only person who is able to handle the crisis that could mean the end for all of Tamriel. The main problem with TES games is the constant "improvements" of the lore. Sometimes it feels like solving a Rubic's Cube by nibbling off all the stickers, sorting them by color and then putting them back on. The solution is messy, but who cares... ;-)

While everything in your spoiler section sounds reasonable within the game that Skyrim (sadly) is, it probably would be a whole different story if we actually were able to play a real RPG. You know, a game where the player would have real choices. In a real RPG, instead of a brute, you would be able to play a more stealthy character that would knock down enemies or use sleep darts, then hiding them in a dark corner or an unused room. A magician would use similar tactics. All those decisions could have lead to different possibilities and outcomes, like we had in Fallout 3/NV and many older games. Or even something simple as "Zero Bunnies Slaughtered" in the statistics. It also means that someone would have to put a lot more effort and work into the making of such a game... Buuut it seams that "modern" Gamers do not understand such complex gameplay mechanics - or at least Bethesda thinks so. They might be right, after all the negative rants they received for the FO3 pre DLC ending... The thing is that Skyrim tried too hard to be as many different games as possible. Same (even worse) goes for FO4.

That pretty much sums up my first experience with text-based RPGs, after which I wouldn't even look at them for a period of 10 years. Not to mention that there was nothing like google or even the Internet back then... Fast forward to 1995: I managed to find a good one, the first game I played on Linux. I can't remember the name, but I clearly remember that it kept me in front of the screen every night for more than a week. The thing is: It might sound quite easy to create a text-based RPG but in reality it's even harder than using graphics. You constantly have to remind yourself that you need to describe things in a way, that the player is able to see the picture that you have in mind. If you want to start such a thing, I'd recommend using a system similar to Morrowind's conversation system. Just create links for the things of interest. It could be done in HTML/Javascript/PHP and maybe a database. Plus it would be highly accessible even for the "modern" player.

Without wanting to sound rude, but how is this even a question? Modding is not about competition, it's about your personal gaming experience. First, think about why someone wants to mod their game. The first thing that comes to mind is, that somehow something in the gaming experience leaves you dissatisfied. In Skyrim and Oblivion, it started for me with the immediate urge to get rid of the god-awful vanilla UI, continued with game-breaking bugs and the terrible fast leveling, took a side trip on better graphics and ended with creating an overall better gaming experience that wouldn't push me out of the immersive experience at every corner. I ended up with 100 mods (+-10) in Skyrim from which about 25 are essential to me (meaning I would have stopped playing Skyrim in early 2012 if they wouldn't exist). It's a good idea to create a list of things you want to change urgently, then find the mods that might address those points and install them one by one. I'd rather not install a whole bunch of mods without knowing the basics (load order, for starters...)

In response to post #39749725. People always forget that because he is one of the few lead devs in the business who appear in public quite frequently. He even might not approve of everything that happens during development but being signed to a company also means that you go d'accord with your bosses in public.

In response to post #39675940. #39677215, #39679030, #39680875, #39683735, #39684460, #39688180, #39690275, #39694390, #39705550, #39731905, #39746910, #39763900, #39779675 are all replies on the same post. Remember that Bethesda's behavior is still quite unique when compared to other companies. While it might not be perfect that they deliver games that are somewhat broken it's still awesome that they provide the community with the tools to fix and extend them. I clearly remember the times when "tinkering with a game" was considered as totally evil and the pure existence of 3rd party tools on your homepage could get you into more trouble than you've ever asked for (Yeah, I'm looking at you, Eidos and Core Design.) Speaking of which... being soft banned on Dark Souls 3 for ... well, I honestly still don't know ... reminded me painfully about the awesomeness of single player games and especially TES.

In response to post #39803635. #39807825, #39808475 are all replies on the same post. Remember that Pete Hines can answer the question only within the limits of what the CK is intended to do. Many Skyrim Mods go far beyond the CK's possibilities, especially those which use SKSE. It's also not sure if the current SKSE will be running with the new 64Bit exe. Although I'm pretty sure that the awesome SKSE people will look into that, It might still be possible that some mods won't run until being updated.

In response to post #39691045. #39692170 is also a reply to the same post. You are right... well, not completely. The Nexus would still be there because there are still people out here releasing mods for older games. And there are people out there who buy TES and Fallout games not only because they are decent, they do so because they love their modding abilities. I am one of those people and I instantly stop buying the games as soon as they start to restrict the modding possibilities. I suggest you look up every single video of Todd Howard on youtube, that has been released over the last five years. He seems not getting tired of praising the community and how much Bethesda owes us and on and on and on. Releasing games that are decent enough to get bought by many people is one thing. Really caring about the community and not only talking about it in some random video is something totally different.

In response to post #39692670. #39692720 is also a reply to the same post. There is absolutely no use to that. Exhibit #1: There are tons of articles everywhere on the internet about CC, yet no thief cares. The same with other FLOSS Licenses. This goes so far that some Chinese and Indian companies download the source code for Blender, put their own Logo on it and start selling it.