Wolfmod

So far, all the mods I see are saved files mostly for character creation and a few lighting mods. Will we see alternative bodies and faces for companions, weapons, armor, clothing, scripts. quests, gameplay, and other mods? I realize the game is still new but I did notice that Cassandra from "Dragon Age Inquisition" did get a couple of mods that improved her attractiveness... slightly by removing scars but no mods exist that actually make her attractive as was done with Morrigan in Origins. Seeing as DAI and MEA use the same engine, are we going to see the same lack of modifications to the game itself?

That isn't happening. Plugins.txt has the asterisks, is accessed by NMM to determine the load order but FO4Edit is getting its load order from somewhere else. Where exactly?

I see that the mod I have nominated as a required file is listed if I hit the "required files" button. Will the warning that the required file is needed come up for those who are downloading?

I've just published a mod and it requires another mod to be installed first. Using the "Upload Wizard" it found the Nexus mod for the required file - it auto completed my selection - but it remains with a red cross in front of it. When I trialed it by downloading the files manually, there was no prompt that the other mod was required. What am I missing?

The answer is obvious. Endorsing mods is directly linked to enjoyment. If people are enjoying their experience they will shower those supplying that enjoyment with thanks and even adulation. Unfortunately, after playing Fallout 4 for a couple of months and endorsing the valiant attempts by mod authors to circumvent Bethesda's strategy of filling the game with sales making features while at the same time hobbling those features to give everyone the same "even playing field" Commodore 64 experience, getting engrossed in the shallow illogical characters and their weak motivations became a losing battle. People have moved on. Without real player investment as in player creativity, settlement building as is, is not fun... it's a chore. Seven months after release I am still limited by the amount I can build; I'm still limited with the number of items I can have in my build menu and the CK came out far too late. This negative reaction is not mine alone and I have not purchased the DLC; why compound a bad experience?

Been a bad Witcher.

I have several criticisms of the Witcher 3 as I do about anything I care about but my greatest criticism is that it will be very hard to give us The Witcher 4 with these characters that we know and love. I am looking forward to what comes next.

This is definitely an opinion thread where no response could be wrong. A good game is a good game and I will buy any expansions or DLC for a good game regardless of when it is released. I bought "Dragon Age Inquisition" thinking it was a good game. It was for a brief time but the developer decision to base it on the characters and events of Dragon Age 2, the worst of the Dragon Age franchise, plus other annoying features of the game built up to end my relationship with that company and to view any future releases with skepticism. I played Fallout 4 and while it initially seemed great, none of its surplus of features were fully implemented with severe limits imposed on whatever the player did and I soon identified this game as a cash grab. The problem is that there just aren't enough games of this genre for players to be that choosy. When DLC for a good game like The Witcher 3 comes out we will buy it regardless of what else is out there.

I love the weather effects in this game but really... With the amount of rain and storms the world of The Witcher 3 should be flooded or emerald green. I would give anything to have more sunny days where the panoramic views are displayed in their beauty. But no, it seems that you only get one of those to every four days of rain, storm, and unexplained darkness. Is there a mod or an ini setting that could give us less weather?

One point of contention here. The OP made the claim that modding would negatively interfere with DLC and you have said that the CK would not impact on profits. I have to disagree with both assertions. A mod that increases the number of factions, a mod that alters or builds on story elements, a mod that allows you to build the Taj Mahal and thousands of other mods that add content or alter the playing experience increases player involvement, keeps the game current, adds game news stories, and keeps the player base playing. Those mods that don't work with the DLC have low download rates and the profit potential of a game made dynamic by mods is astronomical. The most developed part of this game was the marketing. Prior to release all news of the game concerned its features. However, every feature whether it is the number of followers, follower mechanics, settlement building and settlement size, building structures and materials that discourage grand designs are all limited. It was as if when given the option of whether to fully implement a feature or to limit it and squeeze in three more, they chose the latter. The question is, can the game engine survive with each feature fully implemented? What will happen to the games run on low end machines when all the limits are removed? And, for those waiting for a statement from Bethesda, I thought that stripping my "plugins.text" file to disable all my mods was a pretty clear and loud statement - "DO NOT MOD THIS GAME". Many have claimed that the removal of mod enabling and ordering (clicking below the eye of the power armor on the launcher graphic) and the stripping of the "Plugins.txt" file was merely to help Bethesda's testing and troubleshooting but such draconian measures did not come with an explanation or an announcement. It was a clear statement in itself. You mistake a aspect of the BETA testing that is made to insure proper BETA testing as a indication of an anti mod behavior. It is not. It is simply forcing those in the open BETA to not use them as frankly, that is counter intuitive to playing a BETA. No I don't. This has nothing to do with a BETA or BETA testing. I never ran a BETA version and the stripping of "Plugins.text" affected everyone with modded .esps or .esms. The EXCUSE given by players for why Bethesda callously sabotaged everyone with modded games was that they needed everyone to be running vanilla games to help fix the many bugs. I rejected this because when opening the stripped "plugin.text" file there were no announcements of "We are working hard on the CK and we ask you to be patient... blah blah" or "We apologize for the untimely interference but for now we really need... blah blah". No, what i read was a message that was both confronting and insulting.

One point of contention here. The OP made the claim that modding would negatively interfere with DLC and you have said that the CK would not impact on profits. I have to disagree with both assertions. A mod that increases the number of factions, a mod that alters or builds on story elements, a mod that allows you to build the Taj Mahal and thousands of other mods that add content or alter the playing experience increases player involvement, keeps the game current, adds game news stories, and keeps the player base playing. Those mods that don't work with the DLC have low download rates and the profit potential of a game made dynamic by mods is astronomical. The most developed part of this game was the marketing. Prior to release all news of the game concerned its features. However, every feature whether it is the number of followers, follower mechanics, settlement building and settlement size, building structures and materials that discourage grand designs are all limited. It was as if when given the option of whether to fully implement a feature or to limit it and squeeze in three more, they chose the latter. The question is, can the game engine survive with each feature fully implemented? What will happen to the games run on low end machines when all the limits are removed? And, for those waiting for a statement from Bethesda, I thought that stripping my "plugins.text" file to disable all my mods was a pretty clear and loud statement - "DO NOT MOD THIS GAME". Many have claimed that the removal of mod enabling and ordering (clicking below the eye of the power armor on the launcher graphic) and the stripping of the "Plugins.txt" file was merely to help Bethesda's testing and troubleshooting but such draconian measures did not come with an explanation or an announcement. It was a clear statement in itself.

Who is the Lone Survivor? He/She woke up one morning and had breakfast. Later that day he/she woke up again - his/her spouse had been murdered, his/her child had been kidnapped and the world had suffered 200 years of Armageddon. But the Lone Survivor hadn't. It was natural for survivors in the first 20 years to be suffering from PTD disorder and content themselves with dragging a sheet of old tin over themselves to survive. The "Mad Max" raider-style of anarchy would prevail with enclaves of tribes surrounded by walls of tires and scrap fencing would be normal for all. However, their children would grow up without a sense of loss and very quickly these raider tribes would unite and form alliances to increase their power base and to protect farmers and their farm plots so as to provide non-contaminated food and clean water for the tribe. They would not kill settlers and scavengers - they would enslave them to work on their farms. However, Bethesda ignored any sense of realism to put the Lone Survivor within a culture of 'Firefly-style' ravers. Fair enough. They also messed with the Lone Survivor's missing time. 2015 is exactly 200 years after the last Napoleonic battle of 1815 and while our ancestors from that time did not have the same devastation to deal with the idea that after 200 years no one in Diamond City has mastered concrete walls to extend the city, using brooms, or replacing the crap buildings with brick and mortar is... silly. Surely, someone 100 years ago thought that decontamination services and land reclamation was a good business to get into. Still, Bethesda wanted to create a post-apocalyptic world with a lot less of the "post" and they did it. But when Piper interviews our hero, he/she says, "You are living in tin shacks and killing each other" and so Bethesda set the bar for the Lone Survivor to make a difference. It is for this reason that the LS is building settlements and offering shelter to the mysterious settlers - (settlers from where? Where are your parents, your grandparents, your great grand parents? How did you and your families survive for these last 200 years - 200 years of being lost, how did that work?). And while I can accept all of this strangeness concerning what others have done - the raiders, the settlers, the struggling farmers, and the factions, I cannot accept these inconsistencies when applied to my own behavior. I'm used to normal and find it strange that the people of Diamond City are still living in tin shacks - I make that quite clear to Piper. So when mod authors and players alike try to add material that is "lore-friendly" by rejecting brand new shiny paint jobs for power armor in preference for faded, scratched, rust covered ones any sense of immersion I've gleaned goes right down the gurgler. I'm standing there with spray can in hand, the paint fumes are still in the air and I stand back and my brand new paint job is transformed into a faded, scratched disaster. What lore is this friendly to? I'm cutting down trees to make furniture... oops, I accidently vomited over that, crapped and p***** over it, tore the fabric and broke the drawers. Like melting down wrenches and screwdrivers to make old aircraft wings for roofs, this is the lore of a scavenger who drags homes furnishings from rubbish piles. The LS has already told Piper that it is not his lore. What he/she makes and builds is new.

When I began modding my game I was told to extend the "sResourceDataDirsFinal=" entry in my fallout4.ini file to "sResourceDataDirsFinal=STRINGS\, TEXTURES\, INTERFACE\, SOUND\, MUSIC\, VIDEO\, MESHES\, PROGRAMS\, MATERIALS\, LODSETTINGS\, VIS\, MISC\, SCRIPTS\, SHADERSFX\" and this I did. Modders still tell players that the reason why this mod or another is not working is because they haven't done this. Now, when I load NMM I am informed that I should return this entry to its default and even some mod authors have been advising players that the .ini file modification is no longer necessary. However, I was also told that using Fallout4.exe to launch my game instead of Fallout4Launcher.exe would stop Bethesda from emptying my plugins.txt file and it didn't. So, what is the story here?

I don't know why but what works for others doesn't seem to work for me. I was told that using Fallout4.exe instead of the launcher would solve my problem but no... Bethesda cleared out my plugins.text and left an annoying note "#Please don't modify this file...blah,blah blah." What this note should have said was "because we released an unfinished game and thought we could use our paying customers as unpaid game testers. We cannot do this if our game testers are using modded games." Bethesda's total indifference to the fact that players using modded games will have their games broken by their actions concerns me. It doesn't look like the creation kit will be available any time soon. The only thing that works for me is to open "#username\AppData\Local\Fallout4\" select plugins.txt, right click for properties, and tick "read only" BEFORE launching the game. In addition, make sure this is not read only before opening up NMM or your mod organizer and check that the contents of this text document match the .esp files in your data folder. Since Bethesda could pull anything I do the same for DLCList.txt and Loadorder.txt. These are located in the same folder as plugin.txt and while so far Bethesda don't touch them ensuring that the load order you want is shown in Loadorder.txt and is read only gives me peace of mind. I don't know what the solution would be for those not using a PC.

That damn door is a 'non-referenced object'. Markfordelete and disable are powerless. I hate that door for what it stands for. "Build a settlement! Be creative!" But we'll tell you what you can build as well as how and where you will build it. Every time I walk over it I think, "It's not really mine"

Boombro, you make some excellent points but just to clarify a few things. Whatever is in the Fallout world need not apply to settlements which are specific blocks of land with items that have totally different characteristics to everywhere else. There is no need to be able to remove scrub as objects. All you need is object placement and a vegetable garden as a flat scalable object that can be scaled and shaped to requirements and replace whatever graphics terrain is there. That is, if you delete/scap it, it leaves flat vacant land that you can build on. I was playing with games that did this back in the late 90s. Not only is it not new but really small Indie games companies have done it. Consoles won't need to relay their settings. If you own a certain model of a certain platform you will have a set capability. The building thing isn't a bug... You cannot snap a wall down from a floor and you cannot snap two wall sections vertically. I just hope they will change this.

I would really like to think so SMB92 but the confusion as to whether we are creating stuff from the raw elements or collecting ruined objects for reuse as the raiders do simply to retain that apocalyptic look is a basic design decision. Take the follower disaster they've created as an example. People think that a mod to allow more than one follower by changing "the number of followers" value will give us the vanila follower behaviours in previous Bethseda games. Because they tied follower behaviour to lock-picking (there's a real pearl if I've seen one) you have to have your follower with you to advance their quests, get them to like you, etc. So in order for you to have multiple followers and the extremely important controls that multiple followers require like assigning homes and telling them to relax in those homes while they continue to adore and respect you, mods that cater to multiple followers will have to lift the vanila followers from the follower system and make them standalone - you can have as many followers as you like but the game will think you have none. In other words, the failings of Bethseda aren't of ommission where partially functioning mechanics can be altered and completed by mods. These are designed features to ensure that someone on a PC built 15 years ago can play it so all that Bethseda have done will have to be overwritten and created from scratch. That is not mod-friendly. I'm just waiting for those who can actually mod to confirm this.

The idea of setlements are wonderful and there are many games on the market right now that either incorporate it or focus on it. But Bethsida, what were you thinking because this "cashing in" is nothing but a tease. So let us begin with the lore and the assumptions. We aren't collecting rusty sheets of iron, rubber tires, cinder blocks and rotten planks of wood to throw up tin shacks as the raiders have done. Raiders create little. They take from others what they want whereas "the vault dweller" is a builder; he's building communities, relationships and trying to recreate a sense of community and establish law and order. Or, at least most vault dwellers are. The sheets of iron he creates for building are made from melted down coffee pots and wrenches so why do they have holes? Why does one roof segment look like an airplane wing? I'm making beds and furniture from raw cotton and yarn. I'm not collecting rat-infested matresses or two hundred year old chairs so why do I end up with stained matresses, chairs with broken backs and settees that look like they were merely moved from a city dump to my settlement? And, the argument that the world doesn't have any manufacturing capabilities is inconsistant. The Power Crafting Frame I build isn't rusty. And what about concrete, cider block or stone walls? It just needs cement - 1 part cement, 1 part sand, and 1 part water. Then we come to assembling this tiny selection of crap. Those of us that enjoy building games have no cause to like Fallout 4. Simple things like allowing roofs and floors to be interchangable so that the roof of a building could function as the floor to a second level, having the snap-to function as an on/off toggle and allowing walls to snap-to vertically as they are horizontally would make a huge difference. I won't even start on the electrical power system that doesn't actually work as intended - the notion that we can't drill holes for wiring and the area of effect actions of conduits make using the on/off switch extremely difficult. Bethsida have obviously responded to the market attraction of building games. And, why not? The fact that millions of players download the perfect body mods, clothing that looks awesome, or those many player homes that we wish we could actually live in should have been a red flag because Bethseda have failed to understand why those building games are popular to begin with. One of the first things you do when building a settlement is go around and pick up the scrap. it's true, you do need the resources, but by restricting this clean-up to only those things that give a resource, Bethsida has missed the point entirely. I want to plant a few rows of carrots. I have shovels and hoes because I've seen the NPCs use them. I can remove logs and giant trees with a click of a button but tubleweed and small dead bushes are beyond me. I have to plant carrots that get lost in the scrub. Why can't I create a flat, tilled vegetable garden? Why can't I level land? Why can't I collect rocks for my walls. Why, in one of my settlements, do I have a large 'non-referenced object' door lying there to annoy me every time I pass it? Why can't I remove some destroyed buildings? what's the problem with patching up houses that have leaky roofs? why can't I join anything to a building already standing? Why did bethseda create a building menu that was so limited and then restrict the ways each item could be used to the point where you build rubbish you don't care about? Of course, the argument will be about the CPU requirements and the differences between player's equipment. What about settings? My PC tells Fallout what graphics and sound settings it can tolerate; why not allow my machine, regardless of the platform, to determine the "size" of the settlements I can create? Because as it stands, only those that don't care about building and chose player homes and body mods that are realistically awful will accept what Bethseda has offered.

I think we are looking at this from the wrong angle. Take the settlement people who stream into your settlements. As you move from one settlement to the other and meet the "new" people streaming in, you are probably busy earning caps and resources and building what you can, some of them will approach and ask you for an assigned task. However, more often than not you aren't ready to assign them a new task. Maybe you haven't built what you need them to do or you just need to run around and look to see what is needed. However, after that initial meeting the assignment dialogue disappears. When you ring a bell to gather them or approach them individually you only have a trading option available. This completely destroys the entire idea of settlements. There is absolutely no NPC control in this game. What I want is the ability to assign tasks for them whenever I am ready to do so and to delegate by nominating a settlement spokesman who will report problems and desires for that community. This complete lack of dialogue is also the problem with followers. I played Fallout 3, Fallout NV and Skyrim and if anything Fallout 4 has gone backwards. While some people like to venture out alone and others like to have an army to decimate entire cities, there is a lot of 'in between' and it is not up to any of us to dictate how you play your single player game. I like adventuring alone but I also want every follower in the game under my control. In fallout NV you got a "follower wheel" that you could use to tell followers to "wait", "go to the home you have chosen for them", "relax", "follow me at this distance", "don't attack until I engage", "Act defensively and don't attack at all", and so on. In Fallout 4 there is none of this which makes playing the "sniper/assassin" impossible with a follower. People worry about building their settlements so that there are no gaps in their defences and I laugh. The attackers are NPCs and their pathing is so bad that a kitchen chair anywhere in their vicinity will have them all trying to walk through it. I have Piper in a suit of power armor and while the command to get her to put it on are there, getting the right command is frustrating and here is the problem: Instead of giving me a menu of every possible command available, the AI attempts to guess what command I want to give depending upon how far away I am from the NPC and the object-target and on the pixel my mouse is pointing at and angle plays a part as well - it is a nightmare. Why not have all commands available and let me select a 'favourites' set for actions I do continuously? Would it be too much to ask for me to assign Piper a Power armour suit, a crafting frame and to teach her how to use it for repairs? Have you ever heard of anything more ridiculous than having player/follower status powered by lockpicking? Apart from being dumber than the Amulet of Mara it forces players to take their follower with them and while follower mods in previous games gave the vanilla followers more options and altered the number of followers you could have that won't help Fallout 4. What we need are mods that remove the vanila followers from the game's follower mechanics entirely. They will retain their quests, story lines and romance options but be stand alone followers and I don't know if this will be possible. What I want is to take on every single follower in the game and assign each to a different settlement. I want to visit each one and get updates and progress reports. I want to have the quests, the options and the controls over them as if each were my only follower and the irony of this is that by building settlements, Bethsida has finally given us a reason to have multiple followers and then failed in epic proportions by disallowing it.

Or, we are all so staggered by the problems with settlement building, companion control and options, and other things that we just aren't there yet. Early days.

I am loving this game in spite of the dog's breakfast that Bethseda have made of it. Without spoilers, I now have Covenant as one of my settlements (I was forced to use "setownership" on several of the objects - I'll come back to this) and it struck me that something was amiss with this 200 year old culture. The rubbish lying around has suffered 200 years of natural aging, acid rain and toxic radiation so we expect a sheet of iron to have rust holes in it. We expect a matress to be stained and look like rats have made a home of it. However, the basic premise of the building system is that we melt down coffee pots, wrenches and scrap metal to make brand new sheets of steel to make housing. We chop wood for brand new timber. We find cotton and yarn, we boil it, bleach it and then dye it to make brand new fibre so that everything we create may or may not have that professional look but we certainly would not be making stained matresses. In the end, all of this must fit with the story of a survivor who on so many levels is rebuilding civilization. And, of all of the settlement/building games on the market (some of them being small budget Indie games) Fallout 4 has managed to come out with the worst I have ever seen. It is so bad, it is broken. Covenant has managed to procure a lovely clean double bed (before the nuclear war the world appeared to sleep in singles) as well as brand new bunkbeds. So where did they get them? Their community is surrounded by a cement wall but that isn't in my building options even though mud and brick are ancient technologies mastered by primitives - So why am I collecting bags of cement? Where are the large doors/gates for my wall (Covenant has them). The fallout world of previous games was full of sandbag walls and at Sanctury I was asked to build defences and sandbag walls were given as an example and yet a simple sandbag isn't on my build list. I want stone walls, cinderblock walls, mounted heavy weapon emplacements, towers. What I don't want is a wall made of scrap that looks like it was put together by someone on acid. How about an electrical system that assumes that the wire going through a wall or ceiling (or any obstruction) is actually going through holes I drilled. How about floodlighting? How about giving us a device or machine that gives a small extention of the build area so that we can run piping (something else that doesn't exist) down to the river for a water purification machine? While I could write a lengthy essay on what we don't have or on what we should have, what we do have is abysmal. You can't patch houses that are still standing. You can't effectively use existing features or objects in your design. Where is the snap-to-grid on and off toggle? Where is the scaling of built objects using the mouse wheel? Where is the broom to sweep out the crap? Where is the shovel to level the land? Why not assume that in placing the flooring we actually used a shovel to level the land? Why not assume that the wall we built didn't come out of a factory in pre-made sheets and can reach the ground regardless of slope or level? How about a 90 degree angle snap-to (this possibly the most frustrating point here). As it stands, I believe modders will have to overwrite everything that Bethseda has done in building before they can so much as add a brick.

I did notice that unlike previous fallouts, Four doesn't seem to have a "local map" function, or have I simply missed it somehow?

Although I don't have his problems, I am still with the OP. You have to go into build mode very close to your settlement and then walk to where the scrap is - you can't just scrap stuff by going into build mose wherever you find it. When this is combined with the imbalance of getting 2 steel from a coffee pot and only 20 steel clearing a house down to its foundations this becomes a problem. In addition, when the walls of a house are still standing, you can neither select nor scrap it. Then you are wasting steel because you have to overlap wall segments that refuse to lock in correctly. The entire building section needs work.

The OP is spot on and not just for those who want to run around with a hoarde of followers. Walking into the game on the day it was released, I met this dog. There was no follow me dialogue that I particularly recall - he just followed me home so to speak and the idea that I would tell him to "go away" would seem unnecessary, cruel and completely out of character for a suvivalist trying to unite settlements across the land. But because I had the dog, I got no options when meeting Codsworth to assign him to serve and protect Sanctuary. He was my robot was he not? And, since I won't get any options when I finally meet Piper and whoever else is out there I have to dismiss the dog and have no followers in order to discover who is available and when. Where was the thinking here?

I've never used VATS in a any Fallout game either. The idea of being in an adrenaline pumping situation where you have to kill them before they kill you but then interrupting that with calm consideration of who to hit first and where deflates the excitement - it never made sense to me. Still, each to his or her own and we just know that as the days pass someone is going to mod a selection of perks that bypasses most of these VAT perks.