Is the future of Bethesda - DOOMED??

[showler]

If Bethesda goes under then modding if their games grinds to a halt.  No Fallout London, no FO4 New Vegas, no Skyblivion, no Skywind.

There is no other developer who comes even close to being as mod friendly as Bethesda.

[JimboUK]

Microsoft are closing Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Roundhouse Studios and Alpha Dog Games, four Bethesda owned studios, Bethesda Softworks seems to have escaped unscathed at least for now. Microsoft have spent a fortune on acquisitions, I would imagine now they're under some pressure to start seeing returns.

[HeyYou]

12 minutes ago, JimboUK said:

Microsoft are closing Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Roundhouse Studios and Alpha Dog Games, four Bethesda owned studios, Bethesda Softworks seems to have escaped unscathed at least for now. Microsoft have spent a fortune on acquisitions, I would imagine now they're under some pressure to start seeing returns.

Likely consolidating assets, and trimming the fat.

[JimboUK]

1 hour ago, HeyYou said:

Likely consolidating assets, and trimming the fat.

This is on top of the 1,900 layoffs back in January, I can't help but feel sorry for Tango Gameworks, they release a hit like Hi-Fi Rush and still get closed down. 

[showler]

Yes, but likely the question was about what they had planned for next and whether they could keep the full studio employed and busy.

[ScytheBearer]

On 5/7/2024 at 11:04 AM, InDarkestNight said:

They are out of touch with what their customers want, and they even acknowledged that after Fallout 76. They admitted, they though that fallout 76 was WHAT PLAYERS WANTED. They thought their fanbase hated story, hated interesting characters, hated quests. They thought all the players wanted was a hack and slash game where you did absolutely nothing but hack and slash. There was quite a lot of outrage over that when they first revealed that. As for bugs btw, they admitted years ago before even Skyrim that they don't even bother to bug test their own games because they know the modders are going to fix it with an unofficial patch anyway., Seriously. They expect THE FANS to bug test and fix their own game. What does that say?

That said, let's be honest, their games have always been flawed. Skyrim's story is shallow and minmal and filled with plot holes. As I said in another thread, its obvious that they didn't bother to think the story through at all. Of course, when you dig into the 'lore' (if you can call it that), its obvioius they don't put any thought into it at all. They don't even hesitate to retcon their setting with every single game. I mean, the first two games seriously aren't canon anymore, and after Skyrim only half of Morrowind is. Even Skyrim isn't canon anymore after ESO.

And let's not forget the gameplay itself. Yeah, there's what I mentioned before, but there's obvious intentional decisions they made that aren't very good. Skyrim's combat is simplistic and lame, dragons are boring, Oblivion's leveling system actually made the game HARDER as you progressed, Morrowind's combat is annoying and its interface sucks. Oh and let's not forget the infamous balance issues that exist in every game. You had fortify alchemy in Morrowind, custom spells in Oblivion that could one-shot even daedric princes, and the fortify restoration glitch in Skyrim (not to mention the complete lack of balance even if you ignore exploits). Skyrim was only an upgrade over Oblivion, Morrowind is still seen as the best of the three games despite its dated graphics and mechanics (such as npcs standing in one place all day long, among numerous other things). The writing has consistently gone downhill between games though. I'm actually reluctant these days to do the vanilla Skyrim quests they're just so bad. I've actually thought about sticking to quest mods and radiant quests and ignoring all else, seriously.

Really, all their games suck. Its only the modding community that turns them into something decent. This has been the case since Morrowind, and still is today (even if Skyrim dialed it up to 11).

I've honestly been hoping they go under and all their ips get transfered to a company run by reasonable people. Of course, it certainly wouldn't help if it went to EA, which has a rap sheet going back decades of driving beloved IPs into the ground (among numerous other things, like refusing to cater to the retrogaming community at all). It could be worse, but either way its hard to find companies WORSE then bethesda, thus if their franchises get transferred to any other company, more than likely random luck's going to pick a better one.

Part of the contract that players enter into when they download and install mods includes an understanding that later updates to the game can and do break those mods.  The issue is not that "Bethesda are not good at listening to their community with empathy or understanding".  Reality is that mod users are simply unwilling to take responsibility for their choices and seek to blame someone other than themselves for the consequences of those choices; Bethesda is just the convenient target. 

As a consequence, irresponsible users break out their favored tirades, sharpen their forks, oil their torches and march their mob on Bethesda.  These mod users have been described as "entitled" and "spoiled" and there is some validity in those appellations.  Their response to broken mods have been likened to a "toddler throwing a tantrum", which also seems fitting.  As a mod maker, I think it is about < obscenity redacted > time mod users took a different approach and looked in the mirror to see where the true issue lies.  

Edited May 12 by ScytheBearer

[dallas8714]

I think it is time to delete my games associated with Bethesda and look for another game platform for the whole f4se and MCM incompatibility thing If you're tired of dealing with the headache of f4se and MCM incompatibility in your Bethesda games, it might be time to consider switching to a different platform. Take a step towards smoother and more enjoyable gaming experiences by exploring alternative options today. The update was designed to break the F4SE and now MCM is on the chopping block today I will be deleting Skyrim and all my Fallout games. my money was spent on this game and the people who made it decided to make it impossible to play it under my terms. face it guys they knew exactly what they were doing with the update release that caused the downhill flow of game issues.

[InDarkestNight]

Jesus, why does Skyrim have to attract so many denialists? What would bethesda have to do before you people acknowledge reality? First, they released s#*&#33; Edition just 'to get more control over mods'. As soon as that was released, they proceeded to release relentless 'updates' that literally did nothing but stop skse from working. They were releasing them at such a pace, the skse team was literally taking months to catch up to them, with their update only lasting for a few days before bethesda launched yet another attack. I for one quickly got tired of waiting for MONTHS ON END to play the game. Seriously. I stopped updating, but that was a perpetual battle. Besides, after a while I started having problems with newer mods just straight not working. It later turned out that mods would refuse to work if the person who made it's version was too far from the one you were running. Mod authors were having to specify what version of the game they were running because PEOPLE NEEDED THAT INFO TO MAKE SURE THE MOD WOULD ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING. They fragmented the community not just between LE and SE, but also between countless versions that did nothing but break skse. They lied claiming they were for cc garbage, even though EVERYONE WAS GETTING THIS EVEN IF THEY HAD NO CC INSTALLED.

I admit, I'm not sure what all they did after that, because I got fed up with it all and switched back to LE. Its nice being able to use any mod I want, regardless of whether it was released to day or over a decade ago. I can run far, far, more mods on LE than I ever could on SE, despite me being able to push the graphics farther with SE.

Then came the infamous AE update, where they FORCE INSTALLED GARBAGE MODS INTO EVERYONE'S GAME. If anyone else did this, what would you think? What if someone came up, force-installed mods that happened to break your game and conflict with pretty much all the biggest mods, and then rig your game so you could never remove them even if you re-installed your game on a completely different computer. The fallout from that was dramatic.

Of course, problem is, people are still obviously making mods. 99% of them are for pre-ae granted, but they still are. So then they CHANGED THE FILE FORMAT THAT TEXTURES USES. So you know all those re-texture mods? Noble Skyrim? Better Bethesda Performance Textures? Those countless skin re-textuires? The Rustic series? SMIM? Countless upon countless others? They don't work now. Can you imagine how much painstaking work it took to make these mods, just so people will keep playing bethesda's game? Everyone who made a re-texture took on a monumental task for absolutely no compensation, just so people would keep buying their game, AND BETHESDA JUST THREW IT ALL IN THEIR FACE. As if the AE update wasn't already the most revolting thing in the universe.

Seriously, tell me, what does bethesda have to do before you all will accept reality? I literally can't imagine anymore they could do. Of course, I would've said that after the AE update. There seems to be no end to their creativity. Who knows what they're going to do next.

Bethesda's antics are the very reason I see no reason to believe the Beyond Skyrim project is ever coming out. Its just taking too long. They've already had to completely re-make their entire maps TWICE, due to it being rendered INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE GAME DUE TO FORCED UPDATES FROM STEAM. There is no way in hell any of those mods will still work years from now. To keep up with bethesda, they would literally have to keep remaking all the assets for them over and over again for all eternity. Beyond Skyrim is never coming out, even if they literally completed it this very moment. All that work, for nothing, BECAUSE BETHESDA CAN'T STAND UNPAID AMATEURS SHOWING THEM UP ALL THE TIME. If they can't do at least as well as non-professionals who aren't being paid, they really need to think hard about how they're doing things. Instead, they're doing the underhanded tactic of trying to destroy what made this game so big in the first place.

Seriously, what must they do? What will 'prove' to you all beyond what's already happened that bethesda hates mods and is doing everything they can think of to stop them? This is why I still play LE and I see no reason to ever stop doing so. Besides, it always ran better on my system than SE every did anyway, and now that I have linux LE works even better (I've also heard that SE runs even worse on Linux than it normally does).

[showler]

^^^^^^^

This is the person who claims that other people are having trouble accepting reality.

Fun question:  If Bethesda wants modding to stop, why don't they just stop supporting it?

[JimboUK]

The games are often heavily discounted on GOG, pick them up there and then you can patch them when you're ready to, or not at all.