Concerns about Fallout 4 Development Kit

[Guest Messenjah]

That being said, I am worried about the modding community. For me, the modding community is the only reason I bother purchasing Bethesda games. It is the one thing we have left from the old school gaming days. The ability to create loads of custom content for a game, without charging people for it. However, with the new dev kit, everything I read seems to give me a bit of a negative vibe about things to come. So here are my worries:

1. According to an article by Polygon, the kit rumored to come out this month for PC and a month later for CONSOLES. Granted, I do not hate consoles, I love my 360, but it serves a different purpose. I play games on my console that I do not want/need additional content for, and for competitive multiplayer shooter games.

The reason this is a concern, is that, every "editor" program created for console that I have seen, is extremely dumbed down. I also wouldn't count on Bethesda making the tool function differently between console and PC. They are much more likely to develop something that functions like Halo's Forge editor, or other dumbed down editors. This likely means, we may not be able to add custom content, beyond moving snap kits, built into the game itself around, or we can make replacers. This means, no new clothes/weapons/static or animated objects.

2. We are likely to be locked out of adding custom animations. We saw this with Skyrim. Bethesda seemed to go to great lengths to make it very difficult to add animations. We found ways around this, but this is likely to only get worse, granted, even IF we can actually add NEW content to the game.

3. The fact that the player is voiced. Before, we were able to simply just write dialogue in for quests/NPC interactions. Now we have a voiced character. It is unlikely they had the voice actors actually say every single word in mulitple languages in different tones for this game, in a way that we can "piece" them together. I also doubt the actors will offer themselves up to voice act for all the mods out there. We are far more likely to see mods where modded npcs are silent, or at least the player is silent. Either this, or the dialogue system and maybe questing system is removed entirely. :\

4. Mods going through Bethesda. When I first read this, I figured that we would be able to choose to publish our mods through Bethesda, or save them to our PC and publish them on Nexus if we so choose not to release them to console players. But, with the statement that it is also coming to consoles, this is sounding more and more likely that we may be forced to publish them only through Bethesda. Some of my mods are of an adult subject matter and Bethesda may not approve. I'm not talking about explicit sex mods, but this could mean even references/inferred sex could get you into trouble. I'm certainly hoping that this is NOT the case and we will still be able to publish them through Nexus.

Anyone else feel this way? I am still trying to feel optimistic, but I'm worried that maybe I'm all hyped up to mod Fallout 4 and setting myself up for massive disappointment. I certainly hope not. :\

Edited April 13, 2016 by Messenjah

[TeamBacon]

 

 

Anyone else feel this way? I am still trying to feel optimistic, but I'm worried that maybe I'm all hyped up to mod Fallout 4 and setting myself up for massive dissappointment. I certainly hope not. :\

 

 

You are not trying to feel optimistic, you are bringing up a bunch of blind speculation and worrying about things that 'could possibly in some possible future happen'. You are judging based on what could happen as opposed to any actual reality.

 

You are being a hard core pessimist.

 

 

 

Actually, the animations thing is a relevant and factual point, the only one at that. But that is more of an issue with proprietary software Bethesda uses and is not allowed to give out for free and other technical issues. This isn't a big conspiracy out to get you. Though yes, animations are usually a big pain... But that has been in any game engine I have worked in...

[ddavies10693]

I just hope they leave nexus alone and don't try to shut it down or alienate users. Hell, maybe even make some sort of official partnership.

 

In addition to what Team Bacon said, I think it's entirely possible that they introduce some sort of build mode on consoles similar to forge.

[Reneer]

When Bethesda said mods were coming to consoles, they meant just that: mods are coming to consoles. The GECK / CK program isn't coming to consoles so you don't have to worry about any dumbing down. Furthermore, they aren't limiting mods to only Bethesda.Net, so no worries there either.

 

The voiced player thing is just something we all have to deal with, though.

Edited April 13, 2016 by Reneer

[PoliteRaider]

 

2. We are likely to be locked out of adding custom animations. We saw this with Skyrim. Bethesda seemed to go to great lengths to make it very difficult to add animations. We found ways around this, but this is likely to only get worse, granted, even IF we can actually add NEW content to the game.

 

 

This isn't a choice Bethesda gets to make. They didn't write their own animation program, they bought a license to use the Havok animation toolkit. Whether they want to share that license with us or not, they're simply not allowed to within their own terms and condition with Microsoft.

 

I really hope they manage a breakthrough and somehow persuade Microsoft to let them share some tools to work with this engine with the modding community, but given that this engine was recently sold for $110 Million I think it's pretty likely to stay under lock and key.

[Di0nysys]

Given Bethesda's track record from Morrowind all the way to Skyrim, doubt this is gonna be the case. I also doubt there will be a CK for console, the challenges of getting the interface right are just too much. I speculate the reason for this delay is the challenges of setting up the infrastructure for mods on console, it's simply rarely been done before, so reasonably there's a good amount of work that has to go into it.

CK is already being offered in an open beta at the new Bethesda forums. If you wanna take a look, go over there and sign up.

[zanity]

Your concerns are not the right ones.

 

The REAL concern is Beth losing interest in TRUE PC modding, and moving their focus to the walled garden of PAID console mods. We are seeing this already in the form of Beth using every excuse under the Sun to delay releasing the GECK, so they can sell lousy 'horse armour' DLC that PC modders would have bettered in weeks after the GECK being available.

 

But NO, once the GECK appears, Beth can no more 'control' modding on the PC than it could for Skyrim (and in truth, Beth doesn't care one way or the other about PC mods, save for their ability to 'copy' the ideas of the best mods and use those ideas in later games they produce).

 

Fallout 4 should be the last use of the ancient and badly coded Gamebryo descended engine. So the question is whether current PC modding will be as possible with Skyrim 2's new engine when it finally appears (probably in 2017). Beth will have tried to perfect their PAID console modding system by that time, and won't care if this initiative ruins free PC modding.

[Di0nysys]

Your concerns are not the right ones.

 

Fallout 4 should be the last use of the ancient and badly coded Gamebryo descended engine. So the question is whether current PC modding will be as possible with Skyrim 2's new engine when it finally appears (probably in 2017). Beth will have tried to perfect their PAID console modding system by that time, and won't care if this initiative ruins free PC modding.

They've sunk too much money into their tech to abandon it now. I bet you they will use another slightly modified version of their current iteration.

Fallout 4 sold nearly 13+ million copies on the current tech, in their view, why fix if it ain't broken?

[1Shep8ardov]

Given Bethesda's track record from Morrowind all the way to Skyrim, doubt this is gonna be the case. I also doubt there will be a CK for console, the challenges of getting the interface right are just too much. I speculate the reason for this delay is the challenges of setting up the infrastructure for mods on console, it's simply rarely been done before, so reasonably there's a good amount of work that has to go into it.

 

CK is already being offered in an open beta at the new Bethesda forums. If you wanna take a look, go over there and sign up.

If it goes so, as a community, we should kill this game.

[TeamBacon]

I also doubt there will be a CK for console

 

Bethesda has 100% confirmed that there will be no creation kit for consoles.