PirateDragon Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 I'm a pretty old school Neverwinter Nights 1&2 modder and have been looking at the TES community for some time. One of the things that I've noticed is that the majority of "mods" made for TES games are gameplay focused or modify the official game. Very few mods create new adventures in separate worlds. As a stark contrast, the NWN communities tend towards the exact opposite behavior. I'm curious to hear some theories why. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rennn Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 (edited) Probably because TES is already so wide open it's easy to stick in an extra building somewhere. Plus, it allows users to dynamically alter quests. For example, normally a modded adventure might take place in the Great Forest (boring), but with Unique Landscapes for the Great Redwood Forest and Chorrol Hinterlands, it suddenly turns a 'meh' quest into something more epic. This style of modding allows the vanilla regions and gameplay to become ridiculously deep and varied. Also, many people lack the time or motivation to make a full adventure. Also, NWN (from what I've heard, I've never played it) was apparently excellent all around to begin with, whereas TES alwasy seems like so many things could be improved. I don't know if it's simply because TES offers more options to begin with, and as a result each option is less fleshed-out, or if TES is generally less polished, or if it's because it's only a single-player game and therefore new adventures are not as fun to play. Edited January 5, 2012 by Rennn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AWildTurkey Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 I think it is mostly to do with how the different editors work. If I remember right, it wasn't very easy to get a custom item or other change into the main game in NWN, whereas it is incredibly easy to do so with the TES editors. But conversely creating a whole new world from scratch in TES takes a lot of work owing to its open world design, whereas NWN use of distinct areas makes such things s bit easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimhsu Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 (edited) Having used both editors before, I'd say the reason is that NWN//NWN2 relies on an area editing methodology, while TES uses largely a worldspace-based methodology. Because the NWN campaign is largely linear, putting, say, a house mod into a campaign does not make a whole lot of sense, because content is subdivided into modules, and modifying the base campaign isn't really worth the time since you'd likely visit each area once, or at most a few times. But because TES games are open world, you would likely visit the same area several, even dozens of times, necessitating both a) increased attention to worldspace detail (certainly not helped by the uncanny valley effect) and b) the mod to exist in the actual worldspace, not instanced (at least for exteriors). Edited January 5, 2012 by jimhsu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brunnwag Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 Personally i have never heard of nwn but im fairly new here. I prefer the big mods because you get to bond as a team and share ideas its even better when the mod your working on is your dream mod! I also like the w ones where they add new ways to play and little features such as melting weapons back down to raw ingreadients is very nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Herculine Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 I'm curious to hear some theories why. New adventures with complex quests, believable NPCs and large worldspaces require more time, effort and dedication than mods that modify numbers in a list like game settings or player stats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimhsu Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 I think it is mostly to do with how the different editors work. If I remember right, it wasn't very easy to get a custom item or other change into the main game in NWN, whereas it is incredibly easy to do so with the TES editors. But conversely creating a whole new world from scratch in TES takes a lot of work owing to its open world design, whereas NWN use of distinct areas makes such things s bit easier. You can get custom items into the base game, but a) it was an annoying process and b) does NOT handle multiple mod conflicts gracefully, if at all. Say what you will about the TES games, but they are remarkably resistant to worldspace mutilation by badly formed mods, changing load order, deleting mods with existing game objects, etc. Most other games without direct developer mod support would simply crash with fatal errors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blu02 Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 "Gameplay"-mods are more common because it's a lot easier for one person with a certain area of expertise to make. Making quests and adventures will however require quite a lot of effort in many areas, so most people would need help from others and form a team, which isnt always an easy task, definitely not in the long run :P Personally I'm not sure what to choose here. Skyrim is still in the need of a LOT of improvements, and I think this is the most important focus at the moment while people still explore the original gameworld. In a few months however, Skryim will look incredible, and we will need new quests and areas to keep it interesting, which I'm sure will pop up like crazy as soon as Creation Kit arrives in a few weeks. When this time comes, I think I'd rather see adventure-mods past the borders of Skyrim, because I think Skyrim is so detailed and well made in that matter already, compared to previous TES-games :) I'm personally looking forward into making quests with new NPC's, rewarding objects and voice-overs myself, and I'm definitely not alone ;) Teaming up with a friend of mine who's good with the scripting-part, so hopefully we'll make it without recruiting more people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LiamFarley1998 Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 I think it is mostly to do with how the different editors work. If I remember right, it wasn't very easy to get a custom item or other change into the main game in NWN, whereas it is incredibly easy to do so with the TES editors. But conversely creating a whole new world from scratch in TES takes a lot of work owing to its open world design, whereas NWN use of distinct areas makes such things s bit easier. If anything the exact opposite. With nwn it had greater armor and weapon gameplay based customization. You could make thousands of unique armors with ease. It took my about ten minutes without any help to figure out both toolsets. Fallout and Oblivion on the other hand were much harder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MonsterMonkey Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 Because gameplay and graphics are the weakness of Beth games, even if Skyrim is better than what they did in the past on this point. Sometimes i wonder if they do this consciously like they know we love to correct the game our way and mod it completely. I think some guys in beth's crew knows ther is one of the biggest Modder community for their games and maybe they leave us some part of the work, or maybe i'm just dreaming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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