Your Chance to Rant about Entitled Mod Users for FO4

[Fkemman11]

I am a newbie to this sort of thing. I bought a subscription, had brief success playing Fallout 4 using mods. It crashed, I never had much luck with clothing and skin textures. They ended in patchwork people that reminded me of an old Star Trek episode. I like the Vaultec clothing and the idea of mods. I don't blame others for my lack of understanding how to get mods to work. I left the game playing for 6 months or so and now have decided to give it another go. I tried many apps so here we go again.

 

Most of the time mod authors will give at least a brief description of their mod and load order/ installation instructions. It is important to read as much about the mod you intend to use as possible. A very simple- easy to overlook error- is usually the culprit for problems when installing and using a mod. Other than that it might be conflicts with another mod in your load order. A better understanding of mods and how they work in your game will help with many issues you might have. Please note that I am not saying anyone is dumb for making a mistake as this is much information to take in by the unfamiliar. :smile:

[Alexotero1219]

I am a newbie to this sort of thing. I bought a subscription, had brief success playing Fallout 4 using mods. It crashed, I never had much luck with clothing and skin textures. They ended in patchwork people that reminded me of an old Star Trek episode. I like the Vaultec clothing and the idea of mods. I don't blame others for my lack of understanding how to get mods to work. I left the game playing for 6 months or so and now have decided to give it another go. I tried many apps so here we go again.

As the guy above said. Having a better understanding how how mods work and what exactly they are doing "under the hood" of your game will help alot in getting things to work smoothly.

 

Contrary to your experience I have been playing and using mods in FO4 on and off since release and even before CK release and have yet to have any save corruption or game breaking crashes with around 80 plugins in my load order.

 

Here are a few important things, imo, that could help you improve your experience.

 

1. Never view your saves as valuable.

save corruption/game time loss is a very real possibility when modifying your game this much. Just view any save corruption or other game time loss as an opportunity to start a new game or take break for a while

 

2. Understand mod dependencies.

Alot of mods will require other mods/files to run properly and will often cause a CTD on startup if necessary files are missing. If your game crashes every time you try to start it chances are high you have a mod activated that is missing a dependency. Go back to your most recently installed mods and read the descriptions/optional files to see if you need something (I.E AWKCR or CBBE)

 

3. Understand mod conflict

Some mods simply cannot run together at the same time because they modify the same files. For example if you install two mods that modify the games weather there are high chances that those two mods will conflict. Mod conflict can cause a variety of issues including crashes but for the most part you should know what mods are loaded and the files they are changing and just make sure to avoid mods that conflict or uninstall one if you want to try the other. Lastly feel free to ask mod authors if you think a mod in your load order might conflict with theirs. In my experience most mod authors are happy to offer their opinions to help with a question like that. If you find two mods in your load order conflict make sure to report this to one or both authors just to help them better improve their mod.

 

4. Load order

Load order is, afaik, the order in which the various plugins are loaded. Some plugins must be loaded before others and having certain "types" of mods loaded before others can cause problems. If you have a mod loaded that appears to be having issues after install try moving this mod the bottom of your load order (unless otherwise stated in the mod page) and it could fix your problem. There are tools that can help you optimize your load order but even these tools dont do all the work for you. A better understanding of what plugins should be loaded when will go a long way in making sure your game runs smoothly.

 

Of course others could correct me if im wrong on any of this or add more but following the above has led me to have a pretty smooth experience so far.

[Greslin]

Honestly, this is where my skepticism needle flew past red, back when I first heard Bethesda's promise to bring FO modding to consoles.

 

I have been doing this a long time. And I can tell you that, while load order is important, it's only the very barest beginning in getting your mods to play nice with each other. A Bethesda mod is basically a big database patch, a long list of records and record overrides and such and such. Every single record does a bunch of different things, and only the last record patch wins.

 

If you want, for example, a mod that changes Quality A in the standard 10mm handgun, and another mod changes Quality B in the same gun, odds are pretty good that they're changing the same record.. and only one of them (the one loaded lower in the order) is going to succeed there. So just screwing around with load order, you'll never get both of them working at once. Now take that basic issue and multiply it by 250 randomly and hastily thrown together mods that were downloaded basically because they involved big boobs, fancy guns, lots of endorsements, or just other stuff that got included for a wow factor.

 

Train. Wreck. Of course your game is unstable as all hell.

 

I seriously don't get how anyone can consider themselves able to do this stuff successfully without having a good functional understanding of how to reconcile/edit/combine records and make merge patches in xEdit. And without that capability, serious console modding is pretty much over before it's started. There's only so much you can do with load order (or LOOT), and it's not much at all.

 

I've really been surprised at how often I've found myself pointing people on this forum to xEdit. I always thought it was a sort of prerequisite for getting Fallout mods to work right.

[PoorlyAged]

As a LOOONG time software developer, I am used to having my work reviewed at several stages of development. Architecture, design, code and test reviews were standard practice. It was one of the things that lead to good code getting into the users hands.

 

But mod creators are generally a bunch of lone cowboys who think that getting a review of their work before publishing it is a sign of weakness. But a good technical peer review before publishing a mod could prevent some of the crapola that gets delivered to users and pis... ah ... annoys them.

 

Yeah, I know. I also believe in a bow that shoots rainbows and a quiver that dispenses beer.

 

Edit: These reviews were also an opportunity for more experienced developers to teach techniques and practices to those who where less experienced.

Edited April 29, 2017 by PoorlyAged

[chucksteel]

You had me at BEER!

 

Not all of us are against reviews and critiques. I myself welcome them so long as they are really a critique, not someone just standing on a soap box bashing. And I know you know the difference.

[PoorlyAged]

You had me at BEER!

 

Not all of us are against reviews and critiques. I myself welcome them so long as they are really a critique, not someone just standing on a soap box bashing. And I know you know the difference.

 

But reviews before publishing? By other mod creators?

[chucksteel]

Sure why not! I want someone to tell me a better way or point out mistakes in a honest way. I think modders get cheesed when it's just arm chair quarterbacking by people who haven't ever created a mod.

[PoorlyAged]

Great. Let's start a campaign.

[chucksteel]

I'm with you! I try to help the new guy, I spend a lot of time on the Beth site advocating for mod equality between the platforms now. My mods never would have gotten where they are had some really nice people come along and told me where I F'ed up and I did F UP a lot in the beginning. (probably still do but now I can fix that.)

[Fkemman11]

I will ask a stupid question. How would you stop a person testing your mod from stealing credit for its development by publishing it themselves?