Why is the Fallout 4 modding community is weaker than Skyrim ?

[sang1]

I know Skyrim has been out for longer but by the time skyrim was 2 years old we where much further along in content. Why ? Interest ? fanbase ? difficulty ?

[FatsackTony1]

Because all the really cool things, and stuff like custom mod menus, require scripting functions that are not provided by default by Bethesda. In skyrim, the thing that allows all that extra functionality is called SKSE Skyrim Script Extender. In FO4 its F4SE, but it's alot smaller and hasn't had alot added to it yet.

[llamaRCA]

We've only had the FO4CK for a little over a year. It came out last April. It hasn't been two years.

 

FO4 has some inconveniences that make it less rewarding to mod. There are major inconveniences to modifying the gameworld and dealing with the voice protagonist is a major pain in the butt. The lack of a full fledged F4SE accounts for some of the problem, but motivated mod authors can do an awful lot without it.

 

The biggest "issue" imo is simply that TES is and always has been more popular than Fallout. Oblivion is the second largest modded game on Nexus. Three moddable Fallout games have been released since Oblivion was released and the largest of those communities, FO4, is still 10K mods behind Oblivion. If you add up all the mods for those three Fallout games the total only nearly equals the number of mods released for Skyrim alone.

[gmg2dave]

Keep in mind also that Fallout 4 is a complete departure from previous titles as far as how the program actually works. Previously, you could use the same basic tools and knowledge and carry it from one game to the next. Ie. If you knew how to mod Fallout 3 you knew how to mod Skyrim for the most part. The tools where the same basically for each one. With Fallout 4, you have an entirely new game engine and modding tools. So yes, a lot of what modders "knew" how to do when modding previous games just no longer applies and they have to learn an entirely new way of doing things.

[Dheuster]

The lack of documentation plays into the learning curb issue. Throughout the code, there are comments like "See http://institute.bethsoft.com/index.php?title=SOMETHINGTECHNICAL for more information". Well, that URL doesn't work and never has. So figuring out things like how the companion system works and how the workshop system works... are all basically through trial and error. There is a huge learning curb for anyone wanting to make a mod of any complexity. I should know, I have been working on mine for 10 months...

[montky]

An interesting question,

although I may have a nuance of opinion on how it is framed

"weaker" ? aren't we're all bethesda fans hehe.

I take it to ask "why are there differences in the 'productivity rates' between mod communities for Fallout 4 and Skyrim?"

or "why are there different quality and quantities of mods for various Bethesda titles".

 

how are we quantifying these cross-comparative metrics?

are we going by the per-time interval rate of new mods,

or by the quality of the modded content from the same epoch with respect to time since launch of the game?

do things like SkyrimSE and FO4VR count?

 

how can we compare a holographic mod and 360vid from FO4VR with the 2D flatness that is most of SkyrimSE? (it is also being slowly implemented in 3D VR stuff, but that seems way slower to happen for Skyrim fanbase than for Fallout).

conversely, Skyrim and Elder Scrolls titles are Lightyears ahead in terms of multiplayer and "hot switching servers" to allow the game to have multiple players in the one instance... fallout could learn a lot from that.

the point of this tangent; apples and oranges hehe.

 

With Sim Settlements, and the pre-vis batching approaches,

FO4 has a lot of awesome mods just in the last 5 months.

when we look to the future, we see vehicles and whole new areas (from folks like blahblahDeeblahblah, neilsIronside etc),

the re-implementing of the karma and dialogue system.

and, more unique gamestates,

not to mention the AGIXML talking heads, NPC overhaul, all kinds of stuff.

it'll be more complex than mods seen for Elder Scrolls, though will hopefully benefit the RPG-ness of Elder Scrolls too...

 

 

 

 

yes, I'd agree FO4 has a smaller quantity of mods at time of writing,

though I'd contend much better quality are possible.

 

A lot of it has to do with "death by a thousand cuts" - the notion that, some modders are holding back from more complex overhauls,

as Steam-variants of FO4 are prone to 'rolling updates" etc...

the EULA is different too in substance.

there's also the turnaround time for complex mods... average turnaround for a 20-28hour playthrough mod is 500+hrs and 12 people,

over around 8 months... so, that's a huge factor there.

 

fiscal incentives are also different, as they're different EULAs and frameworks.

I know I can only hypothetically discuss this facet, but its one aspect which I'd like to see more discussion of.

some have done tentative fiscal analysis of the modders by demography,

and productivity and quality does seem correlated with fiscal liquidity.

yet, it's not necessarily correlated as a tier-related system.

free-to-play does not mean there couldn't be crowdsourcers or guardian angels etc.

 

As others have also said, it's a bit of a steep learning curve for Creation and FO4 itself too,

but the great modders here at Nexus and elsewhere have been making tutorials and keeping them up to date.

the kits like FO4GECK and FO4SE frameworks are also beginning from a less complete approach.

 

then, we've got the ratio of requesters to coders or productive modsters.

in skyrim, this demographic metric seems to be a little different

than for Fallout.

 

Skyrim seems to have more coders, and more more-proficient coders, so it has a different ratio in the fanbase, which leads to more productivity.

conversely, fallout4 has fewer coders doing more of the heavy lifting, but a lot more collaborative mods that have 8 or more individuals...

Fallout4 also seems to have more international multi-national projects; people from 2 or more nationalities in the project... which is very interesting,

given that Skyrim is the more universally popular game.

I should temper this with the reflection that, this is a peer-to-peer self reporting assay, and not 'scholarly published journal etc",

as, that's a discussion for another time.

 

That may have a lot to do with why Fallout4 has a interoperability problem for mods that are from 1 or more region-locked variants of the game...

whereas, that interoperability issue is not as pronounced in SkyrimSE or Skyrim.

It should be easily resolved by bilingual modders though - they merely make the mod in a partition that emulates the region-code they want to make the mod in, rather than only in the region-locked variant they had on hand.

 

 

 

thanks for asking this question,

and I look forward to seeing other folk's perspectives on this

as its a real "what-the?!" question in some respects.

[Moksha8088]

We've only had the FO4CK for a little over a year. It came out last April. It hasn't been two years.

 

If you add up all the mods for those three Fallout games the total only nearly equals the number of mods released for Skyrim alone.

Just the same, there is a marvelous new mod for FO4 called Heather Casdin. :thumbsup:

 

More people modding for Skyrim makes for some very good mods. I've also wondered if graphic designers gravitate more to TES/Witcher type games.

[AnvilOfWar]

The other thing to consider is that quantity does not mean they are all -quality- mods either.
Take a look over at the Skyrim mods, sure there are hundreds of "companions", however a huge amount of those basically amount to a pair of breasts and ass that carries your stuff and follows you around. :(
How many of those have the interaction of either of Llama's Fallout companions? I still remember my NV game time with Willow very fondly for example. :smile: Just something too think about.

Edited May 30, 2017 by AnvilOfWar

[Moksha8088]

One obstacle that creates an additional burden on Fallout 4 mod creations for quests and companions is having a voice for the player. It can be done with good results, but it does limit some creativity for mod authors. Still, with such mods as Heather Casdin, Ellen the Cartographer, Tales from the Commonwealth, Fusion City Rising, and Outcasts and Remnants there is no reason for Fallout to be considered the limited sibling.

[llamaRCA]

One obstacle that creates an additional burden on Fallout 4 mod creations for quests and companions is having a voice for the player. It can be done with good results, but it does limit some creativity for mod authors. Still, with such mods as Heather Casdin, Ellen the Cartographer, Tales from the Commonwealth, Fusion City Rising, and Outcasts and Remnants there is no reason for Fallout to be considered the limited sibling.

 

I agree and disagree with this. I was able to make Heather's dialogue work okay because she's a companion and synths play heavily into her backstory. There is a lot of player dialogue for those two situations so I could make it work.

 

However, If I wanted to tell an entirely different story (and I have ideas for those) the voiced protag limits what I can do tremendously. Like, to the point that I may go back to Skyrim to do what I'm interested in doing next. In FO4 I cannot create excitingly different/new content because there isn't the kind of dialogue available to me to do that.

 

So, yes, with a lot of determination you can build story and character arcs in FO4, but it is not easy (it takes so much time) and you aren't free to do whatever you can image which we could do in the earlier games.