The Creation Club - How to make it helpful to the Modding community, not destroy it

[HeArTBeaT15]

 

If I may, please take off the blinkers for a moment. I would like to interject some rational thought.

Now let me pose a couple of questions. What is the rate at which Bethesda fixes bugs in their game? How many free mods are there which fix bugs in Bethesda's games which never get remedied by the vendor? If nothing else, there will always be a need for mods that fix Bethesda's games.

 

How many established authors are there? How many schlubs like me will never make the cut for the Creation Club? Yet here we are, already developing content for free. And we will continue to make mods. Why? Because it is fun, because it is a challenge or just to exercise 'the little gray cells'. Or just because we want to.

 

The Creation Club will not kill free modding. All of the apocryphal predictions are just irrational fear mongering.

 

did Bethesda care that there was no modding community fixing bugs in FO3 or Skyrim for PS3 and 360?

just because there is a need doesn't mean it will be addressed. Bethesda will only sort out bug fixes if their next game gets zero sales as a protest and that just isn't going to happen.

 

the majority of modders are people who just do it for the fun, challenge and mental excercise and that is how modding should be, with the freedom to create the mods you want to make, even if others think them in bad taste or offensive.

but how would modding continue if Zenimax or Bethesda decided that free mods were competition to the Creation Club and took out C&D orders on FO4Edit or FO4SE?

sure you can create mods for everything up to FO4, but what about TES VI? all they would need to do is a small edit to the EULA and serve up those C&Ds and the next game has no modding community but lots of armour/weapon packs in lots of different colours.

 

it isn't an irrational fear to suspect that a bunch of profit hungry businessmen would jump on any chance to make a profit.

 

there is one way that CC could work alongside a healthy free modding community.

if the CC really concentrated on a few quality mods that added new game mechanics that modders could build upon then that would force people to buy that CC mod if they wanted to use any free mod that used it as a master. no-one is going to use crab armour as a master though so they need to step up their game

 

I'm actually on board with what you say.

People praise CC for different reasons, and most of them are out of self interest, not for the community or modding.

But they need to remember that its Bethesda Softworks we're talking about here (not the ones who make the game, the ones who publish it).

And this company has a bad history of cutting corners to squeeze as much money as they can, ignoring their consumers for the most part, and acting like stated above is a possible.

They found a way to monetise mods in the past, and we all know how that went.

Now they discovered a way to do it, without them having to interfere over free modding comunities directly, because they want to avoid the huge backlash that happened last time.

At the moment Todd Howard told us that modding will always be free and yada yada, but he's not the one in charge of Bethesda Softworks, so his word is worth close to 0.

You must remember that this is a business company and even people like Todd Howard are just a number on the company charts.

So if Bethesda Softworks sees it fit to kill Nexus modding for Bethesda games, and maybe even interfere with Steam Workshop or close that down as well, they will do so in order to take over the market for modding, and they can do so without any press scandals or law suits etc.

All they need to do is release their future games in such a way that only members of the Creation Club will be able to mod the future games.

Sadly enough the only way we can stop this from happening is hoping that The Creation Club wont have much revenue, so that Bethesda Softworks will drop it.

If some want to sell their content to bethesda , power to them, but me , i am happy that we still have modders keeping this comunity alive, so i want to take this chance to tell those people......THANK YOU! :happy:

[TheDungeonDweller]

I always worry about Beth coming up with things to control modding in such a way that it hinders the modding community. Skyrim modding is still behind Oblivion though, due to limitations introduced by the "Creation Engine", but modders have done their best for sure.

Edited July 14, 2017 by TheDungeonDweller

[MightyZ0G]

I always worry about Beth coming up with things to control modding in such a way that it hinders the modding community. Skyrim modding is still behind Oblivion though, due to limitations introduced by the "Creation Engine", but modders have done their best for sure.

 

modding the Creation Engine is possible because it is based on the Gamebryo Engine.

but modders and players are fed up with the buggy mess that the Creation Engine is.

there have been statements from Bethesda that they haven't started development on TES VI yet, which makes me wonder whether they are looking for a new game engine for TES VI and FO5.

if that is the case, will mods be possible at all for future TES and FO games?

[texashokies]

 

I always worry about Beth coming up with things to control modding in such a way that it hinders the modding community. Skyrim modding is still behind Oblivion though, due to limitations introduced by the "Creation Engine", but modders have done their best for sure.

 

modding the Creation Engine is possible because it is based on the Gamebryo Engine.

but modders and players are fed up with the buggy mess that the Creation Engine is.

there have been statements from Bethesda that they haven't started development on TES VI yet, which makes me wonder whether they are looking for a new game engine for TES VI and FO5.

if that is the case, will mods be possible at all for future TES and FO games?

 

I doubt they would stop using a derivative of Gamebyro, because their team has been using the gamebyro, and creation engine for years. Why put money into something that your employees would have to relearn.

[MightyZ0G]

 

 

I always worry about Beth coming up with things to control modding in such a way that it hinders the modding community. Skyrim modding is still behind Oblivion though, due to limitations introduced by the "Creation Engine", but modders have done their best for sure.

 

modding the Creation Engine is possible because it is based on the Gamebryo Engine.

but modders and players are fed up with the buggy mess that the Creation Engine is.

there have been statements from Bethesda that they haven't started development on TES VI yet, which makes me wonder whether they are looking for a new game engine for TES VI and FO5.

if that is the case, will mods be possible at all for future TES and FO games?

 

I doubt they would stop using a derivative of Gamebyro, because their team has been using the gamebyro, and creation engine for years. Why put money into something that your employees would have to relearn.

 

because it was designed to run on old hardware and an outdated OS.

they've cobbled it together and patched it up, but it is a losing battle.

every game since Oblivion and Fallout 3 has been buggy and still has bugs that haven't been fixed by the developers.

 

as for asking why they would get their employees to learn to work with a new engine, have you ever heard of progress?

 

the Gamebryo Engine is like a bicycle. the Creation Engine is like that bicycle with a petrol motor stuck on it. the problem is that you can't keep adding power without doing something to strengthen the frame.

the Creation Engine can't go much further with the Gamebryo Engine as the frame supporting it.

[TheDungeonDweller]

 

I always worry about Beth coming up with things to control modding in such a way that it hinders the modding community. Skyrim modding is still behind Oblivion though, due to limitations introduced by the "Creation Engine", but modders have done their best for sure.

 

modding the Creation Engine is possible because it is based on the Gamebryo Engine.

but modders and players are fed up with the buggy mess that the Creation Engine is.

there have been statements from Bethesda that they haven't started development on TES VI yet, which makes me wonder whether they are looking for a new game engine for TES VI and FO5.

if that is the case, will mods be possible at all for future TES and FO games?

 

They keep on adding new confusing and complicating crap to their editors, that the editors themselves can barely handle, so I bet they are looking for a new engine.

Edited July 14, 2017 by TheDungeonDweller

[HeyYou]

According to beth, the engine for Skyrim was 'all new'. Which only took modders about two minutes to discover that was patently NOT the case.

 

Now, if beth REWROTE the engine, to take better advantages of newer tech, THAT might win some points for them. But, simply shuffling stuff under the hood a bit, really isn't going to work out well.

 

That said, just because it is old, and somewhat dated, does NOT imply that it cannot be improved.

[ElPolloAzul]

I think people overlook that a transition to a whole new, different, or conventional off-the-shelf engine might also come with really watered-down, unfamiliar mod tools that fail to reproduce the qualities that made Bethesda game modding a breakout success in the first place. The modest changes that accompanied modding for Skyrim or Fallout 4 still lead to the perception that it is much harder to mod for these games (I don't think that much has really changed, beyond novel impediments related to, e.g. special effects, rendering, animation, scripting, and in-game "object mod" and recipe improvements). Imagine what would be said if Bethesda pulled another modular engineering home run out, but the workflows were completely different!

From a user experience perspective, complexity in this kind of software for experts is both unavoidable and desirable, as long as they document that complexity very thoroughly (spoiler: they currently don't, and historically never have!).

The object-oriented scripting facilities offered in the transition to the "Creation Engine" really do give you a lot more flexibility and power, and the oddities of the Papyrus in-CK property configuration and the compilation pipeline were well worth learning over the simplicity of the Morrowind-originated system. We are lucky that a few devs seem to have really liked their compilers class in college.

The area that never seems to be fixed very well from a tools design standpoint is the quest-bound dialogue system (despite all sorts of graphical improvements, this process is still kind of tedious and dumb), and the idea that if you want to pass non-worldbound complex variable references around, or name things for text replacement, you are encouraged to make dummy quests and fill aliases and all sorts of strange workarounds. The almost completely officially undocumented nature of NIF effects and the kind of information that would allow for interoperability to be developed by the community is vexing after all these years, too.

It does pain me when old things get broken and then not hidden (see some AI packages), or when scripting functions have totally bizarre, undocumented, and hostile behavior (see the find closest and find random references and actors functions actually ignoring the reference they search from and silently anchoring on the player when the object's cell is unloaded!). There are also many instances of running up against a situation when there should obviously be a function to do something the game clearly does all the time, and odd artificial constraints (the low, fixed bound on the capacity of arrays, the complete lack of string handling and user input and advanced menu facilities, the lack of control on model-changing (e.g. polymorph spell type) functions, and other things that clearly necessitate the Script Extender, for which there is also an oddly entrenched perception that it is needed whenever any scripting gets remotely complex). Without these silly, presumably patchable restrictions, it would be less fun to try to make these things using workarounds, but you could also easily have in-game programmable computers, AI managers, and things like that.

That aside, I think comparing the engine to others which are prettier and more stable, but which are used for bog-standard shooters is fraught with peril. There's a lot more complexity behind the scenes in this kind of game, and to enable the massive parallel simulation and modding support that we have come to expect from these games. It is still a dream to mod these games compared to, e.g. the earlier Bioware engine games (KOTOR, NWN, Witcher 1, Dragon Age), various Star Wars games (Rebellion, Empire at War, Galactic Battlegrounds, Jedi Outcast), various EA games (Battlefield, The Sims, Spore), GTA games, and other one-offs (like Freelancer, where you had to learn the inbuilt scripting and object system, but also had to understand DLL hacking).

As far as Creation Club, I am pretty negatively disposed to it, on the balance.

It is a nice opportunity, potentially, in theory, for people to get on Bethesda's hiring radar officially. We could get more DLC and more games if the studio expands due to a focus on permanent hires of die-hard, battle-tested fans. I think there is some number of suffering modders who pursue their hobby despite their real situation, so this could, again, in theory, do something for them. Although, obviously what is more likely is more of the contract worker / independent contractor / low-paid "consultant" exploitation we have come to know and love over the last decade and a half in the economy generally. I would love to believe in the upside of this, though.

If people really want to gravitate towards and pay and then end up having to pay for the most popular and thereby, the potentially most lucrative types of mods (cosmetic changes, "realism" tweaks, cheats, and "modern weapons"), more power to them. There are a lot of less worthwhile microtransactions, and this kind of movement might actually lift people's bargain-basement standards for that kind of on-demand content. The rest of us might see a movement towards celebrating (and talking about, and video reviewing) more creative mods which are also free.

I don't think the larger community will start putting themselves behind a paywall, and even if they do, there will always be the folks who make stuff outside the mainstream, or who are building their portfolio in order to participate in CC in the first place, or who simply realize they can much more readily reach and entertain more people without any sort of price tag on their work. The free software movement has shown us that there is a competitive advantage, eventually, to free if the products are at parity. This would presumably be even more pronounced in a community that is used to everything being free.

To get angry and demand that everything remotely commercial is a "cancer" that must be met with boycotts, disinformation campaigns, intimidation, insults, and other overkill retaliation tactics is an extremist position that has hurt the overall free software community historically as well. Telling modders (in the old sense of the term) who might want something to just make YouTube videos and do commentaries or set up quasi-verboten-for-modders Patreon accounts doesn't help solve their problem or show any appreciation, and doesn't realize that talents dwell in different areas for different people. The mod authors in a position to care are right to point out that the donations system does not work, at all, if they are expecting anything beyond a few dollars a decade, maybe, and I think are justifiably offended when mob rule tries to impugn their characters and set "strongly encouraged" limits on their freedom of action, all in response to a movement they did not initiate. I think the ugliness of a large chunk (but not all or even most!) of the mod users community, which underappreciates and commoditizes many mods in general, comes out in these kinds of comments.

Rather than the fact that we might get swamped with even more cosmetic junk to buy, it's the indirect things that really bother me.

I don't think that Bethesda will go around suing, threatening, or legally taking down modders who produce similar works to those sold on CC, but the Club modders themselves might have that inclination towards noxiousness and the introduction of the slimy lawyering crowd. Even if they aren't getting a cut of proceeds at all, someone will make the case that poor sales due to alternatives may make future projects from the author less likely to be approved. A company that wants to preserve any historically attained goodwill has to deal with that kind of bad behavior harshly. If EA or Take-Two plays in this space, this kind of thing will definitely happen officially. If everyone has to maneuver around the minefield of producing similar works, especially when the paid modder perceives that their work trumps previously existing free content, that will kill the modding community, and people's creativity.

Again, I don't think Bethesda will (on-purpose) be the ones to first introduce tiered access to mod tools (here, it could start with legally necessary partner access to middleware like the 3DS Max and Havok and FaceGen tools), but someone else (my money's on EA) will do that, and do it poorly. At any rate, we are likely to see increased mandatory registration of modders and toolsets (in fact, our community sort of foolishly demanded this to combat unauthorized "porting" to Bethesda.net.)

The prospect of mod DRM is a real nasty one, and could screw up all of the years of tooling and understanding the community has behind the well-known most everything, even official add-ons, is a ESP or a BA2/BSA philosophy. There might be a misguided business case for this already, given people uploading add-ons (e.g. Far Harbor) on the Nexus, and the immature, vocal plans for campaigns of CC mod piracy may already be destroying the community more than any author who they judge to have "sold out".

Mod authors enrolled in the system, or who wish to be, will have to be a lot more careful about what they put out. If anyone is offended (or could be, in paranoid theory), it could be the case that their Club projects as a whole will be ruled out. This kills creativity for those modders who produce free content too, or who might someday want to be considered. Authors who specialize in less popular or more obscure types of mods are very likely to not get access to the Club, and thereby get a chance to earn broad consumer acclaim. Since some misguided console manufacturers love these kind of standards, the only way to reach whole populations of players will increasingly be to be in the Club.

There will be even more unequal coverage of mods. I expect that the games journos will stop covering the small mods they do (admittedly really erratically) cover, because covering paid products feels right. Popularity will be a rich get richer phenomenon in the paid modding segment as people build fan followings, get officially featured, and accumulate goodwill with the actual, original devs.

The complexity of modding these heavy emergent systems kinds of games, and the lack of official documentation or insight, has made a lot of the modding community, seemingly, heavily dependent on tutorials and asking others for help. I don't necessarily think this is the best way to learn, but it is an important way to learn here, and I think people are going to be tugged at emotionally to dispense a lot less help if they could reasonably believe they are helping less talented people win, potentially, a boatload of money.

In general, this whole thing is going to set off all kinds of hostility and impassioned argument that may just convince a bunch of old hands that this mess just isn't bothering with anymore. I do love Bethesda devs and their games, and have sunk a truly scary amount of my life into them, but I do hope the ALL of the lessons the abysmal press conference this E3 introduced sink in to the minds of the business development people who are potentially sabotaging everyone's future here, and they really think about all of the downsides that not pulling this off absolutely perfectly could bring. Horse armor type things did not exactly help the gaming world out, and I don't think it's worth claiming the credit for pioneering a new business model if it makes you hated and you get the blame for how later, scuzzier adopters truly squeeze that model to its limits.

[HeArTBeaT15]

The creation club is a slap in the face (again) for Beth game fans.

The quality of content Bethesda has been putting out has declined and continues to do so. This is just another excuse for them to put out garbage-half-realised games that modders have to clean up after, i mean i wont be surprised to have to pay for bug fixes on future releases.

I appreciate the QA concepts for the creation club , but it doesn't excuse the garbage aspects of fallout 4 and their blatant cash grabs like Skyrim SE and mostly garbage DLC for fallout 4, and with the creation club i'm pretty sure its gonna get worse, with them ending up releasing mostly resources desguised as games, for which to sell mods afterwards.

I used to be a HUGE bethesda fan but the last several years have made me hesitant and un-trusting of anything Bethesda is launching anymore.

As a matter of fact i never actually bought Fallout 4, i just got it as a gift, but 2 years into the release, i still didn't finish it due to lack of interest and enjoyment, where i finished the previous titles, Fallout 3 and Fallout NV, at least 3 times each, not counting the countless playtroughs i started and abandoned while i was messing with mods (yea sometimes its more fun to experience).

But with fallout 4.... i just open it up now and then because i feel like playing around with the console.

Now i know that most of this mess is on the hands of Bethesda Softworks, but i am starting to lose confidence in Bethesda Game Studios as well.

Edited July 17, 2017 by HeArTBeaT15

[Kiowa7]

I'm not a modder, I just like using mods in my games. My take on the Creation Club is that it's all about control of modding, by Bethseda.