Are we even achieving anything?

[EnaiSiaion]

A year after the release of Skyrim, what did we even accomplish? There are few if any mods that add meaningful new content - quests, landmasses, expanded vampire/lich/religion/daedra worship/anything that makes the game bigger. Instead we get a bazillion armors and weapons and homes and graphics mods. The game can look all sorts of awesome now and you can pick any pretty female race and nude armor you want, but we still have to rely on Bethesda to provide actual content.

 

Is it because of The Voice Actor Bottleneck? Or perhaps messing around with scripts and quests is less fun than making new armors? Is everyone just doing whatever yields the most downloads per minute of time invested? Perhaps the Nexus' own competition oriented mod of the week system encourages cranking out ENBs and other popular mod types instead of mods that do not aim for impulse downloads and therefore fail to grab a mod of the week spot and get a one way ticket to three figure downloadsville?

 

Today's mods of the week comprise 4 visual mods (including the perennial ENB), 1 equippable item, and 1 gameplay mod. It's like this all week long, every week. Sad. :(

[icerush09]

we've got MERP,mod like that scared the sh*t out of WB so they sent it a C&D

[jack013]

We've got wyrmstooth, elswere, and handfuls of oblivion relm and dangerous dungeons type mods. it's not like there's nothing; but i do agree. with the exception of ritual armor and some mods to make things harder, the only additional mods i use are those place and quest type additions.

 

i want to make my own but i keep failing at making new cells in the ck, so many annoying things that stop you bothering to finish.

[Deleted1308005User]

I'd say that it's not the Voice actor bottleneck.

There's plenty of those, and some of them are actually really good. (Check out "Interesting NPC's")

 

I'd say it's the fact that when you start making bigger overhaul, you need team.

Team that can work together, and actually able to do some things.

If you don't have team, you're forced to work alone, and do everything alone.

 

But I wouldn't say we, The community, ain't achieving anything.

There pops up some really distinctive, and unique mods from time to time.

 

Once something NEW pops out, people notice that "Hey, what the F***? This mod ain't armor or skimpy dress and people still love it?"

And they start doing something similar. (Well, always it's not good thing. But still.)

 

Also, CK is too easy to use :biggrin: That's why Nexus is full of these epic swords of doom from oblivion blessed by divines.

 

As said, We are achieving things. Slowly, but steadily.

Some bigger mods, new landscapes and such, are on their way. Those just need time.

[Kraeten]

There are plenty of would be voice actors, problem is there are precious few individuals who actually know what they're doing where quest scripting is concerned. I'd love to make quest mods myself, but the process is hardly easy to learn. Elswere was a TERRIFIC mod btw. Wyrmstooth is worth mentioning too, but it still suffers from a CTD bug when you first enter the Barrow though. Edited January 20, 2013 by Kraeten

[Concept83]

Modders work for free. They get no money, no jobs, the only perks to modding is watching your download counter go up as you create mods. So modders make what they feel are going to get popular, Skimpy armors, hair, or other FEMALE based mods. Not knocking that, for I use some of those mods as well, just saying that nothing is more frightening to a modder than spending countless months in to a mod and seeing only a handful of people download it. So the majority play it safe. If people see different content make it into the top files, then it will encourage people to expand their modding horizons.

 

I'm working on a magic, gameplay, loot, dungeon overhaul mod that has taken me almost 9 months to get to the point where I can say I'm 60% done. And I'm AFRAID that when I finish, my mod will only be downloaded by a few people. So I have to encourage myself that this mod, is changes that I WANT TO PLAY, and am making the mod for me. I tell myself that my mod is just something that I find enjoyable and am so kind enough to share it with the community. If modders have this concept in mind, you'll see more diverse mods. Right now, the majority are just giving the people what they want, and that's skimpy, female armor.

Edited January 20, 2013 by Concept83

[Concept83]

Also, their are some really good mods that are buried on the nexus because so few download them. The youtubers who make videos, only look for new mods, don't blame them though, because there are a ton of mods on this site. Just saying, for any potential modder out their, before releasing your mod, have a video on your mod page. That's one of the first things I look for before downloading your mods. Don't rely on the youtubers to do it for you, because there's a chance that they might miss it or aren't interested in your mod. Do it yourself. Go to forums, be active in the community, promote your mod before releasing it, if you want to gain popularity on Nexus.

[Eckss]

Mod Authors seem to come in two types: Artists who like to make things look (or sometimes, sound) better and programmers who like to fix things that bug them - So that's the sort of Mods you typically get, beautification and bugfixes.

 

I write Mods to either fix something that's really annoying me (Guard Dialogue) or to add a facility that I think would make the game more fun to play for me. (Dragon Knowledge). I've written others that I don't publish because of Nexus' guidelines (If there's already 3 or more Mods addressing an issue, don't bother to upload).

 

I don't write Quest Mods because I'd find my own quest boring to play as I'd be intimately familiar with it and, like most Modders, I write for myself and publish to share with the community; I don't write to please other people or to achieve fame or recognition. That doesn't mean that I'm not extremely pleased that so many people are enjoying the fruits of my efforts, but their recognition isn't a motivating factor in what I'll write.

 

Modding is meant to be fun, and as long as it is, I'll keep doing it. If I feel that something I've written would be enjoyed by others, I'll share, but I don't think there'd be enough interest in my personal crafting or scavenging mods, or my recipe for Orsinium Chilli for that matter, so they'll stay private.

 

Anyway, I think the reason that few quests are written is that no-one wants to solve a mystery that they wrote or get emotionally invested in characters that are inevitably little more than a string of stats to them. Projects like Elsweyr are labors of love for people who love the lore of the Khajiit for example, but that sort of thing is going to be rare whatever the case. Otherwise, improving the way the game looks is definitely something that the Mod Authors can enjoy for themselves, so of course you'll see a lot of that sort of thing.

 

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Eck. :)

[TheGreenLion]

I can relate with what Concept said about being a bit unnerved when releasing a mod that you've worked on for a long time, only to see that a handful of people really like it at all. I didn't share my mods to make a top spot, but rather because I liked it to begin with and thought someone else might as well. I don't mind taking requests into consideration, and I've done a few things just for the people who've bothered to chime in and ask for it. Not everything makes it in because there can be some odd-ball requests. I don't really have to, but I do because I want to improve and sometimes it takes another person to see what's missing. That can get sticky too, because not everyone will like the changes. It has to be something you want to do for your mod primarily.

 

Some of the problem with modding is that once someone makes that innovative and unique mod, people expect to see things of that caliber and barely glance at mods that don't have those functions or quality. Once someone figured out how to script auto-sorting for containers people wanted that in all of their homes. Once someone figured out how to add custom voice and dialogue people wanted more out of their NPCs. I think you see the pattern here. The best time to grab attention is when the mod is brand new, once you lose that initial interest it's hard to bring it back from the depths unless you gained enough of it to make a decent following.

 

There are still a lot of awesome mods in progress, and unfortunately they get pushed back into the shadows with the current competitive system that the Nexus employs. The forums help quite a lot in that regard, if you are active and advertise your mods in your signature you'll be able to supplement that initial interest by gaining a new audience as people join up or buy Skyrim and come to check out what the Nexus has to offer. It won't drag it into the hot files necessarily, but it let's people know that you've got something that might spark their interest.

 

I think we have accomplished much as a whole. Skyrim may be at it's core the same game, but with all of the mods here it can be a totally new experience. Most of us do it for free, although many users simply download and run off rather than show appreciation for our work. Mods with millions of downloads only have a fraction of those as endorsements, do that many people really not give a s*** for what we've done to improve their game? Sometimes I wonder, but I brush it off and continue doing what I like to do with my spare time.

 

Anyway that's enough rambling for me, I'm pretty sure I was on topic for a second there. :biggrin:

[SinderionsBones]

I'd expect stuff like Unity draw the people that would otherwise spend their time modding, since when you're done making stuff with that you actually own it and have a standalone game lol. There's a bit of overhead, but not a lot considering the benefits. I know I may very well move into that sort of thing and never look back after I take some of my current stuff as far as it can get.

 

It really is kinda disconcerting that "Modding" is now basically defined as someone making new models/animations or retexturing. Gameplay content is a seperate, strange portion of "actual" modding. Having started modding in 2002 with Morrowind, it's very confusing at times.

Edited January 20, 2013 by SinderionsBones