Skyrim Modding: Just Spent 10 Hours Modding, Time to Play

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Skyrim Modding: Just Spent 10 Hours Modding, Time to Play

Raygereio: Nov 12, 2012

Sillybones posted:

What was the mod called? This sounds great.

That was Duel.
Ages ago someone who went by Grimy thought it would be a neat idea to setup something like a peer-review-thingy for mods to inform the lesser tech-savy users about the mods' quality. In all seriousness: This was a good idea. I think it's less of a problem now that most of the more incompetent crowd have moved on, but in the early days modders doing stuff wrong with things like scripting was a real problem since it could result in things like save bloat (which would wreck your save).
There was a pretty big backlash against the idea alone. Nowadays any sort of criticism is frowned upon in most modding communities and Skyrim's is no exception.
And then Grimy did a review on Duel. Duel's creator instead of attempting to refute Grimy's claims, decided to admit Grimy was right by throwing a massive tantrum and removing his mod.
A short while later the guy put a "new and improved" version of Duel (really just the exact same version) with a hilarious description page with tons of incompetent poo poo slinging towards Grimy. I don't recall all of it, but one of the more hilarious bits was that he attempted to prove Duel's scripts did something by posting a screenshot of a decompiled script.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 19:19

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# ? Jun 6, 2024 06:26

Killsion: Feb 16, 2011; Templars Rock.

EgoEgress posted:

But here's one of the debut mods, the neat-looking armor that showed up in Valve's announcement.

It costs two dollars, for a mod that adds one armor set. This armor cannot be obtained without doing a player.additem in the console, comes as a single armor piece, does not have a custom menu model (hence why it's covering up the menu text), does not have the weight models that let equipment adjust to your characters' body sliders (there's a picture circulating where a character's rear end just ends up sticking out the back), is riddled with weight/rigging issues...

there's no need to discuss hypothetical scenarios where modders end up churning out crap mods for quick bucks. This is happening Day One, with one of the mods specifically chosen to introduce the system to the community.

This is a hilariously ill-thought-out clusterfuck.

Holy poo poo, this is mind blowing how sloppy this is.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 19:19

Cup Runneth Over: Aug 8, 2009; She said life's
Too short to worry
Life's too long to wait
It's too short
Not to love everybody
Life's too long to hate

Gyshall posted:

Great post, Mr Scumbag

Well this one is certainly quality.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 19:21

sword_man.gif: Apr 12, 2007; Fun Shoe

Killsion posted:

Holy poo poo, this is mind blowing how sloppy this is.

reminder that this is a front-page featured mod for paid mods

# ? Apr 25, 2015 19:21

Dongattack: Dec 20, 2006; by Cyrano4747

Lol, down to 92% positive now, dropping relatively fast i guess.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 19:25

Red Mundus: Oct 22, 2010

Killsion posted:

Holy poo poo, this is mind blowing how sloppy this is.

Off the top of my head I recognize light dragonhide assets, and maybe some hide armor. I would also guess some dark brotherhood armor assets as well.

If I didn't have to pay I would love to load this thing up in blender and see how it was all stitched together from pre-existing assets.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 19:25

Fintilgin: Sep 29, 2004; Fintilgin sweeps!

iGestalt posted:

In England, we have new Consumer Rights (2015) that directly cover digital content. That kind of poo poo would fall right under it and be Fraud, as I've understood it (or if not that extreme, be serious grounds for full refunds)

This is part of the whole legal shitstorm, in that Valve are selling worldwide. Gotta abide by all local trade laws!

Yeah, I can't see how they can offload all responsibility for having the mods work/not melt your computer on to the modders. Valve/Bethesda is selling a software product in their store and taking the vast majority of the money as profit. Waiving a magic fairy wand and calling the product a 'mod' isn't going to be a 'Get out of Jail' free card to absolve them of all the regular consumer protection laws involving selling a working product.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 19:28

ETPC: Jul 10, 2008; Wheel with it.

Does anyone have a source for the claim that Rocket and Bohemia cut out all mod contributors (because money) for DayZ standalone?

# ? Apr 25, 2015 19:29

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

A Stupid Baby posted:

The next TES game is going to be a weird rear end mess if the paid mods are still implemented, because there was a lot of collaborative discovery that went on in the early days of Skyrim modding. For all the poo poo modders get for being special little prima donna snowflakes with their big ugly oblivion gates, the community really does tend to work together quite well because they all want to create cool poo poo and there's no incentive to keep things to yourself since you get e-cred for being a part of figuring things out. There's also been a push for getting some sort of standards set up so your mod isn't just making GBS threads all over the place with dirty edits and conflicts waiting to happen.

A lot of that community effort dates way back, too. Stuff like GhanBuriGhan's morrowind scripting for dummies, a 200 page PDF that was both an exhaustively detailed compendium of previously undocumented functions, *and* a pretty competent learn to program tutorial. If anyone hasn't seen it, check it out just for the wow factor.

Even the people who were super possessive about their work still contributed to the community because everything is open. People could look at how you did the neat thing you made, and do their own take on it. Imagine FO4 or TES6 come with locked down mods to prevent mod piracy, and you can't open the DRM'ed mod files from the workshop anymore. Or nearly as bad, authors try to obfuscate their work to keep their mod from "being stolen".

Killsion posted:

Holy poo poo, this is mind blowing how sloppy this is.

But it looks really good in screenshots!

# ? Apr 25, 2015 19:32

Cup Runneth Over: Aug 8, 2009; She said life's
Too short to worry
Life's too long to wait
It's too short
Not to love everybody
Life's too long to hate

ETPC posted:

Does anyone have a source for the claim that Rocket and Bohemia cut out all mod contributors (because money) for DayZ standalone?

AFAIK they cut them out because they couldn't drop everything and fly out to Czechland to work on it.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 19:35

Bholder: Feb 26, 2013

Scyantific posted:

Calling it now, next scummy Valve move will be that ALL purchases must be in funbux.

But they already are!

# ? Apr 25, 2015 19:38

Synthwave Crusader: Feb 13, 2011

Klyith posted:

But it looks really good in screenshots!

The best part about it is that the screenshots are augmented with ENB + HD textures for the surrounding scenery + weather and lighting mods. And yet they fail to mention that at all on the description.

At least on the Nexus, the mod authors make sure to mention that bit of information if they're not the ones providing screenshots.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 19:39

fennesz: Dec 29, 2008

Scyantific posted:

Calling it now, next scummy Valve move will be that ALL purchases must be in funbux.

This mod costs 15 Steam Points! You can purchase Steam Points in quantities of 3 or 50! Thanks for your purchase! :v:

e: So I was going to look and see if there was a summonable horse mod on the nexus today. This is on the front page.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65034/

The mod is called "Give Me Money For No Reason" and it adds a beggar near Whiterun named Beth.

fennesz fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Apr 25, 2015

# ? Apr 25, 2015 19:41

Sillybones: Aug 10, 2013; go away,
spooky skeleton,
go away

fennesz posted:

This mod costs 15 Steam Points! You can purchase Steam Points in quantities of 3 or 50! Thanks for your purchase!

15 is divisible by 3. I don't think you get how this works.

That combat mod was a good read. I used that mod but couldn't work out what changed, and now I know why.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 19:45

SpudCat: Mar 12, 2012

A Stupid Baby posted:

I'm sure I'm reiterating a point that's been made before, but the problem really isn't with Skyrim. There might actually be some high quality poo poo being put out if they fix the exorbitant modder/publisher share.

The next TES game is going to be a weird rear end mess if the paid mods are still implemented, because there was a lot of collaborative discovery that went on in the early days of Skyrim modding. For all the poo poo modders get for being special little prima donna snowflakes with their big ugly oblivion gates, the community really does tend to work together quite well because they all want to create cool poo poo and there's no incentive to keep things to yourself since you get e-cred for being a part of figuring things out. There's also been a push for getting some sort of standards set up so your mod isn't just making GBS threads all over the place with dirty edits and conflicts waiting to happen.

Who's going to make the script extender for the next TES game? Who's going to be doing stuff like just making modder's resources and throwing them out there onto the Nexus? Where do you even begin with the legal issues involved with "This guy released a huge rear end mod that requires a Javascript thing to edit a bunch of poo poo and because its super popular it had a huge install base and hosed up my mod and now all my customers are angry and giving me 1 star reviews"

A lot of stuff that was just bitchy backbiting might actually turn into loving civil lawsuits given how petty some of these guys can be, and you can just kiss any spirit of communal modding goodbye for the next iteration.

I really really hope they kill this dumbass poorly thought out pilot well before the next TES game launches, or they're probably going to kill off one of the longest-lived, productive, and creative modding scene in PC gaming for a month or two's worth of horse armor.

This is a point, Skyrim modding has survived despite being fraught with potential compatibility issues in part because there's the huge community effort to have standards and editing tools that prevent mods with "dirty edits" that say, accidentally replace every instance of a certain loot list with a full set of daedric armor. Hell, the community has crucified drama queens like Giskard ( whom you may remember as the leader of :siren:

THE GUILD

in GateGate) that don't make the effort to keep their mods compatible.

If people have cash incentives to keep their skills to themselves I don't see how the next TES games especially will come out of that awkward early phase where no one knows how to wrangle the engine properly with anywhere near the richness of Skyrim's ecosystem.

We are Valve's guinea pigs in this grand experiment to see how badly they can gently caress the community while still reaping profits, and they want us to believe they're championing our rights as creators by doing so. :v:

# ? Apr 25, 2015 19:57

Trixie Hardcore: Jul 1, 2006; Placeholder.

KakerMix posted:

I enjoy watching people who were well respected (lol modding community) burn all of their goodwill and assumed good-ness in a few lines of text. These people now, no matter what they make, will be forever attached to 'hey aren't you the guy that'. Since their ~respect~ comes from their mods, they can't escape it. This is the same poo poo that happened in Minecraft. You have well-respected and well-loved mods where the creator said or did a thing with hubris, and were replaced and forgotten about in one update where as before they had been in that position for years.

These modders full of hubris and wearing their newly-fitted Jr. Capitalist hats have no idea about their own positions in this dumb modding community, let alone in how to function with other people. Players decide the fate of mods, not the other way around.

This has been the one silver lining in the whole mess, seeing people who had nothing but the reputation they spent years building in a tight knit & vocal community of creative nerds piss it away the instant they thought they'd won the big league millionaire programmer lottery.

Mr Scumbag posted:

Y'know, if there were both a guarantee of quality and compatibility, I would absolutely pay for mods, and I'm positive other people would too. As in: if Bethesda and Steam somehow paired up and made a game and download system that could figure out quality, load-order, and compatibility so that the only thing I had to do was decide whether or not I wanted a mod and to buy or not buy it and install it and it worked? That would seriously be worth money. The tens of hours I've spent getting mods to play nice are something I'd trade for money.

But no. Instead, we get the same shitfest, but with a price tag attached. And that's only the "entitled gamer" objection, nevermind the myriad inherent problems this system has, not to mention how exploitative it is of content creators.

I guess it's a hard concept for a company to understand, actually adding value to monetized mods, since they probably don't understand what modding is beyond "free DLC". To be fair, the idea of spending hours downloading and tweaking amateur-made programs until the game breaks and then spending hours more fixing it just so you can fight dragons that look like Thomas the Tank Engine while dressed as characters from the Witcher for fun, does make it sound like we'd also be dumb enough to spend real money on the gaming equivalent of a pig in a poke.

EgoEgress posted:

We are Valve's guinea pigs in this grand experiment to see how badly they can gently caress the community while still reaping profits, and they want us to believe they're championing our rights as creators by doing so.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:03

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

EgoEgress posted:

Hell, the community has crucified drama queens like Giskard ( whom you may remember as the leader of THE GUILD in GateGate)

I have actually always been curious what the gently caress was up with that since every GateGate explanation I have read is either the same as the one in the Awful Mods thread or a variation, and it just mentions :siren:

THE GUILD

as this shadowy threat Arthmoor dropped without elaboration.

eta: First google hit for that guy's name takes me here and well...

quote:

This is an condensed account of the events over the past few days, did not want it taking over my news page.

King Bethesda haveth paideth modders silver for their mods, this caused an uprising amongst the TES trolls who immediately started raping and pillaging their own communities and attacking any modder they came across, even the ones that agreed with them.

Mean while the Kings men dideth fight the trolls in support of the Kings decision but where out numbered. Many communities burned at the hands of the evil trolls who expected to get the cooperation of the locals by being fuckwits to everybody. It did not work, many modders came out in support of other modders decisions to sell their mods and this has left the trolls increasingly powerless. So the trolls continued to rage and rampage.

Many other modders have taken their donkey carts fulleth of mods and left. Mods are disappearing from the various fortresses that used to house them safely as the trolls rage war across the land.

Here at Castle TEG, Lord Giskard decreed he wouldeth support any modder and stand against the trolls reguardless of the modders decision to take King Beths Silver or not. Though Lord Giskard has chosen NOT to accept the Kings Silver him self.

Click Readmore to continue.

I don't think I want to Click Readmore :pwn:

GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Apr 25, 2015

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:04

Killsion: Feb 16, 2011; Templars Rock.

Speaking of Arthmoor, he is in the paid mods list. Has he posted any statements by which to crucify himself on?

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:07

iGestalt: Mar 4, 2013

Killsion posted:

Speaking of Arthmoor, he is in the paid mods list. Has he posted any statements by which to crucify himself on?

No but he's gone on about how cool this is. There was a paste somewhere detailing how he loved the idea.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:12

Eric the Mauve: May 8, 2012; Making you happy for a buck since 199X

Demonstrating how Bethesda figures they can get away with this because they're exploiting every modder's dream of working for a Game Company.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:14

Synthwave Crusader: Feb 13, 2011

Killsion posted:

Speaking of Arthmoor, he is in the paid mods list. Has he posted any statements by which to crucify himself on?

No but he did out himself as being unemployed :laffo:

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:14

Pakled: Aug 6, 2011; WE ARE SMART

Killsion posted:

Speaking of Arthmoor, he is in the paid mods list. Has he posted any statements by which to crucify himself on?

Here are his posts on the Nexus forums about the subject.

quote:

The 75/25 cut is something those of us in the pre-launch group brought up almost immediately. It got discussed. Valve and Bethesda mulled it over for a bit. They decided to leave it as is.

I have little doubt they decided that because the other communities on the Workshop who have been under that same split since they began would probably have gone into a rage over it. I doubt it would have been a tenable position for Valve to be in.

They could still change the split though. Just change it for every community going forward. I don't think anyone would be at all upset at 50% for the modder, and 50% for Valve and Beth to haggle over as they see fit.

quote:

No worries Dark0ne.

A lot of information has been flying around everywhere and at the time I posted on my own forums I was still under the impression that you were dead set against the idea of modders making money. So apologies if I came off a bit harsh.

This thing with Chesko bugs me a lot more though. Moreso because he hasn't given everyone all the details as to what he should have expected upon pulling those mods down. We all knew ahead of time that those would be the terms. The mods would remain in the system for those who paid already. Only the author, Valve, and Bethesda can see them at that point. It was in the agreement, it's on the public FAQ, and we've known for 5-6 weeks now.

quote:

FYI: This will be the last post on this subject here before I start deleting the comments without warning. Please respect this.

First off: Valve purged the comments some time after I posted that. It doesn't much matter though since the post you claimed existed didn't and I'd have no way to prove the negative.

Second: How exactly would I FORCE anyone to do anything? Does not compute. Don't want to pay? Then don't. The free market will prevail one way or the other.

Thirdly: I and others voiced objections to the cut we're getting from paid content. Unlike others who can afford to be idealists about it, I'm broke and have been out of work for ages due to the s*** economy in California. Might sound like selling out, but 25% of something is better than 0% of nothing if this had never come to pass. I'm certainly not going to get rich off of one mod. Nor will I from any future submissions. Best I'm hoping for is to stave off certain obligations to the state that are not currently being met due to having nothing to pay them with.

Nothing too spectacular, really.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:16

oblomov: Jun 20, 2002; Meh... #overrated

Mr Scumbag posted:

Y'know, if there were both a guarantee of quality and compatibility, I would absolutely pay for mods, and I'm positive other people would too. As in: if Bethesda and Steam somehow paired up and made a game and download system that could figure out quality, load-order, and compatibility so that the only thing I had to do was decide whether or not I wanted a mod and to buy or not buy it and install it and it worked? That would seriously be worth money. The tens of hours I've spent getting mods to play nice are something I'd trade for money.

But no. Instead, we get the same shitfest, but with a price tag attached. And that's only the "entitled gamer" objection, nevermind the myriad inherent problems this system has, not to mention how exploitative it is of content creators.

I am not sure I would pay for more then a few mods even in this case. The main issue is that it takes a LOT of mods to get things nice and proper for Skyrim to be more then bland system with crappy combat. My mod load order generally goes anywhere from 30 to 100 mods. I would pay maybe for only a handful. Also, most compilation mods are now pretty much history.

That said, yeah, if the above system came into place there would be a lot more incentive to pay for the mods that I do like and think are worth a few $$.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:16

Parallelwoody: Apr 10, 2008

Can anyone think of a good viable alternative? Not to this shitstorm, but to the much more important problem of adding -gate to every controversy. Moddageddon? Modocalypse? The Sinking of The Modsitania? Modnobyl? I have no idea, but together, we can solve this naming crisis.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:21

Synthwave Crusader: Feb 13, 2011

The moddening, like they called that retarded Jennifer Lawrence leak.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:23

SpudCat: Mar 12, 2012

quote:

First off: Valve purged the comments some time after I posted that. It doesn't much matter though since the post you claimed existed didn't and I'd have no way to prove the negative.

Second: How exactly would I FORCE anyone to do anything? Does not compute. Don't want to pay? Then don't. The free market will prevail one way or the other.

He brings up the Invisible Hand of the Free Market :911:

in the same breath as the mention that Valve is silencing criticism by deleting the mod discussion pages.

That's impressively delusional even for a lolbertarian.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:25

Dongattack: Dec 20, 2006; by Cyrano4747

Parallelwoody posted:

Can anyone think of a good viable alternative? Not to this shitstorm, but to the much more important problem of adding -gate to every controversy. Moddageddon? Modocalypse? The Sinking of The Modsitania? Modnobyl? I have no idea, but together, we can solve this naming crisis.

The Paygate? :shrug:

edit: NO WAIT

THE PAYGATE-GATE

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:29

Dapper Dan: Dec 16, 2004; Can't post for 3 years!

EgoEgress posted:

He brings up the Invisible Hand of the Free Market in the same breath as the mention that Valve is silencing criticism by deleting the mod discussion pages.

That's impressively delusional even for a lolbertarian.

The thing that these lolbertarians don't understand about this is that, in this case, there is no free market. It is Valve and that's it. There are currently no viable alternatives to Valve right now, so it has a monopoly. Hence, no free market.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:29

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Pakled posted:

Here are his posts on the Nexus forums about the subject.

quote:
Best I'm hoping for is to stave off certain obligations to the state that are not currently being met due to having nothing to pay them with.

Wow, someone racked up a lot of speeding tickets or some poo poo.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:30

Trixie Hardcore: Jul 1, 2006; Placeholder.

oblomov posted:

I am not sure I would pay for more then a few mods even in this case. The main issue is that it takes a LOT of mods to get things nice and proper for Skyrim to be more then bland system with crappy combat. My mod load order generally goes anywhere from 30 to 100 mods. I would pay maybe for only a handful. Also, most compilation mods are now pretty much history.

That said, yeah, if the above system came into place there would be a lot more incentive to pay for the mods that I do like and think are worth a few $$.

I have like 150 mods in my load order, now that they are so valuable I'm mulling over whether I should put them up on ebay right away & make a tidy profit or if it's smarter to put them in plastic and wait for their value to go up like Beanie Babies.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:31

skooma512: Feb 8, 2012; You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

oblomov posted:

I am not sure I would pay for more then a few mods even in this case. The main issue is that it takes a LOT of mods to get things nice and proper for Skyrim to be more then bland system with crappy combat. My mod load order generally goes anywhere from 30 to 100 mods. I would pay maybe for only a handful. Also, most compilation mods are now pretty much history.

That said, yeah, if the above system came into place there would be a lot more incentive to pay for the mods that I do like and think are worth a few $$.

My Arma 2 and 3 folders usually end up with many GB of mods. My 2 folder was 50GB by the time I uninstalled it when the game itself is only 8.

I'm kind of wary of Valve now. Between this, a really strong market position, and their ability to shut down your account with hundreds of games in it with no recourse, they seem to be too powerful.

Their support might as well not even be there and they don't seem to have any public relations people.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:32

Parallelwoody: Apr 10, 2008

Dongattack posted:

The Paygate?

edit: NO WAIT

THE PAYGATE-GATE

Paygate-gateghazi

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:38

iGestalt: Mar 4, 2013

Parallelwoody posted:

Paygate-gateghazi

PayPlebGate.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:38

Cup Runneth Over: Aug 8, 2009; She said life's
Too short to worry
Life's too long to wait
It's too short
Not to love everybody
Life's too long to hate

Skyrim rating is down to 92%

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:43

Emberfox: Jan 15, 2005; ~rero rero rero rero rero

It would be awesome if it goes below 90%. 84% would be really ironic for a Bethesda game.

Of course I doubt it'll go down that far.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 20:57

GaistHeidegger: May 20, 2001; "Can you see?"

Well then.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 21:14

Synthwave Crusader: Feb 13, 2011

GaistHeidegger posted:

Well then.

IT BEGINS

# ? Apr 25, 2015 21:17

Space Skeleton: Sep 28, 2004

GaistHeidegger posted:

Well then.

If the takedown goes through what happens? Do they keep serving the mod to people who bought it or is it just removed completely? At least $500 has been spent on that mod so far, probably more. IF that is refunded do the users just get steam wallet funds out of it? I am pretty sure that's not legal in a lot of places.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 21:19

Ash1138: Sep 29, 2001; Get up, chief. We're just gettin' started.

GaistHeidegger posted:

Well then.

Haha I hope this news gets picked up somewhere.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 21:19

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# ? Jun 6, 2024 06:26

Synthwave Crusader: Feb 13, 2011

Someone get this to Forbes.

# ? Apr 25, 2015 21:21

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