Thoughts about paid mods

[RoyBaty]

Since I stopped playing Fallout 4 before they introduced the paid mods, I'll admit I'm not up-to-date regarding Bethesda's policy regarding mods.
They mentioned Starfield will be moddable (as expected), but will have a mechanism for modders to benefit from their work.
Anyone have an idea what we should expect the modding scene is Starfield to look like, given the past few years?

My main concern - Bethesda will release a bare bones game, counting on modders to add content to their game. If mods are monetize, Bethesda will even have an incentive to keep vanilla as a skeleton of a game, and make mods an integral part of it.

[Darth Revan]

i dont see that concern personally, with over 250.000 lines of dialogue starfield has more dialogue than skyrim and fallout 4 combined and if you believe what he says todd howard said that starfield has more handcrafted content than they ever had in a game.

mods always were a big part of bethesda games, i expect the modding scene will be the same as usual with an additional mod market place, probably creation club 2.0 or something along that lines. we will see.

[Dragontoast]

Bethesda will always make full games. While Todd wants to support modders making a career out of it, that will not affect the quality of their own products.

We will see potentially a less gated Creation Club similar to the Minecraft Marketplace, where anyone could upload and set a price. Personally I think it won't be healthy for modding as a whole and hope they don't.

[PopinFRESH]

Concurred with the above. You're concern is a fairly irrational fear of one thing which is not connected to the thing you're noting as the source of those fears. Modding, regardless if it is free or paid, hasn't changed what Bethesda Game Studios (BGS) has built and delivered.

In regards to paid mods, the entire fervor surrounding the Steam workshop paid mods for Skyrim was a mob mentality run amuck with very little basis in reality. There were some valid concerns from their effort of launching this with a game that had as much established mods already available on a 3rd party site which led to trash people stealing other people's mods and publishing them as their own. Otherwise the rest of the mobs arguments were patently false and mod developers could still publish mods for free, for "pay-what-you-want" donation style, or for a mod author's set price. I think if Valve and Bethesda had started with a new game and/or had a fairly robust authoring & permissions system in-place before they attempted to launch the system it would have played out much differently. Both Valve and Bethesda wanted to make it a platform where creators could start to make a living on their hobby, if they wanted to.

Players simply crying about the idea of paid mods are just cheap and don't actually value modder's time and efforts.

Regarding Starfield, I'd expect Todd's notion that it will be a modders paradise will prove to be accurate. Given BGS has confirmed that out of the 1000+ planetoids about 10% of them have life on them, and that the planets are each large themselves, it would seem there will be a very large amount of space for modders to craft lots of content. The only thing that I think might pose a challenge for the modding community is learning how their new procedural generation system works and if that system is able to be modded to extend it with additional tiles or additional generative processes. However, 100+ large planets worth of real estate to add-in points of interest, characters, story elements, etc. is still a massive canvas for the modding community even without touching the other 90%.

Given that about two years ago when they first began discussing Starfield they made note of it being the largest amount of dialog they've ever done at over 170k lines and it has now grown to more than 250k lines of dialog I'm not concerned in the slightest that they are releasing a "bare bones" game.

[Bandy]

Originally posted by RoyBaty:

My main concern - Bethesda will release a bare bones game, counting on modders to add content to their game. If mods are monetize, Bethesda will even have an incentive to keep vanilla as a skeleton of a game, and make mods an integral part of it.

There is nothing new happening here in SF, unless you've never played a BGS game before. Creation Club around a long time, horse armour set the stage in Oblivion. Modders improved and expanded basic game content. Period.

Free mods will/should always be available, and in my experience are better than almost everything in CC. BUT with free mods you have to learn how to mod properly using best practices. CC has convenience and game stability on its side.

[Darth Revan]

Originally posted by Bandy:

Originally posted by RoyBaty:

My main concern - Bethesda will release a bare bones game, counting on modders to add content to their game. If mods are monetize, Bethesda will even have an incentive to keep vanilla as a skeleton of a game, and make mods an integral part of it.

There is nothing new happening here in SF, unless you've never played a BGS game before. Creation Club around a long time, horse armour set the stage in Oblivion.

Free mods will/should always be available, and in my experience are better than almost everything in CC. BUT with free mods you have to learn how to mod properly using best practices. CC has convenience and game stability on its side.

cc also has localization done by bethesda on its side since creations are available in all languages the game supports which is good and bad because thats the main reason why none of the creations come with newly recorded voicacting.

i agree with what you wrote even though in some cases i personally actually prefere the creation club version over the free alternative not because the creation club version necceccarly is better but mainly because in some cases the creation club version looks way closer to the original design like with the indoril armor in skyrim or the x-02 power armor in fallout 4.

[Ajax]

Modding is a passion you want to share with players and should be free.

You want to get paid ? then go pro and stop calling yourself a modder

On top of that , Nexxus mods have everything and its free.

[4ndr34]

I'm back playing Skyrim SE updated free of charge to 1.6.640.0.8, I play with the 4 mandatory Creation Club mods (Survival disabled, because I prefer to use Frostfall - Campfire - Hunterborn - iNeed Continued) and with more than 100 active mods downloaded from nexus and loverslab.
On the nexus there are each day more than 20-30 new mods or updates/patches to existing mods for Skyrim SE, do you really think that all mods will be paywall locked in Starfield?

[cl656]

It's hard to hate on someone who is't prideful about working their ass off all week, and likes the idea of being self employed and getting paid doing something they enjoy and are good at, while not working 60+ hours a week for someone else on someone else schedule.

If they see modding as a feasible means to make an easy living, then I hope they can reach their goals as far as that is concerned. Life is short, hard, and ugly, and if you can make your life easier while on this earth for you and those you care about, do it.

[Fireserpent7]

People who create mods deserve to be paid for their work, if they want to make money from their creations they should have every right and freedom too

[CunkFeatures]

Originally posted by RoyBaty:

Bethesda will release a bare bones game, counting on modders to add content to their game.

I've played all Bethesda games without modded content cus 95% of the time its amateur
You think it fills the game, I couldn't care less.

Stop spouting this "mods fix everything" bs. You choose your mods, they dont "fix" jack

[50 Cal]

Its interesting how Bethesda will handle the economy surrounding modding. I think modding is love from gamers to gamers and I don't think that should include a forced price tag. If you like the mods, you should be able to donate money to the modders. If they do try to monotize mods, I can live with it if the price tag is not crazy. But I think mods should be free or very low cost and I also think money made from modders should go to the modders and not to Bethesda. After all, modders help keep the game alive for many years and more people will already purchase the game because of modders. So I dont think Bethesda should also make a lot of money directly from the mods. Nexusmods has a great system Bethesda could look at. You can choose if you want to pay a subscription or go free and modders get a percentage based on downloads.

[Darth Revan]

Originally posted by 50 Cal:

Its interesting how Bethesda will handle the economy surrounding modding. I think modding is love from gamers to gamers and I don't think that should include a forced price tag. If you like the mods, you should be able to donate money to the modders. If they do try to monotize mods, I can live with it if the price tag is not crazy. But I think mods should be free or very low cost and I also think money made from modders should go to the modders and not to Bethesda. After all, modders help keep the game alive for many years and more people will already purchase the game because of modders. So I dont think Bethesda should also make a lot of money directly from the mods.

well, it depends on your definition of mods, if you take creation club for example it really is more like 3rd party contract work than just mods with a price tag and 3rd party contract work ist not unusual in the industry.

bethesda not only pays the creators but also provides technical support for the creators and has the cost of the localization in all languages the game officially supports.

now you can say that it is not good that the creators dont get a share of every sold copy of the creation which is a totally fair thing to critizise but ultimatly this is a subjective matter at the end.

i know a few people who actually prefere a pre determined payment over a share because that guarantees that they get the money no matter how well thair creation sells, i mean if a creation sells particularly poorly it would even be possible that the creator gets less money for his work than he does with the pre determined payment.

[misters82]

Even Nexus is paid site. You should remember that Nexus best features is behind paywall. So while you can have "free" account, Nexus basicaly ask you paid for premium features. As for mods they will be made of no time.Its CREATION 2 engine so tools will be available.

[wtiger27]

Originally posted by Dragontoast:

Bethesda will always make full games. While Todd wants to support modders making a career out of it, that will not affect the quality of their own products.

We will see potentially a less gated Creation Club similar to the Minecraft Marketplace, where anyone could upload and set a price. Personally I think it won't be healthy for modding as a whole and hope they don't.

The game will have Creation Club content. You can count on it. But it will be totally optional. And free mods will be fully supported.

[wtiger27]

Originally posted by Bandy:

Originally posted by RoyBaty:

My main concern - Bethesda will release a bare bones game, counting on modders to add content to their game. If mods are monetize, Bethesda will even have an incentive to keep vanilla as a skeleton of a game, and make mods an integral part of it.

There is nothing new happening here in SF, unless you've never played a BGS game before. Creation Club around a long time, horse armour set the stage in Oblivion. Modders improved and expanded basic game content. Period.

Free mods will/should always be available, and in my experience are better than almost everything in CC. BUT with free mods you have to learn how to mod properly using best practices. CC has convenience and game stability on its side.

That is why I use CC content. I never used any outside source mods for Skyrim or Fallout 4. The CC content I have used for both games, have been very stable and download/install like a DLC. All have worked flawlessly, with no game conflicts. Which personally, that is how I look at them. Small DLC's.

Not saying no CC has any game conflicts. Tunnel Snakes CC can cause some quest conflicts early in a game play run, but works fine if you wait until later. I never used that one, because I have no interest in it.