Bethesda Content Club

[Allen]

Paid modding has sadly started.

https://creationclub.bethesda.net/en

What are people's thoughts on this? It may be a new thing for console gamers, but modding (free modding) has been part and parcel of the PC gaming community for years and I fear that the more people that "buy" these mods, the more modders will be drawn to systems like this. Don't get me wrong, I would, and have done in the past, given a few quid to some extremely good modders, but I really do believe we would be better off in it's current system - free mods with donation options.

What are people's thoughts on this? Have you bought any mods from the Creation Club, or do you plan to?

[kalniel]

I think choice is good rather than forcing it to be one model or another. Having a legitimate paid modding scene goes back a very long way - I worked on premium modules for NWN back in the day and I'm pretty sure that wasn't the first. That never stopped me creating free content for NWN alongside the paid stuff, nor did it affect the community enjoying (and still enjoying) free content.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I am not a fan of it since I don't trust what Bethesda will do with it long term - I have no issue paying a bit of money towards modding sites or individual modders as they provide a service,but this sounds more like Bethesda taking advantage of modders,paying them a pittance for DLC and then trying to profit from them. It also means they can possibly outsource some of their internal work to modders too.

If it leads to proper DLC like content like Bruma,with proper Bethesda support,etc I am quite happy to pay for innovative content like that if it means it can be done better with more people being involved,professional voice actors/actresses,etc.

However,the fact of the matter is Bethesda open world games in the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series are buggy. The modding community for Bethesda games means many PC gamers will overlook that since they are confident the community will fix the issues.

Fallout 4 is notable for that - the unofficial patch for example fixes stupid quest bugs,etc that Bethesda are so lazy they CBA to fix them.Then you had them using X87 instructions with Skyrim,requiring the community to step in with Skyboost. Even the textures,and various other things they do are not well done,as are the character models.

Compare that to CDPR,you can clearly see the lack of effort Bethesda spends on the games on a technical level - even mates who looked at the game,were just shocked at how poor it looked in comparison to other AAA titles. This is a game I nearly paid £50 for!

My worry longterm is that instead of fixing the games,Bethesda will pull in modders to fix the games for them especially the more critical mods,but instead you will need to pay on top of the basic cost of the game,and the DLC content too. I can also see the Nexus suffering longterm too,since if modders do free mods which are similar to the paid ones on Creation Club,wait until Bethesda issues take down notices.

The fact of the matter this is only to increase the bottom line of Bethesda,whilst cutting the R and D spend on their games,and they are cunningly trying to hoodwink people by slowing rolling it out and getting people used to the concept.

My viewpoint is since I am not a gullible fool,if Bethesda starts pulling in mods which fix basic issues of the games,I will make sure I subtract the cost of the paid mods,out of the cost of the price I will pay for the base game and DLC.

I am sure many foolish people will buy into the paid mods system just like they do with paying silly money for "loot crates" in non FTP games,so that instead of £40 to £50,they end up paying double that to just get a fixed game,but I don't mind waiting even a few years if that is the case.

In the end,I think its essential we do support devs like CDPR. I mean even though I do prefer the Fallout universe to The Witcher one,I think I will be buying their next game,Cyberpunk 2077,as much of a show of support as anything else. They spend time and effort on their games,listen to their fans,give massive DLC content away for free,if there are technical issues they listen to fans and implement changes(the tessellation slider for Gameworks) and even make sure they release DRM free versions of their games.

[adidan]

People get paid for better quality mods, no issues with that. Free mods are staying free. Choice is fine with me.

From the Creation Club site:

Mods will remain a free and open system where anyone can create and share what they’d like. Also, we won’t allow any existing mods to be retrofitted into Creation Club, it must all be original content

We’ve looked at many ways to do “paid mods”, and the problems outweigh the benefits

[Ttaskmaster]

I played as many fan-mods as I could get for the old Thief games.
I played a few of the ones that worked on Freelancer.

I skimmed through the list of Skyrim mods and tried a couple of the "amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayzing" graphics enhancement ones, before deciding there was no discernible difference and giving up. The rest was just a massive list that I had no time for even going through.
Some of them read like the old Thief ones used to be, that is to say, nothing more than half-assed attempts at fan-fic.

I understand mods like Crossfire for Freelancer, which changes a LOT and makes a massive difference.
Mods like that are worth my time and if they're that good, perhaps the modders should be offered a job...!!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Mods like that are worth my time and if they're that good, perhaps the modders should be offered a job...!!

This,but that would cost more money you see!

Edit!!

I just logged in to see what was available.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

BTW, all the Creation Club mods download automatically onto your drive whether you want them or not.

[spacein_vader]

BTW, all the Creation Club mods download automatically onto your drive whether you want them or not.

Even the ones you haven't purchased? How/why?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Even the ones you haven't purchased? How/why?

Yep - check your FO4 folder. They are all there. So if you enable auto updates it will just download new ones to your HDD.

Edit!!

Also if you mod,and download the update by mistake simply rolling back the exe won't work as it modifies the following files:

Fallout4.exe (in "Fallout 4")
Fallout4Launcher.exe (in "Fallout 4")
libScePad.dll (in "Fallout 4")
fallout4.esm (in "Fallout 4\Data")
fallout4 - startup.ba2 (in "Fallout 4\Data")
fallout4 - interface.ba2 (in "Fallout 4\Data")

[DDY]

I'm generally not in favour, but we'll see.

I have some concerns.

There is a potential for a detrimental shift from free or donation-ware mods to paid-for mods. Because if modders are good at what they do, which is demonstrated by the popularity of many different mods, why do it for free? Will this also eventually lead to mods that require licensing or approval, and ultimately the loss of free mods?

We've already seen the degradation of the quality of some base games with the scourge of DLCs and there is potential for game developers to similarly expect players to fluff-out their base game with mods. If the BCC model proves to be profitable, what impacts will this have on the wider gaming industry?

[Output]

I would have thought that the previous attempt to introduce paid mods would have dissuaded Bethesda from trying it again, but I guess they think that they have everything in place to solve all of those issues from happening this time.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It looks like F4SE might be screwed and so will some of the major mods too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcldh21R40M

It seems everytime new content will be downloaded the main FO4 file executable file changes.

[spacein_vader]

Yep - check your FO4 folder. They are all there. So if you enable auto updates it will just download new ones to your HDD.

Edit!!

Also if you mod,and download the update by mistake simply rolling back the exe won't work as it modifies the following files:

Fallout4.exe (in "Fallout 4")
Fallout4Launcher.exe (in "Fallout 4")
libScePad.dll (in "Fallout 4")
fallout4.esm (in "Fallout 4\Data")
fallout4 - startup.ba2 (in "Fallout 4\Data")
fallout4 - interface.ba2 (in "Fallout 4\Data")

I wasn't daft enough to buy Fallout 4. Hopefully this won't knock on to Skyrim too much.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I wasn't daft enough to buy Fallout 4. Hopefully this won't knock on to Skyrim too much.

https://bethesda.net/en/article/3lO9...-creation-club

Skyrim Special Edition will get it too,and no doubt all future Bethesda open world games.

[spacein_vader]

https://bethesda.net/en/article/3lO9...-creation-club

Skyrim Special Edition will get it too,and no doubt all future Bethesda open world games.

They can't keep putting all content onto people's HDDs, as the amount of content grows it'll become massively ungainly and must cause huge pressure on their servers. Surely install on demand like the Steam workshop makes much more sense.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

They can't keep putting all content onto people's HDDs, as the amount of content grows it'll become massively ungainly and must cause huge pressure on their servers. Surely install on demand like the Steam workshop makes much more sense.

Bethesda when it comes to its open world games most of the time is technically subpar - there are some innovations they have done like the texture streaming with Skyrim and the build system in FO4,but once you see what modders have uncovered underneath all of that,some of their decisions seem rather weird. This is after all the same company which decided to launch Skyrim which used X87 codepaths(which reduced performance on modern CPUs) even when games had been using SSE type extensions for years and BOTH Intel and AMD had been telling people not to use X87.