It's been established that what you said before, about how you'd rather have the game have half the content it has in order to get mods in, was a deliberate exaggeration - but in all seriousness, how much would you be willing to sacrifice? Would you accept less content, less quests and people? Would you settle for weaker visuals and scenery? Would you be content with glitches and bugs, with many a crash and a poor interface?
Any of these, more than one, or even all of them or something entirely different and even worse, could have easily been an issue if they had pushed for mod compatibility instead. And yes, there would likely have been mods to fix them - but mods themselves would have compatibility issues, would not always work between one another, and the more issues the game has to be fixed, the more mods are needed to make it perfect for you, the more likely it is something will just not work right.
Finally, this all will shoot most of the player base in the foot. The silent minority, those that never cared for the mods at all or find them too complicated, those that just want to play the game rather than mess around with a bunch of files and patches and installation orders and fixing a bunch of new issues they cause. They would be the true victims here. You and I, we mod our games and have the patience to deal with the issues that arise, but most players will not, and they will just have to suffer with a worse game.
I would like a moddable game too, but reduced enjoyment from many others is too high a price for me to pay.
It's been established that what you said before, about how you'd rather have the game have half the content it has in order to get mods in, was a deliberate exaggeration - but in all seriousness, how much would you be willing to sacrifice? Would you accept less content, less quests and people? Would you settle for weaker visuals and scenery? Would you be content with glitches and bugs, with many a crash and a poor interface?
Finally, this all will shoot most of the player base in the foot. The silent minority, those that never cared for the mods at all or find them too complicated, those that just want to play the game rather than mess around with a bunch of files and patches and installation orders and fixing a bunch of new issues they cause. They would be the true victims here. You and I, we mod our games and have the patience to deal with the issues that arise, but most players will not, and they will just have to suffer with a worse game.
I would like a moddable game too, but reduced enjoyment from many others is too high a price for me to pay.
I would gladly accept less content, without of course impacting the overall quality of the content itself. Let's say, for example, a 30 hours game, with the possibility to extend it further with mods, it's IMO preferable to a 50 hours game without mods. Of course, they must fulfill all their obligations in terms of number of cities, number of NPCs, etc., because some of those were in the reward tiers or in the kickstarter goals, but luckily not all of them. So yes, if possible, for example, I would happily do without some of the NPCs, if more could be added with mods.
Of course, the above is what I would like (because you specifically asked what I would settle for). I understand that it may not be possible and that other people may not like it. So, what I mean is that it looks like PoE will be a game for those people, but not my kind of game. So I'm mainly angry at myself for throwing money at Obsidian before knowing for sure if their game would turn out being my kind of game.
Just having some content cut off might be all very well, but like I said, that would very likely not be the only issue involved. Indeed, if the engine supported mods in the first place, it probably would've been pretty fast and easy to add them in, without sacrificing actual content itself. So I think the issue was somewhere under the hood.
Well, maybe there would be a good idea to officially ask Obsidian on PoE forum how are they planning to support would-be modders? Maybe they do have in plan to take care of it after release and the whole argument turns out to be pointless after all.
I find this idea that modders are a small minority (and thus greedy for making demands) confusing and absurd. One, modders often and happily make their work available to all, free of charge. They also try to make managing their work as user-friendly as possible - witness the Nexus Mod Manager, for example, or the in-game Mod Management Menu for Skyrim. So this is a small minority working as hard, if not harder, than the devs themselves for accessibility to the whole community.
Yes, DLC is important - it often adds features modders cannot without clumsy work-arounds and kludges, as the devs can access the source directly. But, again, DLC is limited because devs (very quickly) move on to the next big thing, often destructively fast. When Trent went to Bioware to see if they retained any original art assets from BG1, they said it was all gone. It's unconscionable - the game that saved a genre featuring the final work of Daniel Walker and all they bothered to hold on to was the copyright! Greed is hardly something you can accuse modders of.
Wow, explosive subject I guess. Someone already posted a 'popcorn' eating pic.
My opinion, if anyone cares : Make a solid game and story and see if it stands the test of time. If people want it bad enough... ANYTHING can be modded. That is how BG was modded in the first place (and no, it wasn't Wes who invented Infinity Modding, LOL ) So my advice is not to worry too much about what is moddable and what is not. If the game is good it will stand on its' own merits. There are plenty of people around that will figure out how to mod something and make tools to do it.
Unity is no different than other 3D game engines, it just has game file packaging that is kinda funky (to us modders at the moment). It still uses models, pathfinding, lighting, collision objects, particle physics, xml files, etc, etc. Anyway, I can be long winded. Will get another bucket of popcorn and enjoy the read.
I find this idea that modders are a small minority (and thus greedy for making demands) confusing and absurd. One, modders often and happily make their work available to all, free of charge. They also try to make managing their work as user-friendly as possible - witness the Nexus Mod Manager, for example, or the in-game Mod Management Menu for Skyrim. So this is a small minority working as hard, if not harder, than the devs themselves for accessibility to the whole community.
That's really not what I said. They can make their mods as accessible as they can, but it doesn't help if the players won't meet them halfway down the road, as many do not. The small minority makes a wonderful job in modding the game and getting content in, another slightly larger minority happily enjoys their labor and loves it, but all the same, most players would not bother: as easy as it is, it's still a few more steps down the road after just installing and playing the game.
(TROLL BELOW)
If everyone was willing to take those few extra steps, we wouldn't have any consoles.
If people want it bad enough... ANYTHING can be modded.
@Cuv, if anything can be modded, can you please make for me a mod for MASS EFFECT 3 that adds a new companion and some additional quests. I want it bad enough -p
@Cuv, if anything can be modded, can you please make for me a mod for MASS EFFECT 3 that adds a new companion and some additional quests. I want it bad enough -p
It won't work if the one that wants it and the one that mods it aren't the same person.
@terzaerian Modders and particularly people who use mods are a small minority. Most people never use mods for games.
Sorry to get a bit persnickety and abrupt, but it's pretty frustrating when people who haven't worked in the industry begin to claim they know best. Modding is a complicated beast - this is why so many games don't have modding features.
@Erg You CAN mod Mass Effect 3 - you could even do the things you're suggesting - it would just take a heinously long amount of time and a whole lot of effort.
As games and their engines become more complicated thanks to graphics improvements, the formats and structures that make up the game also have to become more complicated. This is just natural - and even though a lot of people seem to think that because PoE is a "2D" game it should be easier than many games, it's actually quite the opposite. PoE is, technically speaking, a pretty complicated game. Unity is one of the few engines out at the moment that could support what they're doing without rewriting half of it. This is pure speculation, but I suspect they didn't have a whole lot of options.
You CAN mod Mass Effect 3 - you could even do the things you're suggesting - it would just take a heinously long amount of time and a whole lot of effort.
@LiamEsler, so you are saying that it's possible in theory, but most likely no one will ever do it. Thanks, now I feel much better.
@Erg Not in theory, you CAN do it. The file structures for Mass Effect games are pretty much the same as Dragon Age. Get the DAToolset and play around to see which files you can and cant mod. It has an override file structure too. I won't do it for you though, heh.
Not in theory, you CAN do it. The file structures for Mass Effect games are pretty much the same as Dragon Age. Get the DAToolset and play around to see which files you can and cant mod. It has an override file structure too.
@Cuv, if only was so simple there would be plenty of NPC mods for ME3. The fact that there is none so far, tells me that things are much more complex.
Also it looks like PoE will be even less moddable than ME3 considering that at least ME3 has an override folder.
Not in theory, you CAN do it. The file structures for Mass Effect games are pretty much the same as Dragon Age. Get the DAToolset and play around to see which files you can and cant mod. It has an override file structure too.
@Cuv, if only was so simple there would be plenty of NPC mods for ME3. The fact that there is none so far, tells me that things are much more complex.
Also it looks like PoE will be even less moddable than ME3 considering that at least ME3 has an override folder.
@Cuv, if only was so simple there would be plenty of NPC mods for ME3. The fact that there is none so far, tells me that things are much more complex.
Also it looks like PoE will be even less moddable than ME3 considering that at least ME3 has an override folder.
Modern games require much more effort to make compared to old games. Particularly the artwork in the 3D High Definition, shadowy, reflective world that modern games have. Old games would have maybe a couple of artists working for a year to produce the artwork. Modern games take maybe 50 artists working for a couple of years to produce the game. Modding these games requires similarly more effort, but modding is still a fairly solitary business.
Most modern games also have voice acting for all dialogue. Good luck getting Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale to record more dialogue for an ME3 NPC mod. And without it, there will always be a jarring disconnect to the other, fully voiced, NPCs.
And finally (sadly), very few people actually care about mods. We on the forums are a very small minority of the overall gamers, so there is very little incentive for a game producer to cater to us modders. Unfortunately it just doesn't make economic sense.
@karnor00, it looks like we don't share the same tastes as I played several mods without voice acting (for example for the Witcher) and I've enjoyed them, so I wouldn't mind a mod for ME3 without Mark Meer or Jennifer Hale voice. If the quality of writing is good, I'm more than happy with just reading.
About your statement regarding modern games, I would rather play a modern game like Divinity: Original Sin than a modern game that doesn't support mods.
That's what I would play, you can play whatever you want.
If people want it bad enough... ANYTHING can be modded. That is how BG was modded in the first place
I concur. It takes only the right tool, a little creativity, a couple of informed guesses, and a lot of patience. That is how we edited things back in the late 80s--Bard's Tale and the Gold Box games were easy, Dragon Wars was more difficult (because of the way they "hid" the names of items), and Wasteland was impossible (not any more, though--someone figured out the file structure and managed to create tools to explore them).
I think the average length of time from the release of a game until someone creates a character/save game editor is probably 3 to 6 months, anyway. No worries--I prefer to enjoy the game as it exists when I get it before diving into it analytically.
If people want it bad enough... ANYTHING can be modded. That is how BG was modded in the first place
I concur. It takes only the right tool, a little creativity, a couple of informed guesses, and a lot of patience. That is how we edited things back in the late 80s--Bard's Tale and the Gold Box games were easy, Dragon Wars was more difficult (because of the way they "hid" the names of items), and Wasteland was impossible (not any more, though--someone figured out the file structure and managed to create tools to explore them).
I think the average length of time from the release of a game until someone creates a character/save game editor is probably 3 to 6 months, anyway. No worries--I prefer to enjoy the game as it exists when I get it before diving into it analytically.
@Mathsorcerer, so maybe you can make that mod for ME3 with new NPCs and additional quests.
1) Why is Obsidian is not making a mod-friendly game? Because they're using the Unity engine. Which is not as open to modding.
2) Why are they using the Unity engine? Because it does what they want it to do and don't have to create their own engine.
3) Why they're not creating their own engine? Because it would take them even more time and even more money.
Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment are not where they are because mods, it's because they're damn good games on their own.
Secondly, you cannot have a toolset editor like the Elder Scrolls/Witcher/NwN games because the game is not fully 3D.
You cannot create an editor for games like that, unless it's like RPG Maker where the areas are made from different tiles. You cannot do that in a game where the areas are prerendered. Unless you make them from scratch yourself.
Third, any game on PC is moddable. Even if it's just reskinning or texturing or changing some formulas with spells for example.
And Obsidian never lied. The video for Kickstarter never said "this game will also be very moddable".
Now something else. I know a game that focused a lot on modding. It's called Neverwinter Nights 1.
Custom engine, toolset, multiplayer. Of course it was quite buggy in the beginning and the main campaign was painfully average.
If you're so concerned about modding, then it's your own damn fault if you payed someone that never promised you a super mod-friendly game.
With games like NwN1, it was all about the modding. Making your own modules and campaigns, not the story.
With games like BG/IwD/PsT it was all about the games themselves, not how much you could mod them.
And it's the same with Pillars of Eternity. I'm buying it because I'm expecting a solid game that stands on it own. If I wanted a game that was all about modding, I would look somewhere else. It's simple as that.
I'm sure everyone here will already have one. I say frame yours and mount it on the wall with words "My Greatest Folly, Never Forget".
You are probably right.
Anyway, and now I'm serious, if someone has missed the Kickstarter and, for whatever reason, wants to have the game on day 1 at a cheaper price, I'm willing to sell one digital copy of the main game plus one digital copy of the expansion.
I still think you should've seen this coming, considering the games it was based on and the engine it was running on. They really are notoriously poor modding grounds, at least from the developers' point of view.
Still, maybe you'd like to hold on to your game for a couple years, to see if someone ends up doing a bunch of mods for it anyway. They did for the other Infinity games. It just took them a long while: a decade and a half to stitch together the amount of mods something like Skyrim would have gotten in a month. You'll need to be patient, but I'm sure it'll be worth it - it apparently was for Baldur's Gate.
I still think you should've seen this coming, considering the games it was based on and the engine it was running on.
The games it was based on had an override folder from day 1. About the engine, I admit I wasn't aware of its limitations at the time. However, it is not impossible to support mods with that engine, if you really want, just a bit harder. It looks like they don't think it should be a priority and that's a pity. As I said elsewhere, their money (and mine) could have been better spent.
The games it was based on had an override folder from day 1. About the engine, I admit I wasn't aware of its limitations at the time. However, it is not impossible to support mods with that engine, if you really want, just a bit harder. It looks like they don't think it should be a priority and that's a pity. As I said elsewhere, their money (and mine) could have been better spent.
Just because Baldur's Gate had an override folder from day 1 doesn't mean mods were a high priority for them.
Also, I think your thoughts would be better spent if you were to simply look into the future objectively instead of raging against the developers. I doubt their money and time would have been any better spent than it already was - @Archaos made some very good points - but odds are very good that the game will end up getting mods by the end anyway. You selling off the game before that happens, and complaining about it over here, sounds more and more like a temper tantrum directed towards the developers that did not cater to your every whim from the beginning.
Calm down, enjoy a whole new game for a couple playthroughs before it becomes all old news to you, then wait a bit and in a few years something'll probably come out.
sounds more and more like a temper tantrum directed towards the developers that did not cater to your every whim from the beginning.
Calm down, enjoy a whole new game for a couple playthroughs before it becomes all old news to you, then wait a bit and in a few years something'll probably come out.
@Chow, did you even bother reading in full my posts ?
I'm starting to think you didn't and you are just replying to an image of myself that exists only in your mind
If you want to think of me like a spoilt child throwing a tantrum, please do, but that doesn't make it real
This sentence doesn't make any sense to me. But maybe it is just me.
By selling the game away - apparently without even playing it through once, though maybe that was just the impression I got - you are essentially betting that it will never have any mods developed to it. If you lose this bet, you will have to buy the game again, quite possibly at a higher price - but you seem to have a pretty good confidence that you will win the bet, that there will never be any mods brought up to it and that, essentially, the game is equal to garbage to you forever.
By that attitude you appear to have extremely little confidence to the will and ingenuity of the fanbase. For someone such as yourself that so willingly partakes to their fruit when they're available, and abandons otherwise good games entirely when they're not, this is an odd way of thought.
By selling the game away - apparently without even playing it through once, though maybe that was just the impression I got - you are essentially betting that it will never have any major mods developed to it, and by major I mean mods with new NPCs or new quests or new areas and such. If you lose this bet, you will have to buy the game again, quite possibly at a higher price - but you seem to have a pretty good confidence that you will win the bet, that there will never be any major mods brought up to it and that, essentially, the game is equal to garbage a subpar product to you forever.
By that attitude you appear to have extremely little confidence to the will and ingenuity of the fanbase. For someone such as yourself that so willingly partakes to their fruit when they're available, and abandons otherwise good games entirely when they're not, this is an odd way of thought.
What good that confidence in the fanbase did to a game like MASS EFFECT ?
Can you name a major mod for MASS EFFECT that it's not just using existing resources (like the happy ending mod) or just recolouring and/or replacing textures (basically all other mods for MASS EFFECT).
I'm afraid PoE will turn out being as moddable as MASS EFFECT (or maybe even less).
Now, @Chow please stop telling me what should I know, what should I like, what should I enjoy, what should I hope for and to be calm (especially when I already am calm) and let's go back to discuss about PoE, OBsidian and mods as this thread is not supposed to be about me.
Comments
It's been established that what you said before, about how you'd rather have the game have half the content it has in order to get mods in, was a deliberate exaggeration - but in all seriousness, how much would you be willing to sacrifice? Would you accept less content, less quests and people? Would you settle for weaker visuals and scenery? Would you be content with glitches and bugs, with many a crash and a poor interface?
Any of these, more than one, or even all of them or something entirely different and even worse, could have easily been an issue if they had pushed for mod compatibility instead. And yes, there would likely have been mods to fix them - but mods themselves would have compatibility issues, would not always work between one another, and the more issues the game has to be fixed, the more mods are needed to make it perfect for you, the more likely it is something will just not work right.
Finally, this all will shoot most of the player base in the foot. The silent minority, those that never cared for the mods at all or find them too complicated, those that just want to play the game rather than mess around with a bunch of files and patches and installation orders and fixing a bunch of new issues they cause. They would be the true victims here. You and I, we mod our games and have the patience to deal with the issues that arise, but most players will not, and they will just have to suffer with a worse game.
I would like a moddable game too, but reduced enjoyment from many others is too high a price for me to pay.
Of course, the above is what I would like (because you specifically asked what I would settle for). I understand that it may not be possible and that other people may not like it. So, what I mean is that it looks like PoE will be a game for those people, but not my kind of game. So I'm mainly angry at myself for throwing money at Obsidian before knowing for sure if their game would turn out being my kind of game.
Yes, DLC is important - it often adds features modders cannot without clumsy work-arounds and kludges, as the devs can access the source directly. But, again, DLC is limited because devs (very quickly) move on to the next big thing, often destructively fast. When Trent went to Bioware to see if they retained any original art assets from BG1, they said it was all gone. It's unconscionable - the game that saved a genre featuring the final work of Daniel Walker and all they bothered to hold on to was the copyright! Greed is hardly something you can accuse modders of.
My opinion, if anyone cares : Make a solid game and story and see if it stands the test of time. If people want it bad enough... ANYTHING can be modded. That is how BG was modded in the first place (and no, it wasn't Wes who invented Infinity Modding, LOL ) So my advice is not to worry too much about what is moddable and what is not. If the game is good it will stand on its' own merits. There are plenty of people around that will figure out how to mod something and make tools to do it.
Unity is no different than other 3D game engines, it just has game file packaging that is kinda funky (to us modders at the moment). It still uses models, pathfinding, lighting, collision objects, particle physics, xml files, etc, etc. Anyway, I can be long winded. Will get another bucket of popcorn and enjoy the read.
(TROLL BELOW)
Sorry to get a bit persnickety and abrupt, but it's pretty frustrating when people who haven't worked in the industry begin to claim they know best. Modding is a complicated beast - this is why so many games don't have modding features.
@Erg You CAN mod Mass Effect 3 - you could even do the things you're suggesting - it would just take a heinously long amount of time and a whole lot of effort.
As games and their engines become more complicated thanks to graphics improvements, the formats and structures that make up the game also have to become more complicated. This is just natural - and even though a lot of people seem to think that because PoE is a "2D" game it should be easier than many games, it's actually quite the opposite. PoE is, technically speaking, a pretty complicated game. Unity is one of the few engines out at the moment that could support what they're doing without rewriting half of it. This is pure speculation, but I suspect they didn't have a whole lot of options.
Also it looks like PoE will be even less moddable than ME3 considering that at least ME3 has an override folder.
I agree it would be GREAT to be able to mod it, but I've already bought a copy so I'll be playing it at least once either way.
Most modern games also have voice acting for all dialogue. Good luck getting Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale to record more dialogue for an ME3 NPC mod. And without it, there will always be a jarring disconnect to the other, fully voiced, NPCs.
And finally (sadly), very few people actually care about mods. We on the forums are a very small minority of the overall gamers, so there is very little incentive for a game producer to cater to us modders. Unfortunately it just doesn't make economic sense.
About your statement regarding modern games, I would rather play a modern game like Divinity: Original Sin than a modern game that doesn't support mods.
That's what I would play, you can play whatever you want.
I think the average length of time from the release of a game until someone creates a character/save game editor is probably 3 to 6 months, anyway. No worries--I prefer to enjoy the game as it exists when I get it before diving into it analytically.
Can you? Pretty please? -p
2) Why are they using the Unity engine? Because it does what they want it to do and don't have to create their own engine.
3) Why they're not creating their own engine? Because it would take them even more time and even more money.
Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment are not where they are because mods, it's because they're damn good games on their own.
Secondly, you cannot have a toolset editor like the Elder Scrolls/Witcher/NwN games because the game is not fully 3D.
You cannot create an editor for games like that, unless it's like RPG Maker where the areas are made from different tiles. You cannot do that in a game where the areas are prerendered. Unless you make them from scratch yourself.
Third, any game on PC is moddable. Even if it's just reskinning or texturing or changing some formulas with spells for example.
And Obsidian never lied. The video for Kickstarter never said "this game will also be very moddable".
Now something else. I know a game that focused a lot on modding. It's called Neverwinter Nights 1.
Custom engine, toolset, multiplayer. Of course it was quite buggy in the beginning and the main campaign was painfully average.
If you're so concerned about modding, then it's your own damn fault if you payed someone that never promised you a super mod-friendly game.
With games like NwN1, it was all about the modding. Making your own modules and campaigns, not the story.
With games like BG/IwD/PsT it was all about the games themselves, not how much you could mod them.
And it's the same with Pillars of Eternity. I'm buying it because I'm expecting a solid game that stands on it own.
If I wanted a game that was all about modding, I would look somewhere else. It's simple as that.
Anyway, and now I'm serious, if someone has missed the Kickstarter and, for whatever reason, wants to have the game on day 1 at a cheaper price, I'm willing to sell one digital copy of the main game plus one digital copy of the expansion.
If you are interested, please send me a PM.
Still, maybe you'd like to hold on to your game for a couple years, to see if someone ends up doing a bunch of mods for it anyway. They did for the other Infinity games. It just took them a long while: a decade and a half to stitch together the amount of mods something like Skyrim would have gotten in a month. You'll need to be patient, but I'm sure it'll be worth it - it apparently was for Baldur's Gate.
Edit: The games it was based on had an override folder from day 1. About the engine, I admit I wasn't aware of its limitations at the time. However, it is not impossible to support mods with that engine, if you really want, just a bit harder. It looks like they don't think it should be a priority and that's a pity. As I said elsewhere, their money (and mine) could have been better spent.
Also, I think your thoughts would be better spent if you were to simply look into the future objectively instead of raging against the developers. I doubt their money and time would have been any better spent than it already was - @Archaos made some very good points - but odds are very good that the game will end up getting mods by the end anyway. You selling off the game before that happens, and complaining about it over here, sounds more and more like a temper tantrum directed towards the developers that did not cater to your every whim from the beginning.
Calm down, enjoy a whole new game for a couple playthroughs before it becomes all old news to you, then wait a bit and in a few years something'll probably come out.
I'm starting to think you didn't and you are just replying to an image of myself that exists only in your mind
If you want to think of me like a spoilt child throwing a tantrum, please do, but that doesn't make it real
Edit: This sentence doesn't make any sense to me. But maybe it is just me.
By that attitude you appear to have extremely little confidence to the will and ingenuity of the fanbase. For someone such as yourself that so willingly partakes to their fruit when they're available, and abandons otherwise good games entirely when they're not, this is an odd way of thought.
Can you name a major mod for MASS EFFECT that it's not just using existing resources (like the happy ending mod) or just recolouring and/or replacing textures (basically all other mods for MASS EFFECT).
I'm afraid PoE will turn out being as moddable as MASS EFFECT (or maybe even less).
Now, @Chow please stop telling me what should I know, what should I like, what should I enjoy, what should I hope for and to be calm (especially when I already am calm) and let's go back to discuss about PoE, OBsidian and mods as this thread is not supposed to be about me.
Thanks in advance