Im curious as to when it started becoming an industry standard to let unpaid people(modders) fixing their games for you?

[Jagati Khan]

Bethesda

This

 

[Adijazz1706]

There's three distinct lines of reason here:

1. There are things that were ostensibly fixed within hours by someone in their spare time - like the looters dialog on map, .
The 1.3 hotfix specifically - made me doubt "few hours" or "spare time" are in TW vocabulary at this time. The financing alone - whether they'll release the game before a specific quarter is up, will make a huge difference in ie loans interest. I have but a small inkling of what it administratively and financially means to run a project like this, and it's enough to give me second hand ulcers.

2. A product that can take in mods and fan content should not be dismissed as a given. The aforementioned Bethesda, despite having been saved by modders - makes such a bank on their broken products, that they've actually taken steps to cut modders out. Lets count our blessings here.

3. Alternatives. Money and time are finite resources when planning a project. You either limit scope, or need to recoup more money. So for one possible alternative we can look at Paradox model, lets pick a conceptually similar strategy/tactics/economy game. Stellaris "Starter Pack" costs $60, and $146 for the whole thing.
While it's egotistical of me, I pray they don't switch model to that.

So while for industry as whole it is an issue, all things considered I'd count TW in the good guys camp together with ie S.T.A.L.K.E.R. devs. Warband playable range, the amount of hours I've happily sunk in Bannerlords already, and timing of some patches earned at least some credit of trust, at least for me. Obviously it's an individual call. I'd point and blame firstly to people who preorder games from serial offenders, but evidently I made an excemption for this product.

CDPR are on my list as well, I even had the Metro devs until the Epic fiasco. Paradox are ridiculous, CK2 has like 80 DLCs :O

 

[Chaosreaper187]

1. It's not an industry standard. - No it isn't, but it's a trend.
2. But I wish it was. - Are you serious? That's borderline slave work if you look into it at certain perspectives.
3. As far as a timeline for when developers started integrating modability into their games as a central feature, that stretches faaaaar back into the 80s. - That doesn't have anything to do with the topic, but okay

It isn't slave work because they aren't forced to do it. It would be more like open source with the only difference that a company is earning money from it, which is kinda stupid.

THATS how you read that? *facepalm*

No I'm sure you didn' t mean it like that because who would but in all seriousness, taleworlds are fixing their game by themselves and with our feedback and aren't relying on modders to do it. Just because some people like to mod their games doesn't mean that it's obligatory to play the game. The fact that m&b has such a vibrant modding community is a good thing and a fact that taleworlds should take advantage of and give the modders all the tools they need to be creative

 

[mr_nifty]

Not 'we'. Maybe you and some others, but not 'I'.

Modders help enriching the game and offer alternative, sure. Even for games like Skyrim, I never used the so called "community patch" because honestly I looked at the bucket list of "fixes" it has and realize I had never had or ran into even a fraction of them. Not only that, overtime it becomes something more of "this is what the modders want it to be" and not just 'fixes'.

I don't mean to demeaning the effort of modders cause I use truck load of mods in various game, but I had never compared the work they do to the effort by the actual developers. It's just a section of the players seem to overhype the modding scene as something differently than they actually are. No matter what people says, modder can only make an already good/stable game better, they can never fixed a truly broken game. This includes the bethesa games, I had played those game unmodded, and while mods make them a lot better, the base games not broken, despite the vocal section of mod's fans say.

I had never seen modders manage to fix a truly broken/unfinished games into playable state, and I had run into a few of them. I'll give you an obvious reason why: the base game itself has to be good enough to generate interest for the modders to work on it.

It's because they don't really understand what modding is.

 

[Derped@Warband]

I guess it's one thing to look at a company (bethesda for example) and look at all that their games' mods add and face palm when they fail to fix things in re releases that mods have fixed years ago... or to put out an update that breaks a ton of mods so they can push a micro-payment equivalent, and another thing to look at a game that is still in the process of final polish being put on it, where changes are being made daily, or near daily and seeing how that effects mods. I can't really expect them to stop working on the game for the sake of modders, especially not at this stage.

I played a bunch of warband, most of my hours were online, but a good chunk was offline. The SP campaign was functional. It was fine. I wouldn't say mods 'fixed' it so much as I'd say they added to it. I used floris, kengeki (or however you spell it), romance of the three kingdoms among others. For online, crpg, neogk, invasion, mount and musket all added to the scene. I dunno If I'd say the scene was broken before them though. The game was functional in full native both online and off.

 

[Tuco]

1. It's not an industry standard. - No it isn't, but it's a trend.
2. But I wish it was. - Are you serious? That's borderline slave work if you look into it at certain perspectives.
3. As far as a timeline for when developers started integrating modability into their games as a central feature, that stretches faaaaar back into the 80s. - That doesn't have anything to do with the topic, but okay

Incomprehensive.

 

[Çağtay]

"if they really wanted modders fixing their games" they would've released their modding tools all of us waiting for by now,because it could make modder's job helluva lot easier

I can understand this kinda thinking if this was released game and modders hard at work fixing it,reality is its a game in active development and nobody stopping us messing arround with game's files
mods as of now temporary solutions to immediate problems, most of their core issues still remains and those are up to TW,cause TW has the engine and rights to that engine

 

[Abelardo]

game is not out yet...

 

[decourcy]

Op, I am starting to wonder if 90% of humanity are irredeemable trolls with bovine excrement for brains. The game is in early access in case this is too hard for you come back when it releases. If it releases with huge problems then you can say this but until then you are being a rude troll.

 

[Te-Ryn]

game is not out yet...

Op, I am starting to wonder if 90% of humanity are irredeemable trolls with bovine excrement for brains. The game is in early access in case this is too hard for you come back when it releases. If it releases with huge problems then you can say this but until then you are being a rude troll.

Got it, reading entire post and comprehension to hard for some people.

 

[The Leviathan]

Got it, reading entire post and comprehension to hard for some people.

"Duuuur TC I'm not sure if you know this but the game is EaRLy AcCeSs"

 

[Abelardo]

Got it, reading entire post and comprehension to hard for some people.

Let me see if I can make it a bit more clear, because indeed comprehension is extremely hard for "some" people.

Game is not out yet, full features are not yet implemented, full modding support still does not exist, so ranting about modders "fixing" the game does not apply, because you don't know what the game will be like at full release.

That point aside, which by itself is pretty self evident, if you are speaking on a broader sense, your point is extremely subjective.

Yeah, modders will change a game that is supposed to be modded, WOW! imagine that eh?

Fixing? Well that depends, do you assume that what you consider to be better or worse is to be globally accepted as the absolute truth? or perhaps could it be the case that many people would consider the "base" game better? where is the "fixing" then?