One Month To Go and I Have Cold Feet

[Ikea Knight]

Skyrim which was a genuinely bad game

What?
I don't like Skyrim much, but it won Game of the Year, RPG of the Year and Bethesda won Developer of the Year in 2011 at the Spike Game Awards and the reviews on release where great.

Games don't get ratings for their mods.

Skyrim was so succesful because it has great reviews, the hype was real and the base game was good. Then came the mods and a lot of the playerbase stays.

Bannerlord can have amazing mods, but if new players are not interested in the base game first, they won't try the mods.

Gothic 2, Minecraft and Warband all had amazing mods. But it took so long for me to try them out because I was always thinking using mods was too complicated or cheating.

 

[578]

Gaming journalists mean nothing to me, most of them cant play games yet they give games like Call of duty 9/10 ratings. Skyrim was successful because it had marketing, its a watered down game, not even an RPG anymore with the worst combat I have ever seen. Only reason skyrim is relevant is because of mods.

 

[MauledByABeer]

Best advice ever.....yeah yeah, lost 7 hours of play when the power went out...oops.

Perhaps the next devblog will cover the exciting new autosave feature.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

I hate Skyrim as much as the next person but:

1. It's important to remember that it was more or less the first game of its kind and set the stage for almost every big budget game in the 2010s. Developers are still trying to chase the mechanical balance Skyrim reached 10 years after it released because it's a formula which appeals to a lot of people.

2. There are plenty of other, more professionally designed games with dozens of mods which haven't lasted nearly as long.

3. Around half of the sales were on console.

4. Even most PC players don't use mods much. If you compare nexus and steam workshop downloads to the estimated number of PC sales, the numbers are kind of underwhelming considering the game has been out for 10 years and there are probably around 20 million people who have played Skyrim.

Mount and Blade is kind of the same thing. I cannot stand native, in some ways it is even jankier and more poorly designed than Skyrim, but if there were no mods whatsoever I have a hard time imagining the game would just die like that, especially with Multiplayer.

I am also really skeptical of the idea that bannerlord will succeed on the basis of its mods. Warband has no competitors in the singleplayer realm. If it did, you would have a situation like the total war franchise where all the modders move over to the new game and mostly ditch the old one.

 

[578]

I hate Skyrim as much as the next person but:

1. It's important to remember that it was more or less the first game of its kind and set the stage for almost every big budget game in the 2010s. Developers are still trying to chase the mechanical balance Skyrim reached 10 years after it released because it's a formula which appeals to a lot of people.

2. There are plenty of other, more professionally designed games with dozens of mods which haven't lasted nearly as long.

3. Around half of the sales were on console.

4. Even most PC players don't use mods much. If you compare nexus and steam workshop downloads to the estimated number of PC sales, the numbers are kind of underwhelming considering the game has been out for 10 years and there are probably around 20 million people who have played Skyrim.

Mount and Blade is kind of the same thing. I cannot stand native, in some ways it is even jankier and more poorly designed than Skyrim, but if there were no mods whatsoever I have a hard time imagining the game would just die like that, especially with Multiplayer.

I am also really skeptical of the idea that bannerlord will succeed on the basis of its mods. Warband has no competitors in the singleplayer realm. If it did, you would have a situation like the total war franchise where all the modders move over to the new game and mostly ditch the old one.

1) I agree to everything, but the fact is that Skyrim was made by a company that made a far, far more complex game in the past, Morrowind.

2) Yes, this is true but there are games that stay relevant to this day and it is only due to mods. Elder scrolls games for example, Vampires: Masquerade, GTA San andreas, etc. It was more of a highlight and praise towards modders rather than ''its plainly a bad game'', I should rephrase that better

3) No arguement there

4) You can easily see that with steam achievements regarding warband. The ''install and play 1 mod achievement'' belongs only to 54.5% of players who purchased the game. Might not dead-on accurate, buit it's a percentage.

The last 2 points you address, I will sum up in 1. Warband's mods added a lot more systems like invasions, diplomacy, mercenary work etc. After playing mods like Floris or PoP, I could simply never go back to native, no way in hell. Regarding bannerlord, I am sure people will find more creative systems to input in the game, regardless of how full it is. Devs cant really put everything in a game.

 

[Bloody Bill]

Perhaps the next devblog will cover the exciting new autosave feature.

Oh hell no, i kill auto save as fast as i can. imo its caused me more issues than it has ever solved...out side of word.

 

[XDaron]

Skyrim which was a genuinely bad game.

just memeing, I don't disagree completely, skyrim is the example of how mods can boost a games longevity, but there are many examples of players putting ridiculous amount of hours into the skyrim in it's vanilla state, jeez, that was the reality of all console players in fact, so let's not forget that.

Bannerlord will have a strong modding community from the start aswell, many mods are already planned, so let's hope this happens

 

[the_hajji]

Just remember to save a lot.

I heard that patches are going to kill your saves during the EA

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Bannerlord will have a strong modding community from the start aswell, many mods are already planned, so let's hope this happens

Planning mods before the game has even released is lunacy. Some people planned an LOTR mod back in 2014 or something crazy, before they knew anything about the rendering system or how the model pipeline would work. It's the equivalent of moving to a different country with no job, no idea about the language, and no connections.

The way mods are going is that we'll get a much smaller number of higher quality overhauls, and a lot of smaller submods. Games now are just too complicated for someone to pick up and start modding within a few weeks like warband.

 

[Kipsta]

Planning mods before the game has even released is lunacy. Some people planned an LOTR mod back in 2014 or something crazy, before they knew anything about the rendering system or how the model pipeline would work. It's the equivalent of moving to a different country with no job, no idea about the language, and no connections.

The way mods are going is that we'll get a much smaller number of higher quality overhauls, and a lot of smaller submods. Games now are just too complicated for someone to pick up and start modding within a few weeks like warband.

Wrong. Modders can already work on assets for scenes, characters, weapons, etc. and it will be easier to get them into the game than Warband which had really cranky and rather weak tools. This time they'll provide proper tools to modders. It quite literally is going to be easier, it's never about games "now" or games "then". That's not how it works.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Wrong. Modders can already work on assets for scenes, characters, weapons, etc.

Without knowing the proportions of the mesh skeleton, or how IK works, or what animations there are, or how facial animations work or anything like that, you're at a very high risk of having to redo most of it. Back when those mods were announced we didn't even know whether they were using a metallic or a specular workflow, which is a fairly small detail but it completely changes the way textures are designed and in some cases they're basically incompatible.

This time they'll provide proper tools to modders.

It doesn't matter how many tools you give modders, rendering techniques are very different nowadays. In around 2014 the way textures are made changed fundamentally to something called PBR (Physically Based Rendering) which is way less intuitive than the old system and less forgiving if you have less experience, but gives way more visual possibility.

As I say this I'm making textures for my own game in a programme called Substance Painter (around £100), and without it, making textures for PBR in things like photoshop is a massive, massive pain. Most people aren't going to pay that much money to make a mod.

 

[CptMiller]

I heard that patches are going to kill your saves during the EA

RIP