Paid Mods and The Downfall of Skyrim
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ย. 2024
- Recently, Bethesda has relaunched their microtransaction system for Skyrim and it is now called Skyrim Creations! What do I think about paid mods? Are they dooming Bethesda as a company? Is it ruining Skyrim? How bad is it? I'll be going over the positives and negatives of the issue. Enjoy!
#skyrim #bethesda #mods
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Aces High - Funkorama by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommon...
Could you please share that mod list? Your gameplay looks like fun
Sure! It is a combination of my mod list video and a video I did afterwards updating my combat mods:
Modlist: th-cam.com/video/e_2lWupynY4/w-d-xo.html
Combat mods update: th-cam.com/video/tmareBNVi0A/w-d-xo.html
@@Koubitz
Uh... hate to be the BEARer of bad news, but Bethesda just announced ANOTHER Skyrim "update" scheduled for 2024...
@@HattaTHEZulZILLA86 Oblivion take them, this is honestly getting annoying.
@@sacredpower7530 Okay...but perhaps they're trying to fix some of the issues Creations has, even the crashes there. This update shouldn't be meaningless, it should fix issues with their previous update. Hopefully this is the LAST update ever until, maybe a few decades? Who knows.
@@Koubitz I have been using Skyrim 1.59.7 for years now. No creation club mess, still works with most new mods & less buggy.
What's worse than a mod that screws up your Skyrim? A mod you pay for that screws up your Skyrim.
totally relatable.
Imagine having started modding 17 years ago, doing what you could in your spare time to build the community that is massive part of the success of Bethesda. To understand politics, especially how wealth distribution systems work, and see Bethesda myopically choose to destroy what works great *because* it's not greed based, just to make a handful of wealthy elite Capitalists who have more than they can spend, get even more $ they can't spend.
That you can't even refund after you purchase it.
I switched to oldrim after this.
There is still something worse....an update that breaks SKSE sso much so you end up forcing oneself to NOT UPDATE THE DAMN GAME.
A decade where a game is kept alive by modders, you couldn't leave it alone.
GREED. They are willing to destroy the game and alienate the people who have been keeping it alive just to squeeze out more money. Screw Bethesda.
always said the same and never understood the amount of people that disagreed with me. A 10 year old single player games needs to be left the hell alone.
The stone must bleed for the company
the same hapened with ES3 and ES4 , why should ES5 be diferent?....lol...the decision is on the clients , if you dont buy them no harm done...
did you not watch the video? there are plenty of harm being done@@JoaoMariaNunes
Bethesda is constantly trying to ruin their modding community when it's their modding community that's been doing their work for free. They would be irrelevant if not for modders keeping their games alive for years after release. And this Creation Club is totally a taste of what's to come for Elder Scrolls 6...
what is Bethesda doing that the modding community is not already doing?
@@hecc7906 Boo fucking hoo. And? If there wasn’t a modding community to capitalize on the creation kit it’d be fucking useless.
Besides, all it serves is a basic foundation. Most of the most incredible mods out there (that puts their own work, even modern titles to shame) is done using community developed libraries, tools and assets. Things they did not make.
They gave them a set of tools. This cost them nothing. They already got paid back for it fucking years ago, in the form of free fucking labour that kept their shitty game relevant for over a decade, and by extension, them.
Yes. They planted the seeds that grew a beautiful, fruitful tree, and now they’re cutting it down to sell it for firewood, because the free fruits from it wasn’t enough for these greedy bastards.
Fuck you and everyone else who supports them.
@@lj1653 They're pushing their greedy monetization schemes into a niche that has always been free, and it should stay free. I understand mod authors have to eat but that's what patreon and donations are for. This creation club is nothing more than corporate greed.
@@hecc7906 Yeah you wanna know why? Because they NEED modders to fix their games for them... It's the only reason why Skyrim and Fallout 4 are still played to this day, mods. Base Skyrim and Fallout were mid. Bethesda's games started to fall off after Oblivion and Fallout 3.
Also go and take a look at the mod pages for Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Starfield. The top mods for those games are bug fixes that Bethesda developers are too incompetent to fix. They would be nothing without their modders. And yet they keep releasing patches for a 12 year old game that breaks everyone's list, resulting in more headaches for modders.
@@Dedhaven People like you cry and complain that they don't fix the bugs, then they patch the game with bug fixes and people like you cry and complain about it, what the fuck do you want from them
couldn't agree more. the amount of mods that stop working with each update is heart breaking
This would not be the first game that I disabled auto updates on.
They haven't updated the game in like a year, and they worked with the Silverlock team to get SKSE patched as soon as humanly possible.
Literally what more do you people want? It's just SKSE plugins that get broken with each update anyway because the SKSE needs to be recompiled. It's not that complicated. It's not the end of the world. Literally everything that was broken by this update has already been patched and is functional again anyway.
@@kevinwalter4078they only update the game to make more money, and force people to eventually buy a new game. They could leave the game alone and it would have been fine. I don't understand why you defend a billionaire dollar company
@@kevinwalter4078Yeah actual normal supported mods aren't broken by normal game updates - just mods that needs to access the game via unsupported ways like skse which are by far the minority of mods. People just like to be overdramatic.
@@kevinwalter4078 how about less greed for a old game when their new one sucks
The paid mods are utter crap in concept alone. To make things worse most of the mods themselves are unimpressive to put it mildly. The gun for example is just a crossbow you can even load crossbow ammo in the gun and fire it as well as the exact opposite use gun ammo in the crossbow. So about $8 for a reskin.
...and on both Nexus & Bethesda's free mod area on consoles there are proper lore friendly gun mods for free like "Lore Friendly Guns of Skyrim" by Enroys which was made way before the creations one was. That just basicly make many of these paid mods pointless to buy. If these Creations came out like how they will with Starfield it might of been better.. but why pay if someone is willing to do it for free.
And don't get me started on followers. There's this follower named Katja that is hidden behind a paywall but overall still hasn't much of a personality and sounds like it's voiced by an AI. On the other hand we got mod followers like Inigo, Lucien, Kaidan, Xelzaz, Gore, M'rissi and Sa'chil, unique and interesting followers, some even with unique mechanics and questlines, for absolutely free. Sure, not every character needs to have dark stories, come with hours of content or have a unique voice actor, but why should I pay for content if the free alternatives are so much more appealing?
It's truly disappointing when mod creators, who work through passion and FREE, can accomplish groundbreaking achievements on the creation engine 1, and Bethesda can't even come even close on their "polished" Creation Engine 2.
modders that got dlss inton starfield on day 1 of the prerelease when Bethesda took months.
I hope OpenMW will get to that performance stage someday
I haven't modded in years, and it was only ever for a combat flight sim. I spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on reference material, some of it hard to find and long out of print, and I talked to WWII air combat veterans. I tracked down original US Army large scale maps. I spent many hundreds of hours researching actual reports and correspondence. And that was before the thousands of hours of actual work in the sim making the historical scenarios, and in Photoshop making the paint schemes, reproducing commendation letters, awards, and medals. It took a few years, 30-50 hours a week some months. I had a play test team, but the actual project was done all by me. And then I gave it away for free for anyone that wanted it. It never even occurred to me to try to make a buck off it. It was a gift to the flight sim community. That was the goal, to _give_ something that I had enjoyed doing. Not to _take_ something from the community.
This is how it should be. Mods are passion projects. When you start doing it for the money the passion bleeds out of it. It sounds like what you did was incredible.
@@Izzmonster lol no it isn't... why should someone not be paid for their time? The amount of paid content for flight sims is massive. All these people against paid work are children who never worked in their lives or they are lowIQ simpletons
Bethesda is trying so hard to copy EA but not being manipulative enough, failing miserably and its both hilarious and depressing at the same time
While I wouldnt put my hand in the fire for microsoft, it should be acknowledged that the zenimax acquisition came with an agreement that let bethesda act largely in an "independent" fashion. You cant underestimate bethesda's ability to shoot themselves in the foot without outside intervention, you just need to look at the timeline of their f*ckups.
I mean, if Microsoft actually had an iota of attitude in how they oversee their studios I would think they would have greenlit a new vegas 2 by obsidian a long time ago, or, dunno, ask studios such as Rare or Undead Labs what they have been up to for the last decade or so.
The thing is, even if they let the studio operate independently, they still have expectations for their expensive acquisition. After some of their other flagship game failures the past few years, they put a lot of pressure on Bethesda to have Starfield be a success, mainly for gamepass, but also in general. A company bought out by another still needs to be successful and meet targets or quotas, because if Bethesda were somehow able to just start hemorrhaging money (which, they won't any time soon), it wouldn't matter what their contract said if Microsoft decided to sell them off again, or otherwise pursue any other exit that their army of lawyers could pick out to avoid the losses.
@@HorseDe-luxe dunno man, with the tons of studios they have that even helped with the QA and tests over the years, it kinda baffles me that no one pitched in about the shortcomings in game design, gameplay loop etc. When you look at the interviews with corporate (matt booty, pete hines, even phil spencer) it all sounds like a bunch of boomers saying "looks good for me".
@@marconihimself QA never gets to experience the full game in one shot, its always piecemeal, and among multiple people. im not at all surprised they missed the overall gameplay loop being boring as fuck
Ah yes, the typical pleb response, "Microsoft bad", "they can't manage their studios". If that's really all you got, hate to tell you, it's not much.
@@TheWholeGrainBread_Real nice rebuttal
This is why I always mention the GoG version as it can go back to pervious versions of the games and even allows to disable Bethesda net. I with Mod makes would rally behind that version as it can't be tampered with by Microsoft or Bethesda as it is DRM free and 100% stand alone.
I'd switch if all my plugins supported it.
How do you get this GOG version?
@@Mustang-fu6on You can buy it, but you can also 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
@@101Mant Unfortunately what has kept me at bay from hard-switching. The dependencies on dot DLL aren't supported and most mod authors don't make versions for GOG yet.
But my brother plays a stripped version of the Shattered mod in there that has been quite fun
@@nairocamilo I am not confident enough in my skills to attempt to 🏴☠️ a game. Most likely I'd end up with my pc being so riddled with virus that I wouldn't be able to do anything else. 🤣
Dear Bethesda: Nexus Mods thanks you for making them an extremely popular place for people you alienate daily.
@@AlvarezplIndeed. Inclusivity means you aren't included unless you obey.
Nexus ain't all that either....lots of kool aid drinking going on over there.
Nexus mods at this point In time are on the same side of the coin. Also vortex sucks and mo2 is the only decent mod manager.
Time to start supporting the GoG version of Skyrim.
Ah yes, the solution to all Bethesda problems, giving them even MORE money buy buying yet ANOTHER copy of their game 🙄
@@randomthings1293Yep! The best 9 bucks I ever spent on the GoG version. No worries about updates to break my modlist.
@@randomthings1293 You can wait for a big discount :)
But with GOG you'll truly _own_ your copy of the game (no DRM, fully-offline installer just like old times) and never again depend on Bethesda/Steam shenanigans.
@@randomthings1293🏴☠️
The worst part is that even if you disable updates, if there's a steam update, sometimes it'll update the game anyway - or at least put it into the update queue w/o you noticing. Happened to me once, and had to go through all the trouble of figuring out how to downgrade Skyrim.
If you don't want your steam games to update, look in your ~\Steam\Steamapps\ folder and set all of the Appmanifest_******.acf file properties to 'read-only'. Steam can't update the game without modifying these files.
That happened to me, it was a steam update or windows update. Opened up mod organizer2 and noticed Skyrim was updating. Luckily found a good youtube video on how to downgrade. Tried the update on console and had to clear the cache removing all mods just to open the creation page. The interface sucked and now the ae content clogs up the ui.
Valve taking lessons from Microsoft? :D
Honestly looking at the facts, it's not Microsoft so much. Bethesda is just like this. Look at Star Field, Fallout 76, etc. Ever since Morrowind Bethesda has had a track record of alienating fans. There's a really good video that I can link that covers this. Microsoft only JUST recently put in someone to make sure that the products are quality, due to the backlash of both Starfield and Fallout 76. So no. I really don't accept this a Microsoft issue. Passing the buck on this problem isn't going to fix it.
Redfall was not Bethesda Game Studios. That was Bethesda Softworks, a PUBLISHER. God I wish they'd change the publishing company's name already so people stop making this mistake...
@@StygianIkazuchi okay, MAYBE you're right....let's just replace that with fallout 76 lol
@@StygianIkazuchifun side fact:
bethesda pulled two thirds of the dev team for redfall and had them work on f76, theyre still working on f76 as well, as well a big team over from id software.
redfall was never gonna be good sadly with the amount of devs they had, even up until launch the dev team was enemic.
@@notjimpickens7928 Where's your source? Because Fallout 76 was made by Bethesda GAME STUDIOS and Redfall was made by ARKANE STUDIOS. Google came up with no results for what you claimed and they're entirely different development studios. You're confusing Bethesda Game Studios with Bethesda Softworks, which is just a publishing company. They can't pull developers from one company to another.
ZeniMax owned Bethesda from 1999 until the MS buyout.
Behold, a condensed timeline of Bethesda transformation from creators to IP holders.
We don't deserve our mod authors. They're literally the ones we don't deserve, but the ones we need. I thank the modding community for involving me in this life changing journey, saved me mentally from many difficult times with deep stories such as Beyond Reach and over all saved me quite a lot of money on new games and consoles. Thank you and youtubers like you to koubitz for shedding light to their brilliant works and motivating more people to keep on playing and expanding their childhood.
Thanks bethesda for adding a system that fixes nothing and completely breaking everyones modlist and probably a lot of mods that creators aren't updating anymore.
I think this is one of the worst things they could do.
Not me tho my game still works
Daddy Todd is punishing us for not loving Starfield
Perhaps my biggest issue that you touched on is this: BGS will happily ask for and take their cut of the money for the content created by someone else entirely. But they'll in no way take any responsibility for it. Our update broke your mods? Too bad. We don't officially support mods. A mod corrupted your game? Too bad. We don't officially support mods. Two different mods don't play well together despite the fact they they claim they do? Wellllll......
Dang just realized how volatile this could be. Like to load orders and then some.
Like typically you download a mod if it doesn't work, at best it doesn't do as intended, at worst it could break your modlist. Though with a good installer for the most part if you're lucky just uninstall and ditch the troublesome mod and go about your day.
If you run in to that issue with Creations, sure you can uninstall it, most likely, but imagine if you spent any semblance of money on it, and it breaks your modlist. Now you bought something that seemed good but now it's just taking up space and was a waste of money. That could piss some players off, and that could become a strain on the community now that money is involved and demand even more from Mod makers to fix their issues. Which this time the mod user will actually have a leg to stand on given they are literally paying.
I did the tragic mistake of updating my game. Not only was my modlist destroyed, but after hours of replacing and updating mods. I could not even use them.
The game for whatever reason, would just deactivate every mod in my modmanager as soon i came to the Startmenu. Not sure why. I guess i would need to install everything from scratch to fix, but i just could not be bothered. Not knowing how long it will take until something else comes along that ruins everything again.
So i just switched back to legendary edition. I know there arent as many mods for it anymore. But im content with what it has and i can enjoy the game in peace.
I used the skyrim downgrade patcher, but i still and keep om playing the skyrim 1.5.97 version, i don't care for the AE version.
It seems like they can't make any good games anymore, so they wanted a slice of the mods pie. It's lazy, and in my opinion it shows rather than fixing their ways, they're taking the easy route by hosting actually good content made by mod authors.
Do you know what we called paid mods in the past? DLCs. DLCs which actually added extensive quests and features into the game. Nobody questioned why we had to pay for Dawnguard.
yea expect the companies made those mods/DLCs, and thus deserve to be paid for them. Why should they get a cut out of other people's work? Literally doing nothing?
I bought the anniversary edition because it bundled all of the creations into one package that you could buy with actual money and not their stupid game currency. Except I've still barely touched any of the creations in-game. They're just so boring and crap I'd rather do anything else. Half of the Dragonborn DLC has more value than the entire creation club.
@@Asylar343 True. I also bought Anniversary for the same reason, but it turns out that the creations are all pretty lame and buggy. It's sad that they think it's acceptable to do any of this.
give me a call when there is a mod to rival Dead Money, then _maybe_ you'd have an argument
I have no problem paying for all these mods again if bundled in something like an anniversary edition physical, because usually(or at least it used to be), any bugfixes would happen for free, and i could expect that eventually the game would run mostly as advertised... I don't get that with mods, i don't generally trust them, it is very hard to say a new copy of Skyrim is worth buying at $70, to then add on "pink bunny suits" for $5 sight unseen is crazy... I'd be spending days just coming up with lists and then ruining my "super sentai RP" playthrough with my $5 bunny suit mod trying to justify the purchase until my mod list breaks and i dump it hoping to make the RP mildly function... It seems more like sabotage than a skimming attempt honestly.
As someone who only ever played vannila +DLC this honestly makes me less likely to ever try mods out.
It's unbelievable to think about all this bs Bethesda is doing around its modding community, when you think about what Nightdive Studios and Id Software are doing with the modding content of classic Doom and Quake games. There are a lot of free addons added in these remastered, which is awesome to see. This is how you preserve classics and bring old and new mods to the big public. What Bethesda is doing with their TES and Fallout games is just greed and lazyness.
doom is also owned by microsoft now, so it may not be microsoft fault but maybe the devs specific in the other titles.
This feels very unnecessary and will only divide the fan-base. I probably don't want to play Skyrim anymore if they keep on breaking mods with their updates. i don't have much hope for Elder Scrolls 6
You realize these changes will actually help PREVENT them from breaking mods in the future, right?
They "broke" mods with CC updates because they had to release the content as automatically-downloaded "DLC" and then sell unlock codes to access it because of dumb rules placed on their system by console manufacturers, specifically Sony. Now, Microsoft owns them, so they don't need to do this anymore and can release CC content as standalone mods without updating the EXE and requiring SKSE to release an update to restore mod access.
@@kevinwalter4078 Keep huffing the copium, Bethesda shill
Like, you clearly have not a single clue about how game development works and how mod development works. And how one mods update can break 100 other mods without ever actually touching their code.
@@GikamesShadow says one of the guys whining about content he doesn't have to pay for. if you aren't going to pay for it, then stop crying like a little baby over something that has no effect on you.
@@theghostofthomasjenkins9643 So little effect huh? People paid for the game years ago. These updates are not what people paid for and yet it is forced upon them and breaking the game they OWN. If they wanna fuck around with paid moda they could at least have the decency to make it it's own seperate version of the game like they did in the past. At least then it's optional.
REMINDS me of the non-pirated World of Warcraft 3 unable to be played after the reforged came @@gecho8848
11:31 You ok with dragons disapearing like that? I'm sure there is a free mod that removes this behaviour.
This is why I bought and manually downloaded and installed the GoG version of Skyrim SE (and Oblivion and Fallout 4). I play on the Steam Deck and setting up Vortex to mod the GoG versions of Bethesda games under SteamOS is rather easy to do. I do hope the GoG version becomes the standard for modding Skyrim SE, instead of the modding community splitting Steam version with it's ongoing updates, that leaves mods behind that don't get updated anymore every big update. Basically modders have to support three Steam versions now: Skyrim SE, Skyrim AE, Skyrim AE Creations update and somewhere in between are the GoG and Epic game versions...
I have donated to modders in past and will do so in the future to support them. Or i'll try to support them by testing their (new) mods, finding and reporting bugs. This is what I absolute love about the Skyrim (Fallout 4, Oblivion) modding community.
The amount of newer players that support it is amazing and really shows how growing up in a microtransaction world has brainwashed them into thinking its okay. In 2015 Bethesda tested the waters and the community was quick and decisive to strike down paid mods. This newer generation finding Skyrim are growing up with mod lists so they never joined communities to ask questions, give answers, and just partake in learning, just existing with others with the same mod list now. The community that stood against paid mods is gone, replaced by this disconnected player base that Bethesda will take advantage of.
lol street fighter 2 wants to have a word with you . There were literally over 5 different versions of that game and we didnt get updates then we had to fork over 60 bucks again for the new version.
@@lazyfrogeyes5949 Yup Street Fighter 2.
So if the paid mods have to work standalone and not depend on other mods, that means they can't require the script extender, which seems like it would severely limit the capability and scope of the paid mods. Shouldn't the solution to everyone's problems would be for the base game to incorporate the script extender features in the first place. This would prevent game updates from breaking the script extender, and would even help make better mods available on consoles. Surely there would be a way to make it so it's backwards compatible with mods that depend on the existing script extender.
Modding was half the fun for Skyrim 🙂🙂
The other half was playing the modded Skyrim
Mods should only be paid for via donation. That's my take.
I started our modding in 1993 with Doom. Continued modding through tons of games, never asking for a cent and requesting people didn't plagiarize my work. Just a little credit somewhere in a Readme.
I stopped when I joined the military, but picked up again a year after I got out. My work eventually got me a strong enough portfolio to get a job as an actual game developer, but I still did some little mods here and there on the side, still free, still open permissions.
I left the industry after my last AAA project was reduced to something I wasn't terribly happy with and I saw where the industry was going (NDA, so not sure what I can disclose, even though it's been a while).
A lot of mod authors fancy themselves game designers. They kind of are, but kind of not. Many game devs are mod authors, but few mod authors are game devs. Locking a modification for a game you did not create behind a pay wall of any kind should be criminal.
Welcome to my TED talk. Lol.
@@sacredg647 What? Donations? If you want to look at it that way, you're not technically incorrect, but I equate it to a street performer playing their rendition of a cover song. Sure, they didn't write the song and they aren't charging a premium to listen to it, but people who appreciate them will contribute. And, IMO, there's nothing wrong with that, because it's generally not expected by the performer and people can do whatever they want with their money.
more like a street performer selling cds. its not their songs, but the record company allows it.
Koubitz: "I am definitely going on a spicy tirade"
Me: FULLSCREEN, VOLUME 9/10
This is why I bought the drm-free version of Skyrim Anniversary Edition on GOG. It's going to stay that way for a very very very very long time. I became fed up with my mods breaking on Steam, so getting the GOG Skyrim was the better solution.
The reason why they do this is because they want to turn modding into a business opportunity. They wanna capitalize off of people who make mods. And people who make mods as a hobby. It's truly disgusting.
12:09 I could see TESVI going this route whenever it comes out.
ES6 was gonna be rotten from the start. 76 proved Bethesda was rotten and starfield proved xbox is rotten, I doubt they will change
well when a mod that puts a single arquebuss and a small quest costs 10 bucks in a world where enderal (a entire game) is free i have a problem with paid mods
Bethesda's latest update breaking my mod list was kind of the last straw for my new year resolution being to not buy any game from a big publisher, but to only support indie games and small studios.
Bethesda in 2011: "Modders will fix the PC version of our game"
Bethesda in 2023: "Modders will fix every version of our game, and the customer will pay them to do it, but we're taking a cut."
I was wondering why Mysticism vanished. That along with Magnus’ other mods were some of my favorites. They made Skyrim on PlayStation so good! I’m gonna really miss them.
I paused the December update. I just used Mysticism’s Jump spell 5 minutes back.
I wish you could have disabled updates as well.
i mean, you can aswell downgrade you game with patch on nexus ...@@KamleshMallick
the real solution is to abandon bethesda for good. dont give them anymore attention, hope they dont make another elder scrolls, (their just gonna ruin whatever place it is set in) and move on with your life
As sad as it is. It's true. Bethesda isn't even like EA anymore but like Konami. Destroying all their properties and reputation for a quick buck.
Sure, it's bad for a lot of reasons - but what really breaks the new creation club is outlawing any non-vanilla dependencies.
Most of the mods i play with depend directly or indirectly on one or more of the well-known infrastructure base mods: SKSE , address library, OAR (or Nemesis), the XP32 Skeleton, BodySlide, MCN Helper. They also all assume USSEP to be installed
Want to do animations? Better use OAR now and don't even think about not using XP32 as everyone who still plays has it their mod list to support theior body mod of choice.
Want to have an MCM - use MCM helper or painstakingly reinvent the wheel for no benefit.
Want to do new spells or items or change leveled lists: You better do it dynamically or your mod will break every big overhaul out there. Good luck doing that without one of the helpers that rely on Papyrus Extender which itself relies on SKSE and Address library.
You can do new quests and lands. But you can't make patches for them enabling use of stuff from other mods available in the creation club as those patches depend on the mods that they patch. And you have to reinvent the wheel for literally everything that requires scripting. You are also dupposed to pretend that USSEP doesn't exist?! Better avoid every thing touched by it because you can't depend on it but almost everyone playing with mods obviously has it installed. Console users will complain if they paid for your mod but it breaks because USSEP is or is not installed.
The no dependencies rule is literally what breaks it. People will pay for mods. They will make a creation club account to get access to Bethesda-endorsed mods.
But they will expect the mods to work with whatever they already have.
On console that's probably not much though. And that's likely what the target group of Microsoft Bethesda boils down to.
They do it to milk the console peasants and it will work because it always does...
the problem is like Todd has said several times people complain about this stuff but it sells
It's honestly amazing to see how even after so many fallings, Bethesda always finds a new way to bury itself deeper.
I'm envious you had the foresight to keep your game on an older version!
You know you can just get the downgrader and use it yourself, right?
Im aware of the tool, but never looked into it - but it also involves matching the older version mods with it as well :(@@LibraritheWizardOfficial
@@Kalosj That's generally not hard to do. On the other hand I save copies of allllll the things just in case ;)
I am a 'retired' mod author but I did want to drop a few comments here. My biggest complaint with the paid mods is the way it breaks SKSE with every single fricking update. That's unforgivable as far as I'm concerned. It should be stupid simple to introduce new paid content without incrementing the game version and breaking everyone's modlist. Aside from that, yes I'd like other mod authors to be able to have modding as a side gig, or even a full time job. That would be awesome. But I suspect that there are only a few authors that are creative and dedicated enough to pull it off. My 'modding income' has historically been about $5 - $20 per month worth of Nexus Mods' 'donation points' system, and that's with a few thousand downloads a month. Not a lucrative career at all, plus those points are mostly only good for buying other games...
What’s funny about all this is that in order to use skyrim’s online features you have to be on the latest version.. most modders stick to older versions of the game meaning that they probably can’t even buy these mods if they wanted to lol
Feels like they do this to break Nexus mods to force us to use their paid mods.
but mods were only broke for like 3 hours for skse to get updated, then it was all fine.
Reminds me of that one quote. Goes something like “growing up is watching your hero’s turn human” or something like that
It’s so sad what they’ve done too their franchises, I fell off the Bethesda wagon HARD when fallout 4 came out. Fallout 3 was the first RPG I ever really played and understood, fallout new Vegas is still top 3 games all time for me. And I still had Skyrim installed on my drive before this.
This is why when SE was launched and I seen CC would be added onto it, I have just stayed on LE version of Skyrim. I backport SE/AE stuff to try them out.
This is the first video of yours I have watched and I thought it was great. I like your style. I also happen to agree with most of what you said. There are a few things I do see a bit differently though:
1. Your are aiming your gun at the wrong target. Yes Microsoft now owns Bethesda, but they are not calling the shots on what Bethesda is doing or how. I have been working with over a dozen of the Fortune 50 companies now for over 12 years and I am familiar with how companies like Microsoft function. First off, everything that you are seeing now was planned long before the acquisition. So, nothing happening now could have had anything to do with them. Second, Bethesda will operate as an autonomous unit. So, it will have its own budget, leadership and priorities and will be judged by Microsoft based on its ability to hold its own. Unlike Activision, Microsoft is not at heart a game company despite its share of the gaming market at this point. So, if you are unhappy about what is going on, it's Bethesda that you have a problem with.
2. People will buy mods. The reason I say this is because there are two factors that heavily influence the culture of donating to modders that this move will change: convenience and confusion. If you want to donate to a TH-cam content creator, you are given easy and convenient ways to pay them through joining and thanks. This is WAY easier and more convenient than having to go to Patreon which most people have never touched and may be intimidated by. Also modders don't get to ask people to contribute to them on Patreon while the consumer is using their creation. You can; they can't. Finally, this mod shop exposes people who don't normally mod because of how complicated it is to the possibility of doing so in a way that is perceived to be "safe". So, a simple interface, IMO, will give many people who are used to paying for microtransactions a way to essentially do so for Bethesda games in only a slightly different way than they do so for other games. This last point is more to do with Fallout 4 and Starfield as those are what the modern player base will be more focused on as F4 and SF are getting remakes and expansions.
Just my 2 cents (OK maybe 3 cents).
I’m playing on the GOG edition. It’s running on update 1.6.659 which is a version of anniversary edition. While it sucks that many mods like FNIS and Nemesis don’t work on this version, it’s at least DRM-free. This means no mods tab in the menu, no Creation Club, and not being held to the GOG service just to play it. Sure I need GOG to download it, but there’s no strings attached after that. So this means I’m not getting all this bullshit that Bethesda plans to release. Blessed be the GOG version of Skyrim and Fallout 4. 🙏
Business 101 : Prioritize in MAINTAINING TRUST in your brand name.
Corpos : Whazzat? Milk 'em dry? Okeh!
Business 101 : * facepalm *
Not to mention UI mods and text style mods completely brake the mods page to the point you have to uninstall it on Xbox
The main problem with paid mods is that mods are generally built upon existing mods both directly and indirectly. Even without considering the mods themselves, modders use tools and information obtained from the modding community and other users to make a lot of their mods, These things were generally created or given with the intention that those who used it would share their works with the community. By charging money for these mods, they are taking from the community without giving back.
The other issue is that if a paid mod is incompatible with another mod, who is responsible for fixing it. With an unpaid mod there is less of an obligation on the mod author to make it compatible since somebody else could do it, including the author of the other mod. But with paid mods, if the mod author doesn't fix the incompatibility, then anybody who wants to would theoretically need to buy the paid mod in order to get access to it.
Bethesda may think their tos solves the issue. If the paid mod doesn't require another mod to work properly, then one would hope there is no issue with somebody leeching off of the community. But at best it creates a division between paid mods and unpaid mods. The irony is that because of the limitations of paid mods, the uncertainty of if they will work with a person's load order, and the fact that these paid mods are not on the sites people tend to use for modding skyrim and it seems likely that the modders who paywall their mods could end up making less than a modder that doesn't.
If one wants to monetize their work, there are already avvenues to do so that seem far better. For instance, somebody making a mod could make their mod free on nexus or elsewhere but use something like Patreon for those who want the newest version, or maybe do it on a delayed schedule where those who pay get it a week or two early. There's also a tipping function on nexus for those who just want to donate a bit of money to a modder if they want. This also keeps the dynamic between modders and the community more ethical.
We all know they dont really care about mod makers getting that dough. The company just wants its cut of it in the end, bet greed will kill or extremely hurt the mod community even more than it has thus far.
Skyrim will never feel the same for me..
I remember the days you had to put a pendrive in the back of ur 360 and load up the cheat room and spawn in the good old Thomas the tank or cruise around with a lightsaber 😢
the vast majority of mod creators patreons make less than 100$ a month. The majority of mod players see more value in their 4$ going to a bag of chips than a mod.
Another issue with mods becoming obsolete after each update is the mods out there who's creators have stopped working on the mods completely. These mods won't ever get updated and are doomed to be lost to the void.
I wonder if that's what happened to a certain mod I liked. It was one where you can create quality face veils of various colors that matched perfectly with the crowned helmets mod. And no I'm not talking about the face masks mod.
nothing lasts forever.
If they outsourced and got modders to make their games, the games would probably be better
Somehow after cloning my Skyrim Folder from my old PC I am able to launch SKSE without it being registered in Steam. So my stable list is untouchable. I'm going to continue this practice with every hardware update.
At least their business people are smart. If a monetization scheme gets rejected, just do it over again, and again, and again, Until people just give up and accept it. Because they will accept it, After enough time.
Really enjoyed this video. Thanks for bringing all of this into the light.
This is the last straw for me. Oh, I'll keep playing the existing titles. I really like Morrowind and Arena. I _adore_ Daggerfall. An Oblivion and Skyrim are decent games, too. But unless Bethesda Game Studio changes direction _significantly_ and _very soon,_ I don't expect I'll ever buy anything else from them.
Currently, TES VI holds zero interest for me. I'm much more optimistic about The Wayward Realms, which is being developed by TES's original creators who left Bethesda ~20 years ago.
I lost hope in TES 6 after hearing about Starfield. Skipped Starfield after seeing the release state of '76. Before all that was looking forward to the Indiana Jones game but now will probably skip that one or wait 1 to 2 years after it releases.
I use Valhalla Combat, I don’t know why the true hud plugin colours are set grey for both magic & health but you can change them to red/blue in mcm. Select default
holy shit did you just call skyrim a boomer gamer?
Oh, yeah. If you were hyped about it's release, you're old AF.
😅
they pushed another update out on the 17th of January 2024 and it broke all my mods. the update was solely bug fixes for Creations. absolutely disgusting.
I gave Bethesda the benefit of the doubt when I bought the Anniversary Edition upgrade on PS5.
Most of the mods are trash and bug-filled. Some are also lore-breaking. And the sad thing is... On console, you can't deactivate the mods. You're stuck playing with them. There's no Creation Club option to disable the ones you don't like.
We already own the game. everything in the game We Must have access to it. why I must pay for those mods? I know they don't force us to pay them but. Really? this is taking advantage of consumers. Bethesda is trying to ruin modding community which is why the game still popular to this day.. comonnn What are they thinking.
Uninstalled = Problem solved.........
As someone who has recently had to play the bedrock edition of minecraft because a friend only had a console, theres really only one way this storefront is going to go and its not going to go to modders who actually care for the work they do.
It also seems like bethesda is looking at the sheer amount of work of people putting morrowind in the skyrim engine, even after they said that the people there had to do it entirely for free or they are toast, and then deciding that the best way forward is to release their third attempt at Itunes for mods.
I’ve been so mad with Bethesda that I haven’t been able to bring myself to make videos anymore. I was planning on staying again after some health issues - but, Starfield breaking on me (I literally couldn’t play anymore due to a bug that wrecked my save), the general state of the game, their messing with Skyrim - I may get back to making videos, but for the moment… I can’t even load up any of their games. I’ll more than likely get back to it in the end, eventually, and rediscover my love of the old stuff, but right now I’m just not feeling it.
I simply cant donate to all the mods I've downloaded unless if a quarter is not an insult to them. Plus some modders dont care to fix their mods. I bought a mod from a modder I requested and its been 2 months since they havent fixed a mod that broke from an update on that game.
Why would you even want the next elder scrolls? Based on Bethesda's history, it's safe to say the game is going to be much worse than anything they've released before. It's a simple fact, each game they release next is worse than the previous.
The main reason why I play Oldrim is literally because there are some mods that just do not exist on Special Edition and I know it's never going to update because Bethesda before they were bought out by Microsoft hid it on the steam. Don't worry, you can still find and buy it all with a quick google search.
Bethy should just hire Simon to design perk tree for the next TES.
Bethesda has been going downhill for years now and now that they are owned by Microsoft, who are the definition of mediocrity when it comes to their own exclusives...I look for Bethesda to go downhill even worse than they are now. Starfield, IMO is so bad and so boring that I didn't make it into it beyond 30 hrs or so. Starfield honestly makes me worry for Elder Scrolls VI. All the years it supposedly took to make Starfield, all the continued hype, this is the game we got. As for continued Skyrim mods...I've been tired of updates for years. Personally for me, I keep the auto update turned off and never open the game with Steam.
Yeah, but the problem with Patreons and other sources of income for unofficial mods is that they are just that: unofficial. They can and will be broken often because of things out of their control. I will not pay for a product that can't guarantee that it will continue working in the game it's made for. The only hope for a mod to be worth paying money for is if it has official support.
I bought the East Empire Expansion because it's made by Kinggath, and I'm a fan of Sim Settlements for Fallout 4, so I figured it was going to be good, and be a polished mod, since people have to pay real money for this content. However, it's not even close to the polished mod I expected. I'm finding bugs and typos and I've had to restart a new game twice due to the issues that it caused - and I run a very light mod list because everything was broken and many of my favorite mods have been abandoned, so...just me and Inigo and the Creation Club content now. I also expected that there would be more than a few mods, and those mods would have something substantial to them, or at least more content than a follower, an armor set, and a weapon. I guess there's not that many modders scrambling to make paid mods? But, overall, I'm not upset over "paid mods," if they are working correctly, have been tested and vetted to run with the previously released Creation Club content, and have enough content to justify their price. But that's not what we got, and I don't see anything different in what we've been offered except missing the word Club after the word Creation. Sadly, there's nothing we can do about it that won't make matters worse and lead us down the path to which your prediction (a prediction many of us share) will come true.
Fellow 1.5.97 giga sigma detected?
No but seriously Bethesda made me back up my .exe a couple years ago cause I was tired of them breaking my carefully constructed (and ever expanding) mod list.
Personal opinion though none of the paid mods they actually have atm are anywhere near good enough for me to justify spending money on them when nexus already has free mods that are so much better than them.
The thing is many mods have .1130 updates already, many just still work because skse and adress library were updated and so on
I also stayed on my old version BUT I updated a few days ago and it did break 3!! Of my 360 mods and all I had to do was to swap them out for alternatives (like dar to oar)
I've seen other vids where ppl say that the update broke most mods. So if that's true, modders might as well remove their mods in protest since their mods won't work anyway.
lmao, I just bought the game and Bethesda started this clown show again XD
why would I ever want to go through them if I want to support a mod ?
if anything they made me more hesitant about buying the game because it made modding so confusing, at first I was worrying about what skyrim to buy, not I have to worry about what version to buy, I didn't expect then game to update so often without adding anything of value XD.0
I thought to myself " this is an old game, should be easy to mod since everyone is practically on the same version" boy was I wrong
I hate the paid mods crap.
Sorry but the soul and essence of mods is the love and passion the team puts into their work.
Look at Star Wars Empire at War, a 20 year old game with a devoted modding team that "makes a living" keeping that game alive
What background music are you using in this video? Thanks
i just stay at 1.5.97 at be comfy with it.
fuck bethesda, this is why we can't have nice things - literally.
Yesterday was playing around with CBBE sculpting. Today everything broke. Started with saying my Skyrim SE is actually Skyrim AE. Try updating everything. Now my SkyUI dont even work. Thank you Todd Howard
Many years ago I made the hard decision to stick with LE... I'm so happy I picked the right choice.
A heavily modded Skyrim LE might run clunkier but at least it works.
In the same boat here! I've tried a few times to switch to SE, but every time Bethesda just destroyed my mod order again and again. At this point, I'm not sure if even the GOG version is worth it, what with having to navigate X versions of a mod to see if it has the one you need.
The solution for supporting modders already exists with donations.
The problem with donations: greed-Bethesda doesn't get their cut
Yeah donations... sure buddy enjoy the 20 to 50 dollar donations a month for your knowledge and skills that you had to learn on your own time not including all the effort you put in actually creating content. 👍
@@mitri5389
Modding for most is a hobby, not a full-blown career requiring benefits and a pension.
@dragonhold4 so free lancing and contractors are not professionals either than? Uh huh, you seem like a bastion of knowledge...
@@mitri5389
Not everything needs to come with a 401K
I really don’t mind paid mods, or creation club. I just hope modders get a fair pay.
I don't know why you haven't mentioned just modding old skyrim, that one still has tons of mods including steam workshop! And its not being touched by Bethesda!
Pointing out some stuff in a relatable way.
Creation club was introduced like youtube. It begins free, then adds a pay wall, maybe creation club will start getting ads at some point too. I would be surprised if this approach works for them, as from what I hear all the mods are now busted on 'CC'. Version updates after 1.6.1130 is not really worth it as it makes mods more fiddley. I forgot 'CC' existed until others spoke about it, is it a big deal? I noticed the update and instantly reverted to Skyrim 1.6.640. If Bethesda wants to sell mods, cant they just put them on a big main platform like 'Nexus' and then put a description like the rest of the community. 'Skyrim players everywhere are starving, hungry and need Skooma', For just £1 a month you could save lives'.
I never...NEVER EVER allow my Bethesda games to auto update...some of my favorite mods are gone forever and won't be back.
the biggest issue of paid mods - its not the MODDERS doing it, but the 2nd LARGEST COMPANY IN THE WORLD, there will NEVER be a situation where its worth it, if they want modders paid, the modders can do it but it won't ever get that big nor should it - the point of mods shouldn't be what Skyrim has made it - a necessity for making a game good
They are limiting, something you didn't mention as you probably wasn't aware ,is that new mods on the market CAN NOT DEPEND on others, example and most important one SKSE and such. Great vid btw.
With bethesda's recent track record FO76, paid mod, and how objectively bad starfield is, I don't ever care about ES6 at this point.
Of course they will look for a way to monetize mods; it's their product being monetized by third parties, and that's money that's not going into their bags.I doubt they will stop mod support, but they will probably do something like sell licenses to the modders so they can do their magic.
*starfield flops*
*Immediately "updates" skyrim, bricking mods, while trying to sell more mods*