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Starfield group fixing Bethesda's bugs say their job is tough as mods feel an afterthought
(www.eurogamer.net)
this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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It's not a feeling, it is an afterthought
Which is weird when you think about how dependent Bethesda is on the Modding Community.
I see so many people excusing Bethesda's poor design choices and lack of content by saying mods will fix them.
That may be true, but the publisher making hundreds of millions shouldn't be offloading their work onto the free labor of the community.
This will not change unless the free labor ceases.
I see that as a net positive, because the alternative is likely them killing mod support altogether.
The alternative is people not buying games that are perceived to be so buggy as to require fixing. Then they have to put out a higher quality product.
I wouldn't count on millions of people suddenly all deciding to boycott now, if all the egregious practices of this industry weren't enough to get them to do it already.
I'm not. Choosing not to buy a bad product has incremental effects on what gets made in the market from 1 person choosing not to buy it all the way out to no one buying it.
Not really. Often companies degrade their products as a calculated choice, considering that they will save and increase their profits more than they will lose. If only a few people protest, which seems to be the case here, then they have no reason to change course.
But chosing to buy from companies that do better can at least carve out a niche.
That's exactly my point. At some point, Divinity: Original Sin was a niche. Now Baldur's Gate 3 is poised to be called Game of the Year and outsold Larian's wildest expectations. Many of those sales came from people who bought BG3 and not Starfield. That sends a message for what customers actually want. There wasn't some mass campaign to boycott Battlefield 2042; their customers just told them, by way of not buying it like they used to, that the product EA put out was not worth the price they were asking.
It always impresses me how seemingly every corporation adopts this mindset of not needing the "little guy" to function. Like their company isn't made up of "little guys" that produce their given product.
It was pretty much one of the biggest lessons of the whole covid affair. The groundfloor personel is the most essentiel part of everything. Without, the whole system collapses.
Honestly Bethesda games are just a modding sandbox for me. I've played hundreds of hours of Skyrim and I'm not sure I've ever finished the main quest. I know I've never taken a side in the civil war. The built in story and quests are important but my fun comes from downloading mods and just roaming like a wandering monk doing whatever quests I run into. Sometimes OP, other times with immersive mods or alternative perks or spells.
I'm probably not a typical gamer as I've had hundreds on hours into BG3 and only made it to act 3 once so far and have yet to finish any of my runs before I decide to have a relationship with someone different or try a durge run, or evil, or realized I forgot to resolve some quest that is now closed. I'm not sure how long a full run is maybe 100 hours? But it's a lot to invest before I get bored and want to try something new.
I also have a need to collect all the gimmicky items even when I know I have or will get much better stuff for the slot. I play Bethesda games the same way. Gotta run over and collect the book of arcane bow if I'm going to be an archer...
Anyway, mods are a core part of the deal for me. They should prioritize them more.
putting in an official way for users to create and load mods takes resources that the small indie company Bethesda just can't afford to use; the modders can do the work for that, too