Mods in Cyberpunk 2077?

[Sardukhar]

It's not Bethesda I'm concerned with about this; I'm clearing this up for the end users reading and/or parroting this tired "mod authors don't own their mods" bullcrap. Licensing is not the same as ownership and it is important for people to understand that.

It's not that important, actually.

1. CDPR games aren't heavily into modding. It's not a big feature.

2. Being friendly is more important than being accurate around here. Yep.

3. Arguing about Bethesda mod and legalities is very much not the topic. A post or two is of course topical, but let's not go a-wandering off into an area that actual lawyers can debate about, if they like.

 

[cara2100]

I support modding off line, do whatever you want in your game

 

[SystemShock7]

How so? I do not recall any people thanking them for supporting mods, or claiming that the company is "better" than others for this particular reason. If anything, the fear of mods being eventually taken away does a lot more damage than not having significant mod support in the first place.



When you have a modding community that outweighs the developers by far in terms of manpower, that eventually becomes damaging in many ways. Just a handful of examples:
- Terrible reputation for being this lazy developer that deliberately leaves work to modders. It does not matter that it makes no sense to assume a sane company would actually do that (most people play without mods, and reviews are based on the vanilla version), the stigma is there, it turned into a meme.
- It is hard to take the story or lore seriously in games that are primarily seen as modding sandboxes, and where the overgrown community wants to dictate the creative vision.
- Games are data mined and picked apart for cut content and any imperfections. Much easier when the tools for doing so are readily available. Anything that is found is a source of bad PR.
- Accusations of plagiarism, it is kind of difficult to avoid accidental similarities to some mod the developers probably never heard about, when there are tens of thousands of mods.
- The reception of new games suffers because of being compared to extremely modded versions of the previous iteration.
- Regular modding related controversies and review bombing. Negative reviews because of technical issues related to mods (e.g. patches breaking some script extender).

Edit: small scale modding support like in The Witcher 3 is generally beneficial, though, so I guess at least something similar could also be in Cyberpunk 2077 if it is feasible.

That is a lot of assertions you are making there, which frankly... let's just say they aren't accurate.

 

[Dreadn0ught_Prime]

Honestly I just want people to be able to post their missions they made in a toolkit so I can play them or upload my own. I remember playing missions in City of Heroes and some of the missions were silly and some were just epic and beyond anything the devs would have made because the modders had the time to make it.

 

[sv3672]

Bethesda's reputation doesn't suffer because of mods. It suffers because they release buggy games with (IMO) lame stories. Yet, undoubtedly, every time Bethesda releases an ES (except for ESO) or FO game (except for the last one) it is modders who fix a lot of those bugs.

Thank you for helping to prove my point, even if unintentionally. This is exactly the kind of reputation damage I was talking about. By the way, Skyrim on the Xbox 360 and PS3 alone sold more than 15 million copies, and has a Metacritic score of 96 on the X360, in addition to winning numerous awards. Maybe worth noting that there is no mod support on those platforms at all.

No TPP? Bad PR, too few RPG mechanics? Bad PR.

Those kinds of decisions are part of the creative vision, they are usually necessary compromises due to not being able to make a game that is good at everything with finite resources. Bad PR due to modding related controversies on the other hand is unnecessary and easily avoidable by never making mods a focus in the first place, it even leaves more resources for other aspects of the game.

Modding, and support for it will benefit a game much more than the lack of it. We are at the end of the day talking about the game and not CDPR business direction. And even so, a solid Modding community with the right tools WILL maintain enough interest in a game to be considered a good business decision.

It is CDPR making the decision about mod support, however, and we need to consider their point of view. It is ultimately about what is best for them as a business, to maximize both sales and reputation (which affects long term sales). Also, The Witcher 3 maintains interest fine with its current (light) approach to modding, better in fact than Fallout 4, despite being older. So, what reason is there for the company to follow Bethesda's approach of doubling down on heavy mod focus? There is no need for the winners (CDPR) to copy from the losers.

 

[Sild]

Those kinds of decisions are part of the creative vision

Dosen't matter, Bad PR. See what i did there?

reputation (which affects long term sales)

The relation between reputation (at least as you seem to view it) and sales is tangent at best. By that criteria EA and Bethesda would have been out of business many times over.
Reputation is a very bad basis for a decision in an industry. And mods don't lead to bad reputation, not by themselves.

 

[sinister.sinner]

Dosen't matter, Bad PR. See what i did there?

Yeah I think bad PR isn't a concern for CDPR. Everytime they post anything about Cyberpunk 2077 the internet goes nuts.

 

[Sild]

Thank you for helping to prove my point, even if unintentionally. This is exactly the kind of reputation damage I was talking about.

There's no point there. Bethesda does buggy games. Always has, before Skyrim. What is your point?

So, what reason is there for the company to follow Bethesda's approach of doubling down on heavy mod focus? There is no need for the winners (CDPR) to copy from the losers.

Because, whether or not Bethesda are "losers", no one can say they became like that because of the modding community. Honestly i'm not even that big of a mod fan myself, but that line of arguments is simply appaling and purposely ignores EVERYTHING Bethesda does wrong and somehow attributes it all to .. modding..

So, what reason is there for the company to follow Bethesda's approach of doubling down on heavy mod focus?

They don't, all they really need to do is release a stripped down devkit without certain 3rd party software they deem necessary for legal reasons. That's it.

 

[sv3672]

The relation between reputation (at least as you seem to view it) and sales is tangent at best. By that criteria EA and Bethesda would have been out of business many times over.

Actually, they are not doing that well lately, EA's stock market value dropped, especially after the massive SWBF2 controversy, Battlefield V performed below expectations, Anthem seems to have flopped, Fallout 76 flopped, Rage 2 looks likely to sell poorly as well from what I have seen. And I am fairly confident at this point that Cyberpunk 2077 will outsell Starfield by a huge margin.

There's no point there. Bethesda does buggy games. Always has, before Skyrim. What is your point?

That the mods make the vanilla product look subjectively worse. This is just basic psychology. Mods essentially compete with official content. If I did not already do enough to explain what I meant, I doubt more will make a difference. I just hope CDPR will not make the same mistake, and keeps modding on a small scale.

Honestly i'm not even that big of a mod fan myself, but that line of arguments is simply appaling and purposely ignores EVERYTHING Bethesda does wrong and somehow attributes it all to .. modding..

Where did I claim that I attribute everything wrong to modding? This is a straw man. I merely stated that in my opinion heavy mod focus is a net negative in the long run. Which however is already enough reason to avoid it.

They don't, all they really need to do is release a stripped down devkit without certain 3rd party software they deem necessary for legal reasons. That's it.

I never said there is anything wrong with a basic ModKit like the one released for The Witcher 3.

It feels like this conversation is getting rather unfriendly, so I leave it at that.

 

[Sild]

That the mods make the vanilla product look subjectively worse. This is just basic psychology. Mods essentially compete with official content. If I did not already do enough to explain what I meant, I doubt more will make a difference. I just hope CDPR will not make the same mistake, and keeps modding on a small scale.

Bugs are objectively bad. No pshychology needed. If mods can fix them once the development-support cycle ends (thus no more bug fixing), it's a big plus, for the game, for the players. Mods can compete with official content. And the modders sometimes get hired at the company or get help in releasing an official version of their mod in the form of a game (Mount and Blade Viking Conquest, Enderall etc.) - Very good PR (in the long run)

Actually, they are not doing that well lately, EA's stock market value dropped, especially after the massive SWBF2 controversy, Battlefield V performed below expectations, Anthem seems to have flopped, Fallout 76 flopped, Rage 2 looks likely to sell poorly as well from what I have seen. And I am fairly confident at this point that Cyberpunk 2077 will outsell Starfield by a huge margin.

Yes, because of questionable business practices, not reputation, cause they're like what? 5 years worst company in America? quite an acchievement for one of the richest in the industry

 

[sv3672]

Bugs are objectively bad. No pshychology needed. If mods can fix them once the development-support cycle ends (thus no more bug fixing), it's a big plus, for the game, for the players.

Every game has bugs, including bugs that are never fixed, even The Witcher 3 has plenty once you start looking for them. But mods fixing bugs brings more attention to the bugs, even the minor ones. Thousands of the "fixes" in the unofficial Skyrim patch are inconsequential, like graphical glitches that 99% of the players will never notice, typos in readables, and the like, but a community made patch bragging about "thousands of bugs fixed!" does massive damage to the reputation of a game and its developers. I mean, if vanilla Skyrim was really so terrible, how come it was received so well initially when the mods did not exist?

Also, community fixes long after release do nothing to improve the critical reception of a game, nor do they help much with sales (given that the bulk of the sales already happens before the mods become available). Obviously it is a plus to the toxic vocal minority of players that demands mods, but I still do not see why it would be a good thing from the POV of the company.

[Sard Edit: Nope]

 

[SystemShock7]

Thank you for helping to prove my point, even if unintentionally. This is exactly the kind of reputation damage I was talking about. By the way, Skyrim on the Xbox 360 and PS3 alone sold more than 15 million copies, and has a Metacritic score of 96 on the X360, in addition to winning numerous awards. Maybe worth noting that there is no mod support on those platforms at all.

I didn't prove your point.
Bethesda has a reputation for releasing buggy games. Some of the bugs can be corrected via mods, but many can't. Skyrim on consoles may have a metacritic score of whatever, but Skyrim on consoles also came with bugs and (IMO) a lame story. You are trying to make a correlation that isn't there.

As for metacritic itself, I don't put too much stock on what is says. Although, if we are going to use metacritic as any sort of measuring stick (which we shouldn't), the 96 score is from 89 "critics"; the user score is 8.5. The PC version is 94/8.2. And the difference is not related to modding, but usually PC players are more demanding than console players, because all of the options that are possible on the PC platform consoles can't deliver. The best example is inventory management. I guess now gamers are more used to it than in the past, but back then PC gamers didn't appreciate that inventory management became a scrolling mess, clearly developed for consoles, and adapted to PC. You don't have to go that far to see and example of it. Just go to The Witcher 2 forum. I am sure there's a post somewhere on this forum about it too, but definitely you'll not see the passionate discussions about it like you saw them back then.

Those kinds of decisions are part of the creative vision, they are usually necessary compromises due to not being able to make a game that is good at everything with finite resources. Bad PR due to modding related controversies on the other hand is unnecessary and easily avoidable by never making mods a focus in the first place, it even leaves more resources for other aspects of the game.

What modding-related controversies are you talking about?
Mods or no mods, if gamers think there is something that should be in a game but isn't, or that is in the game but shouldn't be there, they'll be up in arms about it. And probably demand modding tools so they could "fix" it, which BTW I heard a lot of when Skyrim first came out from console players.

It is CDPR making the decision about mod support, however, and we need to consider their point of view. It is ultimately about what is best for them as a business, to maximize both sales and reputation (which affects long term sales). Also, The Witcher 3 maintains interest fine with its current (light) approach to modding, better in fact than Fallout 4, despite being older. So, what reason is there for the company to follow Bethesda's approach of doubling down on heavy mod focus? There is no need for the winners (CDPR) to copy from the losers.

Are you calling Bethesda losers? Just with the ES and FO IP's, they have a license to print money.

It may be that Witcher 3 maintains a higher level of interest than Fallout 4, and I don't know that is a fact as you state, but I posit the reason for it is that, mods or no mods, Witcher 3 is a much better game than Fallout 4. And as far TW3 being older than FO4, you are splitting hairs there. They both came out in 2015 a few months apart.

 

[Rawls]

Witcher 3 is a much better game than Fallout 4.

I agree with this, but I also think that by focusing resources on story, gameplay, level design, quest design and setting first, the end result is a better game.

In order to make a game heavily moddable like Betheda titles, that has to be a focus for the Engine from the ground up. Those engine limitations then can lead to a lesser final product. There are some parts of a handcrafted game with unique assets and moments that make modding harder generally speaking if I understand the process correctly.

Though I will freely admit, I am not a modder, and do not have a lot of first hand knowledge on the subject. So my impressions could very easily be wrong.

 

[Sild]

I agree with this, but I also think that by focusing resources on story, gameplay, level design, quest design and setting first, the end result is a better game.

In order to make a game heavily moddable like Betheda titles, that has to be a focus for the Engine from the ground up. Those engine limitations then can lead to a lesser final product. There are some parts of a handcrafted game with unique assets and moments that make modding harder generally speaking if I understand the process correctly.

Though I will freely admit, I am not a modder, and do not have a lot of first hand knowledge on the subject. So my impressions could very easily be wrong.

Could be true, not sure if when Bethesda made the Creation engine, mods were the focus there, since Oblivion and Morrowind which use the Gamebryo engine saw comparable modding efforts and successes. Modding in Beth games really only took off to unprecedented levels with Skyrim.

And you could argue it did because of the sand-boxy nature of the game combined with it’s wide commercial success AND the nature of the engine not really as a mod support type but one that focused on sand-box type gameplay, like how most well known mods come from those types of games (Mount and Blade, ArmA, X3) which were not mod focused engines? just easily moddable. It’s a distinction that should be pointed out. though there are notable exceptions like Warcraft 3, Half Life… So it seems based on this that mod creators will try and mod a game not if the engine is made specifically for that, but more on their enjoyment of it? The possibilies that are offered to them?

So could a story-driven, highly focusd game like Cyberpunk 2077 become a good platform for mods? Yes, even if the engine is overly complex and rigid to modding, by releasing tools like devkits. The cost of stripping down a devkit and releasing it is beyond my knowledge, but.. could it be that high to not warrant consideration? Is “bad rep” a given when supporting modders? Ofc it’s not. Supporting modders means you’re supporting creativity. And that is usually a very good thing, that has resulted in many amazing efforts, games, and even new genre’s. How is any of that synonymous to bad rep ? There are reasons to not implement mod support. Bad rep is just a rather limited take on what is otherwise a source of new ideas, talent and revenue in the industry.

[Sard Edit: Nope]

 

[Sardukhar]

Let us remain friendly, all.

If you cannot post in the spirit of polite, friendly conversation, do not post.

Thanks.

 

[SigilFey]

The arguments above are all making some good points, but I argue that they're blurring together wholly unrelated considerations.

1.) Modding will work for any game if that's what the game is designed for. Modding will fall flat for any game if that's not what the game is designed for. It's really that simple. This is exclusively a design and development decision. [This is the only consideration that concerns modding.]

B.) A totally separate consideration is company PR. Even if I have an amazing game, poor PR and customer relations can destroy my game. Reputation is huge in determining popularity -- but popularity and acceptance have absolutely nothing to do with how good a game is in-and-of itself. It simply means that a garbage game might be played by a lot of people, while a brilliant gem of a title might go completely unrecognized. [Notice how modding was never once mentioned, because it has nothing to do with this.]

and

#.) The success of a game is not determined by "how much money it makes". Its financial success is determined by profits and ongoing revenue. That does not mean that a tremendously successful game (in terms of innovation, gameplay, and player response) cannot be given away absolutely free and never generate a single dollar. They are two, totally separate concerns. [Neither one of those concerns has even the slightest thing to do with modding, directly.]

Now, comes the endless tug of war between different people involved in the system, each with their own agendas:

• In certain cases, investors and producers will overstep, and a beautiful game will be severely damaged or utterly destroyed when the design and development is derailed by individuals that do not care about the experience as much as they do about their profits.
• It's perfectly possible for overzealous designers and developers to overreach and create a title so amazing and involved, that they'll never be able to afford the development and it will never be delivered.
• People on either end may fail to realize the vision of their game, and it will harm a project because the final product doesn't gel and...just...isn't a very good game.

So, how is the decision about modding made in the best way possible? The designers and developers -- the people with the vision -- the ones working day-in and day-out to realize that vision -- use their expertise to decide whether or not their game will benefit or be marred by modding. Then, they do what they know to be best.

Can't please everyone. That's not even a consideration. That's wavering.

 

[SystemShock7]

I agree with this, but I also think that by focusing resources on story, gameplay, level design, quest design and setting first, the end result is a better game.

In order to make a game heavily moddable like Betheda titles, that has to be a focus for the Engine from the ground up. Those engine limitations then can lead to a lesser final product. There are some parts of a handcrafted game with unique assets and moments that make modding harder generally speaking if I understand the process correctly.

Though I will freely admit, I am not a modder, and do not have a lot of first hand knowledge on the subject. So my impressions could very easily be wrong.

And wrong they are

Games are not coded moddable or unmoddable. The engine doesn't care if it was the developer or the modder who put the extra armor in the game, as long as the armor - in layman's terms - speaks the language the engine understands. What really determines the moddability of a game is the tools available to manipulate game files. Now, there are some developers who use certain proprietary file types for certain things. My experience has been with proprietary import/export filters for meshes. But most of the time, opensource comes up with a solution for that, and I can't say if this happens because of game efficiency or it is an anti-mod measure. I tend to think it is the former.

And even when you have the dev tools to mod, some games are more complicated to mod than others, but really that is not because this dev has better mod support than that dev. For example, Dragon Age Origins is more complicated to mod than the Oblivion or Skyrim, but that is because the Dragon Age engine is more advanced, and uses a database to manage game files, whereas the Oblivion/Skyrim engine just loads files into memory (caveat, I don't know if they have updated it. I haven't modded anything Bethesda in a few years), and so, the DA:O dev kit is more complex than the Oblivion/Skyrim dev kit.

 

[Rawls]

Games are not coded moddable or unmoddable.

Oh I agree with this. It's just to what extent can it be done that is the issue.

What really determines the moddability of a game is the tools available to manipulate game files

I learned something!

For example, Dragon Age Origins is more complicated to mod than the Oblivion or Skyrim, but that is because the Dragon Age engine is more advanced, and uses a database to manage game files, whereas the Oblivion/Skyrim engine just loads files into memory (caveat, I don't know if they have updated it. I haven't modded anything Bethesda in a few years), and so, the DA:O dev kit is more complex than the Oblivion/Skyrim dev kit.

I really want to ask like 30 questions about this, but I have the feeling you would feel like a physicist trying to explain general relativity to a hamster. So I'll just say, "mmmmm ... interesting."

 

[SystemShock7]

The arguments above are all making some good points, but I argue that they're blurring together wholly unrelated considerations.

1.) Modding will work for any game if that's what the game is designed for. Modding will fall flat for any game if that's not what the game is designed for. It's really that simple. This is exclusively a design and development decision. [This is the only consideration that concerns modding.]

That's incorrect. Modding will work on any game with the proper tools, whether the tools come from the developer or open source.

Technically speaking, every game is designed for modding. Otherwise you wouldn't get DLCs through a small download. Because that is what DLC is, a mod to a game. If a dev couldn't mod the game, they'd have to recompile the entire game just to add an asset, like a weapon or a piece of armor, then you'd have to re-download the entire game.

 

[Sild]

1.) Modding will work for any game if that's what the game is designed for. Modding will fall flat for any game if that's not what the game is designed for. It's really that simple. This is exclusively a design and development decision. [This is the only consideration that concerns modding.]

Not sure if this is accurate. One would have a hard time arguing that engines for games like Half Life or Warcraft or X3 or Mount and Blade were build for with even minimal considerations for modding, and yet they spawned some incredible modds.