Since the game is in "development" now, it's right time to ask the question about mods

[BaalNergal]

The majority of copies of Skyrim was sold on platforms (PS3 and especially X360) where modding is not supported at all. Actually, I recall Todd Howard saying only about 7% of all Skyrim players uses mods. The game also has the highest Metacritic review score on the X360, 96%, again this is a platform without mods, so that has to be the vanilla game. Therefore, I am not convinced it is fair to attribute its success to the modding community. If anything, my personal opinion is that from the developers' point of view, mods could overall do more harm than good, for multiple reasons. Which is why I think it was in the end the smart decision by CDPR not to release the REDkit for The Witcher 3.

You're a little behind the times on that. The developers have changed their mind about Skyrim and mods, which has had a big impact on its Special Edition releases. The Creation Club, which is part of Fallout 4 and Skyrim Special Edition, is basically paid mods. It's not only still going strong, but growing in mods available through it. And these are not mods made by Bethesda, but by showcased modders.

So, the developer's point of view has since changed.

 

[Suhiira]

So, the developer's point of view has since changed.

Mostly because they can rake in a profit off someone elses work?
As I recall the modder gets only a small fraction of the sales price, Bethesda gets the lions share.

 

[sv3672]

Supporting mods or even monetizing them is not quite the same as a game being mainly modder driven or existing purely as a platform for modders. It is possible for something to be a niche feature (used by a minority of players) and still be profitable. My point was that Skyrim was plenty successful and highly acclaimed on platforms like the Xbox 360 without any involvement of the modding community whatsoever. And I still think CDPR's approach of not diverting resources to mod support is better, The Witcher 3 not only outsells both Fallout 4 and Skyrim SE on PC (where modding is most relevant), it also avoids all the controversies and bad PR related to modding that the BGS titles are subject to. It is just consistent with what to me seems to be their philosophy, not wanting to ruin their reputation for the sake of relatively minor extra revenue, be it from DRM, horse armor, paid mods, or whatever else.

Edit:

Mods are not bad PR. A few minor incidents do not influence the majority's viewpoints.

Mods are 100% fine and not at all harmful to a game. This is all pure assumption and speculation.

It is not assumption at all that BGS titles are review bombed because of various modding related controversies. And I do think an overly active modding community contributes to the image of the developers being lazy and greedy. How often do you see it posted for example that they "rely on the modding community to fix bugs", when in fact the majority of people play vanilla and that is what critic reviews are based on, too, so this alleged business strategy would be rather stupid? But it essentially became a meme. It is not speculation either that CDPR received no significant criticism for not releasing their tools, their game would not have 97% user score on Steam otherwise. It is not an assumption that it also sells extremely well on PC and has very good longevity in particular, which is an alleged positive effect of heavy modding - yet it is not supported by the game. So, I do not see the harm in not having mods. Of course, these might be just random examples, although I do have a lot more where mods are bad PR, but it may already be too much off-topic. Perhaps someone could show cases where a large modding community is evidently a good thing from an AAA single player game developer's (not from the users', obviously having something that is optional is better than not having it) point of view?

Paid mods are definitely a PR disaster, but major investment in free mods is just a waste of resources, and in my opinion, from my anecdotal evidence, in the long run they still make the developers look worse than just not bothering to release the tools. I do not think 100% free mods are viable on consoles from a business point of view, since maintaining the infrastructure to distribute them actually costs the developers money, Sony or Microsoft would not just let people download random stuff from Nexus to their closed systems where all content needs to be certified. PC exclusive modding immediately makes the feature relevant only to a minority of players, since typically 70+% sales of an AAA title are on consoles, but even on PC the casual gamer does not care about mods, which look more important on internet forums (where hardcore fans are a disproportionately large percentage of the posters) than they really are. Admittedly, I rarely use mods myself, I used to make some long ago, but am not interested nor have the time now. I do not think it is without reason that most large developers do not officially support them, CDPR did in the past but now only to a reduced extent (no REDkit) in the more console focused The Witcher 3. and if/when the Creation Club fails badly enough, the next TES or whatever game that finally moves away from the ancient Creation engine might drop them, too. While I am not specifically against modding, I would actually prefer that if it allowed the vanilla game to be any better.

 

[Snowflakez]

Supporting mods or even monetizing them is not quite the same as a game being mainly modder driven or existing purely as a platform for modders. It is possible for something to be a niche feature (used by a minority of players) and still be profitable. My point was that Skyrim was plenty successful and highly acclaimed on platforms like the Xbox 360 without any involvement of the modding community whatsoever. And I still think CDPR's approach of not diverting resources to mod support is better, The Witcher 3 not only outsells both Fallout 4 and Skyrim SE on PC (where modding is most relevant), it also avoids all the controversies and bad PR related to modding that the BGS titles are subject to. It is just consistent with what to me seems to be their philosophy, not wanting to ruin their reputation for the sake of relatively minor extra revenue, be it from DRM, horse armor, paid mods, or whatever else.

Mods are not bad PR. A few minor incidents do not influence the majority's viewpoints.

Mods are 100% fine and not at all harmful to a game. This is all pure assumption and speculation.

 

[wisdom000]

Mods are not bad PR. A few minor incidents do not influence the majority's viewpoints.

Mods are 100% fine and not at all harmful to a game. This is all pure assumption and speculation.

That's only really true if there is no online competitive mode. While modding for single player games extends the games lves for anyone with access, for multiplayer games modders are a nightmare. A plague.

 

[Sardukhar]

Mods are 100% fine and not at all harmful to a game. This is all pure assumption and speculation.

Ahhh...appropriately, your second sentence nicely describes your first.

The Hot Coffee mod for GTA was an issue - including lawsuits. Of course CDPR is fine with sex, but still. Rockstar would have liked to avoid that one. Cancelling a popular modding tool for GTA by Take Two angered a lot of people - you can bet CDPR would like to avoid that as well.

Mods often complicate game support - you have to check to see if the game has been modded and then hope the user has turned them off successfully.

Whenever you update your game, mods must be updated - and you can bet devs get negative feedback about that necessity. A lot of it.

I'm a big fan of modding games and hope CPunk is modable, but it would be inaccurate to say they aren't harmful to games at all and are 100% fine. Developers consider carefully to support modding or not. CDPR didn't release their toolkit for W3 after great consideration.

 

[Suhiira]

Modding support, or lack thereof, is something that's built into a game from the start.
Some games go out of their way to be as difficult to mod as possible, others release toolkits, but no game is impossible to mod (at least to an extent). There's also very little a developer/publisher can do about mods (in spite of many trying) nor IMHO should they in a single-player game. When it comes to multi-player, competitive or not, we're not talking about an entirely different matter however. We all know how rampant cheating is in most competitive shooters. And it's not just a matter of wanting to create a "fair and balanced" experience for their players but of of cheating hurting sales and far more importantly long term monitization schemes. Who's going to want to buy or play a game where you have essentially zero chance vs the cheaters?

All that said.
I'd say it depends on the game itself. If it's strictly single-player don't worry about it, let them mod away, hell encourage it as it will add life and longevity to your game. But for multiplayer games, especially competitive ones, you need to be very VERY careful, and I'd go out of my way to code such a game in a very mod-unfriendly manner.

 

[Snowflakez]

Ahhh...appropriately, your second sentence nicely describes your first.

The Hot Coffee mod for GTA was an issue - including lawsuits. Of course CDPR is fine with sex, but still. Rockstar would have liked to avoid that one. Cancelling a popular modding tool for GTA by Take Two angered a lot of people - you can bet CDPR would like to avoid that as well.

Mods often complicate game support - you have to check to see if the game has been modded and then hope the user has turned them off successfully.

Whenever you update your game, mods must be updated - and you can bet devs get negative feedback about that necessity. A lot of it.

I'm a big fan of modding games and hope CPunk is modable, but it would be inaccurate to say they aren't harmful to games at all and are 100% fine. Developers consider carefully to support modding or not. CDPR didn't release their toolkit for W3 after great consideration.

We can nitpick all day, with all due respect. That doesn't change my point.

Mods are fine in the vast majority of cases (there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of mods out there for various games, if a handful are bad actors then they can be dealt with as issues arise) and they absolutely do help drive game sales (even if those numbers are smaller). Otherwise, nobody would bother supporting them. Bethesda leans heavily into them on PC for a reason.

If CDPR doesn't want to officially support them, that's their business, but none of us should draw a conclusion one way or the other without actual, hard evidence or a statement from CDPR to back it up (yes, that includes myself).

You say I speculate, and then you speculate yourself ("CDPR would like to avoid that as well").

We have absolutely no clue what CDPR thinks in regards to mods, except that they've supported them in the past in some capacity. Barring an official statement saying otherwise, my view is that they support mods and want them in their games based on their track record. If you have evidence to the contrary, please present it and I'll gladly change my mind.

You are mistaking the vocal minority for the silent majority - your point about mod updates does not make sense to me. If anyone gets "negative feedback" about mod updates, it's modders, not developers.

The hate devs do get -- and by the way, I've seen no proof that this happens on any even remotely significant scale -- is from (to put it lightly) uninformed individuals who don't know what they're talking about. This is not the majority, it's not even the vocal minority, it's just a minority.

Now I'm speculating, but if you're (general "you're") an ordinary, semi-intelligent person, surely you can understand its beyond the developers control when a game update breaks mods. Anyone who has been involved in the modding scene for more than an hour understands this, it's a fact of life.

EDIT: I just want to point out that, despite the probably apparent passion with which I wrote this, it's not intended in any way to be derogatory or rude. I just see a lot of false info spread about mods across the internet (not necessarily from you) and it rustles my jimmies.

That's only really true if there is no online competitive mode. While modding for single player games extends the games lves for anyone with access, for multiplayer games modders are a nightmare. A plague.

Mods in an online competitive game are not mods, they're hacks. Hacks are almost unequivocally denounced by ethical, upstanding modders. Plus, developing a hack for a multiplayer game is a HELL of a lot harder and more risky than developing a mod, the skillsets do not overlap as much as some think.

 

[Hoplite_22]

Ahhh...appropriately, your second sentence nicely describes your first.

The Hot Coffee mod for GTA was an issue - including lawsuits. Of course CDPR is fine with sex, but still. Rockstar would have liked to avoid that one.

Technically Hot Coffee wasn't a mod, it was cut content in the game files that some one re-enabled. So if they wanted to avoid it so badly don't do a thing in the first place.

 

[Sardukhar]

You say I speculate, and then you speculate yourself ("CDPR would like to avoid that as well").

We have absolutely no clue what CDPR thinks in regards to mods, except that they've supported them in the past in some capacity. Barring an official statement saying otherwise, my view is that they support mods and want them in their games based on their track record. If you have evidence to the contrary, please present it and I'll gladly change my mind..

I'm..not going to go there, actually. Leaving this thread alone now. Everyone stay on topic, though.

 

[Garrison72]

My guess is they'll continue to allow modding for the SP aspect of the game. Even Rock Star still allows that. But I'm not getting my hopes up for modding tools, even though I'd argue they'd gain from it in the long run. As others have said, their engine likely was never built for that from the start. We were lucky to get Red Kit but strangely it was largely ignored.

 

[Snowflakez]

I'm..not going to go there, actually. Leaving this thread alone now. Everyone stay on topic, though.

...Okay, I guess?

 

[walkingdarkly]

Mods in an online competitive game are not mods, they're hacks.

The Unreal Tournament and Quake series(Specifically Quake 3 Arena) say hi.
Both were online comp games and both had millions of mods each, some that turned the game into a new game. Both games are still played today. One of my favorite mods was a full conversion mod for Quake 3 Arena that turned it into a Gundam game..if you know that name.

Plus, developing a hack for a multiplayer game is a HELL of a lot harder and more risky than developing a mod

Not really, it would depend on the game itself and the kind of security the devs have for their game. But hacks are also more numerous than mods nowadays, sadly, so they aren't that harder to program.

Mods are fine in the vast majority of cases (there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of mods out there for various games, if a handful are bad actors then they can be dealt with as issues arise) and they absolutely do help drive game sales (even if those numbers are smaller). Otherwise, nobody would bother supporting them. Bethesda leans heavily into them on PC for a reason

From my long history with PC games and the mods for them, try millions of mods across just as many games.

You are mistaking the vocal minority for the silent majority - your point about mod updates does not make sense to me. If anyone gets "negative feedback" about mod updates, it's modders, not developers.
The hate devs do get -- and by the way, I've seen no proof that this happens on any even remotely significant scale -- is from (to put it lightly) uninformed individuals who don't know what they're talking about. This is not the majority, it's not even the vocal minority, it's just a minority.

You underestimate the power of stupid people, their numbers and how loud they can really get. I've seen things you wouldn't believe as the Vocal Minority marched through countless forums getting thier demands met because the Silent Majority was to busy gaming.

 

[dimonicus92]

I expect at least Witcher 3 type of mod approach

 

[sv3672]

I would expect it to stay about the same as in The Witcher 3, some basic level of support that gives the game the benefits of casual modding (retextures, tweaks, etc.), while at the same time does not take away too much resources from developing and patching the game, and does not let the modding community grow large or toxic like it is for Bethesda's titles, nor lead to damaging CDPR's or CP2077's reputation. This is what I think the optimal "middle ground" solution is for the company, it is better than Rockstar's or Bethesda's approach. It worked well with TW3, there is no particular reason to change it.

 

[BaalNergal]

You underestimate the power of stupid people, their numbers and how loud they can really get. I've seen things you wouldn't believe as the Vocal Minority marched through countless forums getting thier demands met because the Silent Majority was to busy gaming.

I've seen gaming franchises ruined because of that vocal minority.

 

[Danyel_Longbow]

I would love to see cyberpunk with skyrim level of modding ....with skse type mods being avalaible..imagine......

 

[SigilFey]

I would love to see cyberpunk with skyrim level of modding ....with skse type mods being avalaible..imagine......

We have an active discussion on modding here, in case you'd like to post there:
https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...ike-cp-2077-to-have-modding-support.10996483/

Closing this one.