Fallout VII - Vault-Tec calling

[Togath]

Okay, so, I was actually in favor of the creation club thingy at first... but unless I'm missing something, it tries to auto download data for the stuff, even if you haven't bought it, and messes with saved games and such?
Like, I don't own fallout 4... but if it's in a state where Bethesda keeps breaking people's saves, I'm way less likely to try it.

[Triaxx]

Seems to have been only the initial 'offering' that did it. Guess they figured we'd all leap to get stuff and they'd save us the time.

Worked as well as you'd expect.

[Mando Knight]

Okay, so, I was actually in favor of the creation club thingy at first... but unless I'm missing something, it tries to auto download data for the stuff, even if you haven't bought it, and messes with saved games and such?
Like, I don't own fallout 4... but if it's in a state where Bethesda keeps breaking people's saves, I'm way less likely to try it.

It doesn't mess with saves. Not directly, anyway. What it did (besides adding all of the archives for all of the Creation Club items) was push a new patch of fallout4.exe, which means that the Fallout 4 Script Extender had to be recompiled for the new version as well, and any mods (and therefore saves) reliant on that are broken until the user downloads the new version of F4SE (which fortunately was published the day after the patch to the main game).

If this is how Bethesda is pushing Creation Club content from here on out, a lot of mods on Fallout 4 are going to die, and SKSE64 will be dead(er) before it even goes live.

[Mudpitmissfit]

Okay, so, I was actually in favor of the creation club thingy at first... but unless I'm missing something, it tries to auto download data for the stuff, even if you haven't bought it, and messes with saved games and such?
Like, I don't own fallout 4... but if it's in a state where Bethesda keeps breaking people's saves, I'm way less likely to try it.

So after a long hard day at work I boot up F04 , to find my script extender no longer works.

Needless to say I was less than impressed.

While the dev team were great in getting an update out and running in record time , I am currently running steam in offline mode as a result.

Breaking free mods in order to implement paid mods is just low in my humble opinion. Oh sorry did I say paid mods , I meant scum sucking DLC micro transactions in a single player game which has had it development costs paid for at launch price, which you pay for.

I may be less than enthusiastic about the prospect.

[Rynjin]

I mean, literally ANY update would break Fallout 4 Script Extender. The [Insert Game] Script Extenders only work with the most recent update. That's not Bethesda breaking something, that's just the nature of the tool.

They're still greedy scum sucking pieces of **** for trying to push this paid mods horse**** again, so this update never should have happened AT ALL, but it's always best to blame them for stuff that is their fault rather than not.

The fault in this case lies almost as much with Valve as Bethesda, since Steam doesn't have an option (most of the time) to roll back to previous updates for games, which it really should.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Every thing released for content creators club that I've seen either has a better version as a non-paid mod or is utter crap that should never have had a price tag put on it in the first place.

[Balmas]

Okay, so, I was actually in favor of the creation club thingy at first... but unless I'm missing something, it tries to auto download data for the stuff, even if you haven't bought it, and messes with saved games and such?
Like, I don't own fallout 4... but if it's in a state where Bethesda keeps breaking people's saves, I'm way less likely to try it.

So... this is gonna be a bit of a rant, a bit of essay, and a bit of consolidation on my feelings towards the Creation Club. I'm trying to avoid sensationalist cries of "Bethesda is just trying to milk us for more cash," as that doesn't really add anything to the discussion. I will admit, however, to being more than a little peeved at this fiasco.

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PAID MODS
Let's start with the basics and call this what it is. These are mods, which you pay for. They're paid mods. When asked what makes them different from paid mods, Pete Hines responded that CC mods are "Mini DLCs,"vetted by Bethesda's quality assurance team. (Personally, I'd say that the value of any vetting done by a company synonymous with glitchy games is dubious at best, but that's neither here nor there.) The fact remains that they're paid mods.

Not only that, but they're mods which are deliberately limited in scope. Leaked reports indicate that the emphasis in "Mini DLC" should be in Mini, instead of DLC. Anything larger than 5000 records is too large for the new .lite files. (For comparison, horse poarmor is around 300, and Automatron clocks in at 50,000.) You'd be lucky to fit an armor pack or two within those limitations. Furthermore, we have reports that people who want to do megamods like Falskaar, Moonpath to Elsweyr, the Someguy Series, Beyond Skyrim, are being turned away. They need not apply.

From a certain point of view, I can understand the reasoning behind this. Normally, mod authors retain ownership of their mods because if something goes wrong and someone winds up with a completely borked system, it's their responsibility and not Bethesda's. The last thing Zenimax wants is to have these super huge mods that require extensive QA and vetting to make sure that nobody's saves get completely messed up.

However, the fact remains that Bethesda is putting out small mods, mostly cosmetic, for very little. I think there's a word for stuff like that, and it's microtransactions.

Let me be perfectly clear. I have no problem with microtransactions, under the right circumstances. Free-to-play games can rely on microtransactions to pay for development and maintenance costs, like TF2. In other online multiplayer games, microtransactions allow players to skip the grind and buy their cosmetics directly. Indeed, TF2 and Overwatc have collected far more in microtransactions from me than from their purchase price.

The place for microtransactions is not in a single-player game that charges a full $60 price tag just to get in. And then another sixty for the season pass. This is especially true when there's content out there already which, for free, far surpasses the available microtransaction content.

VALUE
Gopher did an entire video covering this, but in essence, the Creation Club gives you almost nothing for what you pay for. Five bucks for an armor set? Fifty cents for a pipboy reskin? Four bucks for a cut-content shotgun that just had to be reenabled? None of these things are worth what's being asked. If you were to buy enough credits to buy everything, you'd spend about thirty dollars. Look at those things, and ask, is all this worth thirty dollars? That's half a game. What about when the CC has twice the content it does now, and you'd need to spend sixty dollars on it? Zoom out, and take in the entire Commonwealth, all the quests, NPCs, armor items, the hundreds of hours of content. Now compare it to four armor sets, four weapons, a few reskins, and a backpack or two. Can you really pretend that those things are in any way of equal value?
Zenimas asks too much for too little.

I don't mind supporting modders; if Someguy decided tomorrow to bundle up all his mods--New Vegas Bounties, Russell, the Inheritance, Burt, etc--and charge $20-30 dollars for it, I'd have no problem. Those mods represent hundreds of hours of content, and thousands of hours of time spent on making it all work. Same story for Project Nevada, Falskaar, FWE, all those massive mods. However, Zenimax is just taking the piss with their prices. Mods like Millenia's or Skibadaa's weapon packs would cost more than the base game itself.

However, more than the price, the issue I have with the Creation Club is the frankly exploitative treatment of the modders themselves.

SHADY BUSINESS
Zenimax, if rumors from modders are true, has disgusting plans for the people who join the Creation Club. They'll be independent contractors, paid a flat sum for the work they do. Reports say that the pay will be between $!00 and $!000 for mods, and that afterwards Bethesda receives 100% of the profits for a modders' work. No royalties, no profit shares, nothing.

To put that in perspective, let's say that you negotiate for a thousand dollars for an armor set. Let's also suppose that of the twelve million copies of the game sold at launch, 1% are playing today. Of that 1% of players still playing, let's say 1% actually buys the mod you made for $5. So, worse case scenario, we're talking a $5000 profit for Zenimax.

It might be nothing unusual for the industry, but that's a bit far from the promise of working with the community from the trailer. And any modder hoping to live off their mods, or that Bethesda might hire them on a more permanent basis, can have another think coming for them.

TARGET AUDIENCE (with thrilling transition that isn't just my mind farting out at two AM)
I can almost guarantee that this isn't aimed at PC or Xbox users. Both groups have free mods already. No, this is essentially mods for PS4 users. This adds new content, of a sorts, for the group that's most used to sony reaching their dirty moneygrubbing finger into their wallets already. Bethesda has a captive audience, or sorts. It's either five bucks for an armor set, or literally nothing, since Sony refuses to let anyone who doesn't have a Sony license play in their sandbox.

Ugh. I started this post two hours ago. I'm too tired to think. Will probably have more in the morning.

[Caelestion]

Every thing released for content creators club that I've seen either has a better version as a non-paid mod or is utter crap that should never have had a price tag put on it in the first place.

I wouldn't go that far. The military backpack and modern furniture look quite nice (possibly even worth investing in if you're on a console).

[Togath]

Those two are kinda fun. And, like, not that far off from something like the Hearthfire stuff in Skyrim... buuut then you get to a lot of the other stuff that seems overpriced... and not exactly the "dlc!" thing they'd talked about. No questing or story mods, and supposedly very strict limits on the size of what creation club stuff can be, for reasons.
Like... why would a company NOT go for "stuff most people would actually enjoy enough to pay money for"?(I mean, the backpack and furniture stuff is cool, but it just seems odd that those are the minority, as well as the largest stuff the cc mods offer).
Like, done well, the CC idea seems like it could work really well. It's just Bethesda has gone in a kinda weird direction. Hopefully though, they will listen to feedback. Also not paying the makers of CC mods anything but a flat rate is gonna foster some really negative feelings from the community. That's just sleazy to do regardless of business.

[Caelestion]

Paying a commission to modders is by far the least remarkable thing about this whole mess (almost routine, even).

[Mudpitmissfit]

I mean, literally ANY update would break Fallout 4 Script Extender. The [Insert Game] Script Extenders only work with the most recent update. That's not Bethesda breaking something, that's just the nature of the tool.

Oh yes and fair play on that point , what galled me is the updates we did not get.

The nuka world dlc was a rushed mess and there have been virtually no patches or improvements since then.

Bethesda then "breaks" mods to push their micro transactions.

Not story dlc , not improvements to user experience.

Micro transactions.

Baleful glare intensifies.

[Togath]

I DO like microtransactions in games... it just seems sorta messy how they implemented them here(if nothing else, having to actually start up the game fully before you can buy seems... bizarre ), and like they chose (mostly) not very interesting ones to promote their product.

[snowblizz]

FWIW, if Bethesda *had* introduced interesting large paid story content mods you'd all be up in arms about them gouging you with macrotransactions and forcing you to buy buy story for a game you already paid to expect have story but didn't have enough from the get go. *rabble rabble rabble*

You all know I'm right.

There's just no way Bethesda can win short of giving away the game for free. They are trying to figure out how to increase the long tail on AAA games. It's getting quite common now I've noticed.


Paying a flat fee to CCs makes perfect sense, that is after all how businesses work. Employees are paid for their work and the company figures out how to leverage that. It also avoids all the hassle with paying tiny royalties to people all over the world. Would be no economy in that. It's a classic business takes risk on the content and develoepr gets paid up front scenario. For legal and business reasons I can't see any other way they could go.

[Caelestion]

This isn't an instance where Bethesda literally cannot do the right thing, e.g. like Paradox, who get complaints about every single decision they make regarding their DLC policy, even if it's improving the policy!

This is Bethesda having a thoroughly underwhelming start with overpriced goods, 2 Gb of data that auto-installs to your hard drive and, on top of all of all that, apparently has capped the future offerings of such micro-DLC to a mere 5,000 records per file, ensuring that we won't get anything even approaching Automatron, let alone anything larger.

[Togath]

I'll be honest, I don't get why the 2gb is a big deal?
Even the smallest hard drives I tend to see are in the 500gb range(And I'm talking 5+ years old), so that's less than 1%.

[Yuki Akuma]

I'll be honest, I don't get why the 2gb is a big deal?
Even the smallest hard drives I tend to see are in the 500gb range(And I'm talking 5+ years old), so that's less than 1%.

Solid state drives (and, to a much lesser extend, magnetic drives) can only be written to a limited number of times before they wear out.

Writing to your drive without asking is just kinda rude. It's not about the size.

[snowblizz]

Solid state drives (and, to a much lesser extend, magnetic drives) can only be written to a limited number of times before they wear out.

Writing to your drive without asking is just kinda rude. It's not about the size.

It's absolutely about the size too. My SSD is 512Gb but if I want it to be fast I can't fill it up to capacity. I've got more games that F4 taking up space. And they all cram in 2GB updates like they are the only game in the universe. And that's ignoring Windows10 bloating. It adds up quickly. I'm already at a point where I can't have all my AAA games I might want to play installed at any time. And no, downloading them playing a bit and installing isn't not a feasible option I've found. Even on fibre 50Gb games take long enough to download I went with a simpler option. Already had have to split my Stema folder over 3 discs.

I found 13Gb of temporary internet files the other day. No idea where those come from. I don't want anyone to take 2Gb of space "just because". What if the high-res texture pack wasn't an optional extra?

Just an aside. ARK Survival Evolved is now taking up 109Gb space. When I last complained toa friend of how large modern games are it was around the 50Gb mark.

[Caelestion]

Writing to your drive without asking is just kinda rude. It's not about the size.

Well, that, and you may recall the mild upset when iTunes downloaded U2's latest single onto everyone's connected devices. This was a free track that anyone could play (i.e. not 2 Gb of data that Bethesda expects you not to look at unless you pay for it) and iTunes still backed down afterwards.

[Balmas]

Aaaand, Fallout 3 has started!

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I'm excited for this. I've actually bought some more powerful editing software, which should make my life a lot easier. Yes, I've had to rerecord the two hours I started with, but it let me just sum up most of the intro in a simple, easy way. Of course, it takes much longer to render, but I think it's worth it.

FWIW, if Bethesda *had* introduced interesting large paid story content mods you'd all be up in arms about them gouging you with macrotransactions and forcing you to buy buy story for a game you already paid to expect have story but didn't have enough from the get go. *rabble rabble rabble*

You all know I'm right.

...No, I don't. I think that if Bethesda paid modders a fair wage to develop a DLC, and the DLC was good content, and the DLC was sold for a fair price, I'd be ecstatic to have new content.

This, of course, assumes that they're not auto-installing things onto my hard drive and totally breaking F4SE when they do so with a mandatory update.

This isn't an instance where Bethesda literally cannot do the right thing, e.g. like Paradox, who get complaints about every single decision they make regarding their DLC policy, even if it's improving the policy!

This is Bethesda having a thoroughly underwhelming start with overpriced goods, 2 Gb of data that auto-installs to your hard drive and, on top of all of all that, apparently has capped the future offerings of such micro-DLC to a mere 5,000 records per file, ensuring that we won't get anything even approaching Automatron, let alone anything larger.

Yeah, pretty much this. The problem is compounded by the way that Bethesda Game Studios is seemingly dedicated to burning through their stocks of goodwill at a record pace. I mean, you have the utter crapstorm that was Fallout 4, then the debacle with doubling the price of Fallout 4's season pass, then the fiasco of having half of that promised DLC be worthless workshop content, and now this? It's like they don't think that goodwill is worth more than gold nowadays.

I'll be honest, I don't get why the 2gb is a big deal?
Even the smallest hard drives I tend to see are in the 500gb range(And I'm talking 5+ years old), so that's less than 1%.

Part of it is that some people use SSDs, which are much more expensive in terms of storage. My boot/programs drive is a 120GB SD I bought a few years back.

Another part of it is that it's 2GB right now, when they only have about a dozen mods. What happens when they have twenty mods? Fifty? A hundred?

There are twenty thousand mods on the Nexus right now. If even 1% of those were to come to the Creation Club in the manner we're seeing now, you're talking 200 mods' worth of storage all dumped into your hard drive. You're talking about doubling the size of the base game install, automatically, without being able to opt out.

That's why it's a big deal.

[Winthur]

Another part of it is that it's 2GB right now, when they only have about a dozen mods. What happens when they have twenty mods? Fifty? A hundred?

There are twenty thousand mods on the Nexus right now. If even 1% of those were to come to the Creation Club in the manner we're seeing now, you're talking 200 mods' worth of storage all dumped into your hard drive. You're talking about doubling the size of the base game install, automatically, without being able to opt out.

That's why it's a big deal.

I just imagined that the year is 2020 and Todd is cheerfully dumping the entire catalog of Loverslab onto my account and taunting me with Fallout 4 Community Edition available for the lowly price of 60$.

Now that I think of it, if Bethesda wants to have a say in fanworks, why don't they incentivize big projects like Autumn Leaves was for New Vegas?

[darksolitaire]

FWIW, if Bethesda *had* introduced interesting large paid story content mods you'd all be up in arms about them gouging you with macrotransactions and forcing you to buy buy story for a game you already paid to expect have story but didn't have enough from the get go. *rabble rabble rabble*

You all know I'm right.

Nah. If I'd have gotten actual story DLC I'd have forked out the cash as soon as the reviews rolled in.

[Triaxx]

Okay, so... First, I paid $90 for the game. 60+30. I've played 464 hours, according to steam. So that's .19/hr. New Vegas? I payed a bit less and have played about 3-times as much. Assuming $90 over 1000-1200 hours, means either .09-.07/hr.

I'm not expecting that kind of value. Even getting that much is a tremendous ask. But say Automatron is 3-5 hours for $20, pure story content wise, then it sounds a bad deal. But consider it's essentially adding a new race with origin story, and the ability to customize your own members.

Size is less the issue, than the downloading without asking. 2.1GB of locked files I will probably never use. Compare say Immersive Armors from Skyrim which clocks in at 2.45. And I use them all the time. If Bethesda can't or doesn't fix the issue, F4 will get uninstalled, and relegated to the steam library.

Size on the other hand is an issue. I don't have unlimited cash. I cannot afford to continually increase the size of my storage to keep up with space demands like that. I remember the days of having to uninstall enough things to get the 300MB free to install Baldur's Gate. I'd rather not go back there, thanks.

[Rynjin]

There's just no way Bethesda can win short of giving away the game for free.

Wrong. They could win by not trying to introduce this paid mods garbage again. The modding community has flourished for decades without corporate oversight, and with the advent of services like Paypal and Patreon people have been able to donate money to their favorite modders for a while now.

As-is there is no upside to the Creation Club. It's not good for the consumer, who is getting low-res versions of free content for exorbitant prices (compared to the value added). It's doubly not good for the consumers who don't know any better (console users, primarily) and think they're getting something new and have been brainwashed by microtransactions in games like this for so long that it seems like a good deal. It's not good for the modders, who receive a pittance for their work and don't even get to showcase their real talents, only basic modeling skill.

The only people this is good for are the Zenimax and Bethesda executives who now have an even larger pile of money to dance on.

They are trying to figure out how to increase the long tail on AAA games. It's getting quite common now I've noticed.

It's getting common because publishers are greedy. AAA games don't need any of this extra pre-order, microtransaction, season pass bull**** to succeed. Take away all of that and Fallout 4 is a game that made far more money than its budget. This is not some "necessary evil" where the company is going to lose money, or barely make a profit if they don't do it. All of that is gravy, and they really, really like gravy.

Bethesda isn't as bad as EA, or Ubisoft, or WB Interactive, or Activision...yet. But this Creation Club is a pretty big step in that direction.

The only reason people are trying to defend these kinds of business practices is because they're videogames, which are for some reason held to a different standard than other media. They somehow feel like the creators are entitled to more money for minimal effort just because people play and replay the game. This **** wouldn't fly with a DVD, I know that much. If you had to pay an extra 50 cents per deleted scene or whatever that's on the disc.

Because everybody knows the people in Hollywood really don't need the extra money and wouldn't stand for it.

But people are still stuck in the mentality that video games are made by 5 guys in a basement nowadays and big budget titles struggle to get by, when that could not be further from the truth. So they let themselves get gouged, nickled and dimed for everything the publishers say they think the game should be worth. Whether that be $60, or $100, or $200 (now including some cheap plastic **** we manufactured for under $10 collectively and an art book!). Because the poor widdle publishers "just need to make their money back". As if the game hadn't already. As if these big name publishers are underdogs fighting against an unfair industry.

[Balmas]

Wrong. They could win by not trying to introduce this paid mods garbage again. The modding community has flourished for decades without corporate oversight, and with the advent of services like Paypal and Patreon people have been able to donate money to their favorite modders for a while now.

As-is there is no upside to the Creation Club. It's not good for the consumer, who is getting low-res versions of free content for exorbitant prices (compared to the value added). It's doubly not good for the consumers who don't know any better (console users, primarily) and think they're getting something new and have been brainwashed by microtransactions in games like this for so long that it seems like a good deal. It's not good for the modders, who receive a pittance for their work and don't even get to showcase their real talents, only basic modeling skill.

The only people this is good for are the Zenimax and Bethesda executives who now have an even larger pile of money to dance on.

Well, no and yes.

No, because it's a means for playstation users to get access to mods, even if they're exorbitantly priced microtransactions. In fact, most of this seems to be aimed at the PS4 audience. Part of the reason for being owned by Bethesda instead of modders is because Sony refuses to let anyone without Sony's permission play in their sandbox.

Yes, because the only reason they're gauging the PS4 audience is because PS4 players are used to being taken up the butt by Sony. The PS4 has been the top performer in PS4 vs. XBOX for so long that Sony has essentially dropped all pretense of being on their customer's side. The only reason that PS4 doesn't have mods is because of Sony being anal about who gets to work on the PS4.

And yes, because even when you take Sony's general anticonsumerism out of the equation, everything about the Creation Club screams microtransactions.
-Buy credits! That way Bethesda only has to pay credit card service charges once per credit dump, instead of for every fifty cent transation.
-Limit file sizes, so that you don't get anything that devalues the rest of the content!
-Make only tiny, easily QA'd mods that Bethesda doesn't need to worry about!
They want tiny mods that'll nickle-and-dime the audience into giving away money, because that's what the people want, right?

[Beleriphon]

I don't really care so long as Creation Club doesn't invalidate my existing mods on my Xbox, I really couldn't two grunts about what happens to paid mods on the Playstation courtesy of Sony management putzes.

[Mando Knight]

Xbox mods shouldn't have any problem with Creation Club unless they specifically edit the same records that CC items do. It's the F4SE-powered PC-only mods that ran into the incompatibility issue.

[Balmas]

So, the team recreating Fallout 3 in Fallout 4's engine had an update today.

Highlights include Lincoln's repeater, a preview of the different models for the R91 assault rifle and winterized combat armor, a 360 of the new Centaur model, Tranquility lane, and reimaginings of different houses.

[Balmas]

Maestro, the music, if you please.

Ahem.

I maintain that I've killed more people accidentally or in self-defense than I have deliberately. It's a dubious reassurance at best, given most seem to be able to go their whole life without accidentally wandering into a camp and slaughtering everyone inside. Often I sit awake at night and ponder just how much of a moron I must be.

To be fair, though, it's not like I'm the only idiot around...

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[ShneekeyTheLost]

Maestro, the music, if you please.

Ahem.

I maintain that I've killed more people accidentally or in self-defense than I have deliberately. It's a dubious reassurance at best, given most seem to be able to go their whole life without accidentally wandering into a camp and slaughtering everyone inside. Often I sit awake at night and ponder just how much of a moron I must be.

To be fair, though, it's not like I'm the only idiot around...

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Interesting so far. One thing... you never did equip the vault armor, including the helmet. Since you seem to be running some variant of Project Nevada, it probably means the helmet would've at least helped you not get your head crippled so easily.

Also, I think the reason the old sheriff 'died' like that is because Mr. Burke had a silenced weapon, so you never heard the gunshot. Point blank, from under his coat. Never saw, or heard, a thing. Bastard.

I wasn't aware you could choose your gender in FO3, I'm assuming that's a mod letting you do that.

[Balmas]

Interesting so far. One thing... you never did equip the vault armor, including the helmet. Since you seem to be running some variant of Project Nevada, it probably means the helmet would've at least helped you not get your head crippled so easily.

I'm actually not running Project Nevada at all. This is all Fallout 3, so it's FWE. Similar goals, but handled in different ways. As such, the 3 DR from the helmet would have barely changed a thing.

Also, I was kinda roleplaying a person who's scrambling to get out of the vault, and so wouldn't want to try to strap on armor on the way.

Also, I think the reason the old sheriff 'died' like that is because Mr. Burke had a silenced weapon, so you never heard the gunshot. Point blank, from under his coat. Never saw, or heard, a thing. Bastard.

That, and the script that says if you bring Lucas to the bar to confront Burke and then don't kill Burke before leaving the bar, Simms auto-dies. Normally, Burke is supposed to wait around in his seat in the bar until either you defuse the bomb or plant the fusion charge. I'm not sure what set Burke off to leave.

I wasn't aware you could choose your gender in FO3, I'm assuming that's a mod letting you do that.

No, you've always been able to choose between male and female.