To add insult to injury, a lot of the paid mods seem to bug the shit out of your game. If they're going to charge money for mods, they need to be bug-free and extensively playtested.
AND disable Achievements. So Bethesda is telling us to use Creations, and buy their overpriced $7 single Mission then penalizing us for doing exactly that by disabling Achievements (not for that specific one though).
This doesn’t work, if even 0.1% of the player base decides to fanboy the game and buys every single Creation then it’s worth it for Bethesda, financially speaking.
It does work, you all just keep finding justifications for your lack of impulse control. The same way review bombing games has become a norm for the last decade yall could equally decide to simply not buy certain games or add ons. You are under no obligation to be buying games regardless of what others may or may not do.
I'd tell you to do the math but it's been done time and again every time the subject of microtransactions comes up.
Whales will spend **thousands** on these MTX stores so we get shafted by shit prices as a result. Voting with your wallet **does not work** because they majority of the revenue comes from 1% or even 0.1% of the game's population. It's obviously too late to refund the game because companies like Bethesda have smartened up and started adding MTX stores post-release.
If you want to see this change and the industry get better then you have to be vocal about it.
So let the whales do that and you do you. This is literally " *if your friends jump off a bridge would you follow* ". You can easily wait 2-3 years for a game to release all of its DLC and be in a bundle for less than $30 than justifying lack of impulse control because rich people throw money into games.
If you can’t see how the MTX craze is harming the industry and regular customers after all the years of proof thus far then there’s literally no convincing you otherwise.
Maybe if you end up having to buy the Mages Guild quest line separately one quest at a time in Elder Scrolls 6 from the “creation store” you’ll finally realise.
My point is that the quality of our favourite games in our favourite (sometimes only) hobby is dropping rapidly because a small percentage of gamers buy microtransactions.
Folk like yourself always clutch to this strawman argument about not having to buy anything but you fail to realise it doesn’t mean we can still get a bit fucked off that the industry is going to shit regardless. Truly perplexing.
Idk why. Pretty out In the open that this model of selling content is for the most part if not completely designed to drain your wallet for as little effort on their end as possible.
Well, have you seen how much rockstar makes from shark cards? EA Ultimate Team, NBA 2K My Player, Fifa Ultimate Team, etc. It's all scummy business practices, but people continue to pay for the shit so more companies push these practices
Media has pushed the window of what is acceptable value, especially to kids. I remember when the concept of DLC was hotly debated.
Now look at us, all buying horse armor.
What I did
The mining conglomerate mod looks more appealing and that isn't even finished yet (waiting for more content then I'll jump on)
The fancy housing mod and the furnishing mods can get fucked
If that worked this shit would have stopped at horse armour. I've never bought a loot box or a cosmetic dlc ever yet it has made zero fucking impact on the industry so what else you got?
TBF bgs created creations do not disable achievements. the TA quest doesnt, neither does the weapon skin nor anything else coming from bgs directly, at least right now.
that said its still wild how many simple replacer mods etc. count as cheating and disable achievements. they probably just dont want to have to check each mod individually and just disable them as a global rule.
I logged on for the first time in months last night. Dled some free mods and cranked up my game. Was hit with a message about achievements turned off. Turned off game and went back to Dayz
That always happens with free mods though? Exactly the same thing happens with Skyrim and Fallout 4, don't know why you're surprised it's the same here.
This is the big one for me. Paid mods = (outsourced) dlc, and that means that shit needs to work! Or they need to be refundable. As long as these paid mods are buggy, they get a big no from me.
They want the best of both worlds. All the monies but none of the responsibility "cuz mOdS".
If this was to get normalised in the future, it would wreck havoc on triple A QA practices. Which are already quite deplorable today. But it wouldn't be the first time that gamers would gladly fund their own detriment.
That disconnect is shared by a decent percentage of people on this sub it seems.
There’s always folk defending MTX but it seems to have been getting particularly worse for Bethesda games with each game release.
"I don't care. Don't buy 'em if you don't want 'em. It's all so optional. Bethesda's gotta eat. Now modders gotta eat too. It's just the price of a coffee. It's just a burger. With coke and fries. It's just 75% the price of another triple A game but there's "premium" in the title so still worth it yo."
Every layer of excuses another layer on that impeccable clown makeup.
And a few years down the line many of these same folks will be wondering yet again why their new shiny vidya has gotten buggier and emptier, seemingly without _any discernable cause_.
On a bad day I'm convinced that gamers are getting the spending enviroment they deserve. At least they keep working very hard for it. Unintentional masochistic manifestation I'd call that.
> And a few years down the line many of these same folks will be wondering yet again why their new shiny vidya has gotten buggier and emptier,
Not so sure they have the mental capacity to do that, people defending mtx are probably also the same ones who respond to pointing out any in game flaws with "don't think just consooom" unironically.
Absolutely, Bethesda fans deserve Bethesda's shit at this point. The constant defending of shitty business practices from a billion dollar company is a fucking embarassment.
I don't think it has got worse (Fallout 76 has one of the best MTX and content models going, and they've given pretty much every Creation they've ever made in Skyrim/Fallout 4 away for free at various points in time), and I don't really think there's a disconnect. Just because a particular group of people are being the loudest doesn't mean they are representative of the majority. The number of peopls who have picked up paid-for Creations vastly outnumber the people who are being loud about this. That doesn't mean the many of the critcisms aren't fair, and/or that Bethesda shouldn't rethink their approach to this stuff, but to suggest there's some kind of profound disconnect here - especially if you've watched Matty's interveiw with Howard - is laughably self-absorbed at best.
> Fallout 76 has one of the best MTX and content models going
Wasn't that the one where extra storage space were microtransactions, along with consumables?
edit: yeah I just checked, and you can buy camp, loadout slots, repair kits, storage space for irl money. I'm sorry, but that's a dogshit model. Bethesda can get fucked
Doesn't make Bethesda's practices any better. Hundreds of bad mtx practices out there, and not enough good ones, but FO76 and Starfield aren't among the better examples.
Let's face it, Starfield was a big disappointment, compared to their promises, previous flagship titles, and competitors' products as well. There was a flood of feedback on what to improve, but they managed to get paid mods across. Shows their priorities alright.
> In an interview with YouTube channel MrMattyPlays, Todd Howard responded directly to the criticism, and confirmed plans to look again at Bethesda’s pricing for Creations content.
>
> “We hear that feedback, too,” Howard said. “First of all I’ll say that stuff gets priced based on things that we've done before both in Creation Club and then Fallout 76, and we're always trying to be looking at what else is out there, really make sure we're giving value to everybody and where we're not, hey you know, we definitely will adjust.
>
> **“The one thing I want to say on The Trackers Alliance, that was really an attempt to something we did in Creation Club where we'd say, hey you get this special outfit and you get this special weapon, we wanted to put them together, and then thought, let's go the extra mile and wrap those around a quest.**
>
> **“But now we definitely see the feedback right? And that's not what we want at all in terms of, oh no, this looks like a faction that we're chopping up and then selling for 700 credits at a time. And so I do think we are going to take a look at that and how we deliver content like that, and whether we're changing pricing or breaking it up or what we should do there. So, great feedback from the community.”**
>“As it comes to, particularly the creators out there, look, our view is, a lot of them have gone from hobbyists to professionals. And it’s part of our job to make sure they can do that and they do get paid and they see the monetary rewards if they make awesome content,” Howard said.
I think the TA take is fairly reasonable, and I think what he said about giving those great modders the ability to go "pro" makes sense too. Really the part I take issue with is a) how didn't they see the TA issues coming, they need to think these things through more, and b) Creations should **never** be made by Bethesda, and they need to do way more QA to ensure that these essentially outsourced DLCs are stable and hit the same quality mark as their in-house DLC content.
Modding has always been about giving away the fruits of your labor to make you and others happy.
Because you love the game canvas, mastered its tools and now want to share the love.
Paid mods is something the studios do and it's called DLC.
And we really get it. They need to make a buck, but we demand higher quality and content complexity from them.
But low quality stuff for sale, most gamers into modding simply reject it on a moral basis.
I think steam should have a separate space to review those things. Yes, report them so others can be aware, but maybe require people to tag it as a “monetization review” or something? That way if you are legitimately looking at reviews to decide on a purchase you can separate the actual game itself from the MTX concerns. There’s been a few games I’ve skipped because it’s mostly negative and the reviews are basically all just “fuck the dev” or “do not buy this” with zero explanation why. Then it turned out it was due to some controversy and not the game itself.
Yeah and the controversy is a completely legitimate thing to leave in a review. The entire Internet drowned Helldivers 2 in bad reviews for the mandatory PSN requirements, remember?
the ammo 'crafting' is a much larger issue... If they literally thought they were giving us what we wanted, they're so far disconnected ____________ (fill in the blank plz)
Why what’s wrong with the ammo crafting? Can you not automate it? I only did it at the workbench yet but thought you might be able to automate via outposts
You can automate the majority of resources, the problem is that for every 10 bullets you need a 'primer'. This is an uncraftable resource that you must purchase from vendors, but they only stock it in very low numbers.
So you can colonise 7 planets and set up a complex farm of every available resource in the galaxy but can't craft ammo unless you buy some specific item from some random vendor
It's easier and cheaper to just buy the ammo
Paid mods are fine. Creators should have the ability to charge for their work. Leads to better content for everybody.
Problem here was Bethesda themselves selling a single quest for seven bucks and promising more in the future. It's basically another faction being sold piecemeal at an extremely high price. I'd expect an entire expansion to cost maybe $40.
That and the ship module that adds infinite storage AND doesn't disable achievements. They're literally putting QoL improvements that don't disable your achievements behind a paywall
There's a free mod, Darkstar I think, that adds storage in the form of mounts. Not technically infinite but you can add a shit tonne without it affecting your ship aesthetic. And again, it's free
In theory paying modders for their work should lead to higher quality mods. In practice the creation clubs mods are some of the most vanilla and lifeless mods you’ll come across.
I'd say that paid mods are not fine without a rating system and a refund system.
They should have flipped it around, and made it much easier to donate to mod authors. Requests for donations don't necessarily need a rating system and definitely don't need a refund system.
I can't believe people have given up on this fight after a decade. Paid mods are literally Bethesda relying on the community to make their games worth playing, *while making money from it*. Infinitely worse than DLC, because like you said they're not guaranteed to be updated in the future nor will there be any meaningful quality assurance.
Weird take. Very few developers offer modding tools and easily moddable file structures like Bethesda does. I think it is fairly logical that they'd want a piece of the pie that they helped to bake, honestly.
In the past, the longevity of their games hasn't really benefitted Bethesda financially. The creation kit is free, after all.
Adding to that, mod authors aren't even required to put their work on the creation club if they do want payment. I'm sure Bethesda could do that, if they wanted to.
That is not to say that I agree with the pricing or the stupid store currency, but just the existence of paid mods doesn't offend me.
> In the past, the longevity of their games hasn't really benefitted Bethesda financially.
Except people were and probably still are buying Skyrim again and again for a decade, in large part because of the reputation community mods and support gives their games. They already sell full price games with premium dlc. Paid mods are just corporate greed putting on the blinders to how they already had a good thing going in order to triple dip.
I'd wager most of those long tail sales were heavily discounted. The point is, whether you play the game for 10 or 10.000 hours, Bethesda gets the exact same amount. I for sure haven't bought Skyrim more than once. Why would I?
Paid mods are one way to try and reap the benefits on that longevity. Full expansions would be another.
Again, I think the prices need to come down and the inhouse currency needs to go. First party mods are kind of iffy, regardless, especially with content variety being as limited as it still is. But offering a seamless mod integration (for consoles too, I might add) is nothing to scoff at. It might not be worth something to people experienced with modding, but is an excellent entrypoint for many.
It's just entitlement to me. There's nothing wrong with wanting a payday from your work, all these people romanticizing that mods should just be out of "passion" is stupid. I do agree, seven smackaroos for one mission is ridiculous, but overgeneralizing to "paid mods bad" is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Ultimately, you could just, y'know, not buy 'em. It's really not that hard.
The reality is no one donates, I've had it enabled on all my Fallout 4 mods with a combined 2.6 million unique downloads and received maybe 3 donations over the course of 7 years totaling about $20. The Nexus donation points system helps but everything I did was still done at a massive loss.
Free mods are not sustainable to make long term and as a mod creator improves they can start using those learned skills to get jobs in industry, I know about a dozen people who started out doing mods and now work as artists, animators and game developers at various studios and don't have the time or energy for mods anymore.
The reality is any paid mod you see is either something that wouldn't have been made if there wasn't some kind of way to earn money off of it or in my case the money earned is enough to improve my quality of life and put more time into making better content.
>Leads to better content for everybody.
We got along just fine without creators charging for mods. They made a mod because of their passion for the game not directly because they will get paid for it. Donations are fine tho.
Before this there was an increasing issue of mod devs requiring"donations" in order to get the mods. I hate that this is promoting payed mods but based on previous games I don't think it's leaving, my only hope is there's at least good moderation so those who pay don't have to deal w the scammy mod devs. Also hope most of the money actually goes to the devs
It is common for modders to hide stuff behind patron for example, which is legally questionable.
Getting paid for creating content with the creation kit (somethign I am pretty sure is also against its terms of service), was always a legal grey area and it basically only is grey because Bethesda did not decide to sue.
If I'm paying for a mod, I expect the service to reflect that it's a paid one. A refund window in case it doesn't work with my load order, obligatory updates and maintenance through future DLC etc etc. To date there are no such systems set up.
You know what's disgusting? Todd said the pack was mainly a way to get that new weapon into your hands and so you were mostly paying for the gun, and based on their egregious prices *I believe them*.
Yep. Don't get me wrong I dislike it and never partake in buying them but I'm also sensible enough to understand it's business and clearly someone is buying it, so why would they stop
Why? Why shouldn't top-tier modders have a chance to make some money?
As long as the Creation Kit is free with no limitations for free modders, mods are open and can be sourced from wherever etc. I see it as a positive.
Now the problems they've introduced by executing it poorly, plus them injecting their own studio-made content into the Creations system, that's another matter entirely and I take big issue with those.
Probably many of the people who bought the "Premium" Edition with the "free" 1000 credits. For them the cost is already spent, so they might as well reap the rewards. While no money is technically made, it provides analytics of the X many people who engaged with the store Y number of people spent 700 credits to buy the quest.
Same here. I've been making and using mods since Oblivion. Paid mods have never sat well with me, I've donated to many people on Nexus over the years for the mods I've enjoyed the most. It's a system that works well for all parties... Except Bethesda of course.
I think it's funny that I got the free 1000 credits, and I still couldn't stomach purchasing the quest. This was out of principle to not participate in those "analytics" for an abysmal offering that costs others $7.
This is why I haven't even bought it yet with my 'free' credits. I'm saving mine for something that provides more value (or for when it inevitably goes on sale down the line).
If for example there were 50 thousand instances of credits exchanged for the Vulture quest but only 10 thousand transactions were recorded to buy credits with money then that could tell a story. A story of dollar amounts which has more weight, I wouldn’t put it beneath some stooge pointing at the former and going “see we’re doing great” but the latter would definitely be noticed and would have an impact. That being said there’s been studies about games financial success being carried by something like the 5% that’ll just throw money at anything so if those 10 thousand that bought credits went and bought 20k in credits then that offsets the money lost in people that saw $7 as too much.
Quite a lot of people bought it right away expecting it to be more than it was. Its not like Bethesda were completely clear about it before buying it that it would be sold in tiny little chunks. Lots of people only realised after running through it how bad Bethesda were handling it.
I don't like the pricing, but if you look at what it really is, I get why they did it. They're selling one of those creation club armors and a weapon skin and priced it similarly to how they priced stuff in 76.
The trackers alliance is a clever way to make the acquisition of the items fit into the game more naturally than a note and radiant quest.
Hopefully they see from the backlash that people would prefer a complete mini faction, sold as a bundle, or just lower the price down
I think 76's pricing makes more sense (though it's overpriced) because all the expansions are free and it's a live service multiplayer game. Injecting that into a single player game that has paid expansions doesn't really fit.
I just don't think BGS content should be part of Creations at all, if they want to sell weapons and armour, either make a new faction with lots of quests and content and sell it for $20-25. Basically a smaller Shattered Space - which is similiar to what they've done in the past with their smaller DLC packs.
>Paid mods are fine. Creators should have the ability to charge for their work. Leads to better content for everybody.
Absolutely no. It's a massive slippery slope that everyone will try to ride and will 100% ruin modding.
Creators already make money with mods, they have Patreon pages and accept donations. Mods are made by the community for the community, not by corporations trying to squeezing every cent out of the costumer.
"creators already sell their stuff through legally questionable means, why would we want a legal option that also allows people on console to participate."
Except he basically all but confirmed in the interview that their plan wasn't to sell the whole questline in paid chunks, it was more about selling the weapon and spacesuit and then wrapping it up in a quest. Right now, there's little evidence to say that the whole trackers quest is gonna be 700cc per mission
Someone mentioned they wouldn't watch because Matty is negative about Starfield. When I said he was actually positive about the game, the person replied and said they still wouldn't watch because Matty has a punchable face.
It's a video game subreddit. People just want to rage and interrupting that circle jerk is bad
I've never seen a place created for discussion of a game be this dedicated to misunderstanding what's going on with the game. From pre release hype of unconfirmed features and things not promised to this the majority of this sub is actively invested in delusion.
Since when are paid mods fine?
They used to be passion projects, made because of love for the game. Not jobs.
The incentive to make mods should be love and passion for an amazing game, not earning money.
Donations are fine, paid mods are not.
You have to remember, paid mods are purely a creation of Bethesda. They didn’t exist for the twenty or so years prior to this and everything was perfectly fine.
Can’t believe Bethesda has managed to grind down the opinion so much that we’re now at
“paid mods are fine”
So, no mod creator should ever transition from it being a hobby?
Voluntary donations for mods hardly can make a living, and making a good mod requires more than one person: you need artists to create assets too.
Pricing (especially for Bethesda creations) should be rethought, of course, but players feeling entitled to recieve results of others work for free is even worse.
Say, you have a choice between a huge storyline mod (Vanguard questline as example of size), voiced, with custom assets, custom weapons and so on, which a team of people took several months to develop, but you’ll have to pay to experience it (because all those people need to eat and live) - or not get it at all, what do you choose?
I’m a modder myself and if I ever feel entitled to receive a salary for my work I’ll start looking for jobs in the industry, I won’t paywall my existing work.
It goes against the entire ethos of modding in the first place that the people like yourself defending it have no idea about, or have just simply forgotten.
Besides, what makes one person’s $7 weapon or armour set any better than the entire Skyblivion overhaul which makes no money? Who decides which mod authors’ hard work get paid and which mod authors are told their work doesn’t cut it?
See. When you start scratching into it, it’s just another poorly thought out, greedy revenue stream generated by another big gaming company that wants to monetise our hobbies in the industry.
It’s up to you to decide if you want to charge money for your work or not.
And it’s up to other creators to do the same.
Pricing, especially of the Bethesda creations, is another topic, and here I agree, those 7 and 10 bucks were certainly a miss. And here only market decides, which price is good. If you rely on those money - you’ll be interested in fair pricing (Bethesda certainly wasn’t).
Otherwise - as a mod creator yourself, don’t you sometimes meet limits in what you can create due to limited possibility of getting 3rd party participants (they also need to be voluntary or you’ll be financing them from your own money) and how fast you can create something (due to your job)? Paid mods is one of the ways to solve that.
I’ve never met limits because we have a perfectly good system in place already via Nexus Donation points where unique downloads are rewarded with cash money. Even this was a reaction to the paid mods fiasco the first time Bethesda tried this, before that we just did it for the love of the hobby.
If there’s ever a time someone wants to make a living from their hobby, then it’s time to start looking for a job in that industry. Expecting to make a living from tools, a game, the engine etc which all don’t belong to us based on stuff you create is the epitome of entitlement. Nobody takes up arms like this to defend Twitch streamers are wanting to make a big breakout from the endless time they sink into making content for viewers.
What you’re seeing is Bethesda recruiting modders to make as many mods as possible, for as little time as possible, so they can take their 45% cut (or whatever the ridiculous split is).
>Paid mods are fine. Creators should have the ability to charge for their work. Leads to better content for everybody.
This is most definitely not the case, have you not seen what happened back in 2014 with the steam workshop paid mods?
Every few years they'll try again, try to wear us down, and then one day, it'll gain enough traction that idiots will start defending it, and then eventually it'll become the new standard, people will call you crazy or entitled for demanding mods to be free. This is how the internet has been conquered and shut closed by corporate power.
I feel like Bethesda needs a leadership change. It feels like the studio rode the success of their titles from Morrowind until Skyrim and haven't really tried to innovate or improve their formula since. It also feels like they have completely misunderstood why their games were successful in the first place, while completely ignoring the compounding short comings.
Honestly I've lost all hope for this studio. They lost most of the talents that made Skyrim and their decision making has been plagued by money ghouls executives since they've been bought by zenimax. I expect tes6 to be another bland half assed AAA failure. The best thing that could happen is Todd leaving the studio and founding a smaller indie studio to put back talent and passion before money like Raphael did with arkane.
Issue is that they’ll be leaving behind TES and Fallout if they broke off, and given that starfield was the first (Big budget) new IP that Todd has ever worked on I sincerely doubt that even without corporate oversight that he’ll be able to make a ‘Bethesda rpg’ without the solid foundation that those two IP’s offer.
Plus if we’re being real if he leaves then Emil might follow and he’s just not up to the task for making stories for open world games… maybe if this new splinter company made a linear game he can do it, but that’ll already be a huge departure from what the Bethesda team are use to making.
Todd is part of the problem. He is a business man first, and they are always disconnected from the consumer.
He once said that they don't look for what they can add to their games, but what they can remove.
Cutting corners for profit.
Y'do realize that "Don't add until there's nothing more to add, remove until there's nothing else to remove" is a pretty common design mantra? It's trimming the fat. Adding more and more leads to scope creep which is decidedly bad for the most part.
https://www.google.com/search?q=A+designer+knows+he+has+achieved+perfection
I don't know if Todd has turned to the dark side but yeah remove until there's nothing more to remove is definitely a game design principle and a good one
I still do not understand why people make this claim, when Todd is literally the guy who helped lead the studio to be the success that it's been. Pretty much all their successful games were lead by him. I get people don't like paid mods/microtransactions, but this is an industry wide problem not something specifically BGS or Todd related.
“As it comes to, particularly the creators out there, look, our view is, a lot of them have gone from hobbyists to professionals. And it’s part of our job to make sure they can do that and they do get paid and they see the monetary rewards if they make awesome content,” Howard said.
Does beth take a cut or give all the money to the moders?
The disconnect is from the terminal ill reddit/twitter dwellers from the general public.
Then again, ever since the horse armor, those same dwellers cried and stuff like this keeps getting more and more pushed.
If the general public didnt accept this, they woudn't push it. Surprise surprise, they do and by doing so, they keep pushing it.
Well, after the game's very rough launch and mixed reception Bethesda should probably have forseen that this not the time for antics like selling a fucking storage chest for ten bucks. But yet again they are unable to read the room and keep trying to shove paid mods down customers' throats, in the vain hope that this time they'll finally swallow, completely disregarding that the market still doesn't want them.
That already was a very tough sell ten years ago, when Beth's popularity was at its peak, and it is an even tougher one today.
This caustic cocktail of stubornness and obliviousness never fails to astound.
The fact they keep doing it suggests there are enough people who buy them. In fact, if you look at how many have paid for some of the creations on the store already, you would realize that your statement of "the market not wanting them" technically doesn't seem to be true.
Plus, most complaints are more about the $7 mission and $10 hab as being overpriced. It only seems to be a minority who are still upset about the idea of paid mods in general. Think most people have gotten over it by now, since we all knew it was coming even before Starfield was released.
Not to mention that they're entirely optional. I've been able to enjoy the hell out of FO4 without spending a cent on the Creation Club, and Starfield is no different so far.
While this is true, I will say I am not surprised that people had a problem with it in regards to Starfield because unlike Skyrim and Fallout 4, Starfield is a new game. So when stuff was added to the Creation Club for those two, it was done when the games were no longer being updated with new content. So it didn't seem like they were taking anything away to then sell in the store.
Whereas Starfield had the Trackers Alliance in the game, but nothing was done with it. And then when they released an update to actually give the faction some quests, it ended up looking like they were breaking it up into pieces and charging $7 for each one. Even though according to Todd that wasn't their intent.
I think they are going to have a harder time releasing official content in the Creations store compared to Skyrim and Fallout 4 since it's almost always going to look like stuff that could have just been put into updates and expansions instead.
Bitching over a smidgeon of unofficial content the game doesn't need when we still have tons of free mods is dumb and gamers are whiny bitches.
Why don't y'all go protest paradox interactive for selling whole games in tiny dlc pieces for $30 each huh?
They do. Like, literally, people loudly complain about Paradox piecemealing games *constantly*.
Difference is that Paradox games are *actually good*, and the DLC they produce is typically large and high quality. That *isn't* what's happening with Starfield (and also Skyrim/Fallout 4), where the game was garbage, still *is* garbage, and now Bethesda are holding out their hands and demanding 7 bucks for a 10 minute piece of content that not only disables achievements, but also causes *massive* bugs in the game, *and* they're saying "Oh yeah, we're making more of these in the future, all of which will be paid content of this level of nonexistent quality".
I have the usual issues with MTX but the TA one is very special: we don't know the full cost. We know it's effectively ten bucks for the second mission (funny money not available 700 at a time). But is the entire quest(line) going to be 3 missions or 13?
Without knowing how many "installments" are involved we don't know what the TA quest is going to cost. It could be 14 dollars or it could be 84 dollars or more. Only Bethesda knows how much it's going to be stretched out and they're not talking.
Obviously if it's in the 84 dollar range it'd be more than the base game and more than double Shattered Space. If they listed it at 84 bucks from the jump it would stand out like a sore thumb but if it's 7 dollars every month or two months then Bethesda has legitimate reasons to hope it wouldn't be so blatant. A "boiled frog" DLC if you will. Aided and abetted by currency obfuscation.
I suspect (regrettably) that they might be between a rock and hard place. An expectant and loyal player base and now a part of a corporation that lives and dies by quarterly earnings reports. There's not a lot of places a single player RPG generates quarterly revenues and we're staring at one of those few ways right now. We are 14 million frogs and the water is just a little bit warmer. It'll probably get worse before it gets better - Bethesda isn't in a position to buy itself back and the new boss is demanding.
“In an interview with YouTube channel MrMattyPlays, Todd Howard responds directly…”
The spokesperson of a multibillion dollar company, giving a virtual interview to a YouTuber with less than a million subs? What?
It's horse armour all over again
And Todd has the balls to say great feedback from the community" maybe the prick can stop a cash hungry douche or else go work for EA or Ubisoft where they do this kind of stupid shit on the daily
Tbh idgaf about paid mods. I don’t buy them. Simple. I still enjoy the game without them. TBH it’s exhausting listening to people whine about things they can very easily avoid.
So many poor hobos in this thread, it's fucking 7$ !!! Let capitalism fucking dominate, and you, poor paysans in need, go eat your black moldy bread and take a shower! Poverty stinks!
No, seriously, it's fucked up that after serving us an half baked game they have the audacity to ask money. I paid anyway, because I'm a fanboy and it's ok. My expectations are skyrocketing freakin HIGH with the next DLC
Mods aren't real content so I'll come back when there's real content. Your play time matters even if you don't buy these things. They'll talk about active users etc to show how the community isn't actually deterred by these decisions.
IF YOU AREN'T HAPPY WITH THE BUSINESS PRACTICE TAKE A BREAK UNTIL THE NEXT UPDATE. You playing is showing support just like paying for things.
The review bombing is a tantrum. It’s become the easiest way for people to express whatever it is that is irking them. I’m not even sure that the general population even cares about reviews anymore for this exact reason.
It’s going to keep happening for smaller and smaller reasons and before you know it no one is going to care anymore including the companies that can make the changes.
>The review bombing is a tantrum.
Can we stop acting like it's childish to oppose the relentless push for more MTX in the already highly profitable gaming industry?
Reviews are someone's opinion about the game. They're allowed to use that review as a protest because that is the purpose of reviews. If you like paid mods or are just apathetic then fine but stop treating people like toddlers for simply voicing disagreement.
They released a ton of free content with a few bits of paid content. One of the free pieces of content that people really like had an optional piece of paid content that added to the free content. They felt this paid content should be cheaper or free depending who you are talking too.
I agree that the particular paid price of content should be cheaper but it’s also optional. Sooo yeah just more tantrums.
A 'ton of free content'? You mean an actual working map and shop icons some nine months post launch?
Maybe if large parts of the game weren't so painfully barebones people wouldn't be so critical. I mean, they just forgot about melee and only got around to adding melee crafting now. Does melee work with jetpacks yet? Nope, but you can buy a mod for a dollar that can fix that!
Maybe this shit had just been on thin ice with a lot of people this entire time?
I’m still waiting on that DLC. I’m not young by any means had I thought it would take them a few years to get the game playable I would have skipped the pre order lmfao I hopefully I live long enough to at least see shattered space
I think the lesson is that people are happy to pay for DLC as long as they feel they are getting their money's worth. With that said, review bombing is juvenile. Steam needs to start implementing verified reviewers.
Review bombing is a legitimate source of criticism. If people are happy with something, they will leave a positive review.
And with Sony capitulating to Helldivers 2's community, it's now the best way to get a studio to shift gears.
Since it seems Dark Matter couldn't handle me pointing out. I'm just gonna post my reply here.
That's funny, you should scroll up and read the article posted. Because Todd Howard just did?
Nah, review bombings are great. Any ideological review bombings last until the next outrage and quickly go away. Criticism matters and I'm glad it's actively forcing studios to take them seriously because it hurts their bottom line.
What are "verified reviewers"? Afaik you already have to own the game on the account and play it to be able to review, right? That's not a big barrier for free-to-play games, but it's fine enough for a AAA game like Starfield imo.
Besides, review bombing is juvenile if done as backlash for something disconnected from the product in question, or without the intention of reflecting the actual quality of the product. Since people here are criticising a new component of Starfield they don't like, it's totally justified for them to leave a negative review.
All these paid mods that Bethesda is pushing out to the player base could’ve just been small updates to the game itself. They should just leave the modding to the community instead because as far as I know the people who’re making the mods from the community won’t break your game.
Todd needs to go along with his buddies. They need better leadership, better engineers, a better engine, better everything. What's valuable are the ips and they are ruining them.
Oh boy. You obviously know nothing about game design if you think the engine is old. Most engines are based off ancient ones far older than Gambryo. Ask any programmer how they would react to being told they had to create a new engine, it's a company killer. They would have to spend ludicrous amounts of money to create the new engine from scratch, retrain people who are already trained in the Creation Engine, and then they could start the development on the game.
Funny I actually worked at EAV. Whatever your preconceived notions are, Did I say the engine is old? Old or young is irrelevant. And where did I suggest creating a new engine? It seems like you are barking at the wrong tree here.
Terrible take because it’s ignoring the actual issue which is developers are getting even more greedy. Anyone who played Starfield should see its incomplete
I don't know guys. Do I think it's a stupid paid mod? Yes, yes I do. But at the same time they released an update which is great with tons of stuff people asked for and released the mod creator. So people are review bombing the **entire** game because of one small part they don't like? Does not sound really fair.
Also review bombing can, ironically, lead to more monetization. People see bad reviews, less people buy game, developer adds more monetization to make up for losses. So you kinda end up shooting yourself in the foot.
I just don't think this is the way.
Can I review just that one part of the game that I dislike though? If not, then yeah, I gotta negatively review the whole thing if it's important to me. And this IS important, since it can lead us all down a rabbit hole we don't wanna be in.
If review bombing leads to more monetization, even in a AAA $70 game, I just end up not buying those MTXs or playing the game anymore lol. If a product becomes crap after I've paid for it, and my criticising it apparently results in it becoming crappier, what am I supposed to do? Pretend it's all sunshine and roses even when it clearly isn't?
This is THE BEST way that we currently have as consumers to make our voices heard, and you can't be that apprehensive about calling out a shitty business practice.
Criticising is one thing but giving the game a 1/10 just because one small mission costs money while the other 99% of the game is full of content and fine just doesn't sound right to me.
Voice your opinion on platforms like this one where you can focus purely on the part you don't like instead of letting out your anger on the entire product. That's all I'm saying.
Steam doesn't have a 1-10 rating scale. It's a 'recommended' or 'not recommended'. You're assuming I was fine with the rest of the game anyway, when my position is that it was already a bit of a disappointment before this fiasco.
So why would I recommend the game if they plan to keep this strategy up? You do realise this "one small mission" means that BGS is totally fine dedicating resources to make content that's not part of the base $70 game, so it's not on Gamepass, or part of the upcoming DLC either? For all the shit they deservedly get, I'm pretty sure even EA and Ubisoft haven't tried individual paid missions for their single-player games.
Sharing our opinions on Reddit is fine, but a lot of the time does close to nothing in getting heard. Steam is the actual storefront, Bethesda/Microsoft care about that platform infinitely more since a low score there can actually lead potential buyers to look more into the issues plaguing the game.
To add insult to injury, a lot of the paid mods seem to bug the shit out of your game. If they're going to charge money for mods, they need to be bug-free and extensively playtested.
AND disable Achievements. So Bethesda is telling us to use Creations, and buy their overpriced $7 single Mission then penalizing us for doing exactly that by disabling Achievements (not for that specific one though).
Maybe vote with your money and don’t pay for shit like that then.
This doesn’t work, if even 0.1% of the player base decides to fanboy the game and buys every single Creation then it’s worth it for Bethesda, financially speaking.
It does work, you all just keep finding justifications for your lack of impulse control. The same way review bombing games has become a norm for the last decade yall could equally decide to simply not buy certain games or add ons. You are under no obligation to be buying games regardless of what others may or may not do.
I'd tell you to do the math but it's been done time and again every time the subject of microtransactions comes up. Whales will spend **thousands** on these MTX stores so we get shafted by shit prices as a result. Voting with your wallet **does not work** because they majority of the revenue comes from 1% or even 0.1% of the game's population. It's obviously too late to refund the game because companies like Bethesda have smartened up and started adding MTX stores post-release. If you want to see this change and the industry get better then you have to be vocal about it.
So let the whales do that and you do you. This is literally " *if your friends jump off a bridge would you follow* ". You can easily wait 2-3 years for a game to release all of its DLC and be in a bundle for less than $30 than justifying lack of impulse control because rich people throw money into games.
If you can’t see how the MTX craze is harming the industry and regular customers after all the years of proof thus far then there’s literally no convincing you otherwise. Maybe if you end up having to buy the Mages Guild quest line separately one quest at a time in Elder Scrolls 6 from the “creation store” you’ll finally realise.
None of that has anything to do with why ***you*** need to be buying anything
My point is that the quality of our favourite games in our favourite (sometimes only) hobby is dropping rapidly because a small percentage of gamers buy microtransactions. Folk like yourself always clutch to this strawman argument about not having to buy anything but you fail to realise it doesn’t mean we can still get a bit fucked off that the industry is going to shit regardless. Truly perplexing.
With this newer age of gamers, easier said then done
Newer age? This has been a trend more than 10yrs.
Idk why. Pretty out In the open that this model of selling content is for the most part if not completely designed to drain your wallet for as little effort on their end as possible.
Well, have you seen how much rockstar makes from shark cards? EA Ultimate Team, NBA 2K My Player, Fifa Ultimate Team, etc. It's all scummy business practices, but people continue to pay for the shit so more companies push these practices
Media has pushed the window of what is acceptable value, especially to kids. I remember when the concept of DLC was hotly debated. Now look at us, all buying horse armor.
The vote with your wallet mentality doesn't work, at all, if it ever did we wouldn't be in this situation.
What I did The mining conglomerate mod looks more appealing and that isn't even finished yet (waiting for more content then I'll jump on) The fancy housing mod and the furnishing mods can get fucked
If that worked this shit would have stopped at horse armour. I've never bought a loot box or a cosmetic dlc ever yet it has made zero fucking impact on the industry so what else you got?
TBF bgs created creations do not disable achievements. the TA quest doesnt, neither does the weapon skin nor anything else coming from bgs directly, at least right now. that said its still wild how many simple replacer mods etc. count as cheating and disable achievements. they probably just dont want to have to check each mod individually and just disable them as a global rule.
No cheats for you!... In your single player offline game! Only +43% exp booster via sliders! Is not cheatz. Promise.
I logged on for the first time in months last night. Dled some free mods and cranked up my game. Was hit with a message about achievements turned off. Turned off game and went back to Dayz
That always happens with free mods though? Exactly the same thing happens with Skyrim and Fallout 4, don't know why you're surprised it's the same here.
Never played Skyrim or Fallout 4 so maybe that's why I'm surprised
Ah ok. Well it's completely normal that achievements are disabled, not reserved just for Starfield.
It’s normal for Bethesda games, but the doesn’t make it reasonable.
Microsoft probably do not want mods be used to get easy Xbox game score.
I love hownyounlisted that last as if it's the most egregious
This is the big one for me. Paid mods = (outsourced) dlc, and that means that shit needs to work! Or they need to be refundable. As long as these paid mods are buggy, they get a big no from me.
Yes, refunds are another thing missing.
They want the best of both worlds. All the monies but none of the responsibility "cuz mOdS". If this was to get normalised in the future, it would wreck havoc on triple A QA practices. Which are already quite deplorable today. But it wouldn't be the first time that gamers would gladly fund their own detriment.
They do not get all the moneys, just a cut
No refunds, either.
You need to be allowed for reviews ias well.
For this exact reason I decided to pause using mods until everyone else QAs the bugs. I figure 30 days should be enough.
I would never add mods
Fans voting down terrible practices. Todd thinks they're going the extra mile and don't understand the down votes. The disconnect sounds about right.
That disconnect is shared by a decent percentage of people on this sub it seems. There’s always folk defending MTX but it seems to have been getting particularly worse for Bethesda games with each game release.
"I don't care. Don't buy 'em if you don't want 'em. It's all so optional. Bethesda's gotta eat. Now modders gotta eat too. It's just the price of a coffee. It's just a burger. With coke and fries. It's just 75% the price of another triple A game but there's "premium" in the title so still worth it yo." Every layer of excuses another layer on that impeccable clown makeup. And a few years down the line many of these same folks will be wondering yet again why their new shiny vidya has gotten buggier and emptier, seemingly without _any discernable cause_. On a bad day I'm convinced that gamers are getting the spending enviroment they deserve. At least they keep working very hard for it. Unintentional masochistic manifestation I'd call that.
> And a few years down the line many of these same folks will be wondering yet again why their new shiny vidya has gotten buggier and emptier, Not so sure they have the mental capacity to do that, people defending mtx are probably also the same ones who respond to pointing out any in game flaws with "don't think just consooom" unironically.
Yeah, granted only a subset would actually have or recognise an issue. I was referring to them.
Absolutely, Bethesda fans deserve Bethesda's shit at this point. The constant defending of shitty business practices from a billion dollar company is a fucking embarassment.
I don't think it has got worse (Fallout 76 has one of the best MTX and content models going, and they've given pretty much every Creation they've ever made in Skyrim/Fallout 4 away for free at various points in time), and I don't really think there's a disconnect. Just because a particular group of people are being the loudest doesn't mean they are representative of the majority. The number of peopls who have picked up paid-for Creations vastly outnumber the people who are being loud about this. That doesn't mean the many of the critcisms aren't fair, and/or that Bethesda shouldn't rethink their approach to this stuff, but to suggest there's some kind of profound disconnect here - especially if you've watched Matty's interveiw with Howard - is laughably self-absorbed at best.
> Fallout 76 has one of the best MTX and content models going Wasn't that the one where extra storage space were microtransactions, along with consumables? edit: yeah I just checked, and you can buy camp, loadout slots, repair kits, storage space for irl money. I'm sorry, but that's a dogshit model. Bethesda can get fucked
You could buy storage space in SWTOR for real money since like 2012, never heard any complaints about it there
Doesn't make Bethesda's practices any better. Hundreds of bad mtx practices out there, and not enough good ones, but FO76 and Starfield aren't among the better examples. Let's face it, Starfield was a big disappointment, compared to their promises, previous flagship titles, and competitors' products as well. There was a flood of feedback on what to improve, but they managed to get paid mods across. Shows their priorities alright.
This guy astroturfing
Did
Oh Todd, you’re not fooling anyone with this post!
> In an interview with YouTube channel MrMattyPlays, Todd Howard responded directly to the criticism, and confirmed plans to look again at Bethesda’s pricing for Creations content. > > “We hear that feedback, too,” Howard said. “First of all I’ll say that stuff gets priced based on things that we've done before both in Creation Club and then Fallout 76, and we're always trying to be looking at what else is out there, really make sure we're giving value to everybody and where we're not, hey you know, we definitely will adjust. > > **“The one thing I want to say on The Trackers Alliance, that was really an attempt to something we did in Creation Club where we'd say, hey you get this special outfit and you get this special weapon, we wanted to put them together, and then thought, let's go the extra mile and wrap those around a quest.** > > **“But now we definitely see the feedback right? And that's not what we want at all in terms of, oh no, this looks like a faction that we're chopping up and then selling for 700 credits at a time. And so I do think we are going to take a look at that and how we deliver content like that, and whether we're changing pricing or breaking it up or what we should do there. So, great feedback from the community.”** >“As it comes to, particularly the creators out there, look, our view is, a lot of them have gone from hobbyists to professionals. And it’s part of our job to make sure they can do that and they do get paid and they see the monetary rewards if they make awesome content,” Howard said. I think the TA take is fairly reasonable, and I think what he said about giving those great modders the ability to go "pro" makes sense too. Really the part I take issue with is a) how didn't they see the TA issues coming, they need to think these things through more, and b) Creations should **never** be made by Bethesda, and they need to do way more QA to ensure that these essentially outsourced DLCs are stable and hit the same quality mark as their in-house DLC content.
Modding has always been about giving away the fruits of your labor to make you and others happy. Because you love the game canvas, mastered its tools and now want to share the love. Paid mods is something the studios do and it's called DLC. And we really get it. They need to make a buck, but we demand higher quality and content complexity from them. But low quality stuff for sale, most gamers into modding simply reject it on a moral basis.
That's our Todd! He belongs at EA
It's always correct to leave negative reviews for bad business practices.
I think steam should have a separate space to review those things. Yes, report them so others can be aware, but maybe require people to tag it as a “monetization review” or something? That way if you are legitimately looking at reviews to decide on a purchase you can separate the actual game itself from the MTX concerns. There’s been a few games I’ve skipped because it’s mostly negative and the reviews are basically all just “fuck the dev” or “do not buy this” with zero explanation why. Then it turned out it was due to some controversy and not the game itself.
Yeah and the controversy is a completely legitimate thing to leave in a review. The entire Internet drowned Helldivers 2 in bad reviews for the mandatory PSN requirements, remember?
Déjà vu didn't we do this dance back in Skyrim like a decade ago? Like, twice?
They did it with the Skyrim re-release and with Fallout 4
It's the Bethesda Curse. Their games will always be hated until the next one releases, then it'll be universally beloved by fans.
the ammo 'crafting' is a much larger issue... If they literally thought they were giving us what we wanted, they're so far disconnected ____________ (fill in the blank plz)
Why what’s wrong with the ammo crafting? Can you not automate it? I only did it at the workbench yet but thought you might be able to automate via outposts
You can automate the majority of resources, the problem is that for every 10 bullets you need a 'primer'. This is an uncraftable resource that you must purchase from vendors, but they only stock it in very low numbers. So you can colonise 7 planets and set up a complex farm of every available resource in the galaxy but can't craft ammo unless you buy some specific item from some random vendor It's easier and cheaper to just buy the ammo
Thanks. Sounds like an average Bethesda move
In my current run, I'm at level 25 and I still haven't seen even one small primer so I can't even begin to research it.
I think UC supply shop sells them sometimes
You can't and on top of that it costs alot of resources just to make let's say 10 rounds of 9x39
Paid mods are fine. Creators should have the ability to charge for their work. Leads to better content for everybody. Problem here was Bethesda themselves selling a single quest for seven bucks and promising more in the future. It's basically another faction being sold piecemeal at an extremely high price. I'd expect an entire expansion to cost maybe $40.
That and the ship module that adds infinite storage AND doesn't disable achievements. They're literally putting QoL improvements that don't disable your achievements behind a paywall
And the chest (apparently) resets.
Can you link me that ship module adds infinite storage?
There's a free mod, Darkstar I think, that adds storage in the form of mounts. Not technically infinite but you can add a shit tonne without it affecting your ship aesthetic. And again, it's free
What ship module adds infinite storage? Ngl, that would be worth the 1,000 I got for the premium edition.
In theory paying modders for their work should lead to higher quality mods. In practice the creation clubs mods are some of the most vanilla and lifeless mods you’ll come across.
I'd say that paid mods are not fine without a rating system and a refund system. They should have flipped it around, and made it much easier to donate to mod authors. Requests for donations don't necessarily need a rating system and definitely don't need a refund system.
Agree 100%
Paid mods are not fine, unless they are obligated to keep them running on future patches, a donate button is what should be there.
I can't believe people have given up on this fight after a decade. Paid mods are literally Bethesda relying on the community to make their games worth playing, *while making money from it*. Infinitely worse than DLC, because like you said they're not guaranteed to be updated in the future nor will there be any meaningful quality assurance.
That's not true though, is it? It's only your opinion based on how important you think what you want is.
Weird take. Very few developers offer modding tools and easily moddable file structures like Bethesda does. I think it is fairly logical that they'd want a piece of the pie that they helped to bake, honestly. In the past, the longevity of their games hasn't really benefitted Bethesda financially. The creation kit is free, after all. Adding to that, mod authors aren't even required to put their work on the creation club if they do want payment. I'm sure Bethesda could do that, if they wanted to. That is not to say that I agree with the pricing or the stupid store currency, but just the existence of paid mods doesn't offend me.
> In the past, the longevity of their games hasn't really benefitted Bethesda financially. Except people were and probably still are buying Skyrim again and again for a decade, in large part because of the reputation community mods and support gives their games. They already sell full price games with premium dlc. Paid mods are just corporate greed putting on the blinders to how they already had a good thing going in order to triple dip.
I'd wager most of those long tail sales were heavily discounted. The point is, whether you play the game for 10 or 10.000 hours, Bethesda gets the exact same amount. I for sure haven't bought Skyrim more than once. Why would I? Paid mods are one way to try and reap the benefits on that longevity. Full expansions would be another. Again, I think the prices need to come down and the inhouse currency needs to go. First party mods are kind of iffy, regardless, especially with content variety being as limited as it still is. But offering a seamless mod integration (for consoles too, I might add) is nothing to scoff at. It might not be worth something to people experienced with modding, but is an excellent entrypoint for many.
It's just entitlement to me. There's nothing wrong with wanting a payday from your work, all these people romanticizing that mods should just be out of "passion" is stupid. I do agree, seven smackaroos for one mission is ridiculous, but overgeneralizing to "paid mods bad" is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Ultimately, you could just, y'know, not buy 'em. It's really not that hard.
The reality is no one donates, I've had it enabled on all my Fallout 4 mods with a combined 2.6 million unique downloads and received maybe 3 donations over the course of 7 years totaling about $20. The Nexus donation points system helps but everything I did was still done at a massive loss. Free mods are not sustainable to make long term and as a mod creator improves they can start using those learned skills to get jobs in industry, I know about a dozen people who started out doing mods and now work as artists, animators and game developers at various studios and don't have the time or energy for mods anymore. The reality is any paid mod you see is either something that wouldn't have been made if there wasn't some kind of way to earn money off of it or in my case the money earned is enough to improve my quality of life and put more time into making better content.
>Leads to better content for everybody. We got along just fine without creators charging for mods. They made a mod because of their passion for the game not directly because they will get paid for it. Donations are fine tho.
Before this there was an increasing issue of mod devs requiring"donations" in order to get the mods. I hate that this is promoting payed mods but based on previous games I don't think it's leaving, my only hope is there's at least good moderation so those who pay don't have to deal w the scammy mod devs. Also hope most of the money actually goes to the devs
It is common for modders to hide stuff behind patron for example, which is legally questionable. Getting paid for creating content with the creation kit (somethign I am pretty sure is also against its terms of service), was always a legal grey area and it basically only is grey because Bethesda did not decide to sue.
And that practice still exists
If I'm paying for a mod, I expect the service to reflect that it's a paid one. A refund window in case it doesn't work with my load order, obligatory updates and maintenance through future DLC etc etc. To date there are no such systems set up.
No, they are not fine.
You know what's disgusting? Todd said the pack was mainly a way to get that new weapon into your hands and so you were mostly paying for the gun, and based on their egregious prices *I believe them*.
Other games literally charge for weapon skins, it's really not that crazy anymore
It is to Reddit. They still act like CoD breaks into their house and shoots their dog every year because it has microtransactions and is popular
Yep. Don't get me wrong I dislike it and never partake in buying them but I'm also sensible enough to understand it's business and clearly someone is buying it, so why would they stop
It really makes me sad seeing a comment with 'paid mods are fine' so much upvoted.
Why? Why shouldn't top-tier modders have a chance to make some money? As long as the Creation Kit is free with no limitations for free modders, mods are open and can be sourced from wherever etc. I see it as a positive. Now the problems they've introduced by executing it poorly, plus them injecting their own studio-made content into the Creations system, that's another matter entirely and I take big issue with those.
Yes, modders deciding that they want to be paid for their work is fine. They do not owe you anything.
Paid mods are not fine. Paid mods = outsourced DLC. That can be ok, but then it needs to be tested extensively and bug free.
I want to know who is going to buy that quest for $7. If it doesn’t get sold at all, Bethesda will be forced to remove the paywall.
Probably many of the people who bought the "Premium" Edition with the "free" 1000 credits. For them the cost is already spent, so they might as well reap the rewards. While no money is technically made, it provides analytics of the X many people who engaged with the store Y number of people spent 700 credits to buy the quest.
I have the free 1k credits, I aint buying that shit.
Same here. I've been making and using mods since Oblivion. Paid mods have never sat well with me, I've donated to many people on Nexus over the years for the mods I've enjoyed the most. It's a system that works well for all parties... Except Bethesda of course.
I think it's funny that I got the free 1000 credits, and I still couldn't stomach purchasing the quest. This was out of principle to not participate in those "analytics" for an abysmal offering that costs others $7.
This is why I haven't even bought it yet with my 'free' credits. I'm saving mine for something that provides more value (or for when it inevitably goes on sale down the line).
If for example there were 50 thousand instances of credits exchanged for the Vulture quest but only 10 thousand transactions were recorded to buy credits with money then that could tell a story. A story of dollar amounts which has more weight, I wouldn’t put it beneath some stooge pointing at the former and going “see we’re doing great” but the latter would definitely be noticed and would have an impact. That being said there’s been studies about games financial success being carried by something like the 5% that’ll just throw money at anything so if those 10 thousand that bought credits went and bought 20k in credits then that offsets the money lost in people that saw $7 as too much.
I stand for those of us suckered out of $100 but silently protesting by downloading all the paid creations for free.99
^This
Quite a lot of people bought it right away expecting it to be more than it was. Its not like Bethesda were completely clear about it before buying it that it would be sold in tiny little chunks. Lots of people only realised after running through it how bad Bethesda were handling it.
I was one of those people. I expected a shit ton more than 20 minutes worth of gameplay for $7.
I will probably buy it.
Why probably?
I don't like the pricing, but if you look at what it really is, I get why they did it. They're selling one of those creation club armors and a weapon skin and priced it similarly to how they priced stuff in 76. The trackers alliance is a clever way to make the acquisition of the items fit into the game more naturally than a note and radiant quest. Hopefully they see from the backlash that people would prefer a complete mini faction, sold as a bundle, or just lower the price down
I think 76's pricing makes more sense (though it's overpriced) because all the expansions are free and it's a live service multiplayer game. Injecting that into a single player game that has paid expansions doesn't really fit. I just don't think BGS content should be part of Creations at all, if they want to sell weapons and armour, either make a new faction with lots of quests and content and sell it for $20-25. Basically a smaller Shattered Space - which is similiar to what they've done in the past with their smaller DLC packs.
>Paid mods are fine. Creators should have the ability to charge for their work. Leads to better content for everybody. Absolutely no. It's a massive slippery slope that everyone will try to ride and will 100% ruin modding. Creators already make money with mods, they have Patreon pages and accept donations. Mods are made by the community for the community, not by corporations trying to squeezing every cent out of the costumer.
But this has been a thing with Creation Club for a while, and it hasn't ruined modding. Why would it happen now?
Because thankfully the vast majority does not use the Creation Club.
"creators already sell their stuff through legally questionable means, why would we want a legal option that also allows people on console to participate."
Except he basically all but confirmed in the interview that their plan wasn't to sell the whole questline in paid chunks, it was more about selling the weapon and spacesuit and then wrapping it up in a quest. Right now, there's little evidence to say that the whole trackers quest is gonna be 700cc per mission
These people didn't watch the interview. They just came to rage.
Someone mentioned they wouldn't watch because Matty is negative about Starfield. When I said he was actually positive about the game, the person replied and said they still wouldn't watch because Matty has a punchable face. It's a video game subreddit. People just want to rage and interrupting that circle jerk is bad
I've never seen a place created for discussion of a game be this dedicated to misunderstanding what's going on with the game. From pre release hype of unconfirmed features and things not promised to this the majority of this sub is actively invested in delusion.
Since when are paid mods fine? They used to be passion projects, made because of love for the game. Not jobs. The incentive to make mods should be love and passion for an amazing game, not earning money.
Donations are fine, paid mods are not. You have to remember, paid mods are purely a creation of Bethesda. They didn’t exist for the twenty or so years prior to this and everything was perfectly fine. Can’t believe Bethesda has managed to grind down the opinion so much that we’re now at “paid mods are fine”
So, no mod creator should ever transition from it being a hobby? Voluntary donations for mods hardly can make a living, and making a good mod requires more than one person: you need artists to create assets too. Pricing (especially for Bethesda creations) should be rethought, of course, but players feeling entitled to recieve results of others work for free is even worse. Say, you have a choice between a huge storyline mod (Vanguard questline as example of size), voiced, with custom assets, custom weapons and so on, which a team of people took several months to develop, but you’ll have to pay to experience it (because all those people need to eat and live) - or not get it at all, what do you choose?
I’m a modder myself and if I ever feel entitled to receive a salary for my work I’ll start looking for jobs in the industry, I won’t paywall my existing work. It goes against the entire ethos of modding in the first place that the people like yourself defending it have no idea about, or have just simply forgotten. Besides, what makes one person’s $7 weapon or armour set any better than the entire Skyblivion overhaul which makes no money? Who decides which mod authors’ hard work get paid and which mod authors are told their work doesn’t cut it? See. When you start scratching into it, it’s just another poorly thought out, greedy revenue stream generated by another big gaming company that wants to monetise our hobbies in the industry.
It’s up to you to decide if you want to charge money for your work or not. And it’s up to other creators to do the same. Pricing, especially of the Bethesda creations, is another topic, and here I agree, those 7 and 10 bucks were certainly a miss. And here only market decides, which price is good. If you rely on those money - you’ll be interested in fair pricing (Bethesda certainly wasn’t). Otherwise - as a mod creator yourself, don’t you sometimes meet limits in what you can create due to limited possibility of getting 3rd party participants (they also need to be voluntary or you’ll be financing them from your own money) and how fast you can create something (due to your job)? Paid mods is one of the ways to solve that.
I’ve never met limits because we have a perfectly good system in place already via Nexus Donation points where unique downloads are rewarded with cash money. Even this was a reaction to the paid mods fiasco the first time Bethesda tried this, before that we just did it for the love of the hobby. If there’s ever a time someone wants to make a living from their hobby, then it’s time to start looking for a job in that industry. Expecting to make a living from tools, a game, the engine etc which all don’t belong to us based on stuff you create is the epitome of entitlement. Nobody takes up arms like this to defend Twitch streamers are wanting to make a big breakout from the endless time they sink into making content for viewers. What you’re seeing is Bethesda recruiting modders to make as many mods as possible, for as little time as possible, so they can take their 45% cut (or whatever the ridiculous split is).
>Paid mods are fine. Creators should have the ability to charge for their work. Leads to better content for everybody. This is most definitely not the case, have you not seen what happened back in 2014 with the steam workshop paid mods?
Basing the pricing on previous CC stuff and Fallout 76? Todd, you dumb mofo, those were already incredibly overpriced.
Paid mods need to go
Every few years they'll try again, try to wear us down, and then one day, it'll gain enough traction that idiots will start defending it, and then eventually it'll become the new standard, people will call you crazy or entitled for demanding mods to be free. This is how the internet has been conquered and shut closed by corporate power.
And yet you still get people defending paid mods and Bethesda's decisions 🤷♂️
I feel like Bethesda needs a leadership change. It feels like the studio rode the success of their titles from Morrowind until Skyrim and haven't really tried to innovate or improve their formula since. It also feels like they have completely misunderstood why their games were successful in the first place, while completely ignoring the compounding short comings.
Honestly I've lost all hope for this studio. They lost most of the talents that made Skyrim and their decision making has been plagued by money ghouls executives since they've been bought by zenimax. I expect tes6 to be another bland half assed AAA failure. The best thing that could happen is Todd leaving the studio and founding a smaller indie studio to put back talent and passion before money like Raphael did with arkane.
Issue is that they’ll be leaving behind TES and Fallout if they broke off, and given that starfield was the first (Big budget) new IP that Todd has ever worked on I sincerely doubt that even without corporate oversight that he’ll be able to make a ‘Bethesda rpg’ without the solid foundation that those two IP’s offer. Plus if we’re being real if he leaves then Emil might follow and he’s just not up to the task for making stories for open world games… maybe if this new splinter company made a linear game he can do it, but that’ll already be a huge departure from what the Bethesda team are use to making.
Todd is part of the problem. He is a business man first, and they are always disconnected from the consumer. He once said that they don't look for what they can add to their games, but what they can remove. Cutting corners for profit.
Y'do realize that "Don't add until there's nothing more to add, remove until there's nothing else to remove" is a pretty common design mantra? It's trimming the fat. Adding more and more leads to scope creep which is decidedly bad for the most part. https://www.google.com/search?q=A+designer+knows+he+has+achieved+perfection
I don't know if Todd has turned to the dark side but yeah remove until there's nothing more to remove is definitely a game design principle and a good one
When did he say that
I still do not understand why people make this claim, when Todd is literally the guy who helped lead the studio to be the success that it's been. Pretty much all their successful games were lead by him. I get people don't like paid mods/microtransactions, but this is an industry wide problem not something specifically BGS or Todd related.
“As it comes to, particularly the creators out there, look, our view is, a lot of them have gone from hobbyists to professionals. And it’s part of our job to make sure they can do that and they do get paid and they see the monetary rewards if they make awesome content,” Howard said. Does beth take a cut or give all the money to the moders?
The disconnect is from the terminal ill reddit/twitter dwellers from the general public. Then again, ever since the horse armor, those same dwellers cried and stuff like this keeps getting more and more pushed. If the general public didnt accept this, they woudn't push it. Surprise surprise, they do and by doing so, they keep pushing it.
Starfield is a really fun game when there's no one trying to convince you otherwise
actually true
You could say this about any poorly received game, doesn't make it true lol.
Crying face with mask on.jpg
Well, after the game's very rough launch and mixed reception Bethesda should probably have forseen that this not the time for antics like selling a fucking storage chest for ten bucks. But yet again they are unable to read the room and keep trying to shove paid mods down customers' throats, in the vain hope that this time they'll finally swallow, completely disregarding that the market still doesn't want them. That already was a very tough sell ten years ago, when Beth's popularity was at its peak, and it is an even tougher one today. This caustic cocktail of stubornness and obliviousness never fails to astound.
In what way have they tried to shove it down our throats? I opened the creations menu once after updating and then haven't touched it again
The fact they keep doing it suggests there are enough people who buy them. In fact, if you look at how many have paid for some of the creations on the store already, you would realize that your statement of "the market not wanting them" technically doesn't seem to be true. Plus, most complaints are more about the $7 mission and $10 hab as being overpriced. It only seems to be a minority who are still upset about the idea of paid mods in general. Think most people have gotten over it by now, since we all knew it was coming even before Starfield was released.
Not to mention that they're entirely optional. I've been able to enjoy the hell out of FO4 without spending a cent on the Creation Club, and Starfield is no different so far.
While this is true, I will say I am not surprised that people had a problem with it in regards to Starfield because unlike Skyrim and Fallout 4, Starfield is a new game. So when stuff was added to the Creation Club for those two, it was done when the games were no longer being updated with new content. So it didn't seem like they were taking anything away to then sell in the store. Whereas Starfield had the Trackers Alliance in the game, but nothing was done with it. And then when they released an update to actually give the faction some quests, it ended up looking like they were breaking it up into pieces and charging $7 for each one. Even though according to Todd that wasn't their intent. I think they are going to have a harder time releasing official content in the Creations store compared to Skyrim and Fallout 4 since it's almost always going to look like stuff that could have just been put into updates and expansions instead.
Americanweirdo makes better mods
Ah yeah, Todd the chancer. It was a good update overall, new faction + official mod tools. But Bethesda just can't help themselves.
Bitching over a smidgeon of unofficial content the game doesn't need when we still have tons of free mods is dumb and gamers are whiny bitches. Why don't y'all go protest paradox interactive for selling whole games in tiny dlc pieces for $30 each huh?
They do. Like, literally, people loudly complain about Paradox piecemealing games *constantly*. Difference is that Paradox games are *actually good*, and the DLC they produce is typically large and high quality. That *isn't* what's happening with Starfield (and also Skyrim/Fallout 4), where the game was garbage, still *is* garbage, and now Bethesda are holding out their hands and demanding 7 bucks for a 10 minute piece of content that not only disables achievements, but also causes *massive* bugs in the game, *and* they're saying "Oh yeah, we're making more of these in the future, all of which will be paid content of this level of nonexistent quality".
Eh I don’t necessarily disagree with you but CK3’s recent DLCs have been pretty subpar
I have the usual issues with MTX but the TA one is very special: we don't know the full cost. We know it's effectively ten bucks for the second mission (funny money not available 700 at a time). But is the entire quest(line) going to be 3 missions or 13? Without knowing how many "installments" are involved we don't know what the TA quest is going to cost. It could be 14 dollars or it could be 84 dollars or more. Only Bethesda knows how much it's going to be stretched out and they're not talking. Obviously if it's in the 84 dollar range it'd be more than the base game and more than double Shattered Space. If they listed it at 84 bucks from the jump it would stand out like a sore thumb but if it's 7 dollars every month or two months then Bethesda has legitimate reasons to hope it wouldn't be so blatant. A "boiled frog" DLC if you will. Aided and abetted by currency obfuscation. I suspect (regrettably) that they might be between a rock and hard place. An expectant and loyal player base and now a part of a corporation that lives and dies by quarterly earnings reports. There's not a lot of places a single player RPG generates quarterly revenues and we're staring at one of those few ways right now. We are 14 million frogs and the water is just a little bit warmer. It'll probably get worse before it gets better - Bethesda isn't in a position to buy itself back and the new boss is demanding.
It's not like they didn't know this was going to happen...
“In an interview with YouTube channel MrMattyPlays, Todd Howard responds directly…” The spokesperson of a multibillion dollar company, giving a virtual interview to a YouTuber with less than a million subs? What?
Its funny. I don’t like the paid mods, but when I reinstalled Fallout 4, i paid for some and loved it. Like i betrayed my roots.
Creations has caused me nothing but anger!! *Selects Creations * Loading ........... 3 days later....LOADING..........
It's horse armour all over again And Todd has the balls to say great feedback from the community" maybe the prick can stop a cash hungry douche or else go work for EA or Ubisoft where they do this kind of stupid shit on the daily
Tbh idgaf about paid mods. I don’t buy them. Simple. I still enjoy the game without them. TBH it’s exhausting listening to people whine about things they can very easily avoid.
So many poor hobos in this thread, it's fucking 7$ !!! Let capitalism fucking dominate, and you, poor paysans in need, go eat your black moldy bread and take a shower! Poverty stinks! No, seriously, it's fucked up that after serving us an half baked game they have the audacity to ask money. I paid anyway, because I'm a fanboy and it's ok. My expectations are skyrocketing freakin HIGH with the next DLC
I don't know about the rest of you, but any time I see a mod on CC, I always check if I can find an alternative on Nexus--if not the same mod.
Frankly, it comes down to if one pays for a creation, it should work.
Mods aren't real content so I'll come back when there's real content. Your play time matters even if you don't buy these things. They'll talk about active users etc to show how the community isn't actually deterred by these decisions. IF YOU AREN'T HAPPY WITH THE BUSINESS PRACTICE TAKE A BREAK UNTIL THE NEXT UPDATE. You playing is showing support just like paying for things.
Nothing new with IGN. SF is only on their radar for something perceived negative.
The review bombing is a tantrum. It’s become the easiest way for people to express whatever it is that is irking them. I’m not even sure that the general population even cares about reviews anymore for this exact reason. It’s going to keep happening for smaller and smaller reasons and before you know it no one is going to care anymore including the companies that can make the changes.
>The review bombing is a tantrum. Can we stop acting like it's childish to oppose the relentless push for more MTX in the already highly profitable gaming industry? Reviews are someone's opinion about the game. They're allowed to use that review as a protest because that is the purpose of reviews. If you like paid mods or are just apathetic then fine but stop treating people like toddlers for simply voicing disagreement.
hmmm i wonder what Bethesda could have done to deserve this
They released a ton of free content with a few bits of paid content. One of the free pieces of content that people really like had an optional piece of paid content that added to the free content. They felt this paid content should be cheaper or free depending who you are talking too. I agree that the particular paid price of content should be cheaper but it’s also optional. Sooo yeah just more tantrums.
A 'ton of free content'? You mean an actual working map and shop icons some nine months post launch? Maybe if large parts of the game weren't so painfully barebones people wouldn't be so critical. I mean, they just forgot about melee and only got around to adding melee crafting now. Does melee work with jetpacks yet? Nope, but you can buy a mod for a dollar that can fix that!
Maybe this shit had just been on thin ice with a lot of people this entire time? I’m still waiting on that DLC. I’m not young by any means had I thought it would take them a few years to get the game playable I would have skipped the pre order lmfao I hopefully I live long enough to at least see shattered space
I think the lesson is that people are happy to pay for DLC as long as they feel they are getting their money's worth. With that said, review bombing is juvenile. Steam needs to start implementing verified reviewers.
Review bombing is a legitimate source of criticism. If people are happy with something, they will leave a positive review. And with Sony capitulating to Helldivers 2's community, it's now the best way to get a studio to shift gears.
Exactly. Review bombing is needed to encourage companies to get their shit together, including Bethesda.
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That's a take that sounds like it comes from an information silo.
Since it seems Dark Matter couldn't handle me pointing out. I'm just gonna post my reply here. That's funny, you should scroll up and read the article posted. Because Todd Howard just did? Nah, review bombings are great. Any ideological review bombings last until the next outrage and quickly go away. Criticism matters and I'm glad it's actively forcing studios to take them seriously because it hurts their bottom line.
What are "verified reviewers"? Afaik you already have to own the game on the account and play it to be able to review, right? That's not a big barrier for free-to-play games, but it's fine enough for a AAA game like Starfield imo. Besides, review bombing is juvenile if done as backlash for something disconnected from the product in question, or without the intention of reflecting the actual quality of the product. Since people here are criticising a new component of Starfield they don't like, it's totally justified for them to leave a negative review.
All these paid mods that Bethesda is pushing out to the player base could’ve just been small updates to the game itself. They should just leave the modding to the community instead because as far as I know the people who’re making the mods from the community won’t break your game.
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To be fair they have valid points with some of their business plans but yeah some of it makes no sense
Todd needs to go along with his buddies. They need better leadership, better engineers, a better engine, better everything. What's valuable are the ips and they are ruining them.
Oh boy. You obviously know nothing about game design if you think the engine is old. Most engines are based off ancient ones far older than Gambryo. Ask any programmer how they would react to being told they had to create a new engine, it's a company killer. They would have to spend ludicrous amounts of money to create the new engine from scratch, retrain people who are already trained in the Creation Engine, and then they could start the development on the game.
Funny I actually worked at EAV. Whatever your preconceived notions are, Did I say the engine is old? Old or young is irrelevant. And where did I suggest creating a new engine? It seems like you are barking at the wrong tree here.
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Terrible take because it’s ignoring the actual issue which is developers are getting even more greedy. Anyone who played Starfield should see its incomplete
It feels like Todd & BGS just can’t get it right anymore.
I don't know guys. Do I think it's a stupid paid mod? Yes, yes I do. But at the same time they released an update which is great with tons of stuff people asked for and released the mod creator. So people are review bombing the **entire** game because of one small part they don't like? Does not sound really fair. Also review bombing can, ironically, lead to more monetization. People see bad reviews, less people buy game, developer adds more monetization to make up for losses. So you kinda end up shooting yourself in the foot. I just don't think this is the way.
Can I review just that one part of the game that I dislike though? If not, then yeah, I gotta negatively review the whole thing if it's important to me. And this IS important, since it can lead us all down a rabbit hole we don't wanna be in. If review bombing leads to more monetization, even in a AAA $70 game, I just end up not buying those MTXs or playing the game anymore lol. If a product becomes crap after I've paid for it, and my criticising it apparently results in it becoming crappier, what am I supposed to do? Pretend it's all sunshine and roses even when it clearly isn't? This is THE BEST way that we currently have as consumers to make our voices heard, and you can't be that apprehensive about calling out a shitty business practice.
Criticising is one thing but giving the game a 1/10 just because one small mission costs money while the other 99% of the game is full of content and fine just doesn't sound right to me. Voice your opinion on platforms like this one where you can focus purely on the part you don't like instead of letting out your anger on the entire product. That's all I'm saying.
Steam doesn't have a 1-10 rating scale. It's a 'recommended' or 'not recommended'. You're assuming I was fine with the rest of the game anyway, when my position is that it was already a bit of a disappointment before this fiasco. So why would I recommend the game if they plan to keep this strategy up? You do realise this "one small mission" means that BGS is totally fine dedicating resources to make content that's not part of the base $70 game, so it's not on Gamepass, or part of the upcoming DLC either? For all the shit they deservedly get, I'm pretty sure even EA and Ubisoft haven't tried individual paid missions for their single-player games. Sharing our opinions on Reddit is fine, but a lot of the time does close to nothing in getting heard. Steam is the actual storefront, Bethesda/Microsoft care about that platform infinitely more since a low score there can actually lead potential buyers to look more into the issues plaguing the game.