Skyrim - What We're Working On

[Ovenall]

Well that's just silly. It is, however, never the wrong time to pontificate (with sanctimonious zeal) against the evils of regulatory and statutory ambiguity. Nor is it ever the too early to preach of the dangerous power it affords unqualified unaccountable censors and sanctimonious zealots. Its the kind of thing that could let someone like me decide whether or not Obsidian's Southpark game gets to be enjoyed by the wider audiences its unimaginable glory would naturally command.

Well, you win because I cannot tell whether you're being sarcastic or not.

Anyway, sorry folks, but computer and video games are seen as "toys" by older people who vote regularly and control much of the wealth, power and media in the USA. "Toys" are for children who must always be protected, at least in political ads.

And at the same time these huge games are big, risky, complicated business investments. Companies are always going to cover their asses.

 

[jhwisner]

Companies are always going to cover their asses.

I did mix in a little sarcasm and was kind of making fun of myself for being a a little bit of a hypocrite.

Yeah it's cold (perhaps cowardly at times) pragmatism. The condescending paternalism comes from outside the industry but weilds undue influence over the content in games. They are why there was an updated version of GTA that blocked the hot-coffee mod, they are why there was a special edited version of Indigo Prophecies which cut out several scenes. It's not because the companies believed Americans couldn't handle it (except for Nitendo, but they're jerks)- it is because the threat of being labeled as AO was so significant. Its easier for most to give a wide birth to the sort of sexual content that seems to rile up the sensibilities of the ESRB and those who pressure them than it is to risk costly delays or having games pulled from shelves. That is why there are about as many games listed as "formerly" classified as AO as there are games that kept that rating.

And yeah these stalwart defenders of our children's innocence do seem to balk at interactive boobies more than they do explodable toros. I suppose that has a lot to do with beleiving their children will probably have a good and righteous reason for exploding someone's torso in the near future but that the only reason for interacting with boobies outside of obtaining sustenance is vile and wicked.

I'll stop derailing this with rants. Sorry about that.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

They did say they wanted to be able to offer select PC created mods and enhancements on the consoles as well - and this sort of service would provide a pretty good environment for finding and vetting those mods.

I just hope that they won't come up with a point in their terms that makes ANY mod that's been made with their tools AUTOMATICALLY become property of Bethsoft.

10 years ago I heard from someone who was active in the NWN community then that Bioware's lawyers had made up terms that included exactly that. They changed it after a lot of protests, though.

 

[ChaosTheory]

Really frustrated with this game, now, since the patch. It's basically unplayable. If I didn't have 60 hours in already, I wouldn't care, but to release a patch that wasn't properly tested is inexcusable. It's not like I'm running anything exotic in my PC that would put it in an outlier hardware spec...

 

[kalniel]

'… and something awesome happens'

I heard that one already. But seriously do you believe that a person who invested time\effort\passion into mod is ready willingly submit it for authorization to unknown corporate official. How many mods have you made?

For TES? But a handful, and most of them were for family and friends only. For other games, loads. I'd estimate close to a year's work equivalent perhaps.

I've done a couple, both were mediocre and simple even by most lenient standards. But I hold them dear to my heart and would send into Oblivion anyone who dares to usurp the right to decide if they are good enough for release or not.

Really? I guess I'm not that precious about them. I could always release them on Nexus if Steam somehow thought they were crap and I disagreed. Or if not Nexus, anywhere else I liked.

Neither I, nor any other modder, has a God given right to free hosting services - if I don't like the rules or decisions of someone offering their own services then I should stump up the cost to host my own.

 

[mazur49]

Exactly my point - mods will go elsewhere and Workshop will end to be a bleak shade of Nexus, elricm.com or planeteldescrolls. If you see that and I see that than why Beth is launching it?

 

[mazur49]

I just hope that they won't come up with a point in their terms that makes ANY mod that's been made with their tools AUTOMATICALLY become property of Bethsoft.

10 years ago I heard from someone who was active in the NWN community then that Bioware's lawyers had made up terms that included exactly that. They changed it after a lot of protests, though.

It's already included in TES CS TOS. All esp\esm mods are property of Bethosft but not resources used in them like meshes, textures, animations, sound. It never was a problem since they never abused this clause by marketing mods via proprietary channels. With Workshop things are going to change.

 

[Harlequin]

Because it'll give a better experience for some people. I'm looking forward to it - much nicer to just pull down something over Steam than have to register for a mod site and then set up update reminders etc.

As long as the adult content is allowed (which it should be) then I have 0 issue with this. The added gore, children kill-able and nudity mods all have a place as well as the more generic mods. As long as there is no censoring going on then great idea, if there is all this will do is splinter the mod community and make it even more difficult.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

It's already included in TES CS TOS. All esp\esm mods are property of Bethosfte.

Interesting. This would effectively keep me from Modding there.

Because it would be my thoughts, my inventions that were becoming their property.

"Thoughts are free" ? Ha !

 

[joxer]

As long as the adult content is allowed (which it should be) then I have 0 issue with this. The added gore, children kill-able and nudity mods all have a place as well as the more generic mods. As long as there is no censoring going on then great idea, if there is all this will do is splinter the mod community and make it even more difficult.

This pretty much sums up my thoughts. I'm aware not everyone is interested in boobs… Well, ok, not into excesive number of boobs like I am…
And if upping a mod that adds more boobs to the game is allowed, hell, why would I complain?

 

[sakichop]

Uh, I play on PC. I installed it and started playing on High graphics settings. The only thing I've changed is tuning off antialiasing (seems to run a little smoother this way) and changing the FOV angle using the console.

I've had one crash in ~30 hours playing. The update didn't seem to mess with my game at all, or at least nothing I've noticed.

Sorry you're having problems. But the truth is games are going to run better for most people on the fixed, standardized equipment in a console. PCs are all over the place. Put the game down for a few months and come back after the next several updates and patches.

I'm not really having problems per se I just feel they could have spent more time polishing the pc version. (controls, dx 11 ect, ect)

@thaurin and I have been having an ongoing debate. He feels that developers focus on all platforms equally (as I understand his position) I think that's false and believe dev's devote many more resources to console development.

I had no crashes in 40 hours at release. After the patch I had 4 crashes in 5 hours so I installed the laa mod and haven't had any rashes since.

The mouse becoming unresponsive in menu's forcing me to scroll and select with keyboard has been an ongoing issue for me since release, although it's not game breaking . Just annoying.

I just feel when I purchase a AAA pc game it should come with things like full dx 11 support, setting to take advantage of higher end systems and most of all fully optimized keyboard and mouse controls. Stuff like being able to remap all keys (no hard coded keys) hotkeys that actually work (dual wielding especially) every thing mapped to a hotkey now goes to my right hand and responsive mouse control even in menu's. A pc gui not a console one with limited keyboard and mouse support.

None of my issues are Major and looking around forum's I'm not the only one with these issues. Which makes it even more frustrating because it seems if they would just spend some time with the pc version these would be easy fixes.

Maybe they will fix them in a patch and if they don't i'm sure modders will. Will I even be playing then though I've got a lot of hours in to it already. will I want to play again when it get around to getting fixed.

Guess I should have listened to JDR13 and waited 6 months and picked it up.

 

[Dhruin]

Interesting. This would effectively keep me from Modding there.

Because it would be my thoughts, my inventions that were becoming their property.

"Thoughts are free" ? Ha !

"Your" inventions? Based on their intellectual property, art assets and engine? It's not as simple as you are making it sound.

 

[Dhruin]

I just feel when I purchase a AAA pc game it should come with things like full dx 11 support [...]

"Niche markets have no right expecting graphics paid for with mainstream money". - Chris Bateman

I agree about the controls issue but by what right can you expect a certain level of graphical features?

 

[Ovenall]

sakichop-

That's reasonable. I agree with a lot of what you wrote. Thing is, it's a business. They know the people buying it for PC are pretty hardcore and their money's already in the pocket. The success of the amateur modding and patching community probably has let them ship games with unpolished UI, etc.

Oh well. We can always just choose not to give them our money, right?

 

[Thaurin]

@thaurin and I have been having an ongoing debate. He feels that developers focus on all platforms equally (as I understand his position) I think that's false and believe dev's devote many more resources to console development.

Hey! That's my name! I didn't exactly say that developers focus on all platforms equally (but I do pretty much think so—they really are not interested in releasing a sloppy product on any platform if they can help it). I said that most coding (and obviously assets, design, etc.) is sharable among the platforms. Thus, work done on the console side benefits the PC side, because a bug can affect both platforms—or expose problems, anyway. A compiler for one platform will handle things a bit different than the other and will bring to the front problems that can benefit the code base as a whole. But enough of the technical side.

No AAA company does anything that is not thought through. It is juvenile to think so. There is too much at stake, too much money invested and too many people involved. Everything is carefully planned and deliberate. So if you think that your problems with the PC version are due to neglect, think again. They wanted it this way, for whatever reason--and it's not because they favour the console side, because the amount of work to optimize for PC pales to the total development cycle. I can swallow that they want both versions to be alike, but I would be interested in hearing their argument for why.

Like I said, personally I don't have that many issues at all. I play with keyboard/mouse, love the interface but am suffering regular crashes that I hope they will one day resolve. It's the reality of PC gaming, unfortunately. Much harder to get down.

 

[sakichop]

"Niche markets have no right expecting graphics paid for with mainstream money". - Chris Bateman

I agree about the controls issue but by what right can you expect a certain level of graphical features?

Niche markets made a lot of these companies big, Unfortunately once they get big they forget that.

I pay $60 just like everyone else (except pirates). That gives me the right to expect whatever I want. I do realize though that they don't have to give it to me.

 

[sakichop]

sakichop-

That's reasonable. I agree with a lot of what you wrote. Thing is, it's a business. They know the people buying it for PC are pretty hardcore and their money's already in the pocket. The success of the amateur modding and patching community probably has let them ship games with unpolished UI, etc.

Oh well. We can always just choose not to give them our money, right?

I own my own business so the businessman in me gets it . Follow the money and make as much of it as possible. Right now the money isn't in the pc version, but...

That makes the pc gamer in me sad.

 

[Bedwyr]

"Your" inventions? Based on their intellectual property, art assets and engine? It's not as simple as you are making it sound.

Dhruin is unfortunately right. Mods fall under copyright law in the US as derivative works:

http://tinyurl.com/bqenvng

 

[sakichop]

Hey! That's my name! I didn't exactly say that developers focus on all platforms equally (but I do pretty much think so—they really are not interested in releasing a sloppy product on any platform if they can help it). I said that most coding (and obviously assets, design, etc.) is sharable among the platforms. Thus, work done on the console side benefits the PC side, because a bug can affect both platforms—or expose problems, anyway. A compiler for one platform will handle things a bit different than the other and will bring to the front problems that can benefit the code base as a whole. But enough of the technical side.

No AAA company does anything that is not thought through. It is juvenile to think so. There is too much at stake, too much money invested and too many people involved. Everything is carefully planned and deliberate. So if you think that your problems with the PC version are due to neglect, think again. They wanted it this way, for whatever reason—and it's not because they favour the console side, because the amount of work to optimize for PC pales to the total development cycle. I can swallow that they want both versions to be alike, but I would be interested in hearing their argument for why.

Like I said, personally I don't have that many issues at all. I play with keyboard/mouse, love the interface but am suffering regular crashes that I hope they will one day resolve. It's the reality of PC gaming, unfortunately. Much harder to get down.

I wouldn't say neglect. I would say more , planned indifference. I would agree it's no mistake the pc version is as it is. I would disagree that they don't favor consoles. As you said game companies are not dumb some companies have said 90% of their sales are from consoles. So if we both agree they are not dumb how can you honestly say the wouldn't favor consoles? If those #'s are correct they have to favor consoles it's their only smart choice and is probable why many companies have admitted as much. That's why i'm confused you'd disagree with that. That doesn't mean as a pc only gamer I have to like it. I just have to deal with it. Thus my frustration.

I'm not saying they are releasing garbage for the pc. I know they wouldn't do that.
I agree that most code is sharable among the platforms and if all 3 platforms were the same that would be great.

I've used the comparison before but it's the best one I can think of. If they made a cross platform game for ds,psp,xbox and ps3 and said hey we want to use the same code for all. You fire up the game on your ps3 and it defaults to ds controls. They still support your controller but you can't map to the shoulder buttons and your analog sticks are a little wonky. The graphics are the best they can make for a ds game anyway.They've taken their time with the game and made the best possible game they could within the limitations of what a ds can do. Sure after the fact they tack on some xbox 360 and ps3 features but it still feels very ds. It's still a cross platform game but when you make 1 game for all the platforms your limited to the lowest common denominator which is the ds. I don't think 360 and ps3 owners would be very happy. The best part would be though when someone that plays the ds a lot tells you it's beneficial for the game to be that way.

Unless at some point before release they decide to make changes to take advantage of each individual system. I think this is where the pc version falls short.

Again I get it. It's business. the console version brings in the cash so when it's done so is the pc version even if there's still room for improvement there.

 

[Tuco]

Steam Workshop is an entirely community-driven thing so all this discussion about it being "shady, corporative and dangerous" is just bullshit.