No reason to be rude, no I don't fail to understand your point. What you describe is exactly what I am doing with modded MW - playing with rules and content I have created (or selected from a large number of choices).
I didn't mean to be rude?
Yeah, maybe that's what you enjoy, but I don't. I don't like having to make decisions for the designer, as I said, because then I feel like I'm "cheating" or corrupting the experience.
Maybe it sounds like I'm a fanatic, or something, but I HAVE played games this way - and my conclusion is simply that I don't enjoy it - when it's all said and done.
I can have fun, but eventually I'll encounter a situation where the balance is off, or something is clearly not meant to happen - according to the original vision.
That takes me OUT of the experience.
I suppose a key point with all of this, is that I'm HUGELY into immersion. I absolutely adore the chance to explore a completely different world - and I adore turning off my critical sense - because it's so rare that I get to do that.
Risen, as an example, is a recent example of fantastic immersion without breaking the barrier in any way.
I can understand that. I don't usually actively seek mods out. It was different in case of TES where I was part of the scene, and it was only natural to use the mods I helped create and discussed on the forums.
However that idea of purity, I don't know… I can see where you come from with the idea of purity, looking at games as an art form. Few games released so far are strong enough as an expression of an artistic vision however, that I would be worried messing with it. £Then there is the fact, that most game projects get wrapped up under publisher pressure, budget and time constraints. The pure vision of the developer will often have been different from the final product - sometimes mods can even restore a game to be closer to that vision. And then there is the whole idea of art as an interactive process, too. There is a certain joy in seeing how changing the rules changes the experience that I think is quite appropriate for an interactive medium.
Anyway, the other side is that games are entertainment, and if changing the rules is fun, who will be the judge? Let's play Calvinball, I say!
Changing the rules can be fun, but as I said - I believe it's a shortsighted pleasure. Then it becomes a different experience entirely, and you're playing a different role - as the designer, rather than the player.
I have to refer to my earlier point about immersion, to get this message across clearly.
And I never bought that argument "the players had to fix it!". There is many arguments against it, but to me the most convincing is still how successful MW was as a console game, without any user mods. Mods provide choice - they did not fix the game, except in the minds of particular people disliking particular features.
I never go by sales. I go by whether I think something works or not. We don't need to go into how many games have sold well, but that we actively dislike around here.
Naturally, I can't claim the game was broken - because it worked as intended.
I just think it was crap.
In my experience, in any mod community I have followed there has eventually been content created that is superior to the original offering. Among a heapload of crap, of course, and maybe only for a very specific aspect, but thats beside the point. The idea that user created content is always amateurish is simply wrong.
The content can be superior, we agree - but the end result, as in the combination of that content AND the original game is VERY rarely better than just the original game if it wasn't fundamentally flawed.
I haven't bothered that much with Oblivion. For MW, my experience was different, running 60 or so mods without noticeable conflicts or problems (or course using the proper tools and procedures etc., which admittedly requires way too much time and dedication for most. In fact I shy away from a replay partly for that reason myself)
I think I've played Oblivion 4-5 times, each with perhaps 40-60 mods - and every time I stop before I'm "done" - because the game is simply broken with those mods. It either crashes, or something happens with balance that just doesn't feel right.
Maybe I'm overly sensitive - or maybe I'm particularly perceptive
True, an editor is no excuse for a bad game. MW wasn't a bad game, though
It was horrible