Fallout paid mod speculation

Ok, if Fallout 4 is the first game to try the paid mod idea on Steam, wouldn't it be cool to have some studios tackle this idea.

Imagine a Fallout game done by the wacky Larian Studios. We could have the first European Vault!

How about a Chinese Dev house, to give us post-apocalyptia from the Chinese viewpoint?

Of course, Obsidian would be a no-brainer. They're already familiar with the engine and would be a natural fit. Crossing the border and setting the game in Texas or Colorado, maybe.

InXile could blend their wasteland with Bethesda tech. That'd be an interesting license for New Orleans to tackle. Fallout: New Orleans. You heard it here first

crpgnut said:

Ok, if Fallout 4 is the first game to try the paid mod idea on Steam, wouldn't it be cool to have some studios tackle this idea.

Imagine a Fallout game done by the wacky Larian Studios. We could have the first European Vault!

How about a Chinese Dev house, to give us post-apocalyptia from the Chinese viewpoint?

Of course, Obsidian would be a no-brainer. They're already familiar with the engine and would be a natural fit. Crossing the border and setting the game in Texas or Colorado, maybe.

InXile could blend their wasteland with Bethesda tech. That'd be an interesting license for New Orleans to tackle. Fallout: New Orleans. You heard it here first

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Not sure if your serious or joking but I'd prefer those companies continue to work on their own stuff and make their own games than waste time and resource on fallout conversion mods.

Just my opinion though.

crpgnut said:

Imagine a Fallout game done by the wacky Larian Studios. We could have the first European Vault!

How about a Chinese Dev house, to give us post-apocalyptia from the Chinese viewpoint?

Click to expand...

God, no!
Don't spread the FO wasteland worldwide please!
Not that design would suck, maybe it'd be great. But the problematic part will be - variety of languages. Sure, it could be made as AC2, but Fallout is not supposed to be AC game and it'd feel rediculous.

As for paid mods I said already in another thread.
Bugfix mods have to get monetized, right now. And not only for Fallout. Think about all benefits that can come from it. The audience happy with polished game, but cursing the total price of broken release and chosing to support companies that clean up their trash by themselves in future.

For other mods and possible price on them, I don't actually care.
Companies are already selling "cheats" aka pay2win DLC, so if there is a mod to turn your protagonist into a demigod, it'd be logical if it ain't free any more.

Well, here is why they might do it. Fallout: New Vegas is a mod. It took a couple years to make, and it has likely sold more copies than Witcher 3, D:OS, DAI, and all of InXile's games combined. It made some serious cash, that could be used to fund other work. I remember back in 2010, it had sold 5 million copies already.

I agree about teams needing to keep working on their own projects. However, opening a new studio; let's say in New Orleans, would be a great way for a subset of a developer to work on something like this.

Let's put it another way. Do you think a remake of Auto Duel would outsell a well-made mod for either of Bethesda's properties? Not by a 1/10th.

crpgnut said:

Fallout: New Vegas is a mod. It took a couple years to make, and it has likely sold more copies than Witcher 3, D:OS, DAI, and all of InXile's games combined. It made some serious cash, that could be used to fund other work. I remember back in 2010, it had sold 5 million copies already.

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Paid mods would only be on PC and not on consoles, right? FO:NV has 4 million total owners according to SteamSpy and Steam is required for FO:NV so that is the total number of (legit) PC copies right there.
I mean it is still a respectable number but the 5 million in 2010 must have included console sales.

Um, no. Mods work just fine on PS4 and XB One.

Why would a dev house willingly fork over 75% of their gross to two partners that did jack squat? That will remain in the purview of desperate modders.

The percentage cut would need to be adjusted for sure. 75% was just stupid.

I would enjoy mods such as this, especially one from a Chinese point of view. A well made (lets call it a mini expansion rather than a mod) expansion with strong storytelling would get my attention.

Oh yeah, the 75% would have to be massively manipulated for a professional studio. Even somebody like SureAI would have to work a better deal than that.

I can understand people being curious about what Fallout would be like from the perspective of a different country, but I don't think it would be very compelling. The whole 1950's America theme is too much a part of the series. It wouldn't really be Fallout without it.

crpgnut said:

Um, no. Mods work just fine on PS4 and XB One.

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I'll be curious to see if they work "just fine". Graphics mods, added monsters, weapons, item, npc's, etc.

After playing through bloodborne on ps4 and running in to many slow downs I wonder how they will get them all to work.

I'm sure there is truth to that too. The speculation was about established studios making paid mods for Bethesda. It is mostly idle, but entertaining to think about. Would Obsidian work with them again, given what happened with F:NV and the rating fiasco? If so, then I'd say that they're already working on Fallout.

FO4 lead designer publically stated his opposition to paid mods. Of course, his influence runs as deep as the sales he generates. Nevertheless, FO4 design should not meet the requirements of the paid mod scene.

In the future, the goal is going to split the current common gaming experience in one raw gaming experience to be completed by optional but must buy mods.

This cant happen without thought, work, design.

For the involvement of established studios, the lid is the share. As long as Bethesda share stays bigger than the paid modder's, the risk is small.
If ever the paid modder's share grows bigger, developping a mod opens a much larger market than many can expect.

Bethesda's ambition is to move to the next level, to match Rockstar with 40 to 50 million sold copies.

Even with a 20 million sold copy market, a well designed product will leave to mods to hit over the million mod copy sales.

Added to that, there is no opposition to a crowdfunded mod, at least through SEA.

crpgnut said:

I'm sure there is truth to that too. The speculation was about established studios making paid mods for Bethesda. It is mostly idle, but entertaining to think about. Would Obsidian work with them again, given what happened with F:NV and the rating fiasco? If so, then I'd say that they're already working on Fallout.

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I'd say the question is more like the other way around: Would Bethesda ever give Obsidian any of their business again after Obsidian called them (and every other publisher) out for being slave drivers during their PoE KS campaign?
If I were Bethesda I would not ever work with Obsidian again after what they said but instead give my business to a developer that would hopefully be a little more grateful.

Also, what "rating fiasco"? Obsidian had a chance to get a totally optional bonus if they reached a certain Metacritic average score. They missed the mark. They did rightfully not get the bonus. End of (a very unspectacular) story.

Re FO4 mods on consoles, yes, it will be interesting to see how many run fine on a weak ass Xbone when the Xbone will barely be able to pull off the targeted 30fps with the vanilla game. Modding on consoles is almost out of question for any mod that puts additional stress on the CPU or GPU.

crpgnut said:

Well, here is why they might do it. Fallout: New Vegas is a mod. It took a couple years to make, and it has likely sold more copies than Witcher 3, D:OS, DAI, and all of InXile's games combined. It made some serious cash, that could be used to fund other work. I remember back in 2010, it had sold 5 million copies already.

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And EA's Sims outsold them all combined.
And paid "mods" for sims games called expansions, stuffpacks and recently gamepacks.

But Sims ain't RPG.

Moriendor said:

Re FO4 mods on consoles, yes, it will be interesting to see how many run fine on a weak ass Xbone when the Xbone will barely be able to pull off the targeted 30fps with the vanilla game. Modding on consoles is almost out of question for any mod that puts additional stress on the CPU or GPU.

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Mods for high end PCs are not expected to be the main market.
In order to favour mod sales, games are going to be designed as a raw gaming experience to be completed by optional mods.

Raw version plus mods being the equivalent of the current vanilla version, mods are going to run smoothly on consoles.