It's called BOSS. And Bash is not intimidating, it just looks that way since the documentation looks like a wall of text. The docs are being rewritten currently. Also, BOSS and Bash work quite well together.

Since the toolkit is technically free software, shouldn't Bethesda also be able to release it as a stand-alone package? That would be the best choice I think, to have it available both on and off Steam for those that really can't deal with having to use Steam.

I'll still personally not understand the extreme anti-Steam stance, though. I can understand the argument about relying on Valve for your products, and I suppose that's a small risk you have to take in trade for the ridiculously cheap prices you get on Steam, but condemning the whole platform because you've had a few issues in the past is just silly. I've been using Steam since the days of CS 1.6 and once it grew into the whole digital distribution platform I consider it the best thing to happen to my personal gaming experience. It's also immensely popular though I won't use that as an argument since things becoming mainstream has never done the games industry any favours.

Is it impossible for Steam Workshop to do this? No.

Is it ridiculous? Yes. Unfortunately, due to the format gamesas continues to use for their games (.ESP/.ESM), mods are always going to conflict, and not in a simple way either. Leveled Lists is the best example. Mod A adds Item A1 to a list. Mod B adds Item B1 to the same list. You load both mods - what do you end up with? Either Mod A's changes, OR Mod B's changes, depending which loads last. Not both. For both changes, you need a tool that will anolyze the file deeper, combine the two changes into a new mod that loads later. Now this sort of anolysis needs to be done on ALL changes, and you need a way to determine which changes should be kept (when there are multiple changes).

Thankfully, the community has tackled this the best they can - BOSS will get your Load Order setup to minimize conflicts, and Wrye Bash will create the Bashed Patch - basically a compatibility mod to resolve even more conflicts. Even then, not everything is solved.

Anyway, the manpower required to do this is just too much - anolyzing mods to determine where in the Load Order they should go, what Bashed Tags they need, etc - there's pretty much no way Steam Workshop will be doing this, unless they have a large staff getting payed a bunch of money by gamesas.
Edit: Note that it'd be even more work to expect the Steam Workshop to merge all of the changes of each mod you choose to install directly into the game.

Verily, it was a mighty flaming...

Such responses seem the sort of a man who has honed his craft in the deepest and darkest pits of the internet

It isn't free software. It is not under the LGPL or GPL at all or a compatible license, as far as I know. It's free as in beer, not speech. There's a big difference.

steam = spyware and is a blight on PC gaming

valve probably collects your information through steam and then sells it to advertisemant agencies

Well i guess I will just have to learn how to download mods manually, thanks for hearing me out guys.

Fixed.

I guess like myself some folks may see this as some kind of stunt, and not a good one. as to act as if they are doing modders a favor, instead of trying to get their hands into the content Pool, thats what I'm seeing anyway. Beth's CK is Beth's CK, no one elses. it was utterly their descision to include workshop within it. I really am not able to get past the "they definently aren't doing this as a favor.


Releasig the CK was a favor, if they wanted tos how some love for modders, give more power in the CK.

It's easy:

Click download without the NMM link. Toss it into the Bash folder. Open Bash and tell it to install. Run BOSS. Profit.

Oh, cool, that is just like downloading mods for DA:O except i used the DA:O updater instead of NMM. Thanks

I got NMM downloaded thanks alot for your help deaths_soul.
Which mod improves magic scaling? I wouldlike to download that one 1st.

I dunno, that's likely, but they're taking soooo much extra time to release the CK in tandem with the Steamworks hub, maybe they're working on a mod managing application as well.

Are you my lost twin?

This is exactly how I feel. Yet we are ignored.

Downloading and installing a mod takes mere minutes and a tiny bit of reading and people are too lazy to do that? I am really saddened that more and more games are treating people like idiots and taking advantage of them when all it needs do is just explain to them how to do it. No need for the chains of Steam. it`s like having a Police security camera installed everywhere in your home plus you must check in and out all the time with more cops because you`re slightly afraid someone might try to rob your home.

And all you need to do is learn how to lock and unlock your front door.

I'm not to lazy to install mods or other stuff, I just don't like having to download 6 different third-party programs to just play my mod. If steam will just do that for me, anolyzing the mods I have installed, and put them in the right order and stuff, I can play my mods without that stuff. The guys at VALVe are great programmers, they can do that. I only see the steam workshop as fanservice, a thing that will streamline my mod installing.

I also don't understand the steam hate, it isn't spyware, if you think steam is spyware you must also think that google is spyware. So far steam has only helped me. Yes it's true that auto-updating is sometimes annoying when an update makes more bugs than it fixes, but everybody makes mistakes, especialy with a game like Skyrim.

There are several, use the search function at skyrim nexus and decide which one is right for you.

They'll probably have full access. Valve has never interfered in how developers handle their games on Steam, they're allowed to release stuff such as DLC, patches and toolkits however they please and there hasn't been an exception so far.

I think it's wonderful that you live in a neighborhood where all attempted break-ins are stopped simply by locking your door. Why don't all people just lock their door?

See? I can make these idiotic comparisons too.

This thread is close to getting closed. I will allow it stay open as long as the discussion is kept to Steam as it relates to Hosting and Distributing Mods and how the CK will integrate into it.

No posts about Steam as a service are allowed in this thread. If you want to discuss Steam and DRM in general, then use the Official Thread we have set up for that.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1331715-unofficial-steamdrm-discussion-26

I understand where you're coming from. Mod management can be a huge time sink. But there's no way steam will ever support the advanced "meta-mods" (skyboost, wrye bash, script dragon, skse), and it probably won't support mods that have multiple installation options, so the mods that would most benefit from the auto-install are the ones that will be missed entirely. Steam will probably host and manage texture mods, simple single esp mods, and similar.

Mod management will probably be several steps behind BAIN, BOSS, and other standard community mod management apps. If the devs wanted to make a great tool, they would have looked at the various apps that have evolved to meet user's needs, but I have a feeling they didn't do that. The Steam Workshop will have a simple UI that will lack a lot of important or even required features. I bet they're aiming for people who run a dozen or two dozen simple mods, not the users who run 200+.

Well at least Steam is better than origin, I cant stand origin I can hardly get around custom servers in Battlefield 3 because EA had to be greedy.
and... why does it matter if you have to use CK through steam? Don't you just make the mod save it and close CK anyway? its not like its damaging your ability to mod (from what i can tell anyway)

It's inconvenient, which is plenty of reason to complain IMO. People who map in TF2 have no inclination whatsoever about having to run Steam for the Source SDK, since the development kit needs Steam to find its way around game files, but for TES players, it's totally unprecedented and seems arbitrary.

However, it's not going to silently steal your mods and put them on the workshop like some people seem to think. Steam-based modding tools aren't new, not even for third party games.

Why?

Once again why do you say that? Why cannot the Workshop handle that? Is there some magical qualities to those community mod management apps that make them forever impossible to reproduce? Why do you assume the workshop won't be able to handle mods with installation options either?



Why do you say before you even have a single bit of info on what it'll do that it'll be too simple and svck because of that?

Deep indepth suppor to that level is not Bethesda's forte, and never has been. They could have released similar mod management tools with Oblivion, Fallout 3, or New Vegas since the blueprint was there from Morrowind (and each subsequent game) yet it never came to fruition. Even something as watered down as NMM or FOMM can handle installation options and ordering. The default plugin manager for the game can't even reorder the plugins in your folder, and that's been necessary since pretty early in the Morrowind modding timeline, since the discovery of mod load orders affecting gameplay. This is why e don't expect some world beating installer that can manage load orders, create alternate folders for install, install with alternate options, and ensure conflicts don't exist unintentionally. Because they've never released a manager that can even change the order in which the mods are loaded. And besides, Wrye Bash already handles all this (and more), and would make anything they produce redundant at this point.

What paladin181 said. Plus, look at how embarassingly bad the load order/data files window is in Skyrim. It's as if the devs have no experience with modding (or at best, beginner level experience).

Also, there are several other issues.

1, if they support mods like Skyboost/SKSE, etc, they risk getting customer complaints when things blow up. This is true for any mod, but especially true for something like SKSE. I'm not saying that installing SKSE, Skyboost or whatever is difficult, but they are outside of the scope of standard mods (esm, esp) and would likely be viewed with distrust from a managerial, and maybe even a legal perspective.

2. Mods that include multiple installation choices or that have separate configuration files will likely be viewed as too complicated and too confusing for users, and again there's increased risk of messing things up.

3. It seems like BGS is having trouble getting the CK out. Many people, including myself, believe this is mostly because of the Steam Workshop functionality. Expecting advanced features when they're in deadline panic is unreasonable. Even if they have some features working, they may get cut to reduce QA pressure or whatever.

Anyway, yes, this is conjecture, as are most posts on the forum. But it's conjecture based on years of experience with BGS, and having developed an idea about what their strengths and weaknesses are, and what their priorities are. And a good mod manager is likely to be too spreadsheety.