Which is all rather unfortunate and explains a lot. I was hoping for something more modern. An sparse octree PVS, geoclipmaps and etc. But eh, what can you do?

My main question is the OP's right now, where is it? I'm kind of bored and won't have much to do until the beginning of January. Would love to spend my time on something at least somewhat productive.

I have a question, will Steam requirements force a change in the way modding as a whole is handled? Perhaps this is one of the thing Bethesda is working to iron out for us so we don't have steam breaking our launchers and modifications every week? I have never modded any games that I have running through steam so I am not sure how pervasive it is but judging by how it has squashed previous player made fixes it seems like it could be a pain.

It didn't change much with Fallout 3 or NV, so probably no. Script extenders still happened, so did the 4gb patch; everyone pretty much got around what they had to and most things didn't have to do anything like that at all.

Heh, what indeed.

3rd party loaders will have to updated with each patch but other than that, nothing much changes.

They've changed the renderer (which used to be Gamebryo), so there's nothing in the game that relates to gamebryo any longer. A lot of the tech they've had since Morrowind has been their own, so no wonder it's similar, it's expected..

I believe the CK is done or is at least at a point very, very close to being ready for release. I think it has been in that state for a few weeks. It might need some little tweaks to make it final but I'm sure it is just about there. If I had to wager on why it isn't out yet, I think it's quite simple. Just ask yourselves if you would want a few hundred people poking, prodding, dissecting, and up-ending just about everything you worked on for the last 5 years within moments of releasing it to the public. I think it has more to do with having us experience the game the way they wanted us to before we hack it up. At the very least to have us understand the flavor they were trying to get across. That's what I would want if i were them. I'd love to tinker with this game as much as anyone but it's easy to offend the chef by putting salt and pepper on your food before you have even tasted it.

If the chef minded he would never allow it to be messed with at all..so no i do not think that is the hold up here i think they did not start to strip out what they needed to until after the game was released unlike oblviion and morrowind when they were working on the game and the construction set at the same time.

i have no doubts the Ck is complete

they just dont want to release it yet!

as they have other things to do such as DLCs


remember bethesda think with their bank accounts these days!

Or, you know, the thanksgiving holiday. They did after all just finish a MAJOR dev cycle, they are entitled to a small break over the holidays.

If you understood my sentiment at all, it makes perfect sense. I think I would be a little upset to go through all of that work and they saw that happen with Morrowind and Oblivion. People not even getting out of the tutorial were jumping into the CS or downloading mods from the first day.

And trust me, the chef does mind. They all do. But at the risk of offending their mostly ignorant customer base you would be hard pressed to find a restaurant that does not have salt and pepper shakers already on the table.

As with everyone else, for Bethesda http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k456in_fDA.

well i dont think they deserve a holiday!

im my industry if i sell a faulty product i have to work my ass off to rectify the situation not go on holidays!

If the CK is released in the first 6 months after the release of the game, to me, this is great. I am excited to do some modding for the first time on an Elder Scrolls game.

lol what defines long? it's been maybe 2,5 weeks since the game is released please stop wining these threads drive me insane....

Good for you.

*goes back to Skyrim*

So, you think that they are holding back the CK so that "a few hundred people" out of a few million purchasers experience it the way they intended? No offense, but I think that is the least likely explanation I've heard so far. Right or wrong, its delay has caused some animosity... and it would be hard to justify that just to uphold artistic integrity for .0001 of the customer base.

Actually, the percentage is people who play on PC and therefore can use mods is pretty small. Xbox has the biggest chunk. Secondly, 150 hours is pretty amazing considering how long games are nowadays, and most of them aren't moddable. Honestly, we're lucky we're getting the CK at all. It'll likely be a bit, if Fallout 3 is any indication.

New Vegas Mod Manager - 198994 DLs
Fallout Mod Manager - 331711 DLs
Oblivion Mod Manager - 491582 DLs

Hardly small numbers. (not that I disagree with everything else you said tho)

I hear people talking about the percentage of customers who play on PC. Here are some numbers from a quick google search:

First two days: 3.4 million copies total:
XBOX: 59 % - - 2,006,000 copies
PS3: 27% - - 918,000 copies
PC: 14% - - 476,000 copies
+ Unknown number of digital purchases not included above.




I didn't see the post above mine. I expect over time the % of purchases on PC will rise as more people who were waiting for fixes and features buy. Also, if anyone is buying this game new years down the road from now it's probably going to be on PC. But, I doubt it will ever be more than 25% or so PC users. That's still a tone of money. The game may not be built for PC users, but I doubt gamesas would want to alienate purposefully 15-20% of its customer base unless it was dang sure they would switch to a different platform.

15% isn't a lot, but it's too much to believe they would ever just decide to skip releasing the CK or anything like that. Would be a poor business move if they ever plan on releasing another TES game down the road.

Small in industry terms though, when compared to approximately 300 million people give or take a few million. PC Gamers may be the largest segment, but modders are an infinitesimally small portion of that segment and people need to wake up and realize this instead of constantly droning on about their inflated senses of entitlement.

legions of modders would have all the bugs fixed in a day that bethesda takes weeks to fix, apparently

Posts like this drive me NUTS.

Absolutely right.


AHHHHGHHGHGHG!

We only feel entitled because the CK and mod support was promised. It's that simple. Prior to release gamesas had every right to abandon mod support. They can do whatever they want. I would simply choose not to buy the product. Maybe I'm just 1 of a dozen people that feel that way. That's fine. But once you commit to something in business people have a right to feel entitled to it.

I believe it will be released sooner than later, but if you have a problem with the community expecting it, you should contact gamesas and ask them not to support the mod community any longer. Because as long as they sell games with the understanding of mod capabilities you should expect the community to FEEL ENTITLED to that feature.

I don't see threads on forums about other games which have never had mod support where people are demanding editing tools. They don't feel entitled, because they didn't buy the product with that in mind.

If the PC community is too small, then stop selling PC games. If the mod community is even smaller, then stop offering mod support.

Entitlements are in line with expectations, and expectations are in line with promises.

300 million people play skyrim? can you please provide some evidence for that number?

He means PC users in general.

PC users > gamers > modders.

The cook shouldn't give a rats butt if I put salt on my food or not. I paid for it, the cook can stuff it.

Having said that, I can see how some developers might be discouraged if they see people completely changing what they made and they saw as a work of art. However, that's how it works. They should (and do, I'm sure) expect that.

On top of that, modding provides them a way to spend less money. It extends the games life, the community fixes bugs.




That's not including digital sales like steam, afaik. A lot of people will buy it off of steam, especially since that's where it ends up anyway. Also, the console purchases are going to be greater than the PC purchases. It's almost always a given, and that's why a ton of games made now are basically console ports if they end up on the PC (One of the few things pisses me off to no end if I think about it, and gets me started on a rant about consoles - but that doesn't have it's place here so I'll move on).