So I can get the way-more-awesome-than-anything-they-created armors and weapons through my XBOX right off the bat. The most ridiculous part of it is the fact that the best looking modded armor is largely created from pieces that you already included in the game, but didn't have the fore-thought to combine it in the way that a regular modder did.

Honestly Bethesda, is it SO difficult for you to include cloaks? For real, it should have just been a given that in a cold climate, people would wear heavy fur cloaks and hoods. But no, instead, YOU GUYS put everyone in short sleeves and chain mail in a freezing cold environment, and left it up to modders to realize how stupid this was and create heavier furs and leathers. Instead you make light fur armor and a leather dress that exposes the wearer's legs.

I really would honestly like to know why these designs weren't thought of by your own design team first.

Time and money, modders can take all the time they want and arent limited by a budget, generally speaking.

Modders are given everything they need by Bethesda, not to mention they don't have any restrictions such as a budget like Bethesda do.
Yes, modders can do some fantastic things. I run a number of mods in Oblivion. But just because they gave you cloaks or fancy armor doesn't mean they ought to be on the team, designing a huge, expensive and potentially best-selling game

I hope for a future where time is the only contraint.

I agree. If modders worked on fixes for bugs also, it would save Beth time to work on some awesome DLC

As a person who has modded Elder Scrolls games for ten years myself, I can say that Skeloton and Solitudian are absolutely right. It's one thing to produce a commercial product that will make a profit and complete that product on a deadline. It is another thing entirely to spend all the time you need to pursue your own personal vision to make a user mod for that product. These two things are entirely different. They cannot be compared.

Beth wouldn't make any money with modders on the team. Modders give it away for free, and "free" is something that is considered as evil as Alduin in the corporate world.

You have no idea.

I wish Bethesda would hire some of the modders? it's not as if modders have all the ideas in the world, but they change or add the things they want, I bet if a dev from bethesda were to go out on his own and make mods, they'd be just as great and probably better than anything a modder can come up with, like that gamejam clip, todd says "what things see the light of day, who knows?" and those were awesome things.

There's a restriction somewhere.


It is what it is.


I agree. but it is what it is, there's still dlc coming, you may just get what your asking for, or not, or sumthing better.

Ha! I knew you would probably chime in on this one. That made me laugh.

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I would imagine that some modders are actually developers. I think the "Real Time Carriage Ride" mod is a Beth dev, is it not? I could be mistaken.The whole budget-time-profit thing is obviously a constraint. Yet, Beth makes sales just from the ability to mod their games. A lot of modders barley even play the game. They are just in it to mod.

Still, a lot of the armor replacement mods are just texture replacers. That is just a color thing in something like GIMP. It is not hard, but some are a lot more than that. The creators of some of the more elaborate armors and weapons, show real talent for sure.

Correct.


Actually, it's harder than one thinks. Anyone can slap some colors on. It takes a real artist to make it look breathtaking.


Hopefully, you'll get your chance. As a coder with high hopes for myself, I know the feeling.

As what some of the above posters mentioned, time and money are crucial factors when doing a commercial game.
Who knows, maybe someone on the dev team did think about doing cloaks, but didn't have enough time to finish the thing in game.

What i like tho, is Bethesda publicly admitting that sometimes modders think of elegant solutions to issues that they didn't even think of when doing the game.
Example: I remember Todd Howard saying in a video interview how he loved the "Denock Arrow" mod from Oblivion and exclaimed "Why didn't we think of that?!" lol
I think its quite cool of a game company to openly admit their oversight on such matters.

That is why in Skyrim you are able to "denock arrow" by sheathing.
So yea Devs and Modders work hand in hand together. Dev develops the game, modders spot and improve on their mistake sometimes.
Hey we're all only human

Edit: Illuminated windows at night. This feature is obviously another mod inspired addition.

I think we agree on that, Froggy.

I thought you meant just the models there or something. To be honest, I'm not sure what I thought. My brain's been kinda engrossed in raw hex these past couple of weeks. >_>

Ah! The hex within the hexes...Well that will do it.

Because Bethesda's artists are tasked with creating unique and new designs, and have a deadline to do it. Modders are just hashing old designs and have as long as they want to do it.

Your dream of getting such armors and whatnot will never happen for this very reason.

This is really a numbers game. Bethesda has 150 to 200 or so people working on the game. They come up with ideas and implement the ones they can. Then they pass the game onto millions of people who can look at the game, anolyze what was done and what is lacking, then develop a fix.

So, we have 200 or so people vs millions. Which group do you think is more likely to come up with those really innovative ideas?

That is also why I've often said that releasing the CK was not really optional. It's in Bethesda's best interest to have a vibrant and thriving modding community. The shear volume of people modding the game guarantees that ideas and solutions will pop up that Bethesda would never have thought of. Bethesda is then able to take those ideas and incorporate them into the next game.

Very similar reason to why MMOs and some games do open beta tests. millions of people can bug test a game faster and better then a handful.

And some of them, like WoW, allows for the modding of the UI. Some of those mods are later incorporated into the game's standard UI.

It's NOT that the dev staff can't do what the modders can creatively. That's not the case at all. It's that they don't have the freedom to do so and are constrained by vicious deadlines. The executives have final say over what's what in the end, and we all know how execs love to think they know more than creative about everything.

I had no idea there was a mod like that. That's pretty cool. Anyway, what people saying is correct. It all comes down to time constraints. I bet that there are a lot of things the devs want to put in the game but the simply don't have time. But, they know that the modders will add them.

And really you DON'T want this to happen. Cause OSCURO, who did the amazing OOO (Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul) got snatched up by Obsidian and now we can't have any awesome mods by him for Skyrim :*(

And where the hell are Martigen and DARn?

I wish they could get somebody with the talent that does the unofficial patches and they could show them how to really fix the game, or better yet polish it way better before release.

They don't give you any modelling tools: some plugins would be nice. I started to fix a couple of broken meshes for Fallout 3 and NV, which I thought would take me 15 minutes, and I ended up having to teach myself how to use Blender and Nifscope.

Bethesda aren't infallible and they make some odd design decisions sometimes; for example the clunky UI with no paper doll and the close to useless map. Sometimes you can look at something too long and you start to miss the obvious (or subconsciously dismiss any shortcomings), and it can be helpful to get an outside opinion from someone coming at it fresh who'll say: "Nooo... that's not working."

You can't be serious. You want Bethesda to give you modeling tools? You have a free, open-source modeling tool in Blender already. Or are you asking Bethesda to give you the same modeling tool they use? 3ds Max currently runs $3, 495. Is this the modeling tool you expect Bethesda to give you? If it is not, then what modeling tool are you asking them to give you?



Let me ask you another question. What programs did you think you were going to use to fix a mesh? Notepad? Excel? Modeling software creates meshes, modeling software fixes meshes. Of course you're going to teach yourself to use Blender. You speak as though Bethesda put you through some terrible ordeal that you shouldn't have had to endure.

I can understand that you may have rushed into it without realizing what were letting yourself in for. That happens to every modder at one point or another. But you appear to be trying to blame Bethesda for the fact that you had to learn to use the proper tools. Tools that all of us who fix meshes have to learn.