honestly I have not yet seen any response to the petitions by the modders for :

more support
more communications
Lod fixes
Navmesh fixes
several bug fixes
Modding tools
Importers and exporters ...


All I see is a lot of posts on cool mods of the week on their bethblog page , but all time are just retextures , some combo of stuff , rehacked things , manga and some creative scripting ... I didn't see any proper quest , any proper new landscape and anything worth for keeping the interestin the game for the long run ...

I think most of the players will be gone couse will get tired to change an outfit every few days and try a new sword every 5 hours ... or kill the same enemies and play the same dungeons with the new cool spell ....

so is it worth modding onlarge projects and quests if probably they will never be released because the CK is broken and won't allow any implementation of true quests and won't look good couse of lod issues?

Confirmed that they are working on the navmesh fix.

I can't believe they still force dialogue to stop if it has no audio.

Seriously, what the gently caressing gently caress bethesda?

Quests are broken in the ck? I admit, I seldom bother with trying to create quests. The closest I came was um fallout 3, using a hidden quest to hold variables opposed to using global variables.

Personally speaking I am constantly looking for nice quest mods. The few that I see released tend to either add in horribly unbalanced weapons or encounters or introduce nasty bugs.

I look for mods that add features to the game that should have been in vanilla Skyrim. Like dual wield parry, mounted combat, open cities, an more. All of which are mods that i have, or are mods that i am looking forward to being completed.

I'm not going to argue that more support and communication wouldn't be a good thing. But, to be fair, I have seen more communication from Bethesda since Skyrim's release than I have seen in the whole ten years I've been here. I've never seen so many devs and admin post in these forums. They have released about as many patches for Skyrim in six months as they released for Morrowind and Oblivion in ten years (and god knows those games desperately needed more patches). They invited the modding community to beta test the CK. That is something they have never done before.

I am actually very impressed with the increased level of support and communication Bethesda has been putting out during the last six months. And I say this as one of the most vocal critics of Bethesda's abysmally poor customer support the last past ten years. But I believe giving credit where credit is due. Not that it couldn't be improved...

I don't see why not if Bethesda dosen't fix those problems then someone will make a work around or fix. I'm sure that this time next year modding and mods will be different.

These words exactly. In comparison to what Bethesda has done for the past games, things are certainly better.

What I mean is many of us , well not that many are working on large projects , some others on quests both of us know that if the CK wont be fixed all the work will be just wasted and trowed to the cesspit ... we are modding without knowing if what we are doing will be ever able to be released in a Decent way instead than a patchwork ... this because Behtesda doesn't keep any form of official communication with the modding community as instead other companies do like Crytek or others ... What I mean is that if we knew that those bugs willbe addressed then we woudl know that there is a hope , but without knowing anything apart that they are working on a new dlc or cool new features but no Fix for the bugs then wha'ts the point in keeping working ?

That same navmesh bug that's been around since Fallout 3?

Yup. Believe it or not.

You also forgot the face export bug, one of the ones I personally hate the most. I thought they said a fix for the face export bug is arriving in an upcoming patch. There's been two patches (patch 1.5 and the upcoming Kinect patch for 360 players) since someone at Bethesda said that and no fix anywhere in sight. The navmesh bug isn't any better.

maybe its time to get loud and angry? send a thoughtful letter to ign telling them to blow the issue up out of proportion and bash the company until it gets them to fix it. LOL
not trolling...im actually half serious here. what will it take for them to actually fix something that has been broken for so long?

The tools they use (including importers/exporters) are licensed, and they're not allowed to give them out. Not that it would help anyway for modders that don't use the same modelling program they do.

This is why I was very sad when they announced they were still using NIFs, as if it was a good thing. Yeah we may have a rudimentary understanding of them to make something at a basic level, but our support via niftools is still relatively poor, all things considered (take a look through niftool's docs, and there's still a bunch of data fields called "unknown" and a bunch of types that say "the purpose of this is unknown" or somesuch). It would've been infinitely better if they had used a more open format where information is fully available, or even something completely custom that they could release the full in-house specs for.

But no, we're still stuck with NIFs.

They've only released Skyrim since Fallout 3.

I think for many of us Skyrim will be the last, if the sheer quantity and persistence of ck breaking bugs are repeated in the next offing. There is much that could be better in Skyrim so far as modding is concerned. Nifskope, max and blender importers and exporters, lod working without farting around with sorcery, trees actually showing up in the distance rather than being a waste of time in LOD and so on and so on. As the months go on I am hoping that fixes will be made for all of this, but currently nifskope has grinded to a halt, blender exporters havent shifted in months and the max exporter is like a bad massage with no happy ending. That the CK is supposed to be a modding platform is in many ways more insult than joke.

Its like opening your present at christmas, finding an empty Action Man box and your Dad telling you it's the Action Man deserter kit. You know someone is taking a piddle down your back and telling you its moisture dripping from the ceiling.

But I am plodding on, gradually getting somewhere in the vain hope of nifskope and exporters, tree LOD, regions wont mess up, quests when I make them wont collapse in a heap, npc's wont disappear, buildings will be where I put them, the distant textures wont be psychedelic and so on.

And still the Bethesda cheerleaders dance and wave their little pom poms shouting, "yay Bethesda, thank's for the sword, yay yay Bethesda we're not getting bored, go go Bethesda ignore them all, moddings no farce, go go Bethesda, ignore the modders youve ....... up the ......"



Anyway, seriously I think sometimes these bugs are owing to pushing the CK beyond what its supposed to be able to do, for modders at least, so we dont have a call on Bethesda to fix them. But it cant be denied that there are things in the CK that make it unfit for the purpose it was claimed to fulfil. Having sections of the CK such as LOD that dont work, navmesh still broken and various other stuff that is crucial and central to modding is quite simply wrong. Time will tell. I still tend to favour the idea that under it all Bethesda remain a good company with good intentions. I hope I am proved right, but as I said, time will tell. We are all going to learn much about the future of our interest in TES in the next six months to a year.

I wouldnt go so far as to say they have been much more supportive this time around, but there has been more support than for Oblivion. Mind you, the CS for Oblivion had all the basics (or most of them). LOD worked, Navmesh worked, voices took effort but worked, heightmap editor worked, quests generally worked, npcs worked, things didnt disappear in the render window, nifs were in a workable format.

The nif importing/exporting process in Skyrim is incredibly messy. It's so... convoluted that the actual mesh editing is the easiest part of getting your .nif file to work in the game. I just hope that the nif tools get properly updated to support skyrim. Currently, I have to set the nif file version and a lot of properties to their Oblivion values just to get the mesh to export properly! After importing the edited mesh back into nifskope, I have to add those Skyrim properties like BSLightingShader back to the mesh manually.. and it's such a pain in the [censored]. It feels like grunt work And I miss using pyffi to optimize meshes!

Ok I read this over and over but then who owns those licenses? I tought they have said the got their very own engine by buying the gamebryo and renaming to creation engine .... So aren't they the owners?

So be it...new modders will come instead. Maybe not so good, at first, but that will be because of the "old generation" has much more experience. The leaving modders will be missed, naturally, but for some time only... I know, it sounds a bit harsh, but that is my opinion anyway (being here from the first days of Morrowind).

New modders are not going to come if they cannot mod. If you can't make good quests, new lands, add new meshes, even properly functioning houses/taverns/dungeons/animations etc....well you have covered just about all aspects of modding. The few mods that will be around will be simple and forgettable.

That said, I am glad that Bethesda has stated that they will fix the Nav Mesh bug, I hope this will extend to fixing many other bugs. I am willing to wait, they had a few bashes at it and no it wasn't fixed...but as long as they are still trying I have every confidence that they will get there.

What I would really like to see is a list of what CK bug fixes have been done in each CK update, not just 'CK update available'. I really wish they would be a little more involved with us and at the least tell us that this update incorporates a (hopefully) fixed nav mesh. Unless I am missing it, I couldn't see any detailed information on the last few CK updates, only detailed information on the actual game updates. Which leaves me haunting CK threads, trying to find what is fixed and what isn't from other modders.

I don't think that going in 'guns blazing' will be helpful. But I do think that if we consistantly and politely press the issue with BGS, as a united group, it may at least encourage them to be more open about the state of things on their end. Really there is no need for secrecy, everything is already released and sold.

the creation engine is theres, the modling/texturing/exporting tools (IE: Maya, Blender, Nifscope, not sure if these are what they use, but using them as an example) are not theirs. Therefore they cannot give out the rights to use those programs to the masses. (Kinda like when people torrent photoshop when they shouldnt) if they sold access to the creation kit then it would be a different story cause they would just make you pay for the licenses to use the other programs.

No this not make sense couse those programs arent spoiled by making a plugin for import export and u dont need to own the rights of those tools to make one ...

try and sell one of your mods that you make for skyrim. See how fast Bethesda slaps you with an injunction to stop its the same concept. Bethesda allows the masses to mod their games, but they still hold the rights to EVERY mod that is made because its made with their product. As long as you dont try to profit from THEIR product they will allow you to make mods and release them for free. They cant release any tools, programs, addons, additions, mods, plugins, plugouts, tai-bo videos, without the consent of those programs owners. In most cases those owners will not allow it, and for Bethesda to take the time to try and broker a deal for them to allow it would be out of the question.

I spoke of this a few days ago on the Nexus site, even in the request section people seem alot more interested in yet another set of HD eye lashes or yet another sword instead of actual game changing mods which add playability. I just do not understand that sort of mentality, this is not the modders per se I am talking about but the people who wants mods made. I can understand modders being relunctant to make a big mod because their work could be destroyed by the next Bethesda patch, so we are unlikely to see the real game changers arrive until Bethesda slow down on the patches.

Really speaking, I think Bethesda need to slow down on the patches. They should be releasing 4 of them instead of one per month. This will encourage modders to create the big ones that add functionality, and at the same time each patch would fix a huge amount of issue instead just a few. I would rather one patch every three months that fixed a lot instead frequent patches that fixes few and constantly forces modders to rework their code. It must be infuriating for them.

But as the for the Requests section on that site, it is crazy. I suggested a Fort Wars mod where you can own/take over Forts, Keeps etc and have battles against other AI 'Lords'. It would be a first/third person real time strategy game in Skyrim.... it got no interest from modders which is understandable given that it would be broken within one month. But the fact that there was no real interest from the community that doesn't mod themselves but only try out mods, that was a little shock to my core. There was a thread requesting a new armor that got over 40 replies, my request got two and it would keep people busy in the game for ages considering multiple AI Lords would send their troops to attack you and vice versa! If I am honest, I reconsidering even to bother posting ideas on that site now

I am sorry but no offens but is totally untrue message ... There is nothing refraining from developing plugins for those programs and they even encourage it , all other big houses of games that own their own engine do have importers and exporters for all kind of 3rd party programs like 3dsmax , maya and so on ... plus if those companies like autodesk etc didn't allow that you would'nt see programs like nifscope and niftools and probably Skyrim wouln't be moddable at all ...

I personally fid it a bit Hypocrit to publicize all the mods that make use of th external tools like nifscope and niftools or nif importers all made by modders on their main site and they publicize their game as beeing moddable showcasing those mods because the merit goes to the modders and not them to have provided the tools for modding ... .Apart the CK that is broken , I do not see any other tool around "official" , all the modding woudl be almoust like 1% of what we have now if the external hackermodders didn't create the external ( buggy not for their faults but for lack of knowledge and deep understanding of the engine ) tools ...