I'm just amazed they'll allow you to download mods that can break your games but nvde mods are a no-no. Like don't they think people are going to freak the [censored] out over downloading mods that ruin their game? It's just surprising, kind of, surely the game-breaking mods are gonna be bad publicity for them.

Yeah, pretty weird.

I guess partly it's a matter of practicality. Proving that a mod's scripting or quest design won't break a playthrough would be at best a major QA task, and at worst a virtual impossibility. And unless they've drastically changed the whole quest-design/scripting since Skyrim (vanishingly unlikely), then they can't just stop scripts being used because those are so fundamental to the way quests work.

Showing that a mod does have nudity would be a much easier task, unless it's sneakily hidden away where it's hard to find - and that would be for an 'objectionable content' report mechanism to deal with.

So, given a choice between a fairly easy control and an almost impossible one, I guess they decided they were damn well going to control something!

And you never know, someone in their press office may have said "Only gamers will be fussed about buggy scripts. Mainstream media will milk nudity for some easy audience outrage. That's the damage to limit."

Ninja nvde mods, eh? I like it. I have a feeling (and slight hope, hehe) the mod scene on console is just going to be repeatedly spammed with people uploading mods with nudity and other forbidden content hidden away in them. I wonder how they'll handle [that thing we can't discuss here] mods, can you imagine they genuinely allowed those while banning nvde mods, hahaha, I can totally see it happening!

I bought Fallout 4 when it first became available for preorder.

What do I expect?

1) Fun playthrough, good voice acting, quests as compelling as Witcher 3.

2) Some technology / visual / reliability boosts. And not as grey as Fallout 3...

3) Good modding tools. Creation Kit+.

4) Large enough user community to support more mods than Skyrim.

I have over 1500 hours in Skyrim and the Fallout series (TTW counts). Each. 75 percent of that is in mods.

Witcher 3 was great for one pass. I am done. I don't see any replay value.

Fallout 4 I expect to be home for a long time, mostly in mods.

So that is why I bought the game - primarily as a base for great mods, that I can use, modify, and learn from.

Interesting times, indeed - and you know what they say about 'interesting times'

I do wonder - are there any other console games that allow user-made mods? Not things like Halo 3 maps, or Spore creatures and buildings, but actual mods? If not... this is quite a big step for Microsoft. Hope mods for consoles flourishes and doesn't fail.

I've never heard of any.

I believe they said "next year". Your hopes and dreams that means January does not make it a fact. I certainly expect it to be 1st Quarter, but that could be March 30th. Then again, December 2016 is "next year" as well.

I certainly hope I am wrong, but I fear when the details of what will NOT be the same about mods in FO4 compared to Skyrim (even on the PC) due to the addition of potential console mods, many PC modders are going to be quite upset (myself included).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNgEO6ehqp0

I believe in this interview he says jan/feburary

Edit: as to your second part. He explicitly says building mods is PC only so there is little worry in it being "dumbed down" for consoles. I hate it when people also jump to "OH GOD CONSOLES RUIN PC". I love playing on my Xbox One, I love playing on my PC, can't we all just get along and be happy that more people can play mods?

what gives you the idea? for console mod users, there'll be hardly any difference to pc users, except you won't be able to run skse & likes on consoles.

for "normal", ck created mods though, there'll be no console specific limitations i knew about. todd howard himself said in an interview they've been able to run any pc mod on any console version ever since morrowind, the problem just being how to get them there.

I'm amazed you don't see the ridiculousness of your correlation. That would be a bit like ... Since gun manufacturer's cannot guarantee their products will not be used for nefarious means ... they should make prostitution legal. Which of course they have no say over ... and a lobby campaign for it would likely hurt their sales. (maybe?)

However ... I'm sure someone will come up with a way to get nvde mods on the console. Tapping the market of horny teenagers on consoles armed with their parents credit cards is just to great of a draw. But of course Beth would never endorse or facilitate it.

Which brings up a question I'm wondering about ... The conversion tool ... will this be closely guarded by beth , which would make for a lot of extra work by them. Or is it going to be free source with the creation kit?

Hmm maybe just something integral and small to the process of conversion ???

I've seen that interview and he said they were "trying" to get it out by Jan/Feb '16 (which I fully believe). That is not a firm Jan '16 time fame by any means. Bottom line, it will not come out until they get it ready and I think much of that depends on how smooth the actual game launch goes.

I'm in no way prepared to "blame" console gamers for ruining PC modding (I'm not even convinced there will be anything "ruined"). However there are many PC gamers that won't look at it any other way (if it happens). I would fully place the "blame" on Bethesda for pursuing the console gaming mod path, but I would not blame them as it's obviously the best path economically. Again, I'll wait and see what the actual state of "modding" is before I start thinking about "blaming" anyone for any thing.

I've seen no actual mention of a "conversion tool" by anyone but fan speculation (I have mentioned the possibility in past threads), so talking about it like it is a factual thing that absolutely exists is irresponsible. IF one exists, I would guess it will be the main control method Bethesda will have to stop unauthorized mods from being readily available to consoles and would almost assuredly be something they closely guard (and would be part of the vetting / distribution process for mods). No doubt the conversion process (if required) could likely be reverse engineered by modders and could likely bypass the Bethesda controlled method of distribution.

NOW the question remains what Microsoft or Sony might do to console owners that run unauthorized mods. The PR nightmare of Live bans boggles the mind, but would not be impossible.

I do agree it will be "interesting times" in both console land and the PC modding scene.

I have no doubt it will be along the same lines as earlier modding tools they have released for the fallout series and Elder-scroll series.

Just look at Nexus sites 3 different games total amount of mods they offer and see what they have everything from in-game looks to quests and housing, i do not fear they will release some inferior modtool for Fallout 4.

You can learn a lot from looking at the mods on Nexusmods.

Mods available:

Skyrim - 42,982

Fallout NV - 16,274

Fallout 3 - 13,992

Witcher 2 - 344

Witcher 2 is a very good game. The disparate number of mods is due to the ease of modding Bethesda games, and the capabilities of the Creation Kit compared to Red Kit.

When Bethesday gives us good tools, and a good base to work from, the modders will come.

Previously mentioned ... the Creation Kit and the conversion tool are 2 different things.

Of course there is going to be a creation kit which is a program that accesses the assets of the game , and lets the user manipulate them.

Like stated though ... this will only be available on PC.

But porting these addition/alteration files ... from PC TO Console ... is another matter.

So of course to stream line the process ... there will need to be a code coversion tool. Because beth isn't going to hire a bunch of coders to convert PC mods into console DLC as it gets written ... that would be ridiculous.

So just like you have a video or audio converter ... this is what they are creating to port mods (unwritten yet) into console DLC's

Do you see any other way for mods (unwritten yet) to get ported to console?

Would beth even consider it if they didn't have an automated way to do that?

We don't know yet what the fileformats are and how the engine of FO4 will handle them.

If it is good old NIF, DDS, OGG, ... in a BSA (like in Skyrim) then yes there is a conversion sort of needed. Could be done in geck directly or automated on upload. This is a process that should be easily get automated and no harmfull stuff could endup in the console.

Still it is pure speculation at this point.

Conversion tool discussion is really off in the weeds.

Lets see - what do modders do...

Create / modify textures. I don't expect any changes for console.

Meshes, sound, etc - no changes

Skeletons - no changes

.esp files (Quests, scenes, dialog, assets) - no changes

So what is this magic conversion tool supposed to do?

I fully expect a .esp file can be copied from a PC to a console - and just work.

I think you misunderstand exactly what a mod for the Creation Engine consists of. The point is, there is no conversion needed. Mods contain absolutely no executable code.

What they consist of are a set of data files in a proprietary format which are read directly by the game. And the game on the console reads exactly the same format files as the game on the PC.

In fact, mods are simply a kind of DLC, with exactly the same data as a DLC, distributed in exactly the same format as a DLC, in exactly the same format on all platforms. If Bethesda ported Fallout 4 to Linux, the game would still read the mod data in the same way as it reads it on Windows or the console kernels.

To be more specific, a mod structure is as follows;

A .ESP file. This contains data which describes the cells, the objects in them, the quests, the NPCs etc.

A .BSA file. This contains assets used by the mod, specifically;

1. Meshes of objects and creatures
2. Textures for meshes
3. Scripts
4. Sounds

And a few other things. The only difference between a DLC and a mod is the DLC uses a .ESM file instead of a .ESP file - but those two files are almost identical in structure and content, just a .ESM file is handled by the game with a higher priority.

Getting a mod onto a console, is simply a matter of copying the .ESP and .BSA files into the right place on the hard-drive - the same place as a DLC's .ESM and .BSA. Not something that can be done by the user directly, so what Bethesda have to set up is something in the game launcher that will go to a predetermined site (bethesda.net, I gather), present a view to the user of what mods can be found there, then download the selected mod to the console.

Since Bethesda will control the site that hosts mods for console, they can monitor what gets uploaded there (probably through a submissions process) and reject mods that aren't suitable or take down mods that get complained about.

But the mods themselves won't be converted or ported - they will be exactly the same files, containing the same data, as on PC.

Consoles use a different and also encrypted fileformat for textures, meshes, sounds,... The files that are most likely not encrypted are esps and esms correct.

As a matter of curiosity, as the mesh, texture and sound files are read directly by the game, from a compressed file which the game understands... exactly what conversion might be needed? Bethesda have said before that mods just work on console, in the same way DLC does - although console owners can't actually copy the mod files on. Bethesda can, because they have access to console dev kits.

[edit]

Is this confirmed for Bethesda games? That is, are the data files that constitute DLC on console confirmed to be a different file format from .BSA files that constitute DLC on PC? And (if this can be discussed on these forums), what is the source for this information?

See my previous posting.

Heh, edited my post as you were posting

Howdy Sesom ... good to see ya

But of course there is conversion.

Modder uploads a mod .... its ready for any other PC ... but if the mod is to be put onto a console ???

Something needs to happen ... NO ???

If its that simple then what has been stopping the console users from getting PC created mods in the first place?

All I'm saying is obviously Beth is creating a tool to make that possible. (probably closely guarded)

However ... considering mods of the past to alter the game realtime. No doubt some one will make a mod for the console user.

But of course it won't be the GECK ... no freakin way to do that even half assed for console users.

The language shell has a lot to do with it no?

Yeah I agree won't be geck for sure. Will be done at the upload to the service. But actually that is something we as modmakers shouldn't have to care. Regardless if we make the mod for PC or console.