Just no, so much no, you can't judge the quality on some poorly picked initial mods and all the intentionally bad stuff uploaded by protesting children. Even in the terrible implementation we had, after 6 months you would probably see people asking the same 2 dollar prices for professionally made stuff and all the bad stuff down at the bottom, unbought and cluttering things up. It was a bad implementation, but to think what you said is correct based on 3 days data is insanity. Also the reason "mods never provide it" is because professionals leave to make content where they get paid, or spend their time doing other pursuits where they make money, I certainly did and this is the general consensus on sites like polycount that are filled pretty much entirely with industry pros.

Eugh, so many terrible argument's against paid mods around here, the only somewhat valid one I have seen is the difficulty of sharing resources and the potential that some people will be less inclined to share if someone else is likely to make money from it, it would certainly be a shame if this put a damper on more expansive and complicated mods. The rest is almost all fearmongering nonsense, typical of people being against something and then trying their hardest to find reasons because it suits their agenda.

Yes, I am using a few days of data and current DLC models to form my opinion. Now tell me, what data are you using to form your opinion that 6 months down the line we'd have tons of 2 dollar professionally made stuff?

Oh I don't know, might possibly be the 3 or more years of the other two paid workshops?

Which are all purely cosmetic items and even so there are still a lot of badly made stuff and the market has become so saturated you need to make professional videos as you said yourself.

Which is exactly what was happening with paid mods and what I said would happen. Gotta love when people call me up for not having enough data when they have none to support their own. Oh and thanks for backing me up Cider.

In the video Robin talks about people needing to have empathy for the modders that would like the option to get something for their work. He said that the outpouring of hate seems to have came from actual children and a certain percentage of advlts that think like children.

Brumbek is an advlt that thinks like an advlt. The other major modders that Bethesda got to participate in the launch (like Arthmoor and Chesko) are also considerate advlts.

Do you have the ability to empathize with how these modders see the concept of paid mods? Can you see how modders, who have contributed far more hours to modding than others, might want to get some money for their work? Can you also see them as continuing to be thoughtful and helpful to other modders, instead of being turned into evil money grabbers?

Most people lack empathy and instead just use their imagination as a substitute.

and here we see a standard pro-paid supporter resorting to insulting others in order to make a point.

Are there any cases where introducing paid mods to a game that had something beyond cosmetic skins helped the modding community? We know it went terribly bad in case of the Sims - so it isn't just "imagination", it takes into account what had happened before. Similiarly, what would be examples of content comparable to Skyrim's DLC that happened in other games thanks to a paid system being present?

Ad hominem is a really handy tool when you have no backing for any of your points, isn't it?

I don't have a strong opinion about this. I generally agree with the video about how horribly implemented it was and how dropping it into a 3.5 year old game with a solid community was more wrong than right.

Can you really compare TES5 to the Sims? I don't know. I saw what the Real Money Auction House did to Diablo III. I refuse to ever buy that game. We didn't get a chance to see what actually happen with paid mods in TES5 (also discussed in the video).

My only point is that I don't see empathy in people who just rail against the concept of paid mods without any apparent ability to understand the other point of view. It was not an attack on your character. But I gotta wonder if you actually listened to the entire video and can understand it from Brumbek's point of view, which is "I quit modding 6 months ago but even getting paid a small amount to continue modding would keep me in the game".

In general, I also can't see Valve and Bethesda trying this again with TES5. I thought maybe they were doing this to just setup and test out the system before the next Bethesda game (FO4 or TES6).

I'd say it is closer to the Sims than to the games with paid workshops you mentioned earlier (at least when it comes to what mods are and can do).

Most people agree that the implementation of the system was... somewhat flawed. Or terribly stupid, take your pick.

Why should we have given a flawed system a chance to see how it worked out? Yes, the one issue with the ridiculous prices for not-really-top-quality mods might have corrected itself.

But that was one problem. Giving it more time wouldn't have solved the other substantial systemic problems with the implementation.

This I didn't understand. Even Brumbek thought that there were major issues. Why consider keeping a flawed system?

To have actual data and see what floated out.

A damaging, bad system is just that. Giving it more time would have led to more damage. It was obvious that the system needed to either be changed or removed and Beth went with removing it.

It wasn't really damaging, it might have been bad, but actual data is useful. (Also, Beth didn't remove it - Valve did.)

If that's the case then Bethesda/Valve wouldn't have had it removed and would have waited it out/removed it later.

No, they removed it because the internet erupted.

You can't and it's just another one of the poor arguments against paid mods. As far as I can tell the sims 2 was a graphically dull, uninspiring house sim with very little room for creativity with an audience that it's best not to look at too closely. Creating low poly chair models is not something a professional game artist generally actually wants to do, it's the sort of [censored] he's paid to do at any job. This is seemingly on top of a bad implementation by a well known terror of a corporation in the gaming world. Working on elaborate armors, creatures, locations and stories in a deep fantasy world while getting paid, even just a little, I think is an entirely different story. The Diablo auction house is a completely irrelevant, no one was creating anything there, it's just "gamified" online gambling.

This is a schism in the modding community that I think will never heal. That's how bad this was. Like god emperor being betrayed by horus kind of bad.

the community will eventually get back to doing its thing, but I suspect some lingering "us vs. them" undercurrents for a while. A pity that a portion of the community cannot or will not understand that both sides are right (and both sides are wrong), just for different reasons. Reasoned inquiry and civil discourse seem to be fading practices, it seems.

He was the one to bring up the other paid-mod games, not us.

Nah I've seen this before. This is a schism in the community that will never heal. I wish it would. I'll encourage it, but deep down I know. The unifified community is gone forever. I was there for the MechWarrior Online civil war. Those wounds last so deep that even today the community is fractured. All attempts to mend the opposing sides has been met with betrayals and disaster. Including from the company itself.

More often than not when something this big shatters a community it never heals. There's only been one community in my life I knew of that had an event like this happen and it healed. One of thirty plus. Not good odds.

I've seen unhealable schisms happen in general game and server communities a lot but never in a modding community. I hope you're wrong on this because it'd be a real shame if we never got back to where we were.

Well thankfully the paid mod support is so much of a minority it may not effect much.

Most of the people in favor of paid mod support are still quite active and actually contributing to the community. And the loss of Chesko, Arthmoor, Schlangster, their mods, and their willingness to help others would have a huge effect on the community. Fortunately they are not holding a grudge, although Chesko is taking a break. If people on the "winning" side would be as gracious as those on the losing side this community could get back to something close to what it was before. If these pointless attacks continue those folks may yet decide that it's not a community worthy of their gifts.