I would not even call modding a success on the PC with only a handful of games that support them. It is very much a niche market.

I do hope that they can succeed but with the horrible launch on Xbox One for Fallout 4 with the mod thefts, and other negatives far out weighing any of the positives and now no mods on PS4. It might be all on Skyrim to come and sell a massive amount of copies only on the Xbox One and not that many on PS4 so the argument can be made that Mods played a factor on the sale of the game. If the sales are about the same you can then state that mods played little effect on the sales of the game and will make it less likely for the Triple A companies to support mods on the console which I doubt would happen since most do not support them on the PC.

I just hope it is successful enough on the Xbox to continue to allow Bethesda to offer mods on the console and maybe that a few of the Indies to take part as well which is much more difficult since Indies for the most part do not have enough resources to host mods and usually depend on Steamworks or third party hosting sites to host mods. Mostly it is Steamworks. Maybe Bethesda might need to get in touch with some of the Indies and see about them getting them on board and support mods on the console and maybe having Bethesda.net to host the mods for the Xbox One.

I think you vastly underestimate the importance of modding on the PC, Erzherzoghans. There's nothing niche about it. Lest you have forgotten, Counterstrike began its life as a mod. Direct developer support for modding varies widely, but the number of PC games that benefit from and encourage modding is enormous. Many games are given more robust fan bases because of modding (Dominions, as just one example), and many others have enormously extended lifespans because of modding (the Thief series, for example), helping to keep those franchises from fading into obscurity...helpful to developers when they inevitably resurrect them.

I never planned to get this version of Skyrim because I already play a heavily modded game on PC, but I did plan to use some mods for Fallout 4 (which my PC is likely not up to running). So much for that. Consoles aren't all that different from each other, and decisions like this can tilt someone, like me, one way or another when buying one.

It might hurt their sales a bit considering 1.) The amount of PS4s sold which 2.) A lot, seemingly, 360 users jumped ship and 3.) the potential was great because look how the Sony base responded to Fallout 4 after the Skyrim/PS3 fiasco.


It was in a lot of best interests for those two to work it out somehow, and they failed.

No it wont because they have another huge 3rd party dev that loves them. So much that they havent accepted any Microsoft exclusivity offers since the [censored] sales of GTA IV: BoGT & The Lost DLC.


Rockstar is one of the biggest 3rd party devs that is a huge driving force for console sales.

I tend to agree. If it hurts anyone it's going to be Bethesda themselves. Like me for instance, I was going to buy Skyrim SE for PS4 and get the PC upgrade on steam. Now I'm just going to be getting the PC version. If others do this or just choose not to buy the Skyrim SE for PS4, then that's hitting Beth right in the pocket book. Then again, Beth has already made their money off Skyrim and I figure they will easily surpass what they put into this SE between the Xbox1 sales and the people on PC who have not yet bought Skyrim, so they may just cut their PS4 losses.

I can't see much of an upside for Sony to go with this. Will they make more money? Not of the SE version is free to current Skyrim owners (assuming they even get a cut from game sales).

Then there is the Idiot Factor. People will screw up their game with mods just as they do on the PC. They will get CTDs and cause major performance problems trying to add all kinds of things from texture replacers to mods with heavy script needs. How are people going to control the load order? Some will blame Sony, and they will see an increase in their customer support costs because of them.

Is there a chance a mod could actually damage the PS4 or even hack it? Modders can mess with the shader programs, add to scripting with SKSE (and add DLLs to do various things).

Modding adds a can of worms with no $$$ to compensate.

The PS4 version wasn't going to be free, only the PC version (so mods could be ported easily and because SE wasn't that much of an improvement for PC players who already have mods and can use ENB, SKSE, etc.).

The game itself will control load order and the memory limit Sony set for mod content would solve many problems because there simply wouldn't be room to load too many mods. But extra support costs is probably one of the factors that was considered.

DLLs, SKSE, ENB, and similar things were never an option for PS4 (or Xbox). Mods would need to be packaged into ESP+BSA format by the Creation Kit and uploaded through Bethesda's system which verifies that those technically dangerous bits aren't included. Basically the only risks would be mod conflicts and the potential of nudity and other "unacceptable" content.

SKSE isn't a factor since neither Sony nor Microsoft would ever allow an unsupported 3rd party dll to be loaded onto those machines. You are restricted in both cases to just an esp and a bsa file for resources. Neither of which is capable of accessing the host operating system, even on Windows PCs. It simply is not possible to craft the kind of security exploits people think up for scenarios that would penetrate the console's partitioning.

So no, that's got nothing to do with why Sony said no. Sony said no because they refused to give up control of their proprietary sound formats and the 900MB storage limit on mods.

Er, and it looks like I got ninja'd by cdcooley

It's possible, and necessary, to control the load order of mods on the Xbox One. The game will not flawlessly, automatically handle that for you.

I was hoping to use "Tales From the Commonwealth" on PS4, if that was to come to pass, but now that it's (seemingly) not going to happen, I realize that I really don't care. I wouldn't use mods for the same reason I don't use Steam Workshop. Proper use of mods requires a more hands-on approach that we'd ever get on console, at least for now.

Not really. "Proper" use of mods just requires that you download, install, activate them, and be able to manage what position they load in. The console can do that already.

Anything else we have for this purpose on PC is a bonus. One does not NEED Wrye Bash, xEdit, SKSE, ENB, or any other stuff like them in order to play the game. They simply make managing things easier and allow for the more advanced stuff to work.

So, someone (Bethesda?) is going to write a NMM-like program that people will run from the PS4 or XBOX to download and install mods? This program will control what can/can't be installed (to prevent possible trojans)? And Sony and MS would make money from the new SE edition?

That makes it hard to guess why Sony said no. I would guess they are more like Apple in how much control they want over their system (error on the side of paranoia), whereas Microsoft has always made their systems more open to 3rd party innovators and developers.

Far be it for me to argue with someone who maintains the unofficial patch, but this has not been true in my experience. Not in the case of Wrye Bash (or similar utilities), at least. If you don't integrate leveled lists, many mods will not work with each other as intended. None of that other stuff is necessary, no, although the script functions that SKSE adds having been essential to many mods that would not otherwise exist. I consider all mods to be a bonus, but I don't think of some of them as more of a bonus than others.

No, the UI to download mods is already built in to Fallout 4. It interfaces with the Bethesda.net site right now. PC and XB1 can both simply browse the lists from within the game's UI and pick mods that way. They get downloaded directly into the Data folder. There's a crude (but working) load order menu to put things in the right positions when needed.


Think of the official Skyrim launcher. Then imagine it's been vastly improved and is useful for basic to average stuff that doesn't need to worry too much about conflicts. Then you'll have an idea of what the system is like right now.


So yeah, it's pretty hard to imagine why Sony said no, the infrastructure in both the website and the game already exists. There's not going to be any busting out of that on the consoles.


For those of you who don't have FO4, you'll be able to see how it works soon enough

The key point to consider here is what you already said - mods working with each other. As standalone units, that's absolutely not an issue, and you'll also find that most PC players don't bother with Bash either so they play loads of stuff that doesn't work together optimally, but still work for the most part.

SKSE is only essential for mods which require the specific functions only SKSE offers. I'd wager the amount of those isn't as large as you might think, even accounting for MCM use.

It did take it as a given that it was for mods working with each other. I think of that as important enough to practically be a given. In 15 years of being around Bethesda modding communities, I haven't encountered many people who are or would be happy with using one mod at a time. And yes, plenty of players don't bother with merge patches...but that's not a good or desirable thing. For five straight years, there have been posts on forums like this one asking about the same issues and complaining about the same problems, and the solutions to those issues often come down to a few key things, including the use of merged patches. "Working for the most part" is how you get crashes and lots of other things that nobody could be exactly said to want, whether they seek out or use the available solutions.

You may be right that SKSE isn't needed for a large percentage of mods, but I'm not sure the sheer amount is relevant. More important are exactly which mods do in fact require it, how high quality those mods are, and how indispensable a player might consider them to be to their Skyrim game.

It is, if they don't need to merge. One should only use a utility when the situation calls for it. If you install 50 mods that add new items to unique containers around the game world you do not need to merge your leveled lists. Some lists need merging, some do not. I do not always use a Bashed Patch because my mod lists do not always need it. I think this is the point Arthmoor is making when he writes, "One does not NEED Wrye Bash, xEdit, SKSE, ENB, or any other stuff like them in order to play the game."

You would not need to merge leveled lists in your example but you would need to merge objects if any of those mods are installing things to the same container and you want both mods to work. If both mods alter the same container, only the last mod loaded is going to affect what's in the container without some sort of merged patch.

As part of my ongoing effort to be as anolly specific as humanly possible and to avoid future misunderstandings I have added one more word to my post.

Yes, but I'm not debating that point. One does not need mods of any kind to play the game. No, not even the unofficial patch (after all, to paraphrase Arthmoor himself, many players are okay with the game "working for the most part.")


But if one does choose to play the game with mods, and one chooses (as most do) to play the game with multiple mods, the necessity of using a utility like Wrye Bash goes way, way up.

Without external tools to manage compatibility it will simply require more patches to resolve conflicts between particular mods or more consideration about which combinations of mods to use. The Bashed Patch is a convenience not a necessity. The same will be true for mods that make heavy use of the MCM. The creators of those mods will need to find another way to handle configuration or have a less configurable version for console players. And non MCM configuration is possible. Vilja in Oblivion is highly configurable using only core game mechanics. It may not be as pretty as an MCM but it works.

Ahh, thanks for the clarification. Without the various tools that exist on PC, console players who want to mod the game are limited to a smaller subset of mods than the PC. With that caveat, I agree you don't "need" those things.


Most of the mods I consider "essential" require SKSE, and for many of them, I suspect it's not just for the MCM. I like a lot of gameplay changing mods, and those frequently use the additional scripting functions. Plus, many of the mods I use require .dll files. So I "need" much more than a console can provide.


As CD Cooley points out, you can use handmade patches in lieu of a merged patch (I am using that term generically because a bashed patch is not the only automated merged patcher for Skyrim) but only if someone has taken the time to make the handmade patch you need and only if the authors of all the mods involved have given permission for it. Which brings us back to the issue of what mods may be used together on console. Corwin is correct that console players will be more limited in what you can do with mods on console than PC. I think that's the point he's making.


Will the majority of console players be okay with that? Probably (although at least one very vocal console player here does not seem to be okay with it). Anyone who wants to do more with mods has the option of getting a PC. I would never go back to a console since I could not do half the stuff I am doing now on my PC. But I agree that mods (that don't require SKSE, which eliminates my favorite mods) work fine on a console as long as the players are careful about which mods they try to use together.

In a way I prefer using mods on the Xbox one for Fallout 4. Maybe it is that the mods that I use for the Xbox might be from mod makers that took their time to tweak their mods to work well on the Xbox is since it is easier to count for the hardware.

The thing is that you must do your homework and to be prepared to do some work at having a good mod using experience on either the Xbox One or on the PC. The tools will be different and what mods can be used but in the end it all comes down to putting in the effort to get the mods working.

Just downloading mods at random and hope they will work and if not just complain that the mods are broken and the game is broken. We saw quite a bit of that when Mods launched on the Xbox One and that was expected since we do get PC players from time to time that are new to using mods. Sometimes it is worse for the PC players since they have more tools and it is much easier to get something wrong, as well as some mods that are more tricky to install or need third party tools to function.

When you say that a bashed patch is not a necessity but imply that patches are, that's splitting hairs. One way or another, *something* is required to resolve incompatibilities between mods. Personally, I think it's far simpler if one can use a single utility rather than hunting down multiple patches. Not to mention that somebody has to MAKE all those patch combinations. There's not going to be an equivalent on console of going into the CK, even if you assume that the average player is comfortable doing so, which I would dispute. I'm very familiar with modding in many games, but I never use the editors in any of them.

There is also the issue of permissions. As a PC player, I can download two mods and decide they need a patch and make one myself either in the CK or xEdit and as long as it is for personal use only, I don't have to worry about getting permissions from anyone. But if I wanted to put that same patch onto my Xbox One, I would need to upload it to Beth.net in order to install it onto the Xbox One, and I cannot do that without first obtaining permission from both mod authors.

Not all mod authors will grant such permission. Also, not all mod authors stick around to answer questions after their mods are finished, so you may not even get an answer to your question about permission if the mod author has moved on to other things. So, even if you have the know how to make your own patch and own a PC copy of the game to make the patch, you still might not be able to get the patch onto your Xbox One if you cannot get the required permissions.

A patch that makes two separate mods compatible but does not itself contain any of the content from the other mods, simply an ESP that adjust them to be compatible, is generally considered to be fine.

If the patch uses mods as masters, you need permissions from the mod authors. At least that's always the way I've always understood it. By way of example, Shurah has prohibited anyone from making patches for Immersive Citizens and several patches were taken down from Nexus as a result.