the vanilla games of Bethesda and also Obsidian's New Vegas still surpass 95% of other games in content, replayability and quality of the gameplay... without any DLC's or mods

And I also can't remember ever having any major bugs in those games, without the unofficial patches... all their games are pretty stable for their size

Mods just add to that, to make a fantastic expierience even more perfect and increase replayability even higher... to make the game look and feel 'new' even after hundreds of hours of playtime

If a developer refuses to support mods and create mod tools and discourages the creation and uses of mods then they're a money grubbing dictatorship of a company and we hate them.

If a developer goes out of their way to cater to the modding community creating mod tools and making it easy both for modders to create and players to experience then they are lazy good for nothings that want to get their patching done for free.

Anyone else see the problem here.

Does anyone really think that Betheada spent seven years hand crafting a world to turn around and say "screw it, someone else will fix it".

I love mods, I use them all the time, to say that Bethesda depends on them to fix a broken game is a disservice to both the developers of the game and the creativity of the modding community.

I think they were actually quite good with the bugs this time. Try playing an unpatched Oblivion or Fallout 3.

In regards to content, it is arguable.

Kudos, and a nice post indeed.

Mods are about making the game better, adding whatever content, etc.

But what will happen to all Beth games is always the same. Unofficial patches and Script Extender are just 2 examples. And then, there was the 4GB (large address aware) mod from modders. Remember that?

If they didn't say "screw it, someone else will fix it", unofficial patches would have never been developed and released because there would be no need for them.

For the are you excited about mods on see console question i put maybe I want to see what is allowed. Also there not dependent on mods or dlc and I think there games are fantastic alone I've played tes games on console since oblivion and found out I can play morrowind on my 360 just fine.

Do you think Xbox & PS players will ever see the unlimited resources mod? I can imagine a lot of them would be happy to pay for it, even if it's ￡5/￡10 just for that one mod.

A mod we too can have now.

the Script Extender is mainly to help creating and using mods... it has nothing to do with the vanilla game

the 4GB enabler was also a mod, that was created, so that we could use more and heavier mods... it wasn't necessary in the vanilla game

the unofficial patches mainly fix minor bugs, that barely affect the game

all those things aren't essential... they're just an extra to the actual game and there will always be those things, when a game is modfriendly

I've played F3, FNV, Skyrim for hundreds of hours completely without mods, before using them... and they've all worked fine in their vanilla state, without any community fixes or patches

Script extender is made to use mods with extensive scripts, pretty duh moment. The 4gb enabler is only needed because people mod, they add way to much content to the game and crash the engine. The base game does not need this enabler. Yes the unoffical patches are sometimes great, but giving kudos for fixing a broken mountain mesh on a mountain top you'll never see is not exactly high priority.

Yes, I am aware of that.

Actually, I have the Dishonoured mod installed, so if there were a broken mountain mesh in Skyrim, I'd know if you tell me where to look.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/71214/?'s http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/Unofficial%20Skyrim%20Legendary%20Edition%20Patch%20Version%20History.html

I'm not sure about the standards of die hard fans, but to me, that's a very long list.

Except most sales are on consoles so your statement doesn't make sense. It's more like 10-20% May or may not have some bugs fixed. You sound completely ridiculous.

Ever heard of this thing called "personal opinion"? Personally, I would never buy Bethesda's Elder Scrolls and Fallout series if they do not support modding extensively.

And by the way, there is a 98.4574586865784563456435% probability that your 10-20% claim was made up. If you have sources for that percentage, cite it.

I'd bet it's from some site that only tracks retail copies sold at brick and mortar stores.

Nah, he wasn't talking about store sales or anything. He was talking about bug fixes.

D) The Overseer

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Can't respond to the poll, half the answers either don't fit my opinions, don't allow me to skip ones I can't answer (I'm not on console, etc), and a number of them come across as wildly biased.

No, I don't believe they "rely" on mods to complete their games. I think they put out the games they want to put out (well, or have the capability to - every company is constrained by budgets and timetables, and not every wild thing they think of back in the pre-planning stages actually makes it into the final game). But they give us amazing mod abilities, so that each player can customize the experience to fit his or her particular needs/interests/fetishes.

I think mods and DLC are different, and provide different things, which is why I've happily used both in the Beth games I've played.

(As additional context, I've never been part of the "all DLC is removed content, how dare not give it to us for free, I'll only buy a game when it's 'complete'" brigade)

Because they don't think they're "rubbish" guns. Luckily, we have mods, so that people with incredibly strong opinions on minor things, can have their particular scratches itched.

I've never used any of the Unofficial Patch mods, not for MW or OB/SK/FO3/FONV. Only really notable game-effecting bugs I've ever had were a couple characters who had a corrupted world cell (i.e, any time you tried to enter that cell, game CTD'd). Both in FO3.

And I only use the script extender for mods that need it. Which has nothing to do with Beth's programming the game - no matter how many script calls & functions they include, modders will come up with new ones that they want.

As a mod author, I find it downright insulting that certain people in the mod user crowd think that modders are there to 'fix' the game.

The game is not broken, it is a great game and I would never be so arrogant to think that I, as a modder, am better than a professional game studio. I simply want to add more content, give people even more of the same great game that I am already enjoying.

Maybe I can push the limits in certain areas because unlike Bethesda, I can spend all my time in one small area and go crazy with my attention to detail and try stuff that is a bit out there. I don't have to worry about completing an entire game on a deadline, I have no boss to answer to, so I can just go totally overboard in one particular thing and hope others will appreciate my passion.

I love playing this game in its vanilla state, and I won't download any mods until the creation kit is released. I only played Fallout 3 with an average of 6-12 mods, and I am only interested in mods that provide new content, quests, characters, armors, and the like. It has nothing to do with 'fixing' the vanilla game.

My personal opinion is, the modding community is too arrogant for its own good. Give Bethesda the respect they deserve.

LOL. Go ahead and feel insulted without reading anything that's said.

For someone who seems so tuned into the modding community I feel like you have a poor grasp of both how a company runs and how involved it is to fix that much code without breaking something else.

The script extender is used to do things outside of the scope of the game. Unofficial patches are unofficial because they haven't gone through the process to get approved and checked. Mods are about making the game better "in regards to someone's personal taste". That's the beauty of them I may want to be able to craft ammunition, but someone else might like the scarcity of it. Mods can fix some parts of the game, but you are ignoring the parts those fixes break- because they are unofficial, and modders don't have the time to test every different combination, neither does Bethesda- at some point they need to move on to the next project. To be moaning the lack of patches a month and a half after release is kind of rediculous.

Let me quote some of the version history then.

• A damaged Story Manager node with an unresolved reference for Hearthfire was repaired by copying the Skyrim.esm record.
• Resolved DLC conflict in KillingMoveSneakBackA00 caused by a dirty edit in Dragonborn.esm. (Bug #17922)
• Resolved DLC conflict in KillMoveFrontSideRoot00 caused by a dirty edit in Dragonborn.esm. (Bug #17921)
• Resolved DLC conflict in KillingMoveSneakBackA caused by modifications in Dragonborn.esm. (Bug #17920)
• Badnir and Gunding are not marked as unique actors despite being named, never respawning, and the other residents of Whistling Mine being marked that way. (Bug #19485)
• Resolved DLC conflict in the Warmaster perk between Dawnguard and Dragonborn. (Bug #17875)
• Resolved DLC conflicts in the Hack and Slash perks between Dawnguard and Dragonborn. (Bug #17874)
• Resolved DLC conflicts in the Limb Splitter perks between Dawnguard and Dragonborn. (Bug #17873)
• Resolved DLC conflicts in the Twin Souls perk between Dawnguard and the Unofficial Dragonborn Patch. (Bug #17872)

Sound like "personal taste" to you? There is a difference between fixing the compiled executable code, and the quests/scripts.

This is how I view it:

1. Company wants money.
2. Fixing stuff requires money.
3. Company says, "These are low priority stuff that do not have to do with the exe. They can probably fix it themselves, or use console to work around. Let's do something that will make more money instead."
4. Problem does not get fixed.
5. Unofficial patches get written and distributed.

Regarding your "a month and a half moaning", the topic is Bethesda as a whole, not Fallout 4.

The only reason the experience does not feel complete to me right now is because I cannot use my bash and grenade actions on separate keys. When I can do that, I'll be much happier to play this game.

Also, I have a ton of mods installed, but given that the script editor and GECK are not out yet, I've decided to wait til those come out so the mods become more compatible with one another. Hopefully. I also look forward to more newb-friendly mod creation, so I can make the game feel more personalized to my own taste.

EDIT: ANd yes, I do think that Bethesda are reliant on mods. Personally, if there were games that acted as a skeletal structure to be fleshed out with mods, I think that would be cool, as lone as the skeletal structure is sound. I also wouldn't mind it if mods could be bought and were actually being curated.

However, this is not the case. I don't hate Fallout 4. I actually kind of love it. But I think it would be naive to say that there's not a current trend where games are released unfinished. Bethesda open world sandboxes often come out buggy, which precedes the trend of releasing games unfinished. If anything, though, I think that Bethesda has to be more, not less wary about exactly how unfinished their titles come out now, because they now can and should be judged equally to the likes of Assassin's Creed Unity or Batman: Arkham Knight.

Bethesda has always been mod friendly and of course, Assassin's Creed Unity and Batman: Arkham Knight aren't. But the latter two games succeed or fail based on how catastrophic the bugs are and how quickly they are fixed by a professional team. Bethesda games have succeed regardless of bugs in the past and they weren't held to the same level of scrutiny because they were modder-friendly.

In the current industry, that shouldn't be acceptable. If anything, Bethesda should be a front-runner in both mod-friendliness and bug-fixing and set itself apart. They should show that their games are different, or risk getting dragged down.

I'll be honest I've never thought of it along those lines. That being said I do think there is a main-questline here that, and the same goes for previous fallouts, lacks some of the benefits DLC stories have that COULD be incorporated. Namely for me its the morale greyness associated with some of these quests, where no decision is polar. Maybe my expectations have risen slightly as a result of games like Witcher 3 coming along which, IMO, have pulled this world of no-true-good-guy off so well (I'd imagine a lot of you will disagree).
I think FO4 tried to evoke that sense of grey by providing three good guys with their own sets of negatives, but I also personally feel it somewhat failed.

I do agree with your last statement, its not that I dislike them but I think they've been far manipulated from their original outlook of tech-greedy fascists (a grey faction) to we-are-paladins (just my view of them).

Didnt think of my wording right. I'll edit the poll and try and make it more sensible...

Honestly dont see the bias, and its definately not intended to be, sorry you feel that way...

I think most people understand what DLC is and intends to do, and I always try to be subjective with my views on DLC.

I also think most people understand what mods are and do...

The poll doesnt ask if you enjoy mods, it asks if you think Bethesda have become reliant on them, IE do you think they leave things out intentionally like many people on this forum claim (hence me making this poll) so modders can fill them in. Clearly your answer is no, they are not. My answer is the same as your answer.

I also dont think the argument has ever been 'modders made this feature and Bethesda couldnt think of it, they svck balls!' That being said I do think some innovations are a result of mods, I am positive I remember playing a settlement-mod on FO3, it may not have been the first in a Bethesda game, but I do think these sorts of mods influenced the introduction of a settlement system.

I dont want to be offensive but I feel like you are assuming my answer to everything was negative. I stated in my post (second one) that I have thoroughly enjoyed the vanilla games, that includes FO4. Unless I have gotten it wrong and this post wasnt geared to myself. Now I did say that I do feel that Bethesda have become slightly more reliant on DLC to complete the game, and I stand by that as I do feel Skyrim felt complete and FO3, especially, felt complete post DLC. Even FO4 as great as the base game is feels like it is missing that little something and I am positive that the DLC will make it feel whole.

I'll edit the poll to be more non-console owner friendly...

Again, I apologize to everyone if the poll options svcked, I'll edit them...

I dunno about the removed content thing, some games sure feel like something MUST have been held back; how else could Destiny have cost almost 500 million (yeah I know most of it was marketing) and come out barely a game... But I agree about Bethesda, I dont think Bethesda will ever do it.

EDIT: Updated the post. Sorry again, I didnt realise you had to answer every question to submit answers.

First I would have to install the unofficial patches.

Seriously; there are people who use pcs who don't use the unofficial patches or mods.

Yes, I know there are people that don't use unofficial patches/mods.

I never use unofficial patches.

Does that mean that no one uses them?