I am forever grateful to all those that created these tools, but hopefully, the new engine will make it so that this sort of thing isn't needed.

Wrye Bash is completely indispensable for OB, and anyone wanting to use any kind of general overhaul as well as any other mods along side it HAS to have this tool. In case anyone doesn't know, the main reason for this (as the tool has other uses) is because instead of each field inside an id being able to be edited separately, all data for an id are taken from the last one loaded in the load order and changes made to the same id in a mod loaded earlier are all lost, even if its to a different data inside that id. Wrye Bash combines them... making it so if you edit the inventory of a character in one mod, you can also edit the level/stats of the same character in a mod loaded later, and get both changes. I would hope if they are rebuilding the engine from scratch, that this would certainly be the way it works stock, without a third party app.

OBSE allows more scripting capabilities and scripting sizes. I would hope that Bethesda has the foresight to make the script portion of this new engine be capable to exceed the limits they require of it as a stock game. If they expect people to mod, they should anticipate the need to allow it to grow beyond its out-of-the-box bounds.

Wrye Bash and OBMM both are able to maintain your load order much better than the launcher. Added stock capabilities for mod management shipped with the stock game would be fantastic.

In any case, its not really a big deal to USE these tools, and all mod users like me are spoiled that someone took the time to make them... but its a lot of dependency on a third party taking a huge amount of time and effort to make something work the way it should have worked in the beginning. It kind of is a big deal to expect someone to have to make tools as opposed to just making mods. I wonder how much work will need to be done this time around.

Yeah I really hope they at least have a better "Data Files" menu, it's absolutely impossible to have more than 5 or 6 mods with that without it getting completely screwed up, and the load order not being changeable is awful.

I also hope they have an editor that doesn't crash every hour and in which dungeon blocks are all placed by hand, it's incredibly time consuming and prone to bugs.

Yes. It would also be nice if they included some other things in the Creation Kit. Here are my ideas:

• Make the .esp (old TES game mod files) more like the .omod (Oblivion Mod Manager file). It would automatically install all the models and textures and if there were multiple options in the mod you could make a quick 'Wizard' that told it what version to use. This is extremely helpful for people who aren't tech savvy.
  
• Give us a tool for extracting game files from the get go. It is a pain to download a 3rd party tool just to change a fire model's color or change an item's physics.

I have more but I'm not on my computer atm.

i agree with the OP.
Bethesda should not only worry about what they are doing, but what other people are going to do... they could make the mod community much larger if they would help simplify it a little.

I'm guessing you'll still need to rely on third party tools. They just don't design the game in a way in which a lot of these third party tool functinos would be necessary for them. NOw these functions would be nice, but I don't see any motivation for gamesas to build them in.

Bethesda aren't under any obligation to make the game mod friendly, just releasing the creation kits is a lot more than most developers would do. Also the pc version has the minority of the games users now, due to consoles. I'm not saying it is a bad suggestion just may not be worth the time, money and effort on Bethesda's part

the amount of PC gamers is not the right way to approach the money angle. The real question to ask is whether sales would increase beyond their projected sales figures by implementing these changes.

Answer: No, probably not.

Bethesda can't cover every possible feature and function that the modders may need or want.

Plus they can't and don't provide constant updates the same way that the creators of the mod managers and script extenders do. The best Beth can do is cover the basic fuctions and allow tool creators to fill in the rest as and when they need it.

Though an ability to change load order on the launcher from the off would be useful.

Yeah, the CS is made how they need it to design the game. That said, I did find Fallout 3's GECK a lot friendlier than Oblivion's CS.


:nod:

Really, if I had a "wishlist" - and really I'm just grateful they're releasing the Creation Kit at all - it would be to have a built-in bit-flipper like in Bash so that you can make .esp files dependent on each other.

Maybe the OBSE one is too much to ask for... but I don't see why asking that the main function Wrye Bash was intended for can't be the way the stock engine works... in all honesty, it doesn't really make any sense the way the old system works in the first place. If I change a character's hair color... why should the game engine overwrite that if I then later change the character's inventory? It would be useful to Bethesda too when they develop DLC... assuming that the DLC will still come as separate files like they did in the past, and not merge with the existing file. Again, OBSE's functions and some of Wrye Bash's other functions are probably asking to much, but merging all changes to the same id to allow multiple mods to edit the same character or container is really just the way it should be in the first place.

Couldn't agree more. I've quite a bit of modding experience, but relatively little programming/technical experience and I don't like to take for granted the efforts of the guys who provide useful, and in some cases essential tools for our modding.

I'd love to see features that've previously been enabled only by 3rd-party tools be integrated into the Creation Kit itself, or at least given some kind of official support from Bethesda. I'll make no arguments that we're entitled to them or that Bethesda are somehow bound to provide them; only that it'd save some skilled and very dedicated modders a lot of work, and raise Bethesda's support of modders from "great" (releasing the Creation Kit alone is a lot more than most developers seem willing to do nowadays), to "awesome."

Myself I liked that I had to learn and read up on what was needed to run the game and mods smoothly.
Now even if there is a problem with a vinilla Beth game I can reliably solve most issues or at least figure them out.

However it took a while to get there, less than I thought but many don't like the hassle.
Some others are not confident enough to try, and many are rightly in some of cases, suspecious of running third party software.

So if Bethesda could limit the need for such tools it may help.

However it would be rude of me not to thank the people for making past tools as Wrye , Boss, OBSE and any I may have missed.
You do fantastic work and it is appreciated by many, more than you may guess.

If #1 was included, I hope to god it would be optional. I personally dislike omod files and much rather manually install all my mods.


As for tools we would need 3rd party. Some kind of NifSkope type program to allow data manipulation post-3D editor.

The data files menu does indeed need to stop being terrible. However, beyond that, mods are third party things, third party tools are not just necessary but preferred. Would we really have something as versatile as the bashed patch if it was handed to us vanilla? Of course not, it has capabilities tailored to mods that didn't exist upon release. Could bethesda have predicted the need for handling configuration files when building their mod installer? Of course not, without OBSE there's no way to *use* config files.

Third party tools don't just give us the ability to keep everything in our hands, they give us the freedom to adapt. Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout3|NV's modding communities have been punctuated with breakthroughs and change, we cannot rely on closed source binary blobs to power us through them. It just wouldn't work.

The thing is, by creating a very detailed and easy to handle world editor, the devs themselves make their lives so much easier as well as making the mod community happier. I would love to see more mod support personally.

Having to use third party tools is unavoidable as modders always want to take things further than originally intended. But an integrated bit flipping option like Princess suggested would be a great addition.

Of course more advanced modding capabilities are always welcome, but I'm already quite happy that the game is to be released with the editor, or a close version of it, used used to create the game. Because it's rare nowadays
And Morrowind and Oblivion toolsets are relatively user friendly, so I hope Skyrim toolset will be as well.

I'd prefer not. Mainly because of what others have stated; Wrye Bash and OBSE are still in development, so any support from Bethesda would have long since dried up. Not to mention the fact their stuff would most likely be closed source, so if something was needed that they didn't do people would start all over again. Adding in a bunch of the OBSE functions out of the box would be nice, but again not essential as we have people that devote their time to doing it for us .

Bethesda won't need any of the functions to make the Vanilla game, so likely they won't be included. They already support us enough with the hosting of the CS and GECK wikis, as well as actually releasing the actual tools themselves.

I'm far from an expert on these things, but I should think that the "isolation" in Oblivion was a result of problems with having it work the other way in Morrowind - both approaches seem to have their pros and cons. The isolated way seems to be more stable, but not mod-friendly.

I would really like to see these included or added at some point. I wonder if Steam could be used to do these things... at least to manage load order if not more.