Bethesda makes an amazing game template.

Modders make the template an amazing game.


Beth games without mods are made for console-tastes (easy combat, lots of little 'hints' etc.) since Morrowind, so without mods it wouldn't really be a standout PC game.

Modders make it a PC game.

MMMmmmm PC games ....

valid point, i think.

Many modders play the game or even other games as much for learning/research as to actually play.

I reccomend every person with intent to mod BGS games actually play them as well. To see what they devs did, then when you do mod, you will grasp so much more much quicker. it'll also give you a bteer guess where to look for something when you want to possibly usse a similar feature.. there is a lot of content and it isn't always easy to know where womething is done in the CK...

Forgive me here but what all is required to create a mod? Is it like software coding? Sorry I’m not very familiar with game development or modding..

People do not like newbs :frog:

i play vanilla game first at least once maybe more if its done well and then mod what needs changing. oblivion is the only game the i have ever had to mod before finishing a vanilla playthough because the level scaling was just awful. i even had to restart the game but it bugged me that much. had i been playing on the console or the game was moddable i would never have finished it. with mods though i put hundreds of hours into oblivion and it turned an unplayable game into a very fun game.

there is a danger with using mods though and i fell into that trap with oblivion. once you start tweaking things you start to notice more flaws or stuff in the game you want to change. you end up spending more time modding than playing at a certain point. every day or so you scrounge around looking for the latest update of a mod you have or a new mod that fixes some issue that has bugged you. the absolute worst case scenario is if you start modding yourself. then you will never get to actually play the game unless you playtesting your own mod.

"If I were creating the world I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, Day One!" ~ Evil.

Ideally we wont need any mods right away.
After nudity, any annoying occurances (like not being able to leave an alchemy set on a table while using it) will probably be addressed right away.
So of course most will play vanilla first, then see what they think needs changing, and proceed accordingly.

Modders don't have to create a game from scratch.

There is a wiki for the OB construction set that is very good with some starter type guide pages.

To answer more directly, it depends what kind of mod you are making. Most simple mods you don't need to know anything about scripting/coding. Larger and more complex mods you'll need to start digging into the scripting part of the CS.

If the creation kit is released after Skyrim, there will be mods made even before the CK is released. Hell, there were mods released for Dragon Age 2's Demo that made it much better!

As for whether modders are better than Bethesda, let's just say they stand on the shoulders of giants, so it's difficult to really compare them. Nehrim, however, is a total conversion I enjoyed more than Oblivion.

I could create a list of mods right now that WILL be created and will almost certainly make the game unequivocally better, it's just the way development works. Developers will not know how the players will respond to certain aspects of the game (Like FO3 ending when you beat the main quest), and they have to make serious trade-offs that nobody likes.

I have lost count of how many times I've based one of my scripts on an existing one from Bethesda that I knew did something similar to what I wanted.

For me personally I mod when I feel a need to mod. For Morrowind and Oblivion this resulted in one big project that I just had to do and where I was asking (too many *lol*) favors of modding friends to help me and several smaller ones that were just for fun, to test certain theories or to make something in particular for someone else. Next to that I enjoyed helping out other modders with playtesting, voiceovers or offering suggestions for their projects (provided the projects interested me or I knew the modder involved in its creation)

My first mod will probably happen after playing the game for at least several days as I want to immerse myself into the world first, and depending on my mood and my desire to change something when I feel like I simply have to change it. For Skyrim it could be something trivial as renaming Dwarven->Dwemer and Elven->Ayleid for weapons and armor, or setting up a nice cozy home if those already ingame are not to my liking.

I doubt I'll undertake massive projects again like I did with the Playable Dremora (Morrowind) or Mannimarco Revisited (Oblivion); but you never know


Greetz,

Milt

Nehrim>oblivion

Yes yes they do beat them.

I think you will, wait and see Skyrim should be quite a trip..
Greetz,

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/01/13/road-to-skyrim-the-todd-howard-interview.aspx There was a part (5:20 at the first video) were he says stuff like "Going to a really good school for games will only take you so far, we want to know what you did with our tools."

Yeah i have watched that interview many times.

Sooooooo true. I'm not sure I ever finished Neverwinter 2 because of that exact reason.

Haha me too. I was all excited to fight him. Little did I know...