I assume QA stands for Questions and Answers?

By the time TES V is released (hopefully not soon I want quality not quantity) MS may have better aproaches to this kind of stuff.

At the very least they could choose a mod every six months or every year to become a DLC. That isn't unreasonable in any way, shape, form , or fashion (well 6 months may be a little to often for MS, I forget how lazy rich companies are) I WOULD pay for a console version of Midas Magic, but not for something like clothing...

And where exactly does the money for these prizes come from? From the sale of the DLC? Sony and MS would already be taking a cut (as you point out later), then Beth has to pay all the extra staff they'll have to lay on to handle all this extra work.

Plus if Beth starts giving out cash for mods, then you're going to get the position of modders selling their work to PC users and cutting Beth out of the picture.



And Bethesda pays for this new page and the bandwith thats going to be needed to handle all those mods that are going to be uploaded? Plus they'll have to pay for staff to consider everything thats uploaded. And regardless of content you're going to get a lot of 'Flak' mods getting uploaded too (ie: mods that somebody knocked out in a few minutes such as placing a powerful weapon next to the start location)



Free version of the DLC? Since the prize is for making the mod, and making mods can only be done on the PC, and modder has to have the game to make the mods and mods are free on the PC anyway, thats not a good prize.





Wouldn't work. In order to put it up on the PSN or LIVE, MS and Sony will require to do the bug testing in house (ie: Beth Employees do it). This then brings you back to having to pay for staff and time and resopurces, etc.

As for those unfinished mods, some of the best mods are considered unfinished and constantly being updated. MMM, Better Cities, Open Cities, Unique Landscapes, Tamriel Rebuilt (Which you happily used as an example earlier), Midas Magic and DC Interiors (as examples) are all recieving regular or semi regular updates.





Incompatibilities aren't just limited to location. But also scripts, NPCs being used, dialogue changes, even textures.





Again, some of the best mods use OBSE or FOSE. And what about load ordering? A third party tool is required to adjust that as some mods work better when loaded before or after other mods.





Again, who's going to do that? Are modders really going to be interested in doing all that extra work? Plus whos going to test that it works?




A bad mod install (User or modders fault, doesn't matter) can often result in having to do a complete reinstall. Thats how problamatic mod using can be.



Not a problem. And it's clear you've though this out, but I don't think your considering just how problamtic getting mods to the console will be.




Quality Assurance. (ie: Bug testing, making sure it works, it's playable, etc)

They will probably be making a decent profit off of the DLCs... some of the Berhesda DLCs were not that great, but they made a bit of a profit.



Why on earth would they do that? The mods would still be free on PC as an unnoficial mod.




The Flak mods wouldn't make it... gamesas would choose their favorites, then test them. They would only need 3 or 4 staff on this.



(Console users in mind)




I did mention bug testing by Sony and MS. Bethesda would be able to pay them adequately and still make a small profit.



MMM wouldn't work anyway because of scripts etc., Better Cities causes to many problems it would lag an xbox or ps3, Some Unique landscapes could not be used, I didn't mention Tamriel Rebuilt (Though I said something about new provinces), Midas Magic wouldn't work on 360, DC Interiors is a fallout mod, but it might actually work. When the author finishes a version, it usually leaves the released part semi-finished.



If people use their own objects and don't edit the textures (which shouldn't be done on 360 anyway, it can't take higher-res stuff) and Bethesda hires someone to do dialogue every once in a while. (didn't think of that)



Hopefully Bethesda will include an in-game much better script extender with the future in mind. The same goes for load order, though I think load order on xbox 360 goes by a certain system.



A few modders might not mind putting in an extra 3 hours or so for editing, formatting, and testing. There are rewards... Money is pretty nice. The modders and their fans will test it, then Bethesda, Sony and MS will test it, if there are problems, it will be sent back to the modder and they can try again in a following month.



On 360 and ps3 you would only need to reinstall the mod, because the game is on the disk.

Personally, I'm a PC gamer. I, myself, don't see the problem with releasing mods to the console crowd. I mean, I know pretty much any modder would be more than happy to have thier mods released as unofficial DLC. I mean, it's not as if we get payed for releasing them for PC...

Though, I have to say: I play my games with an xbox pad. Oblivion's pad support is quite awful, but, I've played Morrowind with a console pad for years, and I've found it fine all this time. I use Xpadder, a free software, and Morrowind's clunkiness (I love it, I feel Oblivion is too... flexible) makes perfect for it. Just a tip for you.

Easier solution is for them to just support the Xbox 360 controller for Windows(USB versionMicrosft released for PCs, althought they can work on 360 as well) on the PC release on the next TES game. Bioshock, Gears of War and other games that were on 360 and PC did this, can't be too hard to achieve?

That would mean incredibly simplifying the tools of the CS which would mean incredibly simplifying the game. Plus, scripting would take hours unless you had a keyboard connected to your controller.

But is it going to be enough to cover the prizes, MS and Sony's cuts, Bethesda's own costs (Staff, resources, time, bandwith, site maintenence)? I doubt it,




Because when somebody starts getting cash for something -even as a prize- then others will want to get a slice of the pie. There's already been problems before about sites charging for mods, Beth starts giving out cash prizes and charging for mods on the consoles and you're going to see it happen everywhere. Reguardless of the illegality of charging for mods.




But they still have to be sorted though.



Sorry, but I had to chuckle at this. I think you are massively underestimating the work that would be involved.

Look at Planet Elder Scrolls or Fallout3Nexus or any mod site for that matter, look at how many mods are uploaded DAILY They would need a lot more than just three or four people to sort them, As each individual mod would have to be downloaded, installed, looked at, checked, tested, then tested alongside other mods and then okayed.

Even if each mod took only an hour to get through, each staff member is likely to only get through five or six in a days shift. They'll need a lot of people to sort through everything thats gets put forwards.




Except if its a prize for making a mod, and console users can't make mods, whats the purpose of having it as a prize.





See my first reply on this post.



Yes, but these are some of the most popular mods and I used them as examples of mods that are constantly being improved.

Thing is though some of the best mods are also resource chewers and would give the consoles problems trying to run them, so if we disreguard those -as well as script heavy ones, ones with custom textures, etc- then all that will be left are the little fix mods, weapon/armour mods and cheat mods.

So modders have to put more work in so somebody else can make a profit? And Bethesda has more expenses to deal with?



An idea, but it wouldn't really work. Both FOSE and OBSE are constantly being updated to make use of new functions that are discovered. In theory, Beth would have to make the onboard script extender so open, with so many multiple features (On the off chance someone uses them) they could end up bugging it up.




Asking modders to put a considerable amount of extra effort into something on the off chance they get a reward is a bit much to ask. You may want to actually get a modders opnion on this rather than speaking for them as it where.



Ture, but I was merely making a point on the pitfalls of mod using.

Grimblade I really don't think you realize just how long and intense a process like Quality Assurance testing is. Bethesda Softworks has a large team that they're already able to keep pretty busy. Anything beyond some new equipment would require far more than three or four hours of QA. The really complex ones could easy rival the official Fallout 3 DLC in terms of time commitment.

You've also glossed over some of the other real hurdles. It's easy to say that Bethesda should include a script extender or that they'll improve load order issues - accomplishing these feats are far more difficult.

Quality Assurance would definitely be the biggest hurdle. All of these other problems could be fixed in some way or another, but if they only came out with one monthly mod, or one seasonal mod, or even a mod every 6 or 12 months, QA might not be a problem.

Well, I guess I'll just hope they make it controller compatible. All of this would be easily possible, but not on the current consoles. Actually the PC won this generations hardware war by a longshot. Lets just hope a new company makes a console, because all MS, Sony, and Nintendo care about is money and quantity, not happiness of gamers and quality. I think I will take a break from this site, everything I say gets shot down (this makes sense though so don't reply angrily). I guess I won't try to give my ideas to this community any more.