The Elder Scrolls modders amaze me.

[Smooth Operator]

I guess it's hard to fathom the modding concept in our current buy & discard uber consumer world, but back when I were a wee lad you always improved on things you bought.

Several good reasons for modding:
- nothing is perfect, you can always make it better and we always want to have a better end product
- to prove your own idea and skill
- to reap the pleasure of creation
- to reap the pleasure of you work being put to good use (sharing the mod)

 

[lovest harding]

Property of Claws von Snipperton

Why do so many people think I hate them? I was just asking about the modders. Grief this happens with every single one of my posts. Hold on I'm going to add a note at the beginning unless I can think of a better rewording.

I don't think you hate me or the Elder Scroll community. I think the idea that the assumption that what you heard is in fact the true experience for all who played the game (that the games are horribly bugged and badly written) is incorrect.
My first line was douchey (which is why I deleted it and apologized in my other post). But I didn't mean to imply that I was hating on you. I just felt you were being unfair (and I felt that the post came across as saying "Certain people say these games are shit, so they must be, so why do other people still like them?")

I actually meant why do people think I hate the games. Sorry I came off that way. Also I didn't think your post was douchy (though if I took a few days to dissect and analyze it until I understood it I might have though by then I might have stopped caring).

Just that first part was. xD

Also I added this edit to that post:

EDIT: I will say, though, I didn't realize the entire thing was meant to be solely about modders. I read the modders section as being just another aspect of the community rather than the point of the post. Sorry about that.

I feel like a major dick to overreact out of misunderstanding now. Sorry.

No problem now we got that cleared up. Just a simple misunderstanding. Hopefully no one else will misunderstand now. Though since this has been happening for a while now I doubt it.

I say change the name. Just add modders instead of community. That would have solved the issue for me at least. xD
Just giving you an idea, no need to listen. ^^

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

Hell if I know; The Elder Scrolls is definitely not my cup of tea, and the fact that they tend to be buggier than an ant farm isn't exactly a point in their favor for me.

If Bethesda were wise, though, they'd start hiring some of these modders, though, assuming they don't. I'm sure said modders wouldn't mind having the job, and Bethesda could obviously use the help.

 

[PrototypeC]

To answer your question, I really don't know. Modders do what they like, just for the satisfaction of having a working item or entire questline or what-have-you that they created themselves.

 

[Mordwyl]

Because I'm the Nerevarine, Madgod and the Dovahkiin.

Seriously, I think everyone knows the proverb by now: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. TES made the ultimate use of this one.

 

[LostCrusader]

Because the open worldness of their games are done really well.

This. Combined with the rich lore makes people get tunnel vision.

Bethesda just has some formula going people love, making people ignore the flaws.

I love the serious because of both of these reasons, but mostly because it is the only RPG I have played that doesn't force you to play the game one way. I can play as a warrior in any of their games and then shift over to a mage or rogue just by leveling up those skills and it lets me become good at all skill sets if I want to.

 

[isometry]

I guess my question for discussion value would be this. Why? What drives these people? Where does this dedication come from?

It's fake. It's just a "big coporation sucks, little people rock" feel-good story that doesn't really match reality.

Source: 10 years of playing elder scrolls since Morrowind, all on PC, only about 5-10% of my time playing mods, and never having a bug that I couldn't quickly fix by reloading a save or using a console command. Sure, the games have "flaws", just like all games do, but straight out bugs? Not especially, sure people make you tube videos but that stuff never actually happens to me (hint: most of them are breaking the game on purpose because they are bored after playing dozens of 100s of hours).

P.S. I never patched Oblivion or Morrowind from the versions I bought them as (around launch), specifically avoided it because I generally don't like patches.

 

[Rack]

I guess my question for discussion value would be this. Why? What drives these people? Where does this dedication come from?

They make great worlds for games to exist in. Also you need to lay off the parenthesis, I mean one or two is fine but you seem to have a real problem there. I recommend trying to quit cold turkey.

 

[Zing]

I hated every game up to Skyrim for these reasons. Skyrim is leagues better in every regard. Better gameplay, very few bugs, much better writing and interesting characters. They could still learn a thing or two from BioWare regarding characters and story. But they have improved a lot since Oblivion.

 

[Edager6882]

Ok so I haven't played Skyrim yet (my games back log is longer than a school yard) but I've played more than 150hours of oblivion and i feel like I've barely scratched the surface with that game. There is no other game series that's gives a player so much freedom. The world is an empty canvas and a blank script. Who your character is and what his/her story is yours to write.

 

[Starke]

I guess my question for discussion value would be this. Why? What drives these people? Where does this dedication come from?

Morrowind really hooked me. The sheer amount of content squirreled away in in game books blew my mind. The open go anywhere, do anything sandbox I got turned loose in. Morrowind had a real capacity to make it feel like you were taking possession of your own corner of the world, too. Actually, possession is probably the wrong word.

Morrowind engaged at a level I'm not used to, but it felt like some kind of home. And some of that was just RPing, but some of that sticks with me. I don't know if it's the same for people who played Oblivion first, in Skyrim, but I always regretted not being able to go back to Vvardenfell or Solstheim in Oblivion. The thing is, even in Skyrim, when looking at the state of The Empire, it feels like this place I've been away from, and come back to. Sorry, I'm usually pretty coherent, but for me, I've got a kind of attachment to the setting I can't adequately define.

The only other game series where I can remember hitting something like this were Fallout, where I always regretted not being able to go back to California in 3, and Arcanum.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

Because they're fun? Because the bugs have never been major for me? Because the lore of the games is absolutely incredible? That's good enough for me.

Have I just been really lucky when it comes to bugs with Elder Scrolls? I have experienced a major bug once, which was fixed by reloading my last save, and even the minor ones are pretty sparse for me. Yes, there are bugs, but I feel like it's blown out of proportion sometimes. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER

Mr OP try the first three words. A game can be buggy or ugly or incomplete or slow but at the end of the day if its fun? No one cares. It has achieved its goal. It as worked.

STALKER was horrible by every measure. Broken game, i had to edit the source files several times, mod a few more and change anti aliasing over and over between saves THEN trick the computer into thinking i had a different graphics card JUST TO RUN IT.

Amazing game... truly amazing. So. Much. Fun. Slow as hell at times, horrifically slow, but AWESOME FUN.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

Why do fans of vehicle buy a perfectly ok vehicle, and then spend hours and hours + money and money tweaking every last possible tweak to iron out the final creases and make there car that bit better? To maximise their enjoyment!

Also, some people just like being creative, and creating mods to get a different, but familiar experience isn't so different from the thousands who spend hours locked away playing minecraft, or playing with Lego...! The human mind likes to set upon projects that will have an outcome that will be pleasing! Same deal as lego...!

 

[Wekub]

Also the only reason I stopped playing Oblivion today was because my character got over-encumbered and I couldn't figure out how to drop anything after hitting every single key on my keyboard.

(Oblivion):
Left Click - Equip or use item
Shift + Left Click - Drop selected item
Left Click and Hold Mouse Button - Drop selected item in grab mode

 

[GoddyofAus]

All of this constant talk about Skyrim can only mean that it deserves GOTY unreservedly.

 

[Doom-Slayer]

Just to go over some points

They all have an ungodly amount of bugs

Never encountered a single game breaking or noticeable bug in the 58 hours Ive played. In Oblivion I clocked over 700 hours and found a small handful of bugs that were actually problematic, and Inever got the unnoffical patch. ALSO same thign with New vegas with was "bug-ridden", I finished the game before the uber patch came out and had no problems.

the writing is bad

Id call it average, but Ill get to why it doesnt matter in a moment.

and the combat is lackluster

Argueable. But...the reason the combat, the reason the story and the NPC are all average and nobody cares and still gives it high scores is this.

People play Elder Scrolls games for the world. They(We) play it for the open-ended world and the total sandbox nature of it. You can do basically whatever you want, and every single person you talk to will have a difference experience. Even people who choose identical playstyles will have totally different weapons/armor and places they have visited because the world is so huge and detailed.

On a side note, in all these games id say the bugs are exagerated. yes they exist but they dont actually happen as often as they are made out.

The reason its so popular with modders is because mods are actually very easy to make with the engines that Bethesda uses. Hell I picked up the Oblivion toolkit an dmade myself a castle with about 20 minutes of reading up on a wiki. Its very easy to do, and people who are good at it can make very high quality mods which can drastically improve the experience. The game is basically an open canvas to them to do whatever they want. And at the end of the day, its fun.

 

[Sjakie]

Besides the fact that TES games are a lot of fun, have been at the top of graphical splendor when released and present a massive gameworld that lets you do whatever you want....

well, mods ofcourse, making mods for this game is really easy compared to most games.
And when you think about it: all games that had made lots of mods made for them did even better after release: Quake, half-life (gave us Counter-strike) fall out 3 and TES 3-5 are the most obvious ones. It adds immensly to the (top)shelf-life of the game and value for money.

In case of Skyrim, if you would play it now and "finish it" before the end of the year...you will want to come back 3 months after the mod tools are released. You can then pick a whole bunch of mods and feel like your playing a brand new, different game. And 3 months after that AGAIN!
Once the mods start rolling out, other people who use and make them, start getting ideas for bigger/better mods because of that. It's the community inspiring itself to make the perfect game for everybody and because you can pick whatever mod you like, you can tailor it to your very own taste so it will fit you perfectly and if it's not good enough, you can fix it yourself: it really isn't that hard to do. It is positive reinforcement for everybody involved in making and using mods, only adding to the fun of the game and most of all tinkering with it.
If you spend an evening building your own perfect house and then using it is 2 times it's reward.