Paid mods are now available on the workshop

[Kesta]

While your angryness / disappointment is pretty understandable, I think this sentence resume about everything that need to be told about the paid mods "issue" :

 

Why don't you produce a completely unique town within a month and then come talk to me about 'how you could do better with your eyes closed'.

 

That's exactly what no-one wanted, but everyone feared, "mods made within a month", and then released on paid plateform.

 

Nothing personnal, and all this is over anyway. Hopefully you'll keep modding.

[Pretendeavor]

If it helps you, I actually thought the underground town was quite original and it looks pretty cool with the right ENB. I never planned paying for it but it's in my load order :p

[Guest]

You said a friend brought you here and now you say Google? Brings new meaning to the phrase 'Google is your friend!'

[Shezrie]

You said a friend brought you here and now you say Google? Brings new meaning to the phrase 'Google is your friend!'

Yes a friend did recommend I come here, I will not name them as I don't think it is fair to drag them into this but if you like I could send the name to the admin and they can contact the person and verify. I actually found this particular thread and comment through googling Bleakden.

[Guest]

Fair enough, but until you explained it, it was contradictory to me obviously.

 

I do think the mod needed a bit more polish if it were to be released for money. It's not 'bad' but it needed fleshing out in my opinion. I mean I had a good chuckle at the homeless thing because it was right up my humour street. If you just put that as an actual joke, it would actually be pretty neat. I assume it's a serious mod though?

 

I have only spent a few hours in the CK because it is horrid. I possibly don't have the skills to do everything properly, but I know how to work it. It's just too clunky for me to have any fun in. I respect anyone who has to wrangle with that beast.

 

Most of all I see modding as a hobby and it links to my other hobby which is art. That is a good enough reason for me to just sit down, relax and make something. That something will always be free. Hell, I would go as far as saying I would be fine if someone released a paid mod in one place, but still had free access in another. That would be more like donations, which is cool by me.

 

Also, did you used to do Oblivion modding and such? I recall a similar name back in the day, y'know before ES blew up and started selling 20M copies.

[alt3rn1ty]

Also, did you used to do Oblivion modding and such? I recall a similar name back in the day, y'know before ES blew up and started selling 20M copies.

If you ever tried Pells Gate, you have just been conversing with the author.

 

Shezrie's towns are superb, lots of lore in-jokes/references, voice acting, good design considered for companions in tow, and plenty of well considered detail for all users potential needs / immersion.

 

https://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/topic/3383-relz-shezries-towns/

[Shezrie]

Fair enough, but until you explained it, it was contradictory to me obviously.

 

I do think the mod needed a bit more polish if it were to be released for money. It's not 'bad' but it needed fleshing out in my opinion. I mean I had a good chuckle at the homeless thing because it was right up my humour street. If you just put that as an actual joke, it would actually be pretty neat. I assume it's a serious mod though?

 

To be honest I don't get the 'joke'. There are no 'homeless' in the mod, every NPC there has a house. There are poor people with small houses. I have no idea where that guy who wrote that 'review' got the idea that there were 'homeless'. To be honest a LOT in that review was just plain wrong and unfortunately a lot of people believed it and I am still to this day getting emails and messages about it.

 

For how 'fleshed out' it was, yes it could now be fleshed out to bring it up to the amount of content of say...my Old Hroldan Town. But that was just not possible in the time frame. Town modding is a difficult thing because in order to make a really immersive town you will be investing literally thousands of hours, which is why there are so few mods that add completely new towns out there and even fewer that add quests/voice acting. In fact most town mods released have the same amount of content that Bleakden did, even less. Most town mods released have maybe one player home if at all and basic NPCs with no voice acting and maybe a few shops. My Old Hroldan Town has/is taking well over two thousand hours to make. My Oblivion towns have well over 5000 hours poured into them. People don't understand how much goes into making a town and just see it as plonking down some houses and NPCs. It is far, far more involved then that and often comprises almost every part of modding....level design, interior design, character design, AI, animations, scenes, voice acting, lighting, nav meshing, texturing, making meshes, writing stories, writing a ton of dialog, scripting, quest design...you name it, it is all in there and more. All these parts have to be managed and brought together. It just is not as easy as people think.

 

For Bleakden, I made a mistake in trying to tackle a town in the short time we had and I should have known better, after all it was the 8th town I have made. But people are used to better like my other towns and they compared rather unfairly, but yes in some ways I cannot blame them as it is natural to compare. So many people were saying Bleakden was my 'failure' but it wasn't at all. It was a town produced within a month (292 hours) being compared to my towns produced over years. (2000 to 5000 hours)

 

The town released was a 'regular' amount of content town and if you noted in the 'review' it was actually excellent 'quality' in that the guy could not come up with any actual flaws like missing meshes, or wrong textures or statics or nav mesh issues or anything that makes a bad 'quality' built mod. (other then two beds with ownership not set) What he did was nitpick at my design choices and look for things to criticize. When the mod was released as free there was one issue for me to fix brought up by the thousands of users and that was it. For a released town comprising thousands of separate parts that is pretty damn good quality.  

 

As for 'worth' and what something is worth monetarily, that is utterly subjective. What some people think is worthless, is valued and prized by others. *shrug*

 

This is the story around Bleakden and what has happened with it. (Skip to 10:00 in the video to skip the boring Old Hroldan stuff) Also a quick walk around the town for those who never saw the mod.

 

Also, did you used to do Oblivion modding and such? I recall a similar name back in the day, y'know before ES blew up and started selling 20M copies. 

 

Yes I made 'Shezrie's Towns' for Oblivion, which had 5 unique towns in it. Also made a ton of house mods. I created and ran Oblivion's Real Estate website for house and town mods for seven years. Skyrim has a new community so few recognize me now and tbh that is just fine with me. 

 

Anyway I am pretty much finished with modding towns (except the last thing I am finishing up). Town modding is a very much undervalued area of modding and that has me wondering a lot while I do it if I am wasting my time. You head into your modding cave to make a town and when you emerge with the finished product a year later everyone has forgotten who you are. lol Anyway I have decided to give up town modding and am learning to make weapons and armor. 

 

*waves at alt3rn1ty* Hi! Didn't know you were here. :)

Edited August 28, 2015 by Shezrie

[alt3rn1ty]

(except the last thing I am finishing up). 

Shezrie the old reductions I did for that previously, I dont think I will get around to redoing them - I have a new supersonic laptop bought recently ( ASUS with a Broadwell I7 CPU, Geforce 950 and apply big numbers to the rest of the usual specs ) .. So I have no reason to be doing reduced stuff anymore.

 

Certainly still looking forward to it though :)

[SynthetikHD]

The progress looks pretty good. I think the reason why you got a lot of criticism on Bleakden when it was released as a paid mod was because people had higher standards, after all, why pay $ for a town mod when you could just download one for free on the Nexus? I can't speak for everyone, but I feel like most people were probably trying to communicate that they didn't think the mod was worth paying for, not that it was terrible or they hated it, and they appeared somewhat harsh. I'm not surprised like you said that people didn't talk bad about the mod when it was released for free or about your other town mods, because they don't feel they have a right to criticize something that was done in your free time for enjoyment.

 

Also after looking through some of your other videos, it is very clear you spend a lot of time on your mods. Nice work.

[Guest]

Ah right so the review was wrong. I take it back then I apologize. I hate when someone gets something wrong and makes me look like a bitter moron. Ugh. I thought it sounded funny and I thought it may have been a joke you see. I would have jokes everywhere personally, it's just me all over.

 

My god though it is you! I had an account on that site years ago to download all the cool stuff. I think it inspired me to make a small town in the Great Forest, which was the first thing I did. It was obviously a bit shoddy, but I really enjoyed making it. I think I asked for that account to be deleted so everything went missing, but I wasn't too bothered. I can only thank you. You are not forgotten, don't think that.

 

If you decide to go over to Fallout 4 then don't do house modding because of their new building system. Weapons and armour are very time consuming, but if you want the headaches I obviously can't stop you. LOL! Make some cool environment art or something as it would suit your previous experience better I would think. Mind you I'm really into nature and stuff.

Edited August 28, 2015 by Guest

[z929669]

@Shezrie

No problem. If you PM me on the Nexus (to prove you are the author of any Nexus mods), then I will add you to our mod Authors group here, which will be handy if you ever decide to visit again in the future.

[Shezrie]

Shezrie the old reductions I did for that previously, I dont think I will get around to redoing them - I have a new supersonic laptop bought recently ( ASUS with a Broadwell I7 CPU, Geforce 950 and apply big numbers to the rest of the usual specs ) .. So I have no reason to be doing reduced stuff anymore.

 

Certainly still looking forward to it though :)

Thanks for letting me know. Congrats on the new laptop. :)

 

 

SparrowPrince, on 28 Aug 2015 - 3:05 PM, said:

My god though it is you! I had an account on that site years ago to download all the cool stuff. I think it inspired me to make a small town in the Great Forest, which was the first thing I did. It was obviously a bit shoddy, but I really enjoyed making it. I think I asked for that account to be deleted so everything went missing, but I wasn't too bothered. I can only thank you. You are not forgotten, don't think that.

 

 

Thank you! It is awesome to still meet members of ORE around the net after all this time, makes my day everytime. :)

[kryptopyr]

Oh, wow, I feel dumb.  Shezrie, I never made the connection between you and ORE.  I LOVED that site.  I didn't play Oblivion until several years after it was released and never really got into creating mods for it, but I enjoyed house mods and probably installed more house mods for Oblivion than any other type of mod.  ORE was my favorite site for browsing mods.  I think I frequented it 10 times more often than Nexus.  Thank you so much!

 

I'm glad you decided to check the STEP boards out, though I do wish this hadn't been one of the first threads you came across.  The paid mods situation in particular had tempers pretty hot, and there were certainly a lot of emotions running wild that week.  That doesn't justify the hateful comments in the least, but in comparison to the discussions elsewhere, I think the posts made here remained relatively sedate.

 

@everyone else:

I was one that invited Shezrie to join us here.  I suggested that she might find the STEP forum to be a more welcoming place for civil discussion than what Nexus currently is.  Which, of course, doesn't mean there aren't the occasional exceptions, but I think most of the people here generally tend to strike a good balance of managing to be strongly opinionated while still maintaining respect for one another.  I've very rarely seen the sort of person attacks and childish insults that many of the Nexus threads seem to devolve into.

[GrantSP]

It appears @shezrie is another talented modder that has been 'royally shafted' by the 'paid modding debacle'.

 

Having to produce a new mod, rather than releasing an existing gem, was the thing it seems. I truly hope your view of the STEP community is not too tarnished by this unfortunate affair?

[Shezrie]

Oh, wow, I feel dumb.  Shezrie, I never made the connection between you and ORE.

 

No worries, it has been years since the site was removed. :)

 

I truly hope your view of the STEP community is not too tarnished by this unfortunate affair?

 

No not at all. :) I am sure Kryptopyr is correct that this is a very nice, friendly community. She is certainly correct about it realistically  having one of the most civil discussions about the pay for mod thing in comparison to other places. Also I didn't exactly make the best entry, again apologies for that.