Is Bethesda going the way of the console or do they not like modding any more?

[EisDrache]

Is Bethesda favoring the consoles now or do they not like people modding there games now? I ask this for really two main reasons.

 

Fallout 4 is one of their first games in a long time where they removed well more like hidden the file selection option and completely removed it in the latest patch in the launcher. And 2nd their beta patch and the retail patch both completely disable almost all plugin based mods.

 

Or do you think their trying to hold all that stuff back until they release the official modding tools?

[Omolong]

I don't see why Bethesda would be opposed to modding, seeing as they've confirmed that modding tools are coming out, and that, at the very least, the Xbox version of Fallout 4 will be getting the ability to use mods created on PC.

 

Bethesda have likely disabled plugin based mods in beta patches to limit the amount of bug reports that come from mods. Bug reports can be pretty undetailed and incredibly unhelpful, and disabling mods would hopefully reduce the amount of bug reports that are caused by mods. Especially seeing as some mods have been made in FO4Snip (or whatever it's called), and that the other unofficial mod tools still don't fully support Fallout 4. Obviously, disabling mods so forcefully can cause problems, but I don't think that mods are far enough along for there to be any big problems caused by that yet, short of items/objects disappearing.

 

I don't know what patches other than the beta patches you're talking about, though. I can still access the file selection in my launcher, and it doesn't seem like there's a patch waiting to be downloaded on my side. Even if they did remove the file selection, though, that wouldn't stop people installing mods through NMM/similar tools, or by manually editing the plugins.txt file. They likely just hid the option because they plan on enabling it in future, anyway. It's also seemingly set up to use a Fallout 4 Steam Workshop, though obviously the actual Steam Workshop isn't up yet, so it just redirects you to the main Steam Workshop hub page.

 

I expect that the proper file selection option in the launcher will probably become next year, either before or when they release the official modding tools.

[Octopuss]

What seems more likely is they did the same retarded thing Microsoft did with Windows: unify it for ALL platforms, so it looks exactly the same no matter what device you use. Might be nice on mobile phones but absolute garbage on PC (Metro anyone?). Seeing the "improvements" to the controls and interface in Fallout 4, I bet they messed up the PC version indirectly by not giving a F about the differences between a controller and keyboard+mouse.

[EssArrBee]

It makes perfect sense for Bethesda to disable mods with beta patches. You don't want to try to fix bugs for mods on a beta version.

[youtoo]

They may have done this because they want mods to be compatible on all platforms. They may be concerned that we may make PC only mods. 

[TechAngel85]

If I was them, I wouldn't support modding until the official tools were out. Makes since they're turning it off for beta patches.

[hishutup]

If I was them, I wouldn't support modding until the official tools were out. Makes since they're turning it off for beta patches.

I will concur with Tech on this.

People can hack together tools for plugins but they are usually massive issues.

Loose files are fine, nifs are a different story but has there ever been an official tool for them?

[Guest]

They are in fact cleverer this time around. Usually they rely on a burst of console sales at a launch, with PC lagging behind in terms of sell-throughs. Even though that is true, the modding scene will keep the sales of the PC version trickling out, as console sales fall. If they introduce console modding (even simply) they have two constant revenue streams instead of one, which also keeps people around to buy dlc. So no, Beth don't hate modding.

Edited November 30, 2015 by Guest

[strangerism]

they did the reasonable thing in my opinion. Too early to start using plugins and there is probably tons of newcomers who are new to modding Bethesda games and they have already ****ed up theirs save games probably. After the GECK will be out things will be normal. In my opinion Bethesda knows pretty well that the reason of their success lies with their game being modifiable most than anything else. Heck Nexus just reached 10 millions registered users, that's an hefty user's base. 

[DoubleYou]

I bet you could simply load plugins with the sTestFileX INI settings. Hopefully it won't come to that, as there are only like 10 of those.

[EssArrBee]

They haven't stopped supporting mods in the release version, only the beta. It just makes sense to not want plugins to load by default with a beta patch. You can't really do proper testing when people have a bunch of bootleg plugins active. I bet the reactivate plugin loading again when the when 1.1 or w/e they call it goes official.

 

I'm still using Wrye Flash and it works with plugins.