373 réponses à ce sujet

[Pseudo the Mustachioed]

Allen, You must understand that I'm not just financially hooked on Dragon Age, but also emotionally attached. Of course I will buy the incoming game because I'm actually looking forward to it.

 

You've got to spend money to make money. Bethesda had no issues whatsoever about getting the special permissions to create and develop the Skyrim Creation Kit and neither should Bioware, unless if the company is near bankruptcy, and that I find hard to believe.

 

Another way to raise that thousands of dollars for getting a license is to add quality items in the store. I'm not trying to be mean but theirs not one thing that I want to buy from http://www.biowarestore.com/ especially in the T shirt department, which I'm currently am shopping for new T shirts as of now.

 

You do know that software licenses can cost over $1,000 per user, right.

 

I don't think you can raise a grand x # of 3rd party software x # of dragon age users by selling t-shirts.

[TurretSyndrome]

 

 

 

So much is wrong with this image that I can't even begin to put it into words... 

[Tayah]

So much is wrong with this image that I can't even begin to put it into words... 

Indeed and neither can I. On topic: I would like to see mods being possible for DAI though. My essentials for DAO and DA2 were mods that changed spiders into bears or mabari and had them appear on the ground instead of dropping from the ceiling... a simple fix that allows arachnaphobes like me to avoid spiders and still lets spider fans have their fun too.

[TurretSyndrome]

Haha! Imagine bears sliding down from the web or going back up. OK, gotta find a video on that one... 

[Mirdarion]

This was a quote from PC gamer...

 

PCG: Is there any chance of Battlefield 4 being moddable?

Karl-Magnus Troedsson, DICE GM: We get that question a lot. I always answer the same thing, and then the community calls me bad names. We get the feedback, we understand it. We also would like to see more player-created content, but we would never do something like this if we feel we couldn’t do this 100 percent. That means we need to have the right tools available, we need to have the right security around this regarding what parts of the engine we let loose, so to say. So for BF4 we don’t have any planned mod support, I have to be blunt about saying that. We don’t.

But it is something that we are thinking about for the future, where we are going with the product, et cetera. So user-created content is something that’s very interesting to us, but I’m sorry to say that we will not have mod support in BF4.

 

Let me translate that for you: "Blablabla [insert a carebear-line to appease customers] blabla. No. Blablabla [insert a carebear-line to appease customers]."

A lot of words only to say no and to add some stuff that is so vague that you can't be held responsible for it. 

 

 

 

Games made specifically and only for multiplayer ... are the only ones I know of. And that would be all the MMOs, of course.

 

There are mods for WoW ... stuff that actually really allows you to "cheat" and not just modify the UI or macros or things of that nature (those are allowed) ... by increasing your level, gold, HP, or whatever else ... you will be banned if you are found using them. (I'm not sure how they "watch" for players using them ... but they do ... especially in the PvP areas.)

 

Battlefield 2 was technically made only for multiplayer. There was an offline-mode, but almost nobody ever touched it because of its limitations. And Battlefield 2 got so heavily modded, that the resulting games had nothing to do with Battlefield 2. And no, there wasn't a huge amount of "cheat mods" for Battlefield 2.

 

 

 

From my experience with most online games, it's really just a quick check of certain files at startup using the client. But that kind of stuff is still bypassed and cheating is only found out from reports. Never heard of anything being hack proof because the engine was made that way. Only consistent updates and regular cheater bans kept any online game that I ever played running.

 

Mods enhance the longevity of a game (Battlefield 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Baldurs Gate, Crysis, Company of Heroes, the Gothic series etc.). If a game has good mods (and is itself a good game) less people are inclined to buy the next one, if it comes out once a year. Company of Heroes is a good example: You'll find more players for the first game, because it has mod-support AND it has some seriously great mods. There are two ways for a game to stay alive for a long time, and those are either mod-support or being a good niche-product (eg Wargame). The question is, if you want your game to be alive for a long time. And it seems like Dice doesn't want that anymore with the Battlefield-series (and thus the Frostbite-Engine).

 

 

 

We should also consider the fact that just because there might not be any mod support at launch doesn't mean no mod support period. 

 

Well, we saw how well that worked out for The Witcher 2. How many gameplay-mods do you know for that game? 

 

 

 

Seriously, I'm wondering if I was the only one who was rather let down when they announced to be using the Frostbite-Engine for Inquisition. Yes, I don't know anything about the game yet, I don't even know how it plays and feels. But I always asked myself "Why didn't they use the CryEngine? EA has direct access to it, surely Crytek would do a lot to get that kind of advertisement.". 

[Little Princess Peach]

what you are asking for op is unlikly don't forget Bioware dose not own the frostbite engine so they cant just give us access to it they would of signed contracts and things before using it you know legal mambo jumbo

[Fast Jimmy]

what you are asking for op is unlikly don't forget Bioware dose not own the frostbite engine so they cant just give us access to it they would of signed contracts and things before using it you know legal mambo jumbo

I'm not sure it is legal mumbo jumbo, or anything as complex as people make it out to be. The following response is not directly towards you, Tharja, just more of an attempt to explain the legal mumbo jumbo.

When you go buy a copy of "Finding Nemo," do you expect Pixar to include all of their animation tools, many of which are not owned by Pixar directly and which cost thousands of dollars for each animator to be able to use? Would you expect that since you bought the content of their movie, that it would be easy and automatic for you to create your own cartoon content?

That's essentially what mod kits for video games are. And they were much easier to do back five or ten years ago, because nearly every game development company basically built their own engine, many times making a brand new engine for each game. That's not the case anymore - companies don't use their own in-house engines, nor do they use their own animation tools, or big reporting tools, or project management modules, etc.

A company can lease an outside engine, animation, sound rendering, light rendering, etc. tools and not only save money by not spending all of their resources making these tools, but in many cases have better tools. After all, Bioware is a game development company, not a animation software designer. Companies that make the creation of those tools their expertise will obviously be able to create something better than what a Bioware employee could cook up on their own.


In today's world of specialization and efficiency, it is ludicrous to expect every (or even most) developers to create all of their tools in house. It's easy to point to Bethesda or CD Projekt that include their own toolkits, but there are obvious drawbacks to using their own tools. For one, Bethesda's games are RIDDLED with bugs. This is in part because they are not going out in the industry and acquiring more cutting edge tools and bug reporting software.

As Allan stated earlier, Bioware COULD release a kit that removed all of the software that they or EA don't directly own... but that kit may be very bug prone (you can't just yank out code and have things run smoothly, any more than you could rip off someone's leg and not have other complications like massive bleeding). And for them to then go back and add the missing pieces themselves would cost lots of time and resources... and it STILL might not work well, since the team wouldn't actually be using this toolkit to make their games, so it's interface or even overall functionality may be incredibly sub-par.

Nothing malignant or overly technical about any of this, just straight business sense. Bioware is concerned with making the best game possible with the best tools possible, which unfortunately means they are unable to give the tools they use away freely to PC players. I'd like to see Bioware take steps to make the game more moddable even without a kit, but I'd still say the chances of their being a lot content on that front for DA:I is low.

[CybAnt1]

I'd like to see Bioware take steps to make the game more moddable even without a kit, (*) but I'd still say the chances of their being a lot content on that front for DA:I is low.

 

(*) IMHO, the best thing they can do, officially/unofficially, is document file types. (Besides providing modding sub forums, an override folder, and words of encouragement rather than discouragement.) Offer some handholding guides - and it's fine, put two interns on it, after game launch, doesn't have to be before ... on whatever they are legally able to do. 

 

Which they did in the past. Hope they will do again. Again, there might be legal/licensing issues in documenting some files, and that I understand. 

[The Antagonist]

@mirdarion EA owns Frostbite but not CryEngine, so it's makes business sense to use the engine where you won't pay any royalties.

[Tayah]

Haha! Imagine bears sliding down from the web or going back up. OK, gotta find a video on that one... 

And swinging from web to web Tarzan style! I could live with that so well my party might get KO'd once or twice while I'm laughing!

[Realmzmaster]

I am sure Bioware would like to make a modkit  or find ways to make it easier to mod. The primary concern in Bioware's mind is making a excellent game on all platforms. It does not matter if the game has a modkit or is moddable if it is a turkey, lemon, disappointment or insert your own denouncement. 

Now some may say that mods can make a turkey better. I am sorry unless the mod rewrites the game it will still be a turkey. Maybe a little be more done.

 

I want Bioware to make the best game possible on all platforms then Bioware can worry about making it moddable.

[Nohvarr]

Business practice 101    The consumers are always right so essentially we do have the right to tell them what to put in the game, especially asking for mod support.

 

Go to the site http://notalwaysright.com/, re-evaluate your statement, and then come back.

[Paul E Dangerously]

A lot of people like Bethesda's approach, but like has been mentioned they're essentially just patching the same old clunker again and again and tossing it out there. It's nice for those who have a PC powerful enough to run it and mod it, but for the rest of us it just leaves a game that's broken in all kinds of places - or at the very least, so lopsided it's pathetic.

[GVulture]

You do know that software licenses can cost over $1,000 per user, right.

 

I don't think you can raise a grand x # of 3rd party software x # of dragon age users by selling t-shirts.

This.

 

You know how a full copy of Photoshop costs over a $100? Imagine that Bioware would have to license at least that much for EVERY person that downloads a toolset. It probably costs more than that, as a professional/specialty software. The software at say... a financial institution or the point of sale system at your friendly neighborhood Walmart probably costs several hundred dollars PER STATION. 

 

Bethesda can hand their stuff out for free because they own the software (and because they need third party modders to make their games playable =oP ). If Bioware did write and own the software they use for programming, which Allan says they don't... there isn't much they can do about that without reaching an agreement with the company that wrote the software.

Considering the Dragon Age II still sold pretty successfully without a modding toolset, I don't think Bioware HAS to do anything.

 

((side note to voice my UGH over the idea that a fan is entitled to anything from a business))

[Fast Jimmy]

I am sure Bioware would like to make a modkit  or find ways to make it easier to mod. The primary concern in Bioware's mind is making a excellent game on all platforms. It does not matter if the game has a modkit or is moddable if it is a turkey, lemon, disappointment or insert your own denouncement. 

Now some may say that mods can make a turkey better. I am sorry unless the mod rewrites the game it will still be a turkey. Maybe a little be more done.

 

I want Bioware to make the best game possible on all platforms then Bioware can worry about making it moddable.

 

Moddable turkeys in DA:I. 
 

Semi-confirmed rumor.

[Bayonet Hipshot]

This will be difficult if not downright impossible because Frostbite 3 is not built with modding in mind. The primary reason for existence of Frostbite 3 is to bridge the gap between last gen and next gen. 

 

Additionally, Bioware does not own the engine. Neither do they own the additional software and tools they used. 

 

My personal thought is that if DICE has any sense, they will make the next Frostbite engine with modding in mind and release modding kits. Especially once they have looked at the success of Betheda's Creation Kit and CDPR's Red Kit. 

 

So most probably we will have to wait..and hope....

[Fast Jimmy]

This will be difficult if not downright impossible because Frostbite 3 is not built with modding in mind. The primary reason for existence of Frostbite 3 is to bridge the gap between last gen and next gen. 

 

Additionally, Bioware does not own the engine. Neither do they own the additional software and tools they used. 

 

My personal thought is that if DICE has any sense, they will make the next Frostbite engine with modding in mind and release modding kits. Especially once they have looked at the success of Betheda's Creation Kit and CDPR's Red Kit. 

 

So most probably we will have to wait..and hope....

 

It doesn't really work like this, honestly. 

 

For one, the "next" Frostbite is an incredibly arbitrary statement. When DA:I was originally announced, it was said to be coming out on Frostbite 2 instead of Frostbite 3. However, there was no "release" of a "new" Frostbite in-between the time of one versus the other - there are constant updates, enhancements and releases being made on the software. Each release is iteratively named (DICE may well be on Frostbite 3.41 right now, for instance), but there is rarely a milestone event or release that causes them to move from Frostbite 3 to Frostbite 4. 

 

What this means is that if the underlying structure, engineering and architecture of Frostbite is not mod-friendly, it won't EVER be. Frostbite 9 won't be likely to have a radically different core than Frostbite 3. Now, that doesn't mean DICE can't change the engine to be more mod friendly, but these will be future enhancements that will work to overcome the existing structure's limitations, not a "start from scratch" approach to an engine that will remove some of the barriers.

 

They could be just as likely to enhance Frostbite to better allow for all modding in Frosbite 3.5 as they could Frosbite 4.0 or Frosbite 9.7... the only real question is what they would have to push back, remove or delay in the laundry list of requests for added features (which I'm sure is a mile or twenty long, given that EA wants FB to be able to support every type of game genre in their portfolio). And, just like with Bioware, EA wants the best game possible to come out more than they want a game to be 100% moddable. 

[Allan Schumacher]

"Why didn't they use the CryEngine? EA has direct access to it, surely Crytek would do a lot to get that kind of advertisement."

 

I don't know for certain, but I'd be skeptical that this was the case.

 

As for "the advertisement," it's a bit like asking artists to create their music/art/whatever for free because of the "exposure" it gives them.  Few artists are keen on doing this (for good reason).

[Fast Jimmy]

I don't know for certain, but I'd be skeptical that this was the case.

As for "the advertisement," it's a bit like asking artists to create their music/art/whatever for free because of the "exposure" it gives them. Few artists are keen on doing this (for good reason).

I'm not even sure artists are a good enough analogy.

It is like saying because you bought admission to a concert, you should get to take the musicians' instruments home with you to make your own music. Even though the guitar may cost thousands of dollars more than your own ticket, you still feel entitled to it as the consumer.

I love modkits and the idea of modding in general, but to expect it or say that any company that doesn't give it out for free for every game imaginable is somehow "screwing" anyone as a gaming consumer is the height of both ignorance (somewhat understandable) and also arrogance (completely unacceptable).

[tmp7704]

My personal thought is that if DICE has any sense, they will make the next Frostbite engine with modding in mind and release modding kits. Especially once they have looked at the success of Betheda's Creation Kit and CDPR's Red Kit.

I'd say that's doubtful, given EA has no real interest in prolonging 'life' of their offerings. Their business model revolves around selling regularly and frequently, at the pace which makes mods and such for their older products not only unnecessary, but perhaps even viewed as something that gets "in the way" of having their customers shell out money for the latest Franchise Year+1.

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm not even sure artists are a good enough analogy.

It is like saying because you bought admission to a concert, you should get to take the musicians' instruments home with you to make your own music. Even though the guitar may cost thousands of dollars more than your own ticket, you still feel entitled to it as the consumer.

I love modkits and the idea of modding in general, but to expect it or say that any company that doesn't give it out for free for every game imaginable is somehow "screwing" anyone as a gaming consumer is the height of both ignorance (somewhat understandable) and also arrogance (completely unacceptable).

 

I was referring to the implication that Crytek would benefit from EA using their engine for free because it'd be a good advertisement for CryEngine.

[CybAnt1]

This will be difficult if not downright impossible because Frostbite 3 is not built with modding in mind. 

 

It doesn't seem to me built to defeat it, but it was also not created in such a way to facilitate & encourage it. 

 

One problem is just its newness. It's always easier to mod engines and associated files that have been around a long period of time, as you start to get familiar with how they work. 

 

I don't think DAI modders will be able to really build on the experience of those who did manage to mod BF3 & BF4. Complete difference in games built around the engine; complete difference of what people want to modify. 

[Realmzmaster]

A modkit may or may not happen. Bioware primary concern is producing a excellent game. If Bioware does produce a modkit people will also expect Bioware to support it with bug fixes. The other point is the modkit has to be usable and documented. All of this takes time and resources. Even documenting the data files so that it could be modfriendly will take someone to sit down and document how it is possible.

I hate to say it comes down to cost versus benefits, but it does. The benefits of producing a modkit must outweigh the costs. You are also talking about a small group of people who actually create the mods in a niche market where the predominant sales will be on consoles.

After the game ships Bioware may look into producing a modkit or providing modding information. I do believe by being patient and asking politely it may happen, but if it does not it is because it is not economical viable. 

[CybAnt1]

A modkit may or may not happen. Bioware primary concern is producing a excellent game. If Bioware does produce a modkit people will also expect Bioware to support it with bug fixes. 

 

If they release a Toolset, they do have to support it itself, yes. But as for mods themselves, even in DAO, you were "advised to use them at your own risk". Bioware technical support would only tell you to remove all mods if you were having an issue or problem, but they did not otherwise support or deal with problems in the mods themselves (or created by them); for that you usually had to go to the author's forum at DA-Nexus (if there was one). 

[Fast Jimmy]

I was referring to the implication that Crytek would benefit from EA using their engine for free because it'd be a good advertisement for CryEngine.

 

Ah. My apologies.

I do agree, for the record. For Crytek to give away their engine to EA means that EA, one of the largest publishers in the business, is getting your product for free, essentially slashing the available market by close to half. In an industry where you only have maybe two dozen major and mid-sized publishers, that seems like a poor business decision.

 

It would make more sense for them to take the Unity approach, where they offer indie developers and amateurs free access to their engine, then offer a "pro" version that has more robust features to get more exposure and still able to turn a profit off of bigger studios using their engine.

 

EDIT: If, of course, their goal was to try and give away their engine for free as part of a marketing attempt, that is. They could very well go the route of just using the engine for their games and licensing to any other developer/publisher who wants to use it. Letting your work speak for yourself is never a bad policy.