Battlefield 4

[Natty]

Yes, but I have been one step ahead on that point all the time It's not that BF3 or FB "sucks in the modding department", it has no modding department what-so-ever

just like your DVD box set of Lord Of The Rings has no modding department....You dont expect to be able to "mod" your LotR boxset, right? So why expect a game like BF3 to be?
 People still seem to confuse BC2 and BF3 with old games like bf42 and BF2... just because those games were moddable they seem to take for granted that all BF games should be.

Just... forget about it, be happy with the 4 PC titles that were moddable (bf42, bfv, bf2 and bf2142) and look at other games or engine if you want to "mod"

That's how I look at it at least.

[hitm4k3r]

Some franchises just had some great mods: Imagine what would happen if Skyrim, ArmA, RO, Half Life 1/2 or take what ever game you want in those terms would stop their modding support. Ofcourse people will start screaming that there is an important feature missing and make comparisons to prequels. That's the nature of those things like this huge modding history for the BF franchise. There is no way you will get this out of the heads of the community and in my opinion rightfully.

I recently played Splinter Cell conviction just to see how the story goes on. And ofcourse I compare it to it's prequels and make a conclusion wich things are better or worse and wich features got implemented or wich features are missing. The story and ambients are awesome in the newest title but the rest is worse. With the last title the spirit of Splinter Cell died. It is not a stealth shooter anymore, no, it is a simple 3rd person shooter/rail shooter where you just snipe tons of enemies popping out by a special trigger like in other FPS franchises wich names I won't mention.
And I think you will agree with me, that people have the right to do the same for BF3.

This has nothing to do with being too nostalgic or what ever you call it. It is just natural. Even PC magazines do the same in their reviews and it is a logical consquence of the things.

[THeTA0123]

Mods have made many games great. Perfect example will be Day Z and ARMA II. Pretty much 650 000 copies where sold thanks to this amazing mod

[NTH]

But in one point he is right and that's what I tried to say with my argumentation: the FB sucks in the modding departement because of it's architecture. That was a point that, you Natty and nth missed a bit.

How the content for the game is created is quiet similar to any other game and there is no big fuzz about it. The problem lies in the editor and in this pipeline and how all the content is processed in this engine. And this has certainly to to with the architecture of the FB engine and it's function to be suitable on different platforms. It is the evolution of this engine. Kalms himself even describes this evolution  and why this FB engine is build up as it is. That the FB engine doesn't work the same way on all three platforms is quiet obvious. There are too many different components in the different hardware configurations.

No FB is great because of it's architecture, I can't believe it does what it does on my "Outdated" laptop. Modding isn't impossible, other wise how would Dice create their own game, it just got harder to do.
Let me dissect your post:

- You say the editor and pipeline has become complex because it had to be made suitable for on different platforms. You don't think it had to do with all the shaders, geometry, animation and textures they wanted to cram in the game. You think the PC platform is some kind of unsatiated monster that can never be filled. You have to expect that game developing is getting complexer if you want to deliver better graphics, sound and effects. You spin it the other way around.

- You say That the FB engine doesn't work the same way on all three platforms. BF3 doesn't look and deliver the same on all three platform that is correct. You can you how they have cut for Consoles. Less players, less map size, less everything. That's where you see the differences. I don't think PC would have been any different in looks and sounds if they weren't also developing for the consoles. Also don't forget that PC's has many more various hardware components then all consoles combined starting with the first MSX, Amiga till the pS3

It's the numerous patching what would undo modding. If they only added a patch per year or max two then you could keep up as a mod team. Since you build your mod around the dataset that a developer is giving you, every time a patch comes out, you cross your finger and hopes nothing breaks. The more complex software becomes the harder it is to create patches and maintain total integrity of your data set.

So when they are done with patching and adding DLC's who knows if they release the editor tools. Perhaps they will take it in consideration for BF4, if the demand is high enough and they don't have to sink vast and numerous resources into it. It is still a company you know.

In the end I rather have a complex engine that is shitty to maintain\mod but can produce great results.

[Natty]

Mods have made many games great. Perfect example will be Day Z and ARMA II. Pretty much 650 000 copies where sold thanks to this amazing mod

For other games, sure. ArmA is kind of shitty as it is so it's just good for them that they can have people working for free for them. But things are different now. Even Valve/Steam which everyone lives in the delusion is so "mod friendly" and "community friendly" (lol) is making it hard for modders. You cant just use Steam as your awesome modding platform as you like. Demands have increased. The Darkest Hour team explained in great painful detail how it is for them when they want to patch. It would be ten times more complicated with EA and FB, what should mods be updated via Origin? Who should verify those files? Some QA people at DICE should sit and test mods?
Or should EA release broken files on their platform? What if the files also breaks BF3? Should EA be sued by users for selling them a product for 60$ then break it when they release mod files that are corrupt? Who owns the mod files? EA would need to own all your content. These are just starters.

And what about quality? Why should EA allow mods to be shitty? BF2 had no quality control over the mods at all, and most of them were crap. What I mean is, modding can hurt a franchise as well. If EA released mod tools and markets BF3 as a moddable game, and all the mods turn crap, what would that be like for all the players looking for mods? They'd think BF3 was bad just because the mods were bad... this happened in BF2. Many mod players didnt play BF2 and then because mods sucked, they thought BF2 sucked also... As if BF2 was worse than the mods. No, it was worse than their ideas of the mod they wanted to play but never got to play because 90% of all bf2 mods were crappy, boring, buggy or never released. Or failed with building a playerbase so you'd either play 5 v5 or against bots.

No, it's up to each development team to form their own playerbase. Mods are great learning tools, sure, but people have past that now. Everyone is a "pro modeller" at home now with multiple free or cracked 3D programs, tutorials on the internet, millions of websites to learn design fundamentals etc... They don't need to "mod" a finished game anymore like 10 years ago, when people didnt even understand how shooter games are made to begin with. Now they know, and can make their own game instead. Indie games or free games are easy to make. 10 guys can make a good shooter in 18months if they just shape up and have a good organisation.
My last negative words about the mod community is that people still just want to make pretty models and post online. Few care about the game experience and how to set up a working team.
Day-Z might have done that, and I feel that PR did it too. At least they deliver an experience and don't care much about the looks etc, because that is not what PR players care about.

So ok. PC modding isn't dead per se, but the way it were, is dead. Now if you really want to make something good, you need to stop looking at yoursefl as a "modder" and start looking at yourself as a developer. Someone who has a vision of a game experience and can identify the path to creating that. It's not done by altering damage values in BF3 and then claim "I made a realism mod"

[Hjaldrgud]

Even Valve/Steam which everyone lives in the delusion is so "mod friendly" and "community friendly"

They are more mod friendly and community friendly than EA/Origin. IMO, Workshop is an awesome thing. Makes it 4x easier to install and distribute mods for the games.

BF2 had no quality control over the mods at all, and most of them were crap. What I mean is, modding can hurt a franchise as well.

Why is it negative that they didn't create mods of a good quality? If you buy 10 kg meat and find 1 kg roadkilled meat on the way home, and the 1 kg of meat tastes awful, then you don't hate on the butcher. Hate on the car that  "made" that dog meat.  I've never heard anyone whine because they bought a game and the mods for the game sucked.

If EA released mod tools and markets BF3 as a moddable game, and all the mods turn crap, what would that be like for all the players looking for mods? They'd think BF3 was bad just because the mods were bad... this happened in BF2. Many mod players didnt play BF2 and then because mods sucked, they thought BF2 sucked also...

Please give me sources to the mod players who though BF2 sucked because they never played BF2 and only tried the mods for the game. I can't find anything on google.

[FatJoe]

Even Valve/Steam which everyone lives in the delusion is so "mod friendly" and "community friendly" (lol) is making it hard for modders.

TOO DELUSIONAL!! all this about mod and community friendly Valve, hah!!.. we should open our eyes for a change and realize that EA is here to save us from the wicked ways of Valve and their evil dirty plan, before it's too late!!

I mean there are even proofs that Valve are evil geniuses!! D:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/08/15/proof-that-valve-is-run-by-evil-geniuses/

WAKE UP PEOPLE!! OPEN YOUR EYES AND LOOK TO THE LIGHT, EA IS HERE TO SAVE US!!

[hitm4k3r]

@NTH: ofcourse there is much more different hardware for PC's as for the consoles. But this is not the core of the problem. The core of the problem is the limit of the console hardware. And these limits will always stay the same and you can only adjust the software according to this.

I may help you a littlebit with a quotation of Kalms:

"Now let us consider the Frostbite engine and where it comes from.

It was initially used to create BFBC1. This game was released only for consoles. This means that the team which developed BC1 had to do a certain amount of cooking - mainly to avoid excessive load times and memory fragmentation. The hard memory and performance constraints of running on a console also made it more important to pre-compute some things, and to package data into suitable archives."

How patching is done for FB engine games is also determined by those demands that come up with the limits of consoles. I never disagreed with you on the points you've posted, but you seem not to understand the core problem. Even Natty agreed on the point that the architecture of the engine makes modding very complicated. I was just pointing out that there is a reason for this special architecture and that I don't like the way how EA and DICE managed those information with the community.

@Natty: I never saw someone complaining about a game because the mods for it sucked. Mods can use the possibilties of a core game even further or better. Just compare FH2 with vBF2. I play alot rFactor, a nice racing sim from 2005. There is no doubt that the modding community made this sim so succesful. There are tons of mods, some of them are crap but the few top notch mods make it just worth. Also the quality standards for mods are different from player to player. There is no ultimate truth about the quality of a mod and it is up to the player to judge what he likes and what not. Some people just like to drive on a track in rFactor no matter how it looks like. And the reason for modding is not that the core game is shitty, no it is the fact, that the core game is a great platform. It is easy to say ArmA is shitty and very closeminded if you ask me. That Valve/Steam makes it hard for modders is even more laughable. They atleast do something to provide a platform. Btw: mods and games are rated by the players in Steam. I hope you understand this point now.

 

[RAnDOOm]

Even Valve/Steam which everyone lives in the delusion is so "mod friendly" and "community friendly" (lol) is making it hard for modders.

TOO DELUSIONAL!! all this about mod and community friendly Valve, hah!!.. we should open our eyes for a change and realize that EA is here to save us from the wicked ways of Valve and their evil dirty plan, before it's too late!!

I mean there are even proofs that Valve are evil geniuses!! D:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/08/15/proof-that-valve-is-run-by-evil-geniuses/

WAKE UP PEOPLE!! OPEN YOUR EYES AND LOOK TO THE LIGHT, EA IS HERE TO SAVE US!!

AHAHAHA

That made me laugh. At least a good touch of humour in this thread.

Well done.   

[Torenico]

Mods or gtfo bf4!!!!!!!!

[Cheesus Krighst]

very elaborate trolling there, my tin-foil hat's off to you 

In 5 paragraphs you didn't really manage to say anything substantial of that of value to this conversation at all. It also contains pure lies  "scripted destruction" grab your shame-pillow folks, the guy just started tech-talking about things he does not understand, hilarious!

I think the so-called "computer whizzes" you talk about should spend 6-8 years making their own engine, dont you think? Or aren't they whizzy enough to do that? is it in fact so, that they can't really do anyhing except "tweak" already done games, games done by professional "whizzes"?

*smoked*

I don't need technical prowess to understand that all the destruction can be replicated in small scale in the BF2, it'd look pretty ugly and laggy, but it is do-able. I believe i saw a youtube video of someone trying to replicate the Frostbite Engine destruction in the BF2 engine a few years back. Sadly the closest he got was buildings disappearing after being destroyed and walls disappearing in a plume of rock and dust (Oh look, Frostbite Engine -1.0)

Why are people so attracted to talking about the Frostbite engine not being able to do any type of modding? The frostbite engine isn't moddable, period. When people argue about it; it gives me the gist of someone's actually thinking that EA, out of it's utmost charitable kindness, would magically put up a modding kit out for the community for modding just because they argued about the boring subject on a forum which they probably don't know exists.

Any battlefield game after the Refractor engines are dead through the eyes of people who wants mods. EA is not going to make modding tools for Frostbite. It's too unfriendly to modders, which is a major fault in that engine's design, because it destroys any type of community participation or contribution (Other than throwing money at EA for stupidly small content releases that give you a brief moment of satisfaction).

Stop this madness about the Frostbite engine's modding abilities (which is par to none) before Natty (Respectfully known as The Intellectually Advanced Overlord of FH2) comes in once more and begins another assault on our poor minds (Respectfully known as a slap fight). The Oogity mush i call my brain cannot withstand such a distraughtful subject that relates to the Frostbite Engine.

As for BF4, I just have the gist of it being a BF3 expansion. A very expensive expansion.

[Natty]

WAKE UP PEOPLE!! OPEN YOUR EYES AND LOOK TO THE LIGHT, EA IS HERE TO SAVE US!!

hm wut? EA? I didn't say that EA would save us or anything..EA is a publisher,their job is to make money.
But people like you are simply not seeing the full picture of Valves plans. You seem to live in the unicorn valley under the holy Valve rainbow, fully believing that Steam was designed as some sort of "community tool" 

Valve/Steam is a 15+ plan in the making to create a digitally distribution monopoly system, nothing else. A way to establish such a powerful platform that indie games and smaller labels cant choose to not use, since marketing your own product is impossible these days. It's clever, it's genius, and very evil and money-hungry. They thought about it first, and executed a very well made platform, but to think that it's for the "community" is delusional, yes. And I know it's a safe place in lullaby-land believeing that it's for modders and whatnots, when fact is, it's just Origins daddy.
Steam is great for having your games and whatnots, and Source obviously is the #1 modding engine and has been for years, but Valve didnt make it so just to be nice, wake up... They can track by the dollar how much $$$ they earned for making it so. Oh, another urban myth just died: Valve did not create Steam or made their engine moddable to be nice to the community *R.I.P.* myth 

@NTH: yes, I didnt say that Valve is making it hard for modders, no no.. they make it easy for people to do free work for them. But what I mean is that they dont do it "to be nice"... it's not like Gabe sat back in the days and said "hey. let's make the engine moddable! that would be nice to our dear community"

It sounded more like "what steps do we need to take to establish Steam as the #1 digital distribution platform? Well one thing is to allow source to be moddable and then allow modders to distribute their content on our platform, which will get us more users on the platform which is basically just our store. This wil also result in new games popping up which we will sell and make money. Then 10 years down the line when the platform is big, we will lease it out to smaller games to sell through steam and take a nice 30% chunk of the prizes. This comes in handy now that retail chains are getting in to serious problems just like we see with the music industry. Where music has iTunes, gamers will have Steam"

This, and hundreds more points was the plan from start, "modding" was a side-note only. A way to get X thousands more in to the Steam system. The goal was to replace GAME, and other retail stores as the gamers #1 place to go and look for games. Steam is primarily a store, a money-making machine which dominates the gaming world. The fact that Valve seem so "nice" to the community and gives you "free" stuff, is only because you gave them so much money already  They can afford to be nice because Valve has too much money than what to do with. It is not because Gabe is such a loveable nice guy who care about the "community"

I don't need technical prowess to understand that all the destruction can be replicated in small scale in the BF2, it'd look pretty ugly and laggy, but it is do-able. I believe i saw a youtube video of someone trying to replicate the Frostbite Engine destruction in the BF2 engine a few years back. Sadly the closest he got was buildings disappearing after being destroyed and walls disappearing in a plume of rock and dust (Oh look, Frostbite Engine -1.0)

uhhh.. sorry dude, but you watched some youtube video? Let me explain.. No, that kind of moddy fake-destruction you saw in BF2 is not the same - not at all - as Frostbite. It is not possible to make Frostbite destruction in BF2. There, yet another myth killed!
You can have destroyable objects in BF2 of course, but it works completely different from Frostbite.

[FatJoe]

It sounded more like "what steps do we need to take to establish Steam as the #1 digital distribution platform? Well one thing is to allow source to be moddable and then allow modders to distribute their content on our platform, which will get us more users on the platform which is basically just our store. This wil also result in new games popping up which we will sell and make money. Then 10 years down the line when the platform is big, we will lease it out to smaller games to sell through steam and take a nice 30% chunk of the prizes. This comes in handy now that retail chains are getting in to serious problems just like we see with the music industry. Where music has iTunes, gamers will have Steam"

This, and hundreds more points was the plan from start, "modding" was a side-note only. A way to get X thousands more in to the Steam system. The goal was to replace GAME, and other retail stores as the gamers #1 place to go and look for games. Steam is primarily a store, a money-making machine which dominates the gaming world. The fact that Valve seem so "nice" to the community and gives you "free" stuff, is only because you gave them so much money already  They can afford to be nice because Valve has too much money than what to do with. It is not because Gabe is such a loveable nice guy who care about the "community"

Hahahaha.

Do you have any source of facts or proof of this of +15 step evil and money-hungry plan? Or are you busting one "myth" to replace it with your own?

[sn00x]

[hitm4k3r]

This, and hundreds more points was the plan from start, "modding" was a side-note only. A way to get X thousands more in to the Steam system. The goal was to replace GAME, and other retail stores as the gamers #1 place to go and look for games. Steam is primarily a store, a money-making machine which dominates the gaming world.

I think nobody will diagree on the fact that Valve and Steam want to earn money and do it on a highly capitalistic way. For the player or modder it is equal, whether he is part of an evil plan. For the modding fans it is just important that we can produce and play mods - for us this is a missing feature in BF3. And this is a point where Steam/Valve are a big step ahead and where EA/DICE failed heavily with their concentration on producing multy platform games. Valve does produce multy platform games too, but the leading platform is clearly the PC and not any of the consoles. They produce PC games and port it to the consoles and not the other way around ... BC2 *cough*

For me it is equal, whether I have to login into Steam to play RO or DH from a economical POV. I can play this awesome game and all the usermade content. The only thing that is annoying is that I have to login in a 3rd party program just to play a game. But that's a different problem.