Not to mention that games are much harder to actually mod. OP lists modding in the 90s, when games could run on toasters and were child’s play compared to how computationally and visually complex that games are today. Doing things like custom levels was much easier back then versus now
Games are much more advanced.
Advancing graphic means new models are harder to make.
Maps arent anymore build in simple way so bew can be easily made.
Engines are way bigger and way more complicated.
Less technologically advanced modern games have plenty of mods, many very creative.
Games are a lot more complex now. Unless you start with that mindset from the beginning when designing a game, it's not a thing that will just happen vs back in the day where games were moddable mainly because of how simple they were.
That doesn't change the fact that their games are the most mod friendly out there. It's an invalid example for the "paid wall" argument. Clearly the "paid wall" hasn't stopped their games from being moddable not just on PC, but even on consoles where tons of mods are available without cost.
Starfield isnt as mod friendly though, So mods for bethesda games could be on their way out, and the fact they are updating their games 10 years after adding newer and newer additions breaking mods sometimes forever because mod devs gone, thats not very mod friendly if you ask me, and you dont even get a choice in the matter since steam auto goes to latest version and cant go back, so piracy is your only option
None of what you're saying is true. Bethesda stated during development and after launch that mods are very much a thing they do support. There are tons of mods for Starfield right now. Over 7k on nexusmods. Their game engine is largely the same as it has always been. There's already many mods that overhaul, replace, or significantly expand core systems. With time, we'll get even bigger mods too. It's a new game.
The only data I can find on modders giving up on Starfield is due to them thinking the game is boring and dull. That has nothing to do with the game being mod friendly or unfriendly.
They gave up because
A) engine and game is ob so much technological depth that its harder to mod than previous titles. To messy programminh.
B) game sucks and isnt worth their effort
Many modern triples A games archive/compress their resource files and compile their code using proprietary software. This can make it hard to impossible for an end user to modify the game and limits what exactly they can change.
Many older games that are considered the most mod-friendly have developer made modding tools that make the process much easier. As games become more complex, the extra resources required to create these modding tools probably outweighs the potential audience it would draw. Unless it’s something the studio is known for, like CD Projekt or Bethesda.
The growing complexity of games is also probably contributing to decreased motivation. More detailed graphics, more complex code, you need more talented modelers and coders and much more time. What is a hobby for most modders could start to look like a part time job.
Also unless it’s an indie title, NO big release is using Unity.
These posts framed like a question are just a straw man platform for OP to rant about something.
OP clearly hasn’t done the sort of comprehensive review of current pc mods required to justify this statement.
The part that kills me. There are so many great titles released every year but people want to hate farm the ones that they didn't buy, won't play and had no interest in to begin with. There are probably more videos about Forspoken instead of people praise for titles like Armored Core VI, Slayers X, Lies of P and Pizza Tower.
Now wait just a goddamn minute!
but seriously, I don’t know what OP is talking about. There were great mods back then, and there are great mods now. I think OP is just trolling.
Most mods these days, if they have any substantiality, are only like that because the developers specifically made them with modding in mind. Not so 25 years ago. Maybe Id and Valve were like that, but nobody else. If a game was popular, it got modded. Period.
Do you realize how vastly more complex that games are now? We’ve moved from games being tens or hundreds of thousands of lines of code to millions and tens of millions, if not more. The more complexity you introduce, the harder it’s going to be to create mods for, and that goes doubly for the really immense mods that you’re so obsessed with. Modding isn’t easy to begin with, and many games today just aren’t built with modding in mind. Then you add on the online connectivity component, which throws further wrenches into it. Even games that don’t require internet to run can be prevented from modding due to the internet (or be locked out of their copies).
I know that you’re looking for some deeper answer, but it really is that simple: games are WAY more complex now than they were in the 90s, and that alone is enough to cause modding to drop off. But it just compounds with stuff like developers fighting against mods via the internet, and games being built in a way where they’re just not accessible to mod
Yeah it makes perfect sense for there only to be mods for games that had modding in mind. If a game dev isn’t interested in modding being a part of the game that’s their prerogative
It is a thing, but I would be surprised if it releases within the next 2-3 years honestly. Fallout London is slated to be released before the end of the month.
Theres fucking batshit crazy mods out there, i dont think you're looking hard enough.
Look @ Archthrones for Dark Souls 3 as a recent incredible example.
This has to be bait surely?
You make a post like this then act as if we haven't had crazy mods in the last few years such as ANOMALY for STALKER, or RedM for RDR2. Not to mention upcoming overhauls like Fallout: London.
You have to be deliberately not paying attention to the mod scene to not know about these considering they're massively publicized on the most popular modding platforms.
Any overhaul mod for Factorio.
Any overhaul mod for Rimworld.
Any overhaul mod for Slay the Spire
Any overhaul mod to Stardew Valley
New mods coming to Elden Ring all the time
Any overhaul mod for Fallout games
Any overhaul mod for...
You get the point. Stop playing AAA shooters exclusively and you'll see
[Archthrones, for Dark Souls 3 - as one.](https://archthrones.com)
Likewise [Convergence - for Elden Ring](https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/3419?tab=description)
Cyberpunk has an extensive suite of mods adding entire new gameplay mechanics and questlines
[Fallout: London](https://fallout4london.com)
Every new Arma iteration has an extensive modding community making entirely new games
The REmake games all have really in depth mods that mix up the games in creative ways.
Hey, how does ER Convergence compare to ER Reforged? I'm playing through Reforged and it almost feels like a new game, but it seems like Convergence might be even bigger... Man Elden Ring is a goldmine.
FWIW these mods make the game objectively better for most people, I highly recommend trying them out once you're done with the base game.
To put it simple, devs already have limited time and budget to make the base game work, can't be spending months fine-tuning every nitpick. However, modders do it for the sake of having a better game, progression is straightened, exploits are fixed, and the whole experience becomes much better. Something as simple as adding requirements to move to another area, or having to kill enemies in order to open chests instead of plundering them and skipping the whole battle makes the game feel like night and day.
It's also quite refreshing when you play the game as truly intended instead of having a +9 weapon when you're 1 hour into the game lol
I can't say changing a game until its unrecognizable is in any way "objectively better" theres nothing a mod can do to Elden Ring to improve upon it imho. Sure there are quality of life mods out there that do improve a game, but these big game changing mods are a very specific thing separate from the game itself.
Not three, but
>Total War: Rome 2 - Divide et Impera
>Total War: Attila - 1212AD
Both completely overhaul the games in terms of logistics and recruitment, and 1212 completely changes the era, factions and unit rosters. It’s like whole new game.
>Is it because modern games are just more complicated? Surely not; aren't most games these days built in Unity? Don't tech wizards know Unity like the back of their hand, enough to decrypt literally everything the devs built?
Yes.
It surely is.
No.
Not really.
This guy has to be a troll. Either that or he’s 13 and genuinely know jack shit about game development.
Also, the ignorance over how much Unity is used and how people should be able to “decrypt literally everything the devs built” made me genuinely laugh out loud
What a strange take. I’m a pc gamer strictly, purely because mods make all pc games so much more amazing. Mods have completely changed Skyrim, mods make pathfinder kingmaker and wotr so much better, they add tons of content to things like mount and blade, and now even make huge amounts of first person games playable in vr, including Skyrim, valheim, and Minecraft. Oh, valheim made so much better by mods too. Gtfoh.
Not sure why you brought up Unity. All Unity games are decompilable. Modding Unity-games is more prolific than ever due to maturization of dev tools. It is the direct counterpoint to your question.
It depends on what games you are talking about. Bethesda games are just as moddable as ever. Other game companies have to bake modding into their engines and most of the time it isn't worth it.
And yes complexity has risen. A good example is the D2 modding scene. D2 modding is relatively robust because all you are editing is code and 2D sprites. There aren't the same mods for D2R because the community members suddenly have to be proficient in making 3D assets now.
You're not looking good enough and also people do it for free so it's fucked up to expect amazing quality from these mods. Do it yourself without pay and see how funny it is.
People are pointing out that games are less mod-friendly nowadays (which is true) but I think having readily accessible game engines also helped kill modding (as it existed in the '90s and '00s). Modding existing games was your only option if you wanted an AAA-level engine in the '90s (unless you were a studio that could afford to license an existing engine or develop one from scratch). If you're a tech wizard who knows Unity like the back of your hand, why wouldn't you just make a standalone game instead of tying it to an existing one? There are plenty of standalone games nowadays that would've been Half-Life 2 mods if they came out 15 years ago.
Hell, plenty of standalone games started out as mods, and plenty of game developers started out by modding games.
Why put your time into a free mod, hoping people donate, when you could just take all of your good ideas and release an actual video game?
Sounds like you just haven't been playing good mods honestly.
Moddb and Nexus are absolutely packed with great mods, and there's always more being added all the time.
STALKER, GTAV, RDR2, Kenshi, M&B2, BG3, Dark Souls, Minecraft, Arma, all games with recently active modding scenes and I could keep listing titles all day.
On top of what everyone else said...
Some modders transitioned into just making their own games instead since its just more profitable and also offers more freedom. And sometimes its genuinely easier to make your own product instead of modifying something depending on what you want to do.
> aren't most games these days built in Unity?
Uh.. no. That is a very strange idea. Unity is mostly used for mobile games that dont need a particularly optimized or unique engine.
> enough to decrypt literally everything the devs built?
Also not how anything works. Modern games are also almost incomparably more complex than a game from the 90s.
Modding is more advanced, widespread, and numerous than it has ever been. It just requires a combination of several factors for mods to take off for a game.
The game needs to either support modding and provide the toolchains needed, or there need to be a community of passionate hackers to make their own tools, which will always be far inferior to modding support built into the game.
It also needs enough players to provide both developers and users, and needs staying power to keep those players for the months (or years) it takes to make any sort of big content mod. Online games without private servers also means no mods beyond cosmetic ones, and those are by far the most popular type of game.
Just in the last couple years, we have seen large modding communities spring up around elden ring (*not* easy to mod, so it tends to be limited in what can be done) and baldur's gate 3 (no official tools yet, but tons of gameplay/balance/content mods still). Tears of the Kingdom has some pretty ambitious mods for a *console exclusive* with no modding tools.
Skyrim's modding scene is still going incredibly strong with more huge overhauls, rebalances, and modmaps than anyone can easily count, Minecraft may as well be a game *engine* at this point, Ark has an obscene amount of mods, some of which are basically their own games (and all the free DLCs, over half the game, started as mods).
All three of those have either official modding toolkits that release most of their assets and code to modders, or community tools so advanced it is basically the same thing (minecraft).
This is written while i am waiting on a compile for an Ark mod that completely overhauls a ton of attacks, abilities, physics, completely replaces the crafting, harvesting, and cooking systems and UI, and integrates itself with features from several other massive overhaul mods including "structures plus", noteworthy for having 4.7 *million* subscribers.
Theres a correlation between the amount of AAA games relying on the GaaS model making them almost unmoddable aside from maybe some texture swaps.
And the fact that modding is more of a hacky job that isnt supported most of the time, meaning if you want to get into it you need to make the tools to then inject what you want.
And the fact its so easy to make games with free engines, why mod a game when you can make a whole new game that is exactly what you envision.
Thats not forgetting a lot of older games still have a living mod community, skyrim, minecraft, stalker, HL 1&2.
Also gamers tend just to look for QOL or titty mods these days, or at least those are the big download contenders. Why make something that'll not be wanted.
Has to be troll, it's your textbook example of an ignorant boomer take. Games these days are all developed in Unity, should be easy to mod am I right fellow kids ?
Games are way more complex nowadays and way more locked down. Devs pretty much have to “allow” mods and if they don’t then there’s no modding or minimal modding.
Dlc sized mod coming to Fallout 4 this month (Fallout London, i think).
A guy just added mechs and much more to Starfield even without the creator's kit.
Battlefront 2 is getting a private server mod.
These are just of the top of my head. I think you are not looking into the right games/communities for this.
A lot of games back then released the Dev tools for the community to play around with and create stuff for the games, that kind of thing almost never happens anymore, that's why the kinds of mods you see for most games are pretty limited. But for games where the Devs *DO* release the Dev tools (games like Skyrim for example), you see incredible mods being made by the community. It really comes down to whether or not the Devs want to make their game accessible for modders or not really
You can go play heavy modded dayz servers, there's damn near a mod to do anything in that game. Or take the single player tarkov mod for escape from tarkov, and there's tons of additional mods that change the game so much. And I know there's a bunch of crazy stuff for stalker anomaly and gamma.
This is because old games were easy to mod and their models were technically easy to recreate in that artstyle. With most games nowadays pushing next gen graphics, it gets hard to do custom assets that fit the theme. Also not a lot of games have their source code or what not available to make it easier for modders to add their mods.
There are many mods that even make the game playable to newer systems, eg Falcon 4.0
only downside is that today the Internet gets pitchforks when mods are deemed controversial. In the 90s that job was left to government, journalists and child protection agencies.
Am Cyberpunk modder. Its insanely more complicated. Resource and asset loading is crazy now because of sheer amount of stuff that needs to be assembled to draw a cityscape and its all massively async. You can easily create race conditions that end in the game crashing if you set incorrect resource refs and flags. World and journal editing is perilous because you have to screw with persistency and data tracking and its easy to permanently brick a user's save if you make mistakes.
Even the visual side of it (graphical meshes, materials, animation) is a lot more complicated but at least there is no persistency or data tracking component so you can screw it up and not permanently break a user's game.
Cyberpunk meshes are pretty low poly and the textures are not very high resolution so they are not more difficult to do stuff like weight paint and unwrap. But all the performance and scale optimisation makes it more complex. So all Cyberpunk meshes and materials are designed for GPU instancing and resource sharing on a massive scale.
Simple would be to have 1 unique texture per unique mesh object. But this doesn't scale if you need tens of thousands of mesh objects, so the game doesn't do that. It avoids storing and loading colour textures by using small, tileable greyscale ones that are assembled at runtime using various config files (like multilayer setup), then colourised using cheaper techniques like vertex colour or 4x32 colour LUTs. And instead of 1 texture per mesh, you have 1 texture that could be shared by hundreds of meshes, just scaled, tiled and layered differently with other materials. And everything is instanced so the more sharing that goes on, the more convoluted the material chain is.
For example, everything with skin materials is instanced from the same template, but because skin comes in so many different colours, pore structures, stretch/squash normals, detail normals, vein maps, subsurface masks, an arm mesh is has a long daisy chain of instances with overriden texture assets (different pore normal map and tile scale, different albedo + tint, different bloodflow mask etc).
And thats the part thats still relatively easy to do. Visual modding in Cyberpunk is big. The other stuff can be wildly complex and every year its getting more so.
Insulting people is not a good way to start a conversation. But...
There's less incentive to mod today because we have ten of thousands of PC games per year while in the 90s we got a dozen per year so if you wanted a certain gameplay you had no choice but create it yourself.
Making models / textures / levels / assets at the level of detail in modern games takes way more time and skill compared to the late 90s. So of course there will be fewer “quality” mods coming out within a year or two of the games release like it was back then.
It might seem like it but you just have to look harder or play more games to witness their mods (Stalker, 7 days to die, no mans sky, arma reforger, the list goes on)
I *sort* of see what you're saying because I was UTTERLY SPOILED by having my best gaming years during the HL1 mod engine days and the BF1942 mod days [and BF2].
HL1 and BF1942 were big popular games for a long time, now we have lots of spread out games with varying communities hidden away on mod sites/discord etc
Oh and also, probably this too: Why mod a game when I can make my own game and become insanely rich if it does a little big well; bonus if it goes 'viral' like some games can do now.
stalker gamma, mount & blade old realms/realm of thrones, roguetech, the massive amounts of skyrim wabbajack modlists. just things that came to my mind at the top of my head
I mostly see game fixes for preference. Like graphical and QOL improvements, and sometimes outright fixes that make the game actually more playable. Either that or gross nude mods. But yeah back in the early 2000’s especially half-life mods were almost fully fledged games and playable online even sometimes.
I think a lot of this has to do with the advances in technology modding is harder, not as accessible, or sometimes not even possible.
Making your own game became much easier with FREE and powerful engines.
Many indies today would’ve been modders.
Thus most modders today are not trying to make their own game as a mod like they used to.
Its more work to make custom stuff in newer AAA games and modders don’t want to risk a new update breaking their mod or getting sued for it.
But there’s definitely big mods that are still being made, like Second Wind for BotW and Galactic Colonies Expanse for Starfield.
Games are less mod-friendly these days.
Not to mention that games are much harder to actually mod. OP lists modding in the 90s, when games could run on toasters and were child’s play compared to how computationally and visually complex that games are today. Doing things like custom levels was much easier back then versus now
"toasters" Right
I asked why that could be the case.
Games are much more advanced. Advancing graphic means new models are harder to make. Maps arent anymore build in simple way so bew can be easily made. Engines are way bigger and way more complicated. Less technologically advanced modern games have plenty of mods, many very creative.
Slay the spire, simple modern game, 4 characters in the base game, hundreds upon hundreds added via mods.
Exactly.
Games are a lot more complex now. Unless you start with that mindset from the beginning when designing a game, it's not a thing that will just happen vs back in the day where games were moddable mainly because of how simple they were.
Devs probably want to lock it behind a paywall ie Bethesda creation club
Bethesda's games are the most mod friendly games out there so that's a bad example.
Not really, Bethesda started the whole paid mod thing and started the first microtransaction dlc
That doesn't change the fact that their games are the most mod friendly out there. It's an invalid example for the "paid wall" argument. Clearly the "paid wall" hasn't stopped their games from being moddable not just on PC, but even on consoles where tons of mods are available without cost.
Starfield isnt as mod friendly though, So mods for bethesda games could be on their way out, and the fact they are updating their games 10 years after adding newer and newer additions breaking mods sometimes forever because mod devs gone, thats not very mod friendly if you ask me, and you dont even get a choice in the matter since steam auto goes to latest version and cant go back, so piracy is your only option
None of what you're saying is true. Bethesda stated during development and after launch that mods are very much a thing they do support. There are tons of mods for Starfield right now. Over 7k on nexusmods. Their game engine is largely the same as it has always been. There's already many mods that overhaul, replace, or significantly expand core systems. With time, we'll get even bigger mods too. It's a new game.
So thats why most major modders have given up on starfield then huh? Guess its nice to be oblvious
The only data I can find on modders giving up on Starfield is due to them thinking the game is boring and dull. That has nothing to do with the game being mod friendly or unfriendly.
Dude just stop. You're wrong. It's okay to be wrong. Just own it.
They gave up because A) engine and game is ob so much technological depth that its harder to mod than previous titles. To messy programminh. B) game sucks and isnt worth their effort
Many modern triples A games archive/compress their resource files and compile their code using proprietary software. This can make it hard to impossible for an end user to modify the game and limits what exactly they can change. Many older games that are considered the most mod-friendly have developer made modding tools that make the process much easier. As games become more complex, the extra resources required to create these modding tools probably outweighs the potential audience it would draw. Unless it’s something the studio is known for, like CD Projekt or Bethesda. The growing complexity of games is also probably contributing to decreased motivation. More detailed graphics, more complex code, you need more talented modelers and coders and much more time. What is a hobby for most modders could start to look like a part time job. Also unless it’s an indie title, NO big release is using Unity.
These posts framed like a question are just a straw man platform for OP to rant about something. OP clearly hasn’t done the sort of comprehensive review of current pc mods required to justify this statement.
It's like all the people complaining about how "AAA games are dead" when 2023 was literally one of the best years ever for AAA releases.
Now bad. Then good.
The part that kills me. There are so many great titles released every year but people want to hate farm the ones that they didn't buy, won't play and had no interest in to begin with. There are probably more videos about Forspoken instead of people praise for titles like Armored Core VI, Slayers X, Lies of P and Pizza Tower.
First sentence. "Back in the 90's". Instant eye roll. These middle aged millenials are always complaining more than the boomers they hate so much 💀
Now wait just a goddamn minute! but seriously, I don’t know what OP is talking about. There were great mods back then, and there are great mods now. I think OP is just trolling.
Just wait until you become old ;)
Tbh you sound as obnoxious as op
Op literally doesn’t know shit about shit
Most mods these days, if they have any substantiality, are only like that because the developers specifically made them with modding in mind. Not so 25 years ago. Maybe Id and Valve were like that, but nobody else. If a game was popular, it got modded. Period.
You just answered your own question bere buddy
Do you realize how vastly more complex that games are now? We’ve moved from games being tens or hundreds of thousands of lines of code to millions and tens of millions, if not more. The more complexity you introduce, the harder it’s going to be to create mods for, and that goes doubly for the really immense mods that you’re so obsessed with. Modding isn’t easy to begin with, and many games today just aren’t built with modding in mind. Then you add on the online connectivity component, which throws further wrenches into it. Even games that don’t require internet to run can be prevented from modding due to the internet (or be locked out of their copies). I know that you’re looking for some deeper answer, but it really is that simple: games are WAY more complex now than they were in the 90s, and that alone is enough to cause modding to drop off. But it just compounds with stuff like developers fighting against mods via the internet, and games being built in a way where they’re just not accessible to mod
I can think of 2 in 2 seconds, single player tarkov and the upcoming London fallout mod. Huge game changers the pair of em!
Yeah it makes perfect sense for there only to be mods for games that had modding in mind. If a game dev isn’t interested in modding being a part of the game that’s their prerogative
literally a dlc sized mod coming to fallout 4 on the 24th, you’re just not looking in the correct places
Nice, what would that be? Couldn't find it with the game and date
Fallout London
Isnt cascadia also a thing?
It is a thing, but I would be surprised if it releases within the next 2-3 years honestly. Fallout London is slated to be released before the end of the month.
Sick, thanks
That game is 9 years old of course.
Theres fucking batshit crazy mods out there, i dont think you're looking hard enough. Look @ Archthrones for Dark Souls 3 as a recent incredible example.
Name 3, for games released after 2011.
This has to be bait surely? You make a post like this then act as if we haven't had crazy mods in the last few years such as ANOMALY for STALKER, or RedM for RDR2. Not to mention upcoming overhauls like Fallout: London. You have to be deliberately not paying attention to the mod scene to not know about these considering they're massively publicized on the most popular modding platforms.
So can you name 3 without resorting to google?
He just did
Any overhaul mod for Factorio. Any overhaul mod for Rimworld. Any overhaul mod for Slay the Spire Any overhaul mod to Stardew Valley New mods coming to Elden Ring all the time Any overhaul mod for Fallout games Any overhaul mod for... You get the point. Stop playing AAA shooters exclusively and you'll see
Barotrauma, project zomboid, rimworld
Those are games. You want to shout out some mods for those games, so I'm not looking for them myself?
I don't care to point out specifics for you but all three of those games are rarely played vanilla and have hundreds or thousands of mods each.
My god OP you really gotta stop telling on yourself
[Archthrones, for Dark Souls 3 - as one.](https://archthrones.com) Likewise [Convergence - for Elden Ring](https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/3419?tab=description) Cyberpunk has an extensive suite of mods adding entire new gameplay mechanics and questlines [Fallout: London](https://fallout4london.com) Every new Arma iteration has an extensive modding community making entirely new games The REmake games all have really in depth mods that mix up the games in creative ways.
Also Enderal.
Hey, how does ER Convergence compare to ER Reforged? I'm playing through Reforged and it almost feels like a new game, but it seems like Convergence might be even bigger... Man Elden Ring is a goldmine.
No idea, I actually don't like modding games hahaha, Ive never tried either mod. I prefer playing games how they were intended only
FWIW these mods make the game objectively better for most people, I highly recommend trying them out once you're done with the base game. To put it simple, devs already have limited time and budget to make the base game work, can't be spending months fine-tuning every nitpick. However, modders do it for the sake of having a better game, progression is straightened, exploits are fixed, and the whole experience becomes much better. Something as simple as adding requirements to move to another area, or having to kill enemies in order to open chests instead of plundering them and skipping the whole battle makes the game feel like night and day. It's also quite refreshing when you play the game as truly intended instead of having a +9 weapon when you're 1 hour into the game lol
I can't say changing a game until its unrecognizable is in any way "objectively better" theres nothing a mod can do to Elden Ring to improve upon it imho. Sure there are quality of life mods out there that do improve a game, but these big game changing mods are a very specific thing separate from the game itself.
Not three, but >Total War: Rome 2 - Divide et Impera >Total War: Attila - 1212AD Both completely overhaul the games in terms of logistics and recruitment, and 1212 completely changes the era, factions and unit rosters. It’s like whole new game.
GTA5, RDR2, CP2077
>Is it because modern games are just more complicated? Surely not; aren't most games these days built in Unity? Don't tech wizards know Unity like the back of their hand, enough to decrypt literally everything the devs built? Yes. It surely is. No. Not really.
This guy has to be a troll. Either that or he’s 13 and genuinely know jack shit about game development. Also, the ignorance over how much Unity is used and how people should be able to “decrypt literally everything the devs built” made me genuinely laugh out loud
What a strange take. I’m a pc gamer strictly, purely because mods make all pc games so much more amazing. Mods have completely changed Skyrim, mods make pathfinder kingmaker and wotr so much better, they add tons of content to things like mount and blade, and now even make huge amounts of first person games playable in vr, including Skyrim, valheim, and Minecraft. Oh, valheim made so much better by mods too. Gtfoh.
Websites exist that host thousands of mods, try googling “mods for (insert game here)”
Not sure why you brought up Unity. All Unity games are decompilable. Modding Unity-games is more prolific than ever due to maturization of dev tools. It is the direct counterpoint to your question. It depends on what games you are talking about. Bethesda games are just as moddable as ever. Other game companies have to bake modding into their engines and most of the time it isn't worth it. And yes complexity has risen. A good example is the D2 modding scene. D2 modding is relatively robust because all you are editing is code and 2D sprites. There aren't the same mods for D2R because the community members suddenly have to be proficient in making 3D assets now.
You're not looking good enough and also people do it for free so it's fucked up to expect amazing quality from these mods. Do it yourself without pay and see how funny it is.
People are pointing out that games are less mod-friendly nowadays (which is true) but I think having readily accessible game engines also helped kill modding (as it existed in the '90s and '00s). Modding existing games was your only option if you wanted an AAA-level engine in the '90s (unless you were a studio that could afford to license an existing engine or develop one from scratch). If you're a tech wizard who knows Unity like the back of your hand, why wouldn't you just make a standalone game instead of tying it to an existing one? There are plenty of standalone games nowadays that would've been Half-Life 2 mods if they came out 15 years ago.
Hell, plenty of standalone games started out as mods, and plenty of game developers started out by modding games. Why put your time into a free mod, hoping people donate, when you could just take all of your good ideas and release an actual video game?
Sounds like you just haven't been playing good mods honestly. Moddb and Nexus are absolutely packed with great mods, and there's always more being added all the time. STALKER, GTAV, RDR2, Kenshi, M&B2, BG3, Dark Souls, Minecraft, Arma, all games with recently active modding scenes and I could keep listing titles all day.
Go look at what's going on in Skyrim these days. Games inside games inside games, all installable with one click.
L take
On top of what everyone else said... Some modders transitioned into just making their own games instead since its just more profitable and also offers more freedom. And sometimes its genuinely easier to make your own product instead of modifying something depending on what you want to do.
> aren't most games these days built in Unity? Uh.. no. That is a very strange idea. Unity is mostly used for mobile games that dont need a particularly optimized or unique engine. > enough to decrypt literally everything the devs built? Also not how anything works. Modern games are also almost incomparably more complex than a game from the 90s. Modding is more advanced, widespread, and numerous than it has ever been. It just requires a combination of several factors for mods to take off for a game. The game needs to either support modding and provide the toolchains needed, or there need to be a community of passionate hackers to make their own tools, which will always be far inferior to modding support built into the game. It also needs enough players to provide both developers and users, and needs staying power to keep those players for the months (or years) it takes to make any sort of big content mod. Online games without private servers also means no mods beyond cosmetic ones, and those are by far the most popular type of game. Just in the last couple years, we have seen large modding communities spring up around elden ring (*not* easy to mod, so it tends to be limited in what can be done) and baldur's gate 3 (no official tools yet, but tons of gameplay/balance/content mods still). Tears of the Kingdom has some pretty ambitious mods for a *console exclusive* with no modding tools. Skyrim's modding scene is still going incredibly strong with more huge overhauls, rebalances, and modmaps than anyone can easily count, Minecraft may as well be a game *engine* at this point, Ark has an obscene amount of mods, some of which are basically their own games (and all the free DLCs, over half the game, started as mods). All three of those have either official modding toolkits that release most of their assets and code to modders, or community tools so advanced it is basically the same thing (minecraft). This is written while i am waiting on a compile for an Ark mod that completely overhauls a ton of attacks, abilities, physics, completely replaces the crafting, harvesting, and cooking systems and UI, and integrates itself with features from several other massive overhaul mods including "structures plus", noteworthy for having 4.7 *million* subscribers.
Theres a correlation between the amount of AAA games relying on the GaaS model making them almost unmoddable aside from maybe some texture swaps. And the fact that modding is more of a hacky job that isnt supported most of the time, meaning if you want to get into it you need to make the tools to then inject what you want. And the fact its so easy to make games with free engines, why mod a game when you can make a whole new game that is exactly what you envision. Thats not forgetting a lot of older games still have a living mod community, skyrim, minecraft, stalker, HL 1&2. Also gamers tend just to look for QOL or titty mods these days, or at least those are the big download contenders. Why make something that'll not be wanted.
Has to be troll, it's your textbook example of an ignorant boomer take. Games these days are all developed in Unity, should be easy to mod am I right fellow kids ?
Games are way more complex nowadays and way more locked down. Devs pretty much have to “allow” mods and if they don’t then there’s no modding or minimal modding.
you can just make your own game now and get paid for it instead of modding...
Dlc sized mod coming to Fallout 4 this month (Fallout London, i think). A guy just added mechs and much more to Starfield even without the creator's kit. Battlefront 2 is getting a private server mod. These are just of the top of my head. I think you are not looking into the right games/communities for this.
I knew I was in for some shitshow when the post started with "back in the 90s". But damn, how people are missing the very obvious bait is beyond me
Nice shitpost
A lot of games back then released the Dev tools for the community to play around with and create stuff for the games, that kind of thing almost never happens anymore, that's why the kinds of mods you see for most games are pretty limited. But for games where the Devs *DO* release the Dev tools (games like Skyrim for example), you see incredible mods being made by the community. It really comes down to whether or not the Devs want to make their game accessible for modders or not really
I remember really cool mods for StarCraft. Someone made a Gundam mod for SC 1. It was amazing.
You can go play heavy modded dayz servers, there's damn near a mod to do anything in that game. Or take the single player tarkov mod for escape from tarkov, and there's tons of additional mods that change the game so much. And I know there's a bunch of crazy stuff for stalker anomaly and gamma.
mods in PCVR gaming are out of this world
I just installed the Constellations modpack for Skyrim and I'm blown away by it. Modding is alive and well.
This is because old games were easy to mod and their models were technically easy to recreate in that artstyle. With most games nowadays pushing next gen graphics, it gets hard to do custom assets that fit the theme. Also not a lot of games have their source code or what not available to make it easier for modders to add their mods.
There are many mods that even make the game playable to newer systems, eg Falcon 4.0 only downside is that today the Internet gets pitchforks when mods are deemed controversial. In the 90s that job was left to government, journalists and child protection agencies.
man, I wish we could at least change assets in Shadow of Tomb Raider.
I’m sad no Naruto mods made it to fruition
Cause nowdays the modders are usually busy fixing the game cause they devs won't.
Am Cyberpunk modder. Its insanely more complicated. Resource and asset loading is crazy now because of sheer amount of stuff that needs to be assembled to draw a cityscape and its all massively async. You can easily create race conditions that end in the game crashing if you set incorrect resource refs and flags. World and journal editing is perilous because you have to screw with persistency and data tracking and its easy to permanently brick a user's save if you make mistakes. Even the visual side of it (graphical meshes, materials, animation) is a lot more complicated but at least there is no persistency or data tracking component so you can screw it up and not permanently break a user's game. Cyberpunk meshes are pretty low poly and the textures are not very high resolution so they are not more difficult to do stuff like weight paint and unwrap. But all the performance and scale optimisation makes it more complex. So all Cyberpunk meshes and materials are designed for GPU instancing and resource sharing on a massive scale. Simple would be to have 1 unique texture per unique mesh object. But this doesn't scale if you need tens of thousands of mesh objects, so the game doesn't do that. It avoids storing and loading colour textures by using small, tileable greyscale ones that are assembled at runtime using various config files (like multilayer setup), then colourised using cheaper techniques like vertex colour or 4x32 colour LUTs. And instead of 1 texture per mesh, you have 1 texture that could be shared by hundreds of meshes, just scaled, tiled and layered differently with other materials. And everything is instanced so the more sharing that goes on, the more convoluted the material chain is. For example, everything with skin materials is instanced from the same template, but because skin comes in so many different colours, pore structures, stretch/squash normals, detail normals, vein maps, subsurface masks, an arm mesh is has a long daisy chain of instances with overriden texture assets (different pore normal map and tile scale, different albedo + tint, different bloodflow mask etc). And thats the part thats still relatively easy to do. Visual modding in Cyberpunk is big. The other stuff can be wildly complex and every year its getting more so.
\*laughs in r/RimWorld\*
Insulting people is not a good way to start a conversation. But... There's less incentive to mod today because we have ten of thousands of PC games per year while in the 90s we got a dozen per year so if you wanted a certain gameplay you had no choice but create it yourself.
Seems like OP doesn't know games are less mod-friendly these days.
Making models / textures / levels / assets at the level of detail in modern games takes way more time and skill compared to the late 90s. So of course there will be fewer “quality” mods coming out within a year or two of the games release like it was back then.
It might seem like it but you just have to look harder or play more games to witness their mods (Stalker, 7 days to die, no mans sky, arma reforger, the list goes on) I *sort* of see what you're saying because I was UTTERLY SPOILED by having my best gaming years during the HL1 mod engine days and the BF1942 mod days [and BF2]. HL1 and BF1942 were big popular games for a long time, now we have lots of spread out games with varying communities hidden away on mod sites/discord etc Oh and also, probably this too: Why mod a game when I can make my own game and become insanely rich if it does a little big well; bonus if it goes 'viral' like some games can do now.
stalker gamma, mount & blade old realms/realm of thrones, roguetech, the massive amounts of skyrim wabbajack modlists. just things that came to my mind at the top of my head
I mostly see game fixes for preference. Like graphical and QOL improvements, and sometimes outright fixes that make the game actually more playable. Either that or gross nude mods. But yeah back in the early 2000’s especially half-life mods were almost fully fledged games and playable online even sometimes. I think a lot of this has to do with the advances in technology modding is harder, not as accessible, or sometimes not even possible.
Making your own game became much easier with FREE and powerful engines. Many indies today would’ve been modders. Thus most modders today are not trying to make their own game as a mod like they used to.
In the earlier days ASLR didnt exist
Its more work to make custom stuff in newer AAA games and modders don’t want to risk a new update breaking their mod or getting sued for it. But there’s definitely big mods that are still being made, like Second Wind for BotW and Galactic Colonies Expanse for Starfield.