Skyrim Special Edition Thoughts

[ritualclarity]

Ah.. crap.. Placing this here because it is just proof that Besthesda don't have a real clue what their customers really want. How can you trust their product without a good review from your favorite trustworthy reviewer?

case in point that they don't understand what it is we do. Many of the scenes look like you are looking through a yellow filter/haze. Upgrade the graphics, textures and meshes but put a yellow haze one it.

Like looking through a jar of piss playing the game. What is it with Bethesda and their filters?

Just another reason for not trusting them to give a great product. It isn't any better than what we could do ourselves and actually have done ourselves. However it is built in now.

Maybe when the mods get into full swing we will be able to go beyond what was the original game capabilities,  especially for those that use graphics card > 4gb as I believe this is a 64bit game so there shouldn't be the crappy issue with the current Skyrim and memory for Windows 10 so there is that. Hopefully mod authors can polish this.

EDIT:

There seems to be a great deal of mods already updated to work with this new edition. From what I can read it is going to move pretty fast once they get the SKSE version for this game completed. Which should be soon from some sources.

So for any Skyrim Lovers.. is this a YEA!!!! or a NEY!!!

 Chime in.

I do hope I am wrong on this.

[ritualclarity]

Update.

I was able to play it a bit without any mods and it is pretty much the original game. Some upgraded textures and meshes but not great deal. There is more clutter on the pathways which look kind of nice. Gives a better "feel" The fog and lighting does help give to the mood but sometimes a bit overkill for the situation.

Considering this is a newer engine those using Win10 and a beefy card with >4gb ram might be able to get more out of the modded Skyrim than the original. This still remains to be seen if the engine can handle a heavy load like its older brother with the greater amount of textures that most heavy modders of Skyrim kept on running into walls with.

[Doublezero]

Posted by steveowashere on Reddit:

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Architecture

• Most textures are 2k here maybe around 60%. A few 1k textures. However most of the 2k textures have been 'stretched' (i.e. upscaled) to be 2k. Meaning they're actually just 1k since you can't really add resolution like that. Here's an example. This is the farmhouse door texture. Here it is zoomed in 100% next to a bark texture I know is actually 2k because it's from an 4k source and I down-sampled it. (I'll use this bark texture as a comparison throughout) Keep in mind, you should be able to zoom 100% on a texture and not see any blurriness. This is a quick test for checking if something is 'truly' the resolution it's saved at.

• No new changes to anything really. Textures are the same.

• This WoodPost for farmhouses looks better than vanilla and has been color corrected a bit. But it's still not 'true 2k' as it's been upscaled and sharpened a bit from the looks. Ironically, the vanilla mushrooms actually look better at their lower resolution.

• Can you spot the difference? One is 2k from SE and one is 1k from vanilla. (Hint: ^{leftis2krightis1k)}

• But then there's things like: this. this. and this. Don't forget this. Can't ignore this either.

• A lot of textures aren't saved using the correct compression. DXT5 where DXT1 could be used, thus wasting Vram and in general is a mark of sloppiness and lack of QC. I'm sure someone will create a patch for this soon.

• Overall... not great. Something like Skyrim HD or Noble Skyrim HD is far superior. With the exception to the few textures I pointed out.

Landscapes.

• Terrible. Bad. Really awful. So much for 'Remastered' here.

• landscape textues are all 1k, but not really. Again, 'upscaling' has occurred from 512x512 or lower. And it shows.

• If you stare are grounds like me, find a landscape texture pack pronto.

• The one thing I did notice is now all landscape texture normal maps, have alpha specular layers. Which wasn't the norm in vanilla. This is: A: Why existing texture packs the cover landscapes need to be updated to work with SE, B: why people who install current landscape texture packs get 'glassy' textures, and C: potentially very awesome because landscapes might actually have a specular shader, something that is missing in vanilla.

• The one 'shining light' is the mountains texture which is actually 4k!! But again, it's been upscaled from a smaller resolution. So not really 4k. So it's a huge waste for low-end users. Plus there's now 'mountainslab01mask' and 'mountainslab02mask' texture files, which aren't in vanilla. I wonder what those do?

Dungeons

• Overall not much changed from vanilla. Still 1k textures that look the same.

• Mine rock textures actually look pretty okay IMO.

• The Dragon runes got re-sharpened as well so those won't as jaggy by default. Ironically, it was kept at 1k, which is the resolution in vanilla and was just sharpend and tweaked a bit. This is how most all of the texture should have been.

• Imperial fort textures still look awful.

• Really strangely, cavebaseground01 looks really good but the same texture is used in the landscapes, but it's much lower res. Besthesda, WTF?

TL;DR:

Not very impressive for a 'remaster'. For those who care about textures and visuals in general, texture packs will still need to be used in a lot of places. I'll just leave it at this: In SE there is a totally of 7.19gb of BSA archives for textures. In vanilla Skyrim (include DLC) there is a total of: 4.07gb of BSA archives. (Keep in mind, I counted Dragonborn.bsa and Dawngaurd.bsa which are assets for the whole things) It's sorta a waste of space considering most textures have been upscaled and are a larger size but don't look any better than vanilla Skyrim.

However, despite all my negative comments, it's free for us PC users, so can we really complain? And I love Besthesda for giving us an improved platform we can mod for the next 5+ years. As for console users, hopefully these things I've found won't be very obvious in game, but paying the full 60 USD for a game with such shoddy texture work sorta irks me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/59va9l/skyrim_se_texture_report/

[Karma199696]

well...  looking at that video, the remastered version seems even worse then vanilla game...

[Doublezero]

Initial impressions:

It's the same old Skyrim. I keep seeing forum posts where people are saying the graphics are much better but I disagree. Looks worse to me actually. Maybe it's because I'm used to playing with an enb. My rig can't run the game smoothly on ultra so that's probably also a reason.

Saves are now grouped by player name, which I think is a good improvement.

Spoiler

 

Too bad they didn't improve the character models.

Spoiler

 

[ritualclarity]

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Maybe it's because I'm used to playing with an enb.

That is very likely. It looks a bit better with textures and fog etc but not as good as the hype that They have given about the new release. I t runs as good or better than the original on my rig when not running mods. In fact I haven't crashed yet. Before I would crash at the exit from the caves or somewhere between there and the dragon. This time no crash. However to be completely honest.. that was the old Skyrim early on not recent versions of the  original. Recent versions of the original play just the same.

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Saves are now grouped by player name, which I think is a good improvement.

Yes. that is an improvement that I hadn't seen yet. A pretty good improvement as well.

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Too bad they didn't improve the character models.

Mods will fix that like you stated.

It would be nice however to be honest they stated they were fixing the engine (updating it) and giving lighting and some clutter. I didn't see anywhere them stating they would improve the characters or their animations etc or for that matter any of the NPCs that were created. So since they gave it to us without any cost or such then all in all it is a nice improvement provided the tools and frameworks we enjoyed before can and are moved over to SE version. Then in theory we wouldn't have the Dx bug that prevents the use of more ram for cells, textures, meshes and such. Hopefully we will be able to get a bit more out of the game now. I don't even expect it to be as good as Fallout 4's engine as they were "learning" on the Skyrim SE so I suppose that means it is the early edition of the changes made and their "lessons" from SE were used to beef up Fallout 4 engines. Which I can accept. Lets keep in mind they didn't have to release it for the PC. They could have just kept it for consoles. Yes I realize it was a quick and easy patch because they wanted more use of their mod systems. they could have just repacked the original and uploaded it with Mod support instead of spend more time tweaking and bringing it up to par for release (from whatever form they had for the testing of the engine which I strongly suspect wasn't in distribution form)

TL;DR

Played it and liked some of the changes, don't think they went far enough but then again it was free, and will be waiting for final judgment for the mods currently used to be ported over to the new SE system and view the results for the final decision.

8 hours ago, Karma199696 said:

well...  looking at that video, the remastered version seems even worse then vanilla game...

Well my play through was a bit better than the video example. Not sure what the creator was doing or when it was taken.. (perhaps early on before a patch? ) Anyway it is very much like the old Skyrim with some lighting and fog effects and a touch of graphics improvement s however those could be easily fixed with some mods even on a machine running a GTX960 or similar. If you got Skyrim give it a shot and download it.

[Doublezero]

4 hours ago, ritualclarity said:

It would be nice however to be honest they stated they were fixing the engine (updating it) and giving lighting and some clutter. I didn't see anywhere them stating they would improve the characters or their animations etc or for that matter any of the NPCs that were created.

I never said they were going to improve the npcs, I'm just pointing out how awful they look. They were awful in 2011 and they're still awful today. Bethesda could have improved them just like they could have improved the textures instead of just up scaling them.

4 hours ago, ritualclarity said:

So since they gave it to us without any cost or such then all in all it is a nice improvement provided the tools and frameworks we enjoyed before can and are moved over to SE version.

Technically yes, technically no. Skyrim SE is free for those who have it and all of the expansions, but it's $39.99 for those who don't. But lets be honest here, the only reason why it's free is so that modders can jump right in and make mods for consoles. Bethesda has basically ported Skyrim to a 64 bit engine with minimal effort while the modders create the new content that drives console sales. Remember, one of the major selling points for Skyrim SE on consoles are the mods.

Also, any modder who wants to make mods for the Xbox One and Playstation 4 will have to by both copies at full price if they want to test their mods. I don't think Bethesda is hurting giving the PC version away free to select users.

Don't get my negative tone wrong though, I'm actually exited about the prospect of playing Sexlab on a stable version of Skyrim. I wish they did more to the game then just a small graphical upgrade and a port to a 64 bit engine.

[ritualclarity]

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I never said they were going to improve the npcs, I'm just pointing out how awful they look. They were awful in 2011 and they're still awful today. Bethesda could have improved them just like they could have improved the textures instead of just up scaling them.

I didn't say you did I was referencing the info that was given related to what Bethesda stated they would do.

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Bethesda could have improved them just like they could have improved the textures instead of just up scaling them.

Yes... I agree. Not sure if it was lazyness on their part or perhaps they felt that the modding community would port the NPC texture improvements over to the xbox and such. NPC improvements are one of the first mods / fixes that come about with any of the Fallout or TES titles. Basically they might be thinking that no matter what they do... someone will create a replacement for their NPCs. Being a business they likely decide to focus on other things.

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Technically yes, technically no. Skyrim SE is free for those who have it and all of the expansions, but it's $39.99 for those who don't. But lets be honest here, the only reason why it's free is so that modders can jump right in and make mods for consoles. Bethesda has basically ported Skyrim to a 64 bit engine with minimal effort while the modders create the new content that drives console sales. Remember, one of the major selling points for Skyrim SE on consoles are the mods.

Yes. however I believe those that wanted Skyrim... would have gotten it by now. Also I know of some hearing about the new edition and it being free... went and got the old Skyrim before this so they can get the new one for free. So they (Bethesda) even got some sales boost from their old edition before the release of the new one.

Of course they aren't doing this out the kindness of their heart. Yes.. about the modders porting / jumping in and making mods for consoles. It being free for those that have the game already is a benefit because some of those are modders and a portion of those might port their works over to consoles.. It is a win for them. Also hope it is a win for us as well having a stronger engine and hopefully a better ability to mod the living shit out of it without running into the vram issues and Win10 graphics issues that so many have had with Skyrim.

Frankly I wish they ported over Fallout 3 and NV over as well. Hell there are lots of mods there. Even if they didn't add all that "special volumetric lighting" and other crap just a wholesale port... it would be very cool. no more unofficial ~130 plugin limit, black face/body glitches etc. Hell.. port over Oblivion and even Morrowwind (without even added graphics improvements) The modding community would fix that with the added head room. In fact it might even be best not to mess with the success of the previous games. They can then sell the releases on the new consoles with the abilty to have some mods on them as well for very little cost on their part. I am pretty sure that they could at least recope their expenses in porting considering by now they have a pretty good concept and understanding how to port their games over. After all it is still a Gambro engine just went 64bit.

Maybe if this is a success and people mention this in forums often they might just do that. Then we would have added head room for our old games as well.

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Also, any modder who wants to make mods for the Xbox One and Playstation 4 will have to by both copies at full price if they want to test their mods. I don't think Bethesda is hurting giving the PC version away free to select users.

yes.. I see your point. I don't do console games anymore. However I believe if those users want the mod to be ported over and it is popular enough. .. well they need to buy the author a copy of the game at least. You forget not everybody has all the consoles.. to get the console say if I was a modder would be $$$$ however once gotten I can sit back and play a few other games as well..

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Don't get my negative tone wrong though, I'm actually exited about the prospect of playing Sexlab on a stable version of Skyrim. I wish they did more to the game then just a small graphical upgrade and a port to a 64 bit engine.

I am not getting your tone wrong. I also see your disappointment. However... their approach was good for both parties.. them and us. Not normally a process that they have been doing for the most part in recent times (for example the 1 day review copies ) So I am pleased with their "gift" and accept it as such even though they do gain benefit. I also hope that they continue forward with this path of working and being "nice" to their users perhaps porting other of their games or adding content or even listening to the users desires.

I am not holding my breath.. however for the first time they got slapped like a bitch with their Fallout 4 game. Sure it on paper shown well but the old fan base just spit fire out when they got a copy. They hated it. Also likely not getting GOTY which they were so proud of getting for most of their previous titles. Fallout 3, (believe Fallout 4) Skyrim (original) so they were high on themselves. They are a business and if Todd Howard is paying any attention even a blind man can see the growing resentment for what they did and do every time they turn around (like the 1 day reviews when they just need to be more selective of the reviewers to get better results and still give info on their products from a partial 3 party reviewer. Still not impartial but the footage can give some info as to the game outside of the press releases)

Fans of their games... want them to be successes. They want them to create games and many are more than willing to plop down $$$ for the game. They just want better. Better NPCs, more quest, better content etc. AS much as people bitch about the plot line of the player being married and being locked into a story like that (more specific than general) if Bethesda just put more content in like Fallout 3 or NV then at least the quality and content would have been there. Far less bitching on the players part.

TL;DR

I agree I am excited about the new Skyrim and the possibilities and hope of hope that it works out even at 20% of what I expect it to be. I am also excited that we will have more head room for our modded Skyrim games and the prospect that many of the Vram and Win 10 issues experienced before will be a thing of the past. I applaud them for the effort to port (regardless of how trivial it was and how it does benifit them as well) and hope if they see this as successful that they also do it with Fallout 3, NV, perhaps even Oblivion etc. Even without upgrades to the game.. just a wholesale port for users to have more head room to mod.

[daicion]

8 hours ago, Doublezero said:

I wish they did more to the game then just a small graphical upgrade and a port to a 64 bit engine.

It would have been nice to have gotten the skeletal/dismemberment and combat functionality of f04. Real missed opportunity there. Also the building and weapon upgrade system would have been amazing. Imagine upgrading each sword piece by piece, watching the soulgem actually drain of energy as its brightness dims.

I hope the client is at least more stable as there is no justifiable reason to release a yellow filter version of an upscaled 1k pack.

I would love it if the blacksmith were replaced by a make your own sword/shield/armor system. Interchangeable parts held together by dewmer screws. would make sense because people basically live in the ruins aka markarth and others.

Could move the set pieces to the smelter and combine old blacksmith/smelter/anvil. The point being you are casting each part in a smelter and cast then fitting them together in a workbench that could be used to create,customize and upgrade.

Edited October 30, 2016 by daicion
Monkies told me to

[Doublezero]

I enabled frame rate target control in the Radeon Settings, that actually help the game run smooth in ultra mode. I'm still going to buy a new card though.

I caught this image on LoversLab. Looks like we can now have cities with higher populations.

Spoiler

 

[Doublezero]

Wow.

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Did you know having a % sign in an esp name will crash the game when the mod is downloaded through bethesda.net, even if the CK has no problems with it and bethesda.net doesn't warn you?

Well, now you do. Broke 500 people's game. Got called inept, told to kill myself, had all my mods rated 1 star and got reported to the admins for uploading malware. Expecting to get banned from bethesda.net soon.

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/5a68lv/porting_complete_apocalypse_ordinator_imperious/d9e3npj/

[ritualclarity]

2 hours ago, Doublezero said:

Wow.

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/5a68lv/porting_complete_apocalypse_ordinator_imperious/d9e3npj/

That hostility is just uncalled for when you don't have proof that it was someones intent. Then even if you do.. death  threats? really? If your computer and game is so important... then don't download any mods.

[ritualclarity]

7 hours ago, Doublezero said:

I enabled frame rate target control in the Radeon Settings, that actually help the game run smooth in ultra mode. I'm still going to buy a new card though.

I caught this image on LoversLab. Looks like we can now have cities with higher populations.

  Hide contents

 

Yes I saw that as well. ONe of the benifits I would suspect would come around with the 64bit engine. Finally now real populations for those with beefier rigs.

[ritualclarity]

Here is an interesting article..

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/

[Doublezero]

Bethesda's not even trying to hide it...

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What Bethesda did provide is a post asking us if we could get some mods uploaded and working for the release of the game, so that they had plenty on there for console users to download when they re-purchase the game at full retail price. This did nothing but to serve my suspicion that the only reason we were invited to the beta is to provide free content for console users to download. Mods are the biggest selling point of SSE and Bethesda wanted to make sure the content would be there.

The thing that finally hit me in the face is when these YouTubers were allowed to release their videos and we were still on lock down until a mere three days prior to release. The very people providing the content for their new game were not being allowed to share anything, while a collection of people who probably haven't touched the game in three or more years could share everything about the game.

So why did they do this? Basically because these YouTubers providing console footage would serve to advertise the game and sell more copies for the consoles. Allowing PC modders to share footage wouldn't really help Bethesda in any way, given that the vast majority of Skyrim players would already be receiving their copies for free anyway, in turn making Bethesda very little money.

http://www.darkfox127.co.uk/bulletin/no-console-support

[Karma199696]

well, anyway, i think i'll continue playing my "old" Skyrim with all my mods

ehm...  "my" might be the wrong word, LOL, great modders did them, i only downloaded, installed and enjoyed them

[ritualclarity]

1 hour ago, Karma199696 said:

well, anyway, i think i'll continue playing my "old" Skyrim with all my mods

ehm...  "my" might be the wrong word, LOL, great modders did them, i only downloaded, installed and enjoyed them

Yes.. but you combined the mods and added them to your game to just your liking... therefore it IS your game. You just don't own the mods that you used. Yours would be unique from many others even if only slightly but that makes your game unique as well. As unique as you are.

[Doublezero]

I was going to post a comparison photo of the flora in two games but the original Skyrim froze on me. They can't complete SKSE64 soon enough.

[Doublezero]

https://techraptor.net/content/skyui-not-in-the-works-for-skyrim-special-edition

I wonder if the SkyUI team would allow another group of modders to handle SkyUI development.

[ritualclarity]

3 hours ago, Doublezero said:

https://techraptor.net/content/skyui-not-in-the-works-for-skyrim-special-edition

I wonder if the SkyUI team would allow another group of modders to handle SkyUI development.

Sound like it. He don't want it and "get to the point where someone else took care of all the details and all I have to do is update the .esp" part is the reason I think it is very possible. I think the person or persons that take it over would have to show that they have the chops to do so but I don't think they will mind.

This is afterall one of the main mods for almost everybody with only a few not wanting to have it installed.

[ritualclarity]

6 hours ago, Doublezero said:

I was going to post a comparison photo of the flora in two games but the original Skyrim froze on me. They can't complete SKSE64 soon enough.

No they cannot. AS much as some complain about what could have been done.. what has been done by beth moving the game over to the newer engine.. is going to make things a lot better for the fans of Skyrim. Same thing would have happed if Fallout 3 was ported over to the new Fallout NV engine when it was about a year or two old. Imagine what would have been done with that game and how much more life would have been given to that old game. Even with shortcomings of the new SE.. it is still something great. (even if Beth was being an ass to those modders to get their mods up for consoles... )

[Doublezero]

7 hours ago, ritualclarity said:

No they cannot. AS much as some complain about what could have been done.

That was directed at me wasn't it?

7 hours ago, ritualclarity said:

what has been done by beth moving the game over to the newer engine.. is going to make things a lot better for the fans of Skyrim

I'd argue they've made things worse for Skyrim fans. Porting the game to a 64 bit engine is good but they done more to damage to modding community.

1. They created a rift in the modding community with the paid mods fiasco which is why the SkyUI team won't port it to Syrim SE in the first place.
2. They ran many modders away by not clamping down hard on the mod theft on Bethesda.net.
3. They're doing very little (if anything) to help the SKSE team.

Will old modders return? Will new modders come and fill the void? Your guess is as good as mine. After the initial euphoria of playing Skyrim on a new engine subsides and everyone realize this is the exact same game we've been playing for half a decade, how many modders will even bother at that point?

I don't know if this game can come close to the level of enthusiasm the original had. Skyrim fans are excited but many modders are bummed out by the actions Bethesda has taken over the last couple of years.

 

Edited November 2, 2016 by Doublezero
My grammar sucks. ;)

[Doublezero]

Some good news from behippo.

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Progress is being made and we traditionally show an image the first time we get the game hooked and the GetXXXVersion function working properly. I reached that stage last night.

There is obviously still a ton of work to do - but this proves that our basic techniques will be able to accomplish the task.

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/4979480-skse/page-10#entry43903910

Hopefully this means it wont take as long as many have feared. He also wrote this:

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My expectation is that the Papyrus API that SKSE64 provides will be identical to SKSE. I haven't seen any need for changes yet (though it is very early.) However if a mod depends upon plugins - those plugins will still need to be updated. I would hope that plugin authors keep the same Papyrus API - but there are obviously no guarantees.

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/4979480-skse/page-10#entry43906100

 

[ritualclarity]

 

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That was directed at me wasn't it?

No it wasn't. In reality there is much to complain about as some had higher expectations however so far from what I have read or viewed from Todd Howard's video on SE they gave us what they told us they would. No more not less. This is what I am judging Skyrim SE on and as far as I can tell.. they did exactly what they told us they would do. Now if someone has some official statement or video etc from the company that states more were to be done and shows they didn't provide what they stated they would.. I would be interested in that info.

 

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I'd argue they've made things worse for Skyrim fans. Porting the game to a 64 bit engine is good but they done more to damage to modding community.

1. They created a rift in the modding community with the paid mods fiasco which is why the SkyUI team won't port it to Syrim SE in the first place.
2. They ran many modders away by not clamping down hard on the mod theft on Bethesda.net.
3. They're doing very little (if anything) to help the SKSE team.

 

I don't know if this game can come close to the level of enthusiasm the original had. Skyrim fans are excited but many modders are bummed out by the actions Bethesda has taken over the last couple of years.

1. The rift in the modding community about the paid mod fiasco predated the port to 64 bit engine Porting the game didn't cause this. 
2. The failure of them not clamping down on the mod theft isn't the result of them porting to a 64bit game engine. It is the result of them not understanding the processes of the modding community and not caring about them and instead focusing on them (the assets / mods) as a company would their property. Lack of research and or care on the subject. That combined with the site going live without a clear way of claiming copy-rite violations until way later is just plain inexcusable failure for any company. They should have known better and took the steps to address these and other issues before they happened. Their creation of this is like they did so as a second thought not as a properly planned extension of the business. done so by (implemented by / managed by) those that had no clue of what they were doing. Coming on the tail end of the paid mod issues should have wised them up.. however it didn't
3. They haven't ever done anything to help with the third party script extenders or for that matter much to help with any third party apps. This isn't different from what they have been doing. We shouldn't expect any difference for the port.

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Will old modders return? Will new modders come and fill the void? Your guess is as good as mine. After the initial euphoria of playing Skyrim on a new engine subsides and everyone realize this is the exact same game we've been playing for half a decade, how many modders will even bother at that point?

Authmoor as ported a good deal of  all the mods he could even before the release. Others have already as well. Most of the hold up is the fact either the mod author has already moved on or left (old mods) or the scripts aren't ready for the porting over of the game. There are a few exceptions for example the SkyUI team. They left well before the port. That was failure on Beths part for introducing the paid modding system without taking into consideration the modding community core values and processes. Same with them not clamping down on mod theft. That isn't the port issue that is another example of Beth not understanding the mod community and how to work with them. Multiple failures on Beth part yes... however most aren't caused by the port. It is their failure to do proper research and understanding their customers.

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I don't know if this game can come close to the level of enthusiasm the original had. Skyrim fans are excited but many modders are bummed out by the actions Bethesda has taken over the last couple of years.

I doubt it will have the same level of enthusiasm as the original had. The original was new and fresh this is just a rework. The modders being bummed about the action of Bethesda over the past couple of years also isn't the result of the port. It is the result of Bethesda constantly doing things without any forethought or understanding of what they are doing and what it will do to the community and their customers.

The recent actions seem desperate and urgent almost like what I would expect from a company in the death throws before they go bankrupt or get bought out. A company that has lost its way and is trying to satisfy everybody all the time. They have many titles and franchises that they can tap and tallent they can use. There is no reason for this. For example there are those that like the Fallout 3 game and that type. There are those that love the Fallout NV system and such.. no reason that the # releases be one way and the location releases be like the other. One being a vault dweller and the other being a carrier or some other job. Perhaps imagine this.. A raider left for dead trying to recover and ... etc etc. A new avenue. Hell they could create a third one more like Civ where you go and help build up your towns and communities as another community (faction) tries to bring you and your communities down. So many option.. however what isn't' an option is not paying attention to your core loyal fans and giving them something they love.

[Doublezero]

1 hour ago, ritualclarity said:

The rift in the modding community about the paid mod fiasco predated the port to 64 bit engine Porting the game didn't cause this. 

Of course not. I never said it nor did I insinuate it. The 64 bit engine, however, will not undo all of the ill will that was created because of the paid mod fiasco.

1 hour ago, ritualclarity said:

The failure of them not clamping down on the mod theft isn't the result of them porting to a 64bit game engine.

Of course it's not and once again I never said it nor did I insinuate it.

1 hour ago, ritualclarity said:

It is the result of them not understanding the processes of the modding community and not caring about them and instead focusing on them (the assets / mods) as a company would their property.

And they still don't understand the modding community and the to be honest, I don't think they care. This is clearly evident by how Bethesda treated DarkFox and other modders during the Creation Kit closed beta.

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It turns out however that we received very little in the way of communication from Bethesda when it came to technical problems that we had been posting about. The only responses we had been receiving were in regards to anything PR related and none of the developers were really there to help support the modders. It would have made sense for them to be providing technical support to better help the creators of some of the best modding tools out there such as NifSkope, BSAopt, xEDIT just to name a few. They didn't provide any of the information we needed though.

What Bethesda did provide is a post asking us if we could get some mods uploaded and working for the release of the game, so that they had plenty on there for console users to download when they re-purchase the game at full retail price. This did nothing but to serve my suspicion that the only reason we were invited to the beta is to provide free content for console users to download. Mods are the biggest selling point of SSE and Bethesda wanted to make sure the content would be there.

The thing that finally hit me in the face is when these YouTubers were allowed to release their videos and we were still on lock down until a mere three days prior to release. The very people providing the content for their new game were not being allowed to share anything, while a collection of people who probably haven't touched the game in three or more years could share everything about the game.

So why did they do this? Basically because these YouTubers providing console footage would serve to advertise the game and sell more copies for the consoles. Allowing PC modders to share footage wouldn't really help Bethesda in any way, given that the vast majority of Skyrim players would already be receiving their copies for free anyway, in turn making Bethesda very little money.

Now at the end of all of this, it leaves me feeling like once again, us modders are not being shown or given the respect that we deserve. For the past five years we've been keeping Skyrim alive in our free time which keeps the game popular and has probably even sold them even more copies than they would have otherwise, and although from a marketing point of view this all makes sense, it doesn't make it morally right.

http://www.darkfox127.co.uk/bulletin/no-console-support

 

1 hour ago, ritualclarity said:

They haven't ever done anything to help with the third party script extenders or for that matter much to help with any third party apps. This isn't different from what they have been doing. We shouldn't expect any difference for the port.

They should do different. They want modders to be the content creators yet they provide very little support beyond the Creation Kit.

2 hours ago, ritualclarity said:

Authmoor as ported a good deal of  all the mods he could even before the release. Others have already as well. Most of the hold up is the fact either the mod author has already moved on or left (old mods) or the scripts aren't ready for the porting over of the game. There are a few exceptions for example the SkyUI team. They left well before the port. That was failure on Beths part for introducing the paid modding system without taking into consideration the modding community core values and processes. Same with them not clamping down on mod theft. That isn't the port issue that is another example of Beth not understanding the mod community and how to work with them. Multiple failures on Beth part yes... however most aren't caused by the port. It is their failure to do proper research and understanding their customers.

I don't understand this post and I believe you're misinterpreting what I'm trying to say. I'm not blaming the 64 bit version for driving modders away, I'm blaming Bethesda. If a modders no longer wants to mod Bethesda games because of all of the drama that comes about because of Bethesda's poor business decisions, they are not going to make any.

2 hours ago, ritualclarity said:

I doubt it will have the same level of enthusiasm as the original had. The original was new and fresh this is just a rework. The modders being bummed about the action of Bethesda over the past couple of years also isn't the result of the port. It is the result of Bethesda constantly doing things without any forethought or understanding of what they are doing and what it will do to the community and their customers.

Of course it isn't the result of the port, it's because of Bethesda. Just because they ported Skyrim to a 64 bit engine doesn't mean that retired modders who are disgruntled with Bethesda are going rush back and release new mods. Will new modders fill the shoes of the ones who left? Maybe. Maybe not.

2 hours ago, ritualclarity said:

The recent actions seem desperate and urgent almost like what I would expect from a company in the death throws before they go bankrupt or get bought out. A company that has lost its way and is trying to satisfy everybody all the time. They have many titles and franchises that they can tap and tallent they can use. There is no reason for this. For example there are those that like the Fallout 3 game and that type. There are those that love the Fallout NV system and such.. no reason that the # releases be one way and the location releases be like the other. One being a vault dweller and the other being a carrier or some other job. Perhaps imagine this.. A raider left for dead trying to recover and ... etc etc. A new avenue. Hell they could create a third one more like Civ where you go and help build up your towns and communities as another community (faction) tries to bring you and your communities down. So many option.. however what isn't' an option is not paying attention to your core loyal fans and giving them something they love.

Bethesda's not desperate, they just don't care. They don't respect their customers (the gamers) or their content creators (the modders). Why? Because not enough of us demand better from them. They know gamers are going to rush out and buy the newest release day one and what ever issue people have will be fixed by modders. This is why they're pushing console mods so hard so they can be even lazier with their games.