The Citizen Soapbox is an area where we throw out topics to the users of Citizen Game. When we record a podcast we take the soapbox comments and use them in our own discussions. We think it’s a great way of involving you guys in our stupid arguments!
The Setup:
Good morrow Citizens! With the release of the new Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim, pegged for the end of this year (November 11th at the time of writing) I’ve been having a little think about what I’d like to see in the new game bearing in mind all the things I adored about its predecessor, Oblivion. And I realised, with some shock, that I actually don’t like vanilla Oblivion all that much. What made the game so special and absorbing for me were the plethora of mods the community made for the game. When I go on one of my Oblivion binges the first thing I do is install a whole heap of these mods, additions that do everything from make basic changes to the interface to adding entirely new quests and characters. I find I can’t stand to play the game without them. So…
The Question:
My my main question to you Citizens is this; do you mod? And if so, what games do you mod and (perhaps most importantly) how essential do you feel mods are (or can be) to your enjoyment of games?
I have to admit I don’t consider myself to be a compulsive modder. I have used mods in the past but I do not believe that they are integral to the experience.
Many of my experiences have been positive however the ones that have been negative stick in my mind, probably for the reason that they have gone wrong in a very large ways.
I will however agree with hermit, when I do look for mods I get ones that changed the game slightly, mainly to improve my experience. Case in point the dragon age no helmet mod, a mod which allowed you to equip a helmet and receive its bonuses but not see it on your character model.
Seen as I don’t play my PC as much nowadays, I don’t mod as often as I used to. However back during college and school it’s all I did.
Ones that spring to mind are Rocket Arena and Crate Wars for Quake 3 – and the fantastic Real Guns + Ninja Moves + Bulletime mods for Unreal Tournament that turned that game into a Matrix Deathmatch with dudes doing backflips off walls and watching bullet streams from duel Uzi’s fly around in slowmo. Amazing.
Thanks to Barry posting a Stalker to the Crysis engine conversion on twitter reminded me that i played through S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl with the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. complete 2009 mod.
I would advise anyone who is going to play Stalker that playing it with the 2009 mod is the only way to play it. Improved graphics, substantially reduced bug, better AI, better sound, better UI, better controls.
Look its just BETTER with the 2009 mod.
I’m exactly the same. Got New Vegas on release but I didn’t play it for long. It’s now about three months after release and I’m on a proper play through of the game with a stack of mods.
Generally I’m not looking for massive, game changing overhauls when I’m installing mods, just mods that’ll fix stuff I don’t like.
I would love to see developers work on making mods more accessible for users, though. It’s not exactly difficult to install a few mods for Oblivion, but get a long list and you’re looking at load order conflicts, loot list merging, and so on. The community is good at explaining how all this is done, but any means of making more user friendly for the less savvy user would be awesome.
Torchleech is a great example ( http://torchleech.runicgamesfansite.com:7000/ ). It basically tracks Torchlight mods, can install them at the click of a button, and will notify the user when updates are available and suchlike. More of this sort of thing would be excellent.
Not being a huge PC gamer i’ve not got a large modding history.
Back when unreal tournament was the dogs bollocks I remember getting a PC Gamer magazine with thousands of mods on a cover disk. There was one i played to death. It was kind of like a robin hood version of counter strike.
Other than unreal i used to play an ALIENS total conversion of quake. Happy days.
When I started playing WoW I didn’t know what modding was or how it would affect my gaming habits. Then I was shown a friend’s Wow set up which had every availably mod at the time working for him to make his game easier. From herb locations to instance success percentages, he had the lot.
So I downloaded a couple the following day, just as my interest for the WoW was on the wane, I picked it right back up again as it now was easier, and actually more fun (even though, technically I was cheating). After a while, I struggled to play without mods of some kind or another so I just built on the ones I had until there were so many item boxes I could hardly see my character.