The mods that updated for the first update were already updated within 24 hours of the next one.
The only mods that are still broken now are mods that were made and maintained by people who have stopped playing the game some time ago.
And even most of those still work, if they didn’t rely on the script extender
The game is a decade old. I get the feeling that most mods will never be updated.
Downvoters should go check out the Stellaris mod graveyard. So many good mods gone forever.
Damn, you’re right, it’s almost been a decade already. I honestly thought it was younger than that.
I don’t like thinking about that, lol. Skyrim being 13 really makes me feel old
Tell me more about Stellaris
Basically the issue is that every six months they break all mods. Many projects over the years got abandoned after an update, or they were just never able to make progress because every six months they’d have to spend weeks patching.
There are some big mods still, but they’re mostly just content additions. Anything that does overhauls, or has lots of overlapping systems, is doomed to failure unless they want to target a specific version of the game and never update. There was a big story mod awhile ago that decided to lock the game version that they supported, but it died when some dependencies updated to the new game version.
Modders work in their free time, so they can only make real progress when they have a stable base for a long long time.
Sure but that still leaves a lot of unnecessarily broken mods. I don’t know how backwards compatible a lot of the main mods are but doesn’t this risk forcing players to either upgrade and uninstall some old mods, downgrade and uninstall some new/updated mods, or downgrade and play the guessing game of which versions of which mods are compatible where? And after the backlash of the first update Bethesda went ahead and did it again so clearly they don’t care about steamrolling modders’ work and they might do it again. Modders going to give up eventually and go back to New Vegas lol
The mods that weren’t backwards compatible were primarily the ones that depended on the script extender. This was an unsupported executable that expanded on the commands available to the scripts in the mods.
Not to say unsupported is bad, but everyone was well aware that if they depended on the script extender, they would break if the game updated at all. The biggest mods avoided that dependency for exactly this reason, and really didn’t have any trouble. (Sim Settlements still worked the entire time, for example)
And like usual, the community stepped up and updated their unsupported extension quickly, ready for this outcome.
If you made a mod that depends on the script extender and then quit playing the game or supporting your mod, that was a choice you made as a modder. Meanwhile there’s mods that haven’t seen an update in 8 years that continue to work without issue.
People act like mods breaking after an update is new. Bethesda (and every other dev team) has been doing it since Morrowind (and long before that) The MWSE and everything else were fine back then, too.
I mean, the issue is that the updates fix nothing of value and break mods in this decade old game. Passable update for console, “why did you even try?” on pc.
Yeah, Minecraft updates break mods all the time but there it is just something the community accepts as normal and lives with. The huge update rage is something I only see with Bethesda game modding.
Because Bethesda games are exclusively single player and offer absolutely no way to decline updates. If they had the old version available as a “beta” or (even better) if Valve stopped dying on the “every game must be updated before launching it even single player games because fuck you” hill there wouldn’t be any outrage.
People have whined about this for twenty years. Yawn
Then perhaps it is an issue that should be remedied?
Right, that’s really more of a Steam issue than a Bethesda issue. I get why Valve and Bethesda don’t want to provide customer support for old versions, but they don’t have to. People have been figuring out their own problems when using obsolete systems or software for a long time.
I have no issue with Steam pushing the updates and encouraging you to take them, but giving no way to decline is a pretty poor user experience. Especially when we already know they keep old versions on their servers, as people have made guides on how to downgrade with Steam
No way to decline update
Turn automatic updating off for the game in question in Steam, and then set the download rate for Steam to 0 so it can’t update when you start up the game.
So you say that you want the gog.com version of the game then?
Without having to re-buy the game, yes. I’d even be willing to pay GOG a bit of money for the cost of hosting the files etc, but I’m not paying Bethesda twice. That’s just rewarding bad behaviour.
Technical question - does the script extender use signature/pattern scanning at all?
It sounds to me that it may have broken because it doesn’t use it.
You could say “oh they recompiled it so the registers changed” but I highly doubt they changed the code that much or touched optimization flags.
The next gen update used a completely different compiler, and that created a highly different executable, that’s why the update for script extender took so long and that’s why the script extender for next gen edition is unable to load “old” script extender mods.
It is the same that happened with Skyrim Anniversary Edition.
Oh this is the “next gen” update? That would explain things.
Oh well…
They actually do fuck up the memory registers. It’s essentially the same problem DFHack has whenever Dwarf Fortress gets an update.
Yes…core game updates typically do break mods. This is nothing new
It’s mostly about the timing that is infuriating people. Fallout regained popularity with the TV show and they dropped a mod breaking release days later. Now they keep updating it with shit nobody asked for and breaking mods.
Ahh I see. Timing is key. Thx
Your accusations are driven by anger but they don’t make much sense.
It’s mostly about the timing that is infuriating people. Fallout regained popularity with the TV show and they dropped a mod breaking release days later.
At the end of last year when Bethesda announced the next-gen update would be delayed, it was already easy to suspect they will be releasing it along with the tv show. As soon as the show premiered, they announced they’ll release the update in 2 weeks. Annoyance by the initial delay aside, this was a perfect moment to release the update.
dropped a mod breaking release
Mods are not developed by Bethesda, they are not integral to the game or necessary to play it and you cannot expect Bethesda to align the release date with every “modder” or test for each mod compatibility. Modders are welcome to create mods but it’s not their game - you seem to be implying that Bethesda is required to consult with modders on game development. It’s up to modders to keep their mods up to date with the game, not the other way around.
Additionally, Fallout 4 has seen a significant increase in sales during that period, which not only confirms it was the right moment to release the update, but also that it brought many new players, who are unlikely to play the game for the first time with mods.
Now they keep updating it with shit nobody asked for and breaking mods.
Just because you haven’t been waiting for the update, it doesn’t mean nobody has. Many players waited for this update, myself included. The next-gen update, as the name suggests, is mostly intended for consoles and the game has never looked or run better on my PS5.
The only reasonable issue you can have with this update is if you’re on PC and playing the game via Steam - they automatically updated the game and don’t allow to rollback. But that should be a protest directed at Steam, if you play the game via GOG, you can easily rollback the update. Or disable the game-breaking mods.
The article itself is rather unimpressive and not very investigative. Victoria Kennedy did “quick scan over on Steam’s Fallout 4 forums” and decided to make an article about it because she knew mocking Bethesda will bring precious clicks.
Saying mods are not an integral part of a Bethesda game is a real hot take there.
If you want to see how devs should approach mod makers so it works out for everyone, take a look at Ludeon does it with Rimworld.
You are free to choose which games you play based on whatever criteria you like.
I hope all the newbies already learned to turn off auto updates
deleted by creator
only if the dev/publisher/whoever-responsible offers the different versions as available branches in the game’s properties. Some do, most don’t.
Graham Wagner even reminisced about a bug he came across while playing The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall, stating that adding ‘glitches’ into a then-hypothetical second season of the show was “definitely on [his] mind as a concept”.
Now I’m seriously hoping there’s a scene in season 2 where a character walks into a room and every object on every surface just sorta freaks out and clatters around, a la the traditional Bethesda physics engine insanity.
Why even share this? (Or more accurately why even make this article) Everyone knows every update will break mods, nobody is surprised and nobody needs to read an article about it Everytime a moldable Bethesda game updates.
Uh, I was just thinking and I don’t think I’ve seen it mentioned. Have these updates broken the creation club mods?
