this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 57 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 64 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Damn, you're right, it's almost been a decade already. I honestly thought it was younger than that.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I don't like thinking about that, lol. Skyrim being 13 really makes me feel old

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Tell me more about Stellaris

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

People act like mods breaking after an update is new. Bethesda (and every other dev team) has been doing it since Morrowind. The MWSE and everything else were fine back then, too.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

They add plenty of value, people just haven't really read into it. I.e. widescreen support, performance optimization, etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

You mean things that mods had fixed almost a decade ago?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but let's be real - modding isn't for everyone. The show was a mainstream hit, so a lot of eyes were on the game again. Adding native improvements like that are a benefit to the game overall and to the people who don't know how to mod or care enough to do it. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. But at the end of the day, hooking to a binary is just a hotfix away from being broken till someone fixes it again.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Bethesda offloads bug fixing to modders altogether too frequently to simply handwave modding as niche on PC. Over a decade on, comprehensive bug fixing mods are still amongst the most frequently downloaded files on nexusmods for Skyrim and even Fallout 4. They can’t have their cake and eat it too, and then complain that they urgently had to eat it.

Their actions don’t exist in a vacuum. Had they done this 5 years ago, it may have been received with confused appreciation, as it was with Skyrim. Now? After those mod creators have long since abandoned the game? It’s no longer welcome.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Personally, I still think Gamers (capital G on this one) are really stupidly entitled when it comes to shit like this. I agree with the other person, it's not on the company who made the game to stop the work they're doing on it, just to make sure third-party modders are okay with the update. They don't have to, and they technically shouldn't have to either. In a perfect world, yes they would communicate with the mod authors and all, but this ain't a perfect world.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

So you say that you want the gog.com version of the game then?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

People have whined about this for twenty years. Yawn

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Then perhaps it is an issue that should be remedied?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

They actually do fuck up the memory registers. It's essentially the same problem DFHack has whenever Dwarf Fortress gets an update.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yes...core game updates typically do break mods. This is nothing new

[–] [email protected] 39 points 6 months ago (11 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Ahh I see. Timing is key. Thx

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I hope all the newbies already learned to turn off auto updates

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

Really need those clicks, huh Eurogamer?

They're really making an article about mods breaking when the game is updated, an event that nearly always happens when any game is updated. Incredible.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Controversy drives engagement

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I read the headline and thought "well yea, no shit. Thats what happens". It must be a slow news day (you can only report the "new" release date for gta so many times).

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Uh, I was just thinking and I don't think I've seen it mentioned. Have these updates broken the creation club mods?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

I believe creation club dlc does keep working, feel free to assume the worst.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Yeah, we know. And its always a shit update too, nothing worth breaking mods for. Just break steam updates and move on.

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