Guess who's back, back again ♪ Paid mods back, tell a friend

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Arctangent
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Re: Guess who's back, back again ♪ Paid mods back, tell a fr

Post by Arctangent »

DoomRater wrote:Anything (literally anything) that doesn't change the base gameplay. That's wot I thought a MOD was, not buying statistics for a character or cosmetics or inventory. If we're gonna call getting new inventory modding the game, we're taking the word out of any usable context it still has.
So ... Perk's Smooth Weapons aren't a mod? The weapons and items you find on Realm667 aren't mods? All those mods like Simpsons Doom aren't mods?
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Re: Guess who's back, back again ♪ Paid mods back, tell a fr

Post by DoomRater »

I think you people can answer these questions for yourself with a quick analysis: DOES IT CHANGE THE GAMEPLAY? Higher framerates on weapons isn't a mod. Changing the actual behavior of weaponry, however subtle, IS. Changing the behavior of actual monsters, is. Changing the texture of a weapon ISN'T. Changing how monsters look ISN'T. However funny you guys might find putting the Steve model in where Link used to be in Breath of the Wild, it didn't actually change any gameplay. WHy is this so hard to accept? Why do people want to fight over this exact definition and pretend that changing looks makes something a mod?

We have companies turning essential fun parts of their game and cannibalizing them for money. Does that make the sequel a "mod" of the original game?! Do you see where this is going yet? And then to conflate that with downloadable content and EQUATING the two?
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Re: Guess who's back, back again ♪ Paid mods back, tell a fr

Post by Arctangent »

I think you're literally the only person on here that equates "mod" with "gameplay mod" and doesn't consider any other mod a mod.

In fact, I think you'd only find a handful of people across all video game communities that define mod so narrowly.
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Re: Guess who's back, back again ♪ Paid mods back, tell a fr

Post by DoomRater »

Or in other words, the word "mod" has lost all meaning to begin with.
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Re: Guess who's back, back again ♪ Paid mods back, tell a fr

Post by phantombeta »

How has the word "mod" lost all meaning when it has always meant any modification at all? (hint, "mod" is literally just a shortened/contracted version of "modification".)
You're the only person I've ever seen in my entire life who thinks that mods need to change gameplay to be mods.
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Re: Guess who's back, back again ♪ Paid mods back, tell a fr

Post by DoomRater »

-updates to a game "mod" the game.
-patches "mod" the game.
-downloadable content "mods" the game.

In each of these situations we have a better word that describes what's going on. Why use the word "mod" at all? It's about as meaningful as "get" or "set".
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Re: Guess who's back, back again ♪ Paid mods back, tell a fr

Post by phantombeta »

Updates and patches don't "mod" a game because they're meant to be used by everyone instead of the previous update or unpatched version, and are usually free for anyone who already has the game. (and quite often they contain bugfixes, which means they might be necessary to even play the game)
Meanwhile, downloadable content is meant to be optional, only used by those who want to use it, and often meant to be played alongside the game without the downloadable content or with other downloadable content.
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Re: Guess who's back, back again ♪ Paid mods back, tell a fr

Post by DoomRater »

Well you certainly don't play the games the same way after any of these events! How does that NOT mean "any modification, at all"? Surely you mean "any change made by someone NOT the creator", right?

AS for downloadable content being "optional", World of Warcraft would like to have a word with you. (my point here isn't that you could or should be right, my point is that companies can and will try to bend the definition of downloadable content to fit corporate-speak instead of calling it what it should be, paid updates).
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Re: Guess who's back, back again ♪ Paid mods back, tell a fr

Post by Gez »

DoomRater wrote:-updates to a game "mod" the game.
-patches "mod" the game.
Those are basically the same things.

If they change the original game data, they're patches. If they're tacked on, they're mods. (Yes, there are some games where patches use the mod interface, resulting in additional data files to be loaded at startup; instead of changing the original data files.)
DoomRater wrote:-downloadable content "mods" the game.
Well yes. DLCs are commercial first party mods, pretty much.
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Re: Guess who's back, back again ♪ Paid mods back, tell a fr

Post by DoomRater »

I'm attempting to pin down a definition that isn't useless except as a tech support question. (and conceding first party modifications doesn't even really do that) But I also want to point out the whole argument is honestly more about how wording matters. When I said there was corporate-speak involved here, I honestly had no idea how much legitimate need there was for a distinction between paid mods and trying to call it something else (not convinced "mini-DLC" is any better, mind you).
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Re: Guess who's back, back again ♪ Paid mods back, tell a fr

Post by Arctangent »

I mean, it's not like the distinction is anything new. Old school official mods weren't called mods if they were sold, they were called expansion packs. That, however, gained the implication of having significant additional content like an entirely new episode or campaign, so DLC hit the scene as an alternative that could be a catch-all for both digitally distributed expansion packs and much smaller commercial add-ons, like single maps or weapons.

It probably also has to do with the setting of when DLC was born: it came into the common vernacular when consoles gained online capabilities that could download additional content, something previously unheard of outside of PC gaming. Subsequently, expansion packs themselves were pretty much PC-gaming only, because any "expansion pack" that came on console previously was actually just a completely standalone game that was likely the base game + the expansion pack packed together. So, given that expansion packs were already thing that were already thing but of a different community ( remember, PC gaming and console gaming had far less overlap back in the day ), it doesn't seem odd at all that a new term would be whipped up.
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