Re: The "problem" with most mods
Posted: Thu May 11, 2017 6:55 pm
I've seen this very thing over at Nexus Mods with, well, practically every community for every game I've gotten mods for. Skyrim is probably one of the biggest, but Fallout 4 is also a contender. And, yeah, there's a metric ton of mods that aren't compatible with one another, for literally all the same reasons already listed in this thread. It's just the nature of the community to want to mush their favorite things together (see slash fic (disclaimer: don't actually look at slash fic (unless you really want to, who am I to judge))).
Still, I come at this from two points of view. The first point of view is as both a player and a tinkerer, being that I enjoy finding the mods that are compatible with one another, (a mod that only changes weapons alongside a mod that only changes monsters, for example). I enjoy messing around in editing tools to learn what the core components of the game are, so I can develop a better understanding of what is and is not possible to "make" compatible, (beyond the obvious "you can't have two mods change the same thing"). I even made a thread about the very topic. "Mod it 'til it breaks" is one of my favorite mottos.
The second point of view is as a "creator". While I will never claim to speak for an entire community, I personally enjoy modding for the purpose of having "my" version of the game. Unless I'm very specifically looking to create an add-on/patch/variation of an existing mod, I'm creating something that I kinda expect to just go onto the vanilla game. The changes I didn't make are just as conscious as the changes I did make. In some cases that may result in a goal of only changing one "layer" such as the example weapon or monster mods, which leaves it open to run with other mods. In other cases it may result in a partial conversion, with "my" choices of monsters, "my" choices of weapons, etc., which leaves it largely incompatible.
And that second point is kinda what drives my desire to mod. It's all well and good to mush together things other people have made, but sometimes I don't want 100% of one mod in the bunch, maybe that's because they conflict, or maybe it's because I just don't like the feature. I'm not going to pester the mod creators for that, I'm going to roll up my proverbial sleeves and make the thing I want how I want it to be made.
I don't know if I had much of a point, so if I had anything to say in all this rambling is don't let it be discouraging, let it be motivational. This is Doom. If things aren't the way you want them to be, rip them apart and smash them back together until it works. I don't believe it's an incorrect way to learn how things work.
Still, I come at this from two points of view. The first point of view is as both a player and a tinkerer, being that I enjoy finding the mods that are compatible with one another, (a mod that only changes weapons alongside a mod that only changes monsters, for example). I enjoy messing around in editing tools to learn what the core components of the game are, so I can develop a better understanding of what is and is not possible to "make" compatible, (beyond the obvious "you can't have two mods change the same thing"). I even made a thread about the very topic. "Mod it 'til it breaks" is one of my favorite mottos.
The second point of view is as a "creator". While I will never claim to speak for an entire community, I personally enjoy modding for the purpose of having "my" version of the game. Unless I'm very specifically looking to create an add-on/patch/variation of an existing mod, I'm creating something that I kinda expect to just go onto the vanilla game. The changes I didn't make are just as conscious as the changes I did make. In some cases that may result in a goal of only changing one "layer" such as the example weapon or monster mods, which leaves it open to run with other mods. In other cases it may result in a partial conversion, with "my" choices of monsters, "my" choices of weapons, etc., which leaves it largely incompatible.
And that second point is kinda what drives my desire to mod. It's all well and good to mush together things other people have made, but sometimes I don't want 100% of one mod in the bunch, maybe that's because they conflict, or maybe it's because I just don't like the feature. I'm not going to pester the mod creators for that, I'm going to roll up my proverbial sleeves and make the thing I want how I want it to be made.
I don't know if I had much of a point, so if I had anything to say in all this rambling is don't let it be discouraging, let it be motivational. This is Doom. If things aren't the way you want them to be, rip them apart and smash them back together until it works. I don't believe it's an incorrect way to learn how things work.
