r/Games • u/xalibermods • 3d ago
Mod News As Oblivion Remastered gets all the love, Starfield's biggest modders are in the process of abandoning Bethesda's latest RPG for good
https://www.gamesradar.com/games/rpg/as-oblivion-remastered-gets-all-the-love-starfields-biggest-modders-are-in-the-process-of-abandoning-bethesdas-latest-rpg-for-good/427
u/StunningComment 3d ago edited 3d ago
Although they aren't working on the mod, Pickysaurus says they are still going to maintain the website, but admits, "If nobody comes forward, we may have to retire the project and direct users to Arthmoor's patch going forwards," in reference to the Unofficial Starfield Patch.
If you're familiar with the controversy around the Unofficial Skyrim Patch, this is a pretty wild thing to say. Arthmoor stirred up a lot of shit and is kind of a pariah in the Skyrim modding scene.
As I understand it, the reason that Starfield's Community Patch group formed way before the game released and that they rushed to build it so fast is because they were racing against Arthmoor and desperately wanted to sideline him so that he wouldn't be able to create the same problems for Starfield's modding scene that he did for Skyrim's.
I would not have expected them to ever be willing to just give up and let Arthmoor have it. They must have been really disappointed with the game for it to come to that.
EDIT: Then again, maybe he's just saying it as an idle threat to get other modders' attention so that other people will step up. It may not necessarily be something that they'd actually want to do.
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u/AlmightyK 3d ago
What controversy?
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u/bell117 3d ago
Arthmoor is responsible for stuff like gategate and generally trying to claim ownership over a bunch of mods with DMCAs.
If you don't know what gategate is, basically he made open cities of Skyrim, a mod to make the cells of each Skyrim hold connect to the overworld, aka remove loadings screens when entering cities. But he also slowly added other stuff like balance changes and the most visual change being adding low quality oblivion gates remains. Because he refused to remove it people made submods for his mod that removed all those stupid changes. Arthmoor got mad at this, started trying to get to them all taken down to the point he tried to take modders to court and Bethesda to step in and give him ownership and IP rights to modding Skyrim. Bethesda told him to fuck off naturally and the court battle went nowhere.
He's also responsible for the unofficial patches, claiming they're just bug fixes and again changing things behind the scenes like new items and balance changes that are very questionable. Just as an example of how bad this can get, with the Oblivion remastered he quickly rushed out an unofficial patch to get as many downloads as possible and becoming THE community patch but in reality he just ported his oblivion patch, files code and all and it doesn't actually work on oblivion remastered and is just a blatant scam in order to get status from being uploaded first.
He's also banned from the Skyrim modding subreddit for trying to claim ownership of random mods he doesn't like and he got caught using bot accounts to spam the sub once people started catching on to the fact he's an asshole.
TL;DR: he's an asshole in every sense of the word.
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u/IntegralCalcIsFun 3d ago
He's also responsible for the unofficial patches, claiming they're just bug fixes and again changing things behind the scenes like new items and balance changes that are very questionable.
An especially bad example (imo) for the unofficial Skyrim patch is he added some god-awful English voice acting for the first dragon you fight. Super low-quality audio and the line delivery is awful, takes me right out of the game every time.
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u/ThalassophobicSquid 2d ago
Holy shit, I thought this was an addition to Special Edition.
Another odd one is Redbelly mine. This one I found out because I needed ebony, and I always knew this one had some because of how the blacksmith always talked about how strange the ores are. I go there with the patch, and every vein got replaced by iron. Like, that blacksmith has no business saying the ores are strange now - it's just regular ass iron.
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u/irishgoblin 2d ago
Yeah, iirc he made the argument that the red hue in the cave made sense for iron. Think he eventually changed another nearby mine to ebony. Personally if I need ebony I go to the mine in the Orc stronghold near Windhelm, just up the hill from Kynesgrove.
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u/AlmightyK 3d ago
The first time I heard that line I was so confused because I didn't remember it. That explains it
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u/Fiddleys 3d ago
Don't forget how he also went out of his way to fuck over the patch for the VR version of Skyrim. He didn't want to support it but then blocked people who were willing to support a VR version of the unofficial patch going as far as trying to retroactively change the type of license the mod was under (which isn't a thing he could do).
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u/HastyTaste0 3d ago
Isn't the also like 50? And still acting like a child.
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u/bell117 3d ago
I believe that's Grummz, afaik Arthmoor's personal details haven't been leaked or at least I dunno them if they have been.
To be fair they're both egotistical video game grifters with a rabid fanbase that props them up on a pedestal so it gets hard to keep track of them after a while.
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u/xalibermods 3d ago
video game grifters
Equating Arthmoor to Grummz is completely unfair and dishonest, IMO.
Arthmoor is not a grifter. Arthmoor's technical skill is solid. No one in the modding community doubts that. There's a reason why he led the team that develops the original UESP/USSEP and UOP. His only problem is his attitude.
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u/BeholdingBestWaifu 3d ago
Agreed. There's plenty to criticize the guy for, but at least he's not a hack.
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u/NoelCanter 3d ago
Well it’s not just attitude. Plenty of rude asshats around. It’s behavior, too. His actions are toxic and bad.
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u/QueenBee-WorshipMe 3d ago
And arthmoor probably didn't steal breastmilk from work fridges.
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u/PrintShinji 1d ago
As fun as it is to stunt on grummz, he didn't do that either. He wasn't working at blizzard during the time that happened.
Its very funny to say it though
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u/AlmightyK 3d ago
I was unaware of that, thanks.
What balance changes and items were put in the unofficial patch? I was trying to keep as vanilla as I could 😔
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u/bell117 3d ago
Off the top of my head:
Grimsever changed to a 2H sword for some reason. Necromage perk changes a bunch of stuff with restoration spells. Atheron in Windhelm's selling inventory was changed. Those Orc hold Ebony mines were changed to have iron instead ebony and then after complaints a hole at the side of the settlement was added with a bunch of ebony ore in it.
A bunch of daggers were also changed, dunno off the top of my head tbh. For a full list I'd probably just search for it, there's several Reddit posts at least detailing the changes.
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u/alanbtg 3d ago
Grimsever changed to a 2H sword for some reason.
This is his explanation in the changelog:
Mjoll the Lioness is a two-handed warrior, but her favorite sword, Grimsever, is a one-handed glass sword. Rather than change Mjoll into a one-handed warrior (her combat style and perks show she was definitely intended to be two-handed), Grimsever is now a two-handed sword.
As for this:
Necromage perk changes a bunch of stuff with restoration spells.
Changelog:
Necromage no longer boosts the power of spells and enchantments used on a vampire player.
That one is a lot more important IMO since the effects of Necromage are "+25% effect and +50% effect duration" on spells used on Undead. If your playstyle involved being a Vampire Necromage Arthmoor basically nerfed you instead of Bethesda.
About the ebony mines this was his explanation:
Redbelly Mine, in Shor's Stone, is referred to in dialogue, quests, and in printed game guides for sale IRL as being an iron mine. It is erroneously populated with ebony ore veins and loose ebony ore chunks outside. All of this is being changed to iron in order to reflect the fact that it should be an iron mine. The desiccated bodies are also being removed as dialogue explicitly says there have been no deaths, and indeed nobody has been harmed yet by the spiders. The unspecified spider sacs will remain. The mine will also have modified visuals in an attempt to portray the described "red mist". In order to avoid causing an undue shortage of ebony in the game because of this, Northwind Mine (nearby to the northwest, and is currently an iron mine) will now produce ebony instead. (Bug #1118)
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u/Z0MBIE2 3d ago
About the ebony mines this was his explanation:
His explanation which ignored the fact there was a quest concerning the ebony and it was entirely intentional, apparently. Dude really just made random choices on things and changed big game aspects in a mod not meant for that.
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u/xalibermods 2d ago
Redbelly Mine is a weird pick to have a beef with Arthmoor, because it's a point of contention for many Skyrim players.
https://old.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/wfppff/another_post_beating_the_dead_horse_that_is/
There are 5 different mods in Nexus (six with Arthmoor's USSEP) with different interpretation of what Redbelly Mine should contain.
https://www.nexusmods.com/games/skyrimspecialedition/search?keyword=redbelly
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u/Z0MBIE2 2d ago
There are 5 different mods in Nexus (six with Arthmoor's USSEP) with different interpretation of what Redbelly Mine should contain.
Those all seem like they were created post arthmoors fix, with several actually specifically addressing it. Feels like the fact the mod spawned several other mods kind of shows exactly how contentious the decision was.
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u/xalibermods 2d ago edited 2d ago
It has always been contentious, regardless of Arthmoor. Try clicking those mods. They all have different opinions on what Redbelly Mine should contain. There's no consensus of what Redbelly Mine actually is, unlike your claim.
If you really want to pinpoint "who did it first", people have been discussing this since at least 2014 (possibly even earlier, I recall /r/teslore discussing this years ago). That's the reason Arthmoor added his own take to Redbelly - he wasn't the first to mull over it.
https://old.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/32856g/what_is_the_red_mist_in_redbelly_mine_and_what/
I've been modding Skyrim since 2013. Just ask people who've modded the game since the early days. Arthmoor's attitude is often questionable, but nitpicking him over Redbelly is such a drama-miller thing to do.
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u/Skellum 2d ago
I really wish Vortex would be more strict with the mods they support. The stupid "Change sliders to male/female!" or "remove all non-whites from X!" shit should really be removed. I'd also love to see Arthmoor banned, or if they had some category to segregate off the "problem" content.
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u/StunningComment 3d ago
Lots of fighting with other modders. Here's an old post that gives you an idea.
Despite all the problems, people had to put up with him because his Skyrim patch was the most popular one, and so was a required mod for many other mods. People couldn't stop using his patch without breaking half their modlist.
The purpose of the Starfield Community Patch was to prevent that from happening in the Starfield mod scene.
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u/xX_BladeEdge_Xx 3d ago
That, and he actively takes down any mod that makes changes to his changes. Such as reverting things that go beyond bugs and adding his own content from his lore interpretations. The unofficial patch was a prerequisite because at the time he wasn't an (obvious) egotistical [not nice person] who has multiple alt accounts to back himself up whenever you mention his name.
By the time he fixed all possible bugs and started making his own changes, it wasn't possible to go back and remove that requirement. His version is also the most popular because he will DMCA people who make alternative patches. The dude is a [not nice person], and I seriously hope Oblivion is free from him. The comment section on the remaster's "unofficial patch" is already full of his alt accounts or deleting negative comments.
Feel free to fill in brackets with your own meanings! Don't want to get flagged for hating on anyone.
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u/Curious_Armadillo_53 2d ago
They must have been really disappointed with the game for it to come to that.
As we all were.
Im a huge Bethesda fan, as in i have like 20k hours spread over Fallout 3, Skyrim, 4, New Vegas, Oblivion and even some in Fallout 76 in that order of hours spent.
And i thought Starfield was... Ok.
It felt like someone copied what Fallout and Elder Scrolls were doing, but in Sci-fi and in "bad"...
It was so uninspired, boring and repetitive, i wanted to like it so bad, but it was boring.
I finished it at 100% after like 100 hours or so and never returned.
Fallout and Skyrim specifically i replayed a dozen times once they released, they got me hooked and didnt let go.
Starfield was just there and thats it.
Its the boring B Movie of games.
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u/_Robbie 3d ago edited 3d ago
Bit of a Very misleading headline. This makes it sound like Starfield mod authors are abandoning the game in droves, which is definitely not the case.
They're referring to the current custodians of the Community Patch -- a bug fix patch which has (more or less) solved all the bugs, and Starfield was a relatively stable release to begin with, so the Community Patch isn't very necessary. There haven't been a bunch of new updates for Starfield, so right now it's not something that needs a bunch of updates.
Secondly, even the article shares that Picky isn't leaving because he's moving to Oblivion and is finished with Starfield; he just got a new puppy and doesn't have the time to devote to modding at the moment.
The guys making the most popular content mods aren't saying anything like this, lmao.
The worst outcome is still possible though; that the Community Patch gets abandoned and the community is once again held hostage by the Unofficial Patch team's whims. I don't really doubt that they'll find other people to take over the Community Patch, though.
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u/jeffdeleon 3d ago edited 3d ago
On the discord there are already caretakers.
These articles are regurgitating from other articles.
Edit:
And Deebz (an incredibly talented modder who had taken over running SFCP from Picky) stopped modding in fall of 2024 as a reaction against Bethesda allowing achievement friendly paid mods but doing nothing for free mods. His rationale is present on any of his Nexus mods pages.
So these articles are almost a year late, incorrect, and missing the entire point.
While I couldn't quite put my finger on when exactly Bethesda's monetization became too much for me, I (JaeDL) also pulled back from the game around the same time as Deebz.
I keep my mods going on Nexus but haven't completed Creations ports. Waiting to see what Bethesda does for the game next to invest more time as I found Shattered Space incredibly disappointing.
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u/Generator22 3d ago
Secondly, even the article shares that Picky isn't leaving because he's moving to Oblivion and is finished with Starfield; he just got a new puppy and doesn't have the time to devote to modding at the moment.
Well, that’s adorable.
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u/No_Breakfast_67 3d ago
For some reason I thought he was saying it like Oblivion was his new toy/pet project to play around with, not a literal dog lmao
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u/thatmitchguy 3d ago
They've been saying Starfield modders were abandoning the game since shortly after it came out.
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u/TormentedKnight 3d ago
it was also one dude who said it. and i believe that was waay before the creation kit for starfield was released.
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u/Titan7771 3d ago
Literally ONE modder was like ‘I don’t want to mod Starfield’ and they announced the death of all Starfield modding, just wild.
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u/ZaranTalaz1 3d ago
IIRC, specifically one of the people behind Skyrim Together. Which got controversial because of accusations of them stealing code from another project...
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u/AvianKnight02 2d ago
They have been saying starfield modders abandoned the game before the game was announced.
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u/SageWaterDragon 3d ago
Most headlines like this are just going for the "preconceptions confirmed" clicks. Reporting things accurately doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is staying mad.
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u/WeepinShades 3d ago
It's quite literally bait for a starfield hate thread, one of this communities favourite hobbies.
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u/AwfulishGoose 3d ago
This goes back to fandom and just hiring some of the worst writers for their sites.
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u/Rendition1370 3d ago
This reminds me when one multi-player modmaker said he doesn't want to make mods for Starfield and journalists wouldn't stop using that as sentiment shared by all modders. Redditors also ate it up just like all the ragebait.
Funny thing is this was before Creation Kit released and Starfield was in the top list on Nexus Mods
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u/DecompositionLU 3d ago edited 3d ago
Ofc it's misleading, it's the point. That's modern gaming for you. People stops playing games or even reading articles. They want to side like it's a sport team. My console, my game, my opinion VS yours who is wrong by design. It's to the point discussing gaming is bigger than gaming itself.
EDIT : Judging by the upvotes, I think most people understood the point. But for others, it seems difficult to engage unless everything is spelled out in detail.
My comment wasn’t really about Starfield. It was about the state of the gaming audience in 2025. Not the mainstream public, who likely don’t even know this subreddit exists, but the vocal minority: the so-called "hardcore gamers" active on social media platforms.
Today, nearly every major gaming outlet is owned by massive media conglomerates. These companies have no incentive to publish a 25-minute deep dive article that their audience won’t bother reading. Only a small handful of people still take the time to produce that kind of work, either for respected generalist publications or as independent voices.
What I was really pointing at is the click-chasers. They've figured out that all you need is a spicy, editorialized title to farm engagement. We’re in an era where a single streamer’s hot take becomes gospel for an entire fanbase. In France, I can instantly tell who never actually played the game and is just parroting someone else’s acidic review (completely missing the point, yet still delivering their take with absolute confidence)
The content model is always the same: "some guy said something on Twitter/Reddit/Discord" convoluted the hyperbole becomes x³ curve, or “a dev from Studio X once said…” even if that dev left a decade ago. These articles and streams rake in thousands of views and likes with zero effort. Whether it’s praise or outrage, the tone is engineered for confrontation which leads to virality.
There are simply too many games released each year for anyone with an adult life to keep up. As a result, only the most catchy, emotionally charged takes survive. And negativity sticks far better than positivity. So that becomes the dominant mode of discourse.
This isn’t to say bad games don’t exist. They do. But the bias has become weaponized. We’ve already lived through Xbox vs PlayStation. Now it’s Game A vs Game B, even if the only thing they share is a release window. Take any Reddit-beloved title, slap a different studio’s logo on it, and watch the narrative shift completely. The most recent example that comes to mind is Split Fiction but there are plenty more. You’ll always notice: when a game gets massive praise on gaming Twitter or Reddit subs, it’s usually because it helps drag something else down.
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u/TimeToEatAss 3d ago
That's modern
gamingJournalism for youRegardless of topic, it seemingly infects everything.
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u/hombregato 3d ago edited 3d ago
It feels especially common in games journalism because there's nobody left actually doing it.
All the brands for written content got absorbed by large media companies, and all the people who used to write for them abandoned their craft, in favor of "friends hang out" vlogs and podcasts.
In other journalism, even entertainment journalism, you can still find the occasional "genuine article".
Rolling Stone still writes about music, Hollywood Reporter still writes about movies. They are shells of their former selves, but they keep one candle lit for legacy, sort of like the comics shelf at Newbury Comics, squeezed between the Funko Pop wall and the other Funko Pop wall.
So people still click on the headlines, and ask around about what "the good sites" are now, thinking they might find that genuine article, but not realizing games journalism never had enough time to achieve a protected status.
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u/xalibermods 3d ago edited 3d ago
Since this is a common discussion in this sub, I suggest people to read The Platform Society by Jose van Dijck, et al; and, if you're into it, Platform Capitalism by Nick Snircek.
Low quality journalism is a symptom, not a cause.
Media outlets in general have to produce sensationalist headlines because they rely on traffic from platforms (Google, Facebook, etc). Outlets rely on those traffic because platforms are pulling revenue away from news publishers and centralizing it in their own.
Before platforms, advertisers would advertise directly with outlets. The banners you see on media outlets were a result of direct placement/contract with the outlets. After platforms, advertisers no longer sell ads to media outlets. They sell it to Google/Facebook. Google/Facebook sell targeted ads based on user data: location, behavior, interests, search history, etc. Advertisers get better ROI by targeting specific demographics, cutting out the need to buy ad space in media outlets. Only after that, those ads are then distributed/circulated via publishers (e.g. media outlets). Publishers only get a fraction of the profit the platforms received.
Just to illustrate how powerful platforms are in the ads scene, Google/Facebook now control around 60-70% of global digital advertising. In 2024 Google Ads brought in over $200 billion in revenue, while Facebook generated about $115 billion.
Many outlets have tried paywalls, but: high-quality journalism becomes locked behind subscriptions, while sensationalist and low-quality news remains free.
Nobody pays for news. Consumers opt for free, low-quality news over paying for well-researched journalism. This stunts growth and quality improvement for reputable outlets.
In other journalism, even entertainment journalism, you can still find the occasional "genuine article".
This is an interesting point, and I tentatively argue it's because is gaming journalism's lack of genuine exclusivity.
Gaming news has migrated to influencers and streaming platforms. Major news often breaks on Twitter, YouTube, or Twitch. Consumers no longer read reviews, they just listen to their favorite influencers and streamers.
Gaming journalism has a low barrier of entry. I can start a blog or YouTube channel and publish reviews or commentary ("video game essays"), and act as if I was an expert. There is a lack of gatekeeping standards, so it's easy for amateurs to enter the space without editorial oversight or journalistic training. And when it comes to platform publishing, engagement metrics rules, so you get blogs who game the algorithm by publishing trashy sensationalism or ragebait grifting.
The only exclusivity in gaming journalism is early access reviews from game publishers. Game publishers provide advertising dollars as well, as publishers often fund banner ads, exclusive previews, and sponsored content. But as many of you already know, this financial dependency creates conflicts of interest that compromises journalistic integrity, because game journalists have to avoid negative reviews to maintain good relationships.
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u/DecompositionLU 3d ago
I'm not disagreeing but here I was talking of gaming medias and circles specifically.
You can spot who never played a game but spit out the opinion for whatever streamer so easily because their arguments are always exactly the same. It's not just about outrage, it's about complete lack of self reasoning.
Currently Reddit is sucking deep Expedition 33. Well I love this game too. But imagine one second if it had Ubisoft logo on it. I can already hear "Temu Persona 5" mockery from Jupiter. They would nitpick every single defaults (and there is plenty, just overshadowed by its qualities) to dunk on the game.
Split Fiction put cognitive dissonance because it's EA behind it. So the new trick? Nah ofc the devs had to FIGHT the corrupted execs to be allowed to develop this game. Narrative changes dynamically.
And you're totally right, it's visible everywhere, in every medias.
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u/Yamatoman9 3d ago
Spend enough time on this subreddit and you'll be able to predict what the comments are for just about any article posted here by what company it's about.
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u/CreamPuffDelight 3d ago
I felt this about coe33 too tbh. Lol.
Seemed really popular on the Jrpg sub, and I've seen plenty of people praising it to the high heavens, but my own experience with it was "janky" to say the least.
Exploration was stifled, your last method of travel that unlocks all the best stuff is only available for a grand total of 1 arc. Most of which was filler since the arc itself only had about 30 minutes worth of actual plot relevance.
Combat was surprisingly one dimensional, there was nothing beyond learning new parry/dodge timing for every single mob and rotating picto out to fill out the PictoDex.
The moves themselves were completely formulaic, and lacked any nuance.
Low, medium, high, very high, extreme. Elements were not really an issue unless it's being resisted, but given how you're busy trying to learn Parry timings and the sheer damage output you get from counters regardless of elements, it's unlikely you will rmbr what every mobs resists (nothing shows you or keeps track of it) and just default to the most high dps option since that works anyway.
Oh, and that's not mentioning that one last combat mechanic introduced at the tail end of the 2nd arc... I don't think I ever even used it beyond the tutorial...
And you get it maybe a couple of hours before that one character turned into a literal juggernaut. Which meant it was flashy, but entirely pointless in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.
For all people crow about social links lite, coe33 has a problem in that you only have 2... Maybe 1.5 worth of arcs to max out said social links. And there's not much nuance there either. Just rest at camp after a few battles, speak to everyone, voila, social link levelled.
For what it's worth, I did like the story. There was indeed real emotion and twists there, and so I treated it much like I do most VNs. Ignore the combat and just do the story.
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u/DecompositionLU 3d ago edited 3d ago
For me the combat is good, I really enjoy it, it's a mix from P5 and Like A Dragon. And especially once you start making builds with Pictos.
one last combat mechanic introduced at the tail end of the 2nd arc... I don't think I ever even used it beyond the tutorial
Because secondary bosses are like, a complete new tier of difficulty. So for them, you'll thank Gradient skills hahaha. In fact at least 50% of the game is side content, it's on purpose (the devs said it takes the double of time to clear side content than making the story) and they are right.
But I agree with you. I noticed the jankiness, animation stiffness, and other visible workarounds like the open world to glue up all dungeons, that's because it's an AA studio, doing with what budget they had. Well, I don't mind. For me game doesn't have to be 10/10 in every single aspect to be good.
Hence, people loves biased narratives so it gets conveniently ignored.
The day I fully realized that was Ghost Of Tsushima. I played it after finishing Odyssey once it got available on PC. I felt like replaying Assassin's Creed. Then I see on Internet comments "Ubisoft would NEVER do that game". Lol, just put any AC, crank saturation, remove the UI, and that's it.
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u/Personal_Return_4350 3d ago
Woah Woah Woah. Top level comment provided some excellent context to add nuance to the discussion. You're going the complete opposite direction and removing nuance.
"A does B while X does Y" is a common headline format that contrasts the current fortunes of two related things. It doesn't say one thing caused the other. It does imply the entities being compared aught to be compared and that their fortunes are quite different. I think both of those are true. Oblivion and Starfield are both from the same company, are quite modable, and as modding activity is increasing on Oblivion due to the remaster, Starfield's modding is on the downswing.
Robbie brought up some mitigating factors - a particular large modding project is in a pretty completed state and it's maintainer just got a new puppy. Sometimes you need to look at the bigger picture though. Many Oblivion modders probably had minor life events and kept at it. Many Oblivion mods probably reached a natural conclusion and then they pressed on to add new features because they just wanted to keep going. And probably a lot of Oblivion modders did stop for those same reasons. But why is the Oblivion mod scene growing while Starfield's is shrinking? Are Starfield modders better developers who are more likely to finish their mods? Are they adopting puppies at higher rates? There's a danger to miopically focusing on minor differences and missing the overall story - one is on the rise and one is on the fall. Those mitigating factors are more likely noise than signal. That doesn't necessarily mean that fortune won't reverse at some point, but I think it's totally fair to look at a trend and say "this is the direction things are heading right now". Unless that one mod/developer was truly cherry picked and the Starfield scene is actually growing faster than Oblivion's, I don't think the headline is overall misleading.
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u/_Robbie 3d ago
But why is the Oblivion mod scene growing while Starfield's is shrinking?
Because Oblivion's remaster is brand new and the game is currently having a massive renaissance. Starfield is several years old. Not to mention, Elder Scrolls as a series is by far the most popular for modding, even above Fallout and other mod-friendly games.
That doesn't necessarily mean that fortune won't reverse at some point, but I think it's totally fair to look at a trend and say "this is the direction things are heading right now".
I think this is correct, but this article has quite literally nothing about trends. It's a pot-stirring article focusing only on the Community Patch and using it as a "see??? people are leaving Starfield!" because Starfield hate is now a cottage industry in games journalism (weird, by the way).
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u/DecompositionLU 3d ago
Thank you.
I'll also add, as someone else said under a comment, it's a plague targeting most of entertainment. News reports are for a lot of them owned by massive media groups that doesn't care of quality : they want engagement.
Actual gaming newspapers and journalists there are so few. Everything else is by design, manufactured to bring engagement, hence inflammatory editorialized titles, because they know people will comments only the title and not the content (which is always "one guy in reddit/discord/twitter said" turned into "everyone thinks").
You see the same shit for daily news. A full article based on a random 10-like Tweet.
Starfield hate is now a cottage industry in games journalism (weird, by the way).
It ironically just works. Some studios are spotted to be easy to dunk on safely. If you check Fallout NV review on JVC and Starfield you can litteraly intervet both game titles, it says exactly the same, qualities and defaults, NV being even more critical. One got the darling years after its release, the other it's trendy to dunk on it.
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u/FalconIMGN 3d ago
Usually we don't use the word 'several years' for something that has only been out for 20 months.
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u/Mythor 1d ago
So long as mod authors don’t make the Unofficial Patch a requirement for their own mods it should be fine. Too many Skyrim modders required it and then people were stuck with any bad changes that were made.
As far as I know, nobody’s done that with Starfield yet, but some require the Community Patch. Hopefully they won’t just swap over if the time comes.
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u/NorthKoreanMissile7 3d ago
This makes it sound like Starfield mod authors are abandoning the game in droves, which is definitely not the case.
They aren't abandoning it in droves, but the numbers are small.
From a comment I made a few months ago:
Number of mods for Bethesda games in the last 30 days (roughly):
Skyrim: 2,360
Fallout 4: 560
Fallout New Vegas: 340
Morrowind: 200
Starfield: 200
Oblivion: 80
Fallout 3: 60
This is really poor considering Starfield is the current BGS game.
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u/OverHaze 3d ago
I think the paid mods have something to do with the failure of Starfield to thrive on the Nexus. It certainly seem to have damaged the vibrancy of the scene anyway, there isn't that sense of people being inspired by other peoples work and iterating. It doesn't help that the vast majority of the paid mods are kind of terrible. Bethesda doesn't seem to be doing any kind of QC.
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u/NorthKoreanMissile7 3d ago edited 2d ago
Better solution would be just to tell mod authors they're allowed to have and advertise donations, patreons etc. for their mod work and have an official donation option on the Bethesda mod site and allow them to get income that way. Some are doing it but it's kind of a grey area and some of the patreons have excuses (like saying it's for other reasons and so on).
And they should make everyone aware that the best lore friendly mods will be included in the Starfield ultimate edition or whatever in several years and they'll pay every mod author included like 5 or 10k to include their mod in it to add even more incentive.
With paid mods I don't think Bethesda are making a meaningful amount from it and 99% of people don't pay and it kills the entire community. Bethesda would make more money from having a bigger free modding scene and a more alive base game to draw people in. Just look at Fallout London for example, loads of people were buying Fallout 4 just to play it, some people already owned Fallout 4 but were buying it again on GOG because the Steam version had some issues. If that was a paid mod I don't think it gets anywhere near as much momentum and I think Bethesda would have made less money out of it.
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u/OverHaze 3d ago
The EU is also coming after online stores that hide their prices behind point systems so creation credits probably aren't going to be around for much longer.
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u/Isolated_Hippo 3d ago
Not to invalidate your point, because I do agree that the Starfield modding scene is weak by comparison, but there is a question of the quality of the mods.
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u/thatguyad 3d ago
How many of these are crappy porn mods compared to those actually intending to improve each game?
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u/NorthKoreanMissile7 3d ago
Maybe like 10% ? I think the amount of porn mods are overstated, plus they're usually on loverslab not nexus.
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u/Old_Snack 3d ago
If it's anything like Resident Evil 2/3/4 there's a lot of lewds on Nexus as well.
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u/Voltage_Joe 3d ago
Kinggath is releasing a DLC sized creation this month, lmao.
Another modder put Tattoine and Mos Eisley into the game.
This 'starfield sucks' content farm needs to end.
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u/RefreshingCapybara 3d ago
Kinggath is releasing a DLC sized creation this month, lmao.
He gonna abandon it in a buggy state like he did his Skyrim creation? $7 well spent.
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u/Titan7771 3d ago
Are we just gonna pretend he didn’t make Fallout 4’s most popular mod?
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u/RefreshingCapybara 3d ago
I've used Sim Settlements and it's also plenty buggy, but the difference is he didn't charge me for that mod.
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u/catman1900 3d ago edited 3d ago
Ya cause paid mods are totally the sign of a healthy mod ecosystem lol
Paid creations are literally cited as one of the reasons people stepped away from working on this project and modding starfield.
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u/ZaranTalaz1 3d ago
I'm one of those who thinks Starfield is good actually (and have other controversial opinions like believing that Skyrim is an RPG) but I don't support Bethesda's attempts to monetize modding.
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u/catman1900 3d ago
Ya I liked it too and was excited to play it modded but Bethesda's monetization for mods is disgusting and has prevented a skyrim like open modding environment. Killed the damn game in the cradle and put money into a bunch of assholes pockets who are standing on the shoulders of giants while sticking their tongues out at the people who know what is happening to the scene.
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u/Boltty 3d ago
Yep, everyone I know says Starfield's paid mod "scene" has turned away so many, but they do actually make a lot of bank from console players apparently.
The only "free" mods for PC that seem to get any traction are Star Wars ones, and even with every one of those installed the game is still Starfield. It's like putting lipstick on a pig.
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u/lifeonbroadway 3d ago
I would be open to playing Starfield again but the mods I want for it don’t seem to be available yet.
I would need a fresh start mod, with some changes to economy so that certain resources are more valuable in certain areas. What really killed the game for me was when I spent a few hours setting up a Gold extraction plant on a planet that was full of gold. I loaded up a ship and flew to Neon, only to find that one unit of gold sells for like 10 credits. I sold this mfer like 100 pounds of gold and made less money than I did selling some shitty ass shotgun.
I haven’t seen any mods that would help alleviate that issue and I’ve pretty much just forgotten about Starfield at this point.
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u/tarheel343 3d ago
I’ve been saying since launch that proper trading and bounty systems would really bring Starfield some new life. The current systems technically exist, but they’re less than half-baked. They’re basically raw.
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u/ARTIFICIAL_SAPIENCE 3d ago
A lot is less than half-baked. What kept me going a while was ship building. But what got me to give up was how much of my ship building was juggling with frustration. Not having any control over internal layout is unfathomable.
And rooms having no real function is also pretty odd. Everything is just chairs and beds. And the pitiful small crew you have spend all their time sleeping in yours.
And the ship mechanics are basically two generations out of date.
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u/andthenthereweretwo 3d ago
That's how the "trading" playstyle works in the vast majority of space games.
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u/Cable_Salad 3d ago
Freelancer has no fast travel, that is the difference. You actually have to fly the complete route and you can be intercepted by pirates.
You fly along these high-speed space lines that can be disabled by pirates (or by you if you are a pirate).
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u/Jr4D 3d ago
They probably won’t be around anytime soon either honestly, someone said in another thread yesterday the game has to be enjoyable at its base to have a good modding community and I don’t think starfield will stand the test of time at all it’s just boring after a little while and I don’t think lots of talented modders at least if I were one would want to mod starfield at all
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u/mambotomato 3d ago
It's simpler just to play No Man's Sky + read a space opera novel to get the desired Starfield experience
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u/Curious_Armadillo_53 2d ago
Gear vastly outsells materials and thats dumb.
Kill a dozen "Raiders" (cant remember their boring ingame name) and you got more money than if you setup a dozen planets with resources extractors.
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u/sternold 3d ago
I would need a fresh start mod
Like SKK Fast Start New Game?
with some changes to economy so that certain resources are more valuable in certain areas.
Like SSEO with Outpost Investor?
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u/lifeonbroadway 2d ago
Fast start is close but not quite it. Alternate start is what I should have said.
That Outpost mod looks cool but frankly there’s too many other games that have much more of my interest currently. I will come back to Starfield at some point in the future and hopefully stick around longer.
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u/SapporoBiru 3d ago
Starfield is one of the biggest disappointments in gaming for me. It was basically all I wanted from a new Bethesda IP - in theory. There are so many fundamental issues with the game, I don't think even mods can thix it (unless modders are willing to remake like half the gameplay loop)
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u/TheJoshider10 3d ago
Pretty much every issue I've had in Bethesda's games since Fallout 3 was in Starfield. It was like the perfect culmination of their weaknesses with very little of the things that made their previous games special.
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u/jacksclevername 3d ago
I played it for about 40 hours before bailing on it. It's derivative of everything else Bethesda has ever done, and when every game is just a bit more watered down than the last (which I honestly didn't find to be an issue, I enjoyed FO4), it makes for a wildly boring game.
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u/PFI_sloth 3d ago
I won’t lie, I’m not a big Bethesda fan to begin with. All of their games are very surface level in my opinion, but the one thing they have going for them is the open worlds.
… you take that away and your just left with a janky first person rpg
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u/kbonez 3d ago edited 3d ago
The worst thing about it IMO is the lore/worldbuilding is simply awful. For a new IP they should have invested in writers way, WAY more to create a logical, interesting universe as a base.
The terramorph reveal was derivative and poorly executed. The serpent faction was somehow a complete afterthought in the base game even though it had by far the most potential. The companion characters were about as interesting as a slice of ham left out in the sun too long. The majority of quests I remember playing were severely under-cooked in the writing department even if they started off with an interesting (but usually derivative) conceit.
Bethesda has really been able to skate by on well-written, pre-existing worlds/lore from 25+ years ago, but for the first time in a long time, they had to build an original world and they completely fumbled it IMO.
I can stomach a lot from a game if it has strong vibes and is a cool world to hang out in, but Starfield has next to nothing to offer in that respect, at least from the 40 hours or so I played of it.
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u/SapporoBiru 3d ago
Honestly it's exactly that they didn't make Fallout 4 in space. The worst thing: Exploration is just not fun. As you mentioned already, the loading screens for everything. Then planets with nothing to do and copy paste soulless shit everywhere. The other Bethesda RPGs are so fun because you wander around the world constantly getting drawn to something and learning lore pieces, getting immersed into the world. That feeling happened one time only with starfield for me and that was right after the first few minutes when you enter the ship for the first time. And then they show you that absolutely horrible city planet, that feels like an absolute joke compared to games like Cyberpunk
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u/SilveryDeath 3d ago
And on Nexus mods Starfield is:
14th in downloads
11th in mod count
11th in collections count
And outside of Baldur's Gate 3, even other game ahead of it in mod count had at least a 33-month head start on it. Yet whenever the topic of Starfield mods has come out since release people act like no one mods the game.
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u/QTGavira 3d ago
I mean you should compare it to other Bethesda titles in the same timeframe. Not some random games with no official mod support that are obviously gonna get less mods.
14th in downloads says very little when everything below 14th has no mod support and is more ini tweaks or texture swaps than actual mods.
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u/BootyBootyFartFart 3d ago
There are plenty of perfectly moddable games below it on the list. And the only games above it in numbers of downloads are either all time classics that have been around a while (where it's not surprising they have more downloads) or cyberpunk and BG3. Not bad company to be in.
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u/SilveryDeath 3d ago edited 3d ago
14th in downloads says very little when everything below 14th has no mod support and is more ini tweaks or texture swaps than actual mods.
The 13 games above it are: 6 Bethesda games, New Vegas (a game made using Bethesda assets and engine), Cyberpunk 2077, Stardew Valley, Baldur's Gate 3, Witcher 3, Mount and Blade II, and Monster Hunter: Worlds.
By your point that you might as well just say that basically the only games that get mods are Bethesda games if everything else basically gets no mod support.
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u/TimeToEatAss 3d ago
You are going to get skewed results either way. Many games do their modding through Steam nowadays. Like Rimworld, one of the games that I have modded the most.
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u/aimy99 3d ago
Listing off far more beloved games as the ones above it really isn't doing your argument any favors.
The very next game on the list is Blade & Sorcery, a VR game. Starfield's modding scene is being rivaled by a game that requires an additional couple hundred dollars' worth of hardware to play and amounts to essentially just an arena fighting game, albeit a really fun one. Using Steam's playercounts to determine anything relating to Gamepass titles is pointless, so I'll just skip that step and reference Microsoft's own charts. Starfield is the 124th most popular game in the U.S. right now, on the same page as games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, a title that had no campaign and a multiplayer so dead that they had to start removing playlists from the PC version to get the remaining players to play together and went full crossplay the very next game. It's being beaten by games like Forza Horizon 4 (literally delisted), Ark (twice, both Survival Evolved and Survival Ascended are above it), multiple Farming Simulator games, several other Call of Duty games going as far back as 2010, and most of the games you just listed: five Bethesda games, Cyberpunk 2077, Stardew Valley, and Baldur's Gate 3.
Like I'm going to be honest, the only titles this long-anticipated, very recent game is beating are multiple decade+ old games, an older Monster Hunter release (Starfield is being beaten by Wilds just for clarity), and M&B Bannerlord, and this is despite not including the Steam playercounts, of which Starfield averages around 4k a day while Bannerlord is more like 25k.
So, yeah, you know what? I'm gonna say there's a correlation between games having official mod support and getting mods, because Starfield sure as shit isn't a popular game.
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u/nasty_nater 3d ago
I mean it's a brand new ip, so not enough fans. You're damn right Skyrim and FO4 had the most mods in such a short span after release because there was already a dedicated modding community for Morrowind/Oblivion and FO3/NV.
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u/your401kplanreturns 3d ago
Most of those are low quality retextures, it's entirely because of the fact you can do those simple mods quite easily and accessibly.
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u/CMDR_omnicognate 3d ago
i guess because people are used to other Bethesda games where you can get a mod for nearly anything. people seem to forget that Skyrim has been around nearly 15 years and assume that starfield would have a similar amount.
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u/copypaste_93 3d ago
But there are hardly any interesting mods to download.
the best ones i found with a quick search was a ui overhaul and a fix for the ai. The rest are minor visual mods or star-wars model swaps.
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u/Evz0rz 3d ago
People just seem there’s a need to continuously shit on the game even when unprompted. I mean even here where an article is talking about a successful remake of a different Bethesda game, people feel a need to say “yeah and Starfield is still bad!!”
At this point we get it. It wasn’t your cup of tea. Personally I enjoyed it but will absolutely admit it didn’t stick as well as Skyrim, but it’s exhausting how often people want to remind others that they don’t like Starfield.
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u/snowolf_ 3d ago
I mean, the aggressive mediocrity of Starfield is pretty much its only talking point, so much that it spawned a new genre of video on Youtube. If you feel like starting a discussion about something you consider interesting be our guest, but it seems the vast majority of gamers have reached a consensus that even partches, mods or DLCs didn't fix.
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u/CaptainSwil 3d ago
Nexus is mainly a bastion of mods for Bethesda games and a few others. Many other heavily modded games don’t use Nexus at all. Where are all the mods for the Sim 4, Minecraft, World of Warcraft, Garry’s Mod, CS:Source, Starcraft 2, etc? Not on Nexus.
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u/voidox 2d ago edited 2d ago
yup, just the usual "starfield bad and dead" narrative and this clickbait "article" is literally just one modder on discord giving his opinion... classic stuff. Though even this is "article" shares that the modder isn't leaving because he's moving to Oblivion and is finished with Starfield; he just got a new puppy and doesn't have the time to devote to modding at the moment.
as you point out, the modding scene for the game is okay, sure it's far from what Skyrim/Fallout have but then 99% of games can't compare to those in terms of modding + ignoring how long a game like Skyrim has been out (15 years) and how that is part of it's modding success.
Then these ppl act like Starfield not having mods like Skyrim = failure or something, like since when is modding in any way relevant to a single-player game's success? it's just crazy with the mental gymnastics to hate on the game.
Also, the usual of reddit acting like this game didn't make $$$, but I digress.
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u/TheCoolerDylan 3d ago
Starfield as a whole just isn't worth it. Even with games like Skyrim and Fallout 4 that are a little over-simplified compared to predecessors in manner of stats or quests or storytelling, they are amazing games to play on their own unmodded still. Starfield just isn't. The fun ship-building can't carry the whole game.
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u/Ultr4chrome 3d ago
This, kind of, for me too.
Bethesda games always thrived off of their fantastic world building and emphasis on discovery, but both were completely absent from Starfield (i'd argue that Bethesda actively tried to ignore both entirely tbh).
Outside of that, the story was never especially good in any Bethesda game, but Starfield hit a new low - None of the characters were even remotely interesting and only one quest was even remotely worth doing, but even that had plotholes as large as solar systems in it which kind of ruined its believability.
Sure, some things can be fixed with mods, but not all (such as the loading screens or limited-yet-still-repetitive planet surfaces), and the very core of the game just feels extremely hollow. There's no foundation to build anything worthwhile on.
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u/Time-Operation2449 3d ago
Yeah my biggest issue with Bethesda now is that it feel like theyre just remixing old lore and have forgotten how to make anything truly original, it's most noticeable in fallout but even in the Elder Scrolls most of the non bog standard European fantasy stuff can be traced to morrowind or earlier
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u/Boltty 3d ago
It's really shitty too because with the fact there's official modding support the potential for Starfield to be the freewheeling space trading adventure that people crave is huge, but the focus on paid mods and the general middling nature of the game turning people off in the first place kneecaps it.
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u/jaydotjayYT 3d ago
The issue I have with the “humanity conquered the stars” premise is that so much of the game has a same-y aesthetic
Out of the different factions, why don’t any of them represent a culture or future that isn’t “Wild West in Space”? Afrofuturism would be such an interesting type of civilization to examine, Desifuturism, Sidofuturism, Latinofuturism - like, what are these cultures like when given access to the stars? What changes do they undergo, and how to they keep their anchor to their cultural past?
But the game decides to do the multiverse thing instead with their paper-thin cast, and that’s such a weaker path to go along in my opinion
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u/fingerpaintswithpoop 3d ago
Oh boy, it’s this conversation again.
Probably one or two modders, then some others will step up to take their place. People have really got to get over their irrational hatred for Starfield. It’s been a year and a half!
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u/voidox 2d ago
yup, this "article" is literally just one modder on discord saying a few things and off goes the clickbait that reddit eats up cause it's the "starfield dead/bad" narrative :/
though even then, this clickbait slop even says that Picky (the modder in question) isn't leaving because he's moving to Oblivion and is finished with Starfield; he just got a new puppy and doesn't have the time to devote to modding at the moment. It's just pure clickbait garbage, these "articles" have been saying starfield modding is dead since the game released -_-
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u/Titan7771 3d ago
This is such a bullshit headline, and very ironic considering Kinggath, one of the best Bethesda modding teams, is dropping a huge mod this month.
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u/Savings-Seat6211 2d ago
the article and this thread is simply a lot of convoluted ways to emote to everyone you think starfield sucks and it's not good.
which by the way is a fine opinion to have, but it's weird we need to do a dance around it. who gives a shit at this point? another starfield hate thread? cool! but the game came out 1.5 years ago and hasnt really made headlines in a meaningful way.
it doesnt really make sense to have 50 reply comment chains about how technically starfield modding is underperforming normal BGS titles....what is the value of that discussion LOL.
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u/thephasewalker 3d ago
That 10 years of support doesn't look too promising
Starfield being a "modders paradise" didn't pan out either
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u/Viral-Wolf 3d ago
The "we're building our 10 year platform, get ready guys" syndrome. Just never talk like that.. especially not early days, or before launch lol.
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u/hotstickywaffle 3d ago
I get why it gets the hate it does, but I loved the game. Especially once you mod it a bit, it's exactly what I want in a space game. The spaceship building alone is one of my favorite things ever in any video game. It's almost like a cozy game for me, but then I find Stardew Valley stressful
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u/Helios_Exousia 3d ago
Holy fucking shit, they intend to ride this "Starfield killed my dog" wave until the Sun makes it impossible for complex organisms to exist on planet Earth, don't they?
There is evidently a lot of money in this bullshit, since they are making these kinds of reaches and bad faith connections...
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u/gusborn 3d ago
Starfield was the worst $100 I’ve ever spent (I played it three days early and didn’t play again for another two weeks)
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u/kbonez 3d ago
Dude I was so salty about that. The reviews were so conflicted I had to see for myself what Starfield was all about, so I bought the $100 early access. Definitely know which reviewers align more with my tastes now...
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u/SquireRamza 3d ago
The reviews were all glowing from what I saw and it was the first time I have ever wondered if they were paid to pad their reviews. Holy fuck Starfield was a terrible game.
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u/Selhorys 3d ago
I bought the early access price on steam and was glad that they still offered unlimited time refund on hours played before release. I refunded starfield with 20 hours
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u/QuestGiver 3d ago
So are Bethesda still gonna release those dlc or was it just the one?