Vanilla’s good, sure, but have you tried it with sprinkles? : Modding and Games

You can spend ten thousand hours working on a painting and the minute you show it to somebody, you’ll get a comment about how to improve it. Nobody is 100% happy with anything and I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. We certainly wouldn’t have mods without that little bit of “Hmmm, it needs something else…” Mods, for those who aren’t familiar, are user created changes to a game. Maybe you think that a weapon is overpowered, or that a questline should have different objectives, so you go into the games files and bam, you’ve got a different weapon or quest.

I mean yeah, your brushstrokes are good. But what about the palette? Also, this would be better with aliens.

But what do mods do for a game? What are the benefits? What are the drawbacks?

When talking about mods, you’ve got to mention Doom. While not the first game to have mods, the Doom developers made it incredibly easy to modify the game, resulting in a flurry of creative activity. All of Doom’s data was packaged in files called WADs, or Where’s All the Data, making it possible to make whole new levels, weapons, and storylines.

Doom is one of the most important games in history, and the start of the first person shooter as we know it.

The advent and expansion of the internet made it easier and easier to distribute and download mods, expanding the scene further. Doom also showcases one of the key benefits of mods; extending the shelf-life of a game. Doom was released in 1993, but people are still refining, ideating, and creating new mods for the father of the modern FPS. Brutal Doom, released in 2012 and updated at the end of 2015, is one such mod. It’s a total conversion of Doom, meaning that the authors of this mod created entirely new levels, changed up the weapons,

They somehow made it bloodier. Don't even ask me how. I have no idea. They also added reloading, more melee attacks, and a whole slew of other content.

tweaked the mechanics, and came out with a whole new Doom. While not all modders are ambitious as those who created Brutal Doom, you can see how providing tools to your users can extend the life of your game far beyond the paltry 1-2 years that most games are active for.

Of course, you don’t have to look 20 years back to see how important mods are; you need only look back to last year’s Boston based adventure, Fallout 4. Bethesda, Fallout 4’s developer, has a habit of releasing modding tools to users fairly soon after the games have come out, going as far back as The Construction Kit which shipped with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

A bit dull looking, maybe, but you can change up the whole game however you like. There's power in these here boring windows.

It’s no surprise that The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series have now become synonymous with mods, but the way that association is viewed might surprise you. While the mods are generally viewed in a positive light, there are those who feel that Bethesda are viewing the modding scene almost like they would view beta testers. By “relying” on the modding scene to fix common issues with their games, you could argue that Bethesda is pushing their work off onto their consumers. You just need to look at the top mods on any Fallout 4 modding site to see some form of the phrase “Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch.” Part of this is definitely due to the scope of Bethesda’s games, but it’s hard to imagine that the phrase, “the modders will fix it” is never uttered in the Bethesda office.

Over 145,000 downloads as of time of writing. 4th most endorsed file on NexusMods, the largest non-Bethesda download site.

Even Fallout 4’s settlement system seems like something that modders would have implemented themselves at some point, though not at the scale that Bethesda did. Mods are great, but the perception that you’re relying on modders to fix your game is not.

There is one area where mods are not so welcome; multiplayer. Any sort of multiplayer game requires balancing, an incredibly time consuming and mercurial process to ensure that there’s more than one way to play. Mods are the antithesis of this, being changes that users create to satisfy a personal want. Maybe you think StarCraft’s Zerg are overpowered, but if you were to be able to mod the game to make them less so, and then play online, any Zerg player would have an immediate disadvantage.

Not to say that the Zerg couldn't just a little nerfing. Zerg rushes aren't fun for anybody. Or maybe they are, at least for the rusher.

There are other concerns around how your product is experienced as well. A recent example of the clash between mods and multiplayer is the forced shutdown of the legacy (meaning unaltered and unexpanded) World of Warcraft server, Nostalrius. Nostalrius was the largest WoW legacy server available until its April 2016 shutdown, with 800,000 registered users. It was not an issue of theft, like if the Nostalrius devs were charging for the use of the server, but more of an issue of branding. Games like WoW rely on expansions to keep people subscribed, to get new subscribers in the ecosystem, and to create a unified experience for all the players. WoW devs do have legal and arguably reasonable reasons for shutting down the server, though it did anger a lot of people. Because multiplayer games are never quite “finished” and because the experience is shared there’s not really any room for personal touches. Think what you will about that, but I don’t think it’ll be changing anytime soon.

Mods can extend the lifespan of a game, fix issues that the original developers missed, and create a stronger relationship between studios and gamers. They can also ruin the balance of a multiplayer game, dilute the vision of a particular project, and create more work for the dev team (got to build those tools out after all). It’s up to each individual developer whether to include modding support in their games, but it’s worth noting that the sales of any modable game are going to continue long after their non-modable counterparts.

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Yes, I would like to pick up 5000 swords: Loot and Looting in Games

Loot, for those of you who don’t know, is a term used for equipment, armor, currency, and other pick-up-able items that you would find in a videogame. You usually get loot for completing a quest, or killing an enemy in a RPG, though the lines have definitely gotten murkier over time. The distinction that I still think holds true is if you can find an item with many slight variations, it qualifies as loot. You probably wouldn’t call an ammunition pickup loot, but you would call a +1 Steel Sword loot, for instance. So, now that you’re all edumcated, let’s get down to it.

I'm going to pick up all of this junk, stuff it in a chest, and totally forget about it forever.

What makes for good loot in games? What makes for a good loot system in games? Why is obsessively collecting things fun at all?

The most impactful example of loot and looting in video games has to be Diablo, released in 1996. In Diablo, you play as one of three classes and you are charged with defeating Diablo, the Lord of Terror. The loot in Diablo is good because it presents a clear reward for progression, with harder enemies giving out better loot, and because figuring out what is better isn’t a headache.

All the needed info is right there, presented clearly. Loot like this is hard to find and really gratifying when you stumble across it.

The items also have a number of stat requirements which increase replay value by offering you a number of different playstyles besides just the class differences. In Diablo 2, 3 and Titan Quest (a mythological themed hack’n’slash lootfest very similar to Diablo) the items are even easily visible when you’re fighting an enemy, so you can tell what they’re going to drop ahead of time, which increases anticipation.

You know what weapons these enemies are going to drop just by looking at the enemies. You'll be able to tell if a weapon or armor piece is rare early on, which makes defeating tough enemies with rare items fun.

These games also all make good use of chests and treasure boxes. These items are usually positioned after bosses or near the end of dungeons to give a reward besides the items from the boss and to increase the anticipation to finish an area. Yes, you’re low on health potions and you know there’s a tough boss ahead, but man, you could find that +5 Staff you’ve been wanting in the chest behind them.

Most games took their loot systems and loot design from Diablo, so they’re generally well thought out, but there are some odd choices some games make. Borderlands is another loot filled game, though through the lens of an FPS-RPG, rather than an isometric RPG. Borderlands is a generally good game, but I think the loot and loot system have some issues. First of all, unless a weapon is massively overpowered, you can’t figure out much about it when an enemy is using it. You might be able to tell what kind of weapon it is, but only if you’re pretty close, as the cell shaded design of the world makes the weapons tough to distinguish.

It's hard to figure out what kind of weapon an enemy is using, especially when a bunch of bad guys are shooting at you, which is always.

Another choice I’m not too fond of is one that World of Warcraft made with its loot system. While the actual loot in WoW is pretty interesting design-wise, the loot system revolves around a lot of random drops. Essentially, bosses and enemies in WoW have a set group of loot that they can drop, with each item on the list having a certain percentage to drop once the boss/enemy is defeated.

For this particular boss, the drop rates aren't even known yet. This doesn't really seem like good, or even fun, loot design.

This encourages “farming” of items and bosses. Farming is when you keep killing the same boss over and over again to try to get an item drop. MMOs are designed differently than other games, specifically to keep you playing, but having a mechanic that actively discourages progression doesn’t sit well with me. It feels a little too much like a Skinner box, and the fact that designers would think in such a blatantly manipulative manner is a little off-putting.

So, now that we’ve talked about what makes good loot/a good loot system, let’s go a little deeper: Why is collecting loot fun at all? Well, there’s a number of reasons. One of the first is just aesthetics; who doesn’t want to create an awesome looking character by equipping them with cool weapons and armor? There’s something very gratifying about building a unique look in these games, and though Diablo was a bit primitive graphics wise, the later games really allowed you to create an awesome looking hero.

Somebody spent many hours (or even possibly some real money) making this Demon Hunter this awesome.

Besides customizing how you look, there’s also the satisfaction you’ll get from making your character move effective in a general sense, or designing a particular build. For instance, you might be building a character that has a really high damage per second, so you equip armor and weapons that increase your attack speed.

You can design your gear around your build, aiming for a specific kind of gameplay or experience.

Lastly, collecting things, useful or not, is pretty fun. Pokémon is a living example of this, as is the absolutely gigantic amounts of different kinds of Oreos you can find in China. Maybe you don’t even want to equip the full set of that awesome armor, you just want to have all the different sets in your storage and use something else. People like collecting rocks in real life, so collecting different suits of armor in games doesn’t seem that odd to me.

Bet you thought I was joking. Nope. China has a huge variety of Oreos, with different flavors and style of cookie. You don't realize how much you'll miss peach Oreos until you can't get them anymore

Loot and loot systems are huge parts of gaming history, from table top games like Dungeons and Dragons to AAA games like Destiny. Every game puts its own unique twist on the concepts pioneered by earlier games, but every game with a decent loot system shares some qualities. It’s hard to improve upon a system like Diablo’s, but game developers and designers deserve credit for exploring new ground. So next time you’re playing your favorite lootfest, ask yourself what the game is doing to make their loot system more unique and interesting.