Today, Bethesda showed the world what we can expect from the totally-not-paid-mods-that-you-can-still-spend-money-on system, Creation Club. Mostly, the first batch of offerings are disappointing, but hey. Remember Oblivion’s controversial horse armour?
Well, now Fallout has something like it, too:
Gallop your way through the Wasteland in this stylish, sturdy and heavily modified handcrafted Power Horse Armour. Giddyup!
OK then.
Over at the Bethesda blog, we can see 12 different mods that will soon be available in Fallout 4. To celebrate the launch, Bethesda says they’re giving players 100 credits that they can use toward Creation Club mods and that “additional Credits are available on PSN, Xbox Live and Steam.”
So what do we got? A few mods are just reskins of objects like the Pip-Boy and Power Armour, in colours such as Onyx and Camo. There’s a backpack, a shotgun, and a Gauss Rifle which, while polished, aren’t particularly novel. There’s a modern furniture set. Probably the most impressive mod in the set is the space suit belonging to Morgan from Prey:
On the whole, this showcase is not exciting. Mostly, I am baffled that Bethesda thinks anyone would want to pay for items like these. Not surprising, then, that fans on social media aren’t reacting very well:
Right now, Creation Club is available as a beta on PC and will launch on consoles some time tomorrow.
Comments
22 responses to “The First Round Of Creation Club Mods For Fallout 4 Has Power Horse Armour”
The horse armor seems appropriate as a joke, if Bethesda actually made it free on the platform, but we all know they have absolutely no sense of humor!
You’re right, making it a paid item is somewhat insulting; makes Bethesda appear to have a embarrassingly short memory.
Gee, and to think we were concerned that this would be a bunch of low-effort skins and remakes/tweaks of existing free mods at a dramatically over-valued price.
I sure am glad we were proved wrong.
I’m happy to give it time to sort itself out, it’s only just launching in beta at the moment and they don’t have any community creators on board yet. It doesn’t bother me that there’s low effort stuff on there, that’s always been the case even with first party DLC. All I care about is whether good quality stuff will also appear there over time.
I’m more interested in exactly what ‘100 credits’ translates to in dollars, how many credits each skin costs, and how big a minimum pack of credits punters will be up for if they want to buy into this scheme.
Restricting purchases to bundles of premium currency to exploit loss aversion over the unused remainder is a very old – and very scummy – microtransaction trick that is pretty much never well-intentioned.
Leaked information suggests there’s no fixed value. Nominally, 100 credits is $1, but buying credits in larger volumes gives pretty heavy bonuses up to ~150 credits per dollar.
I don’t like points systems from currency either. I wonder if they’re doing it that way because consoles might not support microtransactions with currency directly? The system is supposed to be uniform across all the platforms.
My guess is that at least one of the platforms (most likely Sony, given that they seem to be the one dictating game-by-game, rather than across multiple titles like PC/Microsoft) requires that the game has its own ‘premium currency’ system set up for individual purchase to avoid having each mod count as a separate piece of separately-purchased DLC (subject to taxation, refund, classification/certification, advertising, etc), similar to the way that existing MMOs on the platform are set up – see ESO, for example.
It’s so damned manipulative, though. It might be mandated by the platform, but if you can’t set the minimum ‘points’ purchase to be the same as the smallest mod purchase, then you are right up in that psychological manipulation bullshit.
Also, four to five bucks for a skin is pretty bullshit when the ENTIRE GAME (complete with what… dozens of skins, quests, zones, companions, weapons, etc?) costs eighty. It starts straying into Rocksmith, Train Simulator or The Sims exploitation territory.
I don’t think any of the skins are in that range. The two power armour ones I quoted below have custom models.
It’s not something I’d pay for personally, but I don’t mind it being an option for people who do. Maybe someone out there is a hardcore Giddyup Buttercup fan.
They are.
Who are what?
The hardcore giddyup buttercup fans are out there.
Their dreams have finally come true.
Oh, and since I’m not game to edit any of these posts, the Hellfire power armour is 500 points, I think the horse armour is 400 points, the Pipboy skins are 50 points.
So when you said there were no 5 dollar reskins… what do you call a 500 point mediocre power armor reskin?
When I say there are no $5 reskins, I mean there are no $5 reskins. There are no 500 point reskins. There’s only one thing on the store at all that costs 500 points, and it’s the hellfire power armour which is a custom model. The reskins are all 50-100 points.
i will admit I picked up the furniture pack mainly because it’s something I know I will get value for money from it
So I logged into Fallout 4 on the PS4 and took a look at the Creation Club.
What a steaming pile of horse-shit.
Not only is this smattering of bland, uninspired skins and models the lowest-possible-effort garbage and ridiculously overpriced using scum-of-the-earth microtransaction manipulation ‘currency packages’, but it shines a painfully strong spotlight on just how deceptive Bethesda were being when they made their initial promises and reassurances about how this will be different from their earlier attempt at ‘paid mods’.
This pathetic ‘launch’ is a sloppy wet shart of disappointment and disgust – an offensively foul gesture of disrespect for players, and wasted opportunity.
Weak, Bethesda. Very, very weak.
This situation just doesn’t warrant that kind of response. This is different from paid mods. You’re also looking at the initial offering before developers have even signed up to it. Relax, man. This kind of reaction is more drama than substance.
I disagree. I reckon I was more than meeting them half-way by not even bringing up the more contentious points… such as that they promised – and STILL promise – that the creation club mods won’t be the same as existing mods. ie: a complete bullshit claim that they’ve tried to lawyer their way around by the fact that Hellfire Armor and Chinese Stealth Suit aren’t the same as their identically-titled free mods because someone tinted the fucking textures and included a ‘go here’ quest marker instead of dropping it in the inventory. Just because it’s technically true doesn’t make it pure bullshit that they’ve done it. It’s very much a ‘stop hitting yourself’ dick move that speaks volumes about their respect for the community.
Out of consideration for the fact that it’s currently in beta, I also didn’t mention the rumours from a now-fired ‘creative contributor’ that the Creation Club comes with a hard limit on the number of lines of code in it. Roughly 4000. For perspective: Horse Armor is around 300. Automatron is 50,000. So. This is NOT going to be a place for exclusive DLC-quality story/quest mods or mechanics. It’s going to be a place for skins and sod all else.
Nah, it’s not a proportional response at all, mate. We’re talking about optional content in a video game.
Even in the scope of video games we’ve got WB profiting on DLC memorialising a dead developer and only putting in fine print that purchases outside the US don’t help the family at all. There’s Rockstar trying to shut down single player modding by trying to mask it as a multiplayer security patch. There are actual issues out there that are worth investing in, by comparison this is such a non-issue. And even with things like OpenIV or the Forthog DLC, calm rational response is the way to deal with it, not spazzing out like just another neanderthal of the internet pitchfork brigade.
The Hellfire power armour and Chinese stealth suit are both developed by Bethesda, using their own resources they developed themselves for previous titles as the basis. The Hellfire armour in particular was only added by RTL two weeks ago, well after Bethesda had shown it in promotional material for the CC. It’s not like they went out and stole someone’s mod idea, they just added armour they’d already made for previous games into Fallout 4.
I want to make sure you fully understand that, since you decided to get extra pissy about it. Bethesda added their own assets they made themselves to the store. All RTL did was take the already existing assets (made by Bethesda) from the previous game and import them into Fallout 4. The mod copied Bethesda, not the other way around. You have zero grounds to get pissy with Bethesda for using their own assets.
On technical limitations, all of the 4000 limit quotes come from the same single source, and the guy who said it is wrong on almost every count:
– the limit being talked about is 4096 records (think files in a zip), not lines of code
– it only applies to the new ESL (light plugin) format
– ESL exists to allow a lot of small mods to load without taking up any of the 255 plugin cap
– ESM/ESP files, just like the ones used for Bethesda DLC, can still be used on CC
– Even if they couldn’t, ESL files can be dependency-chained so one mod can have multiple files
The thing has only just launched. Quit listening to doomsayers and bullshit artists, chill out and give it time to see what people do with it. If you genuinely think the way you’re responding to this is reasonable, you’ve lost your perspective and/or objectivity.
Regardless of all the ‘Paid Mods’ hullabaloo going on, Bethesda needs to learn to provide some information about their creation club offerings.
For example;
That is the entirety of the information about something they want (the equivalent of) $4 for.
At least include some armour specs for the damn thing.