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PAID MODS
Let's start with the basics and call this what it is. These are mods, which you pay for. They're paid mods. When asked what makes them different from paid mods, Pete Hines responded that CC mods are "Mini DLCs,"vetted by Bethesda's quality assurance team. (Personally, I'd say that the value of any vetting done by a company synonymous with glitchy games is dubious at best, but that's neither here nor there.) The fact remains that they're paid mods.
Not only that, but they're mods which are deliberately limited in scope. Leaked reports indicate that the emphasis in "Mini DLC" should be in Mini, instead of DLC. Anything larger than 5000 records is too large for the new .lite files. (For comparison, horse poarmor is around 300, and Automatron clocks in at 50,000.) You'd be lucky to fit an armor pack or two within those limitations. Furthermore, we have reports that people who want to do megamods like Falskaar, Moonpath to Elsweyr, the Someguy Series, Beyond Skyrim, are being turned away. They need not apply.
From a certain point of view, I can understand the reasoning behind this. Normally, mod authors retain ownership of their mods because if something goes wrong and someone winds up with a completely borked system, it's their responsibility and not Bethesda's. The last thing Zenimax wants is to have these super huge mods that require extensive QA and vetting to make sure that nobody's saves get completely messed up.
However, the fact remains that Bethesda is putting out small mods, mostly cosmetic, for very little. I think there's a word for stuff like that, and it's microtransactions.
Let me be perfectly clear. I have no problem with microtransactions, under the right circumstances. Free-to-play games can rely on microtransactions to pay for development and maintenance costs, like TF2. In other online multiplayer games, microtransactions allow players to skip the grind and buy their cosmetics directly. Indeed, TF2 and Overwatc have collected far more in microtransactions from me than from their purchase price.
The place for microtransactions is not in a single-player game that charges a full $60 price tag just to get in. And then another sixty for the season pass. This is especially true when there's content out there already which, for free, far surpasses the available microtransaction content.
VALUE
Gopher did an entire video covering this, but in essence, the Creation Club gives you almost nothing for what you pay for. Five bucks for an armor set? Fifty cents for a pipboy reskin? Four bucks for a cut-content shotgun that just had to be reenabled? None of these things are worth what's being asked. If you were to buy enough credits to buy everything, you'd spend about thirty dollars. Look at those things, and ask, is all this worth thirty dollars? That's half a game. What about when the CC has twice the content it does now, and you'd need to spend sixty dollars on it? Zoom out, and take in the entire Commonwealth, all the quests, NPCs, armor items, the hundreds of hours of content. Now compare it to four armor sets, four weapons, a few reskins, and a backpack or two. Can you really pretend that those things are in any way of equal value?
Zenimas asks too much for too little.
I don't mind supporting modders; if Someguy decided tomorrow to bundle up all his mods--New Vegas Bounties, Russell, the Inheritance, Burt, etc--and charge $20-30 dollars for it, I'd have no problem. Those mods represent hundreds of hours of content, and thousands of hours of time spent on making it all work. Same story for Project Nevada, Falskaar, FWE, all those massive mods. However, Zenimax is just taking the piss with their prices. Mods like Millenia's or Skibadaa's weapon packs would cost more than the base game itself.
However, more than the price, the issue I have with the Creation Club is the frankly exploitative treatment of the modders themselves.
SHADY BUSINESS
Zenimax, if rumors from modders are true, has disgusting plans for the people who join the Creation Club. They'll be independent contractors, paid a flat sum for the work they do. Reports say that the pay will be between $!00 and $!000 for mods, and that afterwards Bethesda receives 100% of the profits for a modders' work. No royalties, no profit shares, nothing.
To put that in perspective, let's say that you negotiate for a thousand dollars for an armor set. Let's also suppose that of the twelve million copies of the game sold at launch, 1% are playing today. Of that 1% of players still playing, let's say 1% actually buys the mod you made for $5. So, worse case scenario, we're talking a $5000 profit for Zenimax.
It might be nothing unusual for the industry, but that's a bit far from the promise of working with the community from the trailer. And any modder hoping to live off their mods, or that Bethesda might hire them on a more permanent basis, can have another think coming for them.
TARGET AUDIENCE (with thrilling transition that isn't just my mind farting out at two AM)
I can almost guarantee that this isn't aimed at PC or Xbox users. Both groups have free mods already. No, this is essentially mods for PS4 users. This adds new content, of a sorts, for the group that's most used to sony reaching their dirty moneygrubbing finger into their wallets already. Bethesda has a captive audience, or sorts. It's either five bucks for an armor set, or literally nothing, since Sony refuses to let anyone who doesn't have a Sony license play in their sandbox.
Originally Posted by Togath
Okay, so, I was actually in favor of the creation club thingy at first... but unless I'm missing something, it tries to auto download data for the stuff, even if you haven't bought it, and messes with saved games and such?
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