Fallout 4's most popular mods are now ones that remove Bethesda's disastrous 'next gen' update

Bethesda has so far stayed quiet about the update's reception, so there's no clue as to whether an official fix or even an option to rollback may be forthcoming.

My bet is they "fix" it in 6 months once most mods have been patched, this breaking them all over again.

117

I played Skyrim on and off (mostly off) starting about eeeh idk 4 years ago. Around November and a few months before that I got into the game again and decided to expand my mod list and go deeper into that rabbit hole. I’ve always played modded but it was pretty light stuff and nothing that required the script extender

Then they updated it and broke mods and just kept updating, so i bought oldrim and started again cus i only like to mod games that have stopped being updated for this exact reason

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- I only play Skyrim in VR now and there's zero chance they ever update that.
  
  23
- Buy oldies on GoG, so you get control over versions.
  
  5
Will they be patched? It's not like it's a current game. Came out like 9 years ago. I imagine a lot of these mods have been abandoned

7
- Good call - that could be it for a good chunk of them.
  
  3
It's the modders who need to adjust the mods.

-14
- I mean, technically yeah - the criticism here is just that Bethesda chose the worst possible time to drop an unnecessary patch considering the influx of new players from the TV show's success.
  
  22
- Yes - unexpectedly, on a game that's pretty much a decade old. Modders are not expected to maintain stuff that long, because when does that ever happen?
  
  Then it's just... badly executed at that.
  
  11

Tries to improve game
makes everything significantly worse

Yep, classic Bethesda.

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Permanently Deleted

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Plus, this is Bethesda, and in particular their open world games. They have always been shit the fans had to fix if they wanted to play it, as the foundation was solid but the company didn't do any actual development.

7
- When Bethesda began re-releasing Skyrim without ever fixing any of the many, many, MANY bugs, was when I realized they really don't give a shit about quality. Unofficial Skyrim Patch has over a thousand bugs that haven't been fixed by Bethesda, some as old as the original release.
  
  3
This has been the gaming industry since the internet.

Back when gaming was still considered a niche pastime or just toys for kids, and the developers weren't multi-billion corporations, the dynamic was one of a mutual love of the product.

That was like, barely a generation ago.

1

Oh man the Starfield modding scene is going to be a fucking ghost town.

37

It already is. Check it out on Nexusmods. I did so late last week and they couldnt even fill 1 row of new mods this week. Even Morrowind still gets that done.

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- Have they released a creation kit for Starfield yet?
  
  5

Bugthesda tried to patch something and fucked it up? Oh no, I am thoroughly shocked. Definitely didn't see that coming.

35

I haven't been having any major problems except for occasional framerate stuttering, but then I don't use that many mods.

My only real complaint is that there's really no new story content, it's just a couple of new locations (Enclave checkpoints like FO3) some new armor and weapon types, and a handful of quests that are pretty much radiant quests with a coat of Enclave paint. Considering the download was like 10GB I was expecting more. If Google is telling me the truth, that's bigger than all the other DLC combined.

25

I thought that it was going to be new Bethesda content, but then it was just workshop content, so it's not substantial.

12

Everything I hear about AAA games is just straight garbage

21

You living under a rock? Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man, Elden Ring, God of War, Doom Eternal, RE8, and Tears of the Kingdom are awesome AAAs of just the past 5 years to name a few.

It's just that bad games tend to get more publicity cuz the mob likes to shit on them. Tbh, Cyberpunk wasn't even a terrible game, it just dropped with performance issues that took over a year to mostly fix.

I'll give you that all recent Ubisoft titles have sucked though.

9
- I started to wait a year or two before I try them, that usually means they a) they got most bugfixes, b) additional content and c) they are on sale.
  
  5
- Perhaps
  
  1
Because there's a good experience buried under a mountain of extremely bad decisions. If the games lacked potential people wouldn't care.

6
Mine works fine without mods on the next-gen update. It's looking much better than before on my widescreen monitor. I used to need mods to make it work in 21:9 and unlocked framerate, and now it's all supported by the stock game so I'm pleased with it.

I did have a crash to desktop bug until I disabled the Weapon Debris graphics setting though. That was my one lame hassle that happened with it.

3

The title and the article are overdramaric. On PS5 it's working great. The issue looks to be messing with mods (which had been expected), not breaking the actual game.

I'm not sure what exactly is the point of installing this update on PC other than a questline and some cosmetics? As this update was mainly targeted for consoles to increase framerate and resolution - which it did better than I expected - and PC players could already do that without the update.

19

Works fine for me on Xbox Series X with the exception of a couple of crashes over the course of 3-5 hours. The only issue I see is this should have been an optional upgrade to give the modders time to fix their stuff.

4
- I only experienced framerate drop in the prologue (in the house in 2077 and in the Vault) and 1 crash during it. Once I was out in the open world, tha game has been flawless.
  
  The only thing I expected from this update was 60 FPS and - if it's not too much to ask - higher resolution. They delivered that and more. Game runs smoothly and looks much better than I expected, more detailed (and much better than FO76). They also threw in some new content which I haven't discovered yet so cannot vouch for it. The Enclave paint look great on everything though.
  
  And remember, this is a free update. So I think people are going a bit too hard on Bethesda this time (I know it's the trendy thing to do). They pissed me off when they delayed the update just to sync it with the show. But looking back from their perspective it was probably the right call since everyone is now more hyped to play the games.
  
  EDIT: And exactly as you say - modders just need some time to update their mods. But you cannot expect Bethesda to have their update checked for compatibility with every mod out there.
  
  1

Damn and the next one for Dragon's Dogma 2.

Those flickering shadows you get whenever a light source moves—like, you know, the sun

🤦‍♂️

16

The base game is prettier and more stable in my few playthrough hours with the update.

I miss mods, but this was a significant improvement to the base game imho, especially base visuals, and mods will come.

Honestly the last time I launched the game in an unmodded, un-community patched state, a couple years ago to be fair, it crashed every half hour or so for me from runtime errors, so this feels like a more stable bedrock on which to build.

Just one Bethesda fan's perspective.

15

I've seen several articles whining about this patch over the past several weeks. They all have the same vague complaints, but the only real tangible and provable one seems to be that some mods break, and Fallout: London was delayed.

I've seen claims of crashes and FPS drops, but no actual data or testing to back that up. It seems like a classic case of the Internet circling around and making something into a much bigger deal than reality.

Everyone I've seen commenting who has actually tried it themselves seems to have positive feedback. I installed it briefly on the Deck myself to try it out and it seems fine, although I don't care enough to put in hours of proper testing.

10
- Sounds like normal gamer bullshit to me, lol.
  
  Carry on with our days.
  
  2
Really? Cuz I've had multiple issues since the patch. Crashes seem pretty much the same pre and post patch, but I'm having way more issues with freezes on loads and fast travel.

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Not to come across as defending bethesdas awful history; having multiple mods can be precarious, especially if you dont manage the load order

4
My anecdotal experience- update looks and works great on my original steam deck. Of course, my limited experience doesn’t make it a good patch!

3

Average Bethesda experience I guess

13

Consider Tale of Two Wastelands if you have the Fallout and modding itches. I've got lifetime nexus premium back in the day so I loaded up a wabbajack playlist and was good to go in less than an hour. Otherwise, it just takes more time to follow a guide.

10

Be careful with your lifetime. Mine was “cancelled” after trying to do an account restore, and they gave me a few months free to compensate. Wish there was someplace else for mods that wasn’t run by scum.

8
- Fallout really needs its own version of Minecraft's Modrinth.
  
  2
Does wabbajack now work on linux?

Nobody wants to make a Linux build?

5
- It does not. A bit of intense work arounds can kind of make it happen, but many lists just fail.
  
  Best bet it to use a VM of Windows, (or dual boot or whatever). But if you use Virtualbox, dont try to use a shared folder to make moving the mods easy, it just crashes the whole VM. My lazy work around was to use sftp to move the mods after.
  
  3
- I have heard of people making it work, but I can't confirm for sure.
  
  2
Capital punishment or Begin Again?

1
- Begin Again
  
  2

It actually fixed a game breaking crash on Xbox so I'm not gonna complain.

I'm just happy to have the wasteland back

10

I wish I hadn't installed the update. I was hoping it would make the game run better on the steam deck, but it's actually worse. I think they've increased the graphical fidelity, but it's come at the expense of the battery. I found a work around to get the game launcher to come up so I could lower the graphics settings to improve battery life, but that doesn't fix the bugs. They seem to have gotten worse with the update. Never change, Bethesda. Never change.

9

Happens every time, especially if it has been years since the last update.

9

From the article...

The easiest fix is to own the game on GOG, which allows players to roll-back patches, but for Steam owners the process is a whole lot more convoluted.

... and ...

A more straightforward perspective came from the team working on the enormous Fallout: London project, which was due to launch around now but has been delayed while the team works around Bethesda's update. As the project lead says, "[the patch] has, for a lack of a better term, screwed us over."

_Anti _{Commercial-AI} _license _(CC _BY-NC-SA _4.0)

8

What's wrong, only that it breaks mods or does it break even for regular usage?

4

Really it breaks f4se which is the script extender for mods.

And it takes me sometimes 45 seconds to a minute to load when returning to the Commonwealth or large buildings like the library or institute.

7

Hopefully London is around the corner

4

God dammit Todd

3

I'm on PC and I haven't noticed anything changed. Literally. I don't notice any bugs nor have I noticed a sudden improvement of my graphics. It seems to me that the 15gb that Steam downloaded, was just full of 0's and don't do anything.

Edit: Nevermind, apparently the new quests and items are part of the update, so in that case I have definitely noticed something lol.

3

The primary issue on PC is that it broken F4SE, breaking a large number of mods and delaying Fallout London, a mod they poached developers from.

That, and loading times in some areas are suddenly a minute long.

6
- Every update breaks F4SE. Same with SKSE. Just wait a few days and it'll be fine.
  
  3
- yep, and im still waiting for the dev to update it (tediously painful he says.)
  
  1

Killed abandoned mods for money.

2

"Excellent Fallout series"

lol feck off

1

Do you think it's bad? I've only heard good things about it 🤔

12
- Nah, it's good. Don't listen to the salty "fanboys."
  
  There are literally like two discrepancies, but it's really not a huge deal imo.
  
  5
- It changed a few small details like how becoming a ghoul works but other than that it's really good.
  
  5
- It's as excellent as a live action adaptation can be.
  
  2
- The Fallout fandom can be divided into two camps, Fallout fans and Bethesda fans. I don’t like Bethesda Fallout and from the little I watched of the show it wasn’t anything for me. 5/10 at best. I don’t care about ”the lore” or any discrepancies, I just thought it wasn’t very good.
  
  -2

It just works.

0

Oh, Bethesda. Bethesda, Bethesda, Bethesda.

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