Why are modders able to fix broken things so quickly

Or add new features that should have existed in the first place.

http://m.ca.ign.com/articles/2015/03/02/modder-adds-local-co-op-to-resident-evil-revelations-2-on-pc

This made me think of it, in less than a week 1 guy was able to add a feature. So clearly it isn't that difficult. Another example is dsfix, in less than 1 day a modder fixed the entirety of a broken port.

Or skyrim modders, like a week after skyrim came out modders were able to change the ui to be more pc friendly.

So clearly these things are extremely easy for people to do, so why do developers neglect them? Because they can get away with it? I would understand if it were some big project to fix these things, but they always happen a day or a couple of days after launch.

Why waste money on coders or QA when you have hoards of modders who will do it for free? Bethesda keeps getting away with it and set a dangereous precedent.

When you've fiddled around with enough game files, you get a good idea of how information is stored and where.

Not a programmer/coder/modder myself but some of these features might be hidden in the codes, so if someone were to look through it, they might be able to just simply switch it on? Something like that happened with the Hot Coffee mod in San Andreas.

Saying dsfix fixed Dark Souls is not completely true, as the 60 fps created new bugs with the geometry, some game-breaking. You have to understand that in big studio development, you cannot do a little change, simple as it is, without it being approved by a ton of people. New build means new QA and everything. Whereas the modder can do it and iterate on it as players find bugs.

This does not excuse shitty ports or absent features, of course, but AAA development is such a slow process that it is not surprising that the modders can "fix" things way faster.

They don't have to go through the process to make sure that their stuff actually functions on a large scale. I can't count how many times I've downloaded a mod and it breaks everything just because some piece of my machine or other mod I downloaded conflicts. Developers have to test all of that, or attempt to, and that's a long, long process of back and forth. Also, there's way, way more people buying the game than there are making it.

@fear_the_booboo: dsfix did a lot more than just 60 fps. 60 fps wasn't even the main feature of that, 60 fps wasn't even recommended with it.

PC developers have to make games that will work on almost any imaginable system that has come out in the last 10-15 years; to get the game to work on the most possible systems, they are restricted in what they can do; modders don't have this limitation, they can do whatever they want and not have to answer to any end users if the game no longer works for them or creates more problems than it fixes.

@krullban: I know, my point is that dsfix unlocked features without testing them. Some worked flawlessly, some did not.

@kidavenger: Why is this an excuse to release games broken or without features that should exist though?

@fear_the_booboo: and the game was unplayable without it. Why is it acceptable for them to release the game in that state when a modder could make it playable in less than a day? It wasn't perfect yes, but in less than 1 day he made it playable when it really wasn't at all.

@krullban: what game was broken?

@krullban: I specifically stated that it did not excuse it.

Understanding where the problem comes from does not excuse it at all.

@kidavenger: Dark Souls.

@krullban: missing expected PC features is a huge difference from being broken, stock Dark Souls PC was better than it was on consoles.

First of all, bug testing. Modders don't have to do it.

Second of all, these features are most often, from the point of the dev, not worth it to add to the game. In the case of Skyrim: console players were going to buy it either way, PC players were going to buy it either way and later mod it so it's more user friendly. It's not really a feature that will earn you more customers, people who didn't buy Skyrim wouldn't buy it simply because it had better UI.

Pretty much all games have something which could be greatly improved upon, be it the addition of new skins, new modes, new rulesets, new stats, new textures, new character creation tools. New user friendly UI. It's not a question whether it can be done, rather whether it is key to the experience, unique and, by extension, whether it will bring new customers.

One of the most important things: modders care about these games, they are not just a another meal ticket.

Well in theory this is an easy answear. To implent even a tiny fix someone has to plan for it and assign the task to a programmer, designer and whatever team that is affected. They have to check if it creates confilicts with anything and QA it on thousands of different setups and then they have to roll out the fix wich is a task of its own. They have to pay for whatever license they use and they have to provide support for it all and yada yada. They also have to look at the product as a whole and prioritize whats to be done with whatever tight budget they are running on. Then they have to localize and so on. A modder can just play with different stuff as they see fit without caring for anything of that.

In reality some developers seem to skip all these steps and just release a broken mess so it might aswell be done by a modder working for free.

edit: As @charlie_victor_bravo says the modder may also be more skilled and more passionate about this than the developer. As an example there is a guy that made a huge mod for The Witcher wich fixes alot of things and basicly rebalances the whole game and redesigns alot of things. CDPR was so impressed by that mod so they just straight up hired him and hes now working on The Witcher 3.

Modders dont have to care about compatibility/design/support/etc. They don't have to worry about the trade-offs when it comes to this stuff.

For example the local co-op thing in RE, theres a good chance that was removed not because they couldn't implement it, but just because the trade off wasn't worth it. There is *always* a trade off. The trade off here is giving access to local co-op vs having to support local co-op. It may not seem like much, but im sure enabling local co-op opens up a huge can of worms. You'd have to do more testing, youd have to do more work to make sure that it works on every machine that the game supports, and im sure there are edge cases youd run into. You also are adding just another area where bugs or other things can manifest and break the game. Basically your multiplying your work here and at the end of the day you have to weigh that against how many people want to play local co-op on PC (which isnt very many). They obviously decided it wasn't worth the upkeep on PC (which is a much more fragmented platform than say a console, so would require more work to make sure this works across many different devices), and ripped it out.

In the Skyrim place thats mostly a case of Design. The original Skyrim interface had to be designed not just for hardcore players, but for anyone who is going to play that game ever. That runs the gambit from people who are just renting a game from GameFly, to your players who have never played an RPG before, to your hardcore people who have played every thing in the series. For that kind of problem you need a design on your UI that is both functional and accessible. Once again its a trade off. They struck for a balance that maybe isnt as efficient or as detailed on the functional side in order to create a UI that was more discoverable and accessible for new players. (With the knowledge that the more advanced players would just mod it).

In both these cases the mods are "easy" because the people making the mods dont need to worry about a larger audience. They tend to develop for a much smaller audience (the # of people who install mods is very low) and also dont need to care about supporting their mods and making sure they run on a wide range of devices. Nobody gets particularly angry when a mod doesn't work.

The reality is the programming part of making anything is actually the easiest part. The hard part is designing it at a higher level and making these calls on what your willing to trade off in terms of functionality/design/support/bugs.

Because upaid labor always does a better job than paid labor.

The things you mention(specifically the resident evil thing and dark souls things) were things that were already built out. The modders didn't, from scratch, design and implement these features. It was more like flipping a switch or switches to turn on the lights.

You need to understand developers don't ignore things because they can get away with it. No one wants to put out a bad or a lesser game. People put years of their lives into these projects and want nothing but for them to be great. But problems happen. Deadlines have to be made. Features get cut, no matter how far along they were in development. In the case of split screen in the resident evil game, that was a feature that most likely was focused on for the console versions. It was finished in time. For some reason they kept it out of the PC version by default. Either it wasn't tested properly in time for release, or maybe they didn't think it was something people wanted. Whatever the reason was they switched it off for PC versions. The modder didn't build the feature out from the ground up. He just found out where they turned it off, and reenabled it.

Because modders don't fix it? They create mods. Mods that won't work on every PC; not even close. Coupled with the fact that they introduce new bugs and just don't care. And no one else does either. It's a mod. If it wipes your game file or crashes, then 'it's a mod, so what do you expect'? Developers are held to higher standards. Also, modders do have the luxury of not having to develop the game. You talk about a week like it is nothing. They don't even have an hour to spare come crunch time, so talking about a week like it is short term for a dev is nuts.

Besides all that, once a game is shipped, it's often the end. A skeleton crew might patch a few very common glitches and game breaking bugs, but not much more. If you look at an actively supported game, take Destiny. Say about the game what you will, but Bungie has been yanking out hotfixes and patches like every two weeks. Responding to criticism and statistics. That's with testing and analyses and without introducing new bugs. They only just now fixed the heavy ammo glitch which existed since launch. Yes, they would have been able to do it in a month or two if they prioritized it highly, but I guarantee you a basic modder couldn't do that without murdering other parts of the game.

You come across very biased and misinformed.

They care more.

There's a lot fewer steps involved in modding compared to something coming through official channels. There are people you have to answer to and I'm not talking about consumers. It's a bit disingenuous (and , quite frankly, asinine) to assume all developers are lazy, slow, or just don't care.

@ltsquigs: Thanks for chiming in, Ian. :D

Also I think we got the best answer to this thread now, folks.

Because modders don't have to go through certification and the patching process. They don't go through rigorous compatibility and bug testing. Its just a completely different process. Mods usually involve tweaking existing code and using existing assets to find workarounds for very specific things rather than completely building things from the ground up.

I'm surprised so many people assume developers just don't care about their products and their work. Or the idea that consumers are the only ones who care about video games is a strange attitude to me.

Also scroll up and check out @ltsquigs post, good insight from someone who actually develops stuff.

I miss the days when people understood what words like "broken" and "lag" meant in regards to PC games.

QA, in that they don't have to do it.

It's not that (most) developers don't care, it's that the person who is sat there in their free time trying to fix or implent a feature --for no other reason than to see it fixed or implemented-- clearly cares more about said feature than the developer did, otherwise they wouldn't need to be doing it. Granted it's sometimes a member of the dev team doing the modding / fixing in their free time, but in general employees stop caring when they stop being paid to care.

In a significant minority of cases the modder/s are also just straight up more talented and capable than the staff who worked on the game (eg. Creative Assembly's AI team who completely failed to come up with capable AI for like 6 games in a row, vs the Darth Mod contributors who managed to fix it for like 6 games in a row). That isn't all that uncommon when comparing people who are often self-taught and doing it for the love of it vs. others who probably learned it in a classroom and are doing it for a wage.

Jeez. The animosity of some people in this thread towards mods and modders is mind-blowing. I honestly didn't know some people felt that way about mods.

As a multi-platform release most of the code would have been in the game already, for whatever reason Capcom decided the PC version of the game shouldn't have the feature or were planning to patch it in later, this modder did some poking and found a way to activate the code, it's not like he programmed it in himself. It's worth noting that this mod isn't perfect it's broken in a few ways, possibly for the same reasons that Capcom didn't include it in the first place.

Co-op already existed in the game. The devs most likely just flipped a switch to turn it off. They likely did this because who the fuck plays co-op on PC and it was easier than spending time/money on making sure PC co-op was working correctly.

All the modder did was find the switch and turn it back on.

On a broader scale it all comes down to time and money. Modders can do whatever they want with their time and no money is changing hands.

Huh, modders not giant bomb moderators. Every time i saw this TT this was what i was thinking it was about.

@everettescott: You are telling me mods fix things for everyone without introducing new, maybe worse bugs? I don't think I'm the misinformed one here then.

You're thinking and acting as if everyone that makes a mod doesn't care about what they're making. That they wouldn't and don't try to fix it if it does happen to introduce bugs or anything of the like. Which in that case, yes you are wrong and misinformed.

@everettescott: Where did I say that? Modders create a mod and make it available, without truly knowing what it'll do for every person. They might make something that works for 80% of the userbase, they might make something that works for 1%. A developer won't be able to put something out that fast because they need to do testing. They need it to work as close to 100% of the userbase as possible. There are values that are simply unacceptable to them, which are not for modders. If you create a mod that works for 80% of the userbase, that's pretty awesome and impressive. If you are a developer, that is nothing worth praising them over. That's what I'm saying.

For example, have you tried some of the Skyrim mods? Some of them don't seem to work for anyone I know, yet others require an insane PC setup to run, not justifying what they actually do. Perhaps 'care' is the wrong word, it might be a lack of tools, skill or time, but mods are often just not optimal and they make them available anyway. And people don't 'care' in the sense that they don't expect a mod to be on grade A developer level.

Crowdsourcing is a huge factor, too. Even the largest game dev teams are just a couple hundred people, not counting Ubisoft monstrosity team-webs. Put a game out and you're sharing it with hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people, which increases the chance that one of them will know how to do things that your development team didn't have the time/budget/energy/morale for.

Some folks found the graphic settings in Watch Dogs that makes it look almost as good as those first E3 demos. The craziest thing is it doesn't cause a major performance hit beyond the poor performance it had by default.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b43ZlqPvBDs

For those saying Dark Souls wasn't broken at launch on PC you are sort of correct. The game would turn on and run. That's about all you could expect from the console versions and everyone loves equality! The thing is when I used the dsfix my framerate become much more stable and didn't take strange dips. I could raise the resolution and add decent AA and such and the game still performed better than by default.

So you could say the game wasn't broken normally, but you would have to say a car without working headlights, wipers, locks, etc as you roll it off the lot isn't broken because it still moves when you push the peddle most of the time and that is apparently good enough and if I'm not happy with that I'm probably a racist or something somehow.

@rxptor: Thanks for this answer. The extremely cynical and misinformed attitude toward videogame developpers is something that makes me afraid as a learning coder and I always feel I'll get shit because I'm unable to implement some features into my work. It's good to see people that understand the realities of development.

@rxptor: Case in point. As a 'CS major' you should be able to appreciate that me saying 'x cares more than y' isn't the same as saying 'y doesn't care', yet here we are. I even explicitly stated that most developers do care and you still somehow interpreted it as me arguing that they don't.

If you want to counter what I actually said instead of something you just made up then I'm all ears. Good luck convincing me that the person working for free doesn't care more than the person working for financial gain though. If a given developer goes home after the game has shipped and continues to work on it unpaid in their free time then I concede that they care as much as a modder does.

@rxptor: "I can't find fault in what you said, so I'ma just pretend you think this other thing so that I can go to great lengths explaining how much I disagree with this thing you didn't say."

That about right? If you honestly cannot grasp that there's a significant and not-just-semantic difference between "cares less than" and "doesn't care at all" then you're right, there's little point discussing it further. Amusing that you would drop your possible future computer science qualification into conversation as though it counts for something and then dismiss the difference between a '<' and a '=0' as semantics though. The difference between those two concepts is kind of a big deal and I'm surprised you haven't covered it yet.

You are assuming far too much about my point of view. I think (and said, repeatedly now) that most developers care. I just don't think it takes any special insight to figure out that the people who choose to work on a feature in their free time, without any financial incentive, care about it even more. That's not some slight against developers --nobody is expecting them to go above and beyond and work for nothing in their free time like modders do-- but it is why modders are often able to very efficiently get things done which developers can't or choose not to. Developers *could* do the same thing as modders if they cared enough to do so however (and yes, a few do exactly that), which is why it ultimately boils down to motivation and not flexibility.

It is simple. There are more people with free time on their hands than there is money that companies are willing to spend.

I don't think it's just the sheer amount of people with free time. I think it's the collective knowledge of those people. Between the entire modding community SOMEONE is bound to have run into the specific problem causing a glitch and knows just how to fix it.

Also (back to the time thing) corporate economics re not a concern for the modding community. A games company may have the know-how/resources to fix a problem but solving it doesn't net them enough extra users to justify the resource commitment.

There is a big difference between writing code that seems to work and then throwing it up on the internet, and writing code that has to be tested on a billion different hardware configurations and pass a rigorous QA process, whilst working on a super strict deadline.