Want to Mod Battlefield 3? TOO BAD! No Mod Tools With Battlefield 3

[Shawn Zipay]

EA and DICE have come out and flat out said that there will be no modding tools included with Battlefield 3.

Speaking with GamerStar, EA Senior VP Patrick Soderlund broke the news. "As of now, we are not going to make any modding tools, no," Soderlund told GamerStar. "If you look at the Frostbite engine, and how complex it is, it's going to be very difficult for people to mod the game, because of the nature of the set up of levels, of the destruction and all those things… it's quite tricky. So we think it's going to be too big of a challenge for people to make a mod."

But hey, don't take our word for it. The video interview with GameStar can be seen below for the skeptics out there. Don't worry, they do speak English once the actual interview begins.

[SgtMattBaker]

They'll just sell the mod tools a couple of months later for thousands of dollars.There are tons of skilled mod teams out there, they'll figure out how to work with it if the tools are given to them.

[Lordsethonan]

Yeah what gives, it will only take the community a couple of years to come up with some decent mods; shame on you DICE, shame on you.This is gonna push Project Reality 2 back to 2019 instead of just being available on 2015. >

[*FMJ*Power]

did anyone honestly think in this day and age of DLC that EA and DICE would be giving the user the ability to create new content for free?

[K-16]

That's the way to do it EA. Underestimate the modding community and insult their potential skills. No better way to show your love and support for the PC gaming community than to say the engine is only for the big boys to play with.Personally I would've given a threshold goal for the number of sales for the final DLC for BF3. If customers reach this goal, then the mod tools would be released (since the final first-party DLC has been released) and future DLC will be from the community (mod authors get a small 20% cut of the profits, while players get to see mods for $10 a pop). Was that so hard EA? You can continue making money, and not risk losing any when the mod tools get released. And PC gamers don't get pissed at you or DICE. Besides, there's a chance DICE might skip some PC DLC like they did for BF:BC2 and BF1943.So if you're going to make an excuse, make it sound like you did a moderately adequate attempt at telling a quarter of the truth. It's better than insulting your customers' skills and intelligence. Funny thing is, EA has already done this idea with threshold kills to unlock maps, so why not DLC sales to unlock tools?

[Infernalis]

Re: Want to Mod Battlefield 3? TOO BAD! No Mod Tools With Battlefield 3

Yes it would had been better if they were honest and just told it cost money to develop mod tools and will reduce the number of sales of DLCs. Or less honest they just don't name any reasons, but it's better than insulting the modding community.

[eradicator8]

But is there even a market for MOD´s anymore?If the gaming community screams for a new game every 1-2 years the modders can´t even come close to a decent mod.Does anyone even want to wait until 2019 for PR? I expect the BF series to have reached 5 or even 6 at that time and have most likely moved on to a completely different engine.

[Infernalis]

Re: Want to Mod Battlefield 3? TOO BAD! No Mod Tools With Battlefield 3

There's already 3 mods coming for Red Orchestra 2 because the modders had access to the game before release and if the quality is high enough they will earn money (sell it as a DLC?), that and the SDK after release so I think yes there's a market for mods.

I don't know if they could have done that with BF3 though, because of the engine, the fact they want to sell DLC and a new BF every 1-2 years and others reasons.

[CptainCrunch]

Re: Want to Mod Battlefield 3? TOO BAD! No Mod Tools With Battlefield 3

Yeah, there are three problems with all this:

1. DICE has said a number of times that there are no plans for mod tools. Different people on different levels on DICE and EA have stated that, so its no surprise.

2. The reasons given dont match what others in EA development are saying about the FB 2.0 engine. Some developers are coming out and saying how easy and flexible FB 2.0 is to work with, which doesnt match what DICE is saying about how difficult it is. Unless maybe DICE doesnt understand their own engine, which I doubt.

3. Modding and the mod community, though great and really help expand a game, takes a lot of time to develop something for a very very very small group of people. I gave up on mods in Battlefield because they were always messing things up on my PC and when I played mods on CoD, they were great, but the servers were mostly empty. The most successful mods seem to have a small number of controlled servers making them populate for the mod, otherwise, its dead.

The more options for a game, the longer it tends to stay alive and I am all for that as I dont like to jump games. However, there also needs to be options for the gaming majority as well so that those options are not dead out of the box.

Crunch

[Mavrik347]

No mod tools, then already it won't last as long as BF2. Nor will it be as good or varied. FAIL DICE... Just, FAIL.
The mod teams for Battlefield are near professionals... Christ some get hired by DICE! Yet they still say we are too thick to use the tools that their ex-modding teams of devs used to make the game...

Also we've established that you can only spawn on your squad leader which is ok, but not if you only have a crappy 4 man squad. Honestly the "commander compensation" was the worst blagging ever.

It's not looking good, this is going down hill fast.

[Stev0esque]

Re: Want to Mod Battlefield 3? TOO BAD! No Mod Tools With Battlefield 3

Yeah, there are three problems with all this:

1. DICE has said a number of times that there are no plans for mod tools. Different people on different levels on DICE and EA have stated that, so its no surprise.

2. The reasons given dont match what others in EA development are saying about the FB 2.0 engine. Some developers are coming out and saying how easy and flexible FB 2.0 is to work with, which doesnt match what DICE is saying about how difficult it is. Unless maybe DICE doesnt understand their own engine, which I doubt.

3. Modding and the mod community, though great and really help expand a game, takes a lot of time to develop something for a very very very small group of people. I gave up on mods in Battlefield because they were always messing things up on my PC and when I played mods on CoD, they were great, but the servers were mostly empty. The most successful mods seem to have a small number of controlled servers making them populate for the mod, otherwise, its dead.

The more options for a game, the longer it tends to stay alive and I am all for that as I dont like to jump games. However, there also needs to be options for the gaming majority as well so that those options are not dead out of the box.

Crunch

This. Especially Number 3. While I love mods, we all have to realise that the modding community is far smaller than what we perceive it to be.

[Infernalis]

Re: Want to Mod Battlefield 3? TOO BAD! No Mod Tools With Battlefield 3

Note that the ranking of BF2 killed a lot of mods, because they were mods definitely better than BF2 vanilla with the same gameplay like PoE 2 or OPK. I'm sure Desert Combat wouldn't had the same success if BF42 had a ranking system. And the servers surely wasn't empty the first years of mods.

[Lordsethonan]

Re: Want to Mod Battlefield 3? TOO BAD! No Mod Tools With Battlefield 3

As apparently my sarcasm went undetected, I repost:

Crunch: it's not thatthe engine is difficult to work with, there was an interview recently where one of the DICE guys said it was because it's hard to implement as mod tools, since you have to have a mini PC farm to compile the levels and content; wich, inferred from the interview; means that when they made FB2.0 more easy to work with, they inadvertently made it more difficult to make tools for the community for.

It it also not difficult to see (once you get off the WAAARGH NO TOOLS wagon) that they are both afraid of getting spied on, and quite simply not prioritizing modtools because they plan to finish th egame instead; they basically sacrificed BC2 for PC to get people for BF3, looking back maybe that's why there were just two guys making the BF2 and 2142 last patches; we don't KNOW when BF3 started development even tough it certainly started around the same time they were making a quick cash with BC2; how many times they have said they have increased their workforce in big numbers? All the damn time; I don't recall the exact figure, but it's 3 to 4 times the size of the BF2 team? So that's like what, around 180 people?

How big is your standard mod group? 20-30? Remember Frostbite is not a commercial engine; it's not UE and it's not iDtech; no other games from other companies are being made on FB2.0; DICE most likely can't afford to start making documentation to give away for free and risk people giving up on it; wich is the case some of you neglect to consider. what if it's indeed, a very difficult engine to work with if you are not the guys who actually made it? What when they can't afford to lose time answering your questions when there is no money to be made off you?

Oh and btw, why do we have achievements now? It's odd man!

[Lordsethonan]

Re: Want to Mod Battlefield 3? TOO BAD! No Mod Tools With Battlefield 3

Stupid double post :P

[CptainCrunch]

Re: Want to Mod Battlefield 3? TOO BAD! No Mod Tools With Battlefield 3

The difficult to make mod tools makes more sense than difficult to mod, since, like I stated, that other dev teams are saying how great FB 2.0 is.

My point though isnt about who is smart/dumb/spies/whatever its that they said there will not be any a number of different times and that decision is not going to affect 95% of the people who plan to buy it.

How do I know its 95%? I dont.

Crunch