"I know this will come as a shock" -- not really. I expected this to happen after them working on it for years and then the shitstorm on release. :>
Fallout: The Frontier - Released!
- Thread starter The_Proletarian
- Start date
The fact that the mod was fully voiced (?) must have made a rework more difficult. Every rewrite prompts new voice recordings.
Ave-H
First time out of the vault
It's only a matter of time I suppose before another individual or group decide to try and rework this mod. I did enjoy the world space mostly, the items and it was fun driving around. This mod needs a lot of work, but it will never escape it's history.
Apparently, that was a decision made by the previous project lead, without talking to anyone else beforehand.
A bit of history, the first project lead quit years ago (let's call it L1), then the second project lead quit modding a while after the mod's release (L2), then the latest project lead recently quit too (L3), then the old project lead (L2) came back to announce it was cancelled, without discussing this decision with any other "The Frontier" developers.
Several developers decided that they will not quit and took over. That announcement was deleted and they're still working on the project.
We'll see what will happens next.
Disclaimer: I'm not or ever was part of The Frontier's team. But I am a FNV modder that has access to some circles, information and news that mod users usually don't.
A bit of history, the first project lead quit years ago (let's call it L1), then the second project lead quit modding a while after the mod's release (L2), then the latest project lead recently quit too (L3), then the old project lead (L2) came back to announce it was cancelled, without discussing this decision with any other "The Frontier" developers.
Several developers decided that they will not quit and took over. That announcement was deleted and they're still working on the project.
We'll see what will happens next.
Disclaimer: I'm not or ever was part of The Frontier's team. But I am a FNV modder that has access to some circles, information and news that mod users usually don't.
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Ave-H
First time out of the vault
I get the feeling this won't be the last time something like this happens. Well I guess it means more popcorn for the inevitable show is needed.
This mod is such a shitshow. Kinda embarrassing, really. I wouldn't want my name to be associated with this drama.
Yep, but as Bethesda proved with Fallout 76. The drama is mostly forgotten by players if the game becomes "fun" to play.
If The Frontier ever finishes its rewriting of the NCR campaign and removal of all the controversial content, people will probably forget the past.
Even with the bad NCR campaign and the bad content, the majority of the actual players considered it fun to play, with pretty much all the negativity coming from those two things (NCR camping and bad content), although, some players even liked the NCR campaign.
Gamers have short memories, once people stop talking about whatever was the talk of the day, they move on to the next one and forget the past. As long as "it's fun now", all past sins are forgotten and/or forgiven. It's why some gaming companies can keep pulling the shit they have been for decades now.
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Alphons
National Beholder
I don't doubt that it's fun if you go explore, maybe do some side quests.
Which is why the main quests of NV send you out to explore the map and gain trust of various factions by doing some side quests.
It really says a lot about their egos that they decided to make the full blown campaign with unskippable cutscenes and tons of exposition, completely ignoring what the best parts of NV and even Fallout 3 were.
Some of the best NV mods have none or very simple main quests that simply push you to explore (Saxxon's, North Road and Headhunting, Inheritance and Bounties 2, Zion Trail, Salt Lake Stories).
Which is why the main quests of NV send you out to explore the map and gain trust of various factions by doing some side quests.
It really says a lot about their egos that they decided to make the full blown campaign with unskippable cutscenes and tons of exposition, completely ignoring what the best parts of NV and even Fallout 3 were.
Some of the best NV mods have none or very simple main quests that simply push you to explore (Saxxon's, North Road and Headhunting, Inheritance and Bounties 2, Zion Trail, Salt Lake Stories).
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ironmask
A Smooth-Skin
This mod is so bad that I doubt the rework will fix it.
Dayglow Drifter
Mildly Dipped
If they removed anything that was even remotely objectionable it would still be a dogshit mod
LuciusCorneliusSulla
First time out of the vault
Woah there, I dunno where you're getting your info from but the Frontier was not a fun experience. It had horrible balance issues, map design, and enemy design even if you ignored the plethora of bad disjointed writing across the entire mod. Lore-wise if they wanted to fix The Frontier they'd have to scrap it and restart since its premise is not lore friendly to begin with. Writing wise the thing the Frontier suffered from the most was a severe lack of direction which made the mod feel like a bizarre collection of entirely separate quest mods put into the same buggy game world. Even ignoring the cringy writing and severely rail roaded quest design you'd have the distinct impression that most locations in the mod didn't fit into the game world and were rarely tied into other locations. I played over 70 hours exploring the map, there's about 20% of the original Frontier I didn't get to see and I only played the Legion questline (which besides being horrible from a lore standpoint also just broke preventing me from completing it the normal way). I can honestly say it was not close to fun before the mod team mishandled criticism and sparked controversy mostly by themselves. The rhetoric that controversy alone killed a project that barely had direction and rotted in development hell for years with constant changes and no realistic scope is beyond ridiculous.
LuciusCorneliusSulla
First time out of the vault
L1 Devilswish
L2 TGSpy
L3 Outlander
The actual story of the Frontier is just ridiculous development hell, the re-work is a concept that's DOA since the bigger issue with the Frontier wasn't the controversy or even the fact the team couldn't respond well to controversy but the fact that the mod team hated each other and constantly undermined one another. TGSpy dramatically deciding to prematurely cancel the project is all par the course with him as he has pretended to leave many times in the past. Really modders are just tiresome, I ended up having the unpleasant experience of having a fair number of them tell me directly what was going on in DMs back when Frontier was all the rage. Ended up dropping out of those circles since I was done playing the mod and, not being a youtuber, I had no real reason to continue to piece together the melodramatic behind the scenes story. Still have yet to discover a less likable group of people.
I didn't say it was a fun experience for me. I said that many players had fun with it. It's true that the project has thousands of fans that even enjoyed and had fun with the first release. They still have thousands of people cheering and waiting eagerly for the rework and future releases of it.
Their Discord server still has more than 10k people in it, and this is after the great purge that happened after their server got constantly raided. Only hardcore fans remained.
Reddit is full of people saying how they enjoyed the mod and can't wait for the new version that's being worked on. Steam has people saying how sad it is that it won't have a Steam release anymore, etc.
If you avoid the places where people only complain about it (and the majority of people doing this never even played the mod, only complain because of hearsay), you will see that it is and always was a pretty popular project.
And yet, it's undeniable that if it wasn't for TGSpy, the project would never have been released at all (maybe that would have been for the best). He was the one that kept the team working on it for years. Even though he hated being the project leader. He just wanted to see the darn thing released.
It took a lot on his mental health. But he stuck with it until release, like he said he would.
I won't understand why he stuck with it until the release, it could have been dedication to the project, to keep his word, pure stubbornness, not wanting all the work put by many modders during the years to go to waste or whatever. But he did stay until after the initial release and stayed after it for a while so he could have to deal with all the criticism.
He was going to quit as soon as the project was released but stayed until the hate mostly died, and only then did he quit. By then he was mentally exhausted and super stressed.
His mental health was the biggest factor that influenced how he dealt with the hate and criticism. But he still stayed as the face of the project even when he didn't deal with it in the best way.
To be honest I don't think I would have been able to keep going as he did. I'm not saying he did the right things, or that he was right or anything like that, but I do give him props for keeping his word and staying until most hate had died down so that he could be the person targeted and dealing with most of it.
Note: Double post is against the rules of this forum. You should use the "Reply" option to quote several things in the same post.
LuciusCorneliusSulla
First time out of the vault
Not really the point you think it is. A discord having 10k users doesn't imply 10k players or even that at least 10k people like the mod. I've been on the discord before, the active users are under 200 members which is impressive in its own right I suppose but out of those a fair number of them expressed disapproval of the mod when they were allowed to. Though of course being allowed to criticize the Frontier on the Frontier discord wasn't often allowed since a few of the mod team took it upon themselves to curate and in many cases outright ban criticism. Be aware that it is common on discord to be in a server without actually supporting the server, there are thousands of people in the Frontier discord who's opinion is completely unprovable. As for reddit, yeah I know there are people who enjoyed the mod. My contention is that of those that actually played the mod and weren't turned off by the NCR main quest or the really dated, cringey humour there are more who found it to be a mess than not since it really is just a bad mod. It is extremely tiresome to hear the cope that only those who had not played the mod disliked it. In fairness I will say it is impossible to know what the real ratio of approval versus disapproval is but considering the content was a critical failure even ignoring controversy my view will always trend towards disapproval being the most likely candidate here.
I don't have any respect for TGSpy. He and the rest of the mod team scavenged Devilswish's pet project, increased the scope to a degree they couldn't actually manage, added more and more content to an already disorganized game world, mishandled every PR incident from the smallest points of discord moderation to banning criticism to shifting blame of every controversy to either youtubers or modders they conveniently booted from the team. I do understand it's not a business so there's not likely to be actual organization or professional attitudes but that doesn't mean one has to respect them for shooting themselves in the foot. As for Tgspy personally contributing consider him being the lead of a project whose biggest problem is the lack of organization in every aspect from PR to the mod itself. Hard to admire someone who had more responsibility for a project's failure than anyone else involved.