The State of Starfield Modding: October 6th 2023

The current state of modding for Starfield

 It has been a month since Starfield released in stores and Steam. It has made waves across the video gaming industry. However, the real strength of the game, beyond its amazing procedural generation and the amazing worlds to explore, is the modding community. 

The modding community has been incredibly useful in helping Skyrim and other games that Bethesda has made to continue being successful long after they were released to the public. It is important to remember that Bethesda, despite being criticized for its worlds having little character and being too big, has devoted time towards making sure that modding was supported throughout their games. Instead of other companies out there that tend to drop games within a couple of months, Bethesda has standing by their games, helping to grow and succeed. They have done this with their older Elder Scrolls titles like Arena and Daggerfall, releasing them as freeware on the interent for the community to use. The results speak for themselves. We have people making mods and graphics engines for Daggerfall, a nearly 30 year old game. Whereas most games that old are generally abandoned by the development team, these games have new life breathed right into them. The same thing is going to happen to Starfield. The complaints about this game do not matter as much as the modding community is going to be step in and polish the game up. This is not to say the game wasn't as polished as possible before release but modders can make it better and provide insights for the Bethesda team as to what works and what they need to improve on to make a better game. 

How is Starfield doing right now with regards to the modding community? Right now, there are tons of articles being written about how mods are available for Starfield in order to modify the game. This is great news for Bethesda. It provides free press for them. I originally complained about the marketing campaign for Starfield and how Bethesda was approaching trying to market the game. I guess my mindset was more on a traditional marketing campaign. All these articles are doing the marketing that would be otherwise be done by a traditional marketing agency. Currently as it stands, Starfield Nexus has currently over 3000 mods available. When I originally reported on the state of Starfield mods, I talked about the most popular mod at the time, the Bethesda Archive extractor. Whene the game released, most of the mods were largely about changing surface level aspects of the game. There was little emphasis on changing the graphics of the game.

It is time to take a look at the modding community as of right now.

In comparison with when the game was just released for early access in September, there have been some changes in what is popular at Nexus Mods. The most popular mod right now is StarUI by M8r98a4f2. This is a quality of life improvement that enhances the inventory system in Starfield and makes it easier for users to navigate. It understanable why this mod is so popular. Some have criticized Starfield for many things, and one of those things is that the interface is strangely not designed properly. I think that the first-person view of Starfield is great and streamlined but the inventory is oddly not designed as well. This is a great mod that has been over 1 million downloads and is one of the most popular mods that is on the Nexus Mods.

The next mod that is popular is the Starfield Script Extender by SFSE Team. It is a mod that is largely aimed at people who are technically minded and want to dive more into the files of the game.

Here are some interesting mods that are popular right now. 

1. Compact Ship Builder UI by Stentorious 

Ship building in Starfield is one of the most popular features of the game. Bethesda was wise to include as many crafting aspects in this game to get the player's attention. Ship building is one of those parts of the game that continues to get alot of press and gives Starfield free advertising. This mod helps to improve this part of the game by improving the UI. Much like StarUI, it is a way to improve the interface of the game that people are seeing as inadequate. These mods are important as they help to improve the usablity of the game and its menus. 

2. Richer Merchants by JustAnOrdinaryGuy

In comparison with other games that have been made by Bethesda, this game has its merchants with much less cash. This to me is a sign of the game's somewhat inconsistent attention to realism. In real-life, its common for merchants to not have tons of cash. Generally speaking, people make their purchases through credit rather than through cash. However, in order for video games to be streamlined for the experience of playing, generally speaking, purchases are made through cash instead of people paying it in a monthly cycles. Richer Merchants is just a way for players to make the game easier. 

3. More Planet Sites by Mr3GBA

Starfield's greatest strength is its procedural generation. The ability to generate sites across the planet allows for a variety of playthroughs. This mod allows the game to create even more sites across planets for you to explore. Some players have stated that they are not a big fan of this proceedural generation but its alot better than in other games which were just repeating the same objects over and over again. While this is not the best solution for games, I think that Starfield is the best compromise between having handcrafted experiences and the need for AI-generated content. While some will argue that the best game is one that can be completed in a reasonable amount of time instead of being a time sink, its important to remember that Bethesda has been a studio that interested in big games. Rarely has Bethesda made games that were contained in a specific environment. Their games are really about you living in a video game environment. Some of these games, like Morrowind are more handcrafted than others but that one is the exception. Bethesda has been moving towards using AI in their games and I think that mods like these show that there is contigent of players who are interested in continuing to improve upon what Starfield had managed to achieve with this AI system that creates interesting sites.