Have to admit I was struggling for a good question and I really wanted to avoid another Half-Life 3 one, but this idea just popped into my head.
Obviously, we want the story to either be finished or explained at least to some degree, but personally, it’s all the new mods that we hope to get that really excites me.
Of course, the chances of Half-Life 3 being released WITHOUT mod support is probably as close to nil as it can be, but Valve might decide to move in a new direction.
Plenty of single player games do well without a modding community or do you think that once a company starts down that road it would be commercial suicide not to continue with it.
Are times changing?
How would you feel if Half-Life 3 were released and it didn't support modding?
- I would be angry (84%, 87 Votes)
- I would be happy (3%, 3 Votes)
- I don't care (13%, 13 Votes)
Total Voters: 103
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I’d be utterly outraged.
Yeah, me too.
Source mods are one of the main reasons I am still affiliated with the Half-Life series, even over a decade after Half-Life 2. To not include mod support would be a terrible mistake.
Yeah, I agree would be absolute madness but you never know.
Straight to the trashbin ^^
But in serious matter, HL3 without modding is just not possible, even if the game alone won’t have mod support. That’s because Source 2 is going to be an open engine, I mean availible for anyone like UE4 or Unity. At least that was the last Valve statement. And because of that, even if HL3 will be locked, people will find a way to export all the content and make games/mods anyway 🙂
very good point, my biggest fear with Half-Life 3, is how different it’s gonna be from Half-Life 2,
is it gonna be another massive change, like from the GoldSource Half-Life, to the Source Engine Half-Life 2? (well, in terms of graphics, of course it will) but are they gonna completely rebuild all the game mechanics? (probably) my biggest worry is just how much change, exactly, will occur
Like Phillip mentioned, it’s not like Valve would do this. They were one of the earlier bastions of PC modding, so this would be as uncharacteristic as Joffrey Baratheon starting to hand out flowers and hugs in season 4 of Game of Thrones.
That said, if it did happen for some reason, I personally wouldn’t care. Not that I don’t appreciate everything modders and mappers do, but at this point I’d just like to get through the end of the Combine story arc after 12 years of waiting. Plus, I’m sure it would… er, will be a mind-blowing, genre-defining game again, so that’s something to look forward to, anyway.
Pretty insane to imagine, at this point valve basically lives off community made content in all of their games. Removing such a thing would cause a lot of problems for them and the community.
I don’t believe in seeing a HLÂł ever…I think Valve has completely lost it.
How could they develop a better game than HL²?
But if there will be a HLÂł without MOD Support, I think thta will be one of Valves biggest mistakes.
Imagine the HL Series without MOD Support, there weren’t games like the CS Series and no Garrys Mod and especially the big amount of HL Universe Mods.
I claim that Valve and Steam never would be so successful without the modding community.
Even thought that’s hard to imagine, I would be incredibly pissed off. Modders and map makers need something new to have fun with and most of them are tired with the GoldSrc and Source engines.
It would be a slap in the face, but one I’d quickly get over. There are simply too many other games worth playing to dwell on what Valve does or doesn’t do. If they don’t want to offer it, fine, I’ll take my money and time elsewhere.
although i appreciate hl games im among the few who dont think about this games as big milestones as most people.
what i do have respect for is that they were through modding an immense playground for creative people to make many things from sp maps to total conversions and multiplayer games. counter-strike, team fortress, day of defeat they all exist thanks to the modding community.
to leave out modding capability would be shooting themselves in the leg. i bought my first half life for cs only eg, but also buying up and monetizing the mp mods above (and portal too i think) was a very nice income source for valve in the past 10 years. (i dont mention black mesa, still a weird one for me).
This theme brings up that old threat from game companies about only releasing console games and not supporting the PC for fear of piracy, but I think Steam support has ended that fear especially for Valve.
Unless Half life 3 goes that oft talked about route of online only play!
Valve does seem to be okay with modding so why would they change? HL and HL2, both vastly different in generation support modding, so HL3 if it is a new generation will also I think.
Although I secretly hope it will be Half Life 2 – episode 3 and not worry about the cost of a new PC to play it!
Honestly, I would still play it, even if it was only the one time. I’d just be happy to see it in my Steam library. Having said that, PC users are a crafty bunch, and whether or not mods were officially supported, they would find a way of making limited changes to the base game at the very least.
To be totally honest, even though Half-Life has been a massive part of my life, I’ve only played the base game all the way through a handful of times. Half-Life 2 I played even less, although Episode 2 did keep me entertained a lot more.
I have gotten so much more out of the community contributions to the series, that HL3 without modding support would almost be the ultimate ending of the series in general, albeit a very sad one.
Depends. If Half-Life 3 is going to be more of a reskin of Half-Life 2 (say, same enemies except different mechanics and looks) it wouldn’t be that much of a hassle to me. As such I voted “I don’t care”.
Even if it didn’t have mod support some clever bastards would find a way to make mods anyway.
Would be insane of them to do, indeed. And I’d not be happy if it turned out to be the case… of course, it’s all contingent upon whether we actually see a Half-Life 3. It seems that, just from a story standpoint, a concluding game would be required. I mean, they built us up to go track down the Borealis, only to end on a cliffhanger with Eli having his brain eaten. That’s like not having a Return of the Jedi after Empire Strikes Back. So if Valve is capable of making decisions like abandoning their most beloved in-house franchise, they’re capable of leaving out mod support.
On a personal note, if HL really is done for, I would like to see Marc Laidlaw release a script himself that details how he would have ended the Half-Life series, story-wise.
Maybe we’ll actually learn what the G-Man is all about, that way. I’ve been wondering about him since 1998.
I would be extremely angry.
But to be honest, I’m waiting for Ricochet 2 ^^
I’d be extremely disappointed considering the impact Half-Life modding has had on the industry as a whole, on Valve’s growth and on Half-Life’s importance. I think it’d be a terrible idea and if Valve were to do such a thing the reaction would be so overwhelmingly negative they’d probably have to reconsider.
With that in mind I think we shouldn’t be afraid of them not including modding; but altering their policy on modding. I wouldn’t like to see them restricting modding in any way; like Doom’s SnapMap, or Bethesda’s obsession with paid mods. I also think if they didn’t release the game code for HL3 and limited us to just mapping or whatever they will have in mind, that’d be a major, major mistake.
I don’t see Snapmap as an intentionally devious “restriction” to modding, but the best they could do given the technical shortcomings of their engine. Rage had a full editing suite and hardly anyone used it because it was very complicated and required a supercomputer to run well. I’m not sure a single level ever came out of it. The nature of modern Id Tech, especially the “megatexture” aspect, makes it inflexible for modding.
On the flip side? There is probably an order of magnitude more Snapmaps than there are maps on this site. Most aren’t any good, of course, but the user-friendly aspects of the editor make it less intimidating for newcomers to get their heads around. It’s Super Mario Maker for an FPS. If it gets them interested in modding and trying other games, or if it encourages other devs to release their mod tools after seeing its success, then we all win. Because, right now, very few developers release their tools anymore. Silly as it may be, they’ll scheme over DLC to add life to their products when the modding community could do it for them. They haven’t latched into that concept yet. It’s something that will eventually be relearned, I think, but 90s PC developers had it totally figured out and there’s a reason why their creations have stood the test of time.
This is one of the huge problem with DOOM SnapMap, you can’t do what you want because those limits are quickly reached, if I remember correctly, there is a maximum of 24 monsters in a room and there can only be 12 living at the same time. I know that those kind of limits are there so the maps run on a lot of PCs and consoles but a “warning” instead of a “restriction” should have been nice.
The more complex/modern the engine is, the more work you have to do to reach the same level quality. Compare how much time and complex for a modder it is to create a level between Tomb Raider 1 (DOS/Console versions) and an Unreal Engine 4 game.
Simplicity shouldn’t imply the fact that we have harsh limits, if I am not allowed to create my own rooms, place 500 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 monsters in a single map (I don’t care about Frames Per Seconds), create my own weapon from A to Z, then I don’t call this “modding”, I call this bull****, it’s an insult to modders. FPS Creator despite it’s “bad engine” managed to combine the simplicity of building a level (or game) with the possibility to extend your possibilities by allowing you to create your own assets, or download community made assets (manually or through a store), if you done something wrong, the software would give you a warning but not prevent compilation/testing/playing, I wished DOOM followed that direction.
It also depends on how the game is programmed. Some games are programmed from the very beginning to be modding friendly like Killing Floor 2, the rest is programmed to be released ASAP without modding support and adding “modding support” to a “closed game” takes a lot of time.