PC Gaming: Power of Mods, Grind of Mod Debugging

One of the best aspects of gaming on the PC is availability of mods, esp. if the developers of the game made the game mod-friendly, which allowed gamers who can program to create mods that adds, enhances, or changes certain aspects of the game. 

One of the more mod-friendly AAA tier games that came out recently was Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries, where the developers, PGI, used their experience with Mechwarrior Online (MWO) to help create MW5, which was released back in December, 2019! PGI then followed the game up with no less than SIX official DLCs, adding more mechs, patches, improved AI, but also lore friendly additions, such as melee weapons. Yet from the very beginning it was clear that the fans aren't going to wait for PGI to create stuff, and extremely ambitious mods, such as Yet Another Mech Labs (YAML) turn the simple mechlab in the game, which lets you modify the giant "robots" called mechs with different weapons, ammo, while balance their heat, weight, and so on, into table-top-game accurate affairs. Yet others added non-lore weapons, variants only mentioned in the novels, and bajillion other little mods. 

Yet for every official DLC released, there's always some teeth-gnashing as all the mod makers scramble to update their mod to be compatible with the latest DLC. Yet some mod makers have left the mod-making scene, leaving others to pick up the pieces, while different mod makers have different visions on how to change things (there are dozens of "rebalance" mods as each tries to realize a vision on what constitutes a proper play balance). 

This means as just players, you often have to study the mods you download, to make sure they don't conflict with each other, or accidentally break a third mod, or worse, crash the game. Which means you have to make sure you load them in the right order, known as "load order". 

I haven't played MW5 in over a year, but with release of DLC6 earlier in 2024 and hopefully, the upcoming release of MW5 Clan Invasion (whcih will finally update the game engine to Unreal Engine 5), I should get back into the game. So I updated my mods, downloaded the latest versions, and get the game started... Only to have it crash. It's clear something is breaking some of the mods. Unfortunately, there's no debugger available, and the only way to find the culprit is to disable stuff until the game runs, then enable stuff until it doesn't. Then whatever you enabled last is the culprit. Yes, it's grinding without playing. Yikes. 

With 71 mods, I think I ended up disabling half, as those are either too old or no longer needed. But I basically spend the past 8-12 hours debuging my MW5, setup... I've yet to play the game. Hahaha. 

FWIW, here's a load order for MW5 that seems to work... for now. 39 mods. 

« Generated by MW5 Load Order Configurator 3.2 for MW5Mercs. »

LO   oLO   Mod

71    33   "RevisedNightvision" 1.0(11) by Gundug

70    31   "Yet Another Mechlab" 0.93(2874) by cszolee79 and trueg

69    99   "vonBiomes" 1.0(2595) by vonSeiten

67     0   "MedsMod2024v7778L" 1.0(27) by GenericMeds

66    84   "Expanded_Logos" 1.0(8) by G3n.Zer0

64    38   "MoreMercLevels" 1.0(4) by Gloobnib

63    36   "PilotOverhaul" 7.0.3(776) by Wpnx330

61    45   "UnderTonnageBonus2 & Purchase Salvage2" 5.01(158) by WolfEagle1

60    34   "Coyotesmission" 1.0(6061) by coyotekins

58    30   "TTRulez_LanceMateOrderz" 1.0(24) by Oraeon1224

55    28   "Yeti's Jumpship Animation Remover" 1.0(12) by Yeti

54    27   "Yet Another Weapon" 2.2(434) by cszolee79

52    25   "XenoPax Art Optimizer 3.0" 1.0(216) by xenoargh

49    22   "UpdatedHighEmployment" 1.0(14) by 

48    21   "StarMapMouseOver_V3_07 - Logos" 3.5(4) by JGood121

47    20   "Restore Traits" 1.3.5(20) by Bobbert

44    17   "QOL Upgrades 2 - Thermals and Headlights" 2.2(35) by cszolee79

43    16   "PrecisionSights" 1.1.1(0) by MindlessVictim

42    15   "No Friendly Fire" 1.2(1) by yrrot

41    14   "MW5 Compatibility Pack" 5.2(81) by MagnumGB

40    13   "Mod Options" 1.1.3(16) by Bobbert

39    12   "MechAttributeViewer" 1.8(42) by yrrot

38    11   "LancemateStatusBar" 1.0(43) by yrrot

34     7   "Enhanced Cooldown Pips" 1.0(16) by diji

33     6   "Cockpit Glass" 0.96b(153) by Nek

30     4   "BetterCrates" 1.5(5) by Grahamldlw

29     4   "TTRulez_AIMod2" 1.0(186) by Oraeon1224

28     3   "Assorted DLC Fixes" 1.1a(4) by DeadRaiser

27     2   "Advanced Zoom" 1.2.6(61) by Bobbert

16     0   "LeopardRedone" 1.0(11) by RainingFire

12     0   "Expanded Logos Menu" 1.0(16) by G3n.Zer0

10     0   "CompassHeadings" 2.0(12) by Azuvector

 7     0   "Accuracy Recurve" 1.0(2) by Puff

 6     0   "XenoPax Optimize 4.0" 1.0(73) by xenoargh

 5     0   "Throttle Gauge w Line Markers" 1.0(6) by DAP

 4     0   "Higher Visibility Torso Twist" 1.0(7) by DAP

 3     0   "HeatGauge" 1.0(2) by DAP

 2     1   "Simple Enhanced Environment" 1.0(6) by Zanieon

 1     0   "minimap topography" 1.0(90) by K'Braid

« End of load order. »

Garbage in, garbage out

PC Gamer - Complete History of Gaming (Photo credit: Defragged)

When you want to prove something, you have to prove it with data, not bogus extrapolations.

There was an article on Gamersblog back on November 2011, that claims PC games, due to digital distribution like Steam and such, is going to destroy the consoles. Their "proof"?

Battlefield 3 PC outsold Battlefield 3 PS3, close to BF3 XB360

Wait, where did they get *that* idea? They said they "extrapolated" it. Through these steps

1) VGChartz got the figures:

Xbox 360: 2.2 mil­lion
PlaySta­tion 3: 1.5 mil­lion
PC: 500,000

As of October 2011.

2) They "estimated" that 75% of sales are made digitally, which is NOT counted by VGChartz (who only counts retail), so the "real" PC sales is actually 2 million

3) They "estimated" 75% because "Accord­ing to Techcrunch as of 2010 it was esti­mated that over 57 per­cent of PC gam­ing sales are done dig­i­tally and that num­ber has only grown"

Sounds reasonable, but what does the Techcrunch article actually say, as they didn't link to it? Well, I found it.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/20/pc-game-digital-sales-have-now-outpaced-physical-sales/

It actually says: "According to the all-seeing, all-knowing NPD Group, there were 11.7 million digital sales of PC games during the first half of 2010. That compares to 8.2 million physical sales. "

First of all, using early 2010 data to extrapolate sales in late 2011 is pretty bogus. furthermore, BF3 is only sold on EA's Origin, which doesn't exist until June 2011. Which makes it even more bogus.

Second, that survey is for all games, casual (like those hidden object games, or simple games like Drop, Zuma, bejeweled...) AND big AAA titles. And this is TOTAL SALES. You can't use this to predict ONE game's distribution of digital vs. physical sales!

To give an example: 100 vehicles are sold at dealership A, and 80 vehicles are sold at dealership B. Five vans were sold at Dealership B. How many vans are sold at delaership A?

The answer is: you don't know. You have to ASSUME that both of them are equally adept in selling vans (thus, the van to vehicles sold ratio is same at both dealerships) to get an answer.

Same with the game sale stats. You don't know what is the distribution of sales is in both sales mediums (retail vs. direct online). So you can't use that to extrapolate!

Third, TechCrunch didn't do any predictions, but actually linked to its source: a Gamasutra article and what does THAT say?

"... the tracking firm [NPD] appears to lack agreements with the majority of digital retailers. This means that the figures cited are extrapolated from third-party tracking. The firm attempts to divine PC game purchase habits from surveys, using anywhere from 8,000 to 180,000 individuals on the NPD online consumer panel, depending on which of its methods it chooses."

In other words, the data is NOT reliable, but are very rough estimates! They have a large margin of error! And it does NOT predict any trends and such.

When you use it to predict trends, or to "prove" a trend, you get GARBAGE. Garbage in, garbage out.

Which was borne out when EA released sales figures recently...  It says that Origin, during 10 months of existence, pulled in 150 million.

Consider the fact that catalog of EA PC games sold by origins includes the SIMs (all permutations), and many other games (it numbers 202, as of May 2012, so should be over 100 back in October / November 2011)

Consider the fact that EA serves ALL consoles (Wii, PSP, PS3, PS2, NDS, Xbox360) on Origin, in addition to the PC

Given that the retail price of BF3 on Origin is 59.95, to sell 1.5 million copies of BF3 on Origin (75% of sales ought to be digital) would account for... 90 million of that 150 million revenue, or fully 60% of ALL games sold by Origin.

Clearly, it is NOT possible. Thus the extrapolation is wrong. And the premise is NOT proven.