Some general thoughts from the perspective of a dude that kinda does the same sort of project work right now.

- Assume a lot of your community will be shitty if you don't live up to their expectations.
- Don't raise those expectations in the first place, stay hidden until very close to release if you can.
- Don't under any circumstances give anyone complete creative license over anything unless it can be reproached or vetoed by the team.
- Get rid of anything related to the Enclave, that community aint worth dealing with. Screw 'em.
- Don't take a soft approach when it comes to running your community server.
- Don't get involved with Youtubers unless it's someone you know will take shit seriously.
- If anyone on the team seems fishy, do a soft background check on them. Never hurts.
- Don't try to reinvent the wheel, stay humble, stay manageable.

The Fallout community in itself is one of the most toxic communities out there. The Fallout community IS the Enclave community. Even I appreciate some good Enclave mods from time to time, and I have never sided with them in any game ever. It's like saying the BoS community is it's own isolated thing or the Institute community is it's own isolated thing. They all exist and they're all part of the same community.

With that being said, this whole drama has blew over mostly but I still don't feel comfortable using this mod. Reason being is that I still feel as if the vision of the mod has been tainted in part by it's authors. I would've been able to forgive some of the more controversial elements even past removal, but I just can't forgive their cowardice in throwing Zu under the bus and pretending nothing happened. Not saying he didn't deserve it, just that they never fully addressed the issues plaguing the mod and swept it under the rug in an attempt to conceal the obvious problems with their own writers.

I've been thinking about it for a while and The Frontier was supposed to be a send-off for the New Vegas modding community in many regards. It was the last huge project that had a considerable following, at least for New Vegas. New California had already released and Tale of Two Wastelands had been a thing for years. This was supposed to a sign-off for New Vegas modding. Instead it was disastrous and monumentally disappointing.

It's hilarious because this actually contrasts the Fallout 4 modding scene which is seeing a huge boom right now and some great mods being made for it:
- Desperados Overhaul
- Fallout 4 Photo Mode
- TheFriedTurkey's F4CW mods
- ScottyX2's F4CW mods
Not to mention all the big projects making great strides, such as Fallout Cascadia, Miami, F4CW and F4NV.

New Vegas modding has died and The Frontier was the funeral ceremony sadly.

I don't think it was ever really about the lack of Enclave content as it was a unifying meme in opposition to the conduct of some individuals. Nobody really cared that much about there being no enclave in the mod, it was more so just something used to antagonize the team members with the more explosive personalities. During raids, people prefer to use some sort of symbol as a means to display unity; enclave and later the sneedclave was a catchy and convenient one.

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New Vegas modding has died and The Frontier was the funeral ceremony sadly.

Despite the fact that I prefer FNV over 4, I do acknowledge that FNV has all but run its course for most people. Between PC and 360, I have probably clocked over 2000 hours into it. There isn't much left for me there aside from the occasional playthrough every few years to stay on top of the technical side of things so I can more easily help people set their game up. I already try to avoid getting hyped for upcoming game releases, let alone mod projects ran by those who have zero experience managing a team. So I agree with this statement, its a very poetic way of describing things.

roflcopter117 wrote:

I don't think it was ever really about the lack of Enclave content as it was a unifying meme in opposition to the conduct of some individuals. Nobody really cared that much about there being no enclave in the mod, it was more so just something used to antagonize the team members with the more explosive personalities.

I gotta disagree, the whole 'The Enclave are an objectively evil faction' thing and the whole 'Enclave are trump supporters' joke definitely p'd off the community that goes all in the Enclave - The folks that genuinely want to believe they're heroes and whatnot. Saw it myself, that group was real invested in trying to take down the Frontier. Seems anyone that had any sort of gripe with the mod jumped under their banner because it had a lot of steam behind it.

@IIHawkerII People don't like annoying, arrogant SJWs talking down to them. A lot of Fallout fans aren't even American, they just wanted to join a faction to roleplay and instead they got an autistic Tumblr lecture about why you are a bad person if you want to join the Enclave. And then it turns out those who had the nerve to pontificate about morals are total degenerates who enjoy pedophilia, bestiality and sexual slavery? People are going to tear them down as if it was the funniest thing in the world, because it is.

@Heisenberg @roflcopter11

Heisenberg wrote:

New Vegas modding has died and The Frontier was the funeral ceremony sadly.

roflcopter117 wrote:

I do acknowledge that FNV has all but run its course for most people

Patrolling the frontier will make you wish you were playing Fallout 76.

What I gotta say about that:
e ee e e e e eee e e eee e e eee e e eeeee!

gavin gold wrote:

@IIHawkerII People don't like annoying, arrogant SJWs talking down to them. A lot of Fallout fans aren't even American, they just wanted to join a faction to roleplay and instead they got an autistic Tumblr lecture about why you are a bad person if you want to join the Enclave. And then it turns out those who had the nerve to pontificate about morals are total degenerates who enjoy pedophilia, bestiality and sexual slavery? People are going to tear them down as if it was the funniest thing in the world, because it is.

Let's break this down point by point:

- The line about the Enclave being totally evil was just that, one line. You weren't even speaking to an Enclave member when you were saying it, you were speaking to a fake Enclave recruiter and trying to catch him out iirc.
- Personally, I read that line as satire on the Enclave community and those that genuinely believe that the Enclave are the good guys of the Fallout universe. You can totally love the Enclave, but man - That's a yikes point to take.
- The leads or at least some of them were very clear about not liking the Enclave, this is kinda common in the fallout modding community or at least 4's. If people aren't cool with some devs not liking the enclave and expressing that opinion in their own mod, the community should probably temper it's reaction accordingly instead of flipping out.
- Them enjoying pedophilia, bestiality, etc is pretty off base man. Zu was a shitbag into some messed up stuff - But don't make blanket statements like that about the whole team. They've gone on record explaining multiple times about how troubled the writing process was and how things fucked up on a technical level that exacerbated the edgy shit in their mod. It seems people would rather believe they whole-heartedly committed to a bunch of blatantly shitty stuff expecting to be praised when in reality it's a lot of shitty luck, decisions and information.

Gotta do these too, since they're obligatory for a statement like this.
- I found the Frontier to be utterly repulsing. Hated the mod in it's entirety and would gladly say to the people making it that I thought it was an absolute shitfest. I can't express how poor I thought the Frontier was.
- I also really don't like the Enclave community, Enclave themselves are sweet villains with cool shit - But the Enclave community sucks major nards and are by and large the worst to deal with in this fandom. I don't blame people like Phobos at all for throwing their shit back at them and calling them out.
- I'm in a similar position as these devs in that I work on some of the larger projects in the F4 community. While I can comfortably say I've never seen anything in any of the mods I work on that's even remotely as bad as the shit in the Frontier - I have the perspective of someone that does dread some day of having to deal with a nuclear level shitstorm like the one they got because the community is turbulent at best.

The op really exaggerates the problems with the mods and reeks of moral panic. Reading Harry Potter won't make you a satanist and playing the Frontier won't turn you into a clopper(hopefully). The worst thing that'll happen is experiencing some really shitty stories.

I'm pretty sure the entire conflict with the Sneedclave stems from the fact that the mod authors and their discord throng are likely deranged commies. Sneedclave = nazi in their pee brains so they feel compelled to froth at the mouth when they see people liking and wanting to play as the bad guys. The author of the Frontier Add-Ons mod is a great example of this. They will ban you from their mods on the mere suspicion of being "fash".

@IIHawkerII

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- The line about the Enclave being totally evil was just that, one line. You weren't even speaking to an Enclave member when you were saying it, you were speaking to a fake Enclave recruiter and trying to catch him out iirc.

That line, yeah. But while that one is pretty stupid by itself (the courier doesn't even know what communism is) that wasn't the whole issue.

Look, suppose people come and say "Hey, Phobos, why can't we join the enclave?" and instead of being a total snowflake and talking down to people, he goes "Guys, I know some of you want the option to join the Enclave, but let me be straight here: From the very beginning, our focus has been the three main factions. We weren't even sure it was a good idea to have the Enclave since at this point they're very much gone and we wanted to keep it lore friendly. While we did eventually decided to included them, to be perfectly honest we didn't know exactly what to do with them in terms of story. At this point the mod is massive, we've been working on this for years, and to write a new MQ is just too much. Maybe in the future, but just not right now."

You do that and that's the end of the story. But when you start behaving like Phobos did, you're asking for trouble. You need to be mature enough to deal with criticism and complaints.

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- Personally, I read that line as satire on the Enclave community and those that genuinely believe that the Enclave are the good guys of the Fallout universe. You can totally love the Enclave, but man - That's a yikes point to take.

No one thinks that, dude. People are just trying to be edgy.

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- The leads or at least some of them were very clear about not liking the Enclave, this is kinda common in the fallout modding community or at least 4's. If people aren't cool with some devs not liking the enclave and expressing that opinion in their own mod, the community should probably temper it's reaction accordingly instead of flipping out.

You think the issue was the fact they don't like the Enclave, but that's not what happened. The issue was Phobos (and other members of the team as well but mainly Phobos) completely mishandled the situation and started melting down at the slightest criticism.

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- Them enjoying pedophilia, bestiality, etc is pretty off base man. Zu was a shitbag into some messed up stuff - But don't make blanket statements like that about the whole team. They've gone on record explaining multiple times about how troubled the writing process was and how things fucked up on a technical level that exacerbated the edgy shit in their mod. It seems people would rather believe they whole-heartedly committed to a bunch of blatantly shitty stuff expecting to be praised when in reality it's a lot of shitty luck, decisions and information.

Zu was just a 2d artist. Odin wrote America, Nazo wrote Mae and the lizard sex dungeon, Phobos voiced one of the lizard Queen's breeders, TGSPY is friends with at least two diaper furries...

Zu is not the only degenerate in that group and certainly not the reason the mod is what it is. And by the way, there no way they didn't know what he was into - all the stuff that got him booted out of the mod was years old and published under his exact same username - they were simply fine with it until he got caught.

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- I found the Frontier to be utterly repulsing. Hated the mod in it's entirety and would gladly say to the people making it that I thought it was an absolute shitfest. I can't express how poor I thought the Frontier was.

Good, we agree.

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- I also really don't like the Enclave community, Enclave themselves are sweet villains with cool shit - But the Enclave community sucks major nards and are by and large the worst to deal with in this fandom. I don't blame people like Phobos at all for throwing their shit back at them and calling them out.

You're free to like or dislike whatever you want. But if you can take one lesson from what happened, that should be that Phobos is an idiot. He started an absolutely unnecessary fight for which he and his team were completely unprepared.  

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- I'm in a similar position as these devs in that I work on some of the larger projects in the F4 community. While I can comfortably say I've never seen anything in any of the mods I work on that's even remotely as bad as the shit in the Frontier - I have the perspective of someone that does dread some day of having to deal with a nuclear level shitstorm like the one they got because the community is turbulent at best.

If you don't want that happening to you, make sure you know the people who are working in the project, make sure nothing questionable slips into the final version, and most importantly, make sure when those mods are released you have an adult, not a manchild snowflake, dealing with the community.  

@tm812 I genuinely don't think it's possible to miss the point more than you just did.

The problem isn't that pedophilic content might turn people into pedophiles. The content itself is the problem. It is reprehensible and should always be denounced.

I heard it adds some cool stuff mechanically so I think ill try it and come back and give a opinion, but it seems like this is to complain just to complain, like just don't play if you didn't like it. Sounds like you want them to go on their hands and knees begging for your forgiveness and you have a personal vendetta against them. Whos know though maybe ill come back and say the same things other people are lmao, though I doubt ill take it as seriously as other people are.

@gavin gold
To be fair here, 'Hey Phobos, Why can't we join the Enclave' is kinda of a simplification of the massive amount of trolling, whining and general belligerence that got Phobos to retaliate. That being, said - I wouldn't have done what Phobos did - I kind of admire him still for throwing shit back, but that's never gonna turn out well for anyone. I would've just thrown the answer on the FAQ and ignored any subsequent 'Why no Enclave' questions, bait or trolling. To be fair - AFAIK, the answers the team gave out started off real civil and tame, but when they started getting massive shit for the mod and getting trolled left and right - They got backed into a corner and acted real defensive.

As for 'Nobody thinks of the Enclave that way' - I gotta tell ya, I've had long, serious conversations with people, hell entire servers in the community that absolutely believe the Enclave aren't evil and are a genuinely heroic faction. And they get real defensive and pissy when you state otherwise.

As for Zu and the team - I mostly agree. But I still think it's a bad call to throw out all those labels on the whole team. As for them not checking Zu's background - I can confirm, you generally don't ever do that in the modding community unless someone is giving off some serious red flags. I'm willing to bet more PMs will be more careful about that sort of stuff in the future though - Frontier's probably gonna start a trend of background checks.

@IIHawkerII

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To be fair here, 'Hey Phobos, Why can't we join the Enclave' is kinda of a simplification of the massive amount of trolling, whining and general belligerence that got Phobos to retaliate. That being, said - I wouldn't have done what Phobos did - I kind of admire him still for throwing shit back, but that's never gonna turn out well for anyone. I would've just thrown the answer on the FAQ and ignored any subsequent 'Why no Enclave' questions, bait or trolling. To be fair - AFAIK, the answers the team gave out started off real civil and tame, but when they started getting massive shit for the mod and getting trolled left and right - They got backed into a corner and acted real defensive.

Of course he got trolled to insanity. You know the expression "don't feed the trolls"? Not only did Phobos fed them, he prepared a 5star, 7 course meal for them.

Look, let's go back to the beginning. You're modding NV, you know people are going to expect to be able to play as the villain. You're not willing to make an Enclave quest? Just don't include the Enclave in the first place. By the time of NV, they're gone anyway, there's no reason to keep bringing the Enclave back and if you do you know you're going to have to deal with their fans.

Now, if you must have the Enclave, then be willing to deal with those issues calmly and maturely. What you said there was perfect, by the way. You answer things calmly and politely the first time, and then just put the answer in a FAQ.

Don't start insulting people. Don't try talking down to them or lecturing them. And no matter how much trolling you might be suffering, you always need to keep your cool. Meltdowns attract trolls like crazy and get you nothing except meme status on the internet

Dude, sometimes the mob targets you unfairly because that's what mobs do (this isn't one of those cases btw). When that happens you need legs to stand on, and a thick skin to resist to the assault. Phobos had neither. He's not some brave guy holding the line, he's a snowflake whose ego didn't allow him to take any kind of criticism in a mature way.  

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As for 'Nobody thinks of the Enclave that way' - I gotta tell ya, I've had long, serious conversations with people, hell entire servers in the community that absolutely believe the Enclave aren't evil and are a genuinely heroic faction. And they get real defensive and pissy when you state otherwise.

Fair enough, there may be some genuine crazies out there. Still, most people are just in it for the laughs. The problem ultimately wasn't the dvs dislike for the Enclave, that was just the meme to rally behind against a terrible mod and the snowflakes in charge of it.

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As for Zu and the team - I mostly agree. But I still think it's a bad call to throw out all those labels on the whole team.

I don't. Based on what I've seen I'm comfortable putting on the label on the team as a whole. Not every single member, of course, not every one. But there's enough people in the team that fit the label.

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As for them not checking Zu's background - I can confirm, you generally don't ever do that in the modding community unless someone is giving off some serious red flags.

I get that it's not a corporate job, but during all those years, you mean to tell me nobody bothered to find out anything at all about the people who were working on the project? Because correct me if I'm wrong, that kind of seems like something TGSPY, you know, the project lead, should've done. Like I said, It's not as if Zu was hiding all that stuff, he was publishing it under his exact same username. If you look up "ZuTheSkunk", his deviant art page is the very first result.

Also, the only way a grown man that goes by the name ZuTheSkunk and uses a furry avatar doesn't automatically raise a massive red flag, is if you are into that yourself, and thus, see nothing wrong with it. And, like I said, TGSPY is confirmed friends with several deviants, so...

Background checks, dude. Always make sure you know the kind of people you're working with because you're going to be judged by association.

@IIHawkerII
Be mindful that they actually ended up drawing the ire of /v and kiwifarms. When I was on /v, the frontier had more threads than Cyberpunk got. It mostly started out with what I assume to be some anons from the frontier discord advertising the mod there continuously. The userbase mostly dismissed it because they saw what we saw now and dismissed it. It only caught their attention when the mod team made some politically charged statements (why we don't do it here) and everyone on /v started memeing the mod and later memeing phobos. Just when /v was getting bored of trolling the frontier, the Zu stuff was found and the evisceration began. /v mainly wanted to troll and piss off the team because they were good candidates for trolling; hence why I said it wasn't REALLY about the enclave or lack thereof in the game. The main point is that had the team reacted to the criticism a bit differently, /v wouldn't have gotten bored much sooner and went back to their normal video game talk. I said it in a previous thread and I'll say it again, kicking a hornet's nest like /v has consequences. They specifically targeted phobos due to his behavior; I watched him specifically react very aggressively towards even valid criticism. He stood out from everyone else as a result of this. I definitely wouldn't support someone with his personality if they were nominated for a staff position here.

On a side note, we generally do basic vetting here for things like staff positions to make sure someone isn't drawing cartoon CP (illegal in my legal jurisdiction btw); it takes seconds to google a username. It's worth the miniscule effort it takes when you know that person will be an official representative of your community. Whether that behavior is known or not, it will ALWAYS reflect badly on the community as a whole.

This is some good talk, I am glad we can all have differing viewpoints and keep things mostly civil. You guys are awesome and I'm glad you're all here.

The ads for frontier had me thinking it was going to be a military adventure, tanks, etc. It sounds like it was very different from that.

Did you change the original post? When I first read it I got the impression that you were blowing things way out of proportion, but now that I've reread it I gotta say its all fairly agreeable. The Harry Potter stuff was the first thing that came to mind when I read your post at the time, what with people making mountains out of mole hills and all that jazz. I was probably very tired when I made that post but I didn't and don't think you though the mod was trying to "corrupt the youth". I'll try and refrain from posting while half asleep from now on.

@tm812 I haven't changed the OP except for a small edit. You were probably reading this other post talking about the Frontier https://www.gunetwork.org/t20724-the-frontier-is-an-insult

From a technical standpoint, it's amazing. I am waiting for the day Xilandro releases his standalone car mod with the Highwayman car model so that I can RP as The Chosen One

I feel like the cutscenes were completely unnecessary and we're making the mod less enjoyable, especially since some of them had really long pan out shots (like 30 seconds and more), some of then were straight up plagiarized from more popular games as well as some sections in the game (the bridge scene from COD:MW, Dr. Voss making you choose between two of your mates like in Wolfenstein, literally copying most of the dialogue too, etc.)

Then there's the story. I wasn't really invested in any of the storylines. NCR because Blackthorne is a retard who can't see that his right hand man is literally named Tiberius (seriously, what the fuck) and sacrifices a lot of his troops to save you just because you're the Courier, and it felt like a poor COD fanfiction. Then there's the Enclave space station that massively overstayed it's welcome, implementing the god awful dogfight and the asteroid section from Dead Space as well as the annoying wave defense section. Plenty of dialogue was also poorly audio mixed, which meant that sometimes NPCs were too loud or completely quiet, sometimes they even forgot to add in the voice lines and lip sync. A lot of stuff felt like filler, especially the pissoir horror sections and hallucinations.

The Crusaders felt like they were someone's waifu faction. America, a companion i disliked since I found her annoying (also all that barely 18, foot fetish and slavery crap), then how a lot of main women characters have these weird hair and makeup mods that just makes them look even more out of place, etc. The story was kinda meh too. I like the power armor designs tho, but that's pretty much it.

The legion i have no special comments on. I didn't like it, i didn't dislike it, it just felt meh.

Then we have armor and weapons. I really like the designs of some armors, especially the Scavs armors etc. I usually wore the Explorer variant, equiped with a ghillie sniper rifle and a beanie. It gave me this nice post-apocalitic nuclear winter wonderland feeling. Weapons also looked great, although there were some bugs or mistakes in reload animations (That big fucking revolver you get on the Space station for example).

The driving felt great. However, i disliked that Scav vehicles could only be destroyed by fucking carpet bombing them while my buggy blew up if someone as much as sneezed on it.

The atmosphere and overall feel of the winter wasteland was great. I really wish there were more winter Fallout games tbh.

Then there's the degeneracy. Fuckable Deathclaw, sex lizzards, teen slave and all that shit shouldve been purged from this mod entirely.

And a working arachnophobia patch would've been nice. Nearly shay myself everytime one of those spiders jumped at me.

Overall, I'd give it a 5/10 and even that because of the enjoyable map and mood of the mod outside of story missions and main quests.

I am still on the fence over playing it at all. Probably wait until some new updates if they finish them

I gave up on the main quest and instead played the side content - never reaching the NCR aircraft carrier part on account of bugs, and the poor writing.

In the side content there was playable tidbits. For instance a robot settlement out at the edge of the map or the Hunter's Lodge. Though at its best that content felt fairly predictable. The rest kind of ran the gamut of average mod content. The usual silliness, reference filled (or straight copied), toneless mess you see in other mods like New California. Where you either wind up skipping through all the dialogue to complete the quest, or sit there thinking "huh, alright" every few moments (that the Project Lead was fine signing off on a faction of caricature pirates should have set the tone for things for me) .

At times it felt like the level designers weren't talking to each other. For instance when a peaceful faction's hidden base had its entrance literally in the middle of an enemy camp. Or where someone had the bright idea to stick mines at the level transition to certain cells - killing the player as they load in. Side content wise though from what I've seen of the main quests, this disparity in direction does seem to reinforce what the Project Lead said in how the Frontier was more a collection of mods than one concise project.

As a mod it would be more salvageable to include its Worldspace without any of its story. There just isn't enough there from what I've experienced which was of quality to justify bothering to keep any of it (bringing up New California again for comparison - with that mod I don't think anything was worth saving). When not playing quests and just exploring the mod was fine. There was bugs and ill thought out level design choices (like making certain train tracks accessible - but then deciding not to make all segments solid), and often enemy encounters weren't balanced well. However its world felt much more developed than so many "new lands" mods on the Nexus - where even if the quality's there, they just don't have the scope.

Perhaps someone will salvage the mod then - not for its story, but to make a DUST patch for. As a worldspace the Frontier's could make a better survival simulator than just re-using New Vegas. In fact that's to an extent what I hoped the Frontier would be - till later in the project it was announced the survival elements were gone, and their release videos made the mod seem like Call of Duty.

I think overhyping and mis-advertising is the enemy here.  I think I saw all Frontier's trailers, and nothing in them in any way implied that this was going to be a low-budget cringy erotica mod.  It looked more like sci fi adventure and serious military exploits, and that's what I expected.  
If they'd advertised it as a sex mod, and thrown it up only on a certain adult modding site that does far worse than furry sex, we'd have probably never heard another word of anger about it, at least not here.  
The same for no-man's sky.  An indie developers first game that fell massively short of the hype and advertising.  But what if the advertising had been absolutely and completely honest?  *shrug* I doubt it would have ended up being an infamous game known to legend for its awfulness on release.

Note to devs:  Stop overhyping!  Stop it with the misleading trailers.  Really.  Cut it out.  You're just hurting yourselves.  It's really ridiculous.


Edit: How protective are the frontier devs of their mod? Do they allow other modders to mod it further? It sounds like it has some potential mixed in with the bad. A very enterprising and dedicated modder (group of modders) could probably run through it and edit it into something decent, if I'm understanding the posts here.