nicethugbert: Did you ever have play Neverwinter Nights? That game had a toolset, like the The Witcher 2, and a huge PW community with hundreds of great custom servers, and everyone bought the expenasions because the content was good. Any company who thinks that toolsets puts them out of business has low self esteem. So, a toolset proves to have yet another advantage in that it shows that the developers is not worth the time and money if they feel that the toolset is bad for them.
babark: You misunderstand what I was trying to say. I made no mention of companies thinking toolsets will put them out of business, or that they think they are bad for them. Quite the opposite, in fact.
I was trying to say that they could encourage an attitude of "Oh, lets just release a buggy or incomplete mess, because it'll be fixed in fan-mods anyhow". Like with Dark Souls on the PC. Or Spacebase DF9.
Bioware thought that Neverwinter Nights would be essentially a toolkit, so it didn't initially release a campaign. But, it was taking too long for players to create their own adventures, which meant no good word of mouth to sell the game. So, Bioware was forced to hurry and create a campaign to give people something to play with. Then all was well. No one thought too highly of the original campaign but it sold. BW's first expansion wasn't generally considered all that great, but, it sold because who doesn't want more good content? Even if the story is not so great, the rest of the assets were. NWN's second expansion was the good one. Great story and all.
So, you're right to an extent as the the story of NWN shows. Developers can make the mistake of thinking that players will do their work for them. And, it'll be a hugh mistake, as the story of NWN shows. Bioware should have never assumed that a bunch of amateurs would be able to compete with it. It should have taken the game seriously from the start because toolsets are not a threat to a professionally developed game, as NWN proved. Even their poor initial campaign and first expansion sold despite the fact that BW could have definitely done better, and eventually did. So, in the end, my point if made. There is no reason for a developer to fail to produce quality product because of a toolset. Amatuers will not take business away from them.
Amateurs will only compete with amateurs. Which supports my original point. A toolset protects players from bad developers. If a developer doesn't have the confidence to compete agaisnt amateurs, which is what a toolset allows, then the developer is not ready for prime time, not worth your money.
Also, toolsets are a threat to microtransactions. My experience of Microtranactions is that they are used to string players along, making them repurchase the same game qualities in a new form factor. We're all familiar with developers releasing a series of DPS Applicators, each one better than the next.
Microtranactions on their own are no different than macrotranactions. The distinction between the two is arbitrary. However, Microtranaction content is released at a faster pace, nearly every update, and the games are updated frequently.
This allows developers to play the nerf buff game, where they pretend to care about game balance, but, it becomes obvious that they really do not. Years after the initial perpetual open beta release, the developer is still playing the nerf buff game, releasing new "OP" content to nerf, over and over, reintroducing the qualities that it had previously nerfed into a new form factor behind yet another pay or grind wall. Constantly cannibalizong the game's popular qualities but nerfing it's current form factor and re-releasing those qualities in a new form factor.
But, that's just more bad behavior on the part of developers. It's either a lack of confidence on their part to resort to such scamming, or it's actual inability on the part of the developer to produce high quality game play.
Either way, Miscrotranactions expose the players to bad behavior on the part of developers that players can correct themselves with a toolset and the lack of a toolset is a sign that developers lack ability or willingness to produce quality content. Which is my original point.