Everything that is wrong with mods as they are now from a new player perspective

[Smikis]

I am new here and I am not a modder, but I am player that has been using mods for last decade.
I know game is still in alpha and might be in alpha for another 2 years, game state has nothing to do with actual modding.

This is my view as a new player.

1. Most important, modpacks, guys/ladies all of us appreciate your hard work and as a comp science student I know there is pride in anything you creat, but having 200 small mods with at least 1/3 of them conflicting with the rest is nightmare. Some of most well know mods started as a collection of many small mods.   Imagine being new player, opening mod forum to find 200+ small mods, knowing that half of them will conflict just by reading first 3 posts, it is very discouraging let a lone incredibly time consuming.

2. Mods with same content. I am fairly confident that if you asked modder that has created similar mod as one you are trying to make, he would allow you to improve his instead of having second mod that might share some of its features and in the future both would be mutually exclusive instead of one bigger mod, which would eventually could lead into modpacks or total overhaul mod.

3. Downloading mods. I've noticed that this forum allows attachment,  but for some reason people aren't using them, which makes going through those 200+ mods a total nightmare, there is rimworlds nexus as well, but since its client doesnt support RimWorld yet, not many people upload there. One simple rule could remove the need to deal with 20 different download sites for each mod, either force people to use attachments or recommend single good sharing website such as dropbox, surely no mod will exceed this limit

Dropbox Basic (free) accounts:

    The total amount of traffic that all of your links together can generate without getting banned is 20 GB per day.
    The total number of downloads that all of your links together can generate is 100,000 downloads per day.

Tldr, think of new players or of yourself as a player, browsing through 200+ different mods, that takes hours to go through all of them, because of poor forum infrastructure, not even counting duplicate content or endless conflicts between the mods.
Band with your fellow modders, combine smaller mods into bigger one, then bigger into even bigger ones, create mod packs which would grow into total overhaul mods  ( overhaul might be wrong phrase in this case ), work in teams, have 5 big mods that might follow 5 different directions, instead of 200 that follow same 5 directions, but takes incredible amounts of effort that no new player will invest to get them working properly.

And once again thank you for awesome mods.

[skullywag]

1. Modpack creators should be doing their due diligence and working out conflicts when creating the pack and from what ive seen they do. Also I have literally just this afternoon thrown together my own personal pack of about 30 mods...not 1 conflict, havent messed with ordering or anything , been playing about 4 hours, not 1 issue. If you grab mods in the same area (it tends to be medical/bionics area) they may well conflict but thats par for the course.

2. I disagree, every modder should be free to express themselves however they see fit, just because someone has made it already should not stop someone creating...ever.

3. The forum has a file size limit hence not many people use it. Also people have "issues" with some download providers, I personally have been asked to not use github/mediafire/dropbox, so i picked one and stuck with it, modders cant win on his one.

And as for your last point I again disagree, I say keep your mods granular/modular but generic in build, large mods tend to have more issues with conflicts with other large mods. Tynan is always adding more ways to the core to help modders avoid conflicts (the recipe handling on worktables for example) its up to modders to make use of these tools.

I understand the frustration of pulling together your own mod pack from a load of download links (im weird and personally enjoy it...) but until such time that the community or Tynan can agree a home for mods and allow them to be pulled easily then this is it im afraid.

The above is just my opinion.

[ChoGGI]

I started playing a week or two ago, didn't have much trouble putting a mod list together

http://choggi.org/text/ModsConfig.xml (84 mods)

personally I also enjoyed putting it together
(I will say it took a couple hours)

[Latta]

3. The forum has a file size limit hence not many people use it. Also people have "issues" with some download providers, I personally have been asked to not use github/mediafire/dropbox, so i picked one and stuck with it, modders cant win on his one.

I understand dropbox, but what's the issue with GitHub/MediaFire? GitHub don't even have any ads.

[mipen]

Personally I find GitHub to be the greatest thing ever! It is so easy for me to package and upload the mod in a ready to use state, it is very easy for me to switch between developing on my laptop and desktop pc, it has very good version control and you can use the issues page to track suggestions and bugs. It has made everything so much easier for me

[skullywag]

I have no problem with github, ive been a bit rubbish at keeping mine up to date (everythings local right now) but when i had everything on there, people moaned...a lot...

[Smikis]

1. Modpack creators should be doing their due diligence and working out conflicts when creating the pack and from what ive seen they do. Also I have literally just this afternoon thrown together my own personal pack of about 30 mods...not 1 conflict, havent messed with ordering or anything , been playing about 4 hours, not 1 issue. If you grab mods in the same area (it tends to be medical/bionics area) they may well conflict but thats par for the course.

I never said they don't, thats whole modpack purpose, but only modpacks I could find were for older alpha versions, some goes as low as alpha 5/6 and most recent one was for alpha 8.


I didnt mean that modders should stop being creative or stop creating mods, but if at least few bands up and create larger mods, which would eventually absorb smaller ones, everyone would win? Easier for players and now small mods are used for majority of people using mods and every modder still get credit and most importantly satisfaction knowing that his mod was recognized.

But if you guys enjoy creating modpacks with working load orders, why don't you do us a favour and upload couple of them, because we will enjoy using them.

[skullywag]

But what if i want just that 1 thing thats now in the large mod. Trust me when i say it happens daily, there are people that want the large mods (yourself) and there are people who will want you to split your large mod up into smaller pieces as I want the droids but im not bothered about your power generation for example (me with MD2 lol).

And I will happily upload the modpack im using once I iron out the kinks in a few of my mods im developing.

[akiceabear]

I understand dropbox, but what's the issue with GitHub/MediaFire? GitHub don't even have any ads.

MediaFire is extremely unreliable for me, often refusing to load the landing page (period), both on my "natural" ISP connection and using a VPN.

Every other download portal works reliably with my ISP/country AFAIK.

[mrofa]

I know game is still in alpha and might be in alpha for another 2 years, game state has nothing to do with actual modding.

It have alot to do with actuall modding compare to realese version in alpha each version our envoirment is changing, from small changes that takes 2 mins to fix, for bigger ones that takes a week to fix to the ones that makes you delete part of your mod since the way that it allowed it to work is now not existing.

But as you writed, its from your perspective. From modders perspective its not all Guns & Roses as it looks like

[Smikis]

I know game is still in alpha and might be in alpha for another 2 years, game state has nothing to do with actual modding.

It have alot to do with actuall modding compare to realese version in alpha each version our envoirment is changing, from small changes that takes 2 mins to fix, for bigger ones that takes a week to fix to the ones that makes you delete part of your mod since the way that it allowed it to work is now not existing.

But as you writed, its from your perspective. From modders perspective its not all Guns & Roses as it looks like

But unless after release game wont be supported that is not going to change whether its in alpha , beta or released, things going to be added/changed, same as majority of games that support modding.

There is another issue with lots of small mods, some will eventually end up being abandoned, while if it was incorporated into big mod, it would end up being updated by someone else working on it. And even now in alpha there are probably over 200 mods, at some point there will be thousands of them, that's not a sustainable environment, people are either going to use most popular mods or wont even bother using them as there is so much work to get them working.

How many mods skyrim had, probably millions by now, how many are used actively , 20? half of them grew and absorbed other mods and skyrim is still game that requires so much preparation before you can play with mods, unless you are using just few of them. I am looking at games such as civ4, total war series and so forth, where you have 10-20 big mods that are somewhat different for different tastes or experiences

[daft73]

Well warmart is supposed to the next great answer to putting it all in one store, but it kills small businesses. More of the same here, all in one not always the best. But that is just an opinion.

More to the point, this updated mods list , can be quite useful. It is regularly updated, so it is a great starting point.

[RemingtonRyder]

I agree that it can be a bit daunting going through that releases board. But once you've become acquainted with the mods which interest you, you really just need to keep your eyes open for a new mod to add to the mix, or an update to an existing mod.

I myself try to be proactive about making compatibility patches or addons. Now, if someone comes along and asks for permission to roll the mods and patches/addons into one convenient download, I can't say I would object, as long as credit is given where it's due.

The thing is, I can't guarantee that another mod creator will be on board with that. Or even that players will want to use both mods together. So I have to sort of have to let someone else pick up that torch.

[daft73]

@ MarvinKosh, would not sticky-ing the mods list , help newer players? Just a suggestion. I guess the only thing stopping it is the fact that it is not updated enough?

[tylers2001]

Dude if you dont like how the mods are then DONT LOOK AT THE MODS. just like cyber bullying. "Scientist have discovered an astonoshing way to stop cyber bulling" *shows picture of a power button* its the same principle.