Will there be a modding system akin to Steam Workshop?


junaid_hussain

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I've never heard of anyone arguing against the ability to mod before. I'm blown away.

Some games may suit modding others do not, in my opinion this game is unique and does not suit modding (at this stage) sheesh it's only still in Alpha. Ie stacks of development and tweaking still going on.

And what would you want to mod is another question that no one seems to be able to answer!

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I've never heard of anyone arguing against the ability to mod before. I'm blown away.

I don't get it either. No-one has to play any mod he or she dislikes. Nothing prevents you from ignoring the mere existence of mods. You can always stick to the original game and be happy that it suits your personal needs so well. ;)

I for one actually see a huge potential in TLD for modding. And I'm not talking about adding any fancy stuff like new items, skins or abilities but simply about changes that influence the game's difficulty and/or balancing. In other words: wildlife AI + detection range, number of animals and items, weather patterns and weather durations, indoor & outdoor temperatures, the calorie amount of meat and whatever else you can imagine.

Not a single week goes by in which no new posts arise from people who either ask for a more "realistic" mode (Pilgrim wildlife AI + Stalker weather & items) or a nightmare mode (Stalker wildlife AI, but way less animals & items) or some kind of Pilgrim-Plus mode (with Pilgrim weather & items, but Voyageur wolf AI).

The Devs have stated repeatedly that they want to stick to the current three modes and this is probably a good idea. Their staff isn't particularly big and their working time is limited. They simply can't create (and especially test & balance) all kinds of modes that people ask for. Modding, on the other hand, could provide such experiences.

Enabling mods would imho be a win-win situation for the Devs: They could concentrate on their own 3-mode vision and let members of the community create those additional experiences that are constantly aked for. What's better than having someone work for you for free?

I'm totally optimistic that at least some of the mods would be enjoyable and balanced. Modding is working fine in most other games and TLD's community is both more dedicated and more mature than any other I know.

I thus bet we have a lot of capable modders around here who would be willing to devote a lot of time and effort to create a well-wrought and balanced mod. And presumably even more people who would be willing to test their creations, give them feedback and help to polish those mods. :)

And once again: If you don't want to play such a mod, no-one would ever force you to. You need to actively install that stuff. You're not even going to ever see it exists unless you search the Steam Workshop.

TL, DR:

+1 for modding

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  • 1 month later...

This actually surprises me. I think modding is great, however my experience at least here in the forums, seems like HL wouldnt be for it. I know Save editors, and trainers , have been met with much disapproval from HL (at least bethany). Which strikes me as odd, since giving the ablility to mod would essentially allow for the same thing. But then again, I think there has been some misunderstanding as far as save editor vs altering game code goes, which seems to be the fall back excuse as to why those are discouraged to be talked about.

In any event, I love the idea of modding.

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This actually surprises me. I think modding is great, however my experience at least here in the forums, seems like HL wouldnt be for it. I know Save editors, and trainers , have been met with much disapproval from HL (at least bethany). Which strikes me as odd, since giving the ablility to mod would essentially allow for the same thing. But then again, I think there has been some misunderstanding as far as save editor vs altering game code goes, which seems to be the fall back excuse as to why those are discouraged to be talked about.

In any event, I love the idea of modding.

The 'disapproval' comes not directly from me, but from our forum guidelines, which I am certainly here to enforce. Trainers can have a negative impact on gameplay, and often dilutes feedback, particularly from a technical standpoint. We've had many players report issues, only to find (after hours of trying to reproduce said issues) that they were operating with "trainers" or "cheat engines", making their feedback and the time we've spent focusing on it relatively worthless. This is a big part of the reason we discourage the use of trainers, and prohibit open discussion of them in the forums.

Again, modding is certainly not off the table. It's just something we aren't considering until full launch, as opening the floor to modding would be another nightmare for our technical team, and it doesn't make much sense to have modding capabilities for a game that is in a constant state of change. If we weren't updating/hotfixing/patching as often as we are now, it might be a different story, but I doubt that. We are certainly not adverse to re-opening the discussion to support mods after full release.

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while to a point is see what your saying , I think most of that is expectations and how you set them. If the first question asked is if any trainers or editors or mods have taken place then the obviously they first step will be to disable those. I wouldnt go as far as to say it doesnt make sense thou. A game i've logged over 1500 hours on is currently in alpha and has allowed modding / dev mode in the game since launch with no major issues and the modding is a HUGE part of the community. Again , i get your point, and the devs choice of saying not till release, but i do also think going as far as saying there is no point to it a bit much. Just my thoughts and something to think about.

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Modding would be a great feature to have, however I'm not so sure how easy it would be for the team. From what I can tell they're using the Unity Engine, which I personally love, it's exceptionally easy to work with, however I'm not sure what capabilities it may have in terms of creation of modding tools.

Just to clarify things, they don't actually need to make anything to support mods more than just allow talking about them.

Sure you could argue that it adds bugreports, but I highly doubt that would be a problem. If you take a look at 7 Days To Die or Stranded Deep, they support mods and have even own forum sections for them, yet they still are in Early Access state and manage to fixing bugs. The chance that someone uses mod and then doesn't realize that a bug is because of mod is kinda small, but it can be fixed by just requiring info whether the user used mods or not.

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