@jshores,

From our perspective we made FE a very mod friendly game and have continued to improve on it. But instead of acknowledgement on just how mod friendly the game is we seem to instead be treated as if we've somehow misled users.  

Posts like yours make it hard to justify spending more engineering hours on mod support when it's clear that nothing we do will ever be good enough.

We share our hopes as  we work because we think of our customers as being part of our team. But in return we get these hopes thrown back in our face as if we were making promises.  We can only post what we intend to do Or plan to do. But plans don't always work out when they meet up with reality.

I'm done here. If you have a mod request send it to support and I'm sure it'll get looked at. 

Guys its time to ease up and let the man work and let this rest.  It takes time and money to do anything and this is just going to lead to a lot of pain.  He said he was willing to work with us, throwing veiled, and not veiled insults does not help anyone and hurts many.  He told us what we need to do to help and now we will be lucky if we get that after the bashing that ensued here.  Calm down and be polite, this is a great game and I personally love it.  There is a lot of mod-ability to the game its just not in the traditional sense and there are some hurdles to it.  It can get better but only if we give clear and concise and simple requests not huge base coding changes that require massive code rewrites.

I am honored that my posts carry so much weight that they make it hard for you to justify to your team to spend time on modding. It is a shame that they don't carry enough weight to get it fixed.

We ARE happy with the current perceived features, we just want those existing features to work correctly, predictably and consistently from one location, preferably the mod folder. Anything beyond that would be icing on the cake. We're not raising pitchforks over a lack of features, we are raising them over broken existing features and cryptic functionality. The quotes in my last post were out of frustration, but really I think we would all be happy if the current functionality in the XML worked with predictable results.

In-game data: Very modifiable through XML. 3/5, would be 5/5 if you fixed the many issues with the in-game workshop tools and the object insanity in /mods/ and listened to one or two suggestions.

Graphics and 3d models: I would honestly rate this at the highest I've ever seen in any game. Excellently done. 4/5, would be 5/5 if you released all the models used (NS2 did that) and allowed for animations and skeletons to load to any 3d call (so we could make an animated crown for example). Supporting free-ware Blender with export plugins would be a step in the right direction also.

UI: Barely moddable, we can move things around slightly or resize them. Requires expensive program. 1/5

Data interpretation: Some very shallow things can be done, new spell calculations and the things you find in CityResourceEffectDefs.xml. 1/5, would be 0/5 without those.

Scripting, ability to create new dynamics, variables: 0/5

Mod management: We have a /mods/ folder but we might as well overwrite the core files for all the good it does us. No in-game messages about installed mods or any kind of manager to select mods or download mods with. 0/5.

So, I do not agree with Frogboy that the game is very modifiable. The things they have opened up, I think they have done a solid job there but still plenty of room for improvements in those areas. What brings the game down is the areas they haven't touched. That's me acknowledging the hard work they've put into some areas.

I think the modding community needs to manage their expectations.

It's clear that moddability to the extent that they expect is not going to be happen, simply because it takes too much effort to support that kind of flexibility from just a bunch of XML values. From the dev's point of view, it means that native code must be written to support each tag or value to be able to mod one particular aspect of the game. In theory, with a large enough pool of such tags, you can conceivably create a wholly different type of game. But that is not going to happen because [a] it's literally a never-ending task and [b] this kind of "dials-n-switches" approach is also extremely messy to use in the end.

The solution is to pursue a different methodology and expose a subset of the game engine functionality as an opaque API that can support separately written gameplay code (whether it's a DLL or scripts). This has nearly unlimited flexibility. Of course, this is also a massive undertaking and probably won't happen for FE at this point. Catch-22.

The problem is simply that things in mod folder don't overwrite the core values. If that was true, then I'd say the game is indeed quite modable. And nobody can convince me that this is working as intended. So it's either too much fuss for Stardock to fix that or they simply don't care.

Don't let me start at cartographer which is bugged as hell (rivers, anyone). I really doubt Stardock uses that as base for creating their maps.

Things like that keep me from modding the game (adding content is fine, but it gets old after awhile).

What we have now is AT MOST the ability to add extra content. That's not real modability in my eyes.

Double post, sorry.

From my limited experience as a modder (modding things just for myself, at least for the moment) I think that both parts have valid reasons.

From the modder side, Heavenfall summarized it very well. Mostly what can be done is add new content (units, buildings, etc) but when it's about adding new dynamics it's a lot more difficult because there is no scripting language or even almost nothing that can act as that.

It's possible that there can be done many more things that what seems, but without documentation it's difficult to know. Modders have to search the files looking for examples instead of having a manual of what tags they can use and which arguments they accept. Also, the mod folder does not work, which could be really helpful. Also some tags don't work when they should for no apparent reason (the other thread has an example, but cities getting local amounts of global resources is another).

From the publisher side, a great effort has been done to make the game moddable, and it seems people don't care enough.

It's difficult to balance both positions, but I think can be achieved. First and most important, fix what is broken. Second, document what you have. This would greatly change the bad feeling that some people have of "Stardock not caring". We know that you care, you just need to act in a way that makes this care more visible.

This is just another case of missing expectations management. Fb is done with this thread, but I'll write it again anyway.

What this game development team is needing is a transparent list of what is under development. They have it internally, they just don't show it.

I love changelogs, but until they deliver they serve as information of what was identified as wrong and already fixed or what was added.

I as a player report a bug, and I get no confirmation the report has been read, so I wait and after next release the bug is repeatable. Conclusion: I wasted time reporting the bug, it got missed. Probable truth: it was read, put on list, estimated not important enough to fix quickly or requiring larger number of eng-hours that could be spend on greater number of fixes.

I as a player have a fabulous idea (IMO of course), I write a post, single sentence or wall of text prioritized, detailed. I raise a discussions others join, we compile a list together, OP get updated and ... nothing. I get no confirmation the idea has been read, so I wait and after next release it is not implemented. Conclusion and probable truth like above

Satisfaction: none.

Will I repeat? probably.

How many times? 2-3, after that I'll stop contributing.

Will it hurt SD cashflow? no, the money are already spent.

Will I spread the news about great game shaping in right direction? no, of course no, I was ignored, my ego is hurting, and I was sooooo good willed and faithful

That's all very easy to improve. SD is scanning the forums already, just post a simple 'read' comment under the post from a sd account.

Post a list of things on table (aka changelogs) - already done. Post a list of prioritized changes that are not yet on table. - read only, updated by SD only, with at least weekly update. and for mercy of whoever, mark clearly things (mark them with a large green tick) that you have delivered.

allow discussion over priorities in other threads 

and compare this with: "then don't" and 'bear with me if you want to talk with me' and 'I shared my hope and it is being thrown to me like if I made a promise'.

we talk about perceptions here, and the perception is that suggestions are ignored, criticism is bullied and words are wind 

SeanW3 has left, Heavenfall is on the leave (or at least quite dispirited, with reasons). No one proposed a library of additional stamps, a new map or scenario.

I don't know who is wrong or right, but in the end, customer is always right. To believe that long term modding don't bring cashflow is denying the reality of what happened to Civilization IV. 

The reason why there are no player made scenarios it's because there are very limited options. If I remember correctly Derek or Brad said that it is being improved because they could not do what they wanted for LH scenarios. Stamps for example are a really good idea, but they cannot be fully developed because there is no way to create small scripts for those stamps.

Don't get me wrong. I really think that FE is among the best games of all times (the exact rank is debatable but that's not really the point) I also think that the modding options are cool but somewhat limited, not entirely working and poorly documented. The good thing is that the path it's clear. First fix and document. Second expand and improve.

I will still be here, come sunshine or rain. But I've reached the end of what I am willing to do with the current tools. No mod of mine for FE is currently being developed. Undecided if I will convert Stormworld to FE:LH yet - as Frogboy put it, "expect nothing". Depends on if Stardock will develop the modding area or leave it as is (and I'm not talking about a few "bite-sized" changes here).

I tried, but the map making tool is tedious and confusing

It truly is amazing, and it is fairly "Mod-able", the problem is the amount of "Free-modding" (without learning coding and stuff) is limited down to what the developers thought were necessary, which means when a "Modder" gets an idea outside the box, he can't do it.
I under its hard to make a game freely moddable for people like me (Translated: Idiots) but FE kind of tried to market itself like that (How I understood it) and that is why people get a bone stuck in the throat when the expectations aren't met.

I can promise that every single person in this thread really like the game, and wants to praise Stardock for the vanilla experience, because if they didn't liked what they saw, they would not be hanging out on the forum, the fact that the forum have activity means that its a success to some extent, some people would praise the game, but still come here to talk about they're concerns.
Its hard for me to praise the game on a forum, praise from me often target my friends so they know what I have seen that I think is amazing, so they too can share the awesomeness.
Getting upset that people are talking "badly" or in a "negative tone" in here wont help, talking trash about the game wont work either, but I understand why Heavenfall is annoyed with the progression, because I feel the same way, I have seen several posts on the "Modding Sub-Forum" talking about issues with "Modding" which never even got replied to (by a Stardockian), and seeing lots of "Modding" ideas go down due to restrictions, month after month can take something off your bottle.

It is said several times, this is one of the major concerns in modding, if you want your modding to work from a mod-folder, make it work from there, or at least state when its going to be fixed or what is going to happen, people "waiting" for a fix gets tired of relying on a third party mod-manager when the game is supposed to manage mods...
Again, Stardock did not do anything wrong with the game-code here.
I understand that its tough, but it would be great if the Public Relations guy said "We are confused, please give us 6 months", just to set the expectations of the crowd to something realistic, we are fans, of course our expectations will hit the roof when clouds are all that's talked about.

In hindsight I think a non-moddable game would have a greater set of expectations come from "Modding", I see games with no mod support at all get tons of mods due to fans going banjo on the code, but when a game is "Half-Moddable" "Modders" instead go "Hey they made it easy for us", and then realise that what they intend to do is hard. It might sound counter-intuitive, but this pretty much stops "Modders" from going further.

Thank you Frogboy and team for this game and all the mod features you put in, I hope next time you make them more user friendly, if you need tips you can ask again and I hope me or someone with patience will write you a few notes about where and what you can improve.

Its always hard, especially for a "small" company to make a easily "Moddable" game on release to run perfect, and it probably will take a long time before the average mod would be at the scale of Heavenfall's mod, I just hope you continue when you write in new stuff, especially new features (The new swarm feature comes to mind) where, and how it should be "Moddable", I for one would love to see this feature only be active when the unit have a certain trait.

Also, note that even though "Modders" might be a minority, you also have to count in the people who would want to use those mods.

Hope this wall of text is readable and provides food for thought, enjoy or disregard

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Well put, I feel the same way.

I like the idea of showing everyone a list of the ideas that you have, and the known bugs, and the order in which they are planned to be fixed/implemented. However it does have some inherent problems, 1st people will get annoyed that their particular bug/problem/feature isn't higher on the list, and post about it, while people who like the order probably wont, which leaves an overwhelmingly negative "we can never please our customers no matter what we do" impression on the devs. 2nd if the user base ever ever perceived a delay (correctly or incorrectly) they would raise a veritable storm. 3rd resources get shifted internally, sometimes more people than should have been were on a project because of delays elsewhere so they get moved off, or people are needed elsewhere because of unexpected problems, user base gets annoyed the moment they see this happen and raises a storm.

Starting to see the picture? Transparency sounds wonderful, but the moment that people can see what you are doing, they'll criticize it, or find a problem, or loudly proclaim that they could have organized it better. Maybe this could be managed, maybe the overwhelming positive of seeing improvements coming down the line, seeing bugs being addressed as they are addressed would counterbalance things, maybe the goodwill generated for forum regulars would mean they would help manage the forums and keep down the overly negative feedback from people who really just want their problem solved and solved now (understandable, it's just human nature, but not constructive and new features make more money than bug fixes, I'm sorry but it's true) or their wonderful idea implemented by the team of hired monkeys who exist only to implement their great vision (I mean stardock of course)

In conclusion, it's an interesting idea, and it could go very very right. It could also very very wrong, but on the plus side, it's easy to just stop after stating why you stopped.

EDIT: also, inevitably, the bottom of the list will never be reached, no developer every manages to implement every good idea that they have, or fix every bug/issue, and eventually they have to move onto the next product. This will probably annoy a small but vocal minority, who will come back and say "but you promised"

I don't care about a list, I want to see shit get done. If you can count to two, you can count the exact number of changes implemented since FE release that were specifically aimed at modding. They fixed a type of event trigger, then they fixed terraintype overwrites from /mods/ folder. That's what has come from Frogboy saying he'll focus on modding after release, then after patch 1.2. Does anyone even know if this has been implemented? I don't, because there's no communication and no resources.

Edit: Full disclosure, one animator at Stardock also helped me set up a new skeleton when I couldn't get it to work. I had too many bones in the skeleton, above the max cap of the engine.

Edit2: There was also this  https://forums.elementalgame.com/430589 which noone ever got to work for anything.

Meanwhile, not a single request has been implemented. The workshop tools are untouched.

But Civ5 modding is the same and look at how much more interesting the modding scene there is.

What gets me is that SD supposedly uses the same tools we do to develop their content for the game (except for the excel XML parser.)

It seems to me if they had just invested X labor hours into making those tools more efficient, they might have saved X*2 or X*3 labor hours in developing content for the game. And the modders would be much happier to boot.

Maybe I'm looking at it backwards or from the wrong point of view, but that's the way I see it.

Two words: Derek Paxton

He wrote the official guide to modding Civ5.  What has he done to advance the modability of the Elemental franchise?

There is no doubt that Stardock has done a lot to make Elemental a great game!  Thanks to Stardock for that!!  We are some of Elemental's (and Stardocks) most loyal and devoted fans!!  Please don't lose sight of that!!

As for the modder's frustrations, many of us have put a lot of hours into mods.  It's frustrating for us trying to make our visions come true within the limitations we have.  So, Brad, please forgive us for venting that frustration some times.  If this wasn't a labor of love, we would not be so passionate about it!!

For myself, I've worked for hundreds of man-days on a RPG slanted mod.  I've created a unique race with its own look and feel including unique clothing, equipment, abilities and limitations....  except....

Because of modding limitations, I can't restrict my race to only specific weapons or armor types so not using those other types has become for me, strictly voluntary (this is one of the main reasons I've never released my mod to the public).  I've granted my race unique abilities but balance those abilities by giving unique restrictions.

I've had to limit many of the things I would like to do because I've forced myself to only make mods I can put in the Mods folders.  Having to mod the original files just creates too many compatibility issues and makes taking new versions of the game too cumbersome.  I slammed hard into that problem in Elemental: WoM.

Even with those limitations, I'm down to just needing to create unique quests to give those unique items.... but creating quests more complicated than go to this goodie hut and win this one encounter so so painfully hard to do, I've given up in frustration.   I want to be able to create a few core quests that have 4-8 encounters in 1 to 4 separate locations (given that quests are the heart and soul of an RPG, I think I'm justified in saying this is a minimal requirement for anything worthy of the name, RPG).  In the few quests I've written so far I get it done in 10 to 20 <QuestObjectDefs>.  It has taken me, on average, 6-8 hours per <QuestObjectDef> to get a quest to work.  The final straw was just trying to get the second goodie huts in a string of what will eventually be four separate locations to spawn but it fails and I can't figure out why. 

I would even write a quest creation program if I could figure out how the quest XML actually worked well enough to write it but if I can't manually design a quest without thrashing about for days, I can't write a program to do it!

For the record, my day job is a lead programmer/analyst with 20+ years experience.  And I've been modding since Elemental: WoM so I'm not exactly a bonehead when it comes to this stuff! 

I know that only a small number of Elemental's players are modders, but I think that the value we bring to the game in terms of providing additional playability and replayability to your game makes modder much more valuable than our numbers would imply.

It can't go much more wrong really than it is currently tbh.

I practice that all day long, (from IT department perspective against business units in the company - this is the exact same type of behaviour, they want too much, too fast, too cheap and they want it yesterday and don't forget about things you're already juggling) the idea behind publicizing the list is to take the discussion to the business, putting yourself into the role of executor while reserving yourself slot necessary for architectural improvement, introduction of new platforms (new features to FE) or to put it other way when IT is a Business unit.

Ultimatelly the business (customers in this case) are paying my (IT, Stardock) wages. When done correctly, the business decide among themselves and prioritize what to do next given the limited resources (you need to be honest and trasnparent about the reosurces you have, they can check, if you lie, you'll never regain their trust and the expectations will grow again to the unmanagable level).

I've never said to SD to put dates on their list (not at the start), the list should show what will be done next. if you see your own precious item down the list, gain support to put it higher. if you get enough support and IT (Stardock) delivers that large group of customers (business units) supporting it will be happy (or at least happier).

And just like HF said, some won't care about the list but about getting things done. Show them you done some, let them count to ten not to two because they might haven't notice their request for fullfilled. Show them how their request move up the lists and eventualy gets done. Build credibility.

However doing things nobody expects pleases noone. Doing things in wrong sequence irritates those paying dudes, that usually have more money to throw into the basket if asked. It's all very nice that they did LH, it will bring them money. But they disgruntled LOTS of their current customers. How many of you would buy LH if it wasn't free? Why there wasn't a poll among the CURRENT GAMERS what this game need most, better champions or maybe better tacticals. or maybe better modding or some improvement toward multiplayer. They decided on themselves, they can do so, they get our money, now they can decide what to do with them. Am I happy about it. No. Many others are. The point is in identifying and managing expectations, which they don't seem to be doing. That list is a most basic tool, easy to implement and maintain, low hanging fruit that show you're commited, show your progress, shows that you listen to those that pays your bills for your childrens schools.

The reason I'm raging against lists is personal. It's compartmentalizing things that modders want to get done into "things we didn't know about" and "things we heard someone talk about". There is no third category, "things we did something about". The problem isn't a lack of lists, the problem is there is no process to bring things into that third category.

The very sad reality is that unless we do the kind of hair-pulling, wailing and gnashing you see in this thread, then there is no second category either. Stardock may lament us complaining about all the things we do in this thread, but it appears to be the only way to get any sort of attention for issues. It was exactly the same situation the last time they fixed a bug for modding - first massive wave of complaints, then a minor fix.

Stardock should be taking the initiative for these kinds of things. Why aren't Stardock going out there, listening to what we have to say, fixing the issues? Instead we have to cut our wrists just to MAYBE get some minor bugfixes for in-game tools? Why are we on our knees asking for bugfixes like the map editor being unable to load two maps in a row - the tile editor not sorting loadable tiles in alphabetical order?

Stardock may not like the attitude of modders in this thread, but they created this situation as much as anyone else by being blind and deaf to what has been said by experienced modder as well as the first-time ones.

Not really because Civ5 also has a scripting interface with Lua from their engine, which like I said, FE really needs in order to support that kind of flexibility. 

I think things are going to be worse in LH just judging by the screenshots.

Starting with this one:

At the very best, the above screenshot makes me think we are going to have to do UI modifications to add new paths and to implement new skill trees. At the worst, we may not be able to add new content or we may only be able to replace the existing content and it look correct on the screen.

Then there is this image:

Best case, we get to add paths and it will automatically give us a slider that lets us navigate to paths that are off the screen. Worst case, we have limit our custom paths to replace the existing ones.

I am going to take Frogboy's advice and not expect anything positive on the modding front. It's going to be a weird situation if LH is more scenario friendly while FE ends up being the most mod friendly in it's current state. From the comments in this thread from Frogboy, I expect that modding has been thrown out the window to streamline development of this expansion.

I choose to take a more optimistic view (possibly easier for me because I've only been here a few months, but anyway).

Regarding the character traits tree.... I'd be surprised if it isn't generated in the same was the the tech tree.  So it's probably just a different view of the current skill choices.   Presumably/hopefully if you add ability X and make it's prereq one of those existing abilities .. it will automatically show up in the right spot on the tree.

Regarding the path selection tree... i'm presuming/hoping that your best case is how it will work, we get a slider for additional paths.  I know that in FE... if you create extra magic paths/schools... they show up on the sov creation screen (you get a slider) this will perhaps work the same way.