Why doesn't CA release editing tools?

I really don't get it. Is it THAT much work to release a map editor or a campaign creator for the game? A few tools that could make modding this game 100x easier?

The biggest qualms about this game come from complaints regarding CAI and BAI, certain behaviors/mechanics, etc... and MUCH of this can be altered with mods. WHY is CA against modding? It makes sense when a game like.... World of Warcraft is strongly against modding because its meant to be exclusively played on their private servers. NTW, on the other hand, has multiplayer elements (more so now than ever before) but I still tend to think of it as a largely single player affair. When a game is mostly SP, then it either needs to be MASTERFULLY CONSTRUCTED (Especially in the case where you are emulating battlefield tactics in the 18th-19th centuries), or has to have the potential for the community to provide fixes.

The only reason I can see is laziness. And if it's laziness, CA deserves to be bankrupt. NTW is a good game, I've played through it, but it is what Empire should have been in terms of the mechanics and AI improvements (though not perfect, not even close). Napoleon should have been an expansion (or priced like one) with modding tools. THEN we would all be praising CA for providing us with the REAL refinement of the ETW model rather than simply grubbing for more money.

As it is, the Napoleon Europe Campaign is decent enough, plus the Coalitions (mods unlock ALL nations, though), but taking the game at face value (with no mods), it's not that big. The campaigns leading up the Europe one are more narrative than open-world, which is fine, especially in the way they are used, as a warm-up for the "big show" that is taking over Europe. I don't even mind missing out on Americas/India that much, but they've shown no support to a community that has TONS of people willing to make great mods and put a lot of work into this game.

Darth has said he's not doing anything for NTW and I commend him for it. Why bust your ass when the company refuses to include tools that have been asked for since the beginning of the dev cycle? I'm glad I didn't buy NTW - my friend lets me use his Steam and I go offline mode. I'm glad I didn't pay for it because it's not worthy of my money, especially when they're doing stupid things like FURTHER alienating their fanbase by not including mod tools.

I am firm in my belief that the community has the power to turn NTW into a truly good game, expanding it beyond its own horizons, improving upon the AI and making it worthwhile. In its current form, I'm going to finish Europe, maybe do a Coalition Campaign, and then shelve this game.

Why ?

Gee, I guess 'cause the game isn't yet a month old ?

Originally Posted by Taxandrius

Why ?

Gee, I guess 'cause the game isn't yet a month old ?

ETW...

Lol CAs too busy profiting off of the few units they make that sell for redicilious prices. They dont care for "modding tools".

Amen. There are countless threads and reasons for releasing them, yet CA constanly remains silent about any questions towards tools.

I believe Darth said he wont mod unless tools, community or official are released...

because they want to sell their DLC units, not modders creating units ! they want your money.

I think that the attitudes of CA management towards the modding community has a lot more to do with jealousy and fear than the sale of DLC or the controlling hand of SEGA but probably also points to SEGA's principle objective of evolving the title into a console type product.

It's true that a greater profit motivation of selling DLC is a big reason to curtail the modding of Total War. However by reducing mods you reduce the appeal and shelf life of the product and the danger of upsetting your fan base risks the long term commercial benefits. This is unless of course the future development of Total War is being geared towards a console version or with distribution systems like Steam to create a virtual console enabling a greater level of control of your customers in which mods will not feature. This is the reason you won't be seeing any modding tools because SEGA are not really interested in the modding of current PC versions of Total War and will not sanction their development.

CA said they were going to include modding tools for the same reason they said that Empire would able to be modified or CA staff started coming onto these forums prior to the release of Napoleon TW after many months of silence,THEY WANTED TO SELL MORE COPIES!!! That's their poor cynical attitude shown towards the Total War fans the Company have. I am sorry but I really think that asking for modding tools will prove to fall on deaf ears. Modders could have produced their own tools by now but the game files have been locked away in a deliberate action of stifling the modding of the product by Creative Assembly on the excuse of copyright, which I think is more akin to them locking away their toys back in the cupboard because they don't want you playing with them anymore.

They know that if they state that the game may be able to be modified or that they may release modding tools they will sell more copies, so why promise and not deliver?, why lock the game files up? its certainly not for commercial reasons unless for short sighted benefits and its certainly not to protect copyright for the same purpose, RTW didn't have the same level of security and I don't see many RTW clones on the market do you?! I would attribute it quite simply as petty jealousy and fear. Jealousy because they are not involved in the modding process directly and the mods put their original game content to shame and fear as well that their Sugar daddy back in the land of the rising sun( SEGA )will take a dim view of this comparison, especially after the disaster that was EmpireTW.

Now the staff that work for CA are not faceless suited executives, they are t-shirt wearing gamers and in some case modders like those on TWC and this is reflected in their attitudes. I have often witnessed over the years on TWC many individuals who create textures enter into arguments with others about their reuse which can sometimes result in their departure from the forum along with their textures. (I deleted my examples) . It's a very human attitude to not want others to share what you have created even when it is not used for making money and the basis of your efforts is someone else's. Well now it is the original owners turn to take a hissy fit and have snatched away their toys when they see that others are making better use of them. Take a look around the forum and you will see a substantial level of creativity in which CA have no part, its embarrassing to them, especially when they need to justify their budget to SEGA executives back in Japan. You even started to see TW mods featuring in game magazines. Now it would be a great situation if you had a progressive and enlightened approach to developing Total War by those in charge by working with the modding commumity, regrettably I feel that this is just not possible for them.

I know that this statement can be seen as negative along with my signature but these guys have taken away my most favourite past time of modding Total War and its my turn to take a hissy fit!! (yeah!! you can call me a "Hater" all you Casual gamers around here who don't give a fig about modding) Now if only there was another kid in the school yard with better toys

Originally Posted by DoomBunny666

I believe Darth said he wont mod unless tools, community or official are released...

The question obviously being...

How would he mod even if he wished without mod tools?

they get more money by releasing dlcs and games without having the community create them.

if the etw community had tools, they would have made ntw themselves.

The fact that they hired a Modder to make this game better speaks volumes

Why dont they wait until after they have created some DLC scooped some money from our pockets then sell the modding tools for like £5?

Also making it so you need to have the tools in order to run anything created by them. (e.g You cant play a MOD with units created by the tools)

Yes this would annoy many people saying these tools should be free... blah blah but they get what they want MONEY. (which I think is understandable) and we get MODs.

I dont know about you but I'd be willing to pay £5 for the ability to play MODs which have made games like RTW and M2TW last so long and be so successful.

HarneY

Surely the easiest way would be to release the modding tools and give the modding community areas from which they are prohibited to alter. Like for example ban modders from creating certain units that they plan to release in the future. That way everyone wins. We get better quality, more diverse mods, and they get to make their cheap buck punting special units.

Theyve never released mod tools.
Theres a lot of reasons to not release mod tools
-It means letting other companies basically see what their in-house development team uses to create the game, Its not quite the source code, but it will make any other developer have about half the work they did if they decide to create a clone game.
-It takes time and money, and a lot of it, and the more elabarote and simple it is to use for the average person, the more of them. And they generally want to use that time and money to do something else
-Demand for mods was never really that high, in M2TW Kingdoms, there was a poll that showed that maybe 50% of the gamers ever used mods at all, and only 15% (IIIRC) never touched vanilla again after playing a mod, and this was among people that were playing online.
-Mod tools bring an oppurtunity for redemption, but they also bring an oppurtunity for failiure, if some modder doesnt like the hardcoded limits or things that the mod tools are buggy or unintuitive, it would make things worse for them, not better.

If you think about it logically, releasing mod tools would be examplary, not the minimum.

Originally Posted by roy34543

Theyve never released mod tools.
Theres a lot of reasons to not release mod tools
-It means letting other companies basically see what their in-house development team uses to create the game, Its not quite the source code, but it will make any other developer have about half the work they did if they decide to create a clone game.

Untrue as they can obfuscate their mod tool code just like they do the game code.

-It takes time and money, and a lot of it, and the more elabarote and simple it is to use for the average person, the more of them. And they generally want to use that time and money to do something else

Fair enough.

-Demand for mods was never really that high, in M2TW Kingdoms, there was a poll that showed that maybe 50% of the gamers ever used mods at all, and only 15% (IIIRC) never touched vanilla again after playing a mod, and this was among people that were playing online.

Ok, but how many games did they sell because of mods? Tens of thousands. Mods extend the life of their games by several years and make them a nice chunk of change.

-Mod tools bring an oppurtunity for redemption, but they also bring an oppurtunity for failiure, if some modder doesnt like the hardcoded limits or things that the mod tools are buggy or unintuitive, it would make things worse for them, not better.

This is ridiculous. Dargon Age has a toolset that is mindblowingly good. That's because Bioware has been making money off of mods for ages. There are business models in which mods can be exploited for money, lots of money. In fact, check Steam sales and you'll see that Valve is still making a killing off of mods, namely Counterstrike.

The fact that CA sees no money in mods has nothing to do with the limits of modding. It has everything to do with their failure to think outside the box when it comes to revenue generation.

If you think about it logically, releasing mod tools would be exemplary, not the minimum.

Untrue as they can obfuscate their mod tool code just like they do the game code.

Well yeah, but at some point it would either be too much work to make it worthwhile, or it would be pointless.

Ok, but how many games did they sell because of mods? Tens of thousands. Mods extend the life of their games by several years and make them a nice chunk of change.

Thats tricky to prove you know. They might have sold a lot because of mods, but they might have not. Its a remark that wont sell to the average buissnessman, not just investors (who are far less inclined to do anything that might lower returns)

This is ridiculous. Dargon Age has a toolset that is mindblowingly good. That's because Bioware has been making money off of mods for ages. There are business models in which mods can be exploited for money, lots of money. In fact, check Steam sales and you'll see that Valve is still making a killing off of mods, namely Counterstrike.

Dragon Age toolset is cool, But you know that its an RPG that is already based on previous engines that have already been modded , theyre not risking anything. Besides that Bioware are experts at modding tools, CA sort of just expected the modding community to do their stuff like they always do.
And I cant think of a reasonable way to exploit money made off mods for the TW series, even total overhauls are not really worth much money, Maybe some people would pay tiny amounts for the gigantic total conversions, but CA wouldnt employ those people that long.
The source engine is a highly flexible and open engine, its folly on your part to bring it up. It can be used to make games much more significantly diferent then mods, but valve has a lot more freedom then CA, and on top of that, lets just say the shooter crowd isnt as discriminating as most of the people here.. "cough" Modern Warfare 2 "cough"

The fact that CA sees no money in mods has nothing to do with the limits of modding. It has everything to do with their failure to think outside the box when it comes to revenue generation.

Go ahead and give me one yourself.
And I hope you are not going to be moronic and tell me "its their job!" I seriously hope your not that stupid.

Originally Posted by roy34543

Well yeah, but at some point it would either be too much work to make it worthwhile, or it would be pointless.

There's no threat to intellectual property in releasing mod tools. Anything written in C or C++ is virtually impossible to decompile and reverse engineering is so difficult that you might as well write the code yourself. It's more about costs vs. benefits--a point that I think we both agree on.

Thats tricky to prove you know. They might have sold a lot because of mods, but they might have not. Its a remark that wont sell to the average buissnessman, not just investors (who are far less inclined to do anything that might lower returns)

I agree with you generally on this point, though I think investors would be much more open to these kinds of projects if Sega were generating healthy profits. However, the last 3 years have been absolutely brutal on the gaming industry. If I were investing 10s of millions of dollars in Sega while they were losing money and they were burning up R&D budgets to give away free stuff, I'd be asking a very business-like "wtf?!?" We're talking about huge chunks of change and people rightly want to know that they're being used wisely.

In regards to "proving" profits from mods, it is difficult. However, the conventional wisdom amongst strategy game developers is that mods make money, which is why CA is one of the few companies that I know of that does not provide some degree of direct mod support, even if it's just a blog explaining how to make changes. Yet even CA routinely emphasizes that they're aware that mods "add value" to their games, which you and I know is a euphemism for the fact that mods make them money.

Honestly, my biggest beef isn't that CA hasn't created mod tools; rather, it's that they won't help modders make mod tools, which is something that strategy and rpg game companies do all the time.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Dragon Age toolset is cool, But you know that its an RPG that is already based on previous engines that have already been modded , theyre not risking anything. Besides that Bioware are experts at modding tools, CA sort of just expected the modding community to do their stuff like they always do.
And I cant think of a reasonable way to exploit money made off mods for the TW series, even total overhauls are not really worth much money, Maybe some people would pay tiny amounts for the gigantic total conversions, but CA wouldnt employ those people that long.
The source engine is a highly flexible and open engine, its folly on your part to bring it up. It can be used to make games much more significantly diferent then mods, but valve has a lot more freedom then CA, and on top of that, lets just say the shooter crowd isnt as discriminating as most of the people here.. "cough" Modern Warfare 2 "cough"



Go ahead and give me one yourself.
And I hope you are not going to be moronic and tell me "its their job!" I seriously hope your not that stupid.

Quote:
The fact that CA sees no money in mods has nothing to do with the limits of modding. It has everything to do with their failure to think outside the box when it comes to revenue generation.

Go ahead and give me one yourself.
And I hope you are not going to be moronic and tell me "its their job!" I seriously hope your not that stupid.

Well, clearly you think I'm some degree of stupid, so I can only do my best to impress you. [I could point out that in calling me stupid you committed an egregious grammatical error, but that would be petty wouldn't it ] Anyway, here are a few ideas off the top of my head: 1) a small payment to unlock the ability to use mods generated by official mod tools; 2) paying the top modders to generate content that can be sold as DLC--development costs that would certainly be lower than what they have to pay their in-house developers in the the UK; 3) striaght-up repackaging mods as DLC; and 4) development contests in which modders compete for free to have their work used in a CA release. That's just off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are many ways that wouldn't even occur to either one of us.

They probably don't have modding tools, at least not any that would be both easy to use and limited enough for the general public.

What they likely have is the internal development kit, and no game company would be dumb enough to release that.

The reason I dont pre-order games anymore. CA is greedy and wants to squeeze as much money out of its products (I don't blame them good for business). Because there are no mod tools released I wait a year and then buy the game and all its DLC for 20bucks/bargain bin prices - by then patches have been released mods have been released and I don't feel like a stooge and feel bad towards CA. WIN/WIN situation - CA sells their game and I get it for a small fee with all the updates - Thanks for all those who pre order YOU are my Beta testers

There really has to be more to it than DLC.

Most buyers never use mods. I doubt that half the people that buy the games know what mods are.

Most moders would take advantage of DLC anyway. It isn’t like they would be taking away from market share.

CA has not discouraged moders in the past, why should they have a brain dump and try to alienate them now?

Now I can totally see that they are not allowed to release the tools or to work on them because of not being given the funding to developed them.

I can totally see some bean counter accountant at Sega figuring that the tools might impact something.

Mods sell more games and extend the life of the game. Most anyone can see that but you won’t convince the real corporate types with anything but data (which costs money to acquire) and more importantly, buy making them look good.

So as soon as someone figures a way to make Sega management look good by making their computer games modable we will be flooded with mod tools.

Screaming about CA and trashing them is never going to do anything to get a thing.