What concerns me about the future of the mods...

[Legione]

Right, well this has been on my mind for some time now, I loved RTW's mods, the beautiful skins, the innovations, the polishing the rough edges of the vanilla gameplay, that being said I'm afraid that M2TW will present too much of a challenge for it to be modded at the same level as Rome, either that or we will be stuck for a very looong time without a finished mod. Here's one thing that concerned me right of the bat: the skins. Modding just one unit is now the equivalent of creating about 3-4 units for Rome, add to that the normal mapping and extra detail and modders have quite a bit of work ahead of them. This concerns me because often a mod is too ambitious for it's own good, and more than often it's ambition is it's downfall, M2TW would make this even more so because of all the content that needs to be modded.

Take the skins for example, in Rome, new skins looked strikingly out of place alongside CA's skins, it wouldn't be until quite some time until you could play with a skinpack or mod where all the skins were in harmony with each other like vanilla's. Not all skins were like this, some blended in quite nicely such as the Spartans. I believe that CA has done a phenomenal job on creating the skins this time around, factions are no longer limited to one color but two, (ie. England red/yellow, HRE black/yellow, France blue/white) and even these colors are not so strict, when you look at the units you see more colorful expression than in Rome (ie. the hats on the pikemen). Now they look less generic or cut n' paste. Why not follow this rule and make units looks like they were made by CA, and not by a modder. Based on my knowledge of past mods I know this: modders are going to want to create new units, for which they will need new skins, but they will also leave many of the existing skins alone. So why not blend in the new skins with the CA created ones? Make them look like they really belong to the HRE or France, make them be a part of the family and most importantly make the skins look like fit in. What would be great would be looking at the new skins and looking at CA's skins and not to be able to tell which ones were made by CA.

Another thing! Not too many battles! I know some mods love to make the campaign map as hectic and dangerous as they can so as to present more of a challenge, but seriously sometimes the battles in Rome felt quite tedious after to 50th turn where you must fend of 2 full stacks, or fight off yet another siege attempt (marching all the soldiers out the gates slowly oh so slowly). I'd really hate for that feeling to return in M2 mods. I believe battles should be more deciding like they were in real life, after some time it feels as if every battle is ultimately just a skirmish in some mods, so I'd suggest making the battles farther in between, remember that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. I could expand on this even more but I believe I have made my point in saying that too many battles and too many stacks on the campaign map could grow to be more annoying and make the game feel repetitive than make it challenging.

Thanks for reading up to this point, I know how some people react to these kinds of posts and feel as if they need to defend the mods or that I am attacking them; this isn't an attack on the modders here. I have nothing but the utmost respect for them. I'm solely trying to give a suggestion based on what I've seen and based on what people have said. I'm also curious about what artistic direction the mods are going for, are they looking to improve on the realistic side of things (as was the case in Rome) or are they satisfied with the level of realism of vanilla M2TW.

[DougyM]

Its the same arguement that everybody in the games industry is involved in these days, not just modders.

10 years ago an award winning multi million selling game could be coded by a dozen people and total no more than 300mb in size...

Now we have entire sub sections of game companies numbering into the hundereds (in some cases) creating games that take multiple years to code and total in size of up to 11,240mb in size (MTW2 is indeed 11gb).

Now yeah, its a bit of a bump for people involved in creating/modding games becuase their workload is getting bigger and bigger all the time...

But at the end of the day the games industry has to ask itself the same questions that the movie industry made during the last 50 years (with its increase in costs per film)....

Would you rather have 1000 mediocre games or 10 truly epic games?

[_]Blackfire[_]

Yes I agree with you and I have also wondered how modders will incorporate the "staggering" amount detail put into the vanilla game and somehow release of full conversion for their own mods. The entire religious aspect, the settlement system, the new world, etc.

Also to answer your question I would have to choose 10 truly epic games, for one reason only. Try naming 10 within the last 2 years.

[DougyM]

Also to answer your question I would have to choose 10 truly epic games, for one reason only. Try naming 10 within the last 2 years.

True... but thats down to peoples opinions.

I could name 10 of my favourite games easily.... but they wouldnt be everybody elses favourites.

Point still stands, We can restrict games and not advance technicaly so that modders have less work to do (thus leading to more games but with less over all quality).... or we can continue pushing the boundaries and get better and better games.

[Candelarius]

Think about all the announced mods for RTW...and how many actually finished. And I don't mean "made it to beta", I mean, truly, totally, FINISHED.

I can think of only a handful. And even the handful I am thinking of were still left with bugs that had to be fixed by other modders. So they still were not truly finished. One mod that was announced before all other Rome mods is still not finished...EB.

Now, I don't mean that as a slap against EB, RTR, or any other mod...it is just a lot of work for individuals to accomplish. I think for M2TW, modders need to do one of two things:

1. Focus on less ambitious projects. I for one am sick of following a total conversion, to have it abandoned 1/2 way done or have it come out all full of bugs. Vanilla RTW, IMO, only need tweaks in a few places...I think many modders were just bored and continued to tweak and tweak and tweak...but in the end lost interest and didn't finish their work. Modders need to clearly define a limited goal, specify a time frame, and then finish it. Smaller, more area-specific mods would allow this.

2. Pull their resouces. I think a few excellent full mods is better than fifty half-a.ssed or half-done mods. If all the highly experienced, talented, and bored modders on this site would pull together, and concentrate on a truly great mod, the community would be much better off.

That's my two cents, anyway.

Personally, M2TW looks great, and I'm hoping will play great...it may not need the same level of modding that Rome needed. And when I say "needed", I'm referring to the fugly skins, obviously fanciful units, and ludicrous unit movement and kill speeds. From what I can tell, M2TW suffers from none of these things (or at least a few minor exceptions). So, IMO, M2TW may not need much modding. We'll see. Two more weeks from tomorrow for me....

[DougyM]

Think about all the announced mods for RTW...and how many actually finished. And I don't mean "made it to beta", I mean, truly, totally, FINISHED.

I can think of only a handful. And even the handful I am thinking of were still left with bugs that had to be fixed by other modders. So they still were not truly finished. One mod that was announced before all other Rome mods is still not finished...EB.

Now, I don't mean that as a slap against EB, RTR, or any other mod...it is just a lot of work for individuals to accomplish. I think for M2TW, modders need to do one of two things:

Its the same for every single game with a mod community.

Hundereds get announced.

only a few dozen get a public release

and less than a dozen of those get a series of further releases

finaly 1-2 become common place and end up "finished".

[Candelarius]

Its the same for every single game with a mod community.

Hundereds get announced.

only a few dozen get a public release

and less than a dozen of those get a series of further releases

finaly 1-2 become common place and end up "finished".

Probably very true.

I buy on average a new PC game a month...so I consider myself a pretty avid gamer. But, RTW was the first, and only, game in which I really became heavily involved in the modding community.

To be honest, though, the past few months I grew sick of modding and playing mods, I guess disenfranchised is a better word...so, I'm thinking I'm just going to play M2 in all it's vanilla glory and give the modding-thang a rest for awhile.

[AlfonsoVIII]

Well, I am not scared of modding the game, I pray the chunk of the 11GB is videos. Also ER said coders will have an easier transition from RTW than the modellers / skinners. I always like a challenge, maybe we (TWC) should invest in a couple servers for all the mods to be hosted on if a full conversion will take 5GB. (making movies will be hard to do)

[Burns]

I believe something along these lines has been discussed before. What will be needed in the future is more consolidation of manpower rather than the divergences we've seen with RTW. I gotta say, we have a lot of great work out there, whatever it might be. Total conversions (era and fantasy mods) will have a particularily hard time because they won't usually simply replace skins. The natural solution is consolidation: fewer mods with more manpower. I doubt that this can actually happen because everybody likes doing their own thing. Necessity (actually finishing something!) may prove otherwise.

[Korinthos Hoplites]

I believe something along these lines has been discussed before. What will be needed in the future is more consolidation of manpower rather than the divergences we've seen with RTW. I gotta say, we have a lot of great work out there, whatever it might be. Total conversions (era and fantasy mods) will have a particularily hard time because they won't usually simply replace skins. The natural solution is consolidation: fewer mods with more manpower. I doubt that this can actually happen because everybody likes doing their own thing. Necessity (actually finishing something!) may prove otherwise.

I'm up for a superhuge total mod! That's certainly the way..

[Cadmium77]

I believe something along these lines has been discussed before. What will be needed in the future is more consolidation of manpower rather than the divergences we've seen with RTW. I gotta say, we have a lot of great work out there, whatever it might be. Total conversions (era and fantasy mods) will have a particularily hard time because they won't usually simply replace skins. The natural solution is consolidation: fewer mods with more manpower. I doubt that this can actually happen because everybody likes doing their own thing. Necessity (actually finishing something!) may prove otherwise.

The modders are just too naive for their own good. Many modders are incredibly talented (Hoggy of BLTW for example). The work they produce is outstanding by any measure. The mods they produce are definitely desireable by those that download them. Counterstrike has shown the way. Modders, particularly the tried and true ones must organize into online corporations and then in a speculative manner invest their work in their own company in which they are paid in shares to produce a commercially desireable product that we'll all pay for. It might be $5 or $15 but it will be worth something. RTR is worth at least $10-$15. So is EB and CTW and BLTW.

Once money comes into the equation then the organization of larger development teams to cope with huge programs like M2TW can become a viable undertaking.

[italiano]

The way things are looking (good looking units, good AI, 100 provinces- too many is boring) I'll probally only be waiting for mods that change the physics in battle, eg speed, killrate, mass, morale. Custom units will also be interesting but I won't be waiting for a graphical overhaul.

Edited to add, I will be waiting for shogun: MTW2. Actually that should be MTW2: Shogun

[4BiddenKnight]

It's a good thing you people are concerned about the future of mods. This means M2TW is one helluva game.

[Germanicus75]

I'm most worried by the mods that seek to change the time frame. For a bunch of people dedicated to tweaking and altering the game a bit to improve realism of an *already medieval* setting might not be such a tall order. But for people to totally change the whole setting and make a Roman-era mod for example, including all the reskinning, new animations, new sounds, new videos, new map, dealing with religion, the Senate, and redesigning all the cities, I think it's an *enormous* undertaking. I'd LOVE to see a Roman or Dark Ages era mod, but sadly I fear it might not see the light of day. Of course alot of the background work for this is already done in the mods for Rome, but lots of new stuff and implementation will need to be done.

As the OP said, hopefully people will be smart enough to generate the basis of such mods by joining forces only in a small number of separate teams - pooling resources. People could then tweak the main mods to their liking once the basis had been produced.

[AlfonsoVIII]

I'm most worried by the mods that seek to change the time frame. For a bunch of people dedicated to tweaking and altering the game a bit to improve realism of an *already medieval* setting might not be such a tall order. But for people to totally change the whole setting and make a Roman-era mod for example, including all the reskinning, new animations, new sounds, new videos, new map, dealing with religion, the Senate, and redesigning all the cities, I think it's an *enormous* undertaking. I'd LOVE to see a Roman or Dark Ages era mod, but sadly I fear it might not see the light of day. Of course alot of the background work for this is already done in the mods for Rome, but lots of new stuff and implementation will need to be done.

As the OP said, hopefully people will be smart enough to generate the basis of such mods by joining forces only in a small number of separate teams - pooling resources. People could then tweak the main mods to their liking once the basis had been produced.

I share the same feelings, but with who I have hooked up with mod wise, I can expect some mods soon, but the fact that we all want to play the game at the same time is what will hamper the mods in the short term, I did not pay $50 just to change code, I want to experience the Medieval area also. One thing I want to do personally, is port of RTW as much as I can as a simple mod to see how it plays and hopefully it will be the ground work for better mods on what can be done, since all the files are already created, its just a matter of cut and pasting. PM me and I can update you on all the future mod work, or just check with the Eagle Standard.

[Yosemite]

Another thing! Not too many battles! I know some mods love to make the campaign map as hectic and dangerous as they can so as to present more of a challenge, but seriously sometimes the battles in Rome felt quite tedious after to 50th turn where you must fend of 2 full stacks, or fight off yet another siege attempt (marching all the soldiers out the gates slowly oh so slowly).

Damn i even prefer when i'm attacked by 3 stacks and have 4 cities under siege. \o/ :tooth:

[Black Francis]

I notice that there are already several mods that have been announced for M2TW that all do pretty much the same thing (realism etc).

This is a sad state of affairs.

If all those talented modders were to group into one or even two mods then we would be looking at a decent total overhaul mod much sooner, rather than a bunch of half completed mods in 1 years time.

Modders, WORK TOGETHER!

[ENSAIS]

Actually, I am more encouraged than most posting in this thread.

We have NTO already doing a significant amount of cracking of the DEMO. Just wait until the full game... and there appears to have been a multiplication and build up of competing and overlapping specialists from MTW to RTW. (Eg Sinuhet and Darth Vader for AI and formations code, Promestheus and Webbird and a host of other skinners, etc...)
So the more daunting task of now skinning massive amounts of detail into a conversion of MTW2 can be taken on by more skinners. And I do think RTW failed projects will lead to a coming together of some previous competitors.

I think the first step will be to see what "needs" to be modded (eg battle speed in vanilla RTW) and then see what the extent of moddability is to address that.

Hey, NTO's CVP was released, upgraded, and rereleased many, many times... each time fixing the more basic problems with vanilla RTW. It was also incorporated into outstanding mods like SPQR, which was itself released thru like 6 generations.

SO I think the glass is actually half full for MTW2 prospects. And I do share the expressed hope that modders will band together and quickly see projects thru to completion rather than having hundreds of unfinished or beta only mods.

ENSAIS

[Arakorn]

But remember that it's enough with creating just one skin, yo don't have to create severak different ones :wink:

[Lusted]

The huge problem with charging money for mods is the fact that we would need CA's explicit permission to do so. We mod for our own pleasure in our own time. To turn it into a business would require a mod like Red Orchestra for example, which became popular enough in its own right.

Atm that just ain't going to happen.