Should you upload mods for others to use even if you aren't going to update them?

[ZedClampet]

So made a couple of mods for A Total War Saga: Troy, and I'm trying to decide whether I should upload them or not. The game has almost no updated mods, and these mods could help some people out. Both mods make the game a little easier, so there are accessibility considerations too.

The problem is that I have no intentions of keeping these mods up-to-date because Creative Assembly adds too many DLC to it's games, and with Warhammer 3 getting ready to release, I will probably be moving to that game soon.

Is it better to release the mods anyway for the people who want them now and maybe note on them that hey won't be updated, or should I just keep them for my own use? One consideration is that I really don't want to get messages from random people saying "update your damn mods" every time I open Steam.

Anyway, would be interested in hearing your thoughts.

 

[mainer]

If you're confident in your mods and they work without bugs for you, I say release them. You didn't say specifically where you'd release them, but I'm assuming it's to the Steam Workshop? As long as you leave a detailed description on what the mods do, and that you have no intentions of keeping them updated, anyone installing those mods should know the "risk/reward" situation and have no room to complain.

However -

One consideration is that I really don't want to get messages from random people saying "update your damn mods" every time I open Steam.

It's gonna happen to some extent. There's always going to be a few players who just don't read the mod author's description and associated details, and ask for updates, or compatibility patches, and other assorted drivel, when all that information is right in front of them. I see comments like that constantly on the Nexus, and I'm sure it's a similar situation for Steam Workshop.

But I say go for it. I've actually been thinking about trying the tool set from Solasta, though that program is still technically in beta.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Yeah, I definitely say release the mods with a note explaining what it's compatible with, and that it won't be updated. Somebody might get some good use out of them. If they don't take the time to read the note, it's on them.

 

[Zloth]

Go ahead and upload. At least on Steam, the thread for discussing your mod has the 'subscribe' checkbox just like any other thread. Once you're finished with it, you can unsubscribe from the thread and never hear from it again.

There's always going to be a few players who just don't read the mod author's description and associated details...

Or they are just hoping you'll do it despite what they read. "Hope springs eternal" isn't always a positive thing.

 

[Brian Boru]

If you're not going to end up being hassled, go for it—upload to whichever place(s) will respect your wishes more. That may rule out Steam…

It would be nice if you 'give' the mods to the community, so anyone else can update them if they wish.

 

[ZedClampet]

If you're not going to end up being hassled, go for it—upload to whichever place(s) will respect your wishes more. That may rule out Steam…

It would be nice if you 'give' the mods to the community, so anyone else can update them if they wish.

Uploaded to Steam. Need to figure out how to upload to Epic. Maybe the same way. Steam will let you delete your mods if you need to. Not sure about how Epic works. Their site is a mess.

Anyone who wants to update the mods just has to subscribe to them. That will download them to their system. The mods aren't encrypted or anything.

 

[ZedClampet]

Decided against uploading to Epic. There's zero feedback in that system. If people had questions or the mods borked their games, I would never know. Just a terrible site.

 

[mjs warlord]

Hi Zed , i have never used any mods for any of my games because i have read comments on some steam threads that their game worked ok until they added a mod.

May i suggest you add a comment to your mod link to the effect that ..... this is my spec and the mod works on my set up ..... you download this at your own risk .

Yes it might be overkill but as i say i have seen the arguments

 

[ZedClampet]

Hi Zed , i have never used any mods for any of my games because i have read comments on some steam threads that their game worked ok until they added a mod.

May i suggest you add a comment to your mod link to the effect that ..... this is my spec and the mod works on my set up ..... you download this at your own risk .

Yes it might be overkill but as i say i have seen the arguments

That's an interesting suggestion, but my mods--so far--don't add anything graphical and work on everyone's systems. If you can run the game to begin with, my mods don't change that. My mods are basically speeding up the gameplay and adjusting game balance.

 

[JCgames]

Decided against uploading to Epic. There's zero feedback in that system. If people had questions or the mods borked their games, I would never know. Just a terrible site.

You could always create a support e-mail or run one of those discord things.

I'm more suprised epic has mod support this early. People tend to forget the 20 year crawl that is steam.

 

[ZedClampet]

People tend to forget the 20 year crawl that is steam.

Steam is the original, the innovator. They launched Workshop in year 8 (and remember those early years didn't see them with that many customers) and have continually improved it. It's easier for Epic to do things more quickly because they have a pace setter in front of them. They have the example to work from that Valve didn't have. And yet, after 3 years, their store still lacks many basic features. Some of those basic features Sweeney swears he will never have in his store, like customer comments and reviews. I suppose this isn't surprising since he has most of Twitter blocked and generally has expressed a low opinion of gamers.

As for your suggestion, it's a good one, but I'm not planning on updating the mods or even thinking about them ever again starting in February when Total War: Warhammer 3 comes out, so it would be overkill. If I decide to continue sharing mods in the future, I might go that route eventually, but I'm not sure I'm going to share anymore mods at this point. I have five other mods I've made that I've been holding out on uploading because I'm still debating how far into this I want to go.

 

[Krud]

Necessary considerations like this are one of the things that keeps me from making mods. The entitlement of some of the people making use of another's unpaid work is sometimes mind-boggling. (Though the idea of making it just for myself is interesting, I'd never even considered that until you mentioned it in this thread.) It seems like it would be an even bigger hassle for games that frequently update. One of my late friends was a prolific modder for the Sims games, and when he passed away, they created a website just for keeping his mods updated, because so many people used them but the updates broke them fairly often (though not all of them, thankfully.)

On a related note, I wish more games would take a page out of Minecraft's playbook and let you keep playing older versions of the game so you can use older mods that you like. Too many games force the issue w/ updating, which... it's one thing if it's multiplayer, I get it, but even then, you usually have to have the same mods anyway so it should work itself out. It's frustrating to always be playing games in Offline Mode just so they don't update. =P

 

[Brian Boru]

It's frustrating to always be playing games in Offline Mode just so they don't update

I haven't tested this in action, but assuming a Steam game:
♣ In Steam console, click on it to bring up its page
♦ Click the gearwheel icon to the right of the 'Play' button
♥ Click Properties
♠ Click Updates in the menu and turn off updates

Let us know how it goes if you try it

 

[Zloth]

The entitlement of some of the people making use of another's unpaid work is sometimes mind-boggling. (Though the idea of making it just for myself is interesting, I'd never even considered that until you mentioned it in this thread.)

What's the difference? If you post a mod and somebody immediately steals it, making it part of their own mod without giving you credit, but getting far more downloads than you got then you don't get the fame you deserve for your mod. If you never post it at all, you don't get the fame you deserve for your mod - and nobody else gets to benefit from it, either.

 

[JCgames]

Steam is the original, the innovator. They launched Workshop in year 8 (and remember those early years didn't see them with that many customers) and have continually improved it. It's easier for Epic to do things more quickly because they have a pace setter in front of them. They have the example to work from that Valve didn't have. And yet, after 3 years, their store still lacks many basic features. Some of those basic features Sweeney swears he will never have in his store, like customer comments and reviews. I suppose this isn't surprising since he has most of Twitter blocked and generally has expressed a low opinion of gamers.

Heh, steam has a ton of issues. While it is father along as a "social platform" It is hardly a wonderful place. The forums for most games are either completely dead outside of a random lurker or with popular games are filled with trolls telling you how horrible said game is and doing nothing but arguing with people and basically having an over all negative effect on the game and it's community.

While i do tend to try to make good reviews and most of the time it's because i actually enjoyed the game and i get a random person that it might help on the very rare occasion. Most are completely pointless, check out peoples reviews how many they just rail against games they have 100's or 1k's of hours in or stuff that's completely unhelpful. Must buy, or are you wining son, so helpful.. sometimes you have to scroll through a 100 to find something even remotely helpful. For example, A side scroller that has very difficult jumps and someone points that out, or maybe the game has QTE's if you can even find the info with out spoilers galore. Even the basic rating system is completely flawed. Lots of games don't even generate reviews. Some of my favorite games don't even have 100 yet sold 10k+ copies which is often better it's far easier to find a couple helpful ones verse games that have 25k.

The only thing i wish epic would get, which it does have now but games have to add them to the client are Achievements because i find them fun. If i need a review or a forum there are tons of places i can get that already.

a cart would be nice too, but honestly having to click a couple times isn't the biggest deal, but I'm not sure why that one isn't in.

Another thing i would like to see is a player profile improvement, think about the old myspace pages. Steam is getting a bit better but it's pretty lacking even 20 years later i can't even post basic stuff with out going to specific game forums outside of a single posting thread and maybe then make sure you level up enough to unlock something that possibly help, but even those profile additions are very limited. My space did it 25 years ago hell i think my AOL page was more intersting than my steam page today and i have added everything i can to make it semi interesting and even still i think i have more info in this silly forum post so not really trailblazing.

People don't get blocked because they are just sharing happy thoughts. It's not gamers that he has a low opinion, it's trolls and there is a huge difference. I'm getting to the point that i don't even want to bother trying to help folks any more because even simple posts of someone having an issue gets filled with trolls telling them they suck, or learn to play or are dumb.. It's quite troubling. the internet was always a bit crass but the difference between now and the early 2k's is night and day and not in a good way.

 

[Krud]

I haven't tested this in action, but assuming a Steam game:
♣ In Steam console, click on it to bring up its page
♦ Click the gearwheel icon to the right of the 'Play' button
♥ Click Properties
♠ Click Updates in the menu and turn off updates

Let us know how it goes if you try it

I'll check that out, but the last time I checked I thought closest option to that was "Do Not Update Until Game Starts" or something along those lines. Which I think is my default setting, so games don't just automatically update if I'm online, only if I click Play while online.

Edit: I realize I had said it's frustrating, but it's not really THAT big of a deal to me at this point; the only reason I brought it up is it's relevant to the topic of mod updating.

 

[Krud]

What's the difference? If you post a mod and somebody immediately steals it, making it part of their own mod without giving you credit, but getting far more downloads than you got then you don't get the fame you deserve for your mod. If you never post it at all, you don't get the fame you deserve for your mod - and nobody else gets to benefit from it, either.

The difference is your point, which makes total sense I will admit, is talking about "fame" (which I don't *think* anyone had mentioned, unless I missed context here) whereas I was just talking about Zed's original point about people complaining about mods not being updated. It's two different aspects of entitlement, both of which are issues, perhaps, but for different types of modders. It sounded to me like Zed doesn't want fame, and would much prefer to be left alone rather than be badgered about updates.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Yeah, thinking about people complaining about mods not being updated is weird. Somebody volunteers their time to create a mod, then offer it to people to use for free. Then people feel like they have the right to complain that the mod creator doesn't keep working for them for free. Just doesn't make sense. The world really does have a problem with self-entitlement these days.

 

[ZedClampet]

My mods made the "Most Popular" list, but that's only because there aren't that many mods haha. I ended up uploading 5 mods and not uploading another 4, but I'm still considering uploading the last ones. They all work very well together. They speed up the game considerably, which is great if you are impatient like me. Of course, if you speed up the game, you have to be prepared for the potential consequences. The enemies get better armies faster and can be really aggressive. You have to be willing to play aggressive, too, or you won't last long.

So far the mod users have all been really nice.

 

[Zloth]

Yeah, thinking about people complaining about mods not being updated is weird.

What I mostly see are people begging, not complaining, which isn't hard to understand.

I could understand complaining, too, in some special cases. Say you are using a mod in a game that takes 100+ hours to get through. The game gets updated and the mod breaks. You can't undo the mod because it makes changes that the vanilla game can't understand, you can't use an older version of the game, and you haven't got a save that is mod-free. Your game is over unless the mod is fixed. In that case, I still think the player has no right to complain but I can at least understand why they are complaining.

 

[ZedClampet]

What I mostly see are people begging, not complaining, which isn't hard to understand.

I could understand complaining, too, in some special cases. Say you are using a mod in a game that takes 100+ hours to get through. The game gets updated and the mod breaks. You can't undo the mod because it makes changes that the vanilla game can't understand, you can't use an older version of the game, and you haven't got a save that is mod-free. Your game is over unless the mod is fixed. In that case, I still think the player has no right to complain but I can at least understand why they are complaining.

Well, in my case I've clearly stated that the mods probably won't be updated, so if they are planning on starting a forever game, they should have more sense than to use my mods.

 

[Zloth]

But wouldn't that involve reading something other than the title of the mod?

 

[WoodenSaucer]

What I mostly see are people begging, not complaining, which isn't hard to understand.

I could understand complaining, too, in some special cases. Say you are using a mod in a game that takes 100+ hours to get through. The game gets updated and the mod breaks. You can't undo the mod because it makes changes that the vanilla game can't understand, you can't use an older version of the game, and you haven't got a save that is mod-free. Your game is over unless the mod is fixed. In that case, I still think the player has no right to complain but I can at least understand why they are complaining.

Good point