36 réponses à ce sujet

[AmstradHero]

Petehog wrote...
People who beg for endorsements are doing this out of insecurity..it's sad when people are depending on forums and little plus signs to get their confidence up. These things should be done for your own enjoyment and also to the enjoyment of others. But when it becomes a popularity game, it's so childish.

Ouch, that's a little harsh. As a modder, I like getting endorsements. I'm not insecure! I'm noooooootttttt!

Seriously though, I like that people enjoy my work and have decided to spend a few moments of their time to click a button, or even better, make a comment.  People who make an effort to give something back to modders (however small) help to keep modders going. Yes, I mod for my own enjoyment (and hope that someday I'll actually get a job doing this), but it's nice to know that people appreciate the work. I dedicate a lot of hours of effort into my mods, so I like to know that (a) people are playing them, and ( they are enjoying them.

The other thing that I rely on popularity for is promotion. Getting people to find and download mods is possibly one of the hardest things around. I try to promote my mods where I can, because I want people to play them and I want feedback to know where I can improve for my future work. Something that is in the top ten projects on BioWare's site is practically guaranteed to get more downloads than those not on it. That is the same reason I hated getting low votes for my NWN2 mod Fate of a City, because it pushed the mod further down the list. As a player, if I play a few of the top-rated mods and find that I don't like the ones that I pick, I'm not going to contemplate looking at mods with significantly lower scores, because I can only assume that they must be worse based on the votes received. Of course, having been involved in such systems, I know now that I can't rely on them... so now I have no idea or means to pick modules that I'll actually like.

But, back on topic... I noticed this particular mod quite some time ago, I contacted the author responsible voicing concerns similar to those raised. They contacted the other others and put it to a vote, and believed they should continue, but they removed the quota and update notice from the short description. Apparently this work was in another mod which exceeded 500 popularity before the owner disappeared. They also stated that: " Since my mod has the potential to continue to increase and improve on-going I would expect it to continue to pass other mods that have a finite end position." Now given the mod had just knocked Alley of Murders out the top ten, and the author had responded candidly, I figured I was just overreacting. Of course, I'm coloured by prejudice here, seeing as I'm not a fan of mods that focus so heavily on sex, or have one-option dialogues or feature incest. It's interesting to find that others dislike the approach to popularity. Of course, at this point in time, the mod group has three projects on the first page, so obviously they must be doing something right.

As others have stated, I believe there are issues with the social site project system. Victor did make a post some time ago about a revamp to the system, but it never eventuated and the post announcing it was mysteriously deleted from the forums. It does seem that BioWare appear to have abandoned their focus on the toolset - perhaps due to the lack of adventure based mods? Given we're coming up fast on a year since the game's release and there are still precious few quest based mods around, it wouldn't surprise me if providing support for the toolset has fallen by the wayside because of the push towards DA2.

Modifié par AmstradHero, 07 août 2010 - 12:29 .

[Narrsan]

AmstradHero wrote...
Of course, at this point in time, the mod group has three projects on the first page, so obviously they must be doing something right.

All basically the same. You other modders should learn from this! Advertise your projects with women, preferably naked and promise they'll give your characters sexual favours. And when it's done you can surprise them with a mod that actually has depth and you generally need two hands for.

Modifié par Narrsan, 07 août 2010 - 01:17 .

[DarthParametric]

AmstradHero wrote...

Of course, at this point in time, the mod group has three projects on the first page, so obviously they must be doing something right.

That's the part that irks me. I don't particularly care if the author/s is a popularity ****, but keep it to one project FFS.

AmstradHero wrote...

It does seem that BioWare appear to have abandoned their focus on the toolset - perhaps due to the lack of adventure based mods?

That would be a bit rich, were that case, given that they used a bunch of propriety apps in development and then said "ooh sorry, we can't include those in the toolset" and, instead of the promised support, they just dumped the toolset on us and said "here you go - good luck with that". However, it seems more likely that the real reason is simply money. There's no profit to be made in supporting mods, especially given their trend towards consoles as their primary target platform. Their time is more financially productive spent spewing out weapon DLC packs and making their next game as mass market as possible.

[Phaenan]

DarthParametric wrote...

AmstradHero wrote...
Of course, at this point in time, the mod group has three projects on the first page, so obviously they must be doing something right.

That's the part that irks me. I don't particularly care if the author/s is a popularity ****, but keep it to one project FFS.

I'll have to second that.
Begging popularity to avoid getting stuck in page 20+ is one thing, but a group of authors using that method to propel several mods to the first page is pushing it... I can't say it feels square for those thrown a page back. Plus, what's stopping them from dividing their work in an addtional 4th, 5th, 6th, project an force it to the first page by pulling their players strings once more ? Especially when there is another one already...

Then again, I'm not a fan of sex mods so maybe it's just me. I just feel that DA may deserve better than sex mods hogging the first page instead of a nicely polished fully voiced adventure module such as Alley of Murders.

[danien.grey]

Phaenan wrote...

DarthParametric wrote...

That's the part that irks me. I don't particularly care if the author/s is a popularity ****, but keep it to one project FFS.

I'll have to second that.

I'll third that.  I find it very depressing that there are so few adventure modules for Dragon Age in the first place, but seeing other mods get bumped off the front page by a bunch of sex mods made me furious.  It's no wonder Bioware no longer feels like supporting the toolset when all they see is the community making the Nth incarnation of a sex module (that's not to say that they seemed keen on the idea even from the beginning, but I don't think the current situation helps matters).

If the community continues to support and create puerile trash like this, I would not be surprised if they do not include a toolset for Dragon Age 2; I wouldn't even get angry with them.

Modifié par danien.grey, 07 août 2010 - 08:38 .

[JasonNH]

danien.grey wrote...
It's no wonder Bioware no longer feels like supporting the toolset when all they see is the community making the Nth incarnation of a sex module (that's not to say that they seemed keen on the idea even from the beginning, but I don't think the current situation helps matters).

If the community continues to support and create puerile trash like this, I would not be surprised if they do not include a toolset for Dragon Age 2; I wouldn't even get angry with them.

It's the crowd to whom the game has been catered so it's no surprise to me. This is the new sh-t. Bioware has brought it upon themselves.

[FergusM]

JasonNH wrote...

It's the crowd to whom the game has been catered so it's no surprise to me. This is the new sh-t. Bioware has brought it upon themselves.

Oh please. See: Imoen romance, et. al.

[ladydesire]

JasonNH: I'm not so sure I agree, but you're entitled to your opinion.



Phaenan: I've reported that file for possible violations of the DA Nexus Terms of Service, since it requires a file that isn't posted there that would be considered to be in violation of them.



My personal reaction to "begging" for endorsements is to withhold mine, since they can't force me to endorse their file; to me, a file has to stand on its own merits, and if that means it doesn't get endorsed, so be it.

[JasonNH]

My main point was probably lost in its brevity, so let me try again. I don't believe Bioware made a decision to halt support of the toolset after seeing what kind of mods were most popular. I think you're seeing those kinds of mods being most popular because of the demographic from which Bioware has attracted its fans, coupled with their lack of interest in creating a thriving modding community comparable to nwn1/nwn2. Comic books, anime films, and from what I have seen of DA2, it's just not a surprise to me. This also isn't to say it was Bioware's intention for this to happen in the modding community, it was simply a consequence of their interest in mass appeal for the product.

There will always be nude/adult hacks to games that have a toolset and they are some of the first ones available. It seems to me that the proportion of interest in these mods versus added single player adventures has increased significantly with DA. Amstrad Hero lamented this a while ago in his Support Your Local Modder blog entry. Why is it this has still not changed? IMO, because Bioware has done precious little to motivate and support the adventure based DA modding community and has likely recruited a larger fan base with a median age that is lower than the communities we have traveled prior to this one. Natrually it's opinion and speculation at many points, but that's how I see it.

[FollowTheGourd]

JasonNH wrote...
It seems to me that the proportion of interest in these mods versus added single player adventures has increased significantly with DA. Amstrad Hero lamented this a while ago in his Support Your Local Modder blog entry. Why is it this has still not changed? IMO, because Bioware has done precious little to motivate and support the adventure based DA modding community and has likely recruited a larger fan base with a median age that is lower than the communities we have traveled prior to this one. Natrually it's opinion and speculation at many points, but that's how I see it.

I don't think the focus will change until there's a site with that sort of focus to give it a boost, to be honest. But then the problem is making that site popular enough - but I don't see story mods getting the attention they deserve on BSN projects or DANexus, which I'm not faulting them for since that isn't their goal (except faulting BSN for the mess it's in).

Maybe the interest just isn't as strong, but I'm sure there's a lot more that's going untapped.

[ladydesire]

Interestingly enough, I think part of the reason there aren't more Stand Alone story modules is because we can now safely modify the official campaign to add our stories to it; many people that might otherwise have done what most folks consider the normal type of campaign mod are adding their stories as in game stories that expand the lore of Thedas.

[DapperDan77]

It's pretty pathetic imo. A mod should stand on it's own merit, not be artificially rated high due to blackmail.