The latest little patch is a precursor to mod support being implemented so sanctioned mods will be available in the official realm.
This makes me nervous, and a little sad.
Firstly, I’m not one of those people who is bothered too much about mods. I’m not bothered about getting the in-depth stats of all of the possible weapons combinations to be able to min-max my character, I’m not bothered about being able to see what the other players stats are next to their UI picture, and I have completely avoided the modded realm. Not even bothered.
I do understand some people will want to be able to access this information and play with better bots etc and so that’s what the modded realm is for. I really really want to keep the official realm as a level playing field but I have a nasty ominous feeling that people who use sanctioned mods will have a varying degree of “being better” because I have little faith that Fatshark will be able to prevent things leaking into the official realm that breaks the gameplay and gives people with certain mods a huge advantage. What is the point in the modded realm if things are slowly going to leech into the official realm and become “essential” mods to have? I don’t want that. I don’t want to join a host who has various mods installed that might change how my UI looks, I don’t want the voicelines changed to suit someone else’s taste, and so on…
So, where does that leave those of us who wanted an official realm completely unpolluted by anything from the modded realm? Could modders and mod users just stay in the modded realm?
You don’t have to have faith, this is true, only mods that don’t give advantage will be sanctioned
As i said up here, only non-advantage mods will be sanctioned, so basically if you end your game and want to break few things with new difficulty or so, you go in the modded realm
This is not how mods works right now, they’re not synced (most of them), if i have the mod that display the damage, i see the damage, not you, the mod edit my game not yours
Ok, but we already have examples of where things from the modded realm leaked into the official realm and people were running around with different characters heads on other people and various hats looking idiotic which should never have happened.
You are demonstrating absolute faith in; A) Modders will never ever do anything naughty or try to hide things that give advantage and B) Fatshark are so familiar with their own code they can instantly fix things and stop others from breaking things. FS Can’t even fix things quickly that are obvious in code that they did themselves.
You also said that “most” mods aren’t synced - which suggests some are which will be annoying if it reduces the pool of people I can play with unless I have the synced mod (The “essential” mods I talked about in my OP)
Actually, I reiterate my point that all this kind of stuff I think should stay in the modded realm, especially as it appears people want to “break things.”
Yeah this is true, but was a bug and now is no longer possible in official realm…
A mod is sanctioned after a review of the mod source code, FS check the code before approving it, so a mod can’t have “hidden things” that give advantage
Not gonna happen, with “synced” i was talking about the fact that maybe if i’ve a mod that edit my character dialogue there’s the possibility that you hear that, but honestly i’m not sure about that.
(Edit: or for example the “Waypoint” or the “Ping” mod, that work better if every player has it)
You’ll never be limited to join someone because you don’t have a mod, not until custom maps anyway.
I’m glad someone who uses mods is being quite civil here, so thanks for the feedback @ScrappyCocco as I know a lot of people are screaming for mod support and my position might not be popular.
Actually the Waypoint Mod might be a good example of something that is not malicious, but could give players who have it an advantage over those who don’t. Imagine three players have it and another doesn’t (and doesn’t want mods) but the player without keeps getting isolated and downed because they never see the Waypoint pings and the players WITH the mod don’t use other communication because they’re so used to using the mod.
Does the player without the WP mod eventually get forced into using the mod? ( or get kicked a lot)
Herein lies my concerns.
[edit] I got to go to work, so hopefully it won’t turn into a blightstorm in here while I’m working and can’t comment.
I’m a little V2 modder too, so i’m here to explain you why mods are not that bad
Forced absolutelly not, considering how the community is, it might happens that someone tell you that you should have it because is really useful, but i hope people are not gonna kick you out of the match because you don’t have it.
firstly bad example because ui alterations and the sort will only be client side so if you don’t have the mod all appears normal
secondly if your not a fan of better bots or rideable carts (those are the only two i can really think of that are host dependent) then host your own games.
This kind of knowledge of what mod will affect what you can see/do is something I couldn’t give a fig about. I don’t care about whether it’s client side or host side or whatever.
My key problem is that when mods are mentioned or something is discussed people are saying things like
And actually I want to play the game how I like thank you very much(sorry for singling you out @madminer95) . I live in what is considered “A rural area” of the UK with bandwidth not being awesome. Hosting is a pot luck affair. I want to load the game, click Quick Play and away we go without trying to hope I don’t get some random mod things happening in my game, even if it is only something like Kerillian not talking. Mods should stay in the modded realm otherwise it’s being foisted on people who might not want it OR they don’t even know it’s happening when they’re playing with people who are using mods and getting an advantage (like the Waypoint mod).
Can’t feel very confident about this one myself. is there an actual list of mods getting allowed?
i mean they promised to balance the game and provide a melee focused experience , and if they can drop the ball this badly on them … and then the implementation of the loot system. little hard to have faith this wont be a glorious f up to.
I looked through applied mods for sanctioning, and haven’t seen anything that gives enough advantage that, to my opinion, will affect me in negative way if i remain vanilla and play with heavily modded players.
I have a good idea how much many of the applied mods do - from Vermintide 1.
it’s not a real concern to have in pve game, i mean. Its not a cybersport level pvp to be bothered by slight advantages. You kill AI enemies with a team, and even with having all the mods that are currently applied, your skill is still accountable for 90-95% to success. By success i mean either taking as much green circles as possible, or simply finishig a map with full books.
This statement is depends largely on one’s perspective.
If FS will follow it in literal sense, there will be too few mods sanctioned, as you can often come up with a reason why a mod, seemingly not affecting the gameplay - will be advantageous (even a little is still an advantage, which contradicts the statement), hypothetically.
For example, i believe 3rd person mod is giving some advantage, but at the same time have many drawbacks, which roughly evens out in the end to the normal 1st person view. I would sanction it, but some ppl might think it gives more advantage than drawbacks.
Or there are UI mods that show numerical ammo counts for all heroes in the party, so you could distribute ammo pickups better. This can be seen as a minor advantage over not having this mod (for yourself).
Many mods are in grey area, like blocking during chat (clear advantage - can communicate via typing and not get bashed, but still its affecting your own/team’s performance so slightly that its not a big deal to accept), enemy healthbars.
I appreciate we’re not going to get mods sanctioned that are something like “Give Bardin 10% more magic damage resistance because he’s a dwarf.” And other such things.
Having looked through the applications for sanctioning here are my thoughts, There are currently 46 applications so far. Considering anything that changes the base difficulty of the game is likely to be a flat “NO” - here’s my opinion.
ALL bot improvements/changes, crosshair customisation, third person, any changes to the way zoom works, sticky grim, inventory access during game, reloaded weapon indicator, barrel spawn mod, perfect dark and heat indication for Sienna’s weapons and any changes to the UI which show players stats I would hope should all be blocked as sanctioned mods PURELY for the reason they change the difficulty of the base game.
So that’s 28 applications so far probably not getting sanctioned.
Then all of the ones that are existing content added by modders such as dialogue, and existing models are either going to be included in the future by FS or removed for a reason so they’re likely to get a block on their sanctioning. That’s another two or three blocked.
Which leaves chat blocking, show ping, skip cutscenes(possible advantage for mod users here?) and mods used primarily in the keep (such as bestiary, full inventory across characters and more accurate damage numbers) will be sanctioned. I think about ten out of the current applications might make it.
Anything else would be adjusting the difficulty of the base game, giving modders a different experience to those playing Vanilla, and confirm what I was worried about. - Changes to the game leaking from Modded realm into official realm.
I think that belongs in the modded realm. To be honest the crux of the problem is that modded realm has no progression and no inventory saves so people want to progress and get their cool items but still have their mods.
[edit] with the community slowly vanishing dividing the people who are playing is going to be a really bad idea.
There certainly will be a set of recommended mods that most players are expected to have (though never all), and people certainly will kick others for not having them. Just like they now kick players for using suboptimal (or just annoying) stuff. That’s just the way things go.
It’s also true that if anything that gives any advantage at all would not be approved, anything beyond pure QoL changes (inventory management, for example) or purely cosmetic stuff (which, if ever allowed into Official Realm, will be client-only). Instead, anything giving significant advantage will be denied. Foe example, the already mentioned waypoint mod: It does enhance communication between players, but it is only effective if a) people are already communicating, and b) if more than one person is using it. Even then, its on its most effective when voice comms (already something highly recommended) are missing, as you cant’ simply say “here”, “next to the whatever” but need to use time typing or risk nobody noticing. It does give an advantage, but it’s not personal and not immediate, and as such, is quite acceptable in my opinion.
The approval process is there, as mentioned earlier, to weed out the mods giving significant advantages, hidden or blatant, and to prevent stuff like the silly hat incident from happening. Iirc, there has also been some mention of certain significant mods (ones that get essentially developed together with FS for balance reasons, that change the game a lot) having different queues from the lesser mods or completely vanilla game.
Here we go. This right here is enough for me to be proven correct. Expecting me to have a mod in the official realm makes it… A modded realm. Also the last part of your post suggests that FS are discussing the division of an already hemorrhaging community by making larger mods have separate queues from those playing Vanilla.
FS have shot themselves in the foot so many times I’m surprised there’s anything left below the knee, and now it looks like we’re going to have lots of advantageous mods in the vanilla realm which LO AND BEHOLD! is not what I understood when game was launched. Mods in the modded realm, Vanilla in the official realm.
Unfortunately, that’s just how things will go. If tools are offered to make for better experience, many people will use those tools and expect others to do so too. In this case, I equate it with voice comms: Not everyone uses them, especially in public games. It is recommended, though, as it vastly enhances the coordination of the group, but the people who ostracize others beyond “you should try voice” are rare. If thing go as they should, it’s the same with mods: They make things easier and especially more comfortable for you, thus people use them, and certainly at high enough level the assumption is that people have at least some of them. They don’t, even collectively, give enough advantages to render stuff trivial, though, and though the gameplay experience may be somewhat different for fully modded people than pure vanilla, it’s more a comfort thing than actual advantage.
We’ll have to wait for a while, at least a month or two and likely another wave of mod approvals (if they do come in waves later on) before seeing how strongly the mods will end up affecting the community. No one forces you to use them, though, and no one should exclude you for not using them. But as I said, there are and always will be people that will kick others for the slightest reasons (as well as pure trolls). And as has been said in threads complaining about those people, they’re ones you don’t want to play with anyway, so if you bump into them, consider it another way to filter out annoying or downright toxic people.
Personally, I have another (minor) fear about the mods: That FS will leave changing some significant QoL aspects of the game to the modders, instead of working on adding those things to the core game. Let’s hope they prove that wrong.
sorry but to me this seems like a whole lot of drama over minute gripes, anything that gets sanctioned is getting FatShark’s approval that they deem it to be worthy of being part of the official experience and/or that it will not effect the gameplay of non mod users, and while bandwidth might be a concern now remember dedicated servers are coming soon
Maybe I have gone off the deepend, but with FS history of breaking patches, breaking one weapon by tweaking another, the already mentioned hats being broken incident, the removal of the roadmap, the initial launch with cleave and stagger being wrecked, and the Great Huntsman Nuke™ I think that I can expect the launch of sanctioned mods to be somehow broken too and something slip through the net.
