Originally Posted by
Dol Guldur
A rep system, perhaps, is not necessarily bad. My point was that the way it is assigned reflects the focus of the members of a site.
I think it's probably fair to say that I have built and released more TW mods than probably any other TW modder (I'm willing to be corrected!) but it's rare I ever got any rep for doing so on any release. Rep has largely come from a rare post in the off-topic areas or from some witty remark.
Members do give rep for graphically-rich previews (which is not my style - I like to make a mod fast enough that it does not have or need a preview!) but many of these previews are for mods that are never even released...
I realize, with a prime expertise in coding, it is not such a visible skill and yet coding, debugging and balancing take up an amount of time that vastly exceeds that spent creating the models and textures of previews.
I reckoned I personally spent about 3000 hours on Corsair Invasion (FATW's first module) - add to that the time spent on Forth Eorlingas, The New Shadow, Title of Liberty, Gods & Fighting Men, Multi-Mod Sampler, The Dwarven Blunderbuss, EB 1.0 modfoldering, The New Shadow for RTW, Rome in Middle-earth, Viking Invasion II and - most recently - Dominion of Britannia and it scares me to think how much time I have given to the darn hobby over the last 5 years. Rep points for releasing these mods? I've not worked it out, but I could probably get the same amount in the off-topic area in a week or two if I tried...
It has got better, yes, but the focus of TWC is, imho, not good for TW modding/playing yet. Maybe it will improve still further, but I doubt that will happen unless there is a long, hard look at the nature and purpose of the site and what the structure (inc. rep, patronage, awards and offices) really should represent and credit. My badge at the Org for outstanding modding means a lot more to me than the TWC opifex badge, simply because of the nature of the site's focus and thus the meaning behind such things.