Modding RTW too much of a good thing?

[Adrian II]

OK, I'm a relative newbie here (except where STW SP is concerned) and I have a worry concerning RTW. I'm not sure that it is at all justified and maybe more experienced members could clarify. So here goes.

It's amazing that we are only in week 1 of RTW and already mods for just about any file in the game are on offer here as well as on other sites. If this goes on for another month at exponential rate, soon we'll all be playing a different game and any discussion of tactics will be obsolete. Just look at the issue of 'overpowered' units like Cavalry. In order to 'fix' this some are modding their killing rate, others are tampering with Cavalry speed, still others with the anti-Cavalry bonus of Spears, and so on. Who in their right mind would bother writing a Cavalry sticky if the ground rules, group controls, maneuvers and various stats for Cavalry differ from player to player, from mod to mod, etcetera? We might as well turn this .org into a modding forum. I know it's impossible to put any cap on modding and I wouldn't even consider that: it's a free Web, some mods are great and confusion and competition are a healthy thing in any community, so don't get me wrong on this point. But if this should become a real issue, how do we handle it?

[TosaInu]

Hello AdrianII,

Good point. I think some mods will become more popular than others, so I guess that will become what people will discuss. Perhaps several popular mods? And thus also several guides.

More than ever it's important to realise what the other guy is talking about and that his situation may differ from yours. A note in topic titles and post header can prevent a lot of frustration.

[DisruptorX]

Tactics are exactly the same with the kill rate mod on, and the kill rate after the mod is by no means "slow". It just makes the game more playable. The kill rate change is global, all units are proportionately the same as they were before.

[Adrian II]

A note in topic titles and post header can prevent a lot of frustration.

I guess that would be a great help, I've been confused more than once by posts based on MedMod instead of my MTW VI.

[KukriKhan]

Excellent point. In the past, if/when bugs were found and validated as bugs, the devs fixed them with a patch. Gameplay problems either had to be accepted or worked around.

CA has written that R:TW is highly-moddable, and that appears to be the case. Anyone with a text editor can change not only the look of the game, but also alter gameplay factors as well (e.g. travel speed), it seems. This opens up a whole new opportunity for excellence, not necessarily a prescription for disaster, tho' it could go that way too on the individual gamer level (fixed, of course, by a reinstall of the original game).

As you point out: we are in week 1, and the rest of the world will be online in less than a week from now. I suspect CA is holding off comment until the game is worldwide, and the honeymoon period has settled, and we gamers have discovered on our own, just what this new game does, and can do.

Heck, the "units run too fast" issue may have been planted on purpose, to get us used to modding - especially those of us intimidated by looking at strange sounding files names, etc.

If 100 R:TW full-fledged mods get created, I expect that eventually, 1 or 2 would be adopted as the most popular. And I'm not sure that that kind of development should be managed at all.

[Duke John]

Well, at the moment R:TW is not really that more moddable than M:TW. In M:TW too everybody was able to change stats and lots of people did so. Still there were alto of people who did not trust modding/mods and sticked with the original game. Especially the MP community is extremely conservative towards mods; few players want to adopt a new playing style even if it's a better one, unless CA makes a patch.

So regarding the MP side you probably don't need to worry, and for the SP community; if one changes the unitstats then he probably won't put up a guide, unless for a very popular mod. So most of the guides will still be for the unmodded version. But that is not different from the M:TW period.

And at the moment I'm still doubting how moddable R:TW will be. You can only mod text files, but that isn't enough, you can't add factions, units, new campmap, since they all require new graphics which are nicely stored in PAK files. So we need to wait for CA to make tools and the amount of mods/modding will largely depend on the userfriendliness of those tools. If easily accessible you might expect more mods but since R:TW promises to be very moddable, good mods will also take alot more time to do, so perhaps we will more attempts but less finished mods.

And as Tosa pointed out, alot of confusion could be avoided by stating the version/mod that you are discussing. But then we are talking about the manners and attitude of internet users... hopeless case

[Louis VI the Fat]

Well, MP will have a standardizing effect. You can't multiplay when everybody follows their own set of rules and settings.

Much of this problem will remain though..

[Adrian II]

Well, MP will have a standardizing effect.

Alas, MP in RTW appears to be -- how shall I put it? -- far less attractive than in previous TW games.
My worry may have been premature though. It's interesting to see that self-regulation is already at work, and the lead is taken by experienced modders who know you can't simply stack a load of Mods and expect your game to make sense. If you load one, i.e. replace an original file by a modded file, you lose any other Mods you made or loaded in that original file. In the end, all the tampering causes glitches, CTD's or unplayable scenarios. So, the latest word is 'packaging' strains of RTW Mods (a brief check taught me the number is 18 and counting) into 'UberMods' grouped around themes. So you get your 'Fun UberMod', your 'Speed UberMod', etcetera. I even saw someone refer to a 'Realism Mod'. Now there's a can of worms...
The discussion seems to be turning around, too, be it ever so slowly. For instance threads on 'How to tackle Squalor' are beginning to adress the question why Squalor was introduced in the first place, how important urban sanitation was historically (and as a professional historian, let me tell you it was huge), and what function it might have in the game. I saw a post from someone who discovered you can send your disease-ridden spies into enemy cities and cause epidemics so you don't even have to touch their walls to make a clean sweep.
Heheh, I like it...

[Thoros of Myr]

I love mods. The more freedom and ease given to make them the better. If that means forgoing a "standardized" RTW experiance that's a trade off I will gladly accept.