Unified Website for Mods?

When the game ships, will there be a community website that gathers all of the user-generated mods and makes them available for download?

Just like there’s a minecraftforum.net that connects to curse.com. There should be a stonehearthforum.net or something and people can post their mods there and one day, maybe it’ll be connected to curse as well.

Or, an in game interface for posting, finding, and installing mods. No mucking about in the files of the game.

I only ask because if there isn’t an official plan for a website that holds all of the community mods, I would be interested in designing and building one. I know the game is a ways out right now so there would be more than enough time to build something.

Would anyone else be interested in a website like this?

There’s going to have to be at least two separate things:

  1. a set of “officially endorsed” mods that the devs have decided should be included by default with the game, that meet standards like conforming to the art style, quality stories, bug free, etc.

and

  1. community voting of some kind on other mods and add-ons.

There’s no other way to do it really.

Example: “I can’t agree with official mods aside from the base game, or something made by the Devs (expansions, etc). I do not want what other people have made, I want what Radiant Entertainment has made. and if I decide I want someones mod(s), then I want the choice to put it in my self. Forcing things on people always goes wrong, even if it is something that the game producing company has made that the community at large does not want.”

Now this is an example of a game purist (I personally mod the crap out of my games). Some people don’t want content that is not from the producing company. They like and want to play the base game without changes made by other people. And by Radiant Entertainment endorsing certain mods, this also creates favoritism in the community.

Oh, I understand the appeal of purism. The problem is that this game is

  1. endorsing mods in a BIG way – to the point that the game itself is just “collection of mods.” The devs want people to be using mods,lots, that’s part of the intent.

  2. going to contain pvp elements and co-op play.

So there’s going to have to be some way to standardize mod sets or the PvP elements will be a joke, because people will mod in a Sword of a Thousand Truths for each of their little people and so forth.

Your favoritism comment is a good point though. Sad that the best argument against an official list of “these mods meet our criteria” or whatever is “it would create drama”, but it would.

I think both of those things are not only necessary (like you said), but totally doable. I definitely think that dev involvement in any modding community that is created is essential to making sure that high-quality mods are created.

In response to Galphan, I think that having a mixed rating system using the devs input in addition to community-driven voting up/down for specific mods will minimize favoritism. I’m sure that most of the mods that are voted high by the community will also be mods that the devs support.

Does anyone else have any feedback/opinions? Oh, and if the devs are around it would be great if you could let us know if there is anything like this in the works for the game!

Not only ingame discovery and install but also the ability to point the UI to multiple websites. The Eclipse IDE is a good example of how this can be done. Each mod providing website can be named and you can see all the mods available from that site. Just like downloading plugins for Eclipse. That way if Radient ever goes out of business the mods live on in fan sites.

Simple: they are on greenlight and i can guarantee that they will make it. Steam workshop, period.

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Not really a fan of steam workshop. Having to go through Steam all the time is yuck.
Excitement is okay, but creating websites that you’re going to lose interest in before the game is released probably isn’t the best way to go about this.

Wait until the beta is released at least and see if the Devs will create a centralized website for mods, if they don’t then create a community website. If they do, create a community website anyway and re-host any mods that are on the Radiant website in case it goes down or they go out of business.

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Tom clearly stated in the livestream that support for mods is very important to them. I would recommend against jumping in and creating anything at this point; they most likely already have a plan for something, including in-game support for mod installation and discovery.

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I personally would prefer something in-game, also since not all copies will be sold over steam. There will likely be other distribution platforms available (Beam Dog, Desura just to name the first 2 that come to mind) and possibly something they are going to build themselves. Therefore focusing on the Steam Workshop, as powerful and great as it is, may not be fair.

Though this is purely subjective and based on no actual information. :smile:

He also stated that there would be something in-game for mod downloading and if you joined a co-op game it would automatically get all the mods other people were using I believe.

Just adding!