The first public alpha release of a game, and mostly all I see are postings here advertising people mods, asking questions about mods, mod this, mod that… Can’t we even get the game development progressing before everyone becomes obscessed with mods…
1 Like
Nope 
. To many people Stonehearth is appealing not only because the idea and design is nice, but also because it is highly moddable. As other games have shown (e.g. Minecraft) a healthy and active modding-community can make a big difference and provide much more content than a small development team could do in the same time. So I would not worry too much about people asking questions in this direction… more the opposite .
5 Likes
Why do you ask this question? Lots of games have had tons of mods in their Beta, including Minecraft…
Why do you dislike mods? Sounds a bit absurd if you ask me.
Adding incredible modding ability to a game opens up the game to endless amounts of user generated content. Games like Minecraft and Skyrim are perfect examples. Both games are insanely popular for YEARS, one cause Youtube + modding and the other cause name + modding.
Modding is wonderful and you need to embrace it 
Right, nowadays most people play Minecraft for the mods, when vanilla Minecraft gets boring there are tons of easy-to-install fun mods. This is highly applicable to Stonehearth right know, seeing as there isn’t much content yet.
Because this game isn’t even close to be completed. Mods are for when you’re done with the vanilla game, adding additional things to do. But the game isn;t even completed yet. In fact, I can find close to nothing about the actual game itself. I’m not against mods, I just don’t think the first week of alpha is the appropriate place for modders to be advertising their mods, and other people saying “Oh you gotta play this mod, it’s the bees knees…” I’d like to see the actual game completed before I even consider mods.
aside from being able to discuss playing the game itself (which, in the current alpha state, is difficult, as there is only a barebones amount of content), being able to discuss modifications to the game is the next best thing…
seems perfectly normal to me! 
1 Like
Because this game isn’t even close to be completed. Mods are for when you’re done with the vanilla game, adding additional things to do
Minecraft isn’t even complete at all. People are still smashing their mods into the jar as main way of modding - officially there’s no modding support at all. Yet it has a large modding community and these mods have extended Minecraft’s liefspan immensely.
As weird as this sounds (as one of the guys who mods this game already), I tend to agree with you. It’s silly to start advertising a mod pack that has little more behind it than an idea or a topic. Of course these ideas need a place to live too, but personally I would rather develop the idea a bit before releasing it to the public.
1 Like
I see this all the time in Starbound forums, after most updates, people getting in and crying and whining how their mods all broke. The game is still in development, pieces are constantly changing, and people are attempting to mod to these changes and release them as actual playable mods. Enough people complain about mods always getting broken bootstraps the developers into 1 of 2 mindsets. Too bad, they keep developing and to hell with mods breaking, or they curb their developmental efforts so mods don’t get broken, but internal game mechanics suffer for it.
I think the game should hit a certain level of development people people start attemtping to mod, as well as releasing said mods.
The trouble is we’re not sure when the game will be finished or at a stage where mods are likely to remain stable through versions - of course that moment isn’t right now and it is highly likely that mods will break going forward.
So yes I can see why it might seem odd to start modding now, however people want to involve themselves at the moment and discover and explore what they can do - there’s nothing wrong with that in any way.
With the game pushing how moddable it will be it’s a natural thing to see and I personally find it exciting to see what things people do with the game - but I do appreciate how limited the base game is currently.
Ultimately though I don’t see any harm in fostering a strong modding community from the get go where people can share ideas, models, code, and all discuss ways to mod the game and to make themselves better at modding.
1 Like
I see this all the time in Starbound forums, after most updates, people getting in and crying and whining how their mods all broke.
You can’t change people, as simple as that. They will always complain, no matter what.
The game is still in development, pieces are constantly changing, and people are attempting to mod to these changes and release them as actual playable mods
Yupp, because that’s part of the fun of doing it. It might seem like a waste of time (and technically seen for those developing mods it is, although they don’t see it as such) but it works out in the end. New changes can bring new features from which other mods can profit.
Enough people complain about mods always getting broken bootstraps the developers into 1 of 2 mindsets
That would be an issue with the developers, however. People need to recognize that especially in a beta, the content is subject to change. This includes everything related to modding. Once again, you can’t change people. It might not sound very PR-ish, but the best thing to do would be to simply state “Well, we did say that things might change or break.”
I think the game should hit a certain level of development people people start attemtping to mod, as well as releasing said mods.
What level would that be? What if the core APIs are all already there and little is going to change? What if whatever comes now is simply more content using those APIs? Nobody knows what will change in the future or how. As long as modders (and users) adapt to the changes, we should be fine.
All in all, I think you should stop worrying that a few loud idiots will break the game for everyone else with their (surreal) demands. Have some faith in the developers (both official and modding) and see how it plays out.
Making mods during game development might actually help the devs come up with extra features or change planned features according to a mod that was greatly accepted by the community.
Some people were even hired because of their mods. Modding at every stage of the game is good. It cannot be bad in any way as long as people understand that they will have to update them often.
Again, I have nothing against mods. But look in the forums and find any post about the actual game. There aren’t any (or very few) because everything is about the mods. We’re supposed to be testing the actual gameplay, where can I read about this? What’s breaking, what’s being worked on, where is the info about the actual game? Hardly evident here because everything is about mods. Never mind, I’m stopping. I’ll just avoid coming here. Probably avoid the game as well since all anybody cares about is mods.
Then please ask this question to begin with so we can direct you before cannon balling into:
If you check the Dev Blog they usually update every Tuesday with information on what’s been happening every week. You can find that here: http://stonehearth.net/
The roadmap is also very interesting: http://stonehearth.net/roadmap/
Currently we also have the Curse forums where a lot of the bug reports are happening: http://www.stonehearthguru.com/forums
You might also find some interesting information out from the Kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1590639245/stonehearth
In terms of wanting to find out about the game, the main website/ dev blog is probably the best place for this. The reason there is little discussion about the actual game here on the forums I imagine is because we’ve probably explored all the avenues that were available to us at the time.
Right now we all have our hands on Alpha 1 and it is the very first step on the road towards the game the team are working on, they have their goals and their aims and right now I would argue there’s very little we can do but mess around and report bugs - once things stabilise and gameplay expands then that will be the time that gameplay discussion and suggestions truly kick in.
6 Likes
One of the main reasons the mods are the main focus right now is because the devs aren’t giving us any new information yet. Mods give new content to the game, how can you not understand that.
Even when the game does get the content its supposed to, the mod scene will be much stronger than now. You will be looking at hundreds of modders compared to what, 10 that we have now?
When you create a game and advertise it as highly moddable and then if the modding isn’t the main focus of the community then I don’t see how can that be called a success.
It is also because the discourse set-up always displays the flavor of the day first. All older topics go down. And since all bugs are already reported and there is not a lot to talk about the current gameplay, another big topic remains .
And what @Geoffers747 said, you might find the other websites better suited for you. And come back here when a new version of the game is released and find it flooded with bugreports and gameplay again.
1 Like
Yep, this is probably also a big thing - you can easily change this though by simply switching categories.
A quick and easy way to do this is to just click the drop down arrow next to where it says “all categories”:
There have been numerous bug reports and discussions on the game-play mechanics. Like others have said, with this being a very early alpha and there being very little content in the game (or even a save function) so there isn’t much discussion to be had. As time goes on I’m sure topics on the core game will be more active.
The devs have stated many times how much they love mods and how this game is designed for moding.
Also mods break, that’s how things just work. Learning to mod games is a learning process and a way to get the community involved with the game. Is it a little to early to mod? In my opinion I might agree with you there. My mod right now is mostly just a reskin mod. I’m for the most part waiting for the moding API to be released so I can start on coding and adding more game content.
Right. This is the forum setup for all standard forums: the survival of the most popular.
Hey chaps, Hows it going?
It occurs to me that the main issue here is information overload and how to filter only what is relevant to you.
Your friend here is using the categories view and just ignore the Modding category.
Our (excessive) joy in digging about under the hood and modding the game is best ignored if it doesn’t float your boat, it will not diminish the awesome creation that Stonehearth is becoming.
Please enjoy the game responsibly
Love and hugs
T
2 Likes