Disappointed

[Amazombie]

First off I really loved this game. This is not one of those "I'm leaving" post, I'm for sure going to keep playing, but a post in hopes that maybe Hinterland will listen to feedback. My thoughts are being echoed on the Reddit as well. However, I understand they dont go there very much if at all these days. 
TLD really needs mod support. The recent update killed all mods and from post from modders its not something they can fix. The base game is great but there were just some quality of life mods that made a huge difference, shorter reading intervals, clean up trash, etc. The removal of mods takes this away, and while I said before I plan to keep playing, it really takes a lot of the enjoyment away now that mods are gone. I wont hold my breath, I know hinterland has been anti mod since the beginning. I was chastised often for evening mentioning of mods before. Even though they say they are more open to it, I tend to not be so optimistic. But there is always hope I suppose. So I hope the Devs see this. And also look online at some other comments. I'm not alone, many, many players experience has been hurt with the removal of mods. 

[ManicManiac]

They always listen to feedback... but you also have to remember that they can't cater to every criticism.  Just like any situation, you can never please everyone because everyone has their own subjective viewpoint, thoughts, and feelings.  I'm sure Hinterland takes all feedback and weighs it against their vision of the experience to craft the game into something that both satisfies them as creators and also as many of players as they can.

On the subject of mods... please bear in mind that this is their intellectual property.  Whether they advocate other people modifying their creation or not is entirely their call to make.  I'm not here to chastise anyone, but I would ask that you consider other points of view.

Edited May 7, 2019 by ManicManiac

[thekillergreece]

There was no justified reason to disable mods entirely. Hell, Hinterland has failed to deliver mods since... 1.0 launch? That's too long overdue.

[Amazombie]

I understand its their call. I guess what I was trying to convey and maybe not well, is just that there seems to be a large percent of the player base that supports and would like to see modding available. It benefits not only the community by being able to create an experience that works for them. As you pointed out they cant by default cater to everyone's request. But it also benefits Hinterland, because some people will be more inclined to continue playing. Like I stated before I plan to keep playing, but I can also tell you my amount of time playing will definitely decline, as the mods made it much more enjoyable than the base game. 

[Amazombie]

Just now, thekillergreece said:

There was no justified reason to disable mods entirely. Hell, Hinterland has failed to deliver mods since... 1.0 launch? That's too long overdue.

I wouldnt say that. It may have been changes that were not intended to disable mods but that was a by product. I would just like to see them try to find a way to make it available again. Even though they've never been fans of modding I dont think it was a change strictly to disable them 

[Mroz4k]

15 minutes ago, Amazombie said:

I know hinterland has been anti mod since the beginning.

I dont think they were. In fact, I am pretty sure they mentioned that they wish to add mod support in the future. Back, long-long ago, there was a list of wishes the Hinterland envisioned for the future of TLD... some of these wishes have since then been added (moose), some were discarded forever as never going to happen (spring, summer, autumn) - but as far as I know, Hinterland still wishes for the game to eventually get a mod support.

The reason they crack down so hard on people about TLD mods right now is because these mods were made without the official support, by illegaly tampering with their game´s software. There is a risk these mods open the player to a potential of errors, and even malware attacks, and if these happened, it would cast bad light on Hinterland and on the TLD itself, even if it were illegal mods. 

I understand and fully share your wish for mod support. In fact, I think it would be the best thing Hinterland could add, because it would allow people to mod the game to their liking, which would once and forever solve the issue of "new content coming in too slowly".

[thekillergreece]

4 minutes ago, Amazombie said:

I wouldnt say that. It may have been changes that were not intended to disable mods but that was a by product. I would just like to see them try to find a way to make it available again. Even though they've never been fans of modding I dont think it was a change strictly to disable them 

Hopefully. We, TLD wikia administrators/editors are unable to extract important pics from the game anymore which is detrimental for the wiki itself.

[Amazombie]

1 minute ago, Mroz4k said:

I dont think they were. In fact, I am pretty sure they mentioned that they wish to add mod support in the future. Back, long-long ago, there was a list of wishes the Hinterland envisioned for the future of TLD... some of these wishes have since then been added (moose), some were discarded forever as never going to happen (spring, summer, autumn) - but as far as I know, Hinterland still wishes for the game to eventually get a mod support.

The reason they crack down so hard on people about TLD mods right now is because these mods were made without the official support, by illegaly tampering with their game´s software. There is a risk these mods open the player to a potential of errors, and even malware attacks, and if these happened, it would cast bad light on Hinterland and on the TLD itself, even if it were illegal mods. 

I understand and fully share your wish for mod support. In fact, I think it would be the best thing Hinterland could add, because it would allow people to mod the game to their liking, which would once and forever solve the issue of "new content coming in too slowly".

I have to disagree with you here. I've personally had post deleted where there were no links, or instructions, just mere discussions of modding, and was told by the forum mods at the time "discussions of mods or modding " is not allowed. Their reasons given to me when I questioned why the discussion was not allowed did not have to do with tampering. They just didnt want it discussed at all. Maybe for those reasons, but to block even the discussion of it seemed excessive. They did come out later and say they'd like to add support. But like I said, I'm skeptical. I personally believe it was said to try and appease those who wanted modding, but dont think we will see it unless there is more feedback and pressure for it. 

[Guest kristaok]

I don't think personally Hinterland will ever be for modding, I just don't get that "vibe". But just be careful please, I don't want anyone here to get into any trouble, because I heard discussing mods here on the Forums is a no - no. I think that's unfortunate but I am not the boss, so what I think doesn't matter.  But I can see why people are hurting especially after this update, some people as we speak can't even play the game, so modding right now is sadly the least of their issues. I was one of those people, for a while there my game was pretty much unplayable, I had to literally do a clean uninstall / reinstall, I even had to turn off cloud saves etc. So even though I personally am for modding (I have never been against those who choose to mod), I still can't think of modding especially when I am so sad to see many people still cannot play their game right now due to the crashing. Thank goodness Hinterland said they are working on an issue and it should be fixed within a day or two. 

So yes I know you and others are hurting with the lack of mod support, but let's try to remember that there are people that cannot even play their game at all right now.  This is why I have been trying to do my part and tell people just how I fixed my game, in hopes that they can apply what I did and fix their game too. 

[Amazombie]

Well, I also posted this on twitter, and got a response of "We'll release our own when we are ready."  So, I dont expect too much movement anytime soon.

I did follow up with "While I certainly hope so. We've been told on the forums since I believe as far back as 2016 that "its on the list" . You have to know how important it is to the player base. So, I'd hope you can understand why we are skeptical that that its coming or at the very least a priority"

Which I guess is my whole point. We've been told it was not something they were interested in doing, and then told its on the list. But its been that way for years now. Its not that complicated as many modders have modded the game. It's simply a low priority for them, and now they've further made it so they cant be used at all and based off that response, they dont seem to care. I could be misreading it, but in my dealing with hinterland they just seem to be very dismissive of the mods and how much the ability impacts their player base. It's a very "oh well" type of attitude. 

 

For what its worth... 

 

Edited May 7, 2019 by Amazombie
update

[hozz1235]

Hopefully this will be answered in the next mailbag.

 

[atomic]

2 hours ago, kristaok said:

But just be careful please, I don't want anyone here to get into any trouble, because I heard discussing mods here on the Forums is a no - no.

Do not be afraid 😀, Admin wrote on Sep, 4th, 2018:

"As stated we are fine with people discussing their desire for mods. We, however, do not want people directing others to existing mods, or recommending existing mods. For this reason, we've edited your post removing references to where you can find them.

The main reason for this is that the use of unauthorized mods can have adverse effects on the game performance, even when not using a mod or after removing it. This creates additional work for our support team who are expected to find solutions for people whose games a result of using a mod. When they're focused on this they're not able to focus on helping to address other issues.

Again we're fine with your discussing a desire for mods to come, but recommending or referencing any that might exist now will result in a suspension of posting privileges as it's against the forum guidelines.

Thank you."

 

For me it makes sense, doesn't it?

[Guest kristaok]

I'm glad to see this  

[Amazombie]

1 hour ago, atomic said:

Do not be afraid 😀, Admin wrote on Sep, 4th, 2018:

"As stated we are fine with people discussing their desire for mods. We, however, do not want people directing others to existing mods, or recommending existing mods. For this reason, we've edited your post removing references to where you can find them.

The main reason for this is that the use of unauthorized mods can have adverse effects on the game performance, even when not using a mod or after removing it. This creates additional work for our support team who are expected to find solutions for people whose games a result of using a mod. When they're focused on this they're not able to focus on helping to address other issues.

Again we're fine with your discussing a desire for mods to come, but recommending or referencing any that might exist now will result in a suspension of posting privileges as it's against the forum guidelines.

Thank you."

 

For me it makes sense, doesn't it?

Thats good. I am glad they changed that. There was a point in time when even the discussions of mods even without naming them was not ok. So i think for those of us who are not on the forums that often , that is were the confusion was. 

[FINDarkside]

7 hours ago, Mroz4k said:

 The reason they crack down so hard on people about TLD mods right now is because these mods were made without the official support, by illegaly tampering with their game´s software. There is a risk these mods open the player to a potential of errors, and even malware attacks, and if these happened, it would cast bad light on Hinterland and on the TLD itself, even if it were illegal mods. 

That's pretty much what modding is, except that "illegal" is a way too strong strong term, it might be on the grey area, but there's no precedent and legislation varies between countries heavily. What we do know for a fact, is that Hinterlands strong opinion against mods is not common. Sure, Hinterland doesn't have to allow talking about mods and so on, but don't try to present this like it'd be common with other developers. And this whole "unofficial" and "official" modding terms are pretty much coined by Hinterland. Usually developers might release official modding tools to help modding, not to limit modding. You know what Avalanche Studios did when some modders made "unofficial" multiplayer mod for Just Cause 2? They released it on Steam and hired some of the developers. Surely they should have been super mad for such shenanigans, right?

Now again, I'm not saying that Hinterland doesn't have right to be against modding. It just seems that many people seem to assume, because of Hinterland's stance, that it's common for developers to try to limit modding, which it is not. 

[Guest kristaok]

6 minutes ago, FINDarkside said:

That's pretty much what modding is, except that "illegal" is a way too strong strong term, it might be on the grey area, but there's no precedent and legislation varies between countries heavily. What we do know for a fact, is that Hinterlands strong opinion against mods is not common. Sure, Hinterland doesn't have to allow talking about mods and so on, but don't try to present this like it'd be common with other developers. And this whole "unofficial" and "official" modding terms are pretty much coined by Hinterland. Usually developers might release official modding tools to help modding, not to limit modding. You know what Avalanche Studios did when some modders made "unofficial" multiplayer mod for Just Cause 2? They released it on Steam and hired some of the developers. Surely they should have been super mad for such shenanigans, right?

Now again, I'm not saying that Hinterland doesn't have right to be against modding. It just seems that many people seem to assume, because of Hinterland's stance, that it's common for developers to try to limit modding, which it is not. 

I know personally in the case of most of the games I play, like Torchlight 1 and 2, The Sims Series, Stardew Valley, etc. the Developers have no qualms with modding in fact they encourage and make it easier for modders to mod those games. 

Sadly I feel like Hinterland is shooting themselves in the foot with this one... I think they should be more accepting, and just be frank. Let people mod if they want, and if they hurt their game let them deal with the consequences, but don't shun modding. 

I feel like the Team has a vision for their game, and because of that sadly they are not willing to realize that this "vision" may not match the fanbase / players vision / play style. For instance I have asked personally for a marker on the Map to show where I am going, but It was never provided, and I know it will never be provided. I know I am not the only one, sure a lot of people don't want the marker they want the game harder, but not everyone wants this challenging slog of a game - I know I personally don't. I feel like something like that among other things could be remedied with mods, but as of right now sadly they are not supported.

[Admin]

Just to reiterate what was said in that other topic about mods breaking up:

Mods broke because of a change in Unity we adopted to improve performances. To fix the current PC crash, we may have to roll that back and mods may work again for a short period of time. That is until we find a way to get those performance improvements in safely again, at which point mods are likely to break again. As for why we are currently not supporting mods, we have made it clear in the past: there are a lot of competing priorities while making a game like The Long Dark, with a team our size, at the level of quality that we want. At this stage, mods just create more work for our team still working and focusing on the core game (bug reports, performance issues etc.). We are looking forward to doing mod support justice with proper tools at a later stage.