i read another user's disapproving opinion of modding, and was surprised at the notion that someone would actually not want mods in this game. i myself am quite hopeful that modding will be allowed at some point, tho i can think of pros and cons of it.

pros: i would be able to create the backroads i drive on, and drive on them virtually, keeping me thoroughly entertained and keeping the RL roads safer. i would very much like to take a stab at modelling my car to drive on them, and having the ability to alter the preset car physics models to aid the process. figure i'd start with the xrt and take a little weight off.

cons: users would be able to create licensed cars/tracks. if taken online, i imagine this could lead to legal issues for the devs. user created content will probably be of lesser quality than official content, on average (this is the argument i heard- makes sense, i've experienced this phenomenon firsthand). user created content, if taken online, could skew the balanced nature of the races online, and give people the opportunity to cheat. similarly, it would divide the online community between people who had the same modded content and didn't, potentially making games harder to find.


it seems to me all the cons relate to modded content online. simplest solution- don't allow it online. dunno how simple this would be to implement, but i would be overjoyed at the option to use modded content offline at some point. until then i'll just be ..uh.. "joyed" with the experience.

what do y'all think?

Good mods can bring a lot to the game. However, there is a downside. Imagine finding 6 versions of Laguna Seca or 3 versions of Nordschleife, or any popular track or car for that matter. Which one do you choose? Which tracks/cars are going to be run by the most people at any given time? Which ones are crap and how can you judge other people's opinions? Then try to connect online and try to find a populated server where everyone has all the files necessary to race.

Offline is a different story. Compatibility would not be as big of an issue and you could do as you please.

The great thing about LFS at present is that anyone can connect at any given time of day (or night) and find a race on some really good tracks. Try that with mods and it will be a whole lot harder unless there is some kind of mod organization system. It would be critical for many people to be on the same page to get it to work. rFactor is a good example here. There are some really great mods and tracks, but good luck finding as many populated servers as we enjoy. rFactor also has a lot of crummy mods and then there are the "incompatible file" woes.

You just have to weigh whether mods would actually benefit LFS or hurt it in the end. My opinion is, that while I like the idea of mods, it might actually hurt LFS in the end. The is such a thing as having too many choices. I don't want to see LFS turn into the jumbled mess that rFactor became. The only way it could be pulled off is with the blessing and support of the devs and the implementation of a good mod organization system and a lot of people willing to use them. I doubt it will ever happen and that is probably a good thing. My two cents.

As for offline modding, I would say yes. Online modding, you would need a very strong arguement for me to change my mind from a big no.

agreed. the only way i could think of for them to allow online modding is to incorporate popular mods officially, making them part of the official game. this would of course require an evaluation and implementation process, and a lot of work on the devs part. i would not expect or demand this of them. tho it would be cool, it seems like an unrealistic prospect, with little to no payoff for the devs. but if they were inclined to do so, here is the best way i could think of it to go...

to ease the developer's workload, i would suggest a nomination process, by which a certain percentage of the entire userbase must suggest a mod for official content. they then accept the original mod materials from the modder, and evaluate their quality. this would require qa resources, and engineering resources to correct bugs, as they do with their own content. hopefully at this point the nomination process would have supplied them with plenty of user feedback, easing the qa process. then they implement and release. in order not to divide the userbase, this would have to be free.

like i said, unrealistic, i don't expect nor demand it. but my wheel just broke so i have the time to come up with and share these crazy schemes

i see some people wouldn't approve of modding offline tho, and i wonder what the reasoning is. the only problem i could foresee is security problems making sure it doesn't get online. anyone care to share why they wouldn't want offline modding?

Quote from braincore02 :

pros: i would be able to create the backroads i drive on, and drive on them virtually, keeping me thoroughly entertained and keeping the RL roads safer. i would very much like to take a stab at modelling my car to drive on them, and having the ability to alter the preset car physics models to aid the process. figure i'd start with the xrt and take a little weight off.

I think, the opposite would be true... seeing that you can go much faster there than you do IRL would be really tempting to even that up ^^

The pro:s I have for modding are: more cars, more tracks.

The cons: as you said, the very inconsistent quality, and the splitting of the community, allthough I prefer the term "shattering", as it just wouldn't be split, like with the test patches, but you'd probably only meet a handfull people using the same mods.

So In general, I say nay, because, despite the feeling while driving, the pick up and play style LfS has is the thing that keeps me playing.

I voted "nay". As long as it stays offline, though, I have no problem with it

It amuses me how search functions are hidden into blackhole, considering modding discussions

Ah crap, I voted yay. Wasn't it easyier to just use Yes and No

A simple yes or no isn't enough of a choice for answers (in the poll that you admit yourself is a copy of an existing thread...)

The pros and cons have pretty much already been covered, my biggest personal one being the mismatched versions of mods that there would be. Oh, and the fact that there would be some shockingly bad mods out there which you may only realise once you've downloaded/installed it.
However, I've played some decent HL2 and BF mods in the past, so I can't say I'm totally against it.

You only mentioned track making as a mod in the OP, and I recently posted a complex-to-program but theoretically feasible method of creating tracks within the game which are then generated by the engine on-the-fly. I still think it would make sense, but god only knows how long it'd take to implement.

Car mods, on the other hand, could be disastrous. The balancing of current cars is really coming along, but if someone adds Supercar_01 which sticks to the road like glue and hits 300mph in 4 seconds, nobody running that mod is going to drive anything else. And because it seems like a massive number of people want to drive as fast as possible all the time (check the oval/BF1 server populations) then there would be a load of people not running anything else and really restricting the number of servers available to everyone else.

What I think would be interesting is a serverside option where you could replace car parts to create new models of existing vehicles (in the style of Tweak). For instance, dropping a V8 into the XFG and sticking on semi-slicks or road_supers to create the XF8, which would then replace the XFG on the car screen for that server. Again, automatically created by the engine when you log into the server. It's not the tuning like the ricers want, but it's a nice balance and a way of creating even more variety of cars.
Could be made available for single-player too, but it would be at risk of messing up the AI.

I'm not voting in this poll, because I think there needs to be a "maybe" option.

LFS is already moddable to an extent in that you can change the classes, that's enough for my liking a flat 8 FXR actually sounds pretty awesome

I think allowing LFS to be moddable would be a huge mistake, it would just cause compatibility issues in the only sim that is currently straight forward to use online. Possibly when LFS is actually in S3 final and the Devs decide it's time to throw in the towel then modding could be allowed, but IMO it would still be a cheaper money earning gimmick. Dare I say it as well though rF can be a perfectly reasonable simulation that is really more than enough to satisfy modders needs, unfortunately it also demonstrates how without proper documentation and modders who are mainly worried about graphics you end up with front engined 911s gripping to the road with seriously weird tires.

http://www.lfsforum.net/showth ... 908&highlight=Modding

http://www.lfsforum.net/showth ... 891&highlight=Modding

http://www.lfsforum.net/showth ... 899&highlight=Modding

http://www.lfsforum.net/search.php


yay for searching nay for pointless polls.

Oh and just to add, even if offline modding was allowed, how long before people using these offline mods got bored against playing the AI, and want to bring it online ....

Hmmm Interesting point.

yay for offline only mods (Nordschleife :bowdown

nay for online, for all the reasons that have been said.

Yay with an "if".
Nay with a "but".

yay if:
- Not before S3 final (or very close)
- Offline restricted
- As easy as it is with morrowind to activate/desactivate the mods

I'm part of the group who want any modding in LFS to be strictly controlled by the devs. When S3 is finished I would like to see them hire a few people to make high quality content to help out Eric. Then release that content in packs, Rally Pack, Le Mans pack, Karting Pack...etc. That way you keep the servers populated and make sure LFS doesn't turn into RFactor with empty servers and a billion badly made mods.

Of course then it would all have to be "fictional" content rather than licensed stuff, unless the licenses were secured. I'd be fine with that, I like the current LFS content, I just want more of it.
The only way we'll get "real tracks and cars" is if the devs play no part in the process at all, and that might not be good.

Quote from Gener_AL (UK) :

yay for searching nay for pointless polls...

I'm very much in favour of keeping the fictional content, we can still have similar cars that look like real ones (FZR looks a bit like a Ferrari). I recently bought motoGP 07 for the 360, the real tracks and GP bikes are boring, but blasting along the made up tracks on the sports bikes is amazing.

Either way the ability to modify LFS is very far off, the devs said if they opened it to modding it would only be when LFS is finished. That means when S3 is made final I rekon.

I agree with people who say compatibility is an annoying issue with modable games. I used to play GTR and rFactor a lot, but I found it extremely annoying that I would often have to download new tracks and cars if I wanted to join a busy server. Plus mod authors aren't the best people at managing compatibility even between versions of their own mod, so you end up with mismatch errors and weird bugs. Add in that the quality of many of the mods I played was questionable at best, and I do feel that a large modding scene would really hurt a primarily online game like LFS.

Perhaps in the future when the developers have finished adding their own content, it can be considered to add longevity to what would otherwise be a dead game, but really I think we've got more than enough to keep us occupied racing with for the moment, and really many people just want mods now so they can add Nordschleife to the game.

Also it is funny how some vote nay based to some games like rFactor, thinking that it is only way to do modding, well I have said things so many times already that people really must use search...

Nay.

Dev content only, garantue on quality and that it stays with the vision of LFS.

I'd say yes, for tracks only. I know I seem to be in the minority in LFS, but I really like driving on real-world tracks. I couldn't care less about the cars being fictional as long as there's a good mix of different types and they're representative of real-world equivalents.

However, I was so desperate to drive a real-life track that I actually bought rFactor...with disappointing results!

Limiting mods to offline doesn't really make sense. Who is going to create a mod if it can't be raced online? Obviously allowing online mods does create some difficulties but for modding to be useful it has to be allowed online.

Quote from Clownpaint :

One word. Steam.

That system works beautifully with mods. They download seemlessly as you join servers. As for rFactor, they got it completely wrong. I have to go about grabbing mods from obscure sites and then only find i have a file mismatch, re download etc et bla bla.

STEAM.

Perfect example of a modding community.

Rfactor is a bit messy to be honest.

+1 for a Steam-Like mod system.

If it was for offline then surely someone would just make some hack which allows the use of mods online.

Scawen is good, but im sure that someone would eventually manage to work out what would need changed to allow the mods to work online.

Quote from mcintyrej :

Perfect example of a modding community.

Rfactor is a bit messy to be honest.

+1 for a Steam-Like mod system.

No thanks! One sniff of steam(-like) stuff and I'm off to find another game (which I'd rather not do, especially if LFS became moddable)

All the people saying "as long as it's offline only"... I wonder how many would be wishing they could use it online when someone models their favourite car or track and how many of the nay-sayers are just jealous because they know they wouldn't be able to create decent content in a million years due to lack of knowledge / will to learn.



Regards,

Ian

Modding brings more Depth and Playability, especially as the game gets a bit old. New cars, and Mod projects, bring the community together, Fan Boys and Coders alike