Vanilla Mods to Community Mods-The *CML*

[HoneyBadger]

There are a *lot* of excellent mods being made right now. People enjoy them, the quality is high, and they fill gaps in the game that are welcome to be filled-at least by most.

Why should they be "second-class citizens", doomed to be scorned in Multi-Player and heckled by purist/elitists as "non-canon"?

The community put their money down and the community put a lot of hard work into making mods, so why shouldn't the community have a means of making the transition between what is an "official" nation, accepted in multi-player, and what is not.
So. A format, a medium, is needed to facilitate the transition from what is *not* accepted by the greater community, to what *is*.
It also adds a bit of prestige to creating mods, which isn't a bad thing, considered the time and effort involved, and the benefits to all.

What the primary purpose of this thread is, is to allow everyone to vote to include a given mod in the prestigious 'Community Mod List'. This is a list of mods that has been voted on and accepted by the Dominions 3 Community at-large as a standard of quality, balancing (for vanilla or within the confines of a given particular "mod universe" incase anyone wants to mod a whole collection of nations and balance them against each other), and finally, relevance for multi-play. The Devs are free to vote, but the 'Community Mod List'-the "CML" is separate from, and has no connection to, Illwinter, Shrapnel Games, or any other affiliate, company, or institution.

The secondary purpose of this thread is to help define what the "Vanilla Standard" is, what "quality" in a mod should represent and aspire to, and finally, to outline some community multi-player "house rules" for a community multi-player game.

Tertiarily, I'm hoping it will help strengthen the game as a whole, as old and new ideas are accepted or rejected as more or less "thematic" or "canon" in the game, and as current Official Dev-Nations are 'held up to the light' of community mods, as it were.

The way the voting will work is thus. If you wish to propose a Mod for OUML status, just post it in the thread. If some else seconds it, it will go on to the vote. To be accepted as CML, it has to have atleast 30 votes, and the permission of the person who created the mod-unless that person is unavailable. If permission isn't denied after 30 days by the creator, the mod becomes CML. It's atleast kinda-sorta canon from that point on, and can not be excluded from any sort of CML multi-player game-hopefully, people will start hosting these-unless the rules of that particular CML multi-player game explicitely deny that particular CML mod.

Anyone can submit a mod for voting, and, ofcourse, anyone can create a mod, but in order to vote, you have to be atleast a "Corporal" in Dominions Forum ranking. Sorry, that's just the way it works. I think it takes somewhere around 50 posts to achieve the rank of "Corporal". It just cuts down on spam-voting and that sort of nefarious business, and assures that the people voting have atleast some idea of the issues at hand.

If it's found out that anyone's engaging in any sort of shady voting business, then steps to prevent them screwing things up for the rest of us will be taken. I'm not sure what those steps will be, but I'm sure I can think of something nasty.

If a mod is voted in, it can still be vetoed from the CML status. This requires 50 negative votes, and each negative vote must come with a good reason to deny the mod. A mod under the same name can then be resubmitted to the CML by the creator of the mod, after 30 days.

Hopefully, this will end up expanding greatly the options and then fun of creating mods and playing mods, especially in multi-player games.

[normalphil]

A better way to go about this is to include mods in certain MP games by agreement.

For game-community wide inclusions, I'll put it this way:

You can't even get people not to throw fits over outright vanilla factions being allowed to play in MP (EA Vanheim and Helheim), how are mods supposed to do better?

[HoneyBadger]

There's no reason the OUML can't exclude vanilla factions, now is there? That's one of the reasons it exists, to define "house rules". Excluding Van/Hel would definitely be considered a "house rule". Personally, I'd like to see the OUML keep all vanilla factions in, but as of this moment, it's an entity with a life of it's own.

[normalphil]

No, just no.

[HoneyBadger]

No what?

and Yes, you could have as many personal rules for your own personal game as you want-that's not the point at all. The point is to give certain mods which would work fine with the nations that already come with the game, recognition as being balanced, accepted, and of quality.

[HoneyBadger]

If you don't have some kind of consensus about what's a "standard mod" and what isn't, then noone will ever accept those mods into the game as a standard. They'll always remain exceptions and outcasts.

[Gandalf Parker]

NO
I think there are many tags that we can put out there as a community. But "Official Mod" is not one of them. I would pick a new name as this one gives the wrong impression.

How about "Play-Tested Mods? or even "Preferred Mods"?

[HoneyBadger]

That's why it's got the word "unofficial" right there in the title. I would have thought that would be reasonably obvious, despite it being inside little ( ) marks?

[HoneyBadger]

I guess the name could be changed easily enough, but, it's just a word, you know? It has more than one meaning, I know, but I did take steps to assure that the meaning wasn't ambiguous.

[Foodstamp]

Currently I don't think mods are exceptions and outcasts. I think the modding community has done a great job of providing people mods to enhance their single player experience and in some instance, the multiplayer aspect of the game.

Nation mods will probably never find a niche in multiplayer because even if it is accepted as being balanced, only one player gets to play as that nation, which makes the game pretty much vanilla for anyone else.

Mods that affect things other than specific nations tend to be more accepted by the multiplayer community because the effects usually apply to everyone. Example would include Worthy Heroes mod, Conceptional Balance or Nova Deus (Although I have never seen this one used in MP).

I like the way modding is right now, and how it is accepted. The only mod I have ever seen proselytized around the forums is the Conceptional Balance mod, and it was not even being pushed by the creator. I think this has left a bad impression on some people and has been the center of a few heated arguments. Creating a list of "officially" accepted mods would have a similar effect on the mods included on the list, souring some people before they even try the mod, or causing discourse and hard feelings for people who did not make the list, possibly even discouraging and pushing modders away.

It's like I said in another thread, the relationship between the player and the mod is a personal one. The player downloads the mod of their own freewill if they are interested in it, and then they play the mod if they like it.

I feel that creating a list like you propose would hurt that relationship.