New DLC better ruin seamless co-op for good

[Bazongo]

You shouldnt be able to get carried through the game without being invaded. I hope Miyazaki has added some code blocking to their mod, and also send a cease and desist letter. PVP has been part of the souls franchise forever and they arent respecting fromsoft's vision by avoiding it when in co-op mode.

[ramattis]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Synthetic:

Początkowo opublikowane przez ramattis:

This is asinine. I just described what a mod is. It's a modification of the game's files. Why are you trolling?

Yes, while completely pulling out of your ass that "most mods are merely cosmetics." Why don't you go ahead and take your thesis to its conclusion? Go ahead and lecture us all about why total conversion mods are bad for the community, or make an extremely hilarious justification for how they are different from seamless coop.

Still straw-manning, I said none of what you're suggesting I'm saying. Also all you have to do is visit any modding site and the stuff that's cosmetic and the stuff that doesn't change gameplay will almost always outnumber the stuff that changes gameplay, often by a large amount. Just look around fella. I've been modding games in some form or another for over two decades and the majority of stuff I come across is skins/sounds/model-swaps/other-things-that-don't-touch-gameplay/etc. because oftentimes it's easier to modify game assets than it is to modify the game's code unless the developer makes it fairly easy to access that stuff.

Początkowo opublikowane przez ressenmacher:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Synthetic:

Yes, while completely pulling out of your ass that "most mods are merely cosmetics." Why don't you go ahead and take your thesis to its conclusion? Go ahead and lecture us all about why total conversion mods are bad for the community, or make an extremely hilarious justification for how they are different from seamless coop.

To add to this, ER's modding by volume is clearly not majority cosmetic. In decreasing order of popularity, the most downloaded mods from Nexus are:

Seamless Coop (3.2 million downloads)
Elden Ring Mod Loader
Anti-Cheat Toggler and Offline Launcher
Elden Ring Item and Enemy Randomizer
The Convergence
Elden Ring Reforged
Grand Merchant
Easy Mode for Elden Ring
All Items - All Classes (220 thousand downloads)

You need to go to spot 13 for the first truly cosmetic mod, something that uncaps the framerate and sits at ~200 thousand downloads. Most of the modding is overhauls, shop/cheat mods, and seamless coop.

*Looks at 13 mods out of thousands* "Clearly not majority cosmetic". Instead of looking at the shortlist of the most popular, try looking through ALL the mods and you'll see a large amount of cosmetic mods and stuff that doesn't touch gameplay. And why look only at ER mods? I'm talking about modding in general, not just ER. Smells like yet another straw-man.

EDIT: I'd also like to point out that of that list you posted, several don't even affect gameplay in the slightest.
Mod Loader -- out-of-game utility program, no gameplay change on its own
Offline Launcher -- doesn't launch EAC, no gameplay change on its own
All Items -- assuming just game saves, no gameplay change
These are all what I would consider to fall under the "cosmetic or no gameplay change" category.

[ressenmacher]

Początkowo opublikowane przez ramattis:

*Looks at 13 mods out of thousands* "Clearly not majority cosmetic"

Początkowo opublikowane przez ressenmacher:

To add to this, ER's modding by volume is clearly not majority cosmetic.

I spoke about volume, not the number of individual mods, because the number of players using each type is what has an impact on multiplayer dynamics.

On Nexus, by the 300th mod the individual downloads are down to ~5k. By the thousandth, ~1k. Even if every mod after those had 1k users, it would only come out to 2.24 million - less than Seamless alone.

Mod use is strongly concentrated in the small subset that is most popular, and among the most popular overhaul, cheat, and Seamless dominate. Perhaps in the tail - the area between the 20 most popular and the 300 or so most popular - cosmetics gain ground. But it's very clear that those cosmetics don't themselves utterly dominate the modding scene by volume of use.

And I'm not even sure that's the case. Cosmetic mods do get more popular over the tail, but not to the exclusion of the other types - for instance, looking on page 25 (20 mods/page, out past the 5k zone) reveals that eight are weapon changes/cheats/shop mods/overhauls, while 12 are some kind of cosmetic or minor QoL change.

edit:

Początkowo opublikowane przez ramattis:

EDIT: I'd also like to point out that of that list you posted, several don't even affect gameplay in the slightest.
Mod Loader -- out-of-game utility program, no gameplay change on its own
Offline Launcher -- doesn't launch EAC, no gameplay change on its own
All Items -- assuming just game saves, no gameplay change
These are all what I would consider to fall under the "cosmetic or no gameplay change" category.

Not impacting gameplay doesn't automatically equal cosmetic. These mods have an impact on the multiplayer scene, which the discussion centers around - offline launches prevent people from engaging in multiplayer, all item saves contribute to the duped item problem, etc. The mod loader is fair though - it just enables other stuff, no demographic impact there

[ramattis]

Początkowo opublikowane przez ressenmacher:

Początkowo opublikowane przez ramattis:

*Looks at 13 mods out of thousands* "Clearly not majority cosmetic"

Początkowo opublikowane przez ressenmacher:

To add to this, ER's modding by volume is clearly not majority cosmetic.

I spoke about volume, not the number of individual mods, because the number of players using each type is what has an impact on multiplayer dynamics.

On Nexus, by the 300th mod the individual downloads are down to ~5k. By the thousandth, ~1k. Even if every mod after those had 1k users, it would only come out to 2.24 million - less than Seamless alone.

Mod use is strongly concentrated in the small subset that is most popular, and among the most popular overhaul, cheat, and Seamless dominate. Perhaps in the tail - the area between the 20 most popular and the 300 or so most popular - cosmetics gain ground. But it's very clear that those cosmetics don't themselves utterly dominate the modding scene by volume of use.

And I'm not even sure that's the case. Cosmetic mods do get more popular over the tail, but not to the exclusion of the other types - for instance, looking on page 25 (20 mods/page, out past the 5k zone) reveals that eight are weapon changes/cheats/shop mods/overhauls, while 12 are some kind of cosmetic or minor QoL change.

??? By volume of use? My dude, I'm clearly speaking of number in existence and not what gets downloaded the most. Again, not speaking only of ER, just modding in general. And I feel like I have to say this for a third time: I never mentioned modding at all until someone used it as a straw-man and now everyone seems to be running with it like it's always been the focus of my argument and in reality it has absolutely nothing to do with anything I said. Now we're dropping in this "volume of use" insanity and I'm left wondering what the heck y'all are smoking.

EDIT FOR YOUR EDIT:

Początkowo opublikowane przez ressenmacher:

edit:

Początkowo opublikowane przez ramattis:

EDIT: I'd also like to point out that of that list you posted, several don't even affect gameplay in the slightest.
Mod Loader -- out-of-game utility program, no gameplay change on its own
Offline Launcher -- doesn't launch EAC, no gameplay change on its own
All Items -- assuming just game saves, no gameplay change
These are all what I would consider to fall under the "cosmetic or no gameplay change" category.

Not impacting gameplay doesn't automatically equal cosmetic. These mods have an impact on the multiplayer scene, which the discussion centers around - offline launches prevent people from engaging in multiplayer, all item saves contribute to the duped item problem, etc. The mod loader is fair though - it just enables other stuff, no demographic impact there

As I said at first: "cosmetic or not changing gameplay in any meaningful way". Utilities and save files fall under this category in my opinion. The offline launcher mod just automates something you can do yourself and that particular save file mod would likely fall more under "cheating" than "modding".

[ressenmacher]

Początkowo opublikowane przez ramattis:

??? By volume of use? My dude, I'm clearly speaking of number in existence and not what gets downloaded the most. Again, not speaking only of ER, just modding in general. And I feel like I have to say this for a third time: I never mentioned modding at all until someone used it as a straw-man and now everyone seems to be running with it like it's always been the focus of my argument and in reality it has absolutely nothing to do with anything I said. Now we're dropping in this "volume of use" insanity and I'm left wondering what the heck y'all are smoking.

This argument seems to start with the point you made here in response to someone responding to your point about Seamless splitting the playerbase with "doesn't that mean all mods split the playerbase?"

Początkowo opublikowane przez ramattis:

Not implying that in any way shape or form. You say "any mod in any game", but the majority of mods for most games have no effect on the way the game functions and therefore do not split the playerbase. So to say "modding hurts gaming communities" is simply incorrect and a gross over-generalization as I said in the above post. That straw-man will not work no matter how hard you want it to.

Your answer can be paraphrased to "no, because most mods are are cosmetic," which is why I and others are bringing up use statistics - you might be correct in that most mods are cosmetic (though you have not proved or even supported this), but I don't think that's very relevant in supporting your claim that Seamless is unusually harmful.

We contend that it isn't - that even if most mods are cosmetic, most modding might not be, and thus Seamless splitting the playerbase isn't unusual/a criteria to denounce it for.

[Kraze]

cry

[ramattis]

Początkowo opublikowane przez ressenmacher:

Początkowo opublikowane przez ramattis:

??? By volume of use? My dude, I'm clearly speaking of number in existence and not what gets downloaded the most. Again, not speaking only of ER, just modding in general. And I feel like I have to say this for a third time: I never mentioned modding at all until someone used it as a straw-man and now everyone seems to be running with it like it's always been the focus of my argument and in reality it has absolutely nothing to do with anything I said. Now we're dropping in this "volume of use" insanity and I'm left wondering what the heck y'all are smoking.

This argument seems to start with the point you made here in response to someone responding to your point about Seamless splitting the playerbase with "doesn't that mean all mods split the playerbase?"

Początkowo opublikowane przez ramattis:

Not implying that in any way shape or form. You say "any mod in any game", but the majority of mods for most games have no effect on the way the game functions and therefore do not split the playerbase. So to say "modding hurts gaming communities" is simply incorrect and a gross over-generalization as I said in the above post. That straw-man will not work no matter how hard you want it to.

Your answer can be paraphrased to "no, because most mods are are cosmetic," which is why I and others are bringing up use statistics - you might be correct in that most mods are cosmetic (though you have not proved or even supported this), but I don't think that's very relevant in supporting your claim that Seamless is unusually harmful.

We contend that it isn't - that even if most mods are cosmetic, most modding might not be, and thus Seamless splitting the playerbase isn't unusual/a criteria to denounce it for.

Might as well use what was ACTUALLY said:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Pyro Penguin:

So is your argument that modding hurts gaming communities?

THAT is the absurd statement I was responding to. Also the spitting of the player-base isn't even the entirety of my argument, just the part that some have decided to hyper-fixate on.

Speaking solely of Elden Ring, 100% of mods besides seamless don't allow multiplayer so there's absolutely no competition between them and the base game; it's effectively the same as playing offline (a method available by default with no modding needed). Seamless, however, provides a coop ecosystem completely separate from the vanilla community so is the only mod that can truly be said to split the player-base. Anyone cooping on seamless is not cooping on the official servers. And for many of them, it's for an incredibly silly reason.

[ressenmacher]

Początkowo opublikowane przez ramattis:

Speaking solely of Elden Ring, 100% of mods besides seamless don't allow multiplayer so there's absolutely no competition between them and the base game; it's effectively the same as playing offline (a method available by default with no modding needed).

I'm not super sure about what mods can be taken online, but let's go with that. Modded competes with unmodded by its nature - anyone playing vanilla is not playing modded, and anyone playing modded cannot play vanilla.

I don't understand why you're arguing that only Seamless splits the player base. The playerbase is everyone who plays the game - online, offline, etc. The offline feature splits the playerbase - I don't think it's relevant whether the groups are composed of people playing solo vs playing together, you've still split the playerbase into different groups.

Even if you want to restrict it to "people who normally play ER's vanilla multiplayer," mods still split that group - if those people are playing Convergence, they also are not playing on the official servers.

Seamless is unique only in the demographic it appeals to, not whether it splits the playerbase.

[Shinkiro]

Początkowo opublikowane przez ressenmacher:

I don't understand why you're arguing that only Seamless splits the player base.

Because the people who usually played modded were never going to be in the pool anyway as they were playing alone.

Meanwhile seamless actively takes away from the online pool by allowing people to circumvent the online mechanics to play in a way that should only be on the official servers. Someone playing alone is irrelevant, people playing together not on the official servers are the problem.

[GamingWithSilvertail]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Pyro Penguin:

Początkowo opublikowane przez ramattis:

And the way they are playing the game harms the online community because there are less people available for coop/blues/invasions. Splitting the playerbase is never beneficial to the health of any online community. That has been the core of my argument since the beginning. And again you are misrepresenting part of my argument in attempt to strawman.

That's just how it works with most mods though. You aren't allowed to play on official online with modded content in pretty much any game, so that splits the playerbase between modded and unmodded. So is your argument that modding hurts gaming communities?

What are you talking about? It's litterally the opposite.

The only games you arnt allowed to play modded onlined via official master servers are generally live service games or pvp only oriented games.

Dont mistake 'official servers' like you see on ark to that. Official servers on ark are set by a general rulebook, but that doesnt mean the devs will ban you for listing your modded server on the server list.


ER's seamless server is not directly connected to ER's official server. (And ER doesnt even 'own' anything online. That's provided by steam is it not?

[ressenmacher]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Shinkiro:

Because the people who usually played modded were never going to be in the pool anyway as they were playing alone.

I don't think this is correct; people who like multiplayer sometimes do modded runthroughs.

Seamless does compete more directly/strongly with the vanilla multiplayer group because its primary audience is people who are strongly invested in multiplayer and not necessarily people who might otherwise do multiplayer instead doing a randomizer run or smth, but the difference is degree, not kind.

[GamingWithSilvertail]

Początkowo opublikowane przez ressenmacher:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Shinkiro:

Because the people who usually played modded were never going to be in the pool anyway as they were playing alone.

I don't think this is correct; people who like multiplayer sometimes do modded runthroughs.

Seamless does compete more directly/strongly with the vanilla multiplayer group because its primary audience is people who are strongly invested in multiplayer and not necessarily people who might otherwise do multiplayer instead doing a randomizer run or smth, but the difference is degree, not kind.

Or just do randomizer with seamless?

Eitherway, You're wrong, because by default its not worth doing open world content in ER's multiplayer as a coop. Its better to do so by placing sign near fogs. Why would you wanna run in ER's open world as coop w/o the use of torrent? :p

[ressenmacher]

Początkowo opublikowane przez GamingWithSilvertail:

Eitherway, You're wrong, because by default its not worth doing open world content in ER's multiplayer as a coop. Its better to do so by placing sign near fogs. Why would you wanna run in ER's open world as coop w/o the use of torrent? :p

I'm not commenting on the quality of the experience in this point, only in that all mods compete to some degree with vanilla multiplayer because they attract players who otherwise might play vanilla.

[GamingWithSilvertail]

Początkowo opublikowane przez ressenmacher:

Początkowo opublikowane przez GamingWithSilvertail:

Eitherway, You're wrong, because by default its not worth doing open world content in ER's multiplayer as a coop. Its better to do so by placing sign near fogs. Why would you wanna run in ER's open world as coop w/o the use of torrent? :p

I'm not commenting on the quality of the experience in this point, only in that all mods compete to some degree with vanilla multiplayer because they attract players who otherwise might play vanilla.

But you're gonna have the same problem.

People will find alternatives ways (Such as just placing signs near boss gates, cause thats how the majority probally does it).

If you think that's competing, thats fine, but I personally dont think these people are 'counted' in the pool as you will just have a double load screen.

[Alby]

Początkowo opublikowane przez GamingWithSilvertail:

Eitherway, You're wrong, because by default its not worth doing open world content in ER's multiplayer as a coop. Its better to do so by placing sign near fogs. Why would you wanna run in ER's open world as coop w/o the use of torrent? :p

Lmfao

[ressenmacher]

Początkowo opublikowane przez GamingWithSilvertail:

People will find alternatives ways (Such as just placing signs near boss gates, cause thats how the majority probally does it).

If you think that's competing, thats fine, but I personally dont think these people are 'counted' in the pool as you will just have a double load screen.

I'm trying to speak holistically, to avoid reducing "vanilla multiplayer" to "invadeable targets."

I'm not sure about that either; I actually get relatively few fogwall invasions. That doesn't necessarily mean fogwall summoning isn't common (might just not be getting pulled in fast enough), but I think it's pretty common for coop groups to try and clear levels or open world bosses.