Modability ? workshop?

[pmutzu]

I have played through the base game and it is quite good. but left me craving more content.
What is the modability of this game? can i make my own buildings ? add new techs?new factions?
is there workshop plans?
and are there existing mods?

[SeriousMartin]

Hi pmutzu,
we don't have plans yet to allow adding buildings, techs (upgrades) or factions. It's theoretically possible, but we will have to find a good way on how these would be made available to the player (e.g. how to make them available in the build ring, which only has a limited number of slots).

An idea that we have in mind, is to allow sharing of created planets via Steam workshop which might be accompanied by some script to create custom missions.

[Kastuk]

None of the mods?

Like add pollution for meteors, asteroids, ship-landing and drone-mining?

[Nasabot]

please, dont cater to a minority of the playerbase and spend resources on modability. Rather use these resources to create content yourself!
Mods have their place, but in my opinion too many other games focus too heavily on mod support while neglecting game design.

I think mods somehow divide the playerbase. <1% are mod creators, 5-30% are mod user and 99+% of the moduser play different mods therefor play a different game.

Imagine earth has a very strong and promising base frame which can be build upon. And when I see how significant the monthly patches are, I want it to continue in this direction.

Instead of modability I prefer 3 significant content mods and a fleshed out, indirect multiplayer competition/cooperation system(for instance special score boards or a solar system where different players can interact with each other asynchroniously somehow)

[Lartima]

In my opinion, Modding corrupt original gameplay , i don'y use it in every game, but i see with Factorio, modding can give goods ideas for developer and modder can create a new game
Factorio is a base building but you can create history, PVP, BR etc..

For me IE is ready to leave EA, some sinergy can be add to balanced used building, it is the right time to plan Modding, but i m agree on one point, multiplayer for IE can be very great
Some game with IA require me to take more attention about pollution and emisson, with real player can be very fun

[Nasabot]

Originally posted by Lartima:

In my opinion, Modding corrupt original gameplay

Finally, somebody who agrees with me on this topic!
Usually I get flak, when I critizise games because of their overboarding mod support.

I am not totally against modding, it has its place because it is community building as it binds dedicated player to the game (though the majority is not much effected by mods). Modding has to be taken with a grain of salt though.

What I clearly say is that 90+% of all mods(there are many many many existing) for any game are pure garbage gamedesign wise and are a usually a balancing hell.
Developer should never hope for mods to "complete" their game, its more a playing field for dedicated player (which make up 1-10% of the playerbase) and for experimentation.

A game is like a painting which is crafted by an artist who dedicates his whole life to his profession. I wonder, why such an artist would ever want random people to add random strokes to his masterpiece?
Does not make sense.

Yes, an artist is well advised if he is not completly boneheaded and listens to feedback and looks at other paintings for inspiration. He might also want to "steal" ideas from other artist or pick up underdeveloped ideas and turn them into something greater.
But its not art to make many photos with a camera and put them together randomly.


In my opinion games, which heavily rely on mods (like factorio), should also have a system which takes good mods and implements them in the original game. Unfortunatly this is a completly disregarded concept...

[yuela]

Good mod support is crucial to keep a game (financially) viable for an extended period of time. Look at games like Skyrim or Stellaris, despite their many flaws they are still relevant today due to the creativity and tenacity of their mod communities. Would you like your players to finish the campaign and go to the next FOTM or do you want them to check for new mods, tell their friends and come back time and time again? Easy choice.

[Nasabot]

Originally posted by yuela:

Good mod support is crucial to keep a game (financially) viable for an extended period of time. Look at games like Skyrim or Stellaris

Your argument is flawed. When drawing all-conclusion , you also have to inspect the opposite cases. For instance league of legend: one of the most popular and successful games out there. Does it have mods? No.
There are many other games which are good and are very successful even without mods. Maybe BECAUSE they dont have mods? A game like league of legends would lose its whole purpose if it has mods because it would divide the playerbase and undermine any competivity.

Again, I am not totally against mods, but I want to slowdown the "Muh, mods always gud" attitude, which is present in so many game forums.

There are games which are more suitable for mods and there are ones which are less suitable. And in my opinion it is important to ask this question: "Is my game suitable for mod support?".

I agree, the vanilla game of skyrim is quite dull and has imo many game design flaws. But I tried many mods and was very disappointed. Among thousands of useless vanity, visual and generic content mods(95+% garbage imo), there are only a handful of important game fixing/balancing mods which then do not work properly because they are outdated.
Installing the PROPER mods for a game like skyrim is almost its own science where you need a bachelor degree. Or you just add random mods and corrupt the original game.(many player do not care though)

Good game design is not achieved by random accumulation of content, but by finesse of HOW game systems are linked with each other.

And therefor I want to point out: Make the games good, not the mods!

[pmutzu]

Originally posted by Nasabot:

Originally posted by yuela:

Good mod support is crucial to keep a game (financially) viable for an extended period of time. Look at games like Skyrim or Stellaris

Your argument is flawed. When drawing all-conclusion , you also have to inspect the opposite cases. For instance league of legend: one of the most popular and successful games out there. Does it have mods? No.
There are many other games which are good and are very successful even without mods. Maybe BECAUSE they dont have mods? A game like league of legends would lose its whole purpose if it has mods because it would divide the playerbase and undermine any competivity.

Again, I am not totally against mods, but I want to slowdown the "Muh, mods always gud" attitude, which is present in so many game forums.

There are games which are more suitable for mods and there are ones which are less suitable. And in my opinion it is important to ask this question: "Is my game suitable for mod support?".

I agree, the vanilla game of skyrim is quite dull and has imo many game design flaws. But I tried many mods and was very disappointed. Among thousands of useless vanity, visual and generic content mods(95+% garbage imo), there are only a handful of important game fixing/balancing mods which then do not work properly because they are outdated.
Installing the PROPER mods for a game like skyrim is almost its own science where you need a bachelor degree. Or you just add random mods and corrupt the original game.(many player do not care though)

Good game design is not achieved by random accumulation of content, but by finesse of HOW game systems are linked with each other.

And therefor I want to point out: Make the games good, not the mods!

the finest example ever of how wrong the lack of modding is is

Rimworld


modding allows the dev access to a whole world of user ideas. often those are implemented in future real game patches. adding the best of that content to enrich the game.

rimworld is one of the best rated games ever. OF ALL OF EVER
because of its heavy mod support. and a oceanload of content to choose from.

[Buntkreuz]

Originally posted by Nasabot:

Originally posted by yuela:

Good mod support is crucial to keep a game (financially) viable for an extended period of time. Look at games like Skyrim or Stellaris

Your argument is flawed. When drawing all-conclusion , you also have to inspect the opposite cases. For instance league of legend: one of the most popular and successful games out there. Does it have mods? No.
There are many other games which are good and are very successful even without mods. Maybe BECAUSE they dont have mods? A game like league of legends would lose its whole purpose if it has mods because it would divide the playerbase and undermine any competivity.

Again, I am not totally against mods, but I want to slowdown the "Muh, mods always gud" attitude, which is present in so many game forums.

There are games which are more suitable for mods and there are ones which are less suitable. And in my opinion it is important to ask this question: "Is my game suitable for mod support?".

I agree, the vanilla game of skyrim is quite dull and has imo many game design flaws. But I tried many mods and was very disappointed. Among thousands of useless vanity, visual and generic content mods(95+% garbage imo), there are only a handful of important game fixing/balancing mods which then do not work properly because they are outdated.
Installing the PROPER mods for a game like skyrim is almost its own science where you need a bachelor degree. Or you just add random mods and corrupt the original game.(many player do not care though)

Good game design is not achieved by random accumulation of content, but by finesse of HOW game systems are linked with each other.

And therefor I want to point out: Make the games good, not the mods!

Actually his argument wasnt flawed but yours is.
You basically just take arbitrary and pointless examples out of a vaccum and present them as a proof of nothing while insisting on "minority" and "majority" although you cant back up any of your claims.
His examples were linked to the topic of modding because Skyrim and Stellaris are two games that have a gigantic following on their modhubs.
Skyrim is probably the most modded game ever.

Modsupport is crucial to a lot of games, especially those that function in a modular way with overlapping gameplay elements (Rimworld, Stellaris, Skyrim, Prison Architect).
Imagine Earth can easily benefit by providing more content exactly that way.
People can mod planets and release them, which basically provides an infinite mappool.
They could also mod/create missions, factions, buildings, effects/disasters etc.
And since all of those things are modular, you could combine them any way you want.

No one said that mod support will save a game or make it popular. This can be an important factor but proving that a game becomes popular because of it is actually hard.
A game where you can say for sure that modding contributed a lot to the popularity is Skyrim. Without its modsupport barely people would keep playing it and keep it that alive.

At least its helpful in many ways, and actually its a clever idea to make the game modable for the community to not have to invest development time into smaller areas.
At last the developers shouldnt spend more time making missions but rather work on larger gameplay mechanics.
So leaving it up to the community to mod the game and provide smaller changes and features while concentrating on larger features would be a good strategy.

In the end you already provided the core reason to add modability yourself. You want more content, opening the game allows to multiply the influx of content and the devs can focus on more important features.
Which means you get what you want through modding support.

[Lartima]

I say i dont use mod because that corrupt gameplay but i am for on indie game
Indie have a little team, the time losed to code mod is time win after, many mod on factorio has been implemented directly on game
Time is not stretchable and when you have a restricted team ( 2 dev for IE Jens & Martin) You can not do everything

[Jens]

Hey guys, thanks for the engaged discussion! We want the best of all worlds. With the latest June Update we introduced the workshop integration. You can create, share and play planets and define all rules / opponents and elements for that game. We want to enhance features so you can soon define whole galaxies, briefings, mission scripts, speakers and implement your own, landings ship. Please stay tuned for these features appearance.

But we also added, the so far "Bonus Galaxy" to the Competition Game Mode as a Galaxy full of predefined competitions are high quality game content which can be played with global highscores and ratings. I will put great afford in level designing new Challenges to fill up the void in the Udoxia Galaxy as well as an own Galaxy for Free Play Mode is on the way...

How ever pretty cool world creations by players might be added into the game's content setup as well. Why not?!...

[Buntkreuz]

Sounds great. Thanks for participating in the discussion and providing the information (i only knew you implemented the workshop).
Keep it up guys.