@Robrecht
Yeah, I understand all of that, and those are perfectly valid criticisms. I hate that there isn't currently a particularly ethically made AI Art Generator, and I don't use it in any of my projects as a result (aside from once when I was making a small mod, smaller than even this one).

But where this kind of discussion bugs me is when people attack those such as the creator of this mod due to their usage for it and then attempt to claim a moral high ground for doing so. Technically, using AI Art is stealing, but for smaller and free content like this it just seems cruel and pointless to attack people for it. I can see the idea that having people use AI Art for small mods like this normalizes it, but I don't think that's a sufficient argument to start harassing mod creators over.

I just wish people would direct their complaints to the groups who actually deserve it instead of targeting small creators who just want to make a fun mod for others to enjoy.

@Katrina
I don't particularly mind the use of AI for things like this because no one is making any money, including any hypothetical artist for the mod.
But the thing that's bad about AI art becoming more commonplace, and therefore the reason why I do understand why others are upset by it, is that there's also plenty of cases of companies using AI art so that they don't have to pay an actual artist to work for them, even though they can easily afford it.

And since most AI are trained on large numbers of images taken off the internet because the people behind these AI don't want to pay artists either, it contributes actively to the ensh!tification of the internet. More and more artists start putting art that they used to share freely behind paywalls because they don't want it stolen to train an AI that will put them out of a job

@Nyx
I love how this is a world where people will much rather you directly steal art from people, such as My Little Pony or Darkest Dungeon or even more niche games, than use an AI Art Generator that was trained on stuff.
Is the AI Art Generator free of morality? No. But it sure as heck is more moral than direct thievery- Sure, it's also stolen content, but at least it's different looking.You're not going to be directly changing people's opinions of the individual art used due to its newfound association with your project, nor are you directly taking from a specific person's style and resultantly making a mockery of their work, since these are trained on so many different artists that a singular artist doesn't even have a noticeable impact.

You're not defending artists. You're just being a jerk to people who want to make their own passion projects. You make the world a less happy place.

Thanks for pointing out that it's made with AI. Added!

@Master Atama well no see, almost every single AI model publicly available is trained on mass stolen content. People wouldn't have minded fucking JPG cutouts of fruit. Do not support the use of the plagiarism machine(s). Simple-as

You people didn't care when the guy ripped graphics directly from MLP but you're upset that he used AI? This isn't a commercial product and he's not an artist. Do you not want content. Pick your battles or at the very least understand them.

"AI gen or nothing" or you could learn to draw
even shitty JPGs would do better than AI slop

It's a fanmade free mod, it's AI gen images or nothing.

You should see BEYOND, nvm, stay blind.

oh. AI. cringe.

this looks crazy and super high effort! Awesome job, I can't wait to play it!

I tend to hand out on the Monster Train Discord server which has a channel for discussing mods. You're welcome to ask questions here as well.

Crazy clan mod, I have to really thank you. Is there a thread where we can discuss this clan? I have plenty of questions.

I'm not opposed to changing the artwork here and there, but it's unlikely I'd give the whole clan a major overhaul. The concepts depicted tend to be out the ordinary compared to the source material AI is trained on, so it's difficult and takes time to write prompts that produce the desired results.

Great mod, do you plan on reprompting the art at some point since there has been such a big progress in AI?

I thought it said "Anxiety effect is now beneficial and only take the absolute value" so -1 becomes +1?

The Black Light artifact doesn't change the effects of Hysteria/Anxiety abilities. It just causes them both to trigger. It's only effects that scale off of Mania that are changed.

Take an example: Loco Motive. There's a path that says "Hysteria: +1" and "Anxiety: -1". From my understanding, the Black sth artifact is supposed to make it "Anxiety: +1", too but it didn't

Sometimes the game gets confused and thinks you've played a card when it's discarded. That might be what's going on with Mental Disorder and Epidemial. I'll have to look into it further.

I'm not sure what you mean by the artifact being buggy sometimes. Can you be more specific? What were you doing? What did you expect to happen? What did it actually do?

I think there's a bug with Mental Disorder, and probably how Epidemial works. I notice when MD draws my cards, it duplicates those someimtes, too.
The artifact that makes Anxiety beneficial also bugged sometimes.

Yeah, it was just Highlander that was breaking. I've submitted a fix for that bug.

Hmm. There are targeting restrictions, but the game seems to ignore them if you keep attempting to play the card on enemy units. I'll have to check some other target restricted cards to see if it happens more generally or just to this one.

Thank you for the bug report. I'll look into it.

Highlander card is totally busted as it's not set to only be applied to allied units. Means you can play it on any enemy on turn one to take Seraph/Divinity to 0HP and win.

This mod is honestly really neat. The clan is well-realised, fun to play and has some great synergies with other clans. My favourite so far is applying Paralysis to Eel-Gorgon so it doesn't lose Multistrike stacks at the end of its turn.

There's a few balance issues - I feel for the most part the Exiled champion performs way better than the Default champion. The Mutations feel slightly underdeveloped and too difficult to play around - in particular the Champ that applies Mutated to enemy units then Jitter to Mutated units feels much too slow and often requires up to three cards being cast just to trigger the effect.