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[Erk]

With the nutrition requirements and similar, it's basically that they add a bunch of things that really belong in community mods. We won't be removing support to blacklist and remove that stuff - in fact I just pushed a PR that fixes up and expands blacklist flags - but while they're individually small, collectively they do eat up dev time.

In general we're adding some clear rules for what kind of mods we want to package with the game, with the general rule 'it has to clearly add something, and have someone responsible for curating/maintaining it'. For the rest, the same tools that work for pretty much every other game out there will work for ours.

[Random_Dragon]

The main stressor for me is that I kinda have a bad habit of stepping in to lend a hand with third-party mod maintenance. That's kinda 100% my fault, but seeing a bunch of mods being dumped for reasons I quite strongly disagree with just kinda puts me on edge given...reasons.

And then there's the apparent rationale behind not wanting to maintain in-repo mods, which is a whole can of worms that hits rather close to one of my personal pet peeves, that has been a bugbear for me since the  days when I was a contributor.

[ZebioLizard2]

in a general sense, reactionary mods are not a good thing. they support some idea that the thing they're "reverting" wasn't a good idea in the first place, so why even have done that in the first place?

Some of the comments from the threads are pretty interesting in the idea that people shouldn't really have control over how their playstyle is defined.

[Erk]

I see it more as "we don't have the responsibility to make sure your play choice options are bundled in the game with us personally bugfixing all thirty or so of them, even though they represent play modes we specifically chose to move away from." It'll be just as possible to install these mods as ever, but the reaction has if anything reaffirmed that people expect developers to be on the hook to maintain our dozens of mods

[Arbinire]

it does come across as telling players they're playing the game "wrong" or that Kevin and Co are gatekeeping a "genuine experience" and playing favorites with mod makers.  Like others have said, can understand removing ones that are no longer supported but just because you personally don't like how some mods affect the gameplay doesn't mean they're bad mods.  If the majority of your players are using those mods instead of your features or engaging with your changes, then that's on you the developer not on your players.  They aren't playing the game wrong, especially in a game so modular.

A better decision would have been to just stop bundling ALL mods with the base game and then posting an official and updated write-up on how players can add the mods they enjoy themselves, without the favoritism and gatekeeping

[ZebioLizard2]

I see it more as "we don't have the responsibility to make sure your play choice options are bundled in the game with us personally bugfixing all thirty or so of them, even though they represent play modes we specifically chose to move away from." It'll be just as possible to install these mods as ever, but the reaction has if anything reaffirmed that people expect developers to be on the hook to maintain our dozens of mods

That quote in particular is talking about "reactionary" mods and how they aren't good and not the issues of bundling mods with the main launcher. I'm not sure how you can see it any other way.

[Erk]

it does come across as telling players they're playing the game "wrong" or that Kevin and Co are gatekeeping a "genuine experience" and playing favorites with mod makers.  Like others have said, can understand removing ones that are no longer supported but just because you personally don't like how some mods affect the gameplay doesn't mean they're bad mods.  If the majority of your players are using those mods instead of your features or engaging with your changes, then that's on you the developer not on your players.  They aren't playing the game wrong, especially in a game so modular.

The mod makers we're showing favouritism to are the ones still maintaining their mods. We don't have a lot of favouritism for people who don't contribute to the game anymore, no. There isn't a single mod with an active maintainer that is slated for removal from the mainline repository.

There's no playstyle judgement featured here. I think blazemod is terrible, but if someone wants to start bugfixing it so we don't have to, it'll probably stay. Aftershock and CRIT are light years from what I want but are both going to stay.

A better decision would have been to just stop bundling ALL mods with the base game and then posting an official and updated write-up on how players can add the mods they enjoy themselves, without the favoritism and gatekeeping

Again, there's no favouritism here. There's "does someone fix this when it breaks, or are the devs having to do it" for the majority of the mods. Blacklist switches are about the only exception, and we'll be keeping any of those that are actual major playstyle or performance changes and not just "fuck it I hate acid monsters", which can then be used for even the noobest of noobs to make their own blacklists if they can't be bothered to find mod downloads like any other game.

There's a clear list of inclusion criteria for mods, which was meant to go out before the PR in question, but Reddit latched onto that draft PR with astounding alacrity.

That quote in particular is talking about "reactionary" mods and how they aren't good and not the issues of bundling mods with the main launcher. I'm not sure how you can see it any other way.

I know the person in question is talking very specifically about what is good to include in the base game and what isn't. None of the devs give a rat's ass what crazy hentai mod you're playing at home or how you've disabled any monster that previously hurt you, we just don't consider them reasonable mods to include along with the game. For feature reversions, it becomes an expectation that any time we make a change some people dislike (ie. any time any change occurs), we'll bundle a mod to revert it. We're not going to do that, and for some time we've been talking about taking out the included ones that have basically been grandfathered in for years.

The actual possibility of blacklist and some types of reversion mods is not going to change. None of us care if you play that way. It will be like literally every other game that supports modding, if you want to remove all electric creatures you can get a mod to do that.

[Iceblaster]

Yeah I mean I get the idea of decluttering but with DDA that's diverged wildly with how it was even a few years ago, I would prefer not to mess with the built in stuff.

and yeah i agree about at least CRIT being light years away from things. I like it for the items but like man i never wanna play the professions or anything even though they clutter things.

Man, is CRIT even meant to be played as a profession? Even the most basic guy who isn't a janitor has a built-in backstory with forced traits and pre-supposes a ton of stuff and all like man, maybe I don't wanna play a janitor or a guy with massive PTSD but also part of this apparently big organization prior to the outbreak

[scriver]

You know, when people criticised the changes to this game I used to defend it by saying that there were easily available options right there in the menu to choose away what they didn't like.

I guess that's not gonna be a go any more? That sucks.

[forsaken1111]

I guess that's not gonna be a go any more? That sucks.

I'm pretty sure they'd stay where they are if someone stepped up to maintain them. The point is that the main developers don't want to maintain mods that have been abandoned by their creators or no longer fit with the direction they're taking the game. They don't seem to care if someone else maintains them.

[scriver]

The ease of application and use is the clincher

[forsaken1111]

The ease of application and use is the clincher

Not sure what you mean. The ease of application and use wouldn't change. If someone were maintaining them they'd stay bundled with the game and nothing would change.

[Erk]

I really find it amazing how many people are supporting the position that it's the volunteer developers' responsibility to update and maintain some sixty-odd mods that no longer have maintainers and that really none of us use.

As for blacklists, yeah, they'll get mildly more difficult. There's some chatter about making an app to generate a blacklist according to your personal taste, because we aren't against the concept but against the potentially infinitely expanding list of micro mods.

[forsaken1111]

Yeah I don't see why you'd be obligated to maintain mods that you didn't create and aren't interested in. If someone likes them so much they should pick them up and update/fix them.

[Arbinire]

I really find it amazing how many people are supporting the position that it's the volunteer developers' responsibility to update and maintain some sixty-odd mods that no longer have maintainers and that really none of us use.

As for blacklists, yeah, they'll get mildly more difficult. There's some chatter about making an app to generate a blacklist according to your personal taste, because we aren't against the concept but against the potentially infinitely expanding list of micro mods.

Literally no one said that it's the developers responsibility to maintain abandoned mods.  What was said is this is coming across as favoritism because we actually read the comments, and most of us have been around long enough to understand how Kevin's development works.  If he likes something, it's the best thing since sliced bread.  If he dislikes something, he makes sure to attack it, the person who did it, and everyone who supports it.

What I find amazing is he found you and you're completely comfortable being his PR guy here in these forums since he overreacted his way off of them.