arthmoor
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My View on Mod Packs
🕑 Added 2019-09-29 18:47:51 +0000 UTCAuthor Engagement
One of the biggest reasons many authors release their mods to the public is the engagement they get with their users. Communities can form around certain mods, the author and their users may generate a rapport with each other and come to build friendships outside of the mod itself. There are even examples of where the users and mod authors of certain things have gotten together for real world meet ups. None of which would be possible if people are never directed to where the authors choose to foster this kind of community engagement. The blind downloading of mods in a modpack makes that very unlikely, and in some cases it's not possible at all because the modpack doesn't tell anyone who made the stuff that's in in.
Mod Page Engagement
Mod are about more than just downloading files and running off to play. They always have been. Part of being able to properly set up a load order involves the need to view a mod's description page and its other documentation. There could be some quirky known issues that might come up. There may be some special instructions needed to make the mod work properly that have to be done after it's been installed. Mod pages may have special compatibility information about using them with other mods. There may be modular setups available to make the mod work in different ways depending on what the author provides and/or the users wanted. None of this information is delivered at all to a user installing all of their mods using a modpack. This will lead to problems they won't know how to solve and ultimately only causes more frustration.
Author Recognition
This flows from the first two issues. Modpacks promote the marginalization of mod authors by allowing people to skip over who made the content and thus who to give praise to, etc. When the authors of mods become faceless unknowns, the community is then more able to treat mods themselves as worthless commodities that should always be available for free and without restrictions. Some mod authors will lose out on extra money they bring in through Patreon or Paypal donations as well as modpacks will not display this information to their users. None of the prompts for this purpose are displayed. Not even the endorsement prompt is given, and even Nexus itself appears ready to devalue this for no apparent reason. Granted, not all authors care that much about endorsements (ie: I don't) but not even getting that possibility seems like an unnecessary slap in everyone's faces.
Support and Bug Reports
Let's face it. At some point someone is going to go looking for help. When a users has downloaded their stuff directly from the pages, they're more likely to know where to go when Mod X misbehaves or has a bug. With modpacks, this is no longer the case and they'll be much more likely to pick something at random and go to them based on the assumption that we all know what mods are in what packs. When users don't know who to contact it raises the chances significantly of them filing reports in the wrong places, or for the wrong reasons. Modpack makers will not be able to correctly deal with this without having to become virtual gurus, which is unlikely to be the case. So they'll have little incentive for taking on the burden of diagnosing issues and are likely to instead pass this burden along to us - the authors.
Compatibility and Stability
Modpacks lay claim to the ability to put an end to compatibility and stability issues. This is unfortunately not true in any way though. Especially for any game older than Skyrim Special Edition. The idea that 200+ mods can just be grabbed and put into a package and expected to work together for any of these older games is wishful thinking. Those engines simply don't have the ability to handle the content load due to restrictions on how 32-bit programs work. People are going to assume that someone who puts 200 mods into the package is also guaranteeing that this issue won't take place but they can't, and chances are that instead of the modpack maker taking the blame it'll be passed on to mod authors in some way. Even with games like SSE or Fallout 4 it's not always possible to have a giant list of mods work right when put together depending on exactly what they're doing. There are also a huge number of dirty mods with bad edits and things like deleted navmeshes that require manual intervention. No automated install system can deal with this without encouraging the unwanted modification of an author's files.
There are also issues with games that don't have official modding tools at all, such as Mass Effect, or that have inadequate tools for the job like the Witcher series. In both of these cases it is often necessary for mods to make direct edits to base game files which then leads to the paradox of not being able to install multiple mods into the game. These are technical limitations with these game engines that cannot be overcome by the use of modpacks. So it simply becomes impossible to force the issue. A system built around the idea that this is impossible needs to be able to take this into consideration and either block modpacks entirely, or allow authors of mods for such games the ability to hard opt-out of it if they know their mod could never work in a package.
Legal issues will also get in the way of a properly functioning modpack. Let's take as an example, my own load order. Wrye Bash currently shows it to be approximately 150 mods. It covers a wide range of things, centered around my village mods and Open Cities. This load order is not especially difficult to assemble, but it is also not possible to distribute as-is due to the presence of several compatibility patches and at least one actual mod I've modified for personal use. Despite my having the appropriate level of skill to actually build this modpack and set it up for others to use, it would not be legal to actually do so since it would have to include those files I can't distribute.
So why not just leave those parts out of the modpack then, right? The problem with that is that it's now a package that's no longer possible to run cohesively because the necessary "glue" is missing. It would no longer be composed of a well crafted set of completely compatible and stable mods. Which is why this kind of thing simply isn't feasible. My load order is certainly not going to be some exception to the rule either. Many of us will have done the same sort of thing and some guides that have been converted into modpacks are already including files they're not legally allowed to distribute.
Demands for Modpack Compatibility
At some point, users may find your mod and want it in the modpack too. This is likely to lead to demands from others that your mod somehow be made to work with this modpack even if you have no interest in modpacks at all. Other user communities such as reddit and Steam are already seeing posts from users demanding that some mod author alter their work so that it'll fit into Ultimate Skyrim. Sometimes up to and including openly asking someone else to illegally modify their work to make it happen, even after the author has said no. This is a situation that should never take place in a properly run community. If a mod author doesn't want to be involved, leave them alone. If they don't want their work included in some way, that desire needs to be respected.
Homogeneous Community
Another thing modpacks promote is the consolidation of mods around a select group. For Bethesda games this would likely start from the top 100 list on Nexus and if we're lucky may extend outward to 1000 or so. At some point if modpacks continue to be pushed as "the way of the future" then that future will be one where there's 1000 or so mods in use and any others getting published are ignored regardless of their quality level. Diversity in modding will be reduced to nothing since everyone is now running one of the 5 modpacks that ends up dominating the landscape.
If you don't think this won't happen, have a look at what happened with Minecraft. Prior to about 2014 or so, the Minecraft community was large, vibrant, and thriving. Numerous authors had quality mods being released. Then the movement toward modpacks began and in very short order, mod authors who wanted nothing to do with them were driven out of the community. Now, when looking for discussion of mods for Minecraft, one runs into basically "Feed the Beast" or "Better Than Wolves" and indications are both of these are bitter rivals of each other.
Discourages Learning
Part of the process in modding is learning how the game works and what can and can't be done with it. For the last 15 years we've enjoyed a steady growth in the number of mod authors who started off as users, primarily because they were able to engage the process directly and learn from it and eventually become proficient with the CK. When modpacks are the rule of the day, this learning is discouraged in favor of a "click click click" mentality. Since it removes all of the interaction points previously mentioned, it results in far fewer people becoming mod authors due to the absence of engagement with the process and leads to the homogeneous community issue through basic attrition as the existing pool of mod authors leaves the scene voluntarily or are driven out.
A Solution?
All of the various things mentioned here will tend toward a community that doesn't respect the contributions of mod authors, their rights, or bringing in new people to write new material. So what's the solution to these problems? It's surprisingly simple and goes hand in hand with one of the central philosophies of modding: Choice. Provide a choice to mod authors on whether or not they want their work in mod packs. The easiest way to accomplish this is for Nexus Mods to alter their API in order to allow mod authors to check a box to opt-out of any such system. The next option, while more difficult to implement, would be to get makers of the various modpacking tools to write code to support a community opt-out standard that can be added to their mod descriptions. Something simple like a tag: [ModPacks: NO] or [ModPacks: YES]. If a mod is found to contain one of these tags the tool can act accordingly. The bottom line here though is that authors should be given the choice. Users are not the only people entitled to that.
If market forces should become such that choosing to opt-out has a negative effect on a particular author, they can always choose to change their stance. In this way, everyone should be happy since everyone gets to choose.
Comments
Phoenix
On the topic of "how many mods until the engine breaks", I feel you are doing yourself a disservice by talking numbers. I am with you on the argument that you cannot expect several hundreds of mods to work together out of the box. People that solely follow your advice and use Wrye Bash + LOOT will probably never get a huge mod list to work. But then you go on to say that the reason for why so many mods at once can't work is in fact engine-related. This is simply false and I am not sure why you of all people would make an assertion like that. I'm going to take my own setup and guide as an example because I know exactly what is going on there. We have over 600 mods at this point and the game is almost as stable as vanilla, crashing barely ever. Some users have played for literally hundreds of hours without encountering serious issues. It isn't the engine that is the problem. It's people that don't know how to mod. Hundreds of hours have gone into carefully curating the list of mods TPF uses. All conflict resolution is done manually, in excruciating detail. We have script patches to solve remaining issues. There are detailed instructions on which files or records to delete from certain mods and their plugins so that they all work together. And in the end, they do. That first paragraph under "Compatibility and Stability" weakens your entire argumentation, and the good points that you are making. I don't necessarily disagree with everything you have written and I would be happy to discuss this topic in depth with you if you are ever interested.
Thank you for your mods and mod advice. Greatly appreciated. -SamClemens
