What do you feel is hurting the mod community the most?

Lack of proper leaders and ideas, not that many mods today have a groundbreaking idea or theme.

It really all depends on whos making it, its sort of a tie between some options. Some people whp try to make mods just don't think straight, and make huge ideas but with no knowledge, lol. Another problem of course is when people have an awsome idea, but son't plan ahead! In my opinion though, the thing that hurts mods that have already succeeded these problems are real lives. Even though most of us here don't have one ;) those of us who do that are in a big mod can really stall things - possibly even cause thier downfall. A great example is my mod - we are doing a great job, but a lot of our modelers/skinners have a real life, and can;t spend too much time on the jobs. Anyway, i chose real life, since thats how a lot of huge projects are either stalled or brought down!

~yuripro84

Could be several of those. "Major releases dwarfing small projects" may be a good reason, but I think "Lack of proper planning" is what has happened in MANY mods out there. Sit down and plan the ****! Fine, many ideas are GREAT, and some do finish, but don't have to "Big ideas" if you have "small practical knowledge"

MOD ON!

I find that there aren't enough people interested in doing the actual work - there are ideas people, and a lot of them, but nothing to really support them Wink ! The skilled labourers we do have are generally stretched thinly between multiple projects....

I went and got learnt how to be a programmer so i could just mod. I did not care about geting a job or anything out of it at the end, i just wanted to get into programming my mods.

Ammahls.com < Work in progress, but its my ideas on what i want to write in this thread

that it's because the bigger, and more interesting mods are never finished, and are rarely updated...

On the side of updates, Nightfall (the mod i am working on) has no time for updates, yet we do have a 3 month progress report to the community, that is most of the time, wet your pants, are asking to have our babys.

If your idea is good, and you have commited muture people working on the project, then you will see alot of progress and a completed project at the end of it.

Nightfall has got the above, and as a result i have a good felling that the mod will be completed, even though the maps take upto 3 month to complete (like any good MP level).

Nothing. Where is that option?

wanting to polish things more and more instead of releasing early and get invaluable C&C.

I find that there aren't enough people interested in doing the actual work - there are ideas people, and a lot of them, but nothing to really support them ;)! The skilled labourers we do have are generally stretched thinly between multiple projects....

school

Major releases dwarfing the smaller projects.

doesn't really contain one solution, it's a multiple problem.

people have a lots of (unoriginal) ideas, feeding of successfull mods, having nearly no knowledge at all, missing the will to go through years of development... and finally engines today (those of commercial ones) are so complicate that simple modders don't have a chance to test something out without major document studies and alike.

hence two things kill it:
1) gaming industries doing things wrong with their engines
2) people jumping on bandwagons instead of doing some thinking beforehand

i was gonna say that it was the people on the team who turn the mod's boards into flame fests and things like that...the members that end up ruining the mod for the team (2 examples are "resident evil: to serve and protect" and "Hold Out"....sad day when those mods stopped functioning...

Bahahaa sad day when hold out went!
The thing that hurts modding most is the lack of original ideas.
I think no one should ever remake an game into a mod.

Big Ideas, no knowledge. :X

lack of proper planning and skills

Big Ideas

I'm with lack of proper planing, and lack of skills and indeed lack of yearning to learn skills. Lack of originality is an issue as well.

All too often I see people who come up with these great visions of what they want to do...

Without ever even considering minor details like engine limitations.

i think its a combination of almost all of them
but "Major releases dwarfing small projects" is a big one
think about it, big projects get all the lime light, hence they get all the interest from the experianced tallent thats out there and so the smaller projects have small, inexperianced teams that often lead the faliure of the mod.
it takes a hell of a lot of dedication from all the members of the team to overcom this.

Developers releasing (if it all) ****** mod tools for their games.
Lack of international server support for new mods.

Lack of patience and will power to recruit "Single day members" , therefore I just gave up and am going mainly solo until I feel like trying to get help again :P

Well I voted for "big ideas, small practical knowledge" but perhaps this is not right.

There are loads of really good artists/3d modellers/skinners etc and some lovely renders get made but I think the problem is that there are too many mods with overlapping goals trying to do the samething but without the resources to do it on their own.

If some of the mod groups would consolidate (I mean how many modern day combat BF2 mods do we need, and do we absolutely need 300 WW2 mods for BF2 also?) then they could pool resources and make something professional rather than spending a year with each group making different models of the same helicopter/tank/gun.

The community needs leadership.

Why not make a fund? moddb should have a donate option for pay pal. Another besides the file server, i mean like to make a universal FREE gaming engine thats easy to use and works well. a mix of sandbox and source would be awsome! id pay whole pay checks..

The fact that people start mods and just QUIT and don't leave any notice that they are discontinuing.

what, CS & Valve aren't listed. :)

The nthe major projects dwarfing smaller ones (the big ideas would be my #2. #3 if my initial responce was listed!)

is counterstrike a option :-P

Lack of skilled workers caused by many newbies being scared off when they realise how complex and time consuming modding can be. Also real life hampers progress alot. Damm School!

I'd have to go with not enough care for the community simply because there are far too many multiplayer mods for Half-Life 2 and hardly anything for people without lightening fast internet.

How about a team?
Thats what the problem is..

"Oh i can't do this for a week"
"Oh i might leave since i've got school"
"Oh i'm bored i'm quitting, k thx bye!"

But on that poll.."Funding"

Lack of mod tools and support with some games.

that it's because the bigger, and more interesting mods are never finished, and are rarely updated....

I use to be a modder...

Most of the mods I modded for didn't have a dedicated team and everyone just quits...every game's engine gets more and more bloody complicated that people get scared(no one even has enough spare time to learn)creating lack of so many coders and programmers we only made skinned models and maps that went to waste when the mod died. Some projects had no spotlight but ideas were very original...yet they quit because they had no support from fans and no one gave a care about the mod.

Mods are very time consuming, not alot of people are dedicated to waste time creating something enjoyable for others, everyone has their own lives and I quit modding because I am not going to make a commitment because I know school and personal life will go in the way.I am acctually glad some amazing mods are produced and in progressed and if only mod had a dedicated team...

i agree with most of what lord_elendil said
there is a distinct lack of good coders in the comunity
plus ppl dont realise the time it takes to make a mod so rl tends to get in the way, just beacuse you have plenty of free time now, doesnt mean you will have 1 year from now.

noobs

errr

big ideas, no knowledge!

IF I SAY NO FUNDS WILL YOU GIVE ME MONEY!
NO!!!
ok!

ROFL WTF IS zombo.com
you guys should go try it lol

Lack of people making time for development. They rather work on their own projects instead of helping other people out.
Lack of coders.
Too many unoriginal ideas have 254-headed teams and die within the year while smaller more original mods often can't find anyone (unless it's a team made out of school-buddies).

Make that "lack of FREE coders"

And on a personal note: lack of money to pay non-free coders or whatever-recruits

Real life has been a brick wall for me more than once. I am at the point now where I haven't even had time to play a game in TWO WEEKS(!).

Its demoralising polls like this that are plaguing the modification community!! Muwahwha!

It's possible to learn Moddeling or Texturing, other People can make good Music, but I think we got to less Coders. I took over the old PerfectDark Mod, www.pdarkmod.de.vu and we are Stuck now cause we got no Coder to help us out with the SourceCode. Its really sad, there was a lot of Work with the Mod, we got Maps, Models, Sounds, Textures, Even the Coding is good till one damned thing, We got Problem making Bots in our SourceCode. Without a coder we cant get it out. I was looking for the last 1, 2 Month for a new Coder without Succes, i even offered Cash ^^. Maybe its because the HL1 Engine... A lot of People gave up this Mod, cause its HL1. So the Mod seems dead now. The Reason is we dont have a skilled Coder and I cant Code. So : Big ideas, small practical knowledge. :*(((

I voted for: "Big ideas, small practical knowledge"

But I believe this is just a symptom of the state of Modding these days.

Games are increasingly more technical and complex. We have three dimensions and incredibly advanced effects. Take the Source engine as an example. In it we have an engine that allows us to set the masses of three-dimensional objects to manipulate how they interact with eachother in a custom-made environment. We can do all of this, even creating facial expressions for our characters with the aid of free, industry standard tools. All of this is at our disposal and yet we're still struggling to keep individual Mods alive.

I think the sheer range of things available is what's hurting the Modding world. But it's not the fault of the game developers, it's the fault of we, the Modders. We have too many avenues to explore and we try to go down them all in one foul swoop. We should be concentrating on one, key idea and developing that. Either change the game assets but keep the same story (coded weapons packs, custom models, custom skins) or change the storyline and setting (map-packs, short new episodes using half-life weapons and models).

We should be training ourselves up to do the basics well. By working on shorter, more focussed Mod projects we will learn more and have a greater sense of achievement with the completion of a smaller project (as opposed to having a bunch of media content floating around, not being used by anyone. By doing this we're also more likely to forge tighter Modding teams made up of members we will more likely work with again on more ambitious projects.

We should learn to walk before we try to run.

Other (not finishing or trash ideas)

hl2 spoils everyone, hurts everything. thinks hl2 is as good as zombo.com

I voted Other. And what i ment for otehr is dead mods.

I mean... once you get a team going, they usually start to slack off.
People might be missing for weeks, you might need to replace some people... and its troublesome when you have Nubs on your team, unless they state that they want to make a Nub mod... anyways...

Dedication thats it, ppl lose interest... wich shouldn't be an option, only start a mod if you think, no, if you KNOW that you will finish it.