Best Mod Vote idea.
 

I have an idea; that we should make a list of the best mods, and have a vote to see which one we consider the best and why.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

So far my favorite is the one that Gandolf made so that ALL of the nations could play in one big game. Like the Perpetuality, and the Evermore game that is coming up.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

Conceptual Balance Mod.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

I agree with sombre, even if creating a new and fun to play nation is maybe a harder task. ex : Urdheim is impressive

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

My favourite mods

CBM (makes multiplayer a lot more even)
Worthy Heroes (makes the vanilla nations a lot more interesting)
Skaven (the best of the mod nations i have tried)

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

Skkkaveennnn

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

I love the was it.. 8 or something nation mod based on the Black Moon Chronicals.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

I think community ratings would be cool. Back when I was playing NWN and NWN2 (http://nwvault.ign.com/) I'd always try the ones that sounded coolest, but I usually played the highly rated mods much more.

Unfortunately this falls into the same realm as Idea: cannot implement, since I have no coding skills.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

If we had lots of people playing mods I would agree, but currently I think it's only a small number of players who actually use them.

We're on the 3rd MP mod game now and if we keep organising stuff like that people will get more of an idea about which are the best mods, or at least suit them best. I try to be pretty impartial, because I'm a modder myself, but by making CBM versions of only certain mods I guess I'm playing favourites.

This thread might do better in the main forum actually - I guess there are people there who play a mod or two (probably WH and CBM) but never really come in here.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

Who better to rate mods then other modders?

I would assume rating wouldn't just be on playability, but also on construction quality, technical merits, balance, etc

I think it would actually increase the amount of people who would play mods. Its actually quite intimidating to jump on the forum and see 100 mod threads. If the vocal minority says that a,b,c mods all work, are balanced (or unbalanced if desired), and are fun I think the "mod-newbie" would be more likely to try them out.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

My favorite nation mods so far are Ulm Reborn, Skaven, and that weird Insectoid mod. The Mushroom Kingdom is awesome it its very unique way. There are many more I'd like to try.

I'd say for popularity and MP use, the Conceptual Balance and Worthy Heroes mods are top priority. Get them, and come blitz on the IRC channel!

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

I'm kind of against this, because you've got so many people putting so much hard work into mods for so many different reasons that to say "A mod is better than B mod", it's just relative, and it really doesn't do anything except make the mods that *are* played even more exclusive and rare.

It's much better to promote all the mods, as a community, and simply promote the ones you like better, individually, rather than make this into a popularity contest which has no real basis in anything, or point.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

It has a basis in popularity which may or may not suggest a basis in quality. To paraphrase another - If quality is entirely subjective and relative then criticism and opinion is not 'nothing' it is 'everything'.

As for the point,... It does seem that people are put off by the volume of mods and not knowing where to start. But who is willing to tell them where to start? Which mods are best?

So I guess the idea of this thread is that there's going to be some kind of community consensus. But I know I haven't played all the mods here,.. not even close,.. so it's very difficult for me to say. A better question than 'which mod is best' might be 'which mod is most popular?'

In which case I'd still go for Conceptual Balance Mod :]

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

I'm not against information on which mods are the most generally important, useful, etc. for the benefit of new people. That goes without saying.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

You haven't played a lot of the mods here? you made the mod list!!

I've played just about every mod at least once, and I am sorta against rating mods, cause come on, who looks at a list of mods that are rate from lets say 1-30 and goes, hey I'm gonna try all 1-30 no, they'll try 1-10 or so and thats 20 peoples hard work ignored.

What we should do! is make one huge zip with every mod, update it monthly or bimonthly and include a stick thread with a link to this, a name for this thread that attracts new people and short descriptions of each mod on the thread and in a note pad document inside the big zip.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

Hey I spend more time modding than playing, what do you expect? The mod list was just an attempt to get the forum a bit more ordered. I'm glad I went ahead and did it, because someone sort of had to, but I've stripped back the detail since I first started it and now it's basically just a list of links to original mod threads. Pretty objective.

I think it's fair to say that some mods are better than others. Whether the author put in more time, or the concept was better to begin with, or it had the benefit of someone's artisitic ability or extensive MP balance experience,.. who is to say? But there is clearly a difference in quality between say, the dom2 mods and the dom3 ones. If you had a list of mods 1-30 and people with no idea of what to expect played the top 5 instead of 5 random mods, I think they'd get a better impression of dom3 mods overall, which would be good. They'd probably also have more fun. So there is an argument that it would be helpful.

I don't think a ranking system like that would work though, even if it were wanted/needed.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

Maybe it could be useful to group them into balanced/unbalanced and approximately complete/definitely incomplete. And maybe also some category indicating whether the author focussed on detailed graphics, since clearly some mods such as Sombre's are of roughly Kristoffer quality, whereas others the mod author just created things pretty much as placeholders so they could enjoy working on the unit stats and descriptions.

Hmm, just thinking aloud here. It certainly is a tricky one to keep objective, but I do think it might be nice to have a few "look at these first" mods that people new to Dom3 mods should look at.

Hmm, maybe we could have a little vote on this thread on mods which would be good as "introductory mods", which we'd advise people to look at first. That is less controversial perhaps - it's not saying other mods aren't worthwhile, just that they're perhaps a little more unusual. Could split the introductory ones into balanced and unbalanced, since I know many people find e.g. Amos' mods interesting, but to me the unbalanced nature of them is a complete turnoff.

So, my vote for introductory mods:

-- Balanced --
Ulm Reborn
Arga Dis
Skaven
Vaettiheim

-- Unbalanced --
(don't know)

Sombre, seems like you come out well in my voting! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

Come to think of it, maybe I should add a couple of Zepath's to my list. So, also:

Teutanion
Sylvania

Although I'm not convinced they're so well balanced. But at least they were intended to be, and they're not crazy.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

I do agree with you Sombre that there is a clear line for what's good and what's not, but if to make a list, we have to make sure not to forget anyone's mod, once somethings been submitted no matter how bad we have to subject them to the same rights as the good ones.

Oh I agree that those two mods you mentioned llamabeast, they are well ballanced.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

CB mod. Makes Multiplayerr much more enjoyable

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

I also would like to see a mod "list" be very unrating or categorizing.

But the vote thing in this thread is fine. Maybe we could also start a list of the Dom2 mods. A few of them work with Dom3 but unfortunately it appears that the more involved it was, the more likely it is to be broke now. There are some there which would be a fun addition if they could be repaired to work with Dom3

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

A while ago I made a thread asking if people were interested in me fixing up any of the dom2 mods to work with dom3. There was zero interest at the time.

Most of the dom2 mods just seem inferior to me, though there might be some diamonds in the rough. I haven't played any of them, just looked them over.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

I'd like to see a Dom3 version of the Dragon mod, but I wouldn't really know where to start for fixing it.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

I think that some of the ones on Illwinters Dom2 MODs page could be interesting ideas for AI mods. Anyone looking at getting into modding, that should be easy to do. No worries about "balance" or if you have all of the needs covered (scout, mage, fighter, cavalry, archer, etc). Just as long as its an interesting new thing to run into. The Dragons mod, the Devils mod, the Trolls mod, False Dawn. I see that the Amazons mod and the Hoburg nation are being redone for Dom3. I also remember some things that Leif had in his version of SemiRand for "HorseLords" and "Vampire Nation" which might be interesting.

Of course the same ideas can be worked into the SemiRandom program if someone would rather move that direction. (shameless plug)

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

Hoburg Alliance and Amazons have already been redone for dom3 as Hoburg Alliance SE and Themiskyra respectively.

Trolls has effectively been redone as Vaettiheim SE.

Morky, if you want I can teach you how to 'fix' the Dragon mod, using the IRC channel. Or you could just have a go at it yourself, use the mod manual and see if you can muddle through - that is certainly a learning experience.

Having looked inside a couple of dom2 .dms I don't think you'd have to change that much at all to get it /working/. Polishing is what takes time.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

But where's the Hoburg/Amazon Alliance mod?

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

Leif! is this like "I have been summoned by the use of my name" thing? Have you looked at SemiRand? Its really going well along the lines of our favorite project. Im going to let it progress along the "everyone make a province so we can get a huge library" path for abit but I am envisioning later having special libraries to swap in for doing themed maps.

Re: Best Mod Vote idea.
 

Links are in the mod list, stickied.