Because the modder can just do whatever they want, they don't need permissions and they don't need to worry about compatibility and they don't have a boss saying hhhmmmm no IT NEEDS MORE SHEEP TEXTURES!
It is frustrating when you want just 1 little change and you know TW agrees (or did at some point) and every update it "why didn't they just do it?".
I believe for your own mental sanity guys and girls, for once to determine that the people who design and craft art, scenes, SHEEP textures like you stated are not the same as the people who develop that kind of things we all want stated above.
Those artists have to work somehow, regardless on other priorities than we as a players pointed many times on various plateforms, hence the vast amount of scenes we got on the latest beta patch.
If a Sheep texture is ready to ship ( no pun intended) then I believe they ship it, it's fair to assume that doesn't have any impact on those actively working / programming on the game on it's core, we often have a glimpse of that from the devs themselves like " It's not my area ".
That's quite surprising to see you
@AnandaShanti complaining about this, while I believe you're very active on that forum.
However on Gaming communities as a whole, people for the lack of understanding how a game dev company & team typically work often take the troll route like : " Why do they make those silly and useless textures / art design / new armor when the game needs Diplomacy overhaul, me refund my game, me angry "
Sadly, that's not how it works in general, since I'm not on TW office to see how their meeting and workflow looks like, take it as a rule of thumb backed by my software and web developement experience rather than " I'm right you're wrong " statement.
It strikes me that if effecting a change or feature that improves the experience for players will more than often create larger problems, then the issue is with the engine. Although because of my lack of experience in development I guess this could just be an inherent problem from developers across the board. If that is the case, then it is a good reason to cut them some slack and just share the frustration with them.
I guess it is also the major reason the developers allow mods. They are in fact ESSENTIAL if this is the case.
In all fairness, I was pleasantly surprised to see that my suggestions about UX/UI and effectively QoL have been shipped quite fast. I don't know if it was planned before I made the thread, I honestly think so since I made the following post a couple of days before the latest Beta ship from TW ( 1.5.10 ).
I found that the UI section and of course the UI Guys, I believe
@emrozdemir is one of them are quite active and responsive. So kudos to them !