So, the dev bashing and general nay saying and pessimism of some is something I can do without. However, at the same time the game faces many issues, and regular criticism can be both constructive and productive. My personal opinion is that we should be criticizing the game and not the people making it, because I don't see how the latter can ever be productive. That said, there is also no one in our community right now that I think we can do without. The attitude is a product of the situation as well as the personality of the poster. Everyone has a right to a voice, and as much as one might disagree with the approach, it doesn't remove that right.
On the issue of modders, I have joined this community, and spent countless hours reading, watching, and learning from others. I have yet to accomplish more than designing a couple scenes. We have both a bunch of amateur modders (like myself) and highly experienced modders (not me) who have also worked on game design or work in development of other applications.. Some have a lot of experience, possibly more than some of the devs at TW, but I have never heard one claim to be "better than the devs". On both sides it is just people who really love the game and want to make it into their own vision for the game. The biggest reason to mod is if your vision for the best version of the game is different from that of the devs, not issues with the base game.
Especially lately, I mostly just see a lot of communication back and forth between both devs and modders and everyone is helping each other out. Siince the mod tools released, there has not been so much pessimism in that community any longer. I think the biggest issues were just how hard it was to mod compared to warband, but now it is starting to get better, and will only keep getting better as the mod tools continue to get better (which they will as current mod tools are considered beta). A lot of people were perturbed by the delay of the mod tools, but it is better than getting a buggy non-working set of tools, and these tools actually work pretty well.
As for modders "fixing the game", I haven't see anyone mentioning that ideal of late. It's all relative. What for one person is a fix for the game, may not be appreciated by another who prefers the current mechanic. Everyone has their own little project that they think will make the game better, or in some cases... people just want to make art that others can enjoy! I'm not saying there aren't community patches where people try to work in a number of fixes, but it is really hard for modders to keep up with this type of patch on a game that is constantly evolving. This is because it is a lot of work and modders don't get paid. Then when TW releases their own fix in the next version, and it breaks your mod, it can feel like time wasted...
IMO modding is not about fixing the game as much as it is making the game into what that modder or group of modders wants it to be. Also, I want to mention that most of the big mods are not completed by one dude. It takes a team of guys (all working their free time) to pull this off, and the same was the case for the major conversion mods in WB. Those great mods we all played were years in the making to get to that point, and in some cases were almost entirely different games, on a similar scale to the development effort of the native module. Building from within isn't always easier than starting from the ground up (hence why people often rebuild from the ground up).
In the end the player gets to compile these mods to make their own best version, or versions. These include both the efforts of devs and of modders, and all should be appreciated.
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Banned
