Mod portal wishlist Mk XIV

[Deadlock989]

A lot of this isn't new but just to re-register some of the issues.

- Discussions absolutely need notifications of new threads (at the very least) and probably replies to threads, for the mod owner (at the very least). Otherwise the discussion area is just a burden and an option to turn it off completely would be welcome instead.

- Colour scheme for the discussion area is poor - I can barely read the dark grey text on a dark grey background.

- There needs to be more finesse than the binary choices for listing order of "Recently updated" and "Most downloaded". Otherwise the same old ho-hum mods are going to stay top of the hill forever in a perpetual feedback loop, which is boring for players and discouraging for new modders. A "Trending" option (mods which have an unusually high recent download rate compared to past history) or simply "Most downloaded this month" option etc. should be a pretty easy fix for that. A related issue: there are one or two folkks out there who are beyond prolific with mod uploads, to the point where it's pretty much spam, uploading tens and tens of (in my opinion) very low quality stuff which attracts little interest, drowning out genuinely interesting finds. If people persist in spamming the portal then a rating system (tick box thumbs-up, star rating etc.) would be useful.

- The mod portal should be able to read the zip files' change logs. It's an unnecessary task to have to publish changes in two or three places.

- In the game client, we need more granular control over which mods get updated. Furthermore, it would be a lot better if we could see the change log of an impending update before it's downloaded and then use that to make the decision to update individual mods. For example, the battery icon just changed in the 0.16 development branch, but if I upload a 0.16 version of my mod with altered assets to match, people who are still using 0.16 stable will "accidentally" be forced to update to a mod which doesn't match their game yet, and have no way of knowing that this was going to happen - unless they minimise the game and scrutinise the mod portal manually, for every mod that might be updated.

[eradicator]

- Discussions absolutely need notifications of new threads (at the very least) and probably replies to threads, for the mod owner (at the very least). Otherwise the discussion area is just a burden and an option to turn it off completely would be welcome instead.

I think i've suggested before that it should just link to the official forums (either directly, or via sharing the same database) or the authors preferred bug tracker (no need to reinvent the wheel). As long as discussions are seperate they are yet another place modders have to check regularly. Which adds up (forum, portal, github, reddit, discord, etcpp).

...a rating system (tick box thumbs-up, star rating etc.) would be useful.

Actually a rating system would also solve the problem that "download counts" are all-time total numbers, favouring old mods or mods that get (suspiciously) frequent updates. (I've seen at least one mod that abused the update mechanic by posting null-updates to stay on the first page of recent downloads for a few weeks). As the mod portal accounts are linked to bought game-accounts it's easy to ensure that everyone only to gets one vote per mod. I don't like numeric rating systems, so i'd prefer a steam like percentage based one (yes, you can still see the numbers, but they're not the focus of the system). The steam one also includes a "recent rating" for the last week or so.

- The mod portal should be able to read the zip files' change logs.

Yes. With a seperate tab please.
____________
I'll take the liberty to also link two of my old requests:

Make the mod portal language aware:
Currently the whole portal is targeted at English speakers. And there's no special support for multi-language mods. So as a mod author i am forced to treat one language preferentially, even if my mod fully supports several languages.

Support for experimental channel releases:
The base game has a "stable" and "experimental" branch for a reason. I'd love to have this feature for each mod too.

[Pothrekr]

- In the game client, we need more granular control over which mods get updated. Furthermore, it would be a lot better if we could see the change log of an impending update before it's downloaded and then use that to make the decision to update individual mods. For example, the battery icon just changed in the 0.16 development branch, but if I upload a 0.16 version of my mod with altered assets to match, people who are still using 0.16 stable will "accidentally" be forced to update to a mod which doesn't match their game yet, and have no way of knowing that this was going to happen - unless they minimise the game and scrutinise the mod portal manually, for every mod that might be updated.

Can we move this to Idea's and Suggestion please, I just came to post this exact thing.

I have three maps going (Seablock, Pitchblack and Lazy Bastard), I easily have ~30 mods in my folder. I regularly use the sync mods to save option when loading a map.

Yet when I want to update I have to update everything?

My options are to keep separate mod folders and copy them in as I want to play them, this makes the sync mod to save button useless. Or manually download the specific mod I want to update.

I specifically don't want to change my Seablock related Mod's until Seablock itself is updated.

[Deadlock989]

Have been away for a while and only just noticed the new Trending sort option, the Discussion disabler, the separate FAQ tab, and the greatly improved readability of discussions. Thank you very much, it's a big improvement.

How does "Trending" work? Is it just "recently most downloaded" or is it "sharp up-swing on downloads"?

Looking forward to changelog display in the future.

[deer_buster]

- The mod portal should be able to read the zip files' change logs. It's an unnecessary task to have to publish changes in two or three places.

Yes, please!

- In the game client, we need more granular control over which mods get updated. Furthermore, it would be a lot better if we could see the change log of an impending update before it's downloaded and then use that to make the decision to update individual mods. For example, the battery icon just changed in the 0.16 development branch, but if I upload a 0.16 version of my mod with altered assets to match, people who are still using 0.16 stable will "accidentally" be forced to update to a mod which doesn't match their game yet, and have no way of knowing that this was going to happen - unless they minimise the game and scrutinise the mod portal manually, for every mod that might be updated.

I would also add that ONLY version compatible mods should show up in the mod window from the game client. It would almost be nice if dependency compatible mods could be an available option as well.