Make "sync mods" button larger and more noticeable

[bormand]

What?

Screenshot from 2021-01-31 21-11-03.png (6.64 KiB) Viewed 3445 times

Why?

"Sync mods with save" button is very convenient and used frequently. But it's very small and well hidden from new players, so they don't know about it (i.e. 95355).

You can hide it when mods and their settings are already in sync, so it wouldn't distract anyone until the time they really need that button.

[jodokus31]

+1

[Rseding91]

Clicking "load game" will ask if you want to sync if it isn't. So I don't see the point in making the sync button bigger.

[bormand]

Clicking "load game" will ask if you want to sync if it isn't.

Oh, sorry... I always used "sync mods with save" out of old habit, so never noticed that 1.1 already asks for mod synchronization.

Thanks!

[jodokus31]

However, it seems, that many players don't get it still.

[bormand]

However, it seems, that many players don't get it still.

Well, I tried to use load button. It asks about synchronization only if you miss some mods. But if you have some mods than weren't in the save, it doesn't.

[Rseding91]

However, it seems, that many players don't get it still.

Well, I tried to use load button. It asks about synchronization only if you miss some mods. But if you have some mods than weren't in the save, it doesn't.

That's intended. It would be incredibly annoying if you install some new mods, then go back to load your save file and it asks "are you sure you want to use the mods you just installed?"

[jeff.s]

I've heard from players who switch often between modded and unmodded saves, and are frustrated that the Load button only prompts them about specific types of mod mismatches, while the small, hard-to-miss, Sync Mods button handles all the scenarios. In particular, their pain was around accidentally loading a vanilla achievement run with some hard-to-notice QOL mod enabled (like VehicleSnap). Play for a while, maybe do an explicit overwrite of your save, and now you can't get the Steam Achievements with that save anymore, which is a real bummer.

If I have just deliberately enabled some new mods, and I load a save, and the game asks me if it's OK that the mods are different now, I'm already in a headspace of expecting that and confirming would not be a huge roadblock. I also don't know how often people are deliberately adding mods into existing saves versus bouncing around between saves/servers, but I can imagine that the latter is very frequent.

There's also a bit of a behavioral inconsistency here between servers and local saves - if I connect to a server and have extra mods enabled locally, it does (by necessity) prompt me to sync them. From the perspective of users not familiar with the deterministic all-clients simulation involved for multiplayer, that might lead them to the (false) assumption that the game will do the right thing for local save files too.

[eradicator]

It would be incredibly annoying

More like ... a very mild inconvenience at worst, and a huge help at best. Personally I'm using a completely seperate factorio installation for each map/modpack I play just to make sure that I never accidentially contaminate a savegame. So from me:

+1 +1

[asheiduk]

However, it seems, that many players don't get it still.

Well, I tried to use load button. It asks about synchronization only if you miss some mods. But if you have some mods than weren't in the save, it doesn't.

I'm one of those: So far I always wondered when and why Factorio asked me and when not -- screwing up some saves unintentionally. For me it seemed to be indeterministic behaviour. "Don't ask when just new mods are added" does explain it for me.

So +1 and I would like to make the sync-button also green -- just to be on par with the conventional load button.

[ptx0]

I'm one of those: So far I always wondered when and why Factorio asked me and when not -- screwing up some saves unintentionally. For me it seemed to be indeterministic behaviour. "Don't ask when just new mods are added" does explain it for me.

So +1 and I would like to make the sync-button also green -- just to be on par with the conventional load button.

same here. i use separate factorio installations to work around it.

[ssilk]

A separate installation doesn’t help with steam achievements.

[jodokus31]

For steam achievement you can use the vanilla steam version.
And a separate installation for each modpack.

[eradicator]

I mean, when in doubt it can always be made an interface option "warn on mod changes". That should please both sides.