Certified mods?

[Falcrack]

Would the devs ever consider a system of certifying mods which would be safe use without the game getting a modified tag? I don't know what criteria exactly a mod would have to fit for it to be certified, but some mods are purely cosmetic, with no impact on the ventures system. I'm thing of some music and sounds mods, and mods that simply change explosions effects (like X4 Fire and Smoke). Also No Stardust, maybe the Remove Encounters mod, basically any mod which would not allow the player to send out buggy or OP ships which would crash the ventures system.

Mod developers could submit their mods for certification to Egosoft, and if they were to get approved, then there would be a note for the mod in the extension folder that it will not result in a modified tag. Each update to the mod would of course require an updated certification to make sure they don't sneak something bad in.

How about it Egosoft?

[Imperial Good]

Would the devs ever consider a system of certifying mods which would be safe use without the game getting a modified tag? I don't know what criteria exactly a mod would have to fit for it to be certified, but some mods are purely cosmetic, with no impact on the ventures system. I'm thing of some music and sounds mods, and mods that simply change explosions effects (like X4 Fire and Smoke). Also No Stardust, maybe the Remove Encounters mod, basically any mod which would not allow the player to send out buggy or OP ships which would crash the ventures system.

Some cosmetic mods might go against various intentional gameplay mechanics. For example texture swapping a common skin for a rare one. Anything that modifies gameplay can be rejected immediately since it is now no longer an even playing field between players using the service. Similar to custom logos, custom game music should be a customizeable feature rather than requiring the use of mods.

Mod developers could submit their mods for certification to Egosoft, and if they were to get approved, then there would be a note for the mod in the extension folder that it will not result in a modified tag. Each update to the mod would of course require an updated certification to make sure they don't sneak something bad in.

Who is going to do the certification? If the developers are busy certifying mods, they cannot be working on game updates. Sure they could hire more people, but who would pay for that person's wages? There is a reason why most certification based publishing systems, such as for various app stores, require payment in some form to get apps certified.

[adeine]

The better solution is simply not to lock gameplay elements for modified games. I don't understand why Egosoft are trying to discourage playing modded (or encourage playing vanilla, if you play devil's advocate) when modding had previously been such a big part of the X series' success.

I know it's been said before, but simple solutions exist:

Which, as I said, could easily be fixed if Egosoft wanted to.

Proper solution:
- Fingerprint the mods on an install
- Restrict venture targets to people matching the same fingerprint
- Success!

Lazy solution:
- Don't send ventures to actual other players but instead simulate/randomise venture results locally
- Success!

Lazy solution isn't what ventures are supposed to be in my imagination. For example: what if venture ships were offering you a mission which, if you complete it, sends a bonus (in any form, but mostly rare venture loot, I'd say) to the player sending its ship to your universe?

Fingerprint on mods can be a solution, indeed. But that could be some "major expansion" work time. Like 5.0 release, because before the "mod fingerprint" thing they're obviously trying to expand online features for vanilla players, which is a lot easier to test. And again: testing is a problem. How many fingerprints are there? How many mods combinations are possible?
What if I have my personal mod, giving the ships pink lasers nobody wants? Nobody is going to have my fingerprint, so I'm "using" online features but nothing is happening.

Hence why it's a lazy/stopgap solution. It would still remove the disincentive from playing offline/with mods and allow everyone to experience all the game has to offer. It's definitely better than nothing until a better solution is implemented, if the opportunity ever arises.

As for your example - you could still have the same mission with the laziest of implementations. On the sending side, whatever you're sending simply poofs into nonexistence. On the receiving side, you have a loot table that selects a random reward, much like the current ventures do. It's really not that difficult to 'fake' ventures locally, especially given how incredibly basic they are at the moment. I mean, that's already what kind of happens, as you can kill people's venture ships and on their end they still get their random rewards (and ships back).

You mean the same ventures which already have mods for offline ventures? Those ventures? Hell, the brief skimming I did of those tells me that it even has more complex stuff than the official ventures.

At the time of writing, the only strict advantage of vanilla ventures is that rewards carry over across savegames and you don't have to use another mod to "undo" the restrictions of using mods, yes. This goes back to the "but it's not very relevant/important/interesting to begin with!" argument.

It's not a very good excuse for needlessly restricting gameplay features, and it leaves Egosoft in a really weird design space when it comes to ventures. Again, they've said that they want to expand on the feature, and some of the better ways of doing so would be to actually integrate it into the plot or other gameplay features. Right now, ventures feel very disconnected from the rest of the game. Presumably this kind of anomaly research/the existence of parallel universes is (or ought to be) significant story wise - the only plot thread X4 started with and the very HQ are based around the idea and right now... nothing at all comes of it.

So expanding on it in any meaningful way will either require a solution to address ** modified ** games, or people end up missing out on more and more game aspects just for daring not to play vanilla. Not the kind of message you want to send with an X game.

[Alan Phipps]

@ adeine: "I don't understand why Egosoft are trying to discourage playing modded (or encourage playing vanilla, if you play devil's advocate)"

I don't think they are. What you might be seeing are these three aspects at play:

• * There are concerns that mixing modded games and online features may involve unforeseen risks for cross-player features such as ventures as they evolve in line with the devs' future plans.
  
  * Technical Support assistance can only realistically be offered for vanilla game installations.
  
  * Public beta testing reports have much reduced value if from modified or edited games.

[jlehtone]

Is this a I want to have a cake and eat it too situation?

Optional

If the vanilla game has an optional feature, then the game has to be tested and verified both feature off and on.
When there are more than one optional feature, then all possible combinations have to be tested.
That explodes very quickly. That is why they are very careful about adding optional features.

Mods are optional features. You have option to install a mod.
The difference is that Egosoft does not commit to making the mod work. That is up to the modder and you.

A mod can add or modify (i.e. replace). The "certified scripts", (aka Bonuspacks) of previous games did add.

If there is good additional content, then why keep it as optional? Add that to the vanilla?
Transferring the burden of maintenance from original creator to Egosoft and the IPR issues are not trivial.

[Imperial Good]

If a player is already using game mods, nothing stops them from also installing a game mod designed to emulate ventures.

Sure this mod might not involve actual online data sharing like the real thing, but it could still offer a good enough approximation to the real thing for gameplay purposes. At least for now until venture mechanics get expanded.

[adeine]

@ adeine: "I don't understand why Egosoft are trying to discourage playing modded (or encourage playing vanilla, if you play devil's advocate)"

I don't think they are. What you might be seeing are these three aspects at play:

• * There are concerns that mixing modded games and online features may involve unforeseen risks for cross-player features such as ventures as they evolve in line with the devs' future plans.
  
  * Technical Support assistance can only realistically be offered for vanilla game installations.
  
  * Public beta testing reports have much reduced value if from modified or edited games.

Last two points are certainly true, but that seems more like an argument to agree with the POV than denying it is a POV to begin with.

Personally I think the risk of making mods less appealing by gating off gameplay content is significantly greater than cross-play concerns. Do you think X3 would have become a cult classic with a still sizeable community if it weren't for the modding community, if it weren't for XRM/LU/you name it? Vanilla was never the optimal way to experience all the potential the game engine(s) had to offer at the end of the day. If this move continues, I don't see it ending well for X4 in the long run.

On the other hand, I think it's safe to say X4 will never have true multiplayer of any description. Not the kind of thing the engine allows, and certainly not what the game tries to sell itself as. So the sacrifices to be made there are nowhere near as big, and it's not as if solutions would be difficult to implement. As stated, just fingerprinting mods and enabling crossplay features only for matching installs would be a perfectly workable solution. This isn't an MMO where fracturing the player base would be an issue.

Or just simulate cross-play features on modified games if you want to be lazy.

If a player is already using game mods, nothing stops them from also installing a game mod designed to emulate ventures.

Sure this mod might not involve actual online data sharing like the real thing, but it could still offer a good enough approximation to the real thing for gameplay purposes. At least for now until venture mechanics get expanded.

This really isn't a good argument. You shouldn't have to mod gameplay features back in just because Egosoft decided you can't have them if you install a mod.

Let's imagine for a second they had implemented some sort of cross-play for mission generation, where players can generate dynamic missions that will show up in other players' games (e.g. through ventures). The current approach would be to just disable missions altogether for players on modified installs, and you'd be telling them "Oh, but crossplay! And there's no reason you can't mod missions back into the game!"

[Imperial Good]

Let's imagine for a second they had implemented some sort of cross-play for mission generation, where players can generate dynamic missions that will show up in other players' games (e.g. through ventures). The current approach would be to just disable missions altogether for players on modified installs, and you'd be telling them "Oh, but crossplay! And there's no reason you can't mod missions back into the game!"

Except they have not implemented such a thing so what I said earlier still stands. Currently you pretty much just send ships out and some real time later they can be claimed back for a reward. Also some randomly named and randomly loaded out ships appear scattered around the universe that you can do stuff to without consequences other than local police maybe not liking it. Both of these should be fairly easy to emulate with a mod, and I recall someone having done so around release time.

The main reason people do ventures is for the exceptional mod parts and to a lesser extent paint jobs. Even early game the money and rest of the rewards is trivial as you should be making millions an hour from sector mining pretty quickly. Maybe you could pirate the venture ships in neutral space, but then again you could just pirate normal NPC ships as well. Adding some sort of compensation mod as an alternative source for those exceptional mod parts and paint jobs is really all that is needed and with that players will not really be missing out on anything for now.

This may change in future, but even if there is more point or involvement with ventures there is still a good chance that those aspects can be compensated for by a mod and missing out on the remainder is not too much of a loss.

[Burneyx]

We already have an certified mod,

It is called "Split Vendetta", simple that is

If Egosoft won't let us use mods, why should we buy their next one???

I would love to have a mod that gives us usefull build times and building stations on asteroids, like X3
But what Egosoft gives us for money is not relaxing gameplay, its more annoying then ever, even if it technically works.....

Greetings

[chew-ie]

Mods are not equally important for everyone. First and foremost the product development has to take place. Egosoft already supports Mods to a certain degree, but arguing that they have to certify mods is a bit over the top. It took Bethesda how long to come closer to the modding community? (correct: very very long).

I really can't get behind the "issue". If there are people who want to use mods they already can. And the only thing they can't use is the online component - which can be simulated by mods. And if the modding community want's to have a similar online experience including their mods they should make it happen.

Meanwhile Egosoft can concentrate their precious dev resources on adding the Borons and other new exciting features.

[dtpsprt]

Mods are not equally important for everyone. First and foremost the product development has to take place. Egosoft already supports Mods to a certain degree, but arguing that they have to certify mods is a bit over the top. It took Bethesda how long to come closer to the modding community? (correct: very very long).

I really can't get behind the "issue". If there are people who want to use mods they already can. And the only thing they can't use is the online component - which can be simulated by mods. And if the modding community want's to have a similar online experience including their mods they should make it happen.

Meanwhile Egosoft can concentrate their precious dev resources on adding the Borons and other new exciting features.

All very true and I agree with one exception. To use the "venture" mod you need the venture departure dock which is locked behind Online Features, which are locked for modified games...

[X2-Illuminatus]

All very true and I agree with one exception. To use the "venture" mod you need the venture departure dock which is locked behind Online Features, which are locked for modified games...

Having a look at the requirements of the (Offline) Ventures modification there's no mention of requiring the venture departure dock. In fact, it says to not dock your ships you want to send on ventures.

[Shehriazad]

I think that EVENTUALLY the devs will offer a "signed" package again like they did with past X titles.



I understand that Egosoft put themselves in a sort of bind by adding online features which makes modding a lot harder...but there ought to be a way to keep your online features just because you want to install what is basically a script to make trading easier for example.

[adeine]

Let's imagine for a second they had implemented some sort of cross-play for mission generation, where players can generate dynamic missions that will show up in other players' games (e.g. through ventures). The current approach would be to just disable missions altogether for players on modified installs, and you'd be telling them "Oh, but crossplay! And there's no reason you can't mod missions back into the game!"

Except they have not implemented such a thing so what I said earlier still stands. Currently you pretty much just send ships out and some real time later they can be claimed back for a reward. Also some randomly named and randomly loaded out ships appear scattered around the universe that you can do stuff to without consequences other than local police maybe not liking it. Both of these should be fairly easy to emulate with a mod, and I recall someone having done so around release time.

The main reason people do ventures is for the exceptional mod parts and to a lesser extent paint jobs. Even early game the money and rest of the rewards is trivial as you should be making millions an hour from sector mining pretty quickly. Maybe you could pirate the venture ships in neutral space, but then again you could just pirate normal NPC ships as well. Adding some sort of compensation mod as an alternative source for those exceptional mod parts and paint jobs is really all that is needed and with that players will not really be missing out on anything for now.

This may change in future, but even if there is more point or involvement with ventures there is still a good chance that those aspects can be compensated for by a mod and missing out on the remainder is not too much of a loss.

It being "so easy to emulate or add back in" is exactly my point.

It shouldn't be up to modders to reimplement vanilla, just because they dared to ***modify*** their saves. It's not difficult to work around the crossplay concerns for those who would like to play with mods (not a minority the longer X games stay around). And yet, Egosoft deliberately chose not to do so, instead increasingly locking people out of game features. From what I've read it seems like come CoH you won't even be able to log into your account anymore if your game is modified (though I certainly hope this is wrong).

They're shooting themselves in the foot, and X4 will be worse off as a result.

[CBJ]

It's not difficult to work around the crossplay concerns for those who would like to play with mods..

Your entire argument is based on this statement, which is quite simply false. As I've already explained, other games which involve a single shared online experience have the same limitations, and for very good reasons. No amount of people claiming they have a "simple solution", or insisting that we have just "deliberately chosen not to" is going to change this.

[Falcrack]

So, maybe no certified mods. BUT, if they are determined to not certify mods, could Egosoft please add an official "Offline Ventures" option, so that modified games can send out simulated ventures, and get rewards as if they were sending their ships out to other player's games. Yes yes, I know there is a offline ventures mod already, but there are disadvantages to making us rely on a mod for this. For one, mods break when the game is patched. It relies on someone not affiliated with Egosoft to maintain this feature. The mod and the venture rewards could be wildly out of balance with the rewards in the online ventures. Another consideration, is that the more mods someone has, the more chances there are to break things in the game. I would much prefer is Egosoft were the one's to make offline ventures possible, rather than rely upon a 3rd person mod.

[Killjaeden]

Who is going to do the certification? If the developers are busy certifying mods, they cannot be working on game updates.

In Arma game series the modding tools allow the modders to create a signature key file for their mod, that the host/server uses to check for existance of the mod files on the clients and for potential tampering of the modded files.
So people can have a "shared online experience" on a server, because they all use the same mods / use the mods that the server whitelists as "ok to use".

So the only question is if Egosoft will (at some point) allow users to select the people they want to play with exclusively, set up a "master host"/ server, and in return choose the mod set they want to play with. I understand it wouldnt be simple... but its not like it hasnt been done before, and not a recent invention (first installation of Arma with mod signatures is 14 years old).

Bohemia Interactive devs are pretty cool (i know that at least of of them, Dwarden, even helped out in development on an early X title - dont remember which). I dont think they would say no to sharing some experience/words of wisdom on this topic, if ES would ask them.

Certifaction of "minor addons" that do not effect gameplay or important things could also be done by volunteers with modding experience, whom egosoft trusts... similar to forum moderators. Minor addons/ eyecandy stuff are usually not large in scope and are therefore easier to check than big mods too.

---

a single shared online experience

For the start a single shared experience is easier, therefore a sensible choice.
However, if everyone is constrained to play in the exact same "global player group" all using vanilla game files, it would make modding less popular / always have the caveat applied that no online experience is possible.
If significant development time and efford is put into the online thing, then losing all this work in exchange for moddability would be less and less worth the tradeoff for players.

This would result in small mods becoming much less popular - only significant big mods would be worth the trade. But without small mods, you wont have modders collecting enough experience and courage to build a bigger mod. Thus less people will mod. Less modders in general means even less knowledge sharing, means newer modders will have it even more difficult to learn (unless ES steps in with guides themself). Thus the whole modding eco system would decline proportionally to the attractiveness of multiplayer - and could potentially collaps.
As long as no "multiple shared experience" (analog to modded multiplayer servers in games like Arma or older Battlefield games (1942, 2, 2142, ...) ) is available that is.

[adeine]

It's not difficult to work around the crossplay concerns for those who would like to play with mods..

Your entire argument is based on this statement, which is quite simply false. As I've already explained, other games which involve a single shared online experience have the same limitations, and for very good reasons. No amount of people claiming they have a "simple solution", or insisting that we have just "deliberately chosen not to" is going to change this.

No, sorry, it is not incorrect. Games like Minecraft are a completely different scenario. There you have a server that is shared between a group of people, where everyone using it agrees to use, and benefit from, a particular mod or set of mods. That is, of course, fine in that situation, but for games where everyone participates in the same shared experience, and where changes made on one person's client can potentially have a detrimental effect on someone else's experience, the requirement for an unmodified client is absolutely the norm.

Just to be clear, this is not just about people sending modified ships. I am not going to go into details, for various reasons, not least of which is that we're not ready to share our future plans for the venture feature yet, but suffice it to say that the requirement for an unmodified client is not going to be going away because it is an essential element in maintaining a level playing field for everyone who chooses to participate.

Throwing around emotive terms such as "isolating" and "hostile" isn't going to change anything. We put a lot of thought, time and effort into supporting the modding community, and we will continue to do so. We will also continue to look into whether there are cases where we can allow purely cosmetic mods that don't mark the client as modified, as we already did with music changes for example, but it's not always as easy as people think to differentiate between cosmetic mods and those which can affect gameplay in a way that could potentially impact on the way ventures are prepared for and initiated.

If you could explain how it is false...?

Your Minecraft example is exactly the result of implementing mod/install fingerprinting. I'm sure even vanilla already does, or will have to do something like this to some extent:

. Person A installs mod X, mod B, and mod D. For any crossplay features they are now only matched with people who also use mod X, mod B, and mod D.
. Person B is on vanilla X4. They will be matched with anyone on X4 vanilla.
. Person C is on X4 + SV + CoH. They will need to be matched with people on X4 + SV + CoH, or workarounds will have to be created so the DLC content does not break a base vanilla game.

Literally zero difference between mods and DLC/official expansions.

X4 is not, and will never be a game where everyone participates in the exact same shared experience. DLC and mods prevent that from being a thing. So just let people with the exact same installs experience crossplay features together.

[zakaluka]

If you could explain how it is false...?

I would suggest to you, that this topic is simply a non-starter at this time. That doesn't mean it's never worth coming up again, just that you're working against yourself by continuing to push right now. It's belligerent.

[adeine]

I would suggest to you, that this topic is simply a non-starter at this time. That doesn't mean it's never worth coming up again, just that you're working against yourself by continuing to push right now. It's belligerent.

Not trying to be belligerent, but now is the time to bring it up while it's still fairly easy to course correct.