"Opening up Arma 3 to paid user-made content" - How?

[das attorney 858]

encrypted PBOs

Maybe; there's some talk of new binarisation standard over on tools forum. Not sure if relevant:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?179344-Tools-Development-Branch-Discussion&p=2915006#post2915006

[chrisb 196]

This is an example:

After todays announcement by LJ that JSRS is stopping for now because of the issues he states in his thread (now closed).

I don't use this mod, but I have in the past. Now £1 to buy, if this was up for sale, per download. £1 for a mod that many couldn't play without (so they say). I'm sure if you think about it no one would mind paying £1.

Lets say after all the bites out of that £1 ie. BI & Steam that LJ gets just .40p.

On AH its been downloaded 17128 times, that would be £6851.20 for LJ. I don't know his situation but read the thread comment he made. Who's to say that £1 for that mod is not worth it.

I apologies to LJ for the example, I don't use the mod. But its an example that is relevant to this topic.

_

BI do it properly now and lets help these modders. They need to earn if their mods are taking so much out of them, why not enable them to earn doing something they love doing. :mad:

[teilx 4]

The Game itself need a good quality without many flaws,bugs and issues and maybe people would buy mods like in the popular Valve games. In the current state i think it wont work. The games can not compare but in terms of quality is arma a nightmare.

[Chairborne 2594]

Not after MANW was finished, after it was announced, way before RHS said to take part.

but yeah, i guess with people like yourself, i am simply wasting my time here.

I don't get why you need to act like a frustrated housewife about it.

I'm just saying everyone is happy to jump aboard a project that is already good and going.

A newcomer to arma modding wouldn't be as lucky at finding people willing to help them, and i think you know how hard it is to mod a game like this without a community to help you.

If this ever happens, it's in your own interest to keep valuable know-how for yourself instead of sharing with the rest of the community. Is it not?

[vegeta897 13]

If this ever happens, it's in your own interest to keep valuable know-how for yourself instead of sharing with the rest of the community. Is it not?

The argument I made in my last post applies to this as well. This person who is keeping the know-how to themselves: would they have been a free modder who was sharing the know-how if monetization was not a thing? What would make them suddenly change just because they have the option to monetize?

Again repeating my argument: The more reasonable assumption would be that the only people who are keeping their trade secrets in paid mods are ones who wouldn't have been giving them out for free already if monetization didn't exist. Therefore, nothing is actually lost here. They're just added to the people who were already doing what they're doing for free.

[Tonci87 163]

As I already said, how would anybody benefit from changing the way how things worked so far? BIS would be the only benefactor, together with some high profile mod authors, maybe.

What this game needs is

A: Better tools that make content creation as easy as possible <----------- This is most important

B: Better ways of donating to mod authors.

Some people say that Donations don´t work, I would like to ask them why?

Lets take a look at some mods.

Lets start with a very popular high profile mod. Google JSRS for Arma 3. The first thing you will most likely find is Armaholic. Look at that page, does that page tell you anywhere how to donate or that you even have the possibility to donate? NO! The next thing you may find is the JSRS homepage (unlike most other mods that mod has a homepage) there you can find the option to donate burried under a huge wall of text the average user isn´t going to read. How does the BIS Forum thread look like? There is a donation button embedded in a huge wall of text that, again, the average user is not going to read.

OK, some other mod then.

RHS

Armaholic: No mention of donations. Their website? Small mention. Forum thread? Nothing

The new Kunduz Map

Nothing at Armaholic, the Forum thread, or on Steam.

So why are donations not working? Is that only the fault of the players? I doubt it.

What I would like to see. Both Steam workshop and Armaholic having very visible offers to donate to the mod author after downloading a mod. Make it a popup for gods sake. And since Steam and Arma can now even track how long and often some thing gets used make Arma remember the player after one week that he has used mod xy and that it would be really neat if he considered donating to the author. Include a donation option in the debriefing screen for user made missions, that way people can instantly and comfortably donate if they liked it.

And I can promise you that donations will skyrocket if those things get implemented, without fucking with Armas sucess formula.

[PuFu 4600]

I fully understand where you're coming from PuFu. I've been around this game series since the early OFP days and back in the day I did release a fair few projects over the years. I still to this day work on small private projects for the enjoyment of the group I am a part of. I can't claim to speak with any experience of being part of a large mod team such as RHS - I mainly work on things alone or within the small group pooling our resources and knowledge. However as to the time and effort involved, I do understand and appreciate that "time is money", yet this hasn't stopped addon makers, RHS being a prime example, from standing the tests of time. Many addon makers have moved on to other games or moved on with their lives to other pursuits. That happens in every walk of life. Are we to assume that if OFP had supported "payware" addons, that popular mod teams from back then such as BAS or UKF would still be creating content?

Whilst there may be fewer "mainstream" modders around these days, I don't think the decline in numbers is so steep as to imply that the modding scene is dying. Infact it seems there are more and more people getting interested in creating content for the game. The recent influx of new-blood, whilst sometimes infuriating because they (sometimes) can't post in the correct thread or section when they ask questions, still shows an eagerness to learn and a drive to create new content rather than waiting around for someone (or likely no-one) to do it for them. As to the quality of the content, that falls on both the rest of the community to give constructive feedback as well as BI (as you touched upon) to continue to improve their tools and supporting documentation and such.

The modifiability of this game series (be it my own work or downloading and playing with the works of others) is what has kept this game series alive and is the ONLY reason I still have any interest in this series. While I can appreciate a financial incentive would continue to support content creators, past events have shown (will name no names) that holding the community over a barrel with a "support my mod/mission/whatever or I wont update it anymore" stance, may do more harm than good. Monetizing user-created content isn't a far cry (lol, game references) from this slippery slope. Its not a stretch to envision content-creators from giving up on projects if they don't sell a certain number, or achieve possible sales-goals set by BI/Steam (an idea I seem to remember being bounced around as a possibility though purely speculation).

Like you, I eagerly await further clarification from BI on the subject, as right now this entire discussion is based on a great many if's, but's and maybe's. I guess only time will tell.

Thank you for taking your time to write a proper response. I appreciate a discussion that is based on facts and arguments.

1. regarding BAF and UKF - i know UKF did work for VBS and ArMA, for BAF i cannot talk about here, but there is a reason they are not in the modding scene, at least not as a group (no necessary the topic here)

2. I never said the modding scene is dyeing. Not even close, at least from a mission perspective, there's more today than it was back in A2 for instance (and i am not including the arma life scenery here). But where content is concerned (and i am talking about ground up content, same for features) it is completely different from what was back in OFP days, hell, even A1 days when i go the grips of what modding is about. The recent influx you see here is a lot bigger outside of these forums (yes, there is a bigger community that doesn't even tough these forums). see reddit, steam etc. There is a certain "entitlement" mood around here, believe me i read some of that via RHS facebook posts and messages. But that is just part of the todays mentality.

3. Don't get me started on the tools. all of it is sort of half-done. Recently you can import FBX files, but those don't import selections. texview was added back, because there was no way to get paas to tgas. Anyways, if you want to help people out, allow them to set a proper working pipeline. the tools don't work without the game, so i cannot test stuff on my laptop anymore. The official tools rely on tools released by Mikero (which are better in all regards). Getting new people means you need to allow them to bring their skill-sets right in, instead of wasting time with half-assed tools that work completly different than anything out there in 2015, and for which there is little to no documentation.

4. People abandoning their projects, that is something that happens today just as well, and any monetization is forbidden. It won't change much i would say. But then again, as there is little incentive, the new blood is unlikely to start from somewhere either way. I guess it is easier: there is nothing to abandon.

[Jackal326 1181]

But how is this worse than the current state of affairs? You are making the assumption that these hypothetical content creators you speak of would be working on their projects for free if they couldn't monetize. That's not very likely, if they'd stop working on a project due to lack of sales.

That's really the flaw I see in this talk of modding dying out because of monetization. It makes a giant assumption that people who are already doing stuff for free are going to suddenly require money to keep doing it, only because they now have the option.

You wave the potential of Dollar/Pound/Euro/Yen in someone's face and you'll find scarce few people who wouldn't jump at the chance of getting some of that action. Granted, not everyone will charge for their mods.

However, given the opportunity, I fear many will.

I think a far more reasonable prediction is that the modders who monetize are ones who wouldn't have been able to justify creating something for free, and now have an incentive to. In other words, we end up with more mods than we did before.

Sadly, I don't share your optimism here.

There is of course further issue with the entire monetisation of content - that being collaboration (which has been touched on in a couple of posts recently). As it stands there is quite a good overall "share and share alike" attitude in the community. Many addon creators pooling their content and not only combining mods, but sharing smaller content such as textures, models and the like. This opens the can of worms that if someone monetises content that is not entirely their own, how would this be 'policed'. I assume there would be some sort of approval process, however who would be responsible for this? BI? Steam/Valve? A third party committee of community members?

EDIT: (PuFu, you posted while I was replying so I'm tacking this on the end :P)

Thank you for taking your time to write a proper response. I appreciate a discussion that is based on facts and arguments.

1. regarding BAF and UKF - i know UKF did work for VBS and ArMA, for BAF i cannot talk about here, but there is a reason they are not in the modding scene, at least not as a group (no necessary the topic here)

2. I never said the modding scene is dyeing. Not even close, at least from a mission perspective, there's more today than it was back in A2 for instance (and i am not including the arma life scenery here). But where content is concerned (and i am talking about ground up content, same for features) it is completely different from what was back in OFP days, hell, even A1 days when i go the grips of what modding is about. The recent influx you see here is a lot bigger outside of these forums (yes, there is a bigger community that doesn't even tough these forums). see reddit, steam etc. There is a certain "entitlement" mood around here, believe me i read some of that via RHS facebook posts and messages. But that is just part of the todays mentality.

3. Don't get me started on the tools. all of it is sort of half-done. Recently you can import FBX files, but those don't import selections. texview was added back, because there was no way to get paas to tgas. Anyways, if you want to help people out, allow them to set a proper working pipeline. the tools don't work without the game, so i cannot test stuff on my laptop anymore. The official tools rely on tools released by Mikero (which are better in all regards). Getting new people means you need to allow them to bring their skill-sets right in, instead of wasting time with half-assed tools that work completly different than anything out there in 2015, and for which there is little to no documentation.

4. People abandoning their projects, that is something that happens today just as well, and any monetization is forbidden. It won't change much i would say. But then again, as there is little incentive, the new blood is unlikely to start from somewhere either way. I guess it is easier: there is nothing to abandon.

1. I understand (some) of the reasons behind those mod teams calling time, and I completely forgot about BAS else I wouldn't have used them as an example.

2. Thank you for not including the 'Life' scene :P Yes the community is far larger than these forums (thankfully), if these forums were the be-all and end-all of the ArmA scene it would certainly not hold as much appeal as it does. I too have noticed the 'entitlement' around here (and elsewhere), and it irks me too. Some of the blatant demands people come out with are borderline absurd and they try to feign them off as suggestions or critiques...but that its digressing from the point.

3. I couldn't agree more on the tools. I am in the opposite boat to many though in that I learnt O2 from the ground up with no previous 3d modelling experience. This is now costing me when trying to learn other applications as I've only ever known O2, rather than going into it with a good knowledge of other programs such as 3DS MAX or similar.

4. That is a valid point, the potential for monetising the end result would probably provide more motivation. However the flip side being are we going to see a lot of cheap and nasty half-arsed jobs (like BI tools :P) flooding the marketplace. I suppose thats the author's loss though because if its crap they wont sell very many. An interesting point to come back to regarding the "admissions process/policing content" I outlined in my reply to vegeta897 I guess.

Edited April 16, 2015 by Jackal326

[Chairborne 2594]

The argument I made in my last post applies to this as well. This person who is keeping the know-how to themselves: would they have been a free modder who was sharing the know-how if monetization was not a thing? What would make them suddenly change just because they have the option to monetize?

Again repeating my argument: The more reasonable assumption would be that the only people who are keeping their trade secrets in paid mods are ones who wouldn't have been giving them out for free already if monetization didn't exist. Therefore, nothing is actually lost here. They're just added to the people who were already doing what they're doing for free.

I'm afraid your assumption doesn't make sense to me.

I get contacted plenty of time by people who can't figure out on their own how to make something work properly.

Right now, i'm not better nor worse off by sharing what i know with them.

If i was to monetize my content, i simply would choose not to share what i know with others, because that might damage me eventually.

So yeah, monetization itself would be the reason why i would choose not to share what i know with others.

This is what every reasonable person would do.

[Macser 776]

If this ever happens, it's in your own interest to keep valuable know-how for yourself instead of sharing with the rest of the community. Is it not?

It might be.But it would have to be something very important to make it worth hiding.I think most of the information required to make a quality addon/mod is available these days.Less so when OFP was at it's height.

The fact that there was no monetisation then didn't stop modders from occasionally keeping discoveries to themselves.At least until release time.

Besides that,merely having information is not enough.You have to put it to practical use.Most people don't want to do that.

And yet they still expect the end product to be free.Why?

There's no good reason for members of this community to expect free content.Other than the fact they've gotten used to it.We can receive and appreciate it,but to expect it is something else entirely.

[PuFu 4600]

[too long to quote]

+1

[too long to quote]

+1

There are many Pro's and Con's

One thing people like to forget ... Pro: Incentive for non-arma modders to get into arma modding -> more chance of seeing great content. Con: it will cost you something

The biggest Con i'm afraid of is the attraction of scumbags who steal stuff from people and try to sell it (unaltered or just slightly altered), or people who flood the workshop with absolute junk, in the hopes to fool player into buying something that isn't what they where hoping fore. There are plenty of those around...

The depicted cons happens with any product. That could be solved though. Stealing happens today as well, i would assume more content ripped from A or B would flood in, but so far BI did a fair job keeping everything in some sort of order.

I don't get why you need to act like a frustrated housewife about it.

I'm just saying everyone is happy to jump aboard a project that is already good and going.

A newcomer to arma modding wouldn't be as lucky at finding people willing to help them, and i think you know how hard it is to mod a game like this without a community to help you.

If this ever happens, it's in your own interest to keep valuable know-how for yourself instead of sharing with the rest of the community. Is it not?

Listen lad, bring arguments to the table, not personal experiences. If you have some sort of inferiority frustration, please say so. You seem to get you pampers in a knot just because people haven't hold your precious pretty hand? get over it

I have yet to encounter, since 2005 someone who, asked politely to either help out, or explain something, would refuse me. Do you get that? It never happened!

Oh yes, of course, question along the lines - how can i mod a gun in, is not really a question worth answering. No one is willing to hold your hand. Ask point based questions that shows that you made an effort and you'll get an answer pretty quickly.

Everyone who has talked to me in private, or asked question here on these forums should know that if i can help, i do. I have never hold back know-how. Get it?

Of course, there is a difference between holding shit back, and making my life's mission to educate others by writing tutorials and documentation instead of BI.

---------- Post added at 21:39 ---------- Previous post was at 21:29 ----------

As I already said, how would anybody benefit from changing the way how things worked so far? BIS would be the only benefactor, together with some high profile mod authors, maybe.

What this game needs is

A: Better tools that make content creation as easy as possible <----------- This is most important

yeah, but it simply won't happen.

RHS

Armaholic: No mention of donations. Their website? Small mention. Forum thread? Nothing

So why are donations not working? Is that only the fault of the players? I doubt it.

What I would like to see. Both Steam workshop and Armaholic having very visible offers to donate to the mod author after downloading a mod. Make it a popup for gods sake. And since Steam and Arma can now even track how long and often some thing gets used make Arma remember the player after one week that he has used mod xy and that it would be really neat if he considered donating to the author. Include a donation option in the debriefing screen for user made missions, that way people can instantly and comfortably donate if they liked it.

No one said it is the fault of the players. It is a system that doesn't work on the long term.

Pop up? really? have you seen the drama with the DLC pop-up?

And I can promise you that donations will skyrocket if those things get implemented, without fucking with Armas sucess formula.

The addon maker doesn't control what is posted on 3rd party repositories, be it armaholic, pw6, etc, or at least that is the case with RHS.

Do you want to make a bet with me, even if we put the donate button right on top of the page, even if we put it on top of the upcoming new website, it won't matter all that much (10% tops)?

But i digress. The discussion here is not about donation, but about user made paid content. I haven't seen a single solid argument against it.

Again, i would allow the addon maker the choice of releasing it free, or paid. Why would you, just another user, have anything to say on the matter?

[vegeta897 13]

You wave the potential of Dollar/Pound/Euro/Yen in someone's face and you'll find scarce few people who wouldn't jump at the chance of getting some of that action. Granted, not everyone will charge for their mods.

However, given the opportunity, I fear many will.

I'm sorry but I don't see why I should be concerned about people who are going to jump ship from free modding just because monetization is now possible. That is a problem with them, not the monetization.

I get contacted plenty of time by people who can't figure out on their own how to make something work properly.

Right now, i'm not better nor worse off by sharing what i know with them.

If i was to monetize my content, i simply would choose not to share what i know with others, because that might damage me eventually.

If you're a person who currently makes mods and helps people out, why are you going to start charging for your stuff? Just because you can? If your only reason for helping people is that they aren't a financial competitor, I think that's pretty shallow, and I don't view it as a great loss for the community. There will still be people who make mods for free and willing to help others. Again, you seem to be blaming monetization yet you're the one who must make the choice to monetize in order for this to be a problem.

[I give up 152]

I don't care about monetization, paid user content, profit for server owners or mod maker job career.

I just don't want to be forced to go through steam workshop to play this game or be forced to download tons of useless crap that I will never use or buy, just to play this game.

Maybe then the user made content maybe starts to have the quality of a professional job, because at this point there are no mods deserving such classification. We just need to look at MANW to realize that.

[Defunkt 431]

I'm all for it but I really hope;

- BIS provides the same protection and opportunity for people who script, config and make missions as they do for those who model and skin.

- BIS provide mechanisms for delivering LITE versions of content mods so creators can opt to maximize their reach (and revenue) and don't have to split the playerbase. There should be scripting commands available to mission makers that allow them to know if the player is paid or unpaid and suitably limit the unpaid experience (i.e. can't pilot chopper etc.).

- BIS uses this extra revenue stream to improve the engine and content creation tools.

[ProfTournesol 956]

I don't care about monetization, paid user content, profit for server owners or mod maker job career.

I just don't want to be forced to go through steam workshop to play this game or be forced to download tons of useless crap that I will never use or buy, just to play this game.

Maybe then the user made content maybe starts to have the quality of a professional job, because at this point there are no mods deserving such classification. We just need to look at MANW to realize that.

Nobody forces you to use mods.

[PuFu 4600]

I don't care about monetization, paid user content, profit for server owners or mod maker job career.

I just don't want to be forced to go through steam workshop to play this game or be forced to download tons of useless crap that I will never use or buy, just to play this game.

Maybe then the user made content maybe starts to have the quality of a professional job, because at this point there are no mods deserving such classification. We just need to look at MANW to realize that.

Why would it change? You don't need to download anything just to play the game now, do you?

[I give up 152]

This makes me think.

;2921818']

we will be eventually looking at how to extend the existing DLC strategy to monetized user content using the Steam Workshop

http://dev.arma3.com/post/oprep-content-licensing

Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/arma/comments/32p1cz/oprep_content_licensing/

[x3kj 1247]

The depicted cons happens with any product. That could be solved though. Stealing happens today as well, i would assume more content ripped from A or B would flood in, but so far BI did a fair job keeping everything in some sort of order.

Yes i know, you can't have just the Pro's of course. With the monetisation i fell like it would create many more cases then we had so far. It will be also more difficult to discover, because if things cost money they need to be protected (kindoff), therefore you need to pay money in order to confirm that somebody stole something. I dont think BI will spend manpower to constantly investigate cases of this (real claims and false accusations as well). They could certainly take down stuff, if proven and steam workshop allows that (i certainly hope so...).

Unless you do something very unique (basically fictional models of your own) this will be hard to stop... It will be hard to tell a (lack of) difference between 2 M4 just from ingame pics for an amateur - and those are the ones who would be the most likely to discover those cases.

I'm not saying the monetisation thing should be abandoned just because of criminals, its just something to keep in mind...

If it happens i would have an easier time pulling of my project, so i'm certainly looking forward to how it will be done etc.

[Chairborne 2594]

Listen lad, bring arguments to the table, not personal experiences. If you have some sort of inferiority frustration, please say so. You seem to get you pampers in a knot just because people haven't hold your precious pretty hand? get over it

I have yet to encounter, since 2005 someone who, asked politely to either help out, or explain something, would refuse me. Do you get that? It never happened!

Oh yes, of course, question along the lines - how can i mod a gun in, is not really a question worth answering. No one is willing to hold your hand. Ask point based questions that shows that you made an effort and you'll get an answer pretty quickly.

Everyone who has talked to me in private, or asked question here on these forums should know that if i can help, i do. I have never hold back know-how. Get it?

Of course, there is a difference between holding shit back, and making my life's mission to educate others by writing tutorials and documentation instead of BI.

The only one who seems mad about something is you m8, i'm perfectly fine where i am. ;)

You're the one who comes up with things like "i don't want to waste time with people like you". Maybe it's you the one who has a bit too much self-entitlement.

Leaving child level arguing aside, if it's not know how it's content, there's lots of modders willing to share their own content with other modders, be it scripting or 3d models or whatever, if monetization was possible many of them maybe would refuse.

As you can see from this thread some just don't like the idea of selling what they do, others might as well just go on their own way and keep what they do for themselves to sell.

Would RHS, CUP, or any other big project be the same if third party modders were to refuse to share their material with them?

I get that nobody in their right mind would refuse to earn money out of something as demanding and time consuming but i think this would cut the community into pieces and create lame business dynamics that don't belong to something like arma modding.

The very reason why arma is loved by so many is because of the tons of free content available.

It's pretty much what makes it different from any other game that charges you every two steps like free to plays or any battlefield-like game where payable DLCs rain on you every other week.

Neither you or me know the future so your prediction is as good as mine.

Have a nice day! :)

[x3kj 1247]

be it scripting or 3d models or whatever, if monetization was possible many of them maybe would refuse.

then please tell me, why any of us modellers are still around? We could have made money selling our models since a decade already (turbosquid and similar). Yet most of us didn't.

It's pretty much what makes it different from any other game that charges you every two steps like free to plays or any battlefield-like game where payable DLCs rain on you every other week.

The comparison is limp, because those games are not moddable and free content isn't possible. With monetized user content you'd have both, payed and free content.

but i think this would cut the community into pieces and create lame business dynamics that don't belong to something like arma modding.

Yet people running a server get away with making money of of providing a server that only is attractive because of mod content somebody created and didnt get a penny for?

Edited April 16, 2015 by Fennek

[nodunit 397]

When it comes to paid content, its not the majority of modders that you need to worry about, its people with the mindset of those behind that particular mod that blew up.

Biggest issue I can see is a form of policing, content by other authors (it's a good idea to get some WIP threads going to make some proof) and of course the...shall we say, unpleasant fellows that like to take things from free websites and sell them.

[Chairborne 2594]

then please tell me, why any of us modellers are still around? We could have made money selling our models since a decade already (turbosquid and similar). Yet most of us didn't.

Fair point.

Then why is it so important to monetize them now?

If it hasn't made a difference in 15 years why would it make a difference now?

The comparison is limp, because those games are not moddable and free content isn't possible. With monetized user content you'd have both, payed and free content.

And with free to play you can still get in the game without spending a dime, while Arma costs 40 dollars or so (i'm not up to date sorry).

This is what i'm saying, much of Arma's recognizement is because the extra content is free, on top of the game itself.

If you start charging people for that extra content then you lose something that puts Arma one step above other games.

Yet people running a server get away with making money of of providing a server that only is attractive because of mod content somebody created and didnt get a penny for?

And how does monetizing your content solve this exactly?

Besides running a server has direct costs you can keep into account (and i genuinely wonder how many actually manage to cover their expenses with monetization, by how you describe it server managers are like some sort of Scrooge Mcduck swimming in gold coins :D ), on the other hand based on what criterias do you decide the price of your mod?

Following your line of reasoning, there's probably people who helped you develop it too with source content or knowledge, are they going to get a sum of that too?

[vegeta897 13]

If you start charging people for that extra content then you lose something that puts Arma one step above other games.

No, if you start charging for all content then you lose that.

Your logic is starting to sound like the people that complain about Altis Life "ruining" arma, because there are so many of those servers. When in fact, there are just as many serious milsim servers as before, but it only seems like Altis Life has taken over because there are so many of them that it makes up a high percentage. Their existence alongside the milsim servers doesn't negate them. It's just added alongside. Why wouldn't paid mods work the same way?

[x3kj 1247]

Fair point. Then why is it so important to monetize them now? If it hasn't made a difference in 15 years why would it make a difference now?

Because it encourages/ boost the creation of high quality content. It creates an extra incentive for modders to do better / endure sometimes painfull problem solving instead of throwing the towel and vanishing.

And with free to play you can still get in the game without spending a dime, while Arma costs 40 dollars or so (i'm not up to date sorry).

No, free to play games are free to play games. That means they have ridiculous grind in order to get people to pay money. Even if you payed money you'd have to pay alot more then a full price titel to get the whole package at once.

If you start charging people for that extra content then you lose something that puts Arma one step above other games.

Arma is a step above other games because it is moddable and an open sandbox. That there is extra free stuff is not the extra step, it's the result of beeing moddable and beeing a good game in the first place. If it was bad, extremely few people would mod it. Also just because it's possible to monetize does not mean everything will cost money. Particulary not small stuff that simply wouldnt be worth it.

Besides running a server has direct costs you can keep into account (and i genuinely wonder how many actually manage to cover their expenses with monetization, by how you describe it server managers are like some sort of Scrooge Mcduck swimming in gold coins :D ), on the other hand based on what criterias do you decide the price of your mod?

Modelling also has a cost you know? Good tools and plugins cost money, and sometimes as much as running a server for several years.

on the other hand based on what criterias do you decide the price of your mod

On fairness and reasonability. If people dont buy it its very likely not worth it. The cheaper it is the more people are willing to buy it. It would regulate itself.

How much time have you invested into modding arma yet? Just to gain a perspective...

[Chairborne 2594]

How much time have you invested into modding arma yet? Just to gain a perspective...

Steam says 2400something, that is without keeping into account the time spent looking for source content or in object builder/notepad/whatever.