Why do you think the Developers do not incorporate mods?

[antoineflemming 14]

Uh, DM, you definitely missed the point of Morrow's post, which suggested quite the opposite of what you've said. @Morrow, the MX is supposed to be similar to the ACR (too similar to the SCAR to me anyway). I'd like to see something like the MR-C from Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, but there's a Community Wishes thread and an Addon Requests Thread for that, so I digress. Thing about incorporating addons is, among other things, dependencies on other addons and addons not meeting the quality of vanilla stuff. Other than that, not sure why they don't other than that in some ways it undermines the modding community and modding in general to essentially use mods to get in features and content that developers are paid to do. I mean, modders have been hired by BIS, but it undermines unpaid modders to adopt mods into the game when modders aren't the ones getting paid to make content for the game. That's also another reason why addons/mods shouldn't be the de facto answer anytime someone requests a new unit or new feature (proper response is to point them to the Community Wishes thread)

[roshnak 41]

I didn't assume it meant a direct download. That's why I said "or direct you to another server."

[nicolasroger 11]

The logistic isn't that difficult:

-Allow automatic mod downloading: Yes/ No (If file are too big, No might be a good answer)

-If No: Display a message to the user (with a link to were you can download it!)

-If yes: Display a message to the payer saying telling him the file size and if he wants to download.

-server owner select the server wich will be use to download the file (could be the game server, but it would probably be a bad idea)

-"shadow restart" the game (like display a loading screen while the game kind of restart) and autojoin the server when it is done.

addons will be saved in an addon folder.

The old quake 3 engine as been doing this, the source engine too, etc. The logistic isn't that bad. The dev only need to figure a way to do a "shadow restart" properly.

As galzohar said, player count would double for some mod. Also, the game would simply be more amazing because the server owner would finaly be able to use awesome weapons/tank/plane/etc addons without the fear of seeing their server totaly ignored by the vast majority of the players.

[PuFu 4600]

IMO the whole reason for trying to get arma 3 on steam workshop is so that BIS doesn't have to add favourite mods into the vanilla game but it is so easy to get and use them that to the user it pretty much feels like it is part of the vanilla game. Combined with "make arma not war", I think that BIS is pretty much going to allow addons to be apart of the game.

For example Tactical battlefield seems to be picking up steam as a mod. Imagine how big it will be when it is up on steam workshop. Much like Dayz or ACE, people will forget that there was ever a vanilla. Mods will define the game even for the average/casual user. Thus there won't be much need for BIS to make mods apart of the base game.

Steamworkshop will never pick up, mainly due to its eula.

The logistic isn't that difficult:

-Allow automatic mod downloading: Yes/ No (If file are too big, No might be a good answer)

-If No: Display a message to the user (with a link to were you can download it!)

-If yes: Display a message to the payer saying telling him the file size and if he wants to download.

-server owner select the server wich will be use to download the file (could be the game server, but it would probably be a bad idea)

-"shadow restart" the game (like display a loading screen while the game kind of restart) and autojoin the server when it is done.

addons will be saved in an addon folder.

The old quake 3 engine as been doing this, the source engine too, etc. The logistic isn't that bad. The dev only need to figure a way to do a "shadow restart" properly.

As galzohar said, player count would double for some mod. Also, the game would simply be more amazing because the server owner would finaly be able to use awesome weapons/tank/plane/etc addons without the fear of seeing their server totaly ignored by the vast majority of the players.

The issues with ftp or direct dowloads from the game server: there would be a lack of bandwidth as i see it from todays providers such as armaholics and the likes, since those lads keep the servers running using on site adverts ( one of the reasons there is no deep direct linking). Smaller files would find a place, but not all of those bigger ones.

[galzohar 31]

How about we start with an automatic system where the server would give you a list of links read from the configs of the mod? That would allow the community to make these things work. Isn't nearly as good as automatic, but much better than what we have now, where you might not even see the correct error message, nor would any new player actually understand what it's trying to tell him.

[PuFu 4600]

The only downside is that the config needs to be written prior to the mod being released in order to incorporate the hosting url, when we all know that today things are the other way around.

[galzohar 31]

An even more simple idea that was already suggested is to allow a server to have an "info page URL" that will link to the website page associated with the server containing instructions on what is actually needed.

Basically, there is a wide range of ideas going from "just let the server tell the player what he needs to do" all the way to "give the player everything he needs automatically", and anything on that scale, even at the very bottom, would go a long way to help multiplayer work compared to what we have today where a player tries to join and warps right back to the server browser.

[defk0n_NL 2]

The server would just send the XML/JSON to the client, And let them download it.

Filehosters today are in excess, popular mods would probably host them on a CDN or something.

But the choice should not be that hard. They have squad.xml. why not mod.xml or mod.json

[
{
 "modName":"Foo",
 "version":0.1,
 "author":"Bar", 
 "download":"http://filehoster.com/deeplink/mod.pbo"
},
{
 "modName":"Foo2",
 "version":0.1,
 "author":"Bar", 
 "download":"http://filehoster.com/deeplink/mod.pbo"
},
{
 "modName":"Foo3",
 "version":0.1,
 "author":"Bar", 
 "download":"http://filehoster.com/deeplink/mod.pbo"
}
]

---------- Post added at 16:10 ---------- Previous post was at 16:05 ----------

Heck BIS might actually leave money on the table here. I think alot of people would consider subscribing to a premium mod download service.

This is all in the name of convenience.

[roshnak 41]

Heck BIS might actually leave money on the table here. I think alot of people would consider subscribing to a premium mod download service.

I'm almost certain they wouldn't.

How do you deal with servers having different versions of an addon? How do you deal with the game needing to be restarted to load addons?

The simplest solution is to allow addonmakers to add a name and version number to be read in the config, then when players connect to a server with addons they don't have, it boots them with a message "Missing addon X version X, addon Y version Z, ..."

That way people can just get the addons they are missing themselves.