Unintuitive addon release trends

[LeftSkidLow 1]

I want to first say that I greatly appreciate the many hours that addon makers give to make this game great. I have noticed more and more addon developers are using wiki pages to better organize their teams' manpower, address bugs, track progress, and many other good things I probably can't grasp.

This is all good..... HOWEVER, I do not think it is a great idea to direct the masses to the wiki sites to download mods. In my experience they are not intuitive and can be extremely frustrating to find the download link. I just spent 15 minutes trying to find the correct download link for a depbo tool on a dev-heaven wiki site. I know I'm not as savvy as the addon developers but I also know there are a lot of players that know less than myself and will become discouraged and give up trying to find addons. I don't mean to speak badly about your work, but most of the content on a Wiki is simply too much information and confuses the average ArmA player. I tried to get my brother to install ACE last week and he gave up trying to navigate the wiki site for correct links. He wouldn't have installed it if I didn't give him the DIRECT links for sixupdater and install videos. Even getting to that point from the ACE thread is whole other story.

Haters do your flaming, but is there anyone else out there that has experienced this?

[Rayers12 19]

Agree, Six-Update for ACE was horrible. Whenever I needed help people told me to go to the wiki. The wiki was unhelpful at best.

[LeftSkidLow 1]

Well Sixupdater is a whole different topic I think, but once you get it working it isn't too bad. What is bad is when you need an updated sixupdater all the sudden but there was no notifications of that unless you follow the wiki pages or forum threads.

[echo1 0]

The first ACE2 release was pretty mind-boggling, and that's by the standards of someone quite computer literate. I understand the various merits behind it, and I've read it's been improved since, but I think it should be taken as a lesson that mod makers shouldn't make lives easier for themselves at the expense of everyone who's going to use their stuff.

[LeftSkidLow 1]

Well I'm not sure what the answer is, I know if you google "ace2 arma" you get directed to either: long confusing forum threads, youtube videos, or news from armaholic.

Now I know I shouldn't dare compare the two, but try googling "project reality mod"

The first result is a site dedicated to that mod, and you can easily find the download page with direct links and simple instructions of what to do. What is a player new to ArmA to do with such mods that use a wiki? Especially with the steam release, I would not doubt hundreds of potential players have no clue what to do or where to go.

[Schancky 10]

Agree, Six-Update for ACE was horrible. Whenever I needed help people told me to go to the wiki. The wiki was unhelpful at best.

I agree!

[Takko 10]

Agree, do unfortunately not even have ACE 2 running due this.

Still as optional choise it'd have been great.

[PuFu 4591]

I understand the various merits behind it, and I've read it's been improved since, but I think it should be taken as a lesson that mod makers shouldn't make lives easier for themselves at the expense of everyone who's going to use their stuff.

Easy for you to say that

Mod makers are doing it for free, and it has been said several times before:

1. they do it for themselves before anything else

2. the rest of the community is welcome to use it

Now I know I shouldn't dare compare the two, but try googling "project reality mod"

No, you shouldn't and that is because PR is not:

1. a beta or RC for a long time

2. does not have 3 updates per week

It has been said in a number of threads that when ACE2 reaches version 1.0 stable, there will be a normal 7zip archive file to download as an alternative..

Not really sure what is the purpose of this though...

[vilas 474]

LeftSkidLow thats why we have this forum and notify people

addons are mostly updated when:

- bugs found by people are fixed

- new stuff comes out

it is hard to say how to organize it best way, really hard

so it is best to simply follow news on forums and website

there is no better way, cause a lot of people make different things and it is very easy to lost yourself in news if you were not present here for 5-10 days

[LeftSkidLow 1]

Ok, so you create addons for yourselves, I believe that, but I do not believe addon creaters don't care about how many players use their mod. I know when I've made stuff I always checked how many people have downloaded it and what people were saying about the mod. The more players that play your mod is better for yourself, better for BIS, better for your mod, better for the community, and better for the future of ArmA. You mention these forums as an avenue for keeping tracking of progress, my argument is that there is a very large player base out there that does not read these forums or even know they exist. A new player can't simply google ACE2 if they heard about it ingame and figure out how to install it, it's the same with a lot of other addon tools out there. If it were easier to figure out how to get the tools you'd have more people experimenting with addon making. There has been a huge influx of steam players with Arma2, they don't know anything beyond the Steam forums and just to use ACE as an example, I think if there was a dedicated easy to find site for ACE2, it would surely be in the best interest of your mod.

My point is, I don't think its a good idea to substitute wiki sites and forum pages for traditional mod sites or fan site updates.

Edited March 7, 2010 by LeftSkidLow

[katipo66 94]

Easy for you to say that

Mod makers are doing it for free, and it has been said several times before:

1. they do it for themselves before anything else

2. the rest of the community is welcome to use it

Thats fine and i mostly choose not to use it, only because i need to wait for the next milestone release as a simple download. its just a pain when other mods and missions are Dependant on it.

And i think we all know that all mod makers are doing it for free, and i hope the majority if not all of us appreciate that, but it was released to the community so its obvious that some (alot?) were going to struggle with it as it can be complex to install and use.

Edited March 7, 2010 by Katipo66

[VKing 12]

I thought this thread was about mod wikis?

So when did it become yet another bashfest about the six updater?

Oh, that's right, the second frigging post

Can we please leave it out of this, there's already the ace2 thread and several others about that already.

Anyway, on the subject at hand, there's nothing inherently bad about a wiki structure for readme information. Obviously quality depends on the people who write it, but that's true for any sort of readme or webpage.

As for them being difficult to navigate, they're basically just html pages, no more difficult than any other sort of page.

Just to bring up your ACE example, because everyone seems delighted to use ACE as an example (and because that's what I know :p):

1. Google search for "ACE2 Wiki" (Searching for ACE2 won't give you much, true, but until Google Psychic Search comes out of alpha, ACE is a pretty generic term and must be treated as such)
   
2. First hit
   
3. One and only link on that page
   
4. In big bold letters in the first paragraph on the ACE2 wiki
   

And on that page; five steps explaining how to install, with direct links to the updater and walkthrough vid.

I'm sorry, but how is this excruciatingly difficult?

And even if you couldn't read a wiki to save your life, there's a search function! It's like google, but it works on a specific wiki, who'd have thought?!

[Sniperwolf572 758]

For a thread with such a wide scope, you've prettymuch aimed it dead on at Six-Updater and ACE2. If you really must discuss it, ACE2 thread is already there.