roshnak

I don't think you are really missing the point. I think that is what DarkWanderer was saying, too. The question I have for you is this: Do you think it is a good idea for a video game to cause people physical harm, or even physical discomfort, in the name of realism? Or do you think that it's okay to compromise and make things sound loud, but not uncomfortably loud? I also don't really see how this is offtopic. Seems pretty clearly like audio tweaking discussion to me.

There have been plenty of successful paid modding systems implemented in other games. A few flight sims do it in what I would consider to be a very bad way, but which seems to be pretty successful. Valve has done it in a number of their own games in very clever ways that make it much more appealing. Personally, I can't think of a good way to do it in either Skyrim or Arma.

I would guess that whatever HRTF model Razer Surround uses was created with a head model/ear shape that is not compatible with yours.

How does atropine work in ACE? Because a single injection dropped my heart rate to 35.

But it hasn't been completely rewritten or there wouldn't still be Quake code in HL2. But either way, the point was that implying that it would be too hard to make huge changes to RV because it's too old, unlike Source, doesn't make sense if Source is based on an even older engine that underwent huge changes. And wouldn't the fact that RV probably hasn't been rewritten on the scale that most engines are be more reason that it needs a huge change, not less? Edit: I mean, I guess you could argue that they just need to start from scratch, but that doesn't seem like a great alternative and it's not going to happen, anyway.

Yeah, you're probably right. Using the mouse to control where you're aiming in a first person shooter is totally unintuitive. I know that everyone I've ever played with has started shooting and immediately shouted, "Whoa! Where's my aim going!? I don't know what to do! This is so confusing!" How much zoom are we talking, here? Just the regular "hold mouse 2" zoom, or are you slapping a magnified optic on your SMGs?

Seems plenty controllable to me. I have to move my mouse just under 12 inches to rotate 360 degrees.

Is there some reason that you can't do that? Your avatar in game is not a trained soldier, your avatar is you, and whenever possible your abilities in the game should be tied to your skill, not your avatar's skill. Edit: It seems like if you think players should have to manually compensate for recoil, then you would think that guns in-game should have an amount of recoil roughly in line with how difficult they should be to control. Your first post made it seem like you agreed with this, but then you say that SMGs shouldn't be that way because the character you're playing in game should be compensating for recoil instead of you?

Hasn't there been a bunch of refactoring going on with Arma 3? Besides, this whole premise isn't even true. Source has probably been almost completely rewritten, but it is based on an engine older than Arma's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_%28game_engine%29#History

There are probably a lot of ways in which monetizing user generated content can be successful (I still think the game can't cost $60), but at the end of the day, I think that if nothing else changes except that a bunch of mods suddenly cost money, that's not going to be very appealing to customers.

The suppressor is used to intentionally try to remove the sound of the gunshot from the recording. Since the sound of the bullet crack is what is important, they don't want other stuff interfering with that. The loudness of the gunshot in relation to the bullet crack should be dependent on the distance from the gun and the closeness of the bullet passby. In order for a video including both sounds to be useful, you would have to know the distance that the microphone was from the gun and the distance that the bullet passed by the microphone, at least. Although, as I understand it, you should not have trouble hearing both sounds under most circumstances. Also, I don't think a suppressor should have any significant effect on the sound of the bullet crack.

If someone is volutarily leaving the community as suggested in the post you quoted, are they being shunned? In GossamerSolid's scenario, wouldn't it be modders who were threatening to leave? Also, you should stop accusing people of trying to block modders attempts to get paid. That's not what's happening. People are just voicing their opinions, and GossamerSolid has as much right to say that modders don't deserve to be paid as anyone else has to say that modders do deserve to get paid. And if it's not okay for people who are against paid mods to say things that might make people who are for paid mods feel guilty, then how can we have a discussion? That's the same thing as saying that people don't have the right to make others feel guilty for not wanting to pay for mods, which basically everyone on the pro-paid mods side has done repeatedly in this thread.

This is a pretty misinformed opinion, dude. The skills involved in many kinds of modding are the same skills used in the industry, and they have nothing to do with playing video games.

You're mistaken. First of all, they don't take 55% of your sales, they give you 55% of what they sell of your product. You are the licensor. They are the licensee. You are granting them the license to sell your product, and they are paying you a royalty of 55%. Second of all, if someone buys a Photoshop plugin from CreativeCrash, 0% of that money goes to Adobe as the creator of Photoshop. And in no case is a creator obligated to sell their product through either CreativeCrash or Adobe Exchange. They can sell their product from their own website and not owe anyone else any money at all. Furthermore, if you are going to draw parallels to paid content through Steam Workshop, CreativeCrash and Adobe Exchange would be Valve in that scenario -- the distributor or seller of the product. Not Bohemia or ZeniMax or Bethesda.

I believe that Adobe's store would be more analogous to Steam in this case: taking a cut for distribution. I can't find anywhere in Adobe's terms of service that says that extension/plugin developers are obligated to give Adobe a percentage of their profits if they don't use Adobe Exchange. Also, professional modders absolutely do exist and have existed for years in the flight sim community (and apparently in the train sim community, and maybe others). As far as I am aware, they don't pay a cut to the developers or publishers of the games that they mod for. http://www.aerosoft.com/cgi-local/us/iboshop.cgi?show270 http://www.pmdgsimulations.com/pages/product/fsx.html https://www.simshack.net/ A few examples.

This does not answer my question. Let me rephrase my question: We are talking about whether or not a game publisher or developer deserves to take a percentage of the sales for a product made for their game. Every time someone says, "That's not how it works for [cars/phones/some physical good]," you respond with something about how they aren't comparable because of materials costs and transportation. Your assertion, then, is that because modders don't have to pay for materials, they should have to give a cut of their sales to the game dev/publisher, but since a company has to buy the plastic to make an iPhone case, they shouldn't have to pay Apple. WHY? What is it about needing to pay for materials that makes a company not have the right to demand a portion of the sales for products designed solely to enhance or modify their products? Or, rather, what is it about lacking the requirement to purchase materials that obligates you to pay a percentage of your profit to the company who made the product that you're creating aftermarket parts/content for. This double standard doesn't make any sense. No. The scripts and extensions for Max and Photoshop are not all free. There are tons of scripts and extensions for 3DS Max and Photoshop that cost money. I also don't think you know what Quixel is. Quixel is not a product. The Quixel Suite is a collection of products, one of which is NDO, which does require Photoshop to work. I don't know where you got the idea that any of these people are paying a percentage of their sales to the companies who sell the product that they created plugins for, but I have never seen any evidence that this is the case. It's simply not how things work. There's no conceivable reason that things should work that way. "Gee, thanks for making this addon for my product that makes it better and potentially brings me more customers and money. Now pay me a percentage of your sales."

Again, what difference does the cost of parts and materials make? Or transportation? Who cares? There is a cost to produce mod content as well. You have to (in theory) purchase programs like 3DS Max and Photoshop, tools and extensions for those programs, potentially training materials, etc. I don't understand how the costs associated with creating a product have any bearing on whether or not the creator of that product should owe money to another company whose product his or hers interfaces with. In fact, the cost of materials thing brings up another example: Programs like 3DS Max and Photoshop have tons of extensions and scripts created by third parties and available for purchase. These are about as directly analogous to mods as you can get. The programs in question created the market for said extensions and the extensions directly add to the functionality or content for those programs. Quixel doesn't have to give a portion of all its sales to Adobe because nDo requires Photoshop to function. People writing scripts and tools for Max don't have to give Autodesk a portion of their sales. What's insane is thinking that entitles developers or publishers to a cut of modders profits. It doesn't. Creating a market or a need or desire for a product or type of product doesn't give you the right to a share of the profit of everyone who caters to the market you created.

I truly hope this line of thinking never spreads outside the tech world, because it is insane.

It's really not. Do you think that payware content for flight simulators is a valid comparison? Because I can't find anything that suggests that Microsoft, Xicat Interactive (X-Plane's publisher), or Laminar Research (X-Plane's developer) take a cut of addon sales. And I personally consider flightsim payware to be the worst case scenario for paid third party content. Edit: I should say that this has nothing to do with distribution. Just the "value added" argument. Obviously it makes sense for a distributor to take a percentage of sales, but, even then, 75% is absurd.

I don't see how digital content is that tricky. I also don't see why you would look at it in terms of value. Frankly, your value distribution argument would only make sense if mods were included in the price of the game, which they wouldn't be under a monetized system. They're aftermarket products. Have you taken a look at Sniperwolf's example? Here: Can you think of any other industry in which this would be an acceptable business model? Edit: This is a pretty good example of why I think it's naive to suggest that the "market will balance itself out." People accept all kinds of dumb stuff in the video game industry that they don't seem to accept anywhere else.

If I had to guess, I would say that the logic is this: Money makes things vastly more complicated. People would rather that things stay uncomplicated. These are indeed important issues. Especially given that the Valve and the Steam Workshop's stance is apparently, "If something is broken, please ask nicely and maybe someone will fix but also maybe not." Have there been more than two or three people who have said anything even close to this, though?

Ask them this, please.

I never said that I have no knowledge of content creation. I have enough knowledge and experience to know how much work is involved. However, the amount of work involved has no bearing on the effectivenes of splitting up a package and selling it in smaller parts as a sales strategy. I didn't mention it. Tonci87 expressed concern that it might happen and you said that it didn't make any sense. I merely pointed out that it not only makes sense, it actually happens. Again, you're being way too defensive. Maybe stop assuming that everyone is attacking you or the idea of monetizing user generated content.

This has nothing to do with stock markets. This is a basic selling technique that is used all over the place. See ruebe's post for more info. What does the amount of work that goes into creating a mod pack have to do with this discussion, and why would my knowledge of that work have any impact on my discussion of relatively well-known pricing strategies? I didn't state that this selling tactic was a good or bad thing, and I certainly didn't imply that anyone doing it was in any way evil or comparable to Hitler. It's just the way the modern marketplace works. You're being overly defensive. Edit: Just be be clear: I am not saying that all or even any modders would do this stuff. I am merely saying that not only does it make sense, it is not uncommon.

Of course it makes sense. Companies do it all the time. For example, instead of selling a big mod pack for $10, you sell Side A Pack for $6 and Side B Pack for $6, increasing its total price from $10 to $12. Or you sell a uniform pack, a weapon pack, a light vehicle pack, an armor pack, a fixed wing pack, and a helicopter pack each for $2.50, increasing its total price from $10 to $15.