Controlling the quality of mods

A very important subject, which hasn't been touched on greatly yet, I believe.

Aris/Stefano, Marco; is there a plan to keep the modscene focused? If you just let it go with the flow, we will have 10 versions of Spa, some of which will be quite bad.

Have Kunos Simulazioni thought about the way to handle the modscene? Or will you guys just let the modders be?

I just hope it won't turn into rFactor. It was so messy, I decided quit playing that game.
 
Requiem84
And how do you imagine quality control? Should it be Kunos to check mods quality? What criteria should be met to say that mod/track is qualified? And if it's not qualified then what? You're gonna forbid the modder from sharing his mod? How?

I think there is no way to control that. It's on simracers side to not use crappy mods. It's that simple.

In rFactor nobody was forcing anybody to use low quality mods/tracks.
 
Requiem84
And how do you imagine quality control? Should it be Kunos to check mods quality? What criteria should be met to say that mod/track is qualified? And if it's not qualified then what? You're gonna forbid the modder from sharing his mod? How?

I think there is no way to control that. It's on simracer side to not use crappy mods. It's that simple.

In rFactor nobody was forcing anybody to use low quality mods/tracks.

Agreed. It'll be down to self regulation. There's no possible way we could expect Kunos to have anything to do with any such system. We'll just have to be selective and exercise judgement over what we download and what we leave. It should hopefully be pretty obvious as to what's worth it and what's not with the level of visuals we're going to be at with Assetto Corsa.
 
Actually you can give a value to each mod you will download in the future via our resource manager here.

This means that you can vote mods up and down based on their quality and that should give you a rough indication of what is good and what isn't.

Personally I do understand the concerns of Requiem84 as I also didn't like the system of rFactor 1 where 90% of the mods wasn't even worth downloading. However the 10% that was (very) good filtered themselves out over time and get more attention from the community.
 
Actually you can give a value to each mod you will download in the future via our resource manager here.

This means that you can vote mods up and down based on their quality and that should give you a rough indication of what is good and what isn't.

There you go, took the words right out my mouth, which would have been along the lines of:

'The only way it would work is if the main community websites were used as central hubs, and mods uploaded could be given eBay-like good/bad feedback by the community. They wouldn't be stopping anyone from producing their own mods, but it would give very clear advice as to what's worth the effort and what's not'

So cheers for that, Bram :thumbsup:
 
Requiem84
And how do you imagine quality control? Should it be Kunos to check mods quality? What criteria should be met to say that mod/track is qualified? And if it's not qualified then what? You're gonna forbid the modder from sharing his mod? How?

I think there is no way to control that. It's on simracers side to not use crappy mods. It's that simple.

In rFactor nobody was forcing anybody to use low quality mods/tracks.

No, I think you misunderstood me. I am not suggesting KS should rate/forbid mods. I actually think that is illegal, as they would endorse some mids, giving commercial conflicts.

What I mean is that we need a good and clear structure for the mods. KS can help us on our way in that regard. A central point in community is fine too, as long as we can keep it to some central points and not many.

What I do hope though, is that trackmismatches etc are prevented on forehand before connecting. That drove me insane with rF1.
 
What I do hope though, is that trackmismatches etc are prevented on forehand before connecting. That drove me insane with rF1.

+1 horrible horrible horrible.

I think there are no more developers that release games in 2012/13 with this big flaw in their game design. If they do they will mess up the whole online experience for their customers and haven't learned much from games and community feedback from the past.

As KS has proven to be one of the studios that obviously does carefully listen to it's community I don't think such mismatches will happen in their upcoming title.
 
I believe something like the Steam Workshop would work nice for AC, take a look there. In the Steam games that use the Workshop, you can access it from inside the game, to download a mod you have to subscribe to it, once you are subscribed (just a click), the mod is downloaded and installed automatically, also, every time the mod is updated you get the update too, to delete mods you just have to unsubscribe, each mod has it's own page with pics videos and info, and most important, people can leave comments and rate up/down the mod. In some games, like Gmod, you can only download mods through the Workshop, because that makes the modding community more centralized.
 
I think this is all a bit over-considered.

I will admit that rFactor was crap in this regard because you had no idea what was good or bad. Having a poor rating system for mods, and not knowing the expectations that those rating cars had led to that issue.

Ie, some people are happy that a car looks correct and that is ok, others consider sounds important too, then physics, etc etc...


So why not just have a trusted reliable team that rate cars on key aspects. They can then provide a specific rating to that content.
Ie, 10/9/10 for gfx/sound/physics.
Authors can then work to improve things if they don't get high enough ratings to end up on a top-list which can just appear on a sticky on this forum perhaps.


Self-moderation is important I think. Relying on AC team to moderate us would be a waste of their time in making sure content was any good.

It sounds harsh, but if you want to quell bad or questionable content, or just content that doesn't do AC full justice, then you need to rate it appropriately.


Indeed, you can just choose to only rate content on your seal of approval thread that you deem good enough for a seal of approval.
You don't have to go saying someone's mod is crap, provide them with reasons why it didn't get the seal of approval, how they can get it to a standard where it would.

Ie, be positive and constructive even if content isn't good enough, so it's never seen as disheartening or putting people down.


As for content mis-matches, well I guess that is just something that AC needs to consider when programming. It shouldn't be hard for the server/client code to do a checksum on folder contents or something to check specific contents are the same or not... hmmmm...
Ie, check models, check models and textures, check everything, check nothing, for different levels of strictness.

Hmmm, probably similar code to just checking that people are not cheating (ie, editing track grip values on their local track files or something)

Dave
 
The problem with this logic (1st post _ separating mods into tiers)
is that it encourages Elitistic behavior.

Noone starts with the idea of making a shitty mod in the first place.
Most mods that you possibly wouldn't like to play, comes from people who have little experience with the subject.

In fact you should make sure to play such mods and give useful feedback to those people.
The very same that might keep modding alive in the future.
 

Latest News

Shifting method

  • I use whatever the car has in real life*

  • I always use paddleshift

  • I always use sequential

  • I always use H-shifter

  • Something else, please explain


Results are only viewable after voting.
Back
Top