Spring Clean Workshop.

[kosh22]

I propose that if it were possible CO should stop downloads to Workshop for a few weeks and spring clean it.

They need to remove

• all duplicate asset names
• all identical (pirated) assets.
• all mods which do exactly the same thing.
• Any asset which throws up errors.
• All low LOD assets.
• Any assets which deliberately are placed in wrong menus.

Opinions?

 

[wundte]

Absolutely +1

 

[FXben]

+1, I totally agree.

I look through the workshop a fair bit and there are things you can do to make searching a little bit easier but it most definitely needs some love. I have quite a lot of mods and assets but I'm sure I'm missing some really good ones.

 

[kosh22]

Staring at my screen which yet again CSL has crashed due to some conflict or mod issue I cannot track down I certainly feel that way.

The workshop is glossy and exciting. I want it all. Trouble is CSL does not want it all.

 

[JerkyJerry]

Chances of this happening?

 

[JimmiG]

I don't think it's a good idea to let CO delete stuff based on some arbitrary quality requirements, but stuff that clearly breaks the game should of course be removed.

Personally I've started to only follow a select few asset creators who produce quality stuff. Previously I had over 800 assets, and while the variety was great, cities looked chaotic and incoherent because of the wildly different styles mashed together, and the frame rate and loading times were taking a hit.

 

[RyanX]

Currently, there are only two institutions with the power to regulate the steam workshop, them being Valve and Paradox (or Colossal Order).

Valve has stated numerous times that they cannot and will not conduct any policing of the Steam Workshop, as it would cost too many resources for very little benefit, and in the end they love to hide behind the "laissez faire" approach, where the community is supposed to differ good mods from bad by rating, subscribing, commenting, whatever.

Paradox (or Colossal Order, depending under whom Cities Skylines is published) who in theory should have the biggest interest in actually cleaning the Workshop up, considering their heavy focus on game moddability and the subsequent advertising of this fact. That being said, it's unlikely that Paradox Interactive (the publisher) has the resources or knowledge to distinguish between good and bad mods, and expecting Colossal Order to do such a menial task would be a strain of their resources, and in the end it would only result in less content for us, whether in terms of patches, DLC, etc.

For those reasons, any expectations of the developers/publisher to actively moderate the workshop are folly and unlikely to happen in the near future, if ever.

However.

To my knowledge (and correct me if I am wrong), it is possible to give 3rd party persons the authority (as in administrative authority) to flag (if not outright remove) Steam Workshop content. In an ideal scenario, these would be various volunteers that have previously contributed towards Cities Skylines (e.g. experienced and popular modders, asset builders, community helpers, whatevs.) who would contribute their free time in cleaning up the workshop, removing copied or duplicated content, alternatively removing content that is in the end not that good without any expectations of payment, similar to the moderator system on the pdox forums (although I am speaking out of my ass here, as I have no idea if the forum mods are employees of pdox or are being reimbursed in any way, shape or form for their work).

 

[GavinZac]

Start following favourite authors, and high quality collections. CO will not police the workshop and certainly will not force anyone to not share creations.

 

[kosh22]

I think the idea of a third party spring cleaning is not bad but unlikely. Perhaps we need a moderated repository of stuff away from Steam. Simtropolils would be the ideal.

I purposely put this out there to gauge a feeling for the orderliness of the workshop. In reality of course, CO will not do it. But really at this point the workshop is damaging playability with duplicate assets and poor mods. Gems are harder to find.

And given that it now takes close to 5 minutes for my installation to start up my willingness to install yet another mod is declining rapidly.

 

[JimmiG]

I think the idea of a third party spring cleaning is not bad but unlikely. Perhaps we need a moderated repository of stuff away from Steam. Simtropolils would be the ideal.

I purposely put this out there to gauge a feeling for the orderliness of the workshop. In reality of course, CO will not do it. But really at this point the workshop is damaging playability with duplicate assets and poor mods. Gems are harder to find.

And given that it now takes close to 5 minutes for my installation to start up my willingness to install yet another mod is declining rapidly.

It's not hugely unlikely that an entirely separate repository and mod manager will show up some time in the future. Games like Skyrim and Banished have Workshop support, but also entirely separate repositories (Skyrim Nexus with the Nexus Mod Manager, and Banished Info for those games).

 

[Miwi]

Personally I've started to only follow a select few asset creators who produce quality stuff. Previously I had over 800 assets, and while the variety was great, cities looked chaotic and incoherent because of the wildly different styles mashed together, and the frame rate and loading times were taking a hit.

Doesn't help - also the assets of the so called quality asset creators produce a lot of issues in the output_log.txt.
As long as we don't know what impact have all the different error messages in the log-file we are in the dark.
And it's not only different styles, but principally the different scales the assets are made of that make looking a city incoherent.

 

[FXben]

Ok then....sooo.....More relevant filters?!? such as texture type's (tri count/LOD, etc), scale?

There must be an easier way to sift through the dirt to find those little gold nuggets.

as JimmyG said the nexus mod manager is great, I have used it for a few games, so any chance you lovely bunch of modders could put something similar together?

 

[JerkyJerry]

Doesn't CO have to shoulder some/much/part (insert your word here) of the responsibility here for the mess that is the steam workshop? With a couple of requirements to unlock/upgrade within the game is to have players produce an asset and a map (?) (maybe more I can’t remember) which has contributed to many of the issues we all experience?


With regards to the asset upgrade/unlock I just threw some bogus park up just to get that achievement. I’m no asset producer not knowing what I was doing I just plunked it up there is all I did. By looking at the workshop (on a daily basis that I do) I can assure you I am not the only one. That requirement surely flooded the workshop with numerous issues in the asset section alone.


IMHO some of the blame (again choice of word) has to be on CO and not so much those players who were just trying to achieve an upgrade. Let’s face it if that requirement was not set forth by CO hundreds of assets would have never made it to the workshop to begin with.


Just my 2€

 

[RyanX]

Doesn't CO have to shoulder some/much/part (insert your word here) of the responsibility here for the mess that is the steam workshop? With a couple of requirements to unlock/upgrade within the game is to have players produce an asset and a map (?) (maybe more I can’t remember) which has contributed to many of the issues we all experience?


With regards to the asset upgrade/unlock I just threw some bogus park up just to get that achievement. I’m no asset producer not knowing what I was doing I just plunked it up there is all I did. By looking at the workshop (on a daily basis that I do) I can assure you I am not the only one. That requirement surely flooded the workshop with numerous issues in the asset section alone.


IMHO some of the blame (again choice of word) has to be on CO and not so much those players who were just trying to achieve an upgrade. Let’s face it if that requirement was not set forth by CO hundreds of assets would have never made it to the workshop to begin with.


Just my 2€

The Steam Workshop is not Pdox's service.

 

[JerkyJerry]

The Steam Workshop is not Pdox's service.

Um ok?

 

[Shiggs]

what we really need is for people to stop upvoting mods fitting your criteria. Though most of the cream has risen to the top, I've seen quite a few copies of buildings and other cheap work rated highly.

 

[xone_lai]

Game sales good, use profit to expand team, hire a couple "community managers" to take care of things. Sounds logical to me.

 

[Kirkegaard]

IMHO some of the blame (again choice of word) has to be on CO and not so much those players who were just trying to achieve an upgrade. Let’s face it if that requirement was not set forth by CO hundreds of assets would have never made it to the workshop to begin with.

You don't need to uploads anything to get those achivements, so I do really not hope people are doing it because of them.

 

[TotalyMoo]

It's a dangerous road to take when you start policing content, unless it's a strictly curated workshop.

We have a very active community moderator (Laptop65) on our SteamHub that handles a lot of reports. If you flag a mod as pirated/stolen he will investigate and remove if the claims are correct.

The rest should be, as Steam also claims, moderated via voting, favoriting and collections.

 

[cRAGGLE]

Could another category be added which sorts the stock buildings from the newly added user buildings? Parks are ok but a building which is already in the game and then painted blue or something and then added to the steam workshop is a bit annoying. Maybe it could have a note on there or something.