Spring Clean Workshop.

[DK115]

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.

And tagging? @TotalyMoo: Anything you can do to have tags in the workshop?

 

[TotalyMoo]

And tagging? @TotalyMoo: Anything you can do to have tags in the workshop?

There are tags in the workshop, or what do you mean?

 

[Miwi]

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.

This is fine and I am totally with you. But there are a lot of assets that have issues and produce error messages in the output_log.txt of C:SL. So this means they are recognized by the game as badly designed with potential issues for the game. For example there is the "mesh out of bounds..." error message. When during game start the game recognizes this particular asset as a faulty asset, why the game doesn't prevent to load this asset ? Maybe with a popup naming the faulty assets, stop loading it into game and the option to unsubscribe from Steam - or creating a list with all faulty assets and then the user can manually unsubscribe all faulty assets. I mean thinkable there are a lot of options how to prevent loading and unsubscribe from faulty assets.
I think like this we would avoid a lot of potential problems with assets which are badly created - and you avoid policing content.

 

[Greygor69]

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€

And after you got the achievement you deleted it from the workshop, yes?

Really policing of the Workshop is down to the users.

You find an asset that is well designed and works, you rate it up.

You find an asset that is not well designed and causes issues, you leave a comment explaining the issue and rate it down.


If you're not prepared to do that, what can I say.

 

[KR153]

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

Right.... because it has proven to be so damn effective, right? Why do we have this thread? With the very few things we can mod it is already filled with crap. Imagine how it will look when we can mod bridges and special kind of buildings like W2W.
I must say this is kinda poor handled by CO. Even if it wasn´t that big success that it has become the workshop would have been flooded.

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

To me as well.

 

[Greygor69]

Right.... because it has proven to be so damn effective, right? Why do we have this thread? With the very few things we can mod it is already filled with crap. Imagine how it will look when we can mod bridges and special kind of buildings like W2W.
I must say this is kinda poor handled by CO. Even if it wasn´t that big success that it has become the workshop would have been flooded.

To me as well.

It's in your hands, push back to the up-loaders if you find anything wrong or incorrectly tagged.

Create a Collection and add the Assets that you know work and can recommend.

I will be doing the latter once I get the last achievement and start using Mods and Assets.

 

[Miwi]

I don't know if an asset really "works". I mean there are a lot of assets rated as 5 stars and if you look in the output_log.txt they produce errors, even the one of GULA's, just for naming one.
So far I only see game crashing when I try to exit a load game, either to main menu or to desktop ("cities.exe has stopped working...."). Which asset caused it, no idea, you don't see this in output_log.txt You even can place the faulty assets in your city... do they crash my game ? Normally not. Do they produce other issues I am not aware of ? No idea.
The rating only say one thing - the asset looks good or not. If the asset creator was in the mood he wrote the stats in the description. I did it a few times, copied the error message from output_log.txt into the comments. Most of the asset creators don't know what does it mean. Then I got comments like "in my save games they are working, I am only a creator..." and that's it. The ratings they mainly get only for good looking of the asset. But in terms of game stabilty the ratings barely don't help.

 

[KR153]

It's in your hands, push back to the up-loaders if you find anything wrong or incorrectly tagged.

Create a Collection and add the Assets that you know work and can recommend.

I will be doing the latter once I get the last achievement and start using Mods and Assets.

No, you don´t get it. If I was to do that I still would have to invest hours and hours just to get a look around. That is exactly what I don´t want to do and it defeats the purpose of such a place.
If I was in charge I would start "Operation Clean Sweep" rather sooner than later. The more you wait, the worse it will get.
And for future entries: I don´t see how you evade even more criterias. This might seem a little uncomfortable for modders that make new entries, but the mess that the workshop already is speaks for itself.
The question at hand to me is: Do you only seek a high number of entries in the workshop so you can say "There are 10.000 mods already uploaded"? I´d rather have a place that has less but is more usable.
I think (hope) someone will make a private effort and start an own page with an exchange. Steam workshop with an implementation in the game sounds good on paper, but that´s it.

 

[DK115]

There are tags in the workshop, or what do you mean?

You mean the prefab tags like "Mod" or " Map?

I mean tags like "historical" or "Dutch" or like "whatever" so you can do better searching. Just create new public tags ...

 

[Greygor69]

No, you don´t get it. If I was to do that I still would have to invest hours and hours just to get a look around. That is exactly what I don´t want to do and it defeats the purpose of such a place.
.

No you want someone else to do it for free

 

[xone_lai]

The rating don't tells all the story. Potential errors lurking around... For now everything seems to play fine, tomorrow none of your save game want to load...
Yep... happened on mine...

We're not asking for SORTING (at least I am not), but checking on potential hidden error that we CANNOT fix as end user as we do not have the knowledge to fix them, nor to realize there was something wrong at the background.

 

[Greygor69]

The rating don't tells all the story. Potential errors lurking around... For now everything seems to play fine, tomorrow none of your save game want to load...
Yep... happened on mine...

We're not asking for SORTING (at least I am not), but checking on potential hidden error that we CANNOT fix as end user as we do not have the knowledge to fix them, nor to realize there was something wrong at the background.

That's why if I down vote I always add a reason why, but yes it's not a perfect solution.

Actually, one answer is a working paid mod solution where the game developer can use their share to pay for a curator.

Of course this subject is toxic now.

 

[Miwi]

Again - assets with errors recognized by the game engine should simply be refused to load into the game. So every creator could check for himself if his asset meets the requirements to work without issues in the game before releasing it to the workshop. And even if he loads up a faulty asset to workshop and you subscribe to it, it simply wouldn't be loaded into the game. For me the easiest solution.

 

[TotalyMoo]

Asset doesn't work right, incompatible with the game or contains a similar error?

Flag it in the steam workshop and it will be handled.

 

[Miwi]

Pls explain what kind of errors in the output_log,txt identify an asset as "not working right, incompatible or similar error".
Thanks in advance.

 

[MaxxPower]

Might add mods without a picture.

Especially texture mods without a picture.

 

[KR153]

No you want someone else to do it for free

And that makes me... what, a bad person? I sure as hell won´t pay money if that´s what you mean. That would be stupid.
If a company takes the initiative and choses the steam workshop as a platform for modding in the scale that we see here it should see that it work. Simple as that.Or they should have let it to the private sector in the first place.
The rating system is a bad joke. How in the world is someone who doesn´t know the first thing about modding supposed to rate a mod? All he can say is that he personally sees a use for it. He cannot posssibly evaluate the effort or anything else in detail. An exmple: The "night light mod/cycle", rated with 4 stars. 4 stars for what exactly? Don´t get me wrong, I highly appreciate the effort. I wouldn´t know where to start and it is promising, but until now it looks exactly like I don´t want it to look. Even worse than CiM 2 and that was bad.
On the other hand: The "Modular Airport Main Terminal". Great job, finished and working, also 4 stars. Where is the system in that? There is simply no clear line in it and that makes it useless.

 

[kosh22]

Upvoting/downvoting etc is not an effective tool in the workshop. It is not a pachera to filter the good from the bad. I will download lots of assets and mods at the same time. I will then - shock horror - not play the game for days after. So how would I even know which asset I like or don't like and try to identify it. I get an error message at the moment re an asset. The error message is not helping to identifying the asset. I am a casual gamer. I will not go rooting through error logs. So I never or rarely up or down vote anything. Shockingly I am typical of the vast majority of casual gamers.

The workshop is a far from ideal method for asset distribution because of the laissez faire attitude which comes along with it. Regrettably most such repositories are equally ineffective to this end. Full scale moderation is the only option but then that depends on the opinion of individual and therefore has its own huge issues. Rating systems, an in between option is open to abuse and fails to be a truthy democratic methodology.

Neither the the capitalism and communism of repositories management are truly effective. Trouble is I'm not sure a happy medium exists either. Though I am disappointed, though not surprised, CO don't want to even entertain the difficulties the workshop present to us all.

 

[Greygor69]

Upvoting/downvoting etc is not an effective tool in the workshop. It is not a pachera to filter the good from the bad. I will download lots of assets and mods at the same time. I will then - shock horror - not play the game for days after. So how would I even know which asset I like or don't like and try to identify it. I get an error message at the moment re an asset. The error message is not helping to identifying the asset. I am a casual gamer. I will not go rooting through error logs. So I never or rarely up or down vote anything. Shockingly I am typical of the vast majority of casual gamers.

The workshop is a far from ideal method for asset distribution because of the laissez faire attitude which comes along with it. Regrettably most such repositories are equally ineffective to this end. Full scale moderation is the only option but then that depends on the opinion of individual and therefore has its own huge issues. Rating systems, an in between option is open to abuse and fails to be a truthy democratic methodology.

Neither the the capitalism and communism of repositories management are truly effective. Trouble is I'm not sure a happy medium exists either. Though I am disappointed, though not surprised, CO don't want to even entertain the difficulties the workshop present to us all.

Your right, there isn't a perfect solution when Modding for any game is allowed.

On the plus side we don't have the mess that SC 4 had with items relying on multiple dependencies which may or may not be maintained by the original author (or may no longer exist at all).

With the Workshop at least you have a single point repository with automated updates when a change is made to the subscribed Mod.

But with that there is a price, you are completely reliant on the authors to create and classify items correctly.

No, AFAIK, we are not going to have a CO curated Workshop. We have to use that as a basis of discussion and move on from there.

We have to make the Workshop work for us, and to do that we have to take some responsibility for ourselves.

In the absence of Developer control what do others propose we do? I've made some proposals and so far they've been criticised by those who don't offer suggestions.

what do people want? A Mod Wiki to showcase recommended Mods? Who will create it? Who will Maintain it?

Any Other suggestions? I'm open to ideas.

 

[Steve B.]

Your right, there isn't a perfect solution when Modding for any game is allowed.

On the plus side we don't have the mess that SC 4 had with items relying on multiple dependencies which may or may not be maintained by the original author (or may no longer exist at all).

With the Workshop at least you have a single point repository with automated updates when a change is made to the subscribed Mod.

But with that there is a price, you are completely reliant on the authors to create and classify items correctly.

No, AFAIK, we are not going to have a CO curated Workshop. We have to use that as a basis of discussion and move on from there.

We have to make the Workshop work for us, and to do that we have to take some responsibility for ourselves.

In the absence of Developer control what do others propose we do? I've made some proposals and so far they've been criticised by those who don't offer suggestions.

what do people want? A Mod Wiki to showcase recommended Mods? Who will create it? Who will Maintain it?

Any Other suggestions? I'm open to ideas.

Well, TPB on the Simtropolis forum started a thread on who to follow on the Steam Workshop, but he's currently not able to keep updating it. As a result, they are trying to create a squad of people who would make such suggestions. Maybe this could work as a solution.