Possible "Fix" for the Modding Issues

[Chaotic_Darkfae]

Greetings. I hardly ever post here, but after a lot of the various discussions around the community concerning mods - from their existence to the problem of people taking pictures of others with certain mods on without their permission - have lead me to come here to propose an idea that will not only help SQEX, but also help modders.

Although it's largely underrated, EverQuest created something called the Player Studio in the wake of EQ Next being developed. It's something that still exists, for use with EverQuest, EverQuest II, and PlanetSide 2, so people can take a fuller look at it via the link above; the link leads to a page that gives a short explanation of what the system is, with links to FAQs, Style Guides, and the Player Studio itself.

The general gist is that the Player Studio allows players to download various geometries from any of those three games, then allows them to build custom items from those geometries. Once created, a player can upload them to the system, and players of the game the item is made for can purchase them for digital currency that is bought with real world money (think Crysta, but for EQ/EQ2/PS2). The company gets a cut, but so does the person who made the item - so it would allow modders to monetise their works without violating any rules.

I believe that many of XIV's issues with modding could be "fixed", so to speak, by implementing a system like this into XIV. It would allow modding to "come out of the shadows" while also giving SQEX control over the system, while both parties make some money from it.

Like Skyrim, the XIV modding community has some really good artists in it, and many of them deserve more credit for their work, and deserve to be paid for the time they put into making their mods - something this sort of system would do, easily.

Granted, there are some mods that wouldn't be found acceptable, but the vast majority of them would qualify for being put into such a system.

There's one grey area on this whole issue - mods that make NPC clothing and hairstyles available to players. I think there, SQEX should allow any hairstyle that they aren't going to put on the Mog Station to be handled by the players, however if they plan on releasing something on the Mog Station, they can reject the item. Blanket banning all NPC items isn't precisely a good idea, as it could save the SQEX team a lot of time (and hence, money) if a modder made something and put it into the system. Conversely, SQEX does need to keep certain items available as Mog Station/SQEX exclusives, which largely are holiday items and NPC sets.

Of course, getting SQEX to make such a change would require getting a lot of the player base on board with it, so even if you don't have much to say about it, please post a response if you support this idea.

[KisaiTenshi]

Of course, getting SQEX to make such a change would require getting a lot of the player base on board with it, so even if you don't have much to say about it, please post a response if you support this idea.

No, the biggest issue would be console support, which is effectively impossible. To get content onto a console, Sony has to vet the mods that they won't break the console's sandbox. For most cosmetic style things, the way SE has partitioned the data to begin with would support only a single mod ever being installed without clustering up all the mods for the game as if it were a full DLC package. To which then they are frozen and can't ever be changed again. At least not without downloading the entire set as one file again.

At best, Changing the textures of content would be viable if they can be produced in PS4(HD)/PS4Pro(4K) and PC "SD/HD/4K" versions. Changing the models, would likely require SE reserving a set of indexes in the data files for user-installable content, and it's just not likely to ever be a thing. If you look at the Skyrim mods, the most popular mods are just blatant cheat packages, followed by AI changes. Those are things that can't even be considered in FFXIV.

I doubt there is much, or any, interest in mods to FFXIV that aren't straight up texture adjustments. But if you change an existing texture, it affects everything with that texture, and if you just want YOU to have it, then clearly this isn't the way forward.

Hence, the possibility of SE maybe reserving a set of indexes in the data files for "user-installed replacement", which would mark characters who have a "user installed" modification as needing to get consent to update. This would then allow players with SE-permitted mods to review what the other player has and turn the same mod on, only for that character or leave it off. Then on the client-end, any time that character is encountered, it will use the user-installed index and not the normal index. This would require additional overhead, but not likely any more than spawning/despawning already does. For players who want to install a mod themselves, they could select it from a separate page in the mog shop, and it just enables the ability to use it on themselves.

There is a lot of work required for certain things however. To replace a gear part, requires making the same gear change to every model (so each race and gender), and to replace the entire set requires the helm, body, gauntlet, legs and foot slots for everything. So I don't imagine there being that many attempts to "make a better version of X gear".

Another way to deal with model changes to player characters would be to leverage the glamour plate system, and have a third source of items, those that SE has approved. This again would require setting aside indexes in the data files, but this could instead be treated as additional gear, rather than replacements for existing gear.