Dear Funcom, please consider helping our modders

[heaven13]

@Caroll

In the future, we ask that you share your feedback as early as possible after the mod devkit release so we still have time to adjust it before the patch or at least include it in the pipeline.

It might be good, in the future, to update the beta client to match the dev kit so people can actually test their changes and give appropriate feedback before the release. If modders can’t actually test in the testing environment because the dev kit is ahead of the test client, they can’t give feedback until things are tested which is on live.

It is unfair to place the responsibility at the feet of modders when this is and has been a big problem with differing versions between dev kit, test client, and live.

[Xevyr]

@Caroll

In the future, we ask that you share your feedback as early as possible after the mod devkit release so we still have time to adjust it before the patch or at least include it in the pipeline.

I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is a matter of feedback, but rather a case of feedback constantly falling on deaf ears.
(I also understand that you’re just the messenger in this situation, so please don’t take this personally )

Funcom constantly neglects the modding side of things, to the point where modders are quitting in flocks… when feedback gets rough then they come out and “pretend” to be active… make a few promises… etc. which ultimately never get delivered.
(We’re still waiting on Storm to get back to us with that new CoC he promised last time we raised an issue and that was just a simple case of wording on a block of text… no actual development needed)

See? we even have our little tasklist where we can put in feature requests
Nobody has worked on it for over a year…
to the point where we stopped adding them, since it seems futile.

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We’re not even regarded as content creators… we constantly hear about how Funcom is “scouting” modding talent and that we might get some similar perks as the “other” content creators… like our creations getting some exposure here and there…

What we have is Nicole ONCE a year taking a quick glance at the Steam popularity list and making a 3 minute video using third party footage. Don’t get me wrong, we appreciate that too, but with so many community managers and the game claiming to be in support of modding, I’m pretty sure something like that could be done more than once a year… no?

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What about requesting help from the devs? Often times we have situations where certain problems can’t be solved by us in the context of the devkit… Why? For example it’s locked away in C++ code which we can only guess at, but there’s nobody to ask… In the past while the devkit still had a couple of the old developers working, at least we could occasionally ask them, but now all we have is poor @AndyB as our point of contact, and while he’s awesome and we love him, sadly we can’t really ask him about C++ code…

At the very least there should be 1-2 developers (the new ones who got the devkit) who could be contacted in these cases… or emergencies like we had in the past, where the game update turns out to not match the devkit and we need to go and beg for updated assets because every server is crashing on release day from the mods that we thought have the latest versions of these.

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As for this case, it’s not as big of a fix, they can do a fairly quick and okay solution that would solve it temporarily…
They can keep the 3 slots… even continue to do their little trace in C++ on the crafting queue for the thralls… just pass through the full trace result array of thralls found in a function on the station and output it and have the station display the top 3 from that… this way we could intercept the array with custom logic and prune any unwanted ones, leaving the 3 that we’d like.
This is a quick solution that I think is a fair compromise and doesn’t require any sort of major intervention (5 minute job). At the very least this gives some form of control over those 3 thralls.

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In any case, I’m sorry if the tone of this message seems a bit frustrated. I usually try to keep a positive attitude, but even my enthusiasm has suffered over the past year or so, but if it’s feedback you want we have plenty of that! All you have to do is ask…

[BrentDnD]

Thank you for your reply and the nod that the team will look at the issue. I understand that you’re saying the work would be a bit extensive on your end.

HOWEVER, and this is a big point I want to make…

This issue with the selection of thralls in benches with multiple crafter types isn’t just a “modded” problem. It is also a vanilla bench problem when you have a bench that accepts multiple crafter types. For example, the Tinker’s Bench accepts both amorers and smiths. I have 3 T4 crafters in my base for both smiths and armorers. However, The bench only gives me 2 armorers and 1 blacksmith to choose from. And guess what, none of those are the crafter I need to utilize.

I just want to make sure you understand that it’s not only a problem with modded benches.

And I’m sure that the wonderful modding teams out there could probably come up with a workaround, but this is a core issue with the new update, and they shouldn’t need to. This is a problem with the entire Living Settlements component of the Age of Heroes. I understand that there are many priorities that need to come out with the hotfix. But this is one of the fixes that the Funcom team really needs to place towards the top of the list (along with disappearing thralls).

I want to thank you again for being responsive to our issues.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

@Caroll

From a quick glance, they said that the work on our end would be a bit extensive, as parts of the system would need to be reworked to support the moddable features. And, as you know, some pressing issues have arisen with the new age that are being prioritised for the hotfix, which is limiting our bandwidth at the moment.

Hey Caroll. Thanks for attending to this. It can often feel like our comments are falling on deaf ears, so it’s good to get an acknowledgement.

There’s been several suggested ideas to help with the issue. While some might require a lot of work, maybe just reducing the range would be enough to help a lot of people. That’s likely not too onerous to sneak into the hotfix. Who-ever coded that, did so in the last few months and probably knows exactly where it is.

Either way, knowing that it will be considered helps us to not feel abandoned. o7

[TiktaalikDreaming]

@BrentDnD

For example, the Tinker’s Bench accepts both amorers and smiths.

There’s actually 6 base game benches that accept two thrall types. I had no idea it was so extensive until I went through the tables in the DevKit.

[BrentDnD]

@Caroll

…There’s been several suggested ideas to help with the issue. While some might require a lot of work, maybe just reducing the range would be enough to help a lot of people.

The only issue with this is that I don’t know if it will really help that much because most RP servers have severe size limitations on base building due to lagging issues. So there’s no way to really spread out the crafting benches in that case. And with the roaming of the thralls, even the ones you’d want to be within range of the bench, they probably wouldn’t stay there. Although I’ve turned that off int the server ini file on my single player game right now because they keep disappearing. [It’s also entirely possible that I’m misunderstanding this possible fix.]

Also, I didn’t realize there were 6 vanilla benches that accepted multiple thrall types either, but now that I think about it, that’s about right.

[Caroll]

Hello again,

Thank you all for your continued feedback. And I sincerely apologize for not knowing that the devkit was a different version from the Public beta. That line was mine, and I’m very sorry I made you feel responsible for something out of your control.

I’m taking notes of the ideas and thoughts shared here and passing them along to our team. I’ll update this thread when I have more information to share.

Once more, we appreciate your openness and willingness to continue to chat with us.

[DanQuixote]

@Caroll

Once more, we appreciate your openness and willingness to continue to chat with us.

And, believe me, we greatly appreciate your willingness to continue to chat with us Contact and communication is the basis from which everything else comes - many of us notice and appreciate your willingness to keep trying with us, even if we don’t always speak up.

[Alexandria]

While not relating to the broken crafting benches (both base game and modded) with this update I’d also like to draw attention to the behavior of the wandering thralls themselves which is… less than ideal. I have a dev server up that I’m currently working on so I added 2 crafting thralls (a smelter and an armorer) just so I could observe their behavior as I worked on the area of the server I placed them in. They show a liking for standing on tables, standing in corners staring at the wall, and trying to walk through my character. This is definitely NOT the kind of behavior I want my “villagers” to have. For something that was done “for roleplayers” and to add more “immersion” to player builds… it’s failing miserably even on that score.

[Sikky]

+1

[Alexandria]

I’ve also now discovered that chairs are broken. And have broken the part of the mod that most of us use that allows us to have more than the two standard base game sitting emotes. If they are “too close” to a table you either can’t sit in them at all or the animation is messed up. To work (but not with mods) they have to be so far away from the table that your character couldn’t conceivably reach anything ON the table and the distance just looks ridiculous. And for some seats there doesn’t even have to be a table anywhere around for the standard animation to be broken.

[Bradd]

I support the modders so much for taking Conan from a 6 to 10 with all the cool stuff they do. I cant express my gratitude enough for these amazing talented people!

I say pay the Modders to keep the game alive!

[Teng]

Another strange situation happens with chairs. When I hire a tavern patron, he rises from his chair. But it is not always possible to put him back on this chair. I need to take this chair into my inventory and place it again in the same place, and only then will the hired thrall sit on it. This doesn’t always happen, but quite often.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

The SOS objects are all rotated -90 degrees from the old Thrall Actor components. I suspect all chairs need one of the SOS objects for seating, and once that’s added you can select the animation to use for male and female, within that component’s setting.
And now I remember I have chairs in my mod.

[Noqturn]

What can I add to this thread.
Some of the modders I followed and used their mods for years have left because recently their mods got broken beyond repair.
The reason is that whoever is implementing changes to the game, these changes are “hard coded” and the modder was unable to mod these things via the devkit anymore, so he had to abandon his mods.

You have really skilled modders here, people with amazing ideas, you should try and hire them instead of upsetting them and making them leave one by one.

Also they are in great contact with the actually playing community and know the game, know the devkit and all mechanics, they know what people expect.
You should consult with them about the future of the game not some youtubers “I’m not a PvE player… nah… I’m not a PvP player either… I’m a builder you know”

Each modder runs their own discord community, each modder is present on conan modding discord too. They know us, we know them, you just have to reach out to them.

[VetGamerBoceifus]

100% Support this. I came back for Age of Hero’s because I want to make villages and towns that seem alive and bustling, and Age of Hero’s is broken out of the gate which in turns breaks a lot of very great mods that keep people playing the game.