I’ve been thinking about the potential benefits of allowing client-side mods in Conan Exiles, especially for online play. The idea is to let players tweak their user interface to better suit individual preferences, improve accessibility, and perhaps offer more convenient options for inventory management than the current system provides.
Client-side mods could empower our community to personalize and enhance their gameplay experience without waiting for official updates. This could be especially useful for things like UI customization, where players might want to rearrange elements or apply different themes.
What do you all think? Could this be a viable way to enhance our game experience, or might it pose issues I haven’t considered?
Hell no! That would allow for even more ESP hacks to make their way into the game. The default UI is actually pretty decent. I tried out soulmask recently and really understood how simplicity is king for this type of game.
This is like asking if your job should allow its employees to flap their arms and fly during lunch breaks. Sure they can decide to allow it, but its an impossibility.
I don’t think its even possible to have a mod mismatch between server and client in CE right now. But even if it were, the amount of effort to make it work and not have game breaking issues or outright exploits wouldn’t be in the best interests of FC to devote the effort for such little gain.
Yes. What WoW had for a UI system was way too much. I knew I liked Conan for its clean UI. (programming crossplay is not easy) Then again, I’m arguing over the controller versus keyboard.
What, precisely, would be the benefit for the online game?
No doubt the user experience would change for those that do that but at what costs? Basically if you allow client side mods then where is the shared experience in the game. You are playing Conan and I could be playing Ark at that point.
The very basic premise of shared experience is ruined if everyone has their own mod running.
It’s already the case, my friend. Is it bad that we have different graphical settings, different FOV, or that some use a controller while others use a keyboard? I don’t share the exact same setup as you, so does that make it a bad thing to allow customization? What about people with visual impairments? Should we not give them ways to change some colors so Erjoh can maintain his feeling of a shared virtual world?
I see no issue with giving more options to people. Some prefer seeing damage numbers, while others want a more precise idea of their heat resistance and how close they are to getting heatstroke. The player base already has varied experiences, from people role-playing all day, to those playing single-player and changing admin settings, to others in PVE vs. PVP vs. PVC, using controllers vs. keyboards, dealing with graphical settings disparities, and personal finances affecting what one can buy that others can’t.
I try not to see it through an individualistic lens.
The concept of “client-side”-only mods for Conan Exiles simply doesn’t exist.
It’s standard unreal engine client-server programming… even a mod that does its work 100% client-side has full access to the server and every single game system.
Basically mods loaded for this game become actual parts of the game after loading and not an “addon” or some form of side-loaded hacky mechanic, so the server and the clients always need to have the same mods, else it would be like trying to connect 2 different versions of the game.
The only way this would be possible is if they developed a whole new custom UI modding system, essentially turning them less into mods… and more into configuration templates… since every one of those features would have to be custom coded by Funcom to accept outside idk… xml definitions… or something along those lines.
In any case, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
Hackers will always find way to exploit any system that has an entry. So if they did this, we would see even more hacks flooding the game. I see only negatives with this option.
Isn’t there, by now, reusable code that already handles this? Was there any attempt to standardize input? I was using one for awhile with my CSS-app for another game, so I know it works. Maybe somebody just wants the code after application without all the code builders. (i.e. netcode, release) Because they are no longer needed (after calculus). I mean, I’m not saying it can’t be done.