Yes, I would, “if” there was some way FunCom could protect their assets from theft. I’m not sure how to accomplish that, but that would be my suggestion. Perhaps a ‘legal agreement’ or something, but something so that its not just ‘open season’ for anyone, anywhere, to do whatever with their stuff.
1 Like
That’s what I suggested earlier in the thread, maybe a code or something they can apply for based on the modders content they’ve created thus far. The “DLC Dev Kit” could be locked behind a method like that so you know who is using it.
1 Like
They might have the power to have the mod pulled from Steam, but what’s stopping someone from making a mod, packaging it as a .pak, and providing instructions on how to install it without using Steam?
And even if they had the absolute power to pull mods, how much work would they have to do to keep constantly policing the mods? Every time a new mod appears, they would have to spend some time to download, install it, and check if it breaks their rules.
That’s very expensive. Someone has to pay for it. As a customer, I don’t want to pay for it, because it would require some kind of subscription. As a fan of the game, I also don’t want Funcom to assume that cost, because that will jeopardize the future development.
So who’s left to pay for it? Modders. If Funcom offered a special DLC-enabled DevKit for a price, then they could use that money to cover the cost of the mod approval process. And on top of that, they would have to implement additional mechanisms to detect whether a mod comes from Steam (or a similar authorized source) or not.
Is it doable? Yes. Will Funcom do it? I doubt it. Will modders want it? I’m not one, and you aren’t either, so I would suggest going to their Discord and asking them what they think.
2 Likes
They have to protect their assets. They also have to protect assets they licensed from Unreal and don’t have the rights to share with us (this isn’t necessarily DLC related, but explains why some other things might be protected).
They have expressed some desire to allow us to mod things. Like at the top of the list is Siptah. They want us to be able to mod things there. But they’ll have to setup some sort of system in the modified devkit. For example the ability to mod stats on a DLC weapon or armor. That should be easy right?
Not really. The itemtable as it is designed requires you to have access to the graphic. To redesign the itemtable means the re-entry of tens of thousands of items. It also would break every mod using the itemtable causing those modders to have to re-entry all of their items into the new format.
And as the itemtable is something pretty much 99% of mods use, altering its form will break pretty much every mod on the workshop. This is sometimes an acceptable course moving forward if the benefits of the changes warrant it.
So far however they’ve deemed it not to be. And I don’t blame them. As a mod author, you sort of want to publish a mod that is open to every user that is willing to use mods. DLCs naturally are not available to everyone. But of course not doing it means mod authors who want to include DLC content in their mods for maximum compatibility (with rebalances as an example) cannot do so.
Doing nothing, ticks people off. Doing something, will tick alot of people off. Its almost a lose lose. Almost.
Best thing to do is come up with an elegant solution that breaks as little as possible. A solution that pretty much just requires a recook or if its more a simple blueprint edit here or there. Not a thousand lines of entering data.
My advice, be patient. Ask for the feature in a respectable manner. Keep asking for it in a respectable manner. If they know people keep wanting it. Know that enough people want it. They’ll find a way if they can to give it us. Just don’t call them greedy or misers or whatever ‘funcom bad’ type post is. They don’t listen to those.
2 Likes
This is some well throughout feedback, perhaps a modders community they have built would help with that cost? I’m sure mods like pippi could get that support everyone uses Pippi 
but what would that cost be what would be a fair price point to put it at? Like I said earlier if there was an application process were only active modders that can show a great history in the community could get excepted, that seems like a fairly cheap alterative to me.
I hope I haven’t come off as “hating on Funcom” I care about this game a great deal. Thank you for the feedback, I’m sure I’ll be making another thread in the future to keep this conversation alive.
That applies to all the base game once Funcom already provides all the base content on the dev kit. Anyone could copy everything and make a free game out of it. Still there we have the dev kit.
I now it may seem unrelated but there is effort being put on anti-cheat, which is a function to verify the behavior of the software. If pvp players can move Funcom to spent so much effort preventing cheats, why wouldn’t the community be able to do the same about preventing copy-righting?
I don’t. While I respect modders and I appreciate all they do for the community, Funcom needs money to keep working on the game and as long as we don’t have a cash shop with microtransactions or subscription, the only funding for them is from new players (which are not easy to attract with an older title) and from DLC sales. The DLCs are relatively cheap for what they offer and there are plenty of free armor and building mods out there for those not willing to buy the DLCs to choose from.
1 Like
I think you’re missing the point man, we’re talking about the ability to mod DLCs. Assuming it can be done correctly it shouldn’t hurt sales at all.
As long as i know the itemtable is an abstraction of the database tables that defines a base item, correct? They could solve the issue of modifieing it by creating a new table simply difining the additional data required and making this same table refer to the itentable. Doing so they can keep the old structure and add the new features needed. I know that software-wise it’s better to rewrite item table, but if that will cause too much trouble this kind of “turn around” is a solution.
1 Like
I wonder if it would really be that easy. There are other games that have DLCs and mods as well while the mods are able to use DLC stuff.
Stellaris for example has many mods using features from DLCs, you can however still use the mod without the DLC, the feature is just not available to you, you still have to buy it in order to use it in the mod.
Some of these mods require DLCs to function properly because of that and modders state that in the description.
Funcom should be able to do a similar system as well.
1 Like
The only way to “copy everything and make a free game out of it” would be to take Funcom’s own modified Unreal Engine and put all that content on top of it. While it’s perfectly possible, it’s also the most roundabout and inefficient way to pirate the game that I’ve ever heard of 
Seriously, it’s easier to just simply pirate the software than to use the modding kit to replicate it. And while piracy still exists, it’s not nearly as big of a problem as it used to be before.
The problem with mods is drastically different. There’s one base game, but a myriad of mods. Like I explained above, I’m pretty sure it’s possible to grab a .pak and just plop it down on your HD and have the game use it, without it being detected by BattlEye or any similar anti-cheating tool.
So the first thing they would have to do is implement a detection mechanism that would prevent you from using a mod you didn’t get from an authorized source. Again, it’s doable, but it’s not something Funcom has done yet, as far as I know.
Then they would have to “police” that authorized source. In other words, establish a review process for each individual mod that’s published to that source, and go through that process on each update of each mod. Like I explained above, that has a cost that some party has to assume.
I hope I’ve explained it better this time around.
1 Like
I understand your point, i agree with it and i’m not trying to say you are wrong.
My whole point is, it’s possible, as you said it’s doable. Even if Funcom don’t want it, we the customers, can make some pressure in order to convince them to do so. And as i mentioned on a previews post, the modder community is one of the best marketing resources, if not the best, of Conan Exiles.
And just to make things clear, i don’t want to jeopardize Funcom, i have bought almost all Conan Exiles DLCs and am just waiting for the next steam sale to finish buying the last 2 dlcs i miss 
2 Likes
Heck I’ve bought every DLC on PC and PS lol And I’ve picked up copies for some buddies. lol
You realize that Nexus exists right? Moddb? Hundreds of cloud hosting sites that Funcom can’t control? You can upload Steam workshop files as hidden?
Not feasible in the slightest.
Correct.
I’m sorry. Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that not only do us mod authors have to put up with all the crap we already do, WE be REQUIRED to PAY REAL MONEY so YOU can have expanded modded content you already don’t pay for?
I have no words. Really, no words.
As far as this, it’s been discussed to death on the modding discord. If it could be feasibly be done it would have. However methods they use for DLC protections (remember that any player can use DLC content in game without having to own the DLC, they just need to loot it from another player or have a friend make it) makes this very challenging to accomplish, and would take significant investment to do.
Therefore, unlikely.
5 Likes
This is what I was alluding to when I said they should pop up on modders’ Discord and ask what modders think about this 
I didn’t want to say it like that because:
- experience is the best teacher, and the experience of suggesting something like that to modders’ faces would have been priceless
- I’ve already been accused of “antagonizing” people by pointing things out to them
Oh, and before someone has the bright idea to say “well, modders could pass that cost on to the players”, there are two problems with that:
- As a player, I don’t want to pay for it.
- No, modders actually can’t charge players. It would be illegal.
1 Like
I love how this has devolved from just a conversation to an insult fest shall we say? There’s been some fair points that people have brought up however I didn’t start the conversation to be insulted plain and simple. A destructive conversation isn’t helping anyone, unless you’re someone that gets off on it. 
I started this conversation hoping for constructive feedback if you don’t have any please move on. 
You were given it, not liking the answers does not mean non constructive. I see you ignored my points, and had the opportunity to correct and chose not to do so. In other words, yes you want mod authors to pay on top of everything else…
The only feasible solution was Force’s (and others) on how other games have methods to allow modification of DLC’s. However, as previously stated, Conan does it different then other games. We’ve talked circles around this discussion for years on the modding discord. It’s unlikely to happen, sorry.
1 Like
I’m genuinely curious: what do you perceive as insulting here? So far, this has been a more civil and constructive conversation than I’ve seen in 90% of threads on Conan Exiles forums. I haven’t seen any name-calling, or any ad hominems. Even those posters who disliked your idea the most, even they went to the trouble of offering valid arguments without personal attacks.
I’m having trouble finding anything that could be construed as disrespectful, but maybe I’ve spent too long immersed in the general toxicity that normally pervades these forums.
1 Like
This is similar to the solution that I’ve been thinking over for a while now. The idea I had was to simply reference say… Iron and Star Metal weapons of the same type. So a Pictish Spear uses Iron Spear stats, an Epic Aquilonian Sword uses Star Metal Sword stats. And when a mod edits those iron and star metal weapons on a server the DLC versions take on the edits.
Here’s the issue though. How do you get the itemtable to reference the other table without changing the itemtable?
As you can see, its not that simple. Well… it isn’t terribly complex either, but it has consequences. Consequences I brought up earlier. In any event. Its going to break things and make people mad.
There might be a way to have our cake and eat it too. You’d have to change the game to reference two different tables. But this is where I don’t know of any consequences for other systems that rely on those overlying things. Things like blueprint dependencies (other modders can make their comments on that) and of course server performance. Loading two tables is going to add another set of instructions and another query to every item reference the game and the server makes.
But like I said, if it was simple. We’d have it. Its not simple and probably not terribly complex. So the solution is to keep reminding them that yes we want it. And that we promise not to complain when it breaks stuff. 
2 Likes