This thread is for personal feed back on (as the title suggests) what people want in a mod. you may post anything and everything, including non-constructive criticism; all I require is your true and honest thoughts.

Thank you,

-Joe

Three type of successful mods that I see:
Massive factions
Huge pack of randomness
Extremely well polished one-itemers.

I want to see some bomb packs filled with sparkle magic goodness.

I think this is the ultimate goal I shoot for in a mod. I'm of the disposition that a very high quality mod that was made with considerable revisions, bug fixes, reiterations and changes is the superior mod to one that has a lot of decent or passable quality material.

Ideally, we should all try for Extremely polished non-one-itemers.

I kinda like Extremely Polished Few-itemers, a small pack of items that all compliment each other. Kinda like if you split Shook's pack up into sub packs: The Pyro Series, the Bomb Pack, the Lulz Actors, Lazer Collection, etc.
That being said, I have nothing against a Cortex Total Conversion, though that would violate one of the basic tenets of Cortex modding, keeping it to one .rte.

Remember if you choose to make a massive faction, the sprites have to be top notch to compete with Darlo's Darkstorm and Numgun's AAL and Balistic mercenaries. Unitec already has just about every weapon or tool you'll ever need plus a massive amount of actor content.

I'll have to disagree here.

While all 3 of the mods you mentioned are highly popular, I wouldn't say that it's due to their spriting ability. They are all very well done sprites, but a lot lack proper shading and/or deviate too heavily from the vanilla feel. I personally feel the popularity is due to the "complete set" vibe you get from each of them, and from the new and interesting functionality the modders bring to their factions.

I just feel your statement may put off people who would like to make massive factions and probably could churn out great ideas that could become equally popular, but don't have the spriting talent that would compare them to said mods. I feel that's unfair to new talent to ask them to live up to 3 mods which have A ) Been around forever and B ) Have gone under constant revision, especially spritewise.

It's pretty much unfair to compare anybody's mod to Darkstorm anyway. If I compared myself to Darlos, I'd be slitting my wrists every waking moment.

There are of course secondary kinds of mods, but fairly few people actually get around to building new games within the engine.

Fairly few meaning myself.

I believe your project is a scene, is it not?

So, essentially everyone here is asking for an extremely polished faction (by polished I mean perfectly balanced with other factions as far as damage output, input, and movement speed) with:

-about 2 organic actors, 3 at the most (Sparkle Magic power armor included)

-1 or 2 drones,

-a Brain unit (AHuman or ACrab; I would imagine that people are tired of fixed brains),

-custom bunker modules (that look cool and do something with Sparkle Magic)

-vehicles, if doable (manned turrets, VTOL fighters, Titan units, tanks, etc.,)

-3 to 5 craft (quick deploy returnable drop rocket, heavily armored dropship, Gunship (?), hotzone deployable turret drop pods (?)


And as far as weapons:

-1 very balanced assault rifle

-1 explosive siege shotgun

-1 sniper rifle (lots of ammo yet low rate of fire; non uber range, just higher than the assault rifle)

-1 anti vehicle missle launcher (Sparkle Magic split barrage function included)

-Drones might have a healing or turret construction function (like the Darkstorm Nano Assembler)

-Heavy (but balanced) weapons for the vehicles (EG: anti-vehicle rail cannons, homing artillery cannon, gattling gun (?), SAM (?)

-Titan weapons (for the Titan)

-actor attached melee weapon(s?)

-Phase entrenching device (digger that eats up dirt and concrete, but hesitates at metal)


And finally, Bombs:

-Sticky grenade (Sparkle magic to make it stick to terrain AND actors)

-shape charge anti-tank mine (that only kills enemy tanks)

-repeating pulse grenade (area denial that doesn't eat up terrain)

-timed wall breacher (uses that effect that simply erases terrain without harm to actors, will stick to terrain)

-homing grenade (?)


Please tell me if I'm missing anything, or if further explanation is needed. ALSO: be advised that I am planning 3 factions that will be balanced with each other, in fact, that's what this thread is all about.


Thanks again!

-Joe

Actually, seeing as your starting modding, try making a polished item.

LFoW you know much more then me on this topic. I stand corrected.

Personally, i just want the mod to be fun to play with, and ideally also be pretty enough that i won't have to gouge my eyes out after using it. The quantity is second in priority to quality, so you should rather go for a single super-polished mod than a large pack of half-assed mods. The optimal situation would probably be a medium-sized pack of super-polished mods, as i know from experience that not everybody likes exceptionally huge packs.

And Joe, you're definitely going in the right direction, just be careful that you don't get overwhelmed by the amount of work required.

^ That, a mod doesn't have to be huge pack of the same old shotgun, sniper rifle, assault rife and grenade launcher, it can be a single, fun to play with, innovative mod (see: Zalo). Yes I have had fun with darkstorm, AAL and the rest of those awesome packs, but I've had much more fun playing with, for example, Zalo's ghost clone.