God we need to split the mods section, really... And have more moderator influence. Currently most people will walk into here to find working, quality mods, not some half assed "experimental" mods.

Mods Section:

• First time mods - <Also includes a sticky rubric for modding> First time mods go here, if its good, starting threads in the other mod sections are unlocked to a passing modder, and depending on quality and potential (most likely faction mods), the said mod is moved to its respective section. Also most posters would feel inclined to leniently grade mods posted there...
• Factions - Where "big" mods end up
• Weapons/Devices - Eliminates the need for a minor mods section and allows easier, more organized browsing.
• Actors - Same as above.

But I see the problem of going through every user here... Do we have thread rating?

It would be really nice if we could get some CC roleplaying in there... Making modders feel like independent manufacturers that sell their products and services via the TradeStar network...

Don't we already do that? At least, the serious people?

I agree, we do need some kind of organization. Sure, the giant mod pool we have works. But let's face it. We don't want to spend ages looking for a single mod out of the six full pages we have.

What we do NOT want, however, is a form of the "approved mods" section like we had a while ago. That was utter failure.

What we could really use is what DSMK2 said.

Here are my suggestions:
1) First time mods is a must. With the big incoming wave of new people, they ARE going to try modding and will most likely end up posting some giant bullet sprayer. None of us want to see those kind of things flood the forum. And the new modder will be greatly discouraged by all the negative comments he/she will get from it.
2) A weapons/devices section. This little sub-forum could have a sub-sub-forum for guns, one for bombs, one for tools, etc. This will make things a lot easier to find and will take away the need for the MMC and the debate whether or not something belongs there.
3) An actors section. A sub-forum that could (to make things easier to browse) include sub-sub-forums for normal actors, one for crabs, and one for craft.
4) A section for the factions/packs. This would, or course, bring up some kind of argument over the amount of something in a mod and the diversity of it to be called a pack or a faction. For that, we could just have actor packs posted in actors, weapon/devices packs posted in weapons/devices, etc.




WOW long post for me.



Also, shouldn't this be somewhere like Forum Feedback?

That will be cool , but most people won't look in the section for noob mods . Then noobs-modders will die , and after that when good modders will be down , the community will die .

I suggested this ages ago, and people complained that it was elitist and biased.

DMSK2, the "independent manufacturers" concept is already done. People stamp fictional corporate logos and names to their mods. What you are probably suggesting is a reversion to the specialized subforums for "corps." That's not gonna happen, the staff has spoken on that one many times.

Additionally, continuously splitting the mod forum into smaller and smaller subforums is useless. People can barely post normal threads in the right subforum as it stands. Do you think our current staffing is capable or willing to keep up with shuffling them around? That is a discussion for the staff thread.

The fact of the matter is that there is no better way to do this unless you want to be less Communist about organizing them. You have to let someone make a conscious decision to move "popular" mods into their own subsection, or compile a list.

I also suggest uploading mods to the mod database-- http://disabling.themachinery.net

This is something Daman and I constructed a la garrysmod.org for a searchable tag-based database of mods.

That seems like a lot of work for little gain. Why not simply have a "Minor mods (5 items or less)" and a "Major mods (5 items or more)" section? Then we can encourage sticking in tags like "[actor]" or "[device]" to the mod title to clarify what the minor mod focuses on.

Those sound good.

-First time / Minor Mods
-Factions / Packs
-Actors
-Devices
-Bunker modules

This sound like a winner

We do not want a rating system, btw. It will just alienate people/give unneeded ego boosts. If we split the mod section, it would be easier to see where a mod goes.

Also it's not even hard to move topics if we have to.

I found a loophole in your idea, good friend.

If you have five items, where does it go?

@venn177: I guess you'll be forced to add or remove a weapon/actor.

But seriously, I'm with Duh102 and Brainwashed, although I wouldn't put the minor and 1st time mods in one thread.

If the forum would grow to large levels (100+ active members) then a rating system could work too, but at the moment, like Falcon X said, it'll just create huge, planet destroying ego's as well as having people vote 1 star just because the person that made the mod is a complete arse.
Some people here just aren't friendly enough to be fair, no offense. (Check the general niceness on other mod forums.)

on the mod database:

Yes... But the mod database does not show all the mods on the database, you must know what you are looking for and search for it, I don't like that. However the layout is very good.

I think something more like the TIGDB (the independent games database) http://db.tigsource.com/ is needed, it has a browse feature which shows all mods in alphabetical order with filters that can be applied. It has top, recent, and random selection. And users can submit reviews with a five star rating.

I see garrysmod.org as more of a download mirror than a mod browser, it's just like a regular upload site (say a picture upload), you upload then link it so that people can download it, but you wouldn't use it to look for other peoples content.

on the forum:
A typical forum is not really built for mod browsing, if you split it into sub sections it will just become harder to find mods, so I say leave it as it is, or have tags in the thread name eg:

Metal Gear Solid- AAL [B22][Actor][Devices][Final]
DSTech Corp [B22][Faction][v.2.1]

It's up to the mod maker whether they class the things in the mod as a faction or just a bunch of actors and a few devices. Also note that [Actor] denotes a singular actor, if there were two actors the tag should be [Actors].

Bugger those logic errors

But, good sir, I have a solution!

Post it in both.

How about not as those terrible faction mods don't deserve any praise for what they've done. Hurf durf I resprite this actor 50 times it's a great mod everybody in fact it is a faction!!

Sure is sucks that nobody releases their mods as single packages, I'd rather not have all that other clutter. This is coincidental with the quality of mods, as free-standing genuinely unique modifications are seen less due to the mass amounts of DI­CKCORP RELEESE 12412 B 3434 WIT EXTRA GUNNS!!

The only change I am willing to make is the addition of a Minor Mods area, but seeing as not a single person on DRL seems capable of consistently posting in the right forum it would probably just make things even more stupid.