Discussion: why are small mods the most popular?

[Nightinggale]

I noticed a certain pattern, which puzzles me. When sorting mods for popularity, it's like the big or hard to make mods are first. In fact speaking of my own mods, the by far most popular mods are Half Door and Player Controlled Switch. It's not like they are carefully planned and gone through a lengthy development to aim for perfection. In fact it's the only two mods I have made, which are released on the same day as I got the idea. They really are mini mods. For instance Half Door has 2281 subscribers in just 5 days.

On the other hand, Sensory Overload adds sensors... lots of sensors. It took me around a month to make and it has been out for 27 days and... just 404 subscribers.

It's not just my mods. The most popular mod is the one about calculating the average geyser output. Flow Splitter is also really popular. It's not that I don't get the popularity of the mentioned mods. It's just that I don't get why bigger mods (coding wise) seems to be so unpopular, relatively speaking.

 

Now I ask the question I'm really wondering about: why is it that it looks like the fewer lines of code a mod has, the more popular it is?

[storm6436]

Well, the way I see it (and I could be wrong), the more complex a mod is, the larger of a problem (or problems) it's trying to address.  Similarly, the more complex a mod is, the more complex actually using it is....

 So basically, folks have to identify a problem as such and then be motivated enough to look for a solution.  It makes sense that the avg gas output mod is super popular because that's something basically everyone has to deal with and gets tired of real fast.  More complex stuff like your sensors package?  Maybe folks just aren't in a place where what they're running into is annoying enough to look for a mod to fix it yet.  Add in a dash of "In order to effectively use this I have to actually know what's going on" and you thin your potential user base even more since a large portion any user community rarely bothers to actually figure much of anything out beyond the very basics.

[Tobruk]

Half door addressed a very simple pet peeve people had with the game from the release and I am not surprised it's so popular. Things that are quality of life improvements are always welcome.

[SharraShimada]

Its simple. The small mods change small annoyances, and thats what players bother the most, even in early gameplay

On the other hand for example your wonderful sensory mod, which adds many useful items, is something many players wont even bother with, because automation is a game-feature many wont use at all, or at least avoid it where they can. 

And by the way, its way to early to meassure the popularity of mods right now. The game is not yet released, and mod support is official in beta stage. So the player base is not yet final, and many of our current comrades refuse to use mods in this stage of support. 

As you know, i run into some trouble with your mods on my own. I dont mind, and i´m happy to provide you with bug reports to improve your work. But others just want to play, and dont like to be bothered with bugs. Considering this, there should be another faction, including "small" mods into the game, because its common sense, they wont harm as much as heavy mods, if something goes south.

I give you an example: If i remove your half-door mod, there is a 1x1 tile gap where i build them. easy to fix, even to replace it with normal doors. 

If i remove your sensory mod, i have to redesign whole systems, because they wont work anymore the way i designed them, and the base game wont provide me with the tools i would need to just replace your items.

[beowulf2010]

3 minutes ago, SharraShimada said:

And by the way, its way to early to meassure the popularity of mods right now. The game is not yet released, and mod support is official in beta stage. So the player base is not yet final, and many of our current comrades refuse to use mods in this stage of support. 

This is absolutely true for me. I'm not against mods (Fallout 4 and Skyrim will prove that), but in this pre-release phase I find it difficult to give good feedback on things if I'm not playing the same game the dev's have designed. 

This being said, I'm using 1 tiny mod which coincidentally supports Nightingale's original post. I absolutely hate having the map revealed when I enable the debug mode via backspace and I accidentally hit backspace often enough as it is. 

[badgamer123]

imo,most player who want to install mod is player played some game and get a bit bored,so they will start from the most simple one.
I personally like the way Cairath adding mode,most of them is small independent.Sensory Overload is great ,it just too much stuff put in the same mod.a option to split/seperated into many small mod would help new player go to try it.There already some 1 tile door discussion going on for very long.
I could suggest one new simple mod that would bring in a lot subscribers. vacuum temp exchange tile,basically some simple change to make a mining laser exchange heat with the tile it attached ,most player don't like the annoying heat exchange no-sense in space.

another thing very important to consider is,as SharraShimada suggestion the remove mod effect is need to considered,and affect the mod popularity.I guess most player will consider the risk of the mod suddenly no longer supported etc,thus they will trend to look for something not break down completely in case the worst happen.

I personally install the water sieve not fixed temp ,instead of the 2 water sieve mod(the 2 water sieve mode let you keep the fix output for heat deletion).since it not break the save even i turn off the mod etc.

[Ellilea]

From my perspective as a long time mod-user for various games: small mods have a much smaller chance to break your game. They often fit seamlessly into the experience and just either fix something or add a minor goodie to make the journey sweeter. Big mods are scary if you're aiming for stability and balance. Unless the mod is well-tested and popular it's always a gamble for anything but a test-game. Will it cause bugs down the line? Will it introduce balancing issues? Will it cheapen the experience?

Big mods come into play once you've tamed the Vanilla game (like Baldur's Gate I knew by heart and became too easy and predictable for me) or dislike it (like Skyrim, which I couldn't play without 500 mods slapped on top of it, huge and tiny Snoozefest otherwise).

[Lacost]

I currently don't see the reason to use any content rich mods for ONI since the game is still in development and multiple changes will be made regarding the gameplay. --> The vanilla game won't get stale that fast which means that I don't need content mods to flavour it up.

 

However, what I do need are mods that fix minor annoying stuff that is too low on the priority list of the developers to be tackled anytime soon but would greatly increase the quality of life. Your examples fit perfectly into this describtion. People wonder why you have to use an atmo sensor to manually control switches whereas the actual switch ingame can only be controlled by Dupes. A mod that fixes this is in demand for many players. The same goes for your half door mod.

 

Sensory overload on the other hand does not appeal to the masses like those small QoL mods. This mod is not as easily understood by the user and does not adress a glaring flaw in the balance of the game that most players can relate to. Thus, you need a lot of advertising to promote your mod and convince players to try it out.

[ChickenMadness]

small mods are usually simple quality of life fixes that everyone wants.

 

[qda]

This is a really good question I've asked myself a few times. If you take a look at a large sample of games involving mods, one can realize that two types of mods are generally the most popular : small, QoL mods, and big overhauls of the base game. Recently, I feel like, with the gigantic, overwhelming amount of possibilities offered by online content, people generally have a tendency to either stay within their known boundaries and seek comfort in there, thus adding QoL mods, or feel being urged to explore all those possibilities asap and consequently going for massive content mods. The middle ground, which would be curiosity just for the sake of it, mere curiosity, seems less and less attractive nowadays. This, or maybe small mods are simply better, who knows.

[bobucles]

The game already takes a college degree to play. Why would the typical player want to add more?

[Nightinggale]

Wow, a lot of really good answers showed up, which brings up a lot of valid issues to consider.

11 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

As you know, i run into some trouble with your mods on my own. I dont mind, and i´m happy to provide you with bug reports to improve your work. But others just want to play, and dont like to be bothered with bugs. Considering this, there should be another faction, including "small" mods into the game, because its common sense, they wont harm as much as heavy mods, if something goes south.

Ladies and gentlemen: the only forum user to report bugs to me so far

Despite only having two real bugs, they both are valid points for not using mods since they could both crash the game on load. One was regarding setting up data, which isn't included in the savegame. This was an easy fix once I learned of the issue. The other was due to me reusing the same code in two mods and the savegame code didn't like having two classes with the same name. This was a lot more tricky because the fix itself was easy (just rename), but since the data had ended up in savegames, High Flow Storage now has a few source files, which aren't normally used, but will make it possible to flawlessly read savegames made before the fix.

Now that I know more about how the savegame system works, I won't make the same mistake again. However it does highlight what is indeed a valid concern. Klei joined a discussion about what happens if mods are removed because they apparently want savegames to be loadable even if mods are removed and they apparently took note of the modding community's experiences, particularly the failures. Maybe the next release will be more stable in this regard.

11 hours ago, beowulf2010 said:

in this pre-release phase I find it difficult to give good feedback on things if I'm not playing the same game the dev's have designed. 

That's a very good point. At the same time the pre-release state is also a very strong argument for me to make mods because I report whatever issue I encounter while looking/using the source code and Klei has fixed multiple of those bug reports. This means my choice of focusing on modding instead of playing the pre-release has resulted in the release being more modding friendly and more FPS friendly. Arguably both creating mods and not using mods are for the same reasons: making useful feedback, which improves the quality of the release.

9 hours ago, badgamer123 said:

Sensory Overload is great ,it just too much stuff put in the same mod.a option to split/seperated into many small mod would help new player go to try it.

Maybe, but it would be awful for me to maintain. The thing is that a not insignificant amount of the code for each sensor is shared meaning releasing multiple mods involves a lot of double work. I generally prefer two features to be in two mods in case I only want one. However in case of the sensors, if you don't like a certain sensor, then don't use that sensor. It's not like the mod adds anything, which is forced on the player like modifiers to dupe movement speed. It's only sensors, which the player can choose to not build.

Savegames would also be a concern if I started to split now. Not impossible, but not trivial either.

9 hours ago, badgamer123 said:

another thing very important to consider is,as SharraShimada suggestion the remove mod effect is need to considered,and affect the mod popularity.I guess most player will consider the risk of the mod suddenly no longer supported etc,thus they will trend to look for something not break down completely in case the worst happen.

That's another really good point, but small mods might not be as safe as people imagine. There was one mod, which would remove dupe brain for FPS. Not knowing what that meant, I subscribed and looked through the source code and it essentially means dupes look for chores less frequently. Sounds good right? No, the mod is removed because dupes lost the ability to eat. It was a very small mod, but it was gamebreaking anyway. The idea that small mods are safer than big mods is flawed.

9 hours ago, badgamer123 said:

I personally install the water sieve not fixed temp ,instead of the 2 water sieve mod(the 2 water sieve mode let you keep the fix output for heat deletion).since it not break the save even i turn off the mod etc.

Another very valid point. However ironically the dynamic output mod is more likely to break than adding a new water sieve. The reason is how it change from fixed to dynamic temperature. I changed the setting specifically while the other mod overwrites the entire output with modded output where just one setting is changed. If Klei changes one of the other settings, my mod will cope with it just fine while the other mod will overwrite the changes Klei might make.

[badgamer123]

41 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

Another very valid point. However ironically the dynamic output mod is more likely to break than adding a new water sieve. The reason is how it change from fixed to dynamic temperature. I changed the setting specifically while the other mod overwrites the entire output with modded output where just one setting is changed. If Klei changes one of the other settings, my mod will cope with it just fine while the other mod will overwrite the changes Klei might make.

about the water sieve thing ,I actually installed both this and the steel ladder(my most loved one,the only extra building mod i got,I will grab the single door one if they still don't make it in final release....such thing should not need a mod...),and during the QoL 2 to QoL 3 change the mod not carry over ,have to re-download from steam,i mess up a bit in removing the mod folder it seem,my save game lose all the steel ladder but the water sieve still able to pump(it just back to 40 output). which is the reason in my i consider a bit safer(i end up look carefully and deleted those mod folder and re-re-download again and load a older save lol ).however your example also hold true,it a matter of preference i guess.

Edit:one more thing,to help player more willing to try out some "unknown" ,a better explanation on the effect of add/remove of such mod will be welcome(there some mod that have warning to tell you the save cannot load after you install in a save),other will be safe to add/remove without much problem.i think a lot player worry to crash the save data completely,it could be the player effort to do it(add a mod,save,remove that mod. load...ok seem safe),but I doubt how many player will do it...(me included).

[Nightinggale]

9 minutes ago, badgamer123 said:

one more thing,to help player more willing to try out some "unknown" ,a better explanation on the effect of add/remove of such mod will be welcome(there some mod that have warning to tell you the save cannot load after you install in a save),other will be safe to add/remove without much problem.i think a lot player worry to crash the save data completely,it could be the player effort to do it(add a mod,save,remove that mod. load...ok seem safe),but I doubt how many player will do it...(me included).

Whoa, I completely forgot about that, partly because they all have the standard restrictions (safe to add, removing removes buildings added by mod, otherwise safe to remove). I did write about this when an upgrade wouldn't upgrade existing buildings, meaning people would have to deconstruct and construct again to gain the logic output port or whatever I added in the update.

You are right though. Not mentioning anything due to no issues can't be read as no issues. I'm the only one who knows how I planned all the mods to be safe.

[Sasza22]

I`m not a person that uses mods but if i would consider installing one it would be either something simple that adds or alters one thing (like the half door one) or a complex mod with a lot of positive reviews and tried by many players. I can uderstand many people think similar. Just alter a small part of the game that annoys me rather than overhauling large parts of it i might not understand or might not affect me.

Also small mods have simple names. Again "half door" is pretty self explanatory. Just a one tile door. Sounds useful. On the other hand "sensory overload" sounds like something negative and it`s not obvious wht it does based on the name. People might assume it`s a disease pack or something. In the end it`s like selling stuff. Advertising is important and a bad name of the product hurts a lot.

[Nightinggale]

1 hour ago, Sasza22 said:

On the other hand "sensory overload" sounds like something negative and it`s not obvious wht it does based on the name. People might assume it`s a disease pack or something. In the end it`s like selling stuff. Advertising is important and a bad name of the product hurts a lot.

Then what should it be named? It started out as "More temperature sensors", but then people requested all sorts of sensors and I renamed the mod. The screenshot of just the original sensors might not be that great anymore either, or maybe it was always bad.

Also it's important for me to point out that I don't need to get more people to use my mods. I just used my mods as examples because that's the mods where I know the most of the subscription stats. The topic is mainly because I'm puzzled that it seems the longer I spend on a mod, the less popular it seems to be. It seems counter intuitive to me, hence why I ask the question.

[Yunru]

1 hour ago, Nightinggale said:

Then what should it be named? It started out as "More temperature sensors"

"More sensors"

A name doesn't have it be creative, just descriptive. Creative is a bonus.

[Sasza22]

7 hours ago, Nightinggale said:

Then what should it be named?

I`m not an expert in selling stuff. Just stated my initial reaction based on the name. Some people don`t go further than reading the name so it`s important. Calling it "extra sensor pack" states clear what the mod is about. As for the screenshot you could just put the build menu with some of the new sensors visible. Kinda hard to make a proper sreenshot for it. Much better would be a list of new sensors next to the art they use in game.

7 hours ago, Nightinggale said:

Also it's important for me to point out that I don't need to get more people to use my mods.

I understand this. I`m just trying to find reasons why people behave this way. As i said i`d rather install a tiny mod with one thing than a big pack. Might be one reason. People are lazy. If there is a long list of possible mods they won`t waste time on reading each description. I`m sure a more obvious name should make more people look it up.

[badgamer123]

a bit of sale focus rename:extra sensors bundle? everyone like bundle i guess lol.

btw the no cost gas filter should move to a new type of mod.(let people to change the config on how much it draw power would be better)

[CrutchPunk]

I love mods. I love seeing the creativity of the community, and seeing different ways to better the game, or change/add to the experience...

I've subscribed to a good handful of different mods.. yes, mostly small ones, but that's because that's the majority of the mods out right now. Sensory Overload (personally, for a new name, I like "Too Many Sensors" or something similar, as players of other Klei games like DST might understand what it is, easier) is a miracle mod... I've utilized every sensor I could manage a system for, in my current save. If I were to remove mods, I'd honestly remove tiny door before the extra sensors.

I think the main thing is that smaller mods saturate the current mod library, but it's also hard to know what BIG stuff you want to add to your game, because it's still in development. I love bigger mods.. IIt's just hard with the limited modding capabilities in the current system to find something appealing. There's only so much that can be done.. like changing the colors, etc.

As has been stated before, small QoL mods (like 1x tile door) will always probably be slightly more popular, because it's a small fix to major common annoyance.Once modding allows for custom artwork, and more MAJOR game changes are possible, in the stable game, I can see a rise in the use of "bigger" mods.

[Maxposting]

noobs like me already think the game is complex and overwhelming enough without complex-er mods.

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 6/14/2019 at 5:14 PM, Nightinggale said:

I noticed a certain pattern, which puzzles me. When sorting mods for popularity, it's like the big or hard to make mods are first. In fact speaking of my own mods, the by far most popular mods are Half Door and Player Controlled Switch. It's not like they are carefully planned and gone through a lengthy development to aim for perfection. In fact it's the only two mods I have made, which are released on the same day as I got the idea. They really are mini mods. For instance Half Door has 2281 subscribers in just 5 days.

On the other hand, Sensory Overload adds sensors... lots of sensors. It took me around a month to make and it has been out for 27 days and... just 404 subscribers.

It's not just my mods. The most popular mod is the one about calculating the average geyser output. Flow Splitter is also really popular. It's not that I don't get the popularity of the mentioned mods. It's just that I don't get why bigger mods (coding wise) seems to be so unpopular, relatively speaking.

 

Now I ask the question I'm really wondering about: why is it that it looks like the fewer lines of code a mod has, the more popular it is?

I can't speak for others, but it seems to me that the mods you mention as most popular are simple fixes to things that have irritated a lot of players.  Most players don't really need more sensors, but they REALLY like to be able to click a switch without having to wait for a dupe to go hit it.  

It isn't that the bigger mods are unpopular, exactly, its that they change the game play considerably, or add features that most players aren't using.  For example, I'm currently running the mod that eliminates autosave.  I have about a dozen mods, which I've tried and found fun and interesting, but they dramatically change the game, and I'm not currently to that point yet.  Sensory Overload adds a bunch of sensors -- which is awesome! -- but I don't have a need for more sensors right now.   In fact, at the moment, I use the standard thermo sensor and atmo sensor... and not a lot else.  But the half-door mod?  I use doors horizontally along ladders ALL the time, and its quite annoying to require two spaces for that door when one is sufficient -- so click! Subscribed!

The point is that it isn't the complexity of the mod that is reducing popularity -- its that frequently the simple mods address issues that a much larger portion of ONI players have encountered.

I would also like to thank you, @Nightinggale, along with all the other mod developers, for taking the time to create and add mods.  Even if they don't appear to be popular, they are definitely welcome additions.  =^.^=

 

[PhailRaptor]

Another reason, that I'm not seeing brought up yet, is that when looking at a big mod, I might see 3 or 4 things in it that I really love, but it comes bundled with 1 or 2 things that I absolutely hate.  And usually, you can't turn these additional things on or off once the mod is already loaded -- it's an all or nothing deal.

As an example, Civ 5 had several mods that I was quite interested in, from the titles.  I started reading through the description, and it's ticking all the boxes.  Things like no cap on Exp from Barbarians, Barbarians that advance with global science level, all good...  wait, why can Ranged units no longer defend when attacked by Melee ones?  That doesn't make any sense!

For this reason, I prefer looking at smaller mods that predominately do only 1 thing, maybe 2.  It gives me better control of how I'm manipulating my experience away from the default.  And if a compatibility issue arises, whether it's between individual mods or with updates to the base game, I will lose fewer of my tweaks if they are individual nuggets, versus a huge ingot.  This can be limiting, because a larger mod can add whole new systems, where as a smaller one probably can't, but that's usually a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Not saying any of this necessarily applies to your mods, but something to keep in mind.  Looking at your Sensory Overload, you could break that up into a series of smaller ones.  Group the types of sensors into a few related groups, and release them separately.  I bet if you made just the Liquid Element Sensor as a standalone, you'd have another high subscriber rate.

[Nightinggale]

I'm thinking of renaming Sensory Overload to "Automation Sensor Megapack". It says what it is: sensors for automation and it's likely the biggest collection of sensors to ever be made for ONI. On the other hand if I split it up (see below), renaming might not be a good idea.

On 6/16/2019 at 7:41 AM, ScreenNameMissing said:

Sensory Overload is a miracle mod... I've utilized every sensor I could manage a system for, in my current save. If I were to remove mods, I'd honestly remove tiny door before the extra sensors.

Statements like this means more than just some number. 40, 400 or 4000 doesn't matter as long as those who use it are happy.

9 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Sensory Overload adds a bunch of sensors -- which is awesome! -- but I don't have a need for more sensors right now.   In fact, at the moment, I use the standard thermo sensor and atmo sensor... and not a lot else. 

That's another issue I have been wondering about. A lot of people haven't really figured out how the automation system works, or discovered how beneficial it can be when used to its full potential. It's not wrong not to use automation because the goal is to have fun and if you have fun without automation, then that's fine. It does however give a valid reason to why my sensor mod is by far the least subscribed.

I have been wondering about making some community effort to make simple automation setups. I suspect setting up timing and a maze of gates is what prevents people from really getting started with automation, which begs the question: how much can you do without using gates at all? And how much can you do if you allow only AND gates?

Imagine you have an aquatuner in polluted water and you do not want the water to boil. This means the water should be below 119.3 C. If you add a building temperature sensor and set it to below 118 C, then you can push the aquatuner right to the edge while making sure the water won't boil.

Another example is to let a metal volcano drop liquid metal on a steel tile, which then over time transfers the heat away (steam turbine?). The question is how to get the metal away once it's cold. The answer would be an item temperature sensor, which turns a transfer arm on when the hottest item is below a certain threshold. Alternatively the sensor opens a door and allow dupes to pick up the metal if it's cold enough.

The same with item germ sensor. Activate the transfer arm to remove items from your chlorine room when there are no germs on the items in the pile on the floor.

There are plenty of interesting machines to build with just one sensor and one building to turn on/off.

8 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

Another reason, that I'm not seeing brought up yet, is that when looking at a big mod, I might see 3 or 4 things in it that I really love, but it comes bundled with 1 or 2 things that I absolutely hate.  And usually, you can't turn these additional things on or off once the mod is already loaded -- it's an all or nothing deal.

As an example, Civ 5 had several mods that I was quite interested in, from the titles.  I started reading through the description, and it's ticking all the boxes.  Things like no cap on Exp from Barbarians, Barbarians that advance with global science level, all good...  wait, why can Ranged units no longer defend when attacked by Melee ones?  That doesn't make any sense!

I fully agree and it is something I have been considering. Adding more buildings to a mod shouldn't be a big issue as they are optional and people can choose to not build them. This means having 4 buildings in High Flow Storage should be fine because if you only want the liquid buildings, you can just skip the gas buildings and nothing bad will happen. The coal generator mod on the other hand will replace the vanilla coal generator (savegame safe!) and because of that it has to be a standalone mod. If I add some other feature to it and somebody wants the other feature, but want to keep the vanilla coal generator, then that would be a problem.

8 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

And if a compatibility issue arises, whether it's between individual mods or with updates to the base game, I will lose fewer of my tweaks if they are individual nuggets, versus a huge ingot.  This can be limiting, because a larger mod can add whole new systems, where as a smaller one probably can't, but that's usually a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

To me this is likely the most important statement in the entire thread and it has given me something to think about.

8 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

Not saying any of this necessarily applies to your mods, but something to keep in mind.  Looking at your Sensory Overload, you could break that up into a series of smaller ones.  Group the types of sensors into a few related groups, and release them separately.  I bet if you made just the Liquid Element Sensor as a standalone, you'd have another high subscriber rate.

Splitting up the mod is likely easy. Splitting up without hurting existing savegames is more complex. If/when I split up, I suspect I have to make a new mod with new buildings. They might look identical to the player, but they have to have different names internally and they have to be able to coexist. Sensory Overload will then be updated to remove buildings (sensors) from the build menu and tech tree. However they will still exist in the code meaning whatever is already constructed will stay in the game.

This sounds like more than just a one day task even if I'm not counting testing, but it would give me a chance to update the sensors at the same time. I learned more about how the ONI coding system works while modding and particularly the early sensors doesn't have as clean code as the latest. This is currently unfixable due to savegame compatibility, but if everything is replaced anyway, sensors could get a code cleaning too.

I also learned how to customize the sliders better, but I'm not sure if it would make sense to replace sliders on any of the sensors. Technically I can do that now, but I'm not sure that I want to do so.