[2021] Unjustified (?) opinion: I'm a little worried about mod inclusion. Please convince me I'm worried over nothing.

Before Y'all downvote, hear me out. What I'd love to come out of this thread is for someone to convince me i'm 100% wrong on this, but...

I'm really worried mods are going to end up fracturing the community. With everyone and their server having a different selection of mods to play with, will there actually be any servers for people to play together on?

100% of my game modding experience comes from single-player, where I play games like Skyrim, Civilisation and Total War with hundreds of mods. But this is all single-player. I do Co-op campaigns in TW with mods, so that is the closest to multi-player modding I have, and it is a god-awful pain to sync mod-lists and honestly half the time we just get so frustrated trying to get mods to work, we just play something else.

So I've never actually played an MP-focused game with lots of mod integration, so maybe my lack of experience is just colouring my worry of the whole thing. I sincerely hope this is the case. But what is to stop the game from dying because every server requires a different set of mods? I certainly don't want to spend time messing around with mod-lists between every mission, and I don't really want to jump between games with wildly different rules/mechanics due to whatever flavour of overhaul the host likes, especially if I'm not familiar with the mods running. I'm sort of imagining what it would be like for a random civ player to jump into one of my modded games and have no idea what is going on because I've filled it with mods that tailor the game to my specific tastes.

And if everyone installs their own preferred mod-list and doesn't wants to be bothered changing things around all the time (because who wants to compare mod-lists and go through making sure they are correct before joining every server), won't that just lead to everyone playing solo and the multiplayer aspect dying? I suppose it will encourage people to stay in a server once they are there, which will cut down on the people leaving after missions. Sure, you can say that's a problem only if you stick to your own preferred mods, but then do i really want to play a game where I have to download the shotgun 0 spread 5000 x damage mod just because the host has it, and their game happens to be the only one open when I want to play? Except another server with a 0 grappling hook cooldown mod.

I'm probably just over-worried because big games with hundreds of mods is my only frame of reference. For people who asked for/wanted this change, what do you see coming out of it, and how to you see the community avoiding fracture as everyone develops their personal modlist preference?

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To clarify, the official mod support will include three mod categories; "cosmetic", "serveronly", and "requiredbyall" (names are not final).

Cosmetic mods are mods that only you can see. This could be minor UI changes, HUD modifications, anime profile pics, or meme sound bites.
Server-only mods are mods that change the basic rules of the missions, like the amount of gunk seeds in the level, nitra- cost for resupplies, etc,
Requiredbyall mods are mods that will change the character, like giving the engineer more turrets, etc.

Cosmetic mods will have no influence on gameplay as such, and will not be separated. The other two categories can change the gameplay and will prompt you to play on a separate save game, either a clone of your unmodded save or a fresh save. You can always copy your unmodded save to a modded save slot, but not the other way around.
Modded savegames can't see unmodded games, and unmodded savegames can't see modded games. The idea is to let people enjoy the pure base game without having to be subjected to unintended gameplay changes.

Note that mods already exist and that the update is giving the modders the tools to legitimize the mods and put them in categories that will help people interact (or avoid) with game mods. The system will initially rely on the community of modders to follow some instructions for metadata, so we can have a nice clean integration with Deep Rock Galactic. It's a clear improvement over the current wild west approach. There will obviously still be modifications that people will use to cheat, and there's not a lot we can do about that as it is, other than add tools to make it easier to work with.

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