[2021] Mod support and what the devs count as cheating.

In the steampost 3 days ago, devs released a steampost regarding the 34.5 update in which they stated how they are going to handle progression altering mods.

Sandbox is anything that changes progression and therefore can only be played with others so creating an additional save file would be recommended which is good.

Verified is anything that just changes the game on a visual and audio change so gameplay stays the same which means everyone can join in and have fun while retaining their original save which is also good.

Now... here we come to a part which i highly disagree. Approved mods. "Examples of Approved mods would be more challenging or alternative game modes, changes to weapon stats, and mods that moderately alter gameplay elements while still retaining progression in line with the regular game."

Why do i disagree with the decision that this should also be in line with verified mods and not sandbox? Well simple. Change the stats of your weapons to the point that haz 5 is so easy that you breeze through and farm yourself every little bit of those recources making progression, again, different. Yeah you earn the same amount of recources and exp but the speed at which you do is drasticly faster since now your pickaxe has a range of 50, a normal hit 1 shots bedrock and the GL with fatboy has unlimited ammo which does so much damage on each radiation tick that dreadnaughts are oneshotted and deal 0 damage to players.

Basicly, progression is still destroyed.

So unless the devs check every mod avalible and every update the modder does to the mod after getting approved so that the stat changes are just minor and not much affecting the gameplay, this will break the game aswell.

TLDR: Anything that changes gameplay or progression should be put into sandbox no matter how small or big the change while everything changing the audio and visuals of the game should be accessible for regular gameplay.

External link →

So, I see you are addressing stuff like weapon stats. I think it's important to see that in the context of the full sentence. "while still retaining progression in line with the regular game." Obviously, a rifle that one-shots everything doesn't belong outside of the sandbox. A rifle that has some values tweaked would. The idea is that overall if the mod doesn't make you skip ahead or skip content, it's most likely fair game. If you go down in the mines, spend time down there and go back up, you've been in the game loop, and that is what actually matters. You might have used a brighter flashlight, or maybe the ammo drops are 25% off, but you put in the work. The only mods (AFAIK) we allow to boost XP and rewards out of the sandbox, are the ones that also up the challenge accordingly. You gotta work to get paid.
That should hopefully squash that part of your worries. I know the example isn't super clear about it, but our main objective is to maintain the integrity of the game, while still embracing the creativity of the modding community.
As mentioned elsewhere, using mods to cheat isn't effective at all, and hopefully, the new features will make it easy to distinguish modded games from non-modded games.

That said, we will check the mods, and it's possible to report mods that slip through the categorization. Intentionally slipping sandbox features into the other categories either from the start or with updates is a pretty surefire way to get locked out of uploading mods. We really don't want to police the mods too much, so we're counting on transparency and communication to build a good and functional modding community around DRG.

Again, it's Friday night, and I am not 100% updated on the latest modding news, but I'll append this Monday if need be.

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