The way the game breaks core features based on third-party mods when updates are released is really baffling to me.
One of Elemental's biggest features is the novel way in which it handles modding. The game has literally been built from the ground up to make modding fun and easy, not only for creating them, but also in the way they are deployed to the public. Quite frankly, I have never seen a game make modding so easy and seamless before. What you are going to have, in just a few short months, are literally hundreds of quality mods for people to use. This is a good thing.
What's not good is when we are told we must delete all of our mods before applying a new update to the game. With the promised update frequency we have been given by Frogboy, this sounds like an utter nightmare. This is going to be a serious problem in the future with people having to scour their files for hours trying to rid their computer of every file that "supposedly" causes a conflict with a new build. You will also see the forums crawling with people whining that feature X is broken in the new update, when, in reality, it is some obscure mod causing the issue. This will be a pain in the neck for Stardock to deal with.
What's baffling to me is the seemingly paradoxical way mods are being treated at this point. To install most mods, I am required to dump all of the mod files exclusively into my MOD folder. I'm not changing any core game-play files, I'm not overwriting any XML. I'm putting it into an EXCLUSIVE folder that has literally no direct impact on any other file. Sounds great right? Wrong.
If you're going to separate your mods from your core files, and then not truly keep them separate when push comes to shove, something is seriously wrong here.
This is programming 101. I am a professional web developer, I do this stuff for a living. There are literally hundreds of web applications that I maintain for my company, from Ecommerce stores to system APIs and other web frameworks. In 2010, you can download mods to your hearts desire that become activated based on the core file system requirements. The mods will break if there is a conflict with core files. The core files do not break. This is because the system only activates files that do not override core functions.
This is what I propose to remedy this issue: Require mods to come with a build version. As soon as the game launches, it checks and activates all mods that match the current build version. If they do not, they do not become activated. It's really quite simple: do not allow game features to break because someone's mod conflicts with newer core functions. I don't even care if there is a notification that a mod has become deactived, just break the mod until it gets updated. In fact, don't even show the downloadable mods from the workshop if the version does not match the current build. This will give the modders time to go in and update their mod for the latest version and deploy them effectively.
Elemental just screams, "MOD ME!". This is a great thing, but there needs to be a better way to handle them when updates are released.
