DefunctCantaloupe

While this may be true for most folders, again this isn't universally true so I don't really buy the argument. 90% of what goes on here really boils down to "my folder is bad, thus all folders are bad, thus we should ban all folders". That's fair, and I recognize the risks. But I've tried to set up my plugins folder last night. I spent literally an hour clicking "next" on hundreds of installers. Why can't it just be one folder that's dragged and dropped instead of forcing me to go into literally dozens of practically identical prop collection folders? And yet that proposal was made in march, 8 months ago, and there seems to have been no meaningful progress except for people trying to get a "collection" set-up. I'm trying to be polite, but at the same time when every single response seems to be some variation of "my folder sucks, lets wait for the magical solution and make no changes to sqo meanwhile" it becomes increasingly obvious why nothing seems to have changed. The problem is part 2, "infringing on anyone's rights". By getting stuck on this supposed higher calling, no progress is meaningfully being made. I'm glad that there are now collections to download, I'm not glad that those collections are made up of literally hundreds of individual installers that all must be went through one-at-a-time all to end up in the exact same destination. I've tried setting it up. Unless I'm horribly stupid, these folders are a nightmare to navigate and are needlessly complex given that the alternative would be a single folder download that takes 3 minutes to drag and drop. Compare to sqo where I have already spent almost two hours trying to navigate this maze and have now effectively bricked my game because only half the dependencies are installed. How can anyone look at this and say "well at least we're protecting the sacred rights of @SimGoober, last seen on December 4th 2012"? By protecting the supposed intellectual property of a player who has literally not been seen in 8 years, every person who wants to try to download this collection is forced to waste hours navigating freeware installers for every individual tree so their lots aren't bricked. This is not a reasonable compromise. I've tried finding them, every time a half decent one is put up it's immediately yanked down by a throng of users shouting "but the recognition!!!". Thus, the only ones that remain are junk. I don't think that people are trying to "stymie" the discussion, but I think it's quite telling that pretty much every argument boils down to either 1) extremely low frequency events 2) my folder doesn't work 3) "the collection is coming and that'll solve it" or 4) suffering makes you a stronger player I don't think this happens in anywhere approaching meaningful frequency to be relevant. I have literally tried to research any of these plugins and have failed. I find it extremely unlikely that any overlap is going to take place. If you're motivated enough to find (and pay for) these 'premium' plugins, then you're probably not the type of person to download these folders in the first place. Literally the point is to have one folder that works, that does not need to be messed with. I don't understand these theoretical counterfactuals where somebody says "ah but what if you mix and match, you won't understand the content". Of course the content doesn't make sense, thats why the folders exist in the first place. You literally are trying to argue in favor of forcing new players to spend hours learning about acronyms and whatnot. How is it that so many of the arguments seems to boil down to "I suffered and you must too"? And yet people seem to think that collections are better than just legalizing the uploads? What do you think is more work, creating a collection of hundreds of mods or just uploading a folder? Yes, I recognize that the folders may be broken, but since its just one folder it'd take only a few minutes to replace it, as opposed to when a player has to mess with literally hundreds of independent files and bugtest them. I don't think this is a realistic world. Players would get a folder that is decent and easy to set-up (as opposed to having to navigate some nightmarish collection), and then if they get hooked on the game they would create their own folder. Instead, they're forced to either 1) suffer through playing a game which is very outdated and has some insanely stupid bugs or 2) try to learn the ins and outs of modding before they even know if they want to play in the first place. If you're truly interested in keeping the forum alive, I think one necessary step is making it significantly easier for new players to start playing the game and have fun, rather than trying to gatekeep every single newbie with hours of technical reading and bugtesting. Look, people here make a lot of good arguments why their own folders suck, would be difficult to configure, would be bug filled, etc. But I don't see the connection between that and a universal ban. The recognition arguments I think are pretty widely recognized as low impact relative to their costs, and collections are a time black hole that doesn't really resolve many of the problems new players face. But imagine a world where people are correct, and that the folders are too complex for use and a collection is still needed. Here, legalizing folders is still the correct move, as creating a mod collection in this manner would take only a few hours instead of 6 months. If everyone is truly interested in finding a solution, I think it's right in front of you. There is no need to be shackled by rules that were written a decade ago. This game isn't where it was a decade ago. Pretty much every big name modder has left. Most websites have died. No amount of cargo cult rituals will bring them back.

As long as people treat mod collections as a viable solution, no actual solution will be found. The standard should not be a high effort project that unites the 5 nations. Anybody should be allowed to upload their folder, even if it is just a basic list of lots and mods, organized in a way that doesn't make your eyes bleed. Collection packs, while a glittery shiny idea that in theory solves all the problems, in reality is just a way to try to loophole the regulatory thicket the forum has created. First, let people upload folders. Then, let people try to build upon those existing folders. Building a decent collection should not be complicated (almost everybody posting here already has one), but it is made complex because of the outdated rules people are trying to cling to. Setting up a folder to download should not take six months of concentrated work, and yet it does because of the number of rules and regulations and requirements that must be met for it to be "valid for consideration". Again, consider the costs and benefits. Look at how much time people are wasting because of the rules that have been put up here.

I understand, and I realize a lot of hard work went into building the mods, and I understand the emotions that are related to that. On the same note though, I think the remaining community feels an overly strong sense of obligation to these MIA modders far beyond what is reasonable, and that is extending into concretely harming current players. Is there a more polite way to make the point? I don't think so, my point is that a direct comparison of harms must be done and when you do a tit-for-tat of "what is gained by players giving 'recognition'" vs "what do you force new players to slog through" only then does the choice become truly clear. Yes, I realize that I'm trivializing what 'recognition' means, but the alternative is puffing up 'recognition' into some highest calling that somehow makes it more important than everything else. It's clear this discussion is at a stalemate. The thread was posted 3 years ago. It doesn't appear any meaningful reflection has taken place, as every time something comes up a group of hardcore players comes out of the woodwork to say "i have suffered and thus you must too" before posting a list of 25 reasons why their mod folder is too unwieldy for a new player to use and thus all folders must be blocked. This is ridiculous. The community shouldn't keep punting the ball waiting for some magical mod collection downloader who is able to contact the spirit of steve22 by Ouija board and unites the 5 nations of universal permission, user support, free hosting space, configurability, and foolproof. I don't expect a rule lifting to mean that perfect folders suddenly exist and solve all the problems. I do expect that a rule lifting would create a better world than we have now, with almost no external cost (because before y'all complain about 'boohoo i don't want to support my folder' remember than if a rule is lifted that does not mean you personally must participate in folder uploading).

Given these mods are many years old, I think this is a moot point. As I mentioned, I think allowing new players to be able to play the game without forcing them to bugtest and hunt through a sea of dead links takes precedence to letting steve22, last seen in July of 2011, know somebody said "thanks". I think you also heavily overestimate how people actually show recognition and appreciation. Do you truly believe the type of player who would need to download one of these collections as opposed to going one by one is the same type of player who would actually recognize the mod uploader? Such a train of events would have to happen for this argument to hold water, from the player actually being able to find the mod to the player knowing which mod does what to the mod uploader still existing that the benefits of this become so marginal as to be nonexistent. My understanding is the collection was just a list of quality mods, and did not contain any tweaks nor were they checked for cross-compatibility. The CD also costs $50. If mods truly were "optional", why does no remaining player use the vanilla version? Because the vanilla game is an objective downgrade in every conceivable sense from what you get when you mod it. I find it interesting you bring up the minecraft example, given that minecraft is exceptionally well known for using modpacks such as feed the beast. Imagine, a coherent collection of mods and tweaks tested and designed for compatibility? Wow, wouldn't that sound like literally exactly what I think people should be allowed to upload. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Do you truly believe players, when building their mod folder, download mods one at a time? This is not how people act, nobody says "oh man I have this great 2x3 lot, time to find an apartment building to fill it". If you're building a folder from scratch (as say, a new player might), you would go through the entire process at once, downloading hundreds of mods. This is what makes this such a large issue, as when you're building such a large folder (as people tend to have), you inevitably run into build issues. The alternative of booting up your game after every single mod is installed would require I take a week off and spend my entire day doing nothing but opening and closing sim-city. This may be an argument against why you want to upload your folder, but there is no reason why people can't upload their folders as abandonware as has happened to pretty much every mod on this site. Ultimately, the issue is simple. There are a lot of arguments on why it would be bad for users to download folders. But those arguments are only convincing on a person by person basis, and I don' think they're anywhere near convincing to say "we should ban folders". The only argument against why folder uploads are bad is the idea of a long dead-modder somehow still caring about being "attributed" for a mod he uploaded 15 years prior. What do you think is more important: allowing new players to play the game as has been the standard for the last 10 years without forcing them to fight seas of dead links and folder compatibility issues, or letting steve22, last seen in July of 2011, have the sweet thought of 1 guy possibly remembering his name for 14 seconds as his mod is manually downloaded? I think the answer is quite straightforward.

Thanks for the response. I've done my best to address what you've brought up: Whoever creates the collection. You bring up valid points as to why creating a collection would be highly difficult to do. As I said, the political will clearly is not there. This is all the more reason why the alternatives shouldn't be blocked, waiting for a perfect storm of a team to come out and build this piece of software. It would be up to whoever publishes their collection to decide how they want to manage help. Most I'd imagine would upload "as-is". It's likely that adding any mods to the folder or trying to change config settings would break it. However, the entire point of the folder is to have it be pre-configured, and thus there would be no need to add more mods or to muck around with it. That's fine. Ideally, there would be many collections to choose from, so a user can find a collection that isn't organized confusingly. I don't understand why this is an argument against folder uploads. I would use just one folder that is good. I don't have the time or energy to mess with configs. While this may be an issue with your folder, I don't see why this is a universal argument against folder uploads in general. That is precisely why I think folder uploads is a good thing, as it would already contain the "thousand of file mods". I don't understand why you phrase this as though I would be against it, given that one of the arguments in my post was that modifying the mods is tedious and difficult to do. If the uploader wishes to do so that's fine, but the point of a folder upload is so a new user doesn't have to spend hours messing with a ton of mods trying to get things to work. Up to whoever does the upload. It's not about getting the perfect folder that's exactly what I want. It's about having a working collection of mods that is known to work that doesn't involve hours of configuration. I'm not trying to be picky, I just want to have a decently sized collection of quality content that meshes together without being forced to sacrifice a rather significant block of my free time to set it up. The people who are selfish are people who are against uploads in general. I don't want to force anybody to upload their file. I am against the general consensus of "don't you dare upload your folder, we'll ban you, stronger players make their own folder, here's a list of 25 excuses why folder uploads are bad". To be clear, you can say "I don't want to upload my folder". That's fine. But you writing an essay of what is ultimately personal reasons why your folder sucks as though that's a universal argument against the practice of sharing folders? I think that crosses the line. I don't see how you can extrapolate that to it being only me. It's about a lot of new players. Please, don't gatekeep new players by trying to force them to go through the process you've gone through. This is literally the 'crabs in a bucket' mentality that I mentioned above.

I'm a new player who's been trying to get into SC4 for a while since I stopped playing it in middle school and frankly the lack of decent downloads has been overwhelming. I have things to do. I have exams and job applications to send out and papers to write and taxes to fill out. I don't just have the ability to set aside a full day (or multiple days) to dig through some "suggested mods list", make accounts on multiple websites, download thousands of files, their dependencies, the dependencies' dependencies, the dependency bug fix, the bug fix compatibility fix for night, organize the mods by category, by author, by date, modify some files, check off several dozen seemingly random configuration options (better not mess it up, bc if I do the entire folder will shatter), modify the mods, set up the folder, try to figure out which mod is the one breaking everything, etc. I tried to build a mod folder last two years ago. I gave up after wasting approximately two hours on a wild goose chase through dead links, dead images, and broken mods. This stuff about "respecting the mod authors" I find highly unconvincing. This game's been abandonware for almost a decade. Almost all the modders have families and whatnot, I don't think there's a particular interest on their end in harvesting the last few downloads for a mod they wrote 15 years prior. But a lot of people, myself included, have been held back from actually wanting to play the game because every guide that I find on how to set up my game for a good run requires i set aside a ton of my time to slog through dead forums and dead websites trying to cobble together some folder that won't even work properly the first time. This forum is populated by a special type of person. I recognize that, after all, you have to be a special type of person if you're interested in playing a game that's been irrelevant for so long. But I don't really see much of that type of perspective, and I do see a lot of crabs-in-bucket and survivorship bias of "well I spent the time making my mod folder and it made me a stronger smarter player and a lot sexier too". The solution of making a starter pack is a good idea, if there was actually the political will for it. Obviously, there isn't. But holding back any level of stopgap solution out of an outsized concern for players who no longer exist? I think that's the wrong move. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Stop trying to gatekeep new players away by forcing them to sacrifice tons of time on building a mod folder there's no guarantee will even work. I want to play this game too. A lot of hard work has gone into creating compatible, balanced, aesthetically pleasing mod folders. I recognize that. Literal years of combined efforts have gone into making said folders. Preventing others from reaping those fruit I think is a terrible, selfish decision.