Restructuring the C&C forum for C:BE

With Beyond Earth coming out in a few weeks I wanted to know if the mods had considered reorganizing the creation & customization forum to improve its usability for newer members. Much of the structure for civ 5's C&C forum seems to be copy-pasted from civ 4's C&C forum. If the same is done for Beyond Earth we'll likely see many new users posting technical questions in the tutorials section.

I can think four broad use cases for the C&C forum:
1) Mod makers looking for technical help
2) Mod makers looking to host, present or otherwise "advertise" a completed mod
3) Mod users looking to talk about a specific mod
4) Mod users looking to talk about mods in general (looking for a mod to try)

The forum should provide a clear separation between the areas intended for technical questions/tutorials and the section where end-users can talk about mods they like/would be interested in. End-users aren't interested in how the sausage is made and non-technical questions will add chaff to what could be a very useful technical reference resource.

Technical side
Currently technical questions are split between the main forum and the lua/sdk forum. I do not believe this division is valuable. Many problems are best solved by using a combination of XML, Lua and C++ (if it is required). If the person who starts the tread is only familiar with a subset of the technologies required they can state their constraints and other users can suggest workarounds. Centralizing the questions will also make doing searches on that sub-forum a useful technical resource.

Non-technical side
I do not think the current structure of the forum serves mod users very well. Technical questions fill up most of the main forum, making it look like a place that is not for them. There are no reviews of mods or people swapping recommendations and strategy.

Here is a structure I think would work better:
Creation and Customization would have two sub-forums directly under it and no space for threads that were not part of the customization or creation sub-forum.


The suggestions and ideas in the customization may be redundant with the similar forum in General Discussion but my thinking is that it would provide a way for end-users to talk about what they would like to see without risking them posting in the technical help section.

The scenario section of the mod library could be merged into the Game-play mods (which is likely where most mods will end up).
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Are there any other use-cases that this structure does not support? Do others find this structure intuitive and an improvement to copying and pasting the current structure?

Reorganisation is definitely needed IMHO, and I need to give this some more thought, but I'd suggest starting at the very top. "Creation and Customisation" probably doesn't mean that much to new users browsing the main "CIVILIZATION 5/BE" forum. As the the terms "Mods" and "Modding" are used in game, let's just call it "Mods and Modding"

I won't be moving on to CIV5:BE any time soon, but I think any structural format for the new CIV5:BE modding forum that is more intuitive for new users, new modders, users with a burning question will be an improvement. I support anything that will make for less of a burden to Rob, Poukai, and the other moderators. I know the current organization of the "Creation & Customization" forum wasn't intuitively obvious to me when I first started posting here, and before that, when I 1st started using the info on the forum. I think what I experienced is also what causes the constant drain on the moderators of moving question and help-request threads to where they really ought to go.

The only active suggestion I have for the new CIV5:BE forum (and I don't know how hard it would be to do / currate / keep up to date) would be for the tutorials, references, and how-tos: an index of some sort as a sticky. Currently (in the plain CIV5 forum) when you try to find a reference or tutorial you have to search through the pages of the tutorials & references sub-forum, hoping to find a thread on a subject you are looking for. This can be really discouraging for the newer user, whereas an index of title:subject description:link would be more useful and less discouraging.

Some great thoughts so far. I'm watching this thread for your opinions . Would people be interested in a forum that covered both Civ V and BE or would you want a definite split? I'm thinking that largely the same people will be involved in both; some of the "how tos" will be the same and that there's likely to be crossover?

Rob (R8XFT) said:

Would people be interested in a forum that covered both Civ V and BE or would you want a definite split? I'm thinking that largely the same people will be involved in both; some of the "how tos" will be the same and that there's likely to be crossover?

Click to expand...

Definite split. While people and coding (XML/SQL/Lua/C++) techniques may cross-over, it's very unlikely any (non-trivial) complete mods will. Explaining (for the umpteenth time) in one joint forum that "Xyz's Civilization Abc" can't be used in Civ:BE or that "Lmn's Uber Unit" can't be used in Civ:V is going to be both frustrating and confusing. Even those tutorials where the techniques do cross-over will almost certainly need new examples and/or screen-shots. While the "die-hards" may be able to translate Civ:V terms/code/screen-shots into the world of Civ:BE, for newer users it will only cause additional confusion.

Re any new proposed structure.

I would like to see less hierarchy not more.

Click into C&C (or M&M), decide which of N groups I categorise myself as today (what if it's more than one, or I don't understand the nuances of the terms, or I'm not fluent in English?) and click into that. Now decide what type of issue I have. There are going to be many more "should be in Xzy" type reports for the mods to deal with IMHO.

The other disadvantages to sub-sub-forums is they tend to form their own communities and valuable knowledge and proponents of the art get "locked-in" - I think I can count on my fingers the number of posts by Thal not in the CEP et al sub-forum. Or active threads suddenly go very quite - there is a poignant post by Spatz's on how interest in his mods dramatically declined when they got their own sub-forum. If developers tend to frequent the "technical" sub-forum and players tend to frequent the "users" sub-forum there is going to be a disconnect that will only harm the community in the long term.

Not convinced there is such a thing as "general mod support". Pretty much any post along the lines of "it doesn't work" is universally answered with "what exactly is 'it'". Once you've answered the question "how do I download and install mods", support questions revolve around a specific mod or group of mods - "why does Xyz do this", "how do I get Abc to work with Lmn", etc - and these are usually best answered by the author of the mod(s) and/or the players using combinations of mods including that mod, so should probably be attached to the mod's main thread.

"Mods that don't affect game play" is always going to cause arguments. What about UI only mods that give the player more information than in the base game (eg what other civs are researching). What about additional units that are available to all players to "fill in the gaps" - these don't confer an advantage to one civ/faction or between the AI/human player, so are they affecting "game play". And by the very definition of the term "mod", all mods could be considered to affect game play. Here be demons! (And I suspect lots of "wrong sub-forum" alerts.)

So, if it were left to me, I'd probably go with

Mods & Modding
- Suggestions, Ideas and Requests (covering current posts in the Requested Mods sticky, Mod Component Request sticky, Unit Request sticky, etc)
- Development/Technical Questions
- Reference Library (Tutorials, How-To's, etc)
- Map Library (scripts and pre-made)
- Graphics Library (icons, units, terrain, etc)
- Mod Library ('modpacks', 'mod components' and scenarios)
- Code & Utilities Library (snippets, modules, utilities, et al)
- Total Conversions (with a sub-forum for each TC)
General question and discussion posts (as in the main C&C forum currently)


The current Civ:5 C&C structure would map as

• C&C --> M&M
• Modding Tutorials & Reference --> Reference Library
• Modpacks --> Mod Library
• Mod Components --> Mod Library
• Graphics modpacks --> Graphics Library
• Unit Graphics --> Graphics Library
• New Civilizations --> ???
• Scenarios --> Mod Library or Total Conversions
• Custom maps --> Map Library
• Map Scripts --> Map Library
• Utility Programs --> Code & Utilities Library
• SDK / LUA --> Development Questions
• Project & Mod Development --> Total Conversions

Not sure if "New Civilizations" has a direct Civ:BE counter-part, I'd start by lumping new factions (whatever) in the Mod Library (as things can always be split out later)

And one last thing. I really, really hate stickies. Posts should be at the top of the lists because they are "trending". IMHO if a forum has more than two, possibly three, stickies there is something wrong!

LeeS said:

I support anything that will make for less of a burden to Rob, Poukai, and the other moderators.

Click to expand...

It's funny, no matter where I use the username, it's always the first 'a' that people forget when they're misspelling my name.

I agree completely that we need to redesign the C&C forum, although I'd be hesitant to change it too much. I think the biggest things we need are a dedicated help section and one for mods which are in development. I'm currently sorting out a proposed forum change which takes in the ideas of this topic and tries to alleviate the problems which the forum currently faces, while still retaining the current 'feel' of the place.

Once the staff decide they're happy with my suggestion I'll post a new topic and we'll be able to go from there, with the possibility for changes to ensure you're all happy with the changes to C&C before we make them

whoward69 said:

• Modpacks --> Mod Library
• Mod Components --> Mod Library

Click to expand...

By the way, this is something I'd *really* like to see for the Civ5 forum as well. The structure worked well for Civ 4, where modding was a lot less modular and "mod packs" were basically what people use and "mod components" was basically "code snippets". With Civ5's modular approach, this distinction makes no sense and it's very arbitrary what's a "pack" and what's a "component".

With respect to splitting the forum for BE, I would strongly encourage doing so. Any common ground information can easily be written again and as time goes on there will be more people who have one game but not the other. It would be extremely confusing for such differences to be placed in the same forum.
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I agree with Whoward that it would be wise to limit the depth of any nesting more so than my initial suggestion. When a user clicks on the link they immediately see everything as either a forum or sub-forum. That way none of the sections are hidden a click away. I have some examples at the bottom of this post.
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I also think it would be a good idea to move away from single sticky-ed "request" threads that multiple people use. Often it takes multiple posts to address a single topic which leads to spaghetti conversations when different topics are being posted about at the same time. Creating a single thread per issue (potentially in a dedicated forum) would make it much easier to understand what issues are resolved, in progress or ignored.
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As for naming, I do think calling it "mods" instead of "creation & customization" would be a more intuitive label. In a similar vein it would probably be a bad idea to use "technical" to describe mod creation as end-users may see it and think "tech support", which could result in the development questions section being filled with bug reports that likely belong elsewhere.
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As for a "general mod support" section, my thinking is that it would be a location where issues that don't relate to a specific mod could go. Issues with enabling mods on macs, workshop issues, tricks like clearing the cache could go here. Ideally it would provide a way for mod users to help each other resolve problems that are not caused by defects in the implementation of a mod.

It could also allow people who use multiple mods find out if others have been able to use the set of mods together without issue -- something the mod creator may not know. It could also be a way for people to continue to get support in using mods where the creator is no longer around.

I don't know if it will end up providing enough value to justify the complexity it creates, but that is the optimistic take on it.
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As for the division of the mod library, there are a handful of ways it could be done. The most basic is to throw everything in a single sub-forum. We certainly don't want anything as confusing as the current "mod packs" vs "mod components". I was initially skeptical of having a separate "total conversion" section because I was concerned it would be confusing as to the difference between a "total conversion" and a game-play mod that just alters a ton of things. However, I have warmed to the idea as even though it would be tricky to come up with a clear line, heuristically, it is something people will tend to "know when they see it" because Total Conversions tend to assume incompatibility with other mods by default.

I think a "cosmetic mod" section can be treated the same way. Stuff like the enhanced UI, quick-combat during AI turns, new UI that shows available lux resources (ei: presents information in a more convenient way), faster aircraft animations, mods that make an infantry unit 10 small models instead of 5 would all go there.

Mods that add a new unit everyone can build would not go there.

I acknowledge that mods that provide previously unknowable information (what every AI is researching) verse conveniently present already known information (lux available for trade) are a grey area but if all the mod does is provide information than the name of the mod should generally be able to communicate that.
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Putting everything together, here is a couple examples of my current thinking. Any line marked with a * is expendable:

(user clicks on modding forum and sees

• General mod discussion (sub: ideas & requests, *general mod support, <threads>)
• Mod library (sub: game-play mods, *total conversion mods, map script mods, *cosmetic mods)
• General mod creation (sub: mod creation questions, mod creation how-tos & tutorials, <threads>)
• Mod creation resources (sub: raw art, snippets, utilities)

This structure tries to avoid having an overwhelming number of forums at the top level. Note that threads are only in the sub-forums and at the two general forums. There are no threads at the top-most level or in the "mod library" or "creation resources" level.

One drawback of this approach is that "mod creation questions" is not at the top-most level, which may mean people don't find it. However, I believe that using the phrase "mod creation" (rather than "jargon" like "development" or "technical") will draw new creators to the right location.

Here is an alternative structure that moves more things to the top level:

(user clicks on modding forum and sees

• General mod discussion (sub: <threads>)
• Ideas & requests (sub: <threads>)
• *General mod support (sub: <threads>)
• Mod library (sub: game-play mods, *total conversion mods, map script mods, *cosmetic mods)
• General mod creation (sub: <threads>)
• mod creation questions (sub: <threads>)
• mod creation how-tos & tutorials (sub: <threads>)
• Mod creation resources (sub: raw art, snippets, utilities)

Okay, I've posted the official topic outlining the proposed changes and seeking feedback here, could all discussion please be diverted there? Thanks!

(I'm going to leave this open in case anyone wishes to discuss how the BE version of the C&C forum should look)

I agree with the "let's lose the jargon" approach. To which end "Map Script Mods" should just be "Map Mods" - as that then covers both scripts (lua) and pre-made land-form (civ5map) files