cracker
Gil Favor's Sidekick
Just to clarify here that I am a supporter of true graphics mods that allow players to customize "the appearance" of their personal game environment.
There is another range of the mod activity that either knowingly or unknowingly provides significant and unfair advantages that end up diminishing the depth of the game experience. Many players do not care about these issues in their personal games because the aspects of mystery and discovery in the early game are unimportant to their perception of what the game experience is or should be. Players who prefer to play games over and over again on known map configurations achieve their enjoyment from the game on a different level than players who eagerly anticipate the chance to reveal and conquer new sets of challenges. Its just a different game in these aspects.
It is probably not possible for us to anticipate every new and innovative thing that may be discovered to bypass the elements of game play that seem to be fundamental to how the basic Game of the Month is played. I am confident that when we find these issues we can usually address them in a way that maintains the confidence of the player community without resulting in too much loss of freedom.
Graphics mods that alter terrain appearance and feature appearance without fundamentally changing the way the game is played will continue to be something we should support and encourage as long as they do not disrupt the game. An example might be using a terrain graphics mod that converts everything to totally weird and unrecognizable combinations that only you can interpret and then posting these items in the game progress threads. I would probably discourage this even though it would not mean the game submissions would be disallowed.
The issue in this case is one of those exploit issues that we know potentially exist in the game but that have previously just been minor blips on the road map. If we take these issues and push them to extremes so that they become general public knowledge and begin to have a negative effect on many people, then something has to be done to close the gap.
So the answer is to enjoy your mines that may look like suburbs and to live it up with cactii in the desert. Have fun with blacktop roadways or orthogonal railroads. I like the lush cities myself and enjoy having ponds and fountains in my city courtyards.
The line of what is clearly unacceptable will always be subject to interpretation but some graphics mods are clearly in the non-issue category that we normally associate with "graphics mods", while there is another category that are cleary well beyond any line that we would draw in the sand to determine where they begin to alter play conduct instead of just visual apperances.
There is another range of the mod activity that either knowingly or unknowingly provides significant and unfair advantages that end up diminishing the depth of the game experience. Many players do not care about these issues in their personal games because the aspects of mystery and discovery in the early game are unimportant to their perception of what the game experience is or should be. Players who prefer to play games over and over again on known map configurations achieve their enjoyment from the game on a different level than players who eagerly anticipate the chance to reveal and conquer new sets of challenges. Its just a different game in these aspects.
It is probably not possible for us to anticipate every new and innovative thing that may be discovered to bypass the elements of game play that seem to be fundamental to how the basic Game of the Month is played. I am confident that when we find these issues we can usually address them in a way that maintains the confidence of the player community without resulting in too much loss of freedom.
Graphics mods that alter terrain appearance and feature appearance without fundamentally changing the way the game is played will continue to be something we should support and encourage as long as they do not disrupt the game. An example might be using a terrain graphics mod that converts everything to totally weird and unrecognizable combinations that only you can interpret and then posting these items in the game progress threads. I would probably discourage this even though it would not mean the game submissions would be disallowed.
The issue in this case is one of those exploit issues that we know potentially exist in the game but that have previously just been minor blips on the road map. If we take these issues and push them to extremes so that they become general public knowledge and begin to have a negative effect on many people, then something has to be done to close the gap.
So the answer is to enjoy your mines that may look like suburbs and to live it up with cactii in the desert. Have fun with blacktop roadways or orthogonal railroads. I like the lush cities myself and enjoy having ponds and fountains in my city courtyards.
The line of what is clearly unacceptable will always be subject to interpretation but some graphics mods are clearly in the non-issue category that we normally associate with "graphics mods", while there is another category that are cleary well beyond any line that we would draw in the sand to determine where they begin to alter play conduct instead of just visual apperances.
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