Moonsinger said:
Also, would you take a second to explain your obsession of forcing people into playing the mod? Since you are gods of this forum, you can pretty much make up any rules you like. Although I can't really ask god(s) about "the meaning of life?", I hope the lesser gods would explain why I have to use the mod?
The meaning of life is to play Civilization.
Can I take a second to explain the requirement of the mod? Given that the final decision was mine, I should have done so already!
But first, I would like to at least question the notion that we can make up any rules we like. While a largely autonomous operation, we do have to obey the rules of our god (Thunderfall). Also, if our ruleset drove players en masse away from the Hall of Fame, then there wouldn't be a point to the Hall of Fame and we'd be shut down as wasted webspace and forum.
We on the staff do this as a community service (albeit largely to allay our guilt at spending so much time playing Civilization). As a former moderator yourself, you understand as well as anyone that the benefits package is minimal and the pay sucks.
And so, the decision to require the mod for HOF play was with the community in mind, even if it's interpreted by some as controversial or "tough love".
The benefits:
- Security-Dianthus and Denniz have already nailed this one good, so I won't really drone on about it. Simply put, the public release of the SDK made save editing and analysis the largest threat to the integrity of the Hall of Fame. This could have been anything from gleaning spoiler information, fudging reload data to editing scores and dates.
So we fought fire with fire, and in as much as IV's moddability was the problem, it was also the answer. We've gone from our worst possible circumstances, to the most secure. Cheating is rarely discussed in the HOF/GOTM forums, largely because staffs are present to deal with behind the scenes. Players are left then to focus purely on fun and improvement, and this is now more true than ever.
- Filesize-Denniz already pointed out that it means we can have more tables in less server space. I'd just like to add that it'll cut down significantly on CFC's general bandwidth, and shave an occasional second or two off HOF player's download and upload times.
- Settings-We quickly realized in HOF III that most game rejections weren't the result of rule breaking, but just bad settings. This of course wastes the time of both HOF Staff and players alike. Creating the 4000bc check page reduced this significantly, but with the HOF mod, players are now warned about a lot of settings before they start a game, regardless of whether they check the 4000bc page.
The mod is by no means foolproof on this, it probably never will be, but every little bit helps. Consider for a moment that in five months, the Beta HOF for IV has received more submissions than HOF-III has in five years! 10x the traffic, but we only increased the staff by 25% thus far.
I couldn't even begin to estimate the player hours we've saved.
- Parity-With the release of the 1.52 mod, we were able to have the best of both worlds, seemingly, in that we could allow certain utilities while still having No Cheat Mode. But then I noticed an increasing disparity between the mods and mod-nots. The mod-not games, in general, weren't as successful as the mod games, nor could the mod-nots open the mod saves for study without the mod. By addressing this inequality, the HOF comes down to devotion and playerskill, which is as it ought to be.
- A single download-GOTM requires a file download every month, and you can only use it once. What I'm asking is something updated a few times a year perhaps, and you can use it as much as you like.
Okay, that's a long winded answer, but given the magnitude of the requirement, I think it appropriate. Although I will admit that Dianthus, Mistfit and Denniz are probably laughing their heads off right now. I've got a stringent rule in the HOF Staff Forum that what happens in the Rabbithole stays in the Rabbithole, but on this particular occasion, I'll look the other way if my fellow staff members choose to tease me a little at my verbosity.
