Suggestion / Modding and Private Servers

@personalc0ffee > They allow for things you can't/shouldn't be allowed to do.

Your talking hacks largely. People can hack the game without 'modding' it, just by injecting into it, and people will hack regardless of whether they are allowed to.

Whilst unofficial, and online-only, Mods have been used to great effect in GTA Online, Halo Multiplayer; (if you count forge) or even it's custom maps (if you don't count forge), World of Warcraft, Warcraft 3 MP, Among Us, and others.

You could argue that you don't like the result of any of those platforms, and I mean, your entitled to your opinion.

But I personally dislike, that the bare-bones level of customization of private servers has been restricted to partners only, when there's hundreds of other creatives who would love to tinker and experiment to see what events they could create.

Anyway, the argument is all academic, because it's never going to happen, and there's a long list of reasons why it shouldn't.

Edit:

I also dislike, that as a Live Service game, the game essentially has a shelf life. When Rare are done, the servers will close, and SoT will be a blip on the history of gaming, with no chance of being revisited.

Releasing server files goes a long way towards game preservation, and I hope that Rare at least consider it, upon it's death.

@personalc0ffee

I do not want to have to worry about someone using mods and cheating me out of victory because that player can see something I can't.

Mods wouldn't enable that, that's already possible. I hate that it's possible, but Rare havn't done anything about anti-cheat to date, other then serverside stuff, which can't detect "see things others can't"

As for GTAO and RDO for that matter, those mods, enabled hacks which ruined those modes for me. Modding/hacking is so prevalent in GTAO and RDO. I seen one nearly every game.

People would have hacked those games regardless too, all the modding tools for those are unofficial, and created by the community as far as I'm aware.
Often a 'unofficial modding scene' arises out of a thriving hacking scene, the hacks usually come first.

The reason why hacks come first, is they are simpler to create.

The reason why 'unoffical mods' increase the number of hacks in a game, is because unofficial modders and hackers alike, are both interested in reverse engineering, and typically use the same pooled resources, so unofficial mods drive hack development.

Official mods on the other hand, typically don't. They are typically restricted in how creative a map-maker etc can be, as they are given limited versions of the authorship tools the developers use to some degree, e.g. you could make a map, or a ship, but not something that would give you an advantage over others online.

Giving creatives the ability to mod officially, usually quelches the desire to mod things unofficially, hurting the modding communities reverse engineering resources overall.

And having official support, means the ability for community created accessibility mods, vetted by devs.

Minecraft Bedrock Creator Marketplace is basically filled with 'official mods'.

Minecraft Java edition is full of 'unofficial mods'.

I want so badly to have access to custom servers like the SOT Partners have. Not even anything special...just the basic stuff would be fine.

So many fun things to do with my friends on a Saturday night....Last Ship Standing...Biggest Loot Haul...Fleet War...Map Races...the challenges can be endless and so much fun.

Charge a premium on top of the Season Pass and I'm guessing you'd have a good uptake and even more creative content delivered to the community.

Fingers crossed this becomes a reality for the entire community soon.

I would love to see SoT modding so much, maybe near the end of the games life. After all, at that point Rare has already fully moved on to another big project and abandoned SoT. The game only has five years left in its life.

Modding and self hosting private servers would go a really long way to keep the game alive in the community.