Modding?

[Nitiliak]

So... I'm just curious. I've read a thread where it was said that ANet will not allow modding, but the thread was about UI modding.

What about modding that does nothing but change cosmetics? I know there was a program for GW1 (well, it wasn't strictly for GW1 but it worked with it) that allowed mods that changed the colors of flags, or health/magic bars, or the background colors of menus... just simple things like that. Any ideas if there will ever be cosmetic mods like that?

Again, I'm just curious. GW2 is so beautiful already =)

[Centaur]

Any ideas if there will ever be cosmetic mods like that?

tbh, I doubt it. If there is sufficient request for things like that, then I believe it's possible that ArenaNet will at some point add some functionality to their own user interface so that you can finetune it a bit. But allowing someone to tweak the looks of the game through external mods is tricky... as all these mods run on your own PC, it's extremely difficult to differentiate between someone building a mod on top of the game that changes the colors of some parts of the interface, and a mod on top of the game that provides additional UI elements that (for example) provide pvp-ers with some additional information about their opponents (and thus possibly an unfair advantage).
So any kind of support for modding would require a large amount of time from the developers to be able to make those distinctions, and personally, I'd much rather that they spend that time on other things... ie game expansions or extensions that we all benefit from.

[Nitiliak]

I agree. But, like for the GW1 cosmetic mods, only you could see them. There would be absolutely no change to the game itself, and nobody else would be able to see the changes the mods made. I was thinking of the program TexMod which you can use for GW1. But, once again, I'm only curious. I had some fun playing with TexMod, but it's not going to be a make-or-break component of the game. If that makes sense... =) Basically, I have no problem living without it ><

[Fey]

It's never gonna happen, not because it's not a good idea but because ANet is so damn picky. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks, the Dev's included, if they allowed us to have purely aesthetic UI mods and nothing else it wouldn't hurt anyone.

People who like the current UI can keep it and people who don't can change it to be more shiny. I love shiny.

[Nitiliak]

Hmm... I didn't know programs like TexMod needed ANet's support. But then again, I don't know much about modding in general =/

[King Arthur]

I love modding on single player games or Counter-Strike.. Not on MMOs though. The cheating possibilities are too many.

[Nitiliak]

I've only modded 1 MMO game, that being GW1. And the only thing I did was change some colors and (a really nice guy did this for me) made my armor look a bit more high-res. I agree that the cheating possibilities are too many, and I'm not at all saying that GW2 needs mods of any kind. Honestly, I created this thread because I was bored between my client losing connection to the server. I didn't actually think anyone would vote in this poll either =)

I'm getting off topic >< Weather (I don't think I spelled that right ><) or not ANet will allow modding eventually (which they won't) it doesn't really matter. The game is pretty good without it. Has a few... umm... kinks, but still... nothing's perfect =)

[Fey]

Building your own UI look is super fun.

[Nitiliak]

O.o looks... confusing >< and alot of work Xp

[Fey]

O.o looks... confusing >< and alot of work Xp

Which is the point. A lot of people like to customize. An equally large amount of people don't. Live and let live. They don't want us to play an MMO with "necessary" mods to be able to function, fine. But let me stack my 2 damn bars ontop of eachother. Let me change my health indicator from a circle to a bar and color code it so that when I'm at 100% It's green and when it drops lower it gradually turns red.

Let me move my stupid minimap and change where my target's icons and health bar are! Gah.

Edit: Be quiet fanbois, I already accepted it wont happen like a year and a half ago.