Community Patch TOTAL CHANGES

[Flix 5,220]

"So what exactly does the Community Patch do?"

I seem to hear more and more comments from players like "I don't think I need this to enjoy the game," "not sure this mod is really doing anything," and the ever popular "this mod sucks."

Presenting a somewhat haphazard and spotty change log, spread out over 10 years, doesn't help the case so much.  Many people just see a tweaked interface, or catch wind of new fan-made items and quests, and get scared off.

Put frankly, the Community Patch is indispensable to Sacred 2.  To prove that, I've put together a FULL change log, that lists EVERYTHING the Community Patch does, as of the latest 1.60 release.

View and download the full change log:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_2UcD-_lE-D2-yokJ6_3Ywfm7375yXNB/view?usp=sharing

I used all previous patch notes to make this, as well as my own examination of the files to catch any "stealth changes." I tried to be as comprehensive as possible, while still making it concise and easy to digest.

I'd encourage you to show this to anyone who has doubts about the Patch, and to read through it yourself if you want to get a really good grasp of just how much is fixed.

Happy playing!

[Dax 522]

I believe that players do not like the idea that someone tempers with their beloved heroine. It witnessed several times how players reacted extremely hysteric and childish to criticism or inquiry. Maybe for some people the heroine is more than a bunch of pixels, running through a pixel world, crushing other pixels with a pixel sword.

Also, a code modification means always some kind of disturbance in a well sorted, perfect world where the player is king. The player knows how to deal with the game, how to beat it. The changes a mod brings in, might not fit his taste. It is a mixture between the concussion of something well known and the rejection against something new.

However. There is no solution. Those who want to give it a try, do it. And if it is not your cup of tea, uninstall it. At least, give feedback to the maker. That would be a nice gesture. 

A good day to you!

Edited March 9, 2020 by Dax

[SANGEL 13]

@Flix

Guess little progress could be made if pampering to nimbys'  standards....

Just tell them to play vanilla, this is a MOD anyway.....

It feels terrible that some people are so entitled and spoiled.

They just couldn't see the effort being put into the patch.

 

[Androdion 900]

15 hours ago, Flix said:

I seem to hear more and more comments from players like "I don't think I need this to enjoy the game," "not sure this mod is really doing anything," and the ever popular "this mod sucks."

Where? Did I miss something?! 

[Flix 5,220]

41 minutes ago, Androdion said:

Where? Did I miss something?! 

NexusMods, GOG, Steam, PM's. 

[Androdion 900]

6 hours ago, Flix said:

NexusMods, GOG, Steam, PM's. 

Really? People do love to hate I guess...

[Flix 5,220]

I wouldn't get too hung-up on the naysayers; I just wanted to be sure to put the best foot forward in terms of presentation.  Having a definitive list of fixes and features should be a big plus.  I've already started posting it where I can think of, on the file page here in the downloads section, prominently in Sacred 2 Nexus.

[Androdion 900]

I don't, but it's always uncomfortable because usually it's just blind hatred. I guess your way of circumventing this may be the best one, to say "this is it, take it or leave it".

[dimitrius154 630]

2 hours ago, Flix said:

I wouldn't get too hung-up on the naysayers

Neither would I. Don't tend to react, unless the criticism is presented in a coherent manner. Which happens, but not too often. 

Internet forums have inherited a peculiar trait of their simple chat predecessors - they tend to induce the "Yay, I'm three-years-old again!"  behavioral psychosis in the weak-willed and the weak-minded.

[Dax 522]

On 3/8/2020 at 9:50 PM, Flix said:

 

I seem to hear more and more comments from players like "I don't think I need this to enjoy the game," "not sure this mod is really doing anything," and the ever popular "this mod sucks."

 

I have a question. Under such circumstances, working your !ss off since years, only to face an increasing amount of people that complain that the mod is not exactly like they want it, had you ever in mind to restrict access to the mod? It is a controversial point of view, but I would like to hear your opinion. And of course your opinion too, dear reader.

 

Edited March 10, 2020 by Dax

[dimitrius154 630]

2 hours ago, Dax said:

Under such circumstances, working your !ss off since years, only to face an increasing amount of people that complain that the mod is not exactly like they want it, had you ever in mind to restrict access to the mod?

IMHO, that would not be sensible from a practical point of view. And downright weak from a psychological one. Although, there've been instances in the past, the most spectacular, I remember, being Connary at Bethesda forums. Despite the guy's splendorous work, he'd suffered a veritable meltdown(seemingly due to prolonged trolling).

I definitely prefer the Gamehorder's approach to anonimous childish criticism. 

 

[Dax 522]

Such constant attacks can have a devastating psychological impact. Especially if you are mainly the only one who is working on such a big project. It might lead to a simple question

Why?

Why should I waste my time for people who

- dont care anyway, otherwise they would have rose their voice already to put the trolls in place

- say that the mod sucks, is good for nothing and overall a piece of worthless garbage

- regard years of work as useless junk, they could do better in a jiffy

 

Of course it is better to stand above haters and their opinion, just as you said, but if constant attacks are throwing you out of balance over the time, if you start to feel the impacts, I thought it might be an idea to change the point of view. To dampen the effect, I assume a familiar environment, like it can be found here at Darkmatters, is helpful.

[dimitrius154 630]

7 minutes ago, Dax said:

Why?

Why should I waste my time for people who

The answer is simple: I don't really work for the people. The coding part of the project has emerged as a byproduct of a wish to have a lightning powerclaw for a variation of a certain Inquisitor set. But then it has unexpectedly evolved.

12 minutes ago, Dax said:

if constant attacks are throwing you out of balance over the time

Thing is, they don't. Just provoke sarcastic replies, help release an inner troll.

[Dax 522]

45 minutes ago, dimitrius154 said:

 I don't really work for the people.

Let us rather say, it depends on which kind of modder you are.

A freerunner who does things if, when and how he wants is independent from other opinions. He is an artist who enjoys himself. He drops mods at will, has fun and moves on in the pace he likes best. Give a like or not, hate or not, use the artists mod or not, all these things are none of his concern. In comparison with the next type this one is the lucky guy.

A community based modder relies on feedback. People chime in, report bugs, toss ideas… and so on. Due to the connection to the community, feedback, good or bad, has a far bigger effect. If you ask me, this type of modder is very much battery driven. I think the best way to avoid frustration is to be a part of a larger team that works well together, where people get along well with each other. If so, trolls can stand in front of your door all day and you would not even notice them. Maybe it is a possible solution. We got at least two new coders here.

[Flix 5,220]

6 hours ago, Dax said:

had you ever in mind to restrict access to the mod?

It's never crossed my mind, not least of all because the Community Patch is not mine to restrict. It belongs to the community.

I've also spent years trying to get the CM Patch and Sacred 2 mods & resources to as wide an audience as possible.  The biggest mistake Ascaron made post-release was forbidding talk of modding and doing everything to thwart it.  Likewise the biggest fault of the early CM Patch development was to horde all their modding methods like an elite secret society, never releasing tools or sharing knowledge.

The final reason is that I know that there a large number of pleased-yet-mostly-silent users.  A loud minority of people who complain should not ruin things for a much larger portion of players just because they didn't spend time posting about their experience.  

[Dax 522]

Oh, good. Then it is all settled.

[DarkWolfNine 46]

I agree with many of this.
Even though I have yet to try out the Sacred 2 modifications (Although I did finish getting dimitrius154's (among other devs) CM 0.160, the trimmed enhanced textures, and Flix' EE with regular skills)
I have always had the mind set that these people (Dax too!) have put in a lot of time and effort and are giving something back to the community. I respect that. I tend to commend them for thier efforts when I try them out and use them. If there is a bug  (if I know the game well) I will mention it to the devs, or even offer constructive criticism with suggestions to alternate ideas.

That said, I know I am in the minority. Anyone who spends time giving back to their community deserves a thousand "thank you's". I know how much work and effort goes into making mods (At least for doing a couple total conversion mods back for Unreal Tournament and UT 2003).

It ultimately comes down to how the devs react to fan feedback.
I know this is an abbreviated list but you have people that tend to:
enjoy the mod/work, but are silent (majority)
enjoy it, but offer constructive notes, or praise for the devs (a minority in the sense of being positive vocally)
generally enjoy it, but there are this one or two items that HAVE TO BE CHANGED, and are very vocal about it. (often turning completely negative when they don't get their way)
hate it or don't care for it, but are silent (usually just removing/not using it)
hate it, and are very vocal about it and are nothing but toxic to the community (at least with respect to the mod/project). (this is, unfortunately, the majority of what gets to the devs, forum posts, word out)

I've either experienced them (in my personal outlook) or in feedback while I was on the two teams during those total conversion mods back in the day.

It does come down to the dev community members (of said mod/project) and how they are able to handle/ignore/respect criticism or compliments. You'll never please 100%. But we know this.

I know I'm probably "preaching to the choir" but I just wanted to give my personal thanks for everyone that has put in tireless effort in making these games better (or worse. heh.).

Thank you guys,
- DarkWolfNine

P.S. And thank you Flix for compiling that into a single document/location. I am finding that very useful.

Edited March 10, 2020 by DarkWolfNine

[Flix 5,220]

Made a few tweaks to the document's organization: moved the Sigils under "New Sets", combined a few duplicate entries, added the 4 T-Energy bosses from "Ancients Secrets" quest.  Link remains the same.

Didn't expect to provoke such an interesting discussion.  Happy to hear players and modders weighing in on the current landscape; the VERY worst thing after all, is silence.  

[Charon117 50]

Yo, looks like im late to the party.

There seems to be only positive voices about the Community Edition, and the ones complaining are missing. So let me picture for you what it might look like on the other side.

 

First of all you have to realise that modders and players are fundamentally different.

Players are people who are currently trying to grasp the concept of the game, and have much difficulties doing so.
Modders are people who already grasped the game well enough and are running out of content. So they make more content, because they enjoy it so much.

Introducing more mechanics and content ontop of a player just convolutes and confuses him, hence the saying "Why do I need this ?". And it is a good argument. We all started running in baby shoes to get where we are today.

I only started to use other peoples modding content once I felt comfortable enough with the game, and had my fair share of experience with the base game. I moved up once I "understod" the game, some people never reach that level of understanding.

 

Secondly, Community Editions are always bad and FECAL MATTER! on. And for a good reason. Take a look at this development chart.

Community Editions are usually the first step in a full game development cycle. Thus they feel the least polished experience of them all. And people are right, because thats exactly the case.

People dont like the CP, but praise Enhanced Edition, without realising that one is just further along than the other. But their judgement, as plebeian as it is, is not wrong.

 

One of the things in my oppinion which went horribly is that the CP didnt distinguish between Code and Content, and thus mixed both together. A horrible mistake. While it is impossible to completely seperate Code and Content, a better effort could have been made to distinguish between the two. Something I am still requesting should be made.

A direct impact of this is that the CP flooded the spawnable items in an almost vulgar manner. If I know that if I play 72 hours of a game, and wont be able to complete a single set than something went horribly wrong. Drop Tiers get mixed up, unique items with garbage stats spawn, and regular items are more powerful than unique ones. All of this was the consequence of the unhalted "restoration" of developer items, which were clearly unfinished, and unimplemented. Critique of the well designed vanilla progression getting destroyed by CP wasnt made without reason. A well desinged split between content, and code could have minimised that kind of repercussion.

In my oppinion this is also the biggest gap that modders and players would need to fix in order to move forward. I have high hopes that bigger mods and modders would one day make a well designed rebalance and spawning of all items currently in the game, but it will be night to impossible to do this for 2 - 3 people. For such things you need dedicated testers, and a mass of players to rebalance your game. Most mods never make a full development cycle, because the mass of users are missing to kickstart the process, in order to aquire more users, which test your game even more, etc ... .

 

 

So for this reasons I think it would be a good idea to split the CM Patch into a code and content part.

 

And since so many CP people are here, does anybody know if the CP installer does anything else outside of the Sacred 2 Gold folder ? If not, we could simply start to synthesize the parts we need.

 

But meh, what do  I know ;).

Edited March 19, 2020 by Charon117

[Flix 5,220]

On 3/19/2020 at 12:28 PM, Charon117 said:

A direct impact of this is that the CP flooded the spawnable items in an almost vulgar manner.

All the extra items from the CM Items mod being dumped into CM 1.50 weighs heavily on me at times.  Back then, the CM Patch was the "only game in town" and after discussing things with the original patch devs, I came to understand that they wanted it that way, in order for the CM Patch to be a stable, base foundation.  This was why there weren't any public discussions or any notable mods until around 2014 - simply no one knew how to do anything except CM devs, and all their work was funneled into a single project.

Community Items Mod was always meant to be a little gratuitous.  It started with the idea that there unused developer-made designs, that served quite well to fill the "gaps" in terms of what kind of unique/set/legendary weapons spawned (vanilla has a million swords, only a handful of magic staves, maybe 2-3 shields that anyone used).  I realize by the final release it had become absolutely stuffed with full armor sets, but they all looked so cool, and so many different community members had contributed work on the designs, it just seemed ludicrous to exclude them. 

That period is actually my fondest memory of modding Sacred 2. I was a young, fresh-faced hopeful modder (well maybe not so young), but after I developed CM Items mod, there ended up being lots of fixes present, so I submitted the whole thing to MarcusWob and Czevak so they could decide what to keep for the patch.  And well, it all just got put in there. 

On 3/19/2020 at 12:28 PM, Charon117 said:

One of the things in my oppinion which went horribly is that the CP didnt distinguish between Code and Content, and thus mixed both together. A horrible mistake. While it is impossible to completely seperate Code and Content, a better effort could have been made to distinguish between the two. Something I am still requesting should be made.

I'm planning to do what I can to make a purist-oriented update, once Addendum and EE are settled, as both mods received a large number of fixes.

But I am not the person in the best position to make a true, full bugfix update, as I can't edit the binaries and include all possible code changes.

[DIOX 17]

I love community patch