Content is the one thing LFS desperately needs to re-appeal to it's longer time players.
Licence restrictions prohibit producing content that would appeal to a wider audience.
So as is LFS is a flash in the pan game for most players.
There is nothing about that model which suggests sustainability to me, which I suggest is a contributing factor to why LFS has slowed to a development crawl.
Now is not the time for mods for LFS.
LFS is what it is like it, love it or hate it, but don't change it.
Inspire motivate the community, discuss things that you might want to get from a mod, but talk about the idea, work out the crinkles.
Its like this
Family one child > one day child wants to leave home> bored with life >
Now obvious parents worry that creation will be corrupted and be lost in the matrix of life.
LFS is that child grown, looking to find new horizons, new challenge.
WIth guidance or not it may or may not reach the potential of its capability.
Communication = knowledge = power to do good or bad with what you know.
So the story goes /the end.......
The physics don't change depending on the car or track, this isn't rFactor you know. They stay consistent throughout the content, and that's kind of the whole "point" of LFS compared to majority of the sim opposition out there. LFS physics are all unified and that's what makes it beautiful.
If someone were to create some silly monster truck or a bendy-bus mod for an example, the physics would still make sense as the cars would follow the core game engine physics. From a pure physics standpoint, a car in LFS is basically just a bunch of suspension hard point locations, tire size specs, engine/transmission data and a 3D mesh. There's no individual physics cheating for each car like in some lesser simulators.
But yes, we do need officially supported modding, more now than ever before. Of course it won't happen atleast until the tire physics are finished, and most propably not even after that.
Again assumption that only devs can make realistically behaving cars, the thing with physic in mods is, its just an numbers in tabels.
If the physics in game is realistic then mods with proper data will be realistic no matter what.
But even if there will be mods with arcade-like physics I would like to play them as long as mod itself would be good, I dont see a problem with arcade and I find this attitude funny "I am playing only serious games for serious gamers like myself" Like you not just sit in front of your PC holding plastic wheel and pretend you drive a car.
It wouldn't be too bad if, at least, only track modding would be allowed. Car Mods are just more cans to be smashed, but tracks would give a brand new wave of fresh air for LFS.
Egh. I think the biggest issue of the day is that a lot of people that're posting here are greedy and want more sooner.
Sadly, you can't have an amazing-feeling game AND have all the content in the world. You need to make a compromise, and I think the Devs have made that decision for the better.
At least this factor sets LFS upon it's own pedestal, as opposed to the over-crowded "Quantity over Quality" ideals that the rest of the world is infected by.
No, Scawen is the problem. Also, what cargame.nl said.
You can never have all of the content in the world. To what compromise are you referring? Scavier has not published a new car or environment for four years. Eric never finished updating the interiors (unless he did).
I used to be against mods too. But since playing Rfactor for a couple of years, I don't see what the big problem is. The mods and tracks that come from the Rfactor community are amazing.
If LFS had allowed mods we would have so many great tracks by now. Nurburgring anyone? Rfactors' user made tracks alone seems like an obvious reason to at least allow us to have user made tracks.
And cars, V8 super cars anyone, how about Historic X? These cars in Rfactor are really excellent. They could be 10 times better with LFS's excellent physics behind them.
Of course crap mods will be made, but it's only the best ones that are most popular. And all you need is a server rule/option that allows mods or does not. Or specifies only particular ones.
If they allowed mods, LFS could be in a much healthier state today.
Also, we wouldn't have so many posts on here crying out for much needed new content....
Why would a non mod server be less populated? Surely that would only happen if the mods where better than the default content? And if that's the case, then what's the problem?
You don't want mods because of some people who don't know how to read a readme.txt or have PCs that are unable to run LFS adequately? Odd reasoning.
What would folks think of paying for mods? Was thinking something like having to pay for extra track/car spaces to add mods to play online with no limitations offline. As already said, LFS is free to play with premium content and being able to add more content from 3rd parties is something I'd pay as much as S2 for but wouldnt want LFS online messed up servers full of all kinds of mods and different versions of each.
I wouldn't mind a bit IF it came "in" LFS rather than me having to download it, have the exact right version and always patch it right, unlike rFactor.
6 tracks. 6 good tracks, no doubt, but LFS S2 is the oldest sim and the one with less venues when purchased in the market. I'm talking about the base content, not refering to mods.
Even counting all layouts (some are almost equal, but whatever...) LFS has the least venues in the base game. I know the developer team is short, I know the other sims have some tracks and car mods that are rubbish, but there are great tracks and great cars also.
I think the model would be sustainable, if they kept cranking out good quality content. This would also reduced the appeal and desire to mod. Trouble is, they don't. That's the killer. LFS needs more artists... or maybe just one who releases their work.