Mod status field

[Sebiale]

I feel like this would be a very useful tool, especially for older games.

We have the Version field, but the problem is that it doesn't really mean anything except to the mod authors.

 

To me it seems that having a field with a dropdown that the authors are required to have set with one of a few status indicators would be highly beneficial.

At its most basic I think the goal would be to mark mods as either "in development" vs " feature complete"

 

If you can then set it as a search attribute you would have the ability to filter down to mods that at least claim to be complete.

Modders would be more easily able to find mature files, and mod authors could expect that people who are downloading "in development" mods would be more inclined to leave useful feedback.

 

Or at least that's how I think it would end up.

 

 

Possible drawbacks? Maybe that it would cause some confusion over "feature complete" mods being more buggy than expected because there would be fewer people testing them during their development.

Or the reverse, where you have a mod like SkyUI under SE which, per the dev, is an unsupported alpha version. Arguably that means it would fall under "in development" in this theory of mine. That could mean very useful mods go unrecognized or that the utility of the status field degrades because incomplete mods still posses an important function for their communities.

 

Unsure of any technical difficulties this kind of implementation would face. Maybe not applicable unless it can be set on all mods, which would be a mess for any existing games.