I completely disagree with this line of thought. Historically, only good games have had a large modding community with many submissions. Most modders are not interested in fixing bad games. We are interested in improving upon a great product with low entry barriers to modding and/or adding new content, not fixing someone's mess.

Let me give you a couple of examples...

Love it or hate it, Neverwinter Nights was a wildly popular RPG that had many mods shortly after release and still has new content being released by the modding community.

On the other hand, Elemental: War of Magic was an unpopular game with an esoteric modding system that was often inconsistent that ran off nearly every modder and only saw a few completed mods actually come to fruition.

Good games with low entry barriers get modded the most.

Bad games with high entry barriers get modded the least. 

Everything else falls somewhere in between.

Fortunately, Fallen Enchantress is shaping up to be a great game with easy access to modding.

Part of the problem with early rapid expansion being the best strategy right now is that it is actually the opposite of brittle. But first one needs to define expansion. Yes expanding with outposts is brittle but that isn't the part that is broken. The part that is broken is expanding with cities. There are few situations where it isn't optimal to settle everwhere you possibly can (the only two reasons I can think of is if you want a clay mine/food resource for a particular city so deliberately avoid settling another city closer, and if it is obvious that you would lose the new city quickly to the enemy or monsters).

This is not a brittle strategy because in order to have strength (ie avoid being brittle) you need troops and gold, and to a slightly lesser extent research. Building more cities is the best way to get more troops, gold and research. Therefore the way to avoid being brittle is to build more cities as quickly as possible.

Fortunately it appears Stardock realise this and have made some changes to make it slightly less of a no brainer to constantly mass settle. I'm looking forward to beta 5.

As to Neverwinter Nights, I'm on the 'love it' side. Didn't see any mods for that game for about a month after its release. Everyone was too busy playing the game and exploring all the different race/class combinations you could be. The mods did eventually come though, which made the game just that much more enjoyable to dig into.

Still think that if modding is happening that same week of release....it's a strike against replayability, story, mechanics, balance, etc.

But that's just my opinon. Glad you posted yours. (makes for good debate)

Bioware released the mod tools early. There were mods for NWN before the game even came out. So by your reasoning, the game was a failure. I appreciate your courtesy but you're are incorrect. 

Was into the game at day of release. Didn't see any complete mods for at least a month. The pre-mod stuff was done in anticipation of the game. Not the other way around. Thanks for coming out.

By my reasoning, the game was a success. (don't know if the $$'s made it so, but they did release NWN2, so must have)

And in the case of FE, we are experiancing similar sensations with the modding community. The question to Stardock will be "how long till the modders become 'finished' with the end product and go back to modding in an attempt to further improve the game??

That didn't really happen with NWN. From day one, you could go to NWN Vault and find a new mod with nearly each refresh of the page.

The big difference between that and Fallen Enchantress is there are maybe 6 people modding this game. You may not see mods for this for a while simply because the community is microscopic, even when compared to old indy games like Dominions 3.

Can you show me an example of a terrible game that has been saved by or attempted to be saved by an active modding community?

No reviewer sees it like this. I have never ever read a review where mods where considered signs of a flawed game. And I have read hundreds that either A: complained that a game wasn't moddable or B: mentioned how great it was that the game was moddable.

True. Moddable games are very appreciated by everyone and this is also good for sales. I, for example, bought Rome Total War and Medieval 2 Total War only to play the Europa Barbarorum mod. When I recommend games to people, I always mention what great mods it has too. You can look at mods as free expansion packs between which you can switch at will. Also, if there are things that you don't like about the game, and there always are, you can change them and play the game the way you want, you create your own sandbox universe in which to play.

Civilization IV, because V isn't even worth mentioning, even shipped with a few mods preinstalled. And now look at mods like Caveman2Cosmos and see where the game got because of that, and people still buy the game only to play the mods, because otherwise they would have gotten bored with the vanilla experience.

I have enjoyed RPG and strategy games since Lord of Midnight, Fantasy General and the first D&D games, and have tried my hand at modding for games such as Oblivion, Fallout and Civ IV.

To contribute my 2 cents in this discussion let me say I MUCH prefer games which offer a solid sandbox environment and good modding tools because (a) I admire the endless creativity and passion of modders and ( I like being able to shape my game environment to my individual taste, either through 3d party mods or through my own.

Even for a "perfect" game (if there is such a beast), there is a great deal of customization opportunities, additional content, new functionality etc. which will always be possible and wanted - and, after all, what are expansions but official mods?

To illustrate, let me offer Jagged Alliance 2 - an amazing game in its original release, which got so much better through a series of great mods.

I have also found, however, that in order for the modding community to get even remotely interested in a game it needs to have solid fundamentals and a good premise, so for me the lack of mods would definately mean that the game has some serious flaws which are not fixxable through modding...

Best, bendiwolf

I'm going to mostly agree with you here (and I'm moved to post because I feel as though JShores was a bit rough in his decrying of your opinion).

Vanilla should not require mods for it to be a great game for just about anyone. There is no way it can be perfect though, as everyone will have a different opinion as to what makes a 'perfect' game. At the same time, we should not have people having to mod it straight away in order to counter obvious flaws that should have been picked up and fixed during development.

I also agree that one of the signs of a great game is that mods aren't released straight away as everyone is too busy having fun playing the game as it is to bother with modding it to start with.

However, it's not a sign of failure if people do start modding quickly - some people just like to tinker and get more of a kick out of doing that than playing, which is fair enough.

I do think reviewers will give give it due consideration - most are generally fair. If the vanilla game is good, they will say that at the same time as giving it credit for being easily moddable (which has to be a good thing for the games longevity) regardless if people are already modding it. If the vanilla game is flawed but can be saved by mods, they will say that instead but that will obviously count against it in many people's eyes, which is why it is important for the game to be as good, and as universally appealing, as it can be 'out of the box'

Mods require a userbase to enjoy and make them, a great foundation of a game to be the base, and ability to mod the game as much as possible.

FFH2 wouldn't have been made without Civ4 being a great game that was popular.

The big impediment to FE modding will likely be the userbase, and maybe a lack of a way to .exe mods like you could in Civ 4 (I don't know if FE supports this or not)

 Good mods need to support lazy users.

Civ IV must have really sucked. Lots of mods.

Speaking about mods: Frogboy, what will be the AI's ability at adapting itself to the rule changes in mods? Will we have access to some XML descriptors for the AI?

This is the one thing that scares me the most about mods - since we don't have the source code to modify the AI, I wonder if it's not just going to have a hard time adapting to the changes...

Well, I don't feel I was too harsh with anyone, I was just stating my opinion. 

That being said, I agree with most of what you say except one point. I think you and GFireflyE are wrong on one major thing. Modders aren't driven to mod games to "fix" bad games. I am sure there are a few people out there that are willing to do that, but the vast majority of modders tweak and add content to good games. If the modding system is easy to learn, even better. I can give you as many examples as you like of this being the case. Can you give me at least some examples that prove your point.

Particularly, I would love to see reviews that say to steer clear of a game because the modding community is fixing it. 

I don't think I said anywhere that modders were driven to mod just to fix bad games. There all kinds of people who mod, some to add content to good games (CIV4), some to fix minor problems with otherwise good games (Dark Souls) and some to fix major problems to turn potentially good, but currently bad or unplayable games around (Vampire: The Masquerade) and I'm sure there are other motivations besides.

I'm not going to dig out links to specific reviews but there have been plenty that I have seen that have said that game 'X' has plenty of bugs and recommend that people stay away until they see whether they are fixed (regardless of whether by modders or by the developers). The original EWOM being just one example.