Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 - The Modding Dungeon Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Modding General I went back to NWN, what I learnt will shock you!

I just sat and watched https://www.twitch.tv/videos/175844042 which is a video by Baardvaark trying to explain editing skills.

It seems that this modder guessed and extrapolated what each column did on his own.

For a successful tool, we really do need the developers themselves to create pages in that Wiki which explain what those columns do, and how the game works.

The most successful game for modders that I remember is Neverwinter Nights. I remember I bought a Neverwinter Nights book that focused just on the modding tool. A whole book. It explained everything about the tool including the scripting language etc.

It was created by Versus Books https://www.amazon.com/Versus-Official-Neverwinter-Builders-Perfect/dp/193188613X

It was efforts like this which contributed to the modding scene in NWN being as successful as it was.

I believe if Larian wants to replicate this success, it needs to do the same with D:OS 2.

Cash and resources need to go toward staff members writing this stuff up. We should not be dependant on the community creating tutorial pages or videos. Community educational content creation should be supplementary, not core.

There is a window of time now that the game has launched to attract modders, and to keep player interest.

Let's make 500k sold into 2 million, and create a franchise with ten thousand mods that will last us till D:OS3!

(Because lord knows no other company is making games like this lol )

If you want Larian to provide you the platform you want, PROVE to them that the demand is there. You can do that by using what the toolset does give you and growing the mod community from the ground up.

It's not a catch 22 system. 500k in sales, we don't have to prove anything to the developer the game is successful and we know the type of modding scene that is possible and the benefits.

A lot of sales doesn't mean a modding community is the best place to put resources.

Possible isn't the right word. Feasible is.

The NWN toolset was designed from the ground up to be released as such a utility. D:OS 2's editor is a nice to have throw in with a bit of support on release from the devs. Most of the modding functionality is bolted onto Larian's internal tools and published for use.

The #1 subscribed to mod on the workshop has 10,000 subscribers. That's a drop in the bucket of the overall market.

Make some mods, figure it out. Stumble around in the dark if necessary. You'll grow the mod base, and in turn, Larian has already proven that they'll put more resources as seen from the growth from D:OS 1 to D:OS 2.

There are more actual working mods on the D:OS 2 workshop right now after a few weeks on the market than there were for the entirety of the D:OS 1 + EE. 2 weeks vs over 2 years.

I think pointing to the things that NWN/2 did well is useful, but we also need to keep our retrospection even handed. For one, that book you posted gets pretty bad reviews.

What's more, for whatever spectacular longevity the NWN community enjoyed, the game itself was not a long-term financial success. I think Larian is on the right side of the divide here and with the right priorities. The toolset team is currently focused on the things that we as a community can't do, like adding features, fixing bugs, and documenting some of the more technical parts of the system. For my part, I would like them to stay focused on the things that are hard for the community to do and we as a community take some initiative to get others up to speed who are showing interest. As SniperHF alluded to, we can do a lot to capture the imagination of the early interest by giving them a foretaste of what the editor can do.