MMH5.5 - Heroes of Might and Magic 5.5

Leonion
In my opinion, the modding community for Warband (and Mount & Blade in general) is a prime example of what we should strive for. I used to create small things for Might and Magic, and I have a good understanding of how it works. The modding community for Heroes 5 is as far from this as possible.

I also know about the Chinese modders. But they don't just steal mods; they steal everything they can get their hands on, both in modding and in local commercial game development.

In short, I'm saying that we need to aim for the way the Warband modding community works. We need to identify the authors of different works, establish connections, get to know each other, and promote a system of open-source projects, etc.
The main problem is that this is probably impossible. And the reason is a significant difference between modding for Heroes 5 and Warband: we have significantly fewer people, and there are practically no people who can create their own resources. I was literally told directly, "You're the only one." People, neither the authors nor the audience, are interested in this. Plus, it's physically impossible to force someone to ban something. So, we can't stop it; we can only try to persuade people with a better alternative, but that doesn't really work.

I won't explain the "competition" issue; I'm sure you would agree with my point if I explained it thoroughly and clearly, but that's not important now, and it's not relevant to either of us.

Regarding the fact that 90 percent of our modding consists of borrowed content. It's not as black and white as it seems at first glance. And unfortunately, "double standards" apply here.
First, no matter how much armchair experts on the TaleWorlds forum claim, from a legal point of view, game resources such as models, textures, and so on are, surprisingly, often not directly protected. Of course, Ubisoft would still win any lawsuit against us if they wanted to. But they need to want to sue us in the first place, and that will never happen.
Secondly, for now (and I really hope it stays that way), we only take resources from the same series of games as Heroes 5. And as far as I know, we have permission to use these resources for non-commercial activities. However, there is a suspicion that this permission was granted by someone who did not have the authority to do so. Perhaps just a clerk from the support department.
Thirdly, in the case of Warband, it can be unequivocally stated that "stealing" resources is wrong, and that would be correct. Unfortunately, we can't say that. It's physically impossible to simply ban everyone. If you start saying that you shouldn't take what doesn't belong to you, you'll immediately be labeled a "copyright troll" and so on. "Stealing" resources currently plays a useful constructive role: it attracts new people to the community. Among these people, there are those who try to create something themselves. "Stealing" resources helped them discover 3ds max for the first time, and that, you'll agree, is a step in the right direction.

In short, I really dislike the position of "it's bad because it's bad" if, in my opinion, when something is "bad," we need to explain why it's bad. "Illegal" is not an argument in this case, at least because it's not always legally illegal. But in the case of "stealing" resources, there are specific arguments why it's bad, apart from "illegality." And this is precisely the difference between what people do for Heroes 5 and for Warband. Do you want us to be able to create something? Then stop stealing. But in the specific case of Heroes 5, there are also arguments why it's beneficial. Therefore, if we were to simply stop borrowing (even if it were possible), nothing good would happen for the Heroes 5 modding community; it would simply die.

I'm 100 percent sure that our community needs to change. But it's impossible to do it with a snap of your fingers. I'm not even sure it's possible. The modding community for Might and Magic developed slowly, and from the very beginning, it had these rules. As far as I understand, the Turkish developers themselves initially formed this community. Heroes 5 has a completely different story.

Actually, I would be happy to listen to you if you have any ideas on how we could bring the Heroes 5 modding community to the state in which the Warband modding community is. Even some general ideas could be useful.

And by the way, what Warband mod are you working on? Send a link; I'd be interested to take a look.

Added 21 minutes ago

In my opinion, the strong limitations in modding are partly to blame, as well as the lack of ability to import custom content into the game (I didn't experience the time when HoMMV modding was thriving). This leads to the thought: why create something of your own if you can't use it in the game?

And what about the fact that using original models, animations, etc., which cannot be touched without the permission of the copyright holders (the developers don't have the rights), is almost all of the visual modding for Heroes 5?! If there were ethical requirements here like in Warband, there would be practically no mods due to technical limitations. I haven't played Warband, but based on your requirements for mods, things aren't as bleak and depressing as in Heroes (in terms of visuals). At the very least, the developers provided tools for modding or something similar.

Now, let's compare the mods of a game whose developers intended to provide a platform for creativity when they made it, and the mods of a game that the developers made simply as a game (buy it, play through the story, beat the computer on maps, delete it), and there was no talk of modding among them.

No offense, but whining about the "limitations" of Heroes 5 is nothing more than whining. The ability to import models and animations into Heroes 5 exists. There is nothing that would limit your ability to create these models and animations, rather than stealing them from another game. Everything else is irrelevant.

And by the way, there was simply no time when the modding for Heroes 5 was particularly "more alive" than it is now. Believe me, I've been following this topic for about 10 years. From a visual point of view, you can see for yourself what "masterpieces" people created when making mods during the "golden age" of Heroes 5 modding. It's really impressive, isn't it?