Because mods and the base game development are fundamentally different things. It’s a difference of a chef serving a dish, and giving a client an option of adding additional spices or ingredients or allowing clients to decide how the dish will be made for everyone in the first place.
It’s not about power play - it’s about devs being, well, devs - they design the game, and it should stay that way. At no point did they offer relinquishing this responsibility. Testing and providing feedback, is not the same as designing.
EDIT: There is also a polish saying: “where there are six cooks, there is nothing to eat”. If community were to influence development, it would go nowhere. Simple as that. I used a lot of food illustrations in this post. I am starving. Supper time.
I will be honest, draw conclusions from the whole time of the development of the game. If everything goes as before, without a radical change in approach, the game will not become a faceted diamond in the hands of developers. And in contrast, the game will be a masterpiece, passing through the hands of fans and modders. And it will be a fall for Snapshotgames as a gaming studio.
Firaxis had a lot of this and they benefited max. But then LongWar1 came out and made of “all the work of Firaxis” - Tutorial for Mod. Then of course, they made effective conclusions from this.
In any good restaurant, there are always a lot of cooks, but there is one over all - Chef Cook (who will leave if he finds out that deteriorate food).
But the Devs is not a restaurant but a cafe, and they can (give yourself and your clients a lot of freedom) give customers to cook their own food if, for example, customers do not like the degree of roasting of meat. Concilium and Modrs are unique customers, turning the “food place” into one of their favorite places in their life.
Forgive @VOLAND for the offtopic branch, but this is a very important part for me.
Right. But it is too early to do that. Devs create additional content and change core mechanics. Letting too many people into this mess would be a problem. They will do that probably just before or even after release on Steam. 4 months already passed and game is coming in good direction in my opinion. It is more stable right now and there are a lot less things that frustrate in the game.
Such as? Perhaps there is part of XCOMs development that I am not aware of, but I don’t know anything about Firaxis letting fans rebalance or change mechanics of their games.
longWar was a fun mod. Mods are great. I am in all favour of adding mod support once devs slow down on supporting the game.