Okay, I seem to have offended you and that was genuinely not my intent.
Saying 'if RO2 had X' is not much of an argument. It doesn't, and so it's not really worth mentioning. Your point about game engines (and thus mods) being increasingly complex in recent years is of course totally valid, but that's not a statement that a) I was ever disagreeing with, or b) nullifies the point I was trying to make...
...which is that RO2 is lacking in custom content. Is this your fault? No, because it is not your job to create custom community content for the game, even if you have in fact gone out of your way to do so with regards to stuff like bringing RS in-house, or coding assets for the new transport vehicles in your spare time. The latter in particular was something I took note of and appreciated.
They're both commendable steps, but it doesn't change the fact that after three (?) years or however long it's been (God, time flies...) since release, there are still no new tanks, vehicles or anything approaching a playable conversion mod for RO2. People have been working on-and-off on this type of stuff for a long time now, whereas updates for equivalent stuff on RO1/DH did not take anywhere near as long. Admittedly DH tailed off a bit towards the end of its life - I believe the last major patch was about a year after the penultimate one - but it was a better engine to work with and so the community yielded some great stuff. I've yet to hear anyone dispute that, and in terms of actions speak louder than words I've yet to see anything either.
It was never my intention to disrespect or offend, and indeed I have a great deal of respect for TWI and I take notice when you go out of your way to help the community (i.e. the two examples given above) but questioning the idea of 'a ton of community content' is not disrespectful; further, it is closer to being a 'blanket and false statement' than anything I have said here.
As a point of reference, I am a fan of Company of Heroes 2 and lament the lack of modding in that game; like the prequel, from a modder's PoV it has great potential but currently only custom maps are allowed. Like your games, Steam Workshop is integrated, but unlike your games, proper modding - in the sense of using -dev mode and loading custom archives into the game - is currently prohibited. The reason I mention this is that despite the innate advantage RO2 has over CoH2 in that regard, the number of playable mods (be it balance, total conversion, whatever) is the same: none.
You chose to implement tanks of such an astronomically high technical standard that after three years, I've yet to see a working modified version of one in the game, let alone someone attempt something brand new like a KV-1 or a Tiger. With all the will in the world, I simply do not foresee a situation in which something like DH could be attempted for RO2, but nor am I suggesting that to be the be-all and end-all of modding fruition.
Obviously, feel free to disagree with anything I've said here.
Incidentally, I recently read that a studio (DICE or somesuch, I can't remember... someone big) had said that their future games won't have modding because (paraphrasing) it's too complex for the community to understand; I dare say you've heard about this and in fact have probably mentioned it before. Whilst I vehemently disagree with the notion of 'you can't have X because you wouldn't know how to use it' I think it's worth mentioning, because I believe RO2 to be at a sort of technical crossroads in that respect; i.e. yes, full modding capabilities are provided, but they are so complex and tedious to work with that after three years no one has yet fully utilized them.
It's great that you provide mod tools for your games and, being a former modding outfit yourself, obviously you wish to advocate modding, but I do wonder whether RO3 will essentially be unmoddable to all but the most dedicated professional mod teams who have the time and resources required. I realize this is touching on a broader subject now, but it's one you mentioned in your previous post and I suspect it's something TWI have a number of thoughts on. If you do, and if you have the time, I'd love to hear them.
So, I suppose my closing comment would be to ask yourself this question: if, after nearly three years, none of the attempted mods for RO2 have got to the point of being in a playable state, do you feel it is the community or the engine that is at fault?
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