Kitty Corp Meow Mix Forums

This is a subject matter that has been on my mind for a little while now.  It mainly affects move set mods but can be applied somewhat to other forms of modding.  Simply put how we critique mods and modders and the standards of the various users.

Oh and let me get this out the way now, I fully expect people to disagree with and/or dislike what I've to say.  Admittedly I'll probably read back on it and think it sounds rather elitist of me but nonetheless it should be said.

Move set modding is very complex.  Even the people that do it I feel didn't quite understand what it takes to be a good move set modder and designer.  Heck I don't even think I'm a particularly amazing designer despite the fact that I've learnt a lot about it from being in the PMBR.  You can shower your move set with all the fancy gimmicks in the world but unless there's a solid general design direction and all the little decisions you make surrounding said design direction are coherent your move set is going to be bad.  You'll catch the short term attention of people, but after the cluster begins to wear the anyone with taste can see the move set becomes dull.  Which brings me onto my second point.

I've noticed the standards of the general community associated with mods and this site can be rather sketchy.  People are often too nice with their 'feedback' and as a result leave completely unconstructive comments.  This happens less with regards to model imports I find and its why imports and importers have almost all steadily gotten better.  Most of the imports now are way better than imports from a year or so ago but the same can't really be said for move sets.

I hate to isolate an example but calikingz Crash PSA is a recent one that comes to mind.

SSBB MODZ: Crash Officially Joins Brawl!! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kxbsO8B_mY#ws)

I'm seeing comments all over the video saying how awesome it is yet I'm there looking at it and not getting that impression at all.  Presentation wise its mainly a bunch of animation swaps using largely Luigi's animations with a handful of Crash's actual moves done but it a rather stiff, unintuitive way.  Ironically the final smash was really the only thing that caught my attention.  And this is coming from a user who was nominated twice for the KC-MM award of best all rounder.  I'm not trying to offend calikingz and he's not the worst example or the only one, merely felt this needed to be stated.

This overall prevents a lot of move set modders from actually progressing as designers and artists because they don't actually know, understand of appreciate where they're going wrong.  They may learn some new fangled nifty trick in Brawlbox or PSA but nothing that makes them better move sets.

In addition to design presentation is often important, namely in the animation department.  Honestly I could probably count the number of active good animators here on one hand (myself not included).  The ones striving to improve and consequently are since they're steadily understanding where they're making mistakes (and before you ask no I'm not naming anyone).  Good animations more than anything craft the identity of your mod.  Yeah I know another animator rant I just wish there were more really good ones.

I guess what I'm saying is that I've noticed in the 3 years I've been here that the community is pretty tame when it comes to expressing feedback for mods (namely move sets).  Scared to insult people maybe?  Well I feel some people need to be levelled with a little more.  Being a little more frank so they have the opportunity to truly improve.

And thats why youre on the P:M team :P

Yup :D

But on a more serious note, you also have times where users offer criticism, but it's either vague as hell, too broad, not elaborated on, or in some way of no use because of those reasons or others.

Those types of posts make me feel like Knuckles when he asks the floating TVs about the location of the Master emerald shards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPBhershOHI#t=1m35s (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPBhershOHI#t=1m35s)

There are also the people who don't take criticism well at all, or just outright ignore it. Then again, I'm rather harsh with my criticisms sometimes. Not only that. There are also those that make excuses in an effort to invalidate criticisms just to keep from changing something that really should be changed.

I won't name any prominent examples, but some of the people here may know what I'm talking about.

I see a lot of circlejerking and not much real critique. You compliment me, I'll compliment you, is the mindset most of these posts have.

As far as I can see, it's more of a "I'll post when I see something I like that's up to my standards" kind of thing that leads to so much complimenting and not much critique.

Another thing is that people don't really follow the artists so much as the things they MIGHT make. People won't bother with something they won't download, the way I see it. If author X is making Anime-character-from-a-series-I-don't-care-about Y, and it's not looking up to snuff, most people will just disregard it.

I think most people are also blindsided by the fact that their favorite character finally has a moveset, but they don't take time to actually study and critique the moveset and the animations.

I take Constructive Criticism with a grain of salt. Yes, it can sound mean, but that's what makes us better at modding. There's too many people here that say "This looks amazing!" Or anything of the sort. I'm willing to take the hit as long as it makes the quality of my work better.

"I take Constructive Criticism with a grain of salt." clashes with the rest of your post

a important factor is also the total amount of mods there are in a specific category, and the reason for this amount.
so let's see, what i see most are recolors/texture mods, why? simple, they are simple and quick to do.
second comes model imports, why? simple, while it requires more time than textures (talking about the simple ones that are on the vault), it's still rather easy, both to learn and to "perfect".
then there are stages, same reasoning as above.
and lastly come the PSAs, for the exact same reasons as above, plus a few more:
-it's less user friendly and often scares the [censored] out of any noob.
-it takes a [censored] ton of time, i know this is one of the reasons already mentioned, but think about how long it takes to make a full top quality PSA, first there is the planning, then animating, and then what ends up [censored]ing most noobs like me, the frigging coding, but hey, wait, we're not done yet, now let's go test it, oh [censored] it freezes, let's go through all the possible reasons, ok freeze solved; oh [censored], it's not balanced, let's look at ALL THE DAMN CHARACTER and see how i should change it to fit better; oh [censored], now it's underpowered, let's do this again, ETC.

so yeah, and now, how does this have to do with quality, simple, you have less reference, less time, and even less people that can help you out.