I'm about to post my first paralives mod publicly in a moment. Along with it, I've gathered a better understanding of the modding capabilities, so I have some thoughts about modding for Paralives and am curious for yours as well...

My Thoughts

Paralives' modding is in sort of a weird limbo between traditional "modding" and just highly customizable features. For those that aren't aware, Paralives has official support for 2 types of mods - CC like clothing or build objects, and what we know as "Tuning Mods" in the form of an in-game mod editor. CC is pretty identical to the effort and time a TS4 CC creator takes today. The "tuning mods" tools however, basically just lists collections of different settings the game exposes and a mod creator can alter the value of.

What makes them "mods" rather than just advanced settings is mostly the fact that you can package them and share them with others. Also some of the "settings" aren't super player-friendly, using internal names that might take a bit of trial and error to understand exactly what field does what. Some of these mod types will also still be extremely time consuming and tedious to build even with the in-game mod tools. Some will require custom assets like icons that a modder still has to make in external tools per usual. In some ways, this in-game menu isn't all that different from modding with Sims 4 Studio, just built-in instead of a separate app.Mods can be installed either manually or through the Steam Workshop. Once mods are published to the Steam Workshop, it is not possible to do an early access period.This means any mod in early access would have to be manually installed. It's not difficult to install mods manually for the game, in a way it's the same as what we do today for TS4, but it is certainly a higher barrier than just clicking a button in steam.

The Dilemma

This weird Settings/Mod situation makes it difficult to figure out where to balance early access. Because some of the more simple mods literally involve a few number changes and a few minutes of work inside the game, I don't think every mod necessarily deserves an early access period.At the same time, there has to be some incentive for modders to spend time and effort working on paralives mods when that time could also be spent on TS4 mods.I figured while I sort out my feelings on this, I'd release my first mod for free immediately. It honestly didn't require a ton of effort, but I did still have to trial and error to get the right values. I honestly don't know how much modding I'll do for Paralives. Script and UI mods currently aren't supported which is much of what I do today for TS4, but I wanted to go ahead and get your thoughts on it.

Tentative Plan

This is certainly up for debate, as I'll ask below, but I think this is where I have currently landed on Paralives modding. If I do keep releasing mods for Paralives, I will probably vary the early access time by the amount of effort I have put into the mod. If I feel like a mod could have been easily doable by someone else, had they thought of it, I will probably do a simple 24-48 hour early access period so patrons still get value out of it. Mods with effort and time on par with my TS4 mods would probably have similar early access timeframes to my other mods. As usual, they'll all go free when released and in this case, that means they would be put up on the Steam Workshop.

Questions for You

1. Do you even want Paralives mods?Obviously, let's start here. Do you even want paralives mods from me? Are you interested in them at all?2. How do you feel about paralives mods and modding tools in general?Thoughts on the modding setup, modder's efforts, etc?3. If I do start modding for Paralives, what early access structure do you think is fair?What kind of early access timeframes would you expect for mods from simple, moderate, complex? Would you do something differently?

Thanks everyone for your time, I appreciate any thoughts you may have! 🧡