The mod/map editor has some enormous potential but unfortunately some few limitations act like a bottleneck, such as
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Stacking multiple tuning packs is currently not possible and this is probably the biggest limitation. Basically you can play with only 1 mod enabled at the same time. I understand that from a technical point of view it is difficult to make sure that the mods are compatible. But AoE2 solves this by simply giving the mods a priority and whoever has highest priority, gets enabled if there is a conflict.
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Tuning packs need to be enabled by the host. This is another big limitation. If I wanted smaller trees like in AoE2, I’d need to ask the host to enable this. Why not make two types of tuning packs, some that work locally only (i.e. for the player himself only) and others which are shared between all match participants.
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When browsing for “All mods”, the sorting function for “Rating” is simply useless. Mods with barely 1 or 2 five star ratings will always land at the very top while other very popular mods without perfect rating (e.g. only 4.5 stars) land way further down. Adding another sorting function “Subscriptions” which sorts by number of subscriptions would help a lot to identify popular mods.
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More than half the mods show no preview image. Especially for maps, this is quite annoying. Just make it mandatory for modders to upload a preview image and also automatically generate a minimap image for maps.
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If Relic wants the community to deliver new campaigns, then there should be a separate category for this and also a seamless implementation into the campaign menu. Nobody wants to start a campaign map from the skirmish lobby.
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Add good maps to the official map pool. Due to the lack of map development coming from Relic, it would be good to compensate this by adding good community maps to the official map pool. This would keep the game alive and things interesting. Thanks to AoE 2 and AoE 3 there are plenty of map ideas out there and sooner or later the community is going to add them all to AoE 4. Relic just needs to open the door…
It would be a terrible decision to leave the modding as it currently is and waste its huge potential…