The editor should be more streamlined by now. You brag about how amazing your modding/editing community is in quite a few interviews, so why isn't making what they do as easy for them as possible a top priority? The less we have to focus on figuring out how to get this stuff to work, the more we can focus on the content we are trying to produce. Overall I truly feel that while the community content is impressive now, the quality of the content will increase significantly as it becomes easier to implement. As it is now, the community content is produced more for the purpose of fixing the game, than it is to add new content scenarios, and missions. I find this comparable to selling a customer a brand new lawnmower out of the box and expecting them to sharpen the blades, install the belts and chains, and tune the carburetor before they can really use it for what they want to. As it stands now it takes more time to produce a quality, detailed, and immersive mission than it does to actually play the mission once it is complete. Call me crazy, but how can you claim the editor is "such a powerful tool" when it takes 8-12 hours (assuming you know what you're doing) to create a top-notch quality mission that in the end we only get 2-3 hours of gameplay from?
Furthermore, if you're a modder, you're 3d modeling/animating software + texturing/editor + 3 of bohemia's tools + a converter + scripts + packaging .pbo add-on + testing + publishing. For Source SDK, Creation Kit, or CryEngine3 SDK = 3d modeling/animation program + texture/art/editor(2d stuff) + export plug-in provided by all 3 of the engines named, load into SDK again PROVIDED by the named engines = export to game
Thus, RealVirtuality Engine(Bohemia) modding steps(between) = 8-10 separate steps | MOST MODERN engines and sdk's (provided by devs) modding steps(between) = 5-6 at most.
I truly hope that the current editor is not the pinnacle of their idea of "complete" or finalized.