You are right! I totally forgot about Vintage Story, I only read about it briefly.

> ... you can't really open all the interfaces and expect it to be stable without making some huge trade offs.

Another game I often play with a huge open interface is Crusader Kings 3 and paradox games in general. Most of the gameplay is implemented in their scripting language for the engine. But as you said when the game gets a big update most mods simply dont work anymore.

If the support of the community dies down many mods with much work and craft dont get updated anymore and rot away as the game gets updates. Quite sad actually.

Thats why I also quite like Star Wars Empire at War mods. The game does not get any updates anymore. The API here is mostly frozen, even old mods still work.