Hi all. I've just made this account for the sole reason of sharing my opinion on this topic, so probably i will only use it for a couple of posts, but oh well... btw, prepare for a long post.
I've been playing vanilla Minecraft for 3 years now and only 2 weeks ago started to try out modded Minecraft (i got a bit bored with vanilla by now). As i've seen a load of Minecraft let's-players on youtube use Feed the beast modpacks, i've decided to give them a try and as a beginner started out with the "Unleashed" modpack. Needless to say, i was blown away by all the new posssibilities the included mods brought to the table and i'm playing Minecraft every day again since using FTB, so thanks for the awesomeness you guys made for all of us to enjoy
Now, to the new launcher and Curse partnership part. In my humble opinion, your launcher that is implemented right now, already does a good enough job on what it's supposed to do, namely download single mods and whole modpacks with one click. As far as downloading multiple mods with one click goes, i've seen comments on Curse's practice to require premium accounts in order to be able to download multiple WoW mods with a single click; i'd like to be optimistic just as much as the next guy, but from what i know about how the general corporate & business world (including Curse) functions, they will probably do the same with their version of the FTB launcher, if not outright in the start then most probably at a later point.
From my logic, many players that use a custom mix of mods already download, install and update them individually anyway, so imho it's not like they'd exactly
need that functionality; the rest of us who use whole modpacks, would probably appreciate the launcher updating only individual mods instead of redownloading the whole modpack everytime there's an update, but since this only happens every couple of months and the download takes about 4 minutes (in my case at least), it's not such a big deal in the first place. Personally, i would prefer to download the whole modpack every couple of months instead of seeing annoying adds in my FTB launcher every single time i decide to play Minecraft (which means a couple of times per day), so i'll go out on a limb and hope that there will indeed remain some people who will continue to work on the current launcher and it's promised update for those of us who prefer to use a clunkier launcher instead of being forced to look at adds every time we want to play.
Btw, since i'm on the FTB launcher update subject: you guys (developers) seem to be very proud about the "open" aspect of FTB and minecraft modding, so i don't understand why the work which was already done towards the updated FTB launcher should be scrapped in favour of working on the new Curse launcher. Since Slowpoke already mentioned that the work on the current FTB launcher will continue for at least a while, i really hope you guys will stay true to the "open source" aspect when you switch to the Curse client and at least put the already existing work on the old client out for anybody to work and improve on as an alternative to the upcoming Curse launcher; in fact, you could even do that now (maybe you already did, don't know tbh).
Just an explanation on why i and probably some others would like to have this alternative in the future: i'm an older guy (33) and in regard to that "i've seen some ****", so to say. From what i know to be true, corporations and companies almost always put money & profit first, even when it means screwing their own clients over (even the oldest ones). Like some others mentioned, while it's true that Slowepoke and Lex want to do what is best for the players and modpack users, it's not necessarily what Curse wants to do as well. Yes, they'll repeatedly tell you that on the office meeting and in the following months, but when the deal (contract) is signed and you two become "advisors", Curse will be basicly free to do anything they deem to be in their best interest (aka earn money). They will probably start with ignoring your advices and recommendations about a premium client not being needed in order to download multiple mods at once; you'll be able to advise them on it, but they'll be free to ignore your advices and do as they please anyway.
While this may seem as naysaying and complaining even before we see how this deal turns out in practice, like i've already said, i've seen the above scenario turn out to be true on enough occasions in real life, so i simply can't ignore what i know has happened before to other projects (not just in the gaming business). I honestly hope that my fears will turn out as baseless and the partnership will indeed prove to be what's best for everyone in the FTB community, but like the saying goes, "better to be safe than sorry" - that's why i wrote this wall of text in the first place and that's why i hope that the regular launcher will remain available in the future as an alternative.
Greetings!
TLDR: i've spent 20 minutes typing this so you can at least spend 5 minutes reading it
