I know I'm going to take heat for making this thread; especially considering that I am unknown around here, and I actually signed up primarily for the purpose of making it. Before you accuse me of simply wanting to make trouble, however, please realise that the below post has been building up inside me for 4-6 months now. I've been seeing a lot of things that I was unhappy with, and I held my breath for a long time, because I knew people would think that I was just trying to create drama. I've tried to be as civil as possible, but there are things here that needed to be said.
This sentence sums up the core issue that I am having with the group of mods authored by the people who were initially responsible for Forge, in general; said problem is not confined exclusively to Red Power 2.
Specifically, there is a major problem of insularity and elitism among these people. I've been getting a very strong impression over the last several months, of a particular closed clique, which refers to itself (to quote Pahimar) as "the Forge community," which congregates on a couple of private servers and spends a lot of time focusing on how awesome it supposedly is. They view themselves as celebrities, putting it fairly simply.
There is an equally strong sense at this point, that the modifications which these people develop, are only really intended for the developer clique themselves, and their chosen friends (such as ShadowDragon) to use; I can't remember the last time I saw a public release of IndustrialCraft 2 available from that mod's web site, that wasn't exclusively in FTB, for example. Buildcraft (or the public, non-in-crowd releases, at least) is also showing signs of serious decay, with texture rendering bugs, and the Filler simply destroying blocks it removes, rather than dropping them on the ground. 1.4.7's release of Red Power 2 also has at least one crash bug that I know of, which I've inadvertently triggered multiple times.
I think the real problem is the fact that there has been far too much fawning and genuflection towards these people. They are not Gods, but unfortunately most players tend to regard them as such, and as mentioned above, I've really been starting to get the impression that it has gone to their heads. I don't think we should be deliberately rude or insulting to them, but I don't think it's good for them if we worship them excessively, either.
The trend towards elitism and insularity has perhaps been most strikingly visible with Eloraam. I've been using her mods since before 1.7.3, and back then, she referred to it as Integrated Redstone. This was back before RP World and a lot of other things; the wiring and the integrated blocks were the only real thing there. Back then, however, she was friendly and a lot more communicative; I used to see her regularly responding to people in the RP Minecraftforums thread. Over time, however, and as the mod got bigger and Forge was developed, that changed. We started hearing less and less from her; and for me, the straw which really broke the camel's back was the fact that ShadowDragon and Direwolf20 were making YouTube videos which featured a 1.4.7 version of RP2, probably three months before there was a public release.
This sentence sums up the core issue that I am having with the group of mods authored by the people who were initially responsible for Forge, in general; said problem is not confined exclusively to Red Power 2.
Specifically, there is a major problem of insularity and elitism among these people. I've been getting a very strong impression over the last several months, of a particular closed clique, which refers to itself (to quote Pahimar) as "the Forge community," which congregates on a couple of private servers and spends a lot of time focusing on how awesome it supposedly is. They view themselves as celebrities, putting it fairly simply.
There is an equally strong sense at this point, that the modifications which these people develop, are only really intended for the developer clique themselves, and their chosen friends (such as ShadowDragon) to use; I can't remember the last time I saw a public release of IndustrialCraft 2 available from that mod's web site, that wasn't exclusively in FTB, for example. Buildcraft (or the public, non-in-crowd releases, at least) is also showing signs of serious decay, with texture rendering bugs, and the Filler simply destroying blocks it removes, rather than dropping them on the ground. 1.4.7's release of Red Power 2 also has at least one crash bug that I know of, which I've inadvertently triggered multiple times.
I think the real problem is the fact that there has been far too much fawning and genuflection towards these people. They are not Gods, but unfortunately most players tend to regard them as such, and as mentioned above, I've really been starting to get the impression that it has gone to their heads. I don't think we should be deliberately rude or insulting to them, but I don't think it's good for them if we worship them excessively, either.
The trend towards elitism and insularity has perhaps been most strikingly visible with Eloraam. I've been using her mods since before 1.7.3, and back then, she referred to it as Integrated Redstone. This was back before RP World and a lot of other things; the wiring and the integrated blocks were the only real thing there. Back then, however, she was friendly and a lot more communicative; I used to see her regularly responding to people in the RP Minecraftforums thread. Over time, however, and as the mod got bigger and Forge was developed, that changed. We started hearing less and less from her; and for me, the straw which really broke the camel's back was the fact that ShadowDragon and Direwolf20 were making YouTube videos which featured a 1.4.7 version of RP2, probably three months before there was a public release.
