FTB News 25/01/2015

[PhilHibbs]

Not every all-round pack needs to be balanced. But it would be nice if FTB would release at least one balanced and tweaked all-round pack while still retaining untweaked ones.

Like Resurrection?

 

[jordsta95]

Like Resurrection?

I wouldn't call that KS... however, I haven't played that I still need to, but the greg- is scaring me

 

[rhn]

Sorry, but I don't get your point. You realize the FTB did put off the KS pack right? They initially didn't make one, as they could have had one released at the same time as the DW20 pack, but I THINK there was a lot of the FTB team who didn't see the point in it (purely on what I have heard, though this may not be the case).

Yes I am very well aware that they put off making these large packs. I was quite vocal in raising my concerns about the deliberate choice to stop making these packs, which was based on the FTB team believing that practically noone actually played these packs and those few that were could simply throw the mods together themselves without any need for configurations. I tried very hard to argue that a large portion of the player base was in fact playing these packs and what they were looking for was not just a bunch of mods thrown hastily together(not to mention that might still have been too complex for some people, specially when taking server play and distribution of packs into account).

As for minetweaking/mod tweaking... WHY!? I don't see why you would do want this.

A lot of tweaking can be done to the all-round packs to improve the quality of the experience. I have to bring up TPPI again as it is such an excellent example. In addition to heavily modifying configs, it also modifies many recipes, it adds its own mod "TPPI Tweaks" that adds custom items for several recipes to increase/decrease difficulty of some mods recipes, all to help balance out mods. For example have:

• All the different Quarry options been balanced out to cost roughly the same amount of materials to craft
  
• EnderStorage "Ender Chests" and "Ender Tanks" have been increased in difficulty to match tesseracts more and make it more a midgame item(Forcing you to think outside nether lava from day 1).
  
• SFM items have been increased in cost to match its power by making its recipes more AE-like.
  
• IC2/RC/GT Iron/Steel plates have been Oredict'ed to give cross mod compatibility.
• general small knickknacks added to recipes to fix them, balance them in cost, balance them to power output, oredict them and more.

KS packs are SUPPOSED to be for modded newbies. If you want a challenge play a pack made for challenge. The KS packs are there for those who are new, or want to see how mod interaction works, etc.

Isn't that a little bit judgemental? So because I like to have a modpack with a lot of mods working together without any special HQM quests or other special mechanics getting in the way of my creativity, I must be a newbie? So I must play a unbalanced and quickly dropped together(read poor quality) pack until I "grow up" and become like you? I rather resent that tbh.

I am not interested in a hard challenge, I am interested in quality. A modpack with a large selection of mods that are balanced. It is CLEARLY possible if people are interested in investing the effort in it. And this is what was my the point of my original post to @slowpoke. Now that they finally realised that it was a bad idea to ditch the all-round packs, maybe it would be an idea to revise the attitude of these packs being simple and easy to put together with little to no config changes. And maybe invest the same amount of time in such a pack as other packs and make it as good as I am sure they could. Hell if even close to half the player base is really playing these, would it not be an excellent investment?

Not every all-round pack needs to be balanced. But it would be nice if FTB would release at least one balanced and tweaked all-round pack while still retaining untweaked ones.

Yeah I totally agree. I don't quite understand why they haven't made a "test new mods" pack like Horizons for 1.7. There have been an insane amount of new mods this MC revision and my head is just bursting with it all. It would be great with such a testing ground again. And then just one, well rounded, balanced, well updated all-round modpack.

 

[jordsta95]

Yes I am very well aware that they put off making these large packs. I was quite vocal in raising my concerns about the deliberate choice to stop making these packs, which was based on the FTB team believing that practically noone actually played these packs and those few that were could simply throw the mods together themselves without any need for configurations. I tried very hard to argue that a large portion of the player base was in fact playing these packs and what they were looking for was not just a bunch of mods thrown hastily together(not to mention that might still have been too complex for some people, specially when taking server play and distribution of packs into account).


A lot of tweaking can be done to the all-round packs to improve the quality of the experience. I have to bring up TPPI again as it is such an excellent example. In addition to heavily modifying configs, it also modifies many recipes, it adds its own mod "TPPI Tweaks" that adds custom items for several recipes to increase/decrease difficulty of some mods recipes, all to help balance out mods. For example have:

• All the different Quarry options been balanced out to cost roughly the same amount of materials to craft
  
• EnderStorage "Ender Chests" and "Ender Tanks" have been increased in difficulty to match tesseracts more and make it more a midgame item(Forcing you to think outside nether lava from day 1).
  
• SFM items have been increased in cost to match its power by making its recipes more AE-like.
  
• IC2/RC/GT Iron/Steel plates have been Oredict'ed to give cross mod compatibility.
• general small knickknacks added to recipes to fix them, balance them in cost, balance them to power output, oredict them and more.

Isn't that a little bit judgemental? So because I like to have a modpack with a lot of mods working together without any special HQM quests or other special mechanics getting in the way of my creativity, I must be a newbie? So I must play a unbalanced and quickly dropped together(read poor quality) pack until I "grow up" and become like you? I rather resent that tbh.

I am not interested in a hard challenge, I am interested in quality. A modpack with a large selection of mods that are balanced. It is CLEARLY possible if people are interested in investing the effort in it. And this is what was my the point of my original post to @slowpoke. Now that they finally realised that it was a bad idea to ditch the all-round packs, maybe it would be an idea to revise the attitude of these packs being simple and easy to put together with little to no config changes. And maybe invest the same amount of time in such a pack as other packs and make it as good as I am sure they could. Hell if even close to half the player base is really playing these, would it not be an excellent investment?



Yeah I totally agree. I don't quite understand why they haven't made a "test new mods" pack like Horizons for 1.7. There have been an insane amount of new mods this MC revision and my head is just bursting with it all. It would be great with such a testing ground again. And then just one, well rounded, balanced, well updated all-round modpack.

I'm not gonna split it up, simply because I am busy at the minute. But let's make this plain and simple. Would you:
A) Have a pack where bugs get fixed quickly, and packs get uploaded a week or two after they start being worked on (Infinity testers didn't even have a full week IIRC before it went public) - Meaning when 1.8 packs become a thing you have a month, or two, before the first stable KS pack is out.
B) Have the FTB team spend days upon hours balancing every little thing, and having to make sure it's at a happy medium (e.g. having greg tech and thermal expansion, making sure that GT is made 50% easier, and TE is made 50% harder - in terms of the difficulty spectrum).

And before you say B remember this, it'd take twice as long (at least) to fix a balance issue that we (anyone working on FTB packs) created, as we all have our own little kinks with Minetweaker/modtweaker (for example, I set values weird, gideon may create one .zs per mod - whereas I bung everything into one, etc.). There is a LOT of cons to using MT to balance a kitchen sink pack, especially not when that is your only project, and I doubt the FTB team have the time. Let's look at it this way, out of the people on the FTB team who make packs...
I rarely see JadedCat/Eyamaz on the forums anymore (I assume they are busy over at Curse), tfox seems to be doing a hell of a lot and it's pretty much the same for all core FTB member who work on pack dev.
What about the Phoenix Team? They joined the FTB team to help out with this sorta stuff... Yeah, true. BUT out of the pack devs there:
I just don't have enough time, I can barely get the time to do the thing I am working on at the minute, let alone spare a few hours a week for a kitchen sink pack.
Gideon has a few packs he is working on, and he shouldn't let quality of his packs slide as they are all very well built (it is hard to perfect a kitchen sink pack, even if you are Gideon)
Parcel31u... I don't see him around much as it is
The list goes on...
There could be 20 people working balancing a KS pack. But in short, it's a LOT of time spent for not much result. You balance 2 mods, and then #3 becomes too easy/too hard, you then edit that, and another mod becomes unbalanced, and after 20/30 mods you start to see the original mods you balanced become unbalanced.

 

[Hambeau]

I really prefer to think of them as: different path packs. As in I can take many different paths to reach whatever goal I have.

This name reeks a bit too much of "Political Correctness" to me (different path aka differently enabled, etc.).

I would think something along the lines of "Cornucopia Pack" (that would actually be a good name for such a pack) or "Omni Pack" would actually be better.

N'est Pas?

 

[PhilHibbs]

This name reeks a bit too much of "Political Correctness" to me (different path aka differently enabled, etc.).

Well, I guess we'd better not use that word so you don't get offended. See what you've done now?

 

[Hambeau]

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Yeah I totally agree. I don't quite understand why they haven't made a "test new mods" pack like Horizons for 1.7. There have been an insane amount of new mods this MC revision and my head is just bursting with it all. It would be great with such a testing ground again. And then just one, well rounded, balanced, well updated all-round modpack.

The problem with this statement is that you'd rekindle the argument I like to refer to as "To Greg or not to Greg"

 

[rhn]

I'm not gonna split it up, simply because I am busy at the minute. But let's make this plain and simple. Would you:
A) Have a pack where bugs get fixed quickly, and packs get uploaded a week or two after they start being worked on (Infinity testers didn't even have a full week IIRC before it went public) - Meaning when 1.8 packs become a thing you have a month, or two, before the first stable KS pack is out.
B) Have the FTB team spend days upon hours balancing every little thing, and having to make sure it's at a happy medium (e.g. having greg tech and thermal expansion, making sure that GT is made 50% easier, and TE is made 50% harder - in terms of the difficulty spectrum).

And before you say B remember this, it'd take twice as long (at least) to fix a balance issue that we (anyone working on FTB packs) created, as we all have our own little kinks with Minetweaker/modtweaker (for example, I set values weird, gideon may create one .zs per mod - whereas I bung everything into one, etc.). There is a LOT of cons to using MT to balance a kitchen sink pack, especially not when that is your only project, and I doubt the FTB team have the time. Let's look at it this way, out of the people on the FTB team who make packs...
I rarely see JadedCat/Eyamaz on the forums anymore (I assume they are busy over at Curse), tfox seems to be doing a hell of a lot and it's pretty much the same for all core FTB member who work on pack dev.
What about the Phoenix Team? They joined the FTB team to help out with this sorta stuff... Yeah, true. BUT out of the pack devs there:
I just don't have enough time, I can barely get the time to do the thing I am working on at the minute, let alone spare a few hours a week for a kitchen sink pack.
Gideon has a few packs he is working on, and he shouldn't let quality of his packs slide as they are all very well built (it is hard to perfect a kitchen sink pack, even if you are Gideon)
Parcel31u... I don't see him around much as it is
The list goes on...
There could be 20 people working balancing a KS pack. But in short, it's a LOT of time spent for not much result. You balance 2 mods, and then #3 becomes too easy/too hard, you then edit that, and another mod becomes unbalanced, and after 20/30 mods you start to see the original mods you balanced become unbalanced.

I would prefer B by far. I don't mind waiting months after a new MC version comes out for a pack if that pack is good.
But as I mentioned several times: I have no illusion that you can balance EVERYTHING completely. But the attitude atm. and in the past seems to be that there shouldn't even be done an attempt to do anything(or at least the very least you can get away with). And that is what I challenged in Slowpokes post.

I find it troubling that there is a lack of pack devs, as I have in the past. But since I have no skills my self I cannot really do anything but raise my concerns and point out once again that if at all possible then maybe new people with the right skills/enthusiasm be recruited. Perhaps people who have already proven them selves through third party modpacks could be approached. /shrug

 

[rhn]

The problem with this statement is that you'd rekindle the argument I like to refer to as "To Greg or not to Greg"

It has nothing to do with GT. I merely brought up a pack as an example that happened to contain GT. My arguments apply to any pack containing a larger amount of mods. If you do not do something to balance the pack in form of configs, tweaks etc. then there are bound to be one solution that is more efficient than the other, crossmod "exploits" that allow you to skip large portions of progress and other implications.

Sure with basic willpower you can look away from some of these things. But it gives a much better gaming experience if you don't have to.

 

[Hambeau]

It has nothing to do with GT. I merely brought up a pack as an example that happened to contain GT. My arguments apply to any pack containing a larger amount of mods. If you do not do something to balance the pack in form of configs, tweaks etc. then there are bound to be one solution that is more efficient than the other, crossmod "exploits" that allow you to skip large portions of progress and other implications.

Sure with basic willpower you can look away from some of these things. But it gives a much better gaming experience if you don't have to.

I was referring to the fact that if you make a pack like Infinity as your only "KS" pack lots of people will complain because GT isn't included...

If you go the other way lots of people will complain because it is.

Hence, TWO "KS" packs. QED.

 

[Strikingwolf]

Perhaps people who have already proven them selves through third party modpacks could be approached.

That already happened with the PT...

 

[jordsta95]

I would prefer B by far. I don't mind waiting months after a new MC version comes out for a pack if that pack is good.
But as I mentioned several times: I have no illusion that you can balance EVERYTHING completely. But the attitude atm. and in the past seems to be that there shouldn't even be done an attempt to do anything(or at least the very least you can get away with). And that is what I challenged in Slowpokes post.

I find it troubling that there is a lack of pack devs, as I have in the past. But since I have no skills my self I cannot really do anything but raise my concerns and point out once again that if at all possible then maybe new people with the right skills/enthusiasm be recruited. Perhaps people who have already proven them selves through third party modpacks could be approached. /shrug

There isn't a lack of pack devs. All in all the FTB team has ~10+ dedicated pack devs who (apart from myself) are pretty skilled. However, it's not a lack of people, it's a lack of time, and time vs. reward. When you have a pack with over 100 mods, most of which people wouldn't know how to balance, it would be hard.
For example a new mod to Inifinity RFTools. Other than Gideon and McJty, no one on the PhoenixTeam (and probably the FTB team as a whole) would probably be able to balance that around other mods.
Also, as I said before, multiple people working on it could cause more mayhem than just the one. But one person can't possibly do it all, in the time requirements that the team would LIKE to get a pack out.
For example, Infinity was "rushed" because there hadn't been a KS pack (although, I always argue the DW20 is about as KS-y as they get) so it wouldn't have met the hoped release date if more was done to balance it. However I believe Minetweaker was included by default, so servers could balance the pack for the server if they so chose

 

[rhn]

I was referring to the fact that if you make a pack like Infinity as your only "KS" pack lots of people will complain because GT isn't included...

If you go the other way lots of people will complain because it is.

Hence, TWO "KS" packs. QED.

Ahh I see. Yeah I can agree to that.

But if I were to call the shots then I would probably invest time in a non-gregtech all-round pack, and then refer people interested in GT in either a specialized GT pack(I am sure you get the best GT experience this way) or something like TPPI. I am sure it must be a massive job to balance GT with a bunch of other mods and I probably wouldn't feel it worthwhile when there is already a 3rd party pack out there that already did that, and there are several GT focused packs as well. Instead I would probably focus on making one balanced non-GT pack instead while supporting the DW20, Magic/tech packs and whatever other obligations the dev team have.

 

[Eruantien]

My personal pack is somewhat of a KS pack because I want to play with all this stuff at the same time. I might use HQM for rewards and stuff, but I'm not going to attempt to "unify" everything under one mod (except stuff that does go together, like TE or TC addons).

Mage Quest's quests are still being written (and now rewritten, because some mods updated) and the rewards and like still have to be balanced. Other than the Lit team, I'm not sure who's testing "balance" exactly.

just my $0.02

 

[ftb_monster]

hi i recently got the newest java and i am running 32 bit i was wondering if 32 bit ram could run ftb monster on when ever i launch it it seems to crash it will say not responding any ideas on what i could do
-Thanks-

 

[the_j485]

hi i recently got the newest java and i am running 32 bit i was wondering if 32 bit ram could run ftb monster on when ever i launch it it seems to crash it will say not responding any ideas on what i could do
-Thanks-

Sorry man, but this isn't the place to ask stuff like that. Go look around the support section.

 

[pc_assassin]

hi i recently got the newest java and i am running 32 bit i was wondering if 32 bit ram could run ftb monster on when ever i launch it it seems to crash it will say not responding any ideas on what i could do
-Thanks-

Yes please go ask in the support section. All I will say here is good luck running monster on a 32 bit computer

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[ftb_monster]

ok i will

 

[Feoix]

Hi i'm actually new to the forums but i have one problem. When i try to update it just freezes for 10 seconds and then it restarts FTB and ask me to update again?

 

[Padfoote]

Hi i'm actually new to the forums but i have one problem. When i try to update it just freezes for 10 seconds and then it restarts FTB and ask me to update again?

This isn't the place to ask. Head over to the support forums.