I generally keep my mouth shut on these GT threads and just hit report once they go stupid, but just this once I'll make an exception and notate something.
Wanna know why
I am not particularly enthused about GregTech, albeit being one of the original folks on this forum pushing for "let's give this mod a shot"? It's not just incidents like this alone. Comparing this incident to any other is fruitless because there's a world of difference, too. For a simple distinction you've missed, the Forestry thing happened following attempts to communicate not getting any response. Greg has instead opined that this is his form of communication.
Gods below, I have a soft spot for my fellow developmentally disabled brethren, but that's an Aspy bridge too damn far.
There are two factors at play as to why I am wary and weary of Greg and his Tech:
- The Cult of Personality
- The Ubermensch Mentality
In other words, the same reasons I'm turned off from BTW: Greg thinks he's Steve Jobs in Minecraft. You, the client, are too stupid to know what you want, so he is going to give it to you. And some people think that's the greatest thing ever. Human beings hate uncertainty, and dominant personalities making the decisions for us removes the need to have to do so. For a certain set of people, that's glorious freedom. The Superhuman has set us all free from banal decisions and we should thank him for it. (Being fair, FTB's modpacks save me from a lot of thinking too and make having a server experience with my friends super-easy, so I'm not immune.)
But then when there are perceived problems with the product, the defense is largely an appeal to the Cult of Personality. A body shield is erected of the most fanatic and rabid, and the devotee apostles chant their chorus of mitigating excuses and hipster-like denunciations. The choir shields the master from criticism and inflate the almighty ego. When the excuse ends up "he doesn't care about you FTB rubes", that's a metastasized block of festering goop that's the result of an echo chamber.
But this particular event has been interesting to watch, because apparently it's really been a bridge too far for even some of the acolytes of GT that aren't part of that core group on the IC2 forums. You can tell because the devotees here and elsewhere (see the rabid badger feeding fest on reddit for "elsewhere") who are still with Greg on this one (and it's a dismal selection compared to usual) are deflecting on the issue, and in fact went to that resort immediately in some of the other discussions. "Look at what X and Y did in the past" they say. That's the first sign of a poorly entrenched position.
I don't care what anybody else did. This isn't about anybody else. If your worldview is so black and white that you see this incident as a direct parallel to any other, you're engaged in sloppy slipshod thinking. As this issue has been resolved between Greg and mDiyo, really the only point the thread has now is to air our concerns about this specific incident and what it means for the community. Those other incidents have already been tried ad nauseam in the court of public opinion and FTB's stance on them is proved by what they continue to curate for these modpacks, so further discussion on them is a pointless derailment.
The direction of GregTech is that it appears to be moving towards making itself
the central mod in any compilation it is provided in. That is Greg's right to do, as we have no say in his creative vision. What we do have a stake in, though, is in the lengths to which he's willing to subject everybody else to abuse in order to make it so while remaining a part of these modpacks. Wyld and the rest of the FTB Modpack Team shouldn't have to put up with that crap. There are enough bizarre quirks and unintended incompatibilities between the mods that they negotiate and iron out already, having somebody intentionally making that more difficult is not something they should have to put up with.
Greg's position as it stands is unprincipled and childish. Write reflection code that rewrites everybody else's and vanilla's blocks and mechanics? A-okay. Do it right back at him because other mods require the ratios and balance for their own functionality? Nope, unacceptable. The fact that he decided to do it this way belies the tale that he doesn't care about the modpacks, by the way: his True Acolytes that are supposedly the only ones he cares about would uninstall TiCo in a heartbeat if he so commanded (if they have it installed in the first place, that is). It's the people running modpacks that this battle of code reflection changes impacts.
My preference and recommendation? Tell him very firmly to cut it out or he'll get cut off. At the knees, preferably. If he truly only cares about what he considers his core audience, let's leave him to it. They certainly have no love for us, after all. Heavens knows there are plenty of other mods for us to explore in its place, and none of them consistently produce the vitriol and drama that this one does. Whether it's calling a bluff or ridding ourselves of a pernicious personality, the BS has to stop. A few wonderful doodads and a difficulty/tediousness throttle isn't worth this drama, particularly when it gets in the way of FTB providing modpacks.
