The logical extension of that is that Mods should not seek to be because they might please no-one. More options is always better regardless of whether or not anyone uses them. People are always going to want more, so there's no point getting worked up about it. Sometimes wanting more prompts some pretty great ideas and new mods.
I know I'm probably beating a dead horse here but.. Dartcraft.
- Thread starter MichaelAbbott
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The logical extension of that is that Mods should not seek to be because they might please no-one. More options is always better regardless of whether or not anyone uses them. People are always going to want more, so there's no point getting worked up about it. Sometimes wanting more prompts some pretty great ideas and new mods.
Text-based config files were long ago replaced by "Preferences" panes in proper GUIs long ago. Long ago. The reason is very simple: programmers can do better, and users shouldn't be expected to be comfortable with config files. It's like saying you have to be a mechanic before you're allowed to drive a car. I'm comfortable with editing configs but I'm also savvy enough to recognize that I'm in the minority in doing so. People demanding more config files thinking they're doing the community a favor are dead wrong.
Look, don't take this, "wah wah you're bullying me into not voicing my opinion bit" angle. You voiced an opinion and I'm challenging it. This isn't la-la hippy land where we all barf nonsense on one another and smile blissfully. You're painting a picture of yourself...a "competitive" person...and saying that since you're so special, when you wind up not liking the experience you end up with, it's someone else's fault. I'm saying own your own choices and don't blame others for what happens when you ruin your own good time. I can list dozens of recent release games that people play and enjoy despite not being in any way "perfect" and nobody cries about configs in those games, but a handful of mod devs offer configs as a shortcut to "balance" and all of a sudden it's a goddam standard. 1 step forward, 2 steps back.
I always thought mod developers made mods because they want to add something to THEIR game and they put them up for public use in case someone else also shares their desire for those changes.
Now I do realize that some people make mods because they want to pre "popular".
Also some people do it for the challenge and/or satisfaction of the coding itself.
I personally would much prefer playing a mod that was made by someone who only made a mod for themselves and did any balancing/changing to the mod to better fit their vision of said mod.
The more mods are changed to conform to the vocal detractors of a mod the less likely I am tko use it.
I personally don't believe in all these configs nor use them. If a mid author makes a mod, I am playing it to play their vision of the mod. If I don't like the changes to something I don't use that part of the mod anymore and if enough changes happen, the entire mod. just my opinion on configs
Oneself is also someone, therefore, if they are modding only for themselves, they are attempting to please themselves. If they had no interest in doing that, they wouldn't. Point being that one should not let fear of potentially bad feedback from stopping one from doing anything.
Not having a config is fine. It also means the mod will probably have non-configurable ID conflicts. If a mod author wants to add configurable options, that's up to them. Whether or not one ever looks at a config file is up to oneself. It's great that a lot of mods DO have configurable options. Try to remember that more options is basically the same as having more stuff in a mod. Sometimes literally so in the case of stuff that's disabled by default.
Let me get my point straight here:
OPness is, IMO, a matter of how fast do you work.
I have a passive playstyle (I built a turtle based peat farm just because I felt like it) that is "I have a bunch of resources... What can I do with them?".
And that's fine.
My friend has a different play style, a rather agressive one: "I want to make A so I'll have to put C in B which needs power from something like D"
Nothing is OP for me, mainly because I do a lot of stuff for the shits 'n' giggles. That is, unless it's Dirt to Diamonds (EE2 was different).
For my friend, nothing is OP, unless both can do the same stuff (unless it's ore multiplication).
But for most people, OP is "this is better in X way, everything should be equal" - NO!
Bloody hell, Pulverizer vs Macerator (with GT) was a perfect example.
No one bleeding uses the Macerator anymore because it's downright stupid to go to the Nether to multiply your ores... But Greg thinks that the Macerator is "too powerful".
You can see the problem here, isn't it?
Buffing up something is better than nerfing (unless it's like Bioreactors - where it utterly DESTROYS other ways of generating power). So, if you see something you think it's OP, think "is there something that could be buffed up in the less powerful machine?".
OPness is, IMO, a matter of how fast do you work.
I have a passive playstyle (I built a turtle based peat farm just because I felt like it) that is "I have a bunch of resources... What can I do with them?".
And that's fine.
My friend has a different play style, a rather agressive one: "I want to make A so I'll have to put C in B which needs power from something like D"
Nothing is OP for me, mainly because I do a lot of stuff for the shits 'n' giggles. That is, unless it's Dirt to Diamonds (EE2 was different).
For my friend, nothing is OP, unless both can do the same stuff (unless it's ore multiplication).
But for most people, OP is "this is better in X way, everything should be equal" - NO!
Bloody hell, Pulverizer vs Macerator (with GT) was a perfect example.
No one bleeding uses the Macerator anymore because it's downright stupid to go to the Nether to multiply your ores... But Greg thinks that the Macerator is "too powerful".
You can see the problem here, isn't it?
Buffing up something is better than nerfing (unless it's like Bioreactors - where it utterly DESTROYS other ways of generating power). So, if you see something you think it's OP, think "is there something that could be buffed up in the less powerful machine?".
I have never nor will I ever have to alter item ID's. The fact that mod developers are even able to set item id's means that it doesn't have to be in a config file. Putting it in a config just makes it so that more people than just mod devs are able to alter them if they create conflicts by installing dozens of mods on their own.
Personally, I wish mojang would quit adding new content and actually do a mod api that works and allows people to create their own packs without having to rely on teams like ftb to do all the hard work for them.
It's not a black and white thing. Not every coder at Mojang is going to be working on improving the engine or making an api simply because that's not something that particular coder is good at. Neither are the texture artists going to be able to do anything at all toward creating an api. Neither will an api actually mean everyone will suddenly be able to learn enough programming to know what they're looking at when trying to get one mod to work with another. And it's entirely possible that the API will not expose as many programming hooks to modders as Forge already does (making a Mojang api redundant).
Putting configs in for block/item IDs is fairly standard practice for every single mod available in an FTB pack (as far as I can remember without going back and reviewing all of them again). Lacking it, every other mod would have to be configured around the mod that doesn't have one. And if there were two such conflicting mods, one couldn't be included. Configs for difficulty are great for bringing a mod to a wider audience. Configs for mod interaction are great for any mod included into a mod pack. Configs for turning recipes on or off are vital tools for server operators that may need to blacklist certain things on their server. As far as I'm concerned, having configs for IDs is mandatory for a pack. The rest is optional and great to have, but not absolutely necessary like IDs.
I've been trying Dartcraft lately; it has some neat unique things and some certainly OP things.
Tier 3 upgrade tome, 16 arrows onto full dartcraft armor, iceman's backpack, stacks of snow blocks = nigh-unlimited Death-Bleed Snowballs. At 8 HP each, 3 thrown at full rate of fire will kill a zombie and 5 will kill an enderman (good luck finding that pearl, but at least you showed him who's boss).
(Also, don't throw death-bleed chicken eggs in your chicken pen if you're trying to grow your flock.)
Tier 3 upgrade tome, 16 arrows onto full dartcraft armor, iceman's backpack, stacks of snow blocks = nigh-unlimited Death-Bleed Snowballs. At 8 HP each, 3 thrown at full rate of fire will kill a zombie and 5 will kill an enderman (good luck finding that pearl, but at least you showed him who's boss).
(Also, don't throw death-bleed chicken eggs in your chicken pen if you're trying to grow your flock.)
Building a 1.6.2 pack I noticed something is making a nice id conflict file not only with the blocks/blockids in conflict but with suggested open ranges of blockids. I don't think there is really any hard work left other than a futile attempt at moving balance points to arbitrary positions. Anyway, my point is that anybody who can read and edit a text file will find there isn't anything hard about making a modpack for 1.6.2.
This is really ironic. Why? Modding APIs and modding itself is generally about "shoehorns to make them fit the way anyone wants them to." A modding API is just a complex config. Of course, MC is using a workaround at the moment but that's beside the point since their making an API. A modder complaining that changing his mod is heresy, while at the same time changing a game with a mod, is just too golden. Thats not to say that it should be configs all the way down, just pointing out the hipocrisy.
I think the disagreement comes from what a person expects from a mod pack. Some, like you, seem to treat it and expect it to be a game bundle for convenience of not having to install all the mods individually, interperability be damned. Others, like me, hope that the sum is greater than the parts. For what I want out of a mod pack, balance is very important. All zorn is saying is if you dont feel like balancing to a pack as a mod, let others do it for you via configs. Its a good comprimise, in my opinion.
No, I think the disagreement comes from people not listening. There's this truly awfully tendency for people to see an opposing point of view and interpret one thing and one thing only from it: "You disagree, therefore I must defend." Kind of goes to shit directly after that.
I don't know that I've ever seen someone say that they don't want people to be able to tailor their modded MC experience to their liking. What I see a lot, however, is people saying that configs are a shit way of doing so. Do you see the twist?
Configs are to game customization for the average user what the current modded MC system of keybinds is to controlling the input setup for the average user: absolute garbage.
But people who don't think big picture encourage configs because it works for them. "Dear modders, please provide us with a customization solution that only works for 5-10% of the playerbase. Thanks." And what the rest of us are trying to say is, "Dear modders, please don't waste your time on shit solutions for the minority. Instead, spend that time on solutions that work for everyone or on fixing things that are broken." I would rather see modders collaborate and arrive at a quality solution, but there's too much ego and too much bullshit and too many players endorsing and begging for garbage for that to ever happen.
So we say, "We don't like configs because they don't benefit the majority of players and there are better ways to customize game settings and behavior" and all the 'pro-config' crowd reads is "we don't like configs". And now we get stuck on the round-and-round adversarial debate that wouldn't exist if people actually read with the goal of comprehending instead of satisfying their own bias.
It's not at all ironic. A modding API and modding give two different capabilities; the ability to modify the game to better fit those it already fits and the ability to create an "entirely" new game from the existing one. It's also not at all hypocrisy when modders do not expect Mojang to support them and understand that at any time they can force them to stop. If they did expect Mojang to allow them to modify their game then yes, it is hypocrisy. Just because they are allowed to make use of the work of someone else does the new work not belong to them and is not their own to decide how it is used.
So you basically expect everything to be handed to you? Really? Sorry but, no ones handing you anything. Other than all the tools it takes to very easily modify the packs in the way you see fit to make them balanced. It's also not a compromise at all; it's a demand of modders. They have no reason to want to let others change the balance of their mod or restrict items or any such else for someones personal sake of balance. I believe you're misunderstanding of what devs try to do. It's basically the same as a television show or a game. They add content that appeals to a specific audience. If you're not apart of that audience you don't get the option to shoehorn yourself into place. Modded minecraft is a completely different game everytime a new "meta"(I hate that damned word) mod is added. Because of that the audience should shrink. I say should because modded minecraft is a special case in that it's a hassle to add mods yourself and makes those that normally wouldn't use other mods, use them because they're already in the pack. That aside when you take two mods, lets say TE and Gregtech, and put them together in a pack you do not get a complete combination of their audience. You get a much smaller portion where the interests of the two audiences coincide. This happens every time a large mod is added. The thing is the FTB team gave you the tools to modify it as you see fit to customize the pack to your likings in terms of the mods used. When it comes to mods themselves the devs have every right to tell you "tough shit" AND you have every right to flip them a bird and use a different mod. Every mod is not made for every person because mods are not all apart of the same "minecraft." Each mod makes the game different in its own way so much so that it is a different game each time.