KingLemming speaks!

[King Lemming]

Wow, y'all just take a simple answer and run with it, eh?

Good read though.

 

[zemerick]

Wow, y'all just take a simple answer and run with it, eh?

Good read though.

You should check out all of the RoC threads here too then, this discussion has bled over into all of them

 

[Pyure]

Wow, y'all just take a simple answer and run with it, eh?

Good read though.

Shrug, as good a topic as any.

If we had something better to talk about, such as, I dunno, a major mod release....

 

[rhn]

Wow, y'all just take a simple answer and run with it, eh?

Good read though.

Oh this was not the first place we had this debate about the "arms race", but sadly we managed to put the nerf scare into a lot of RoC fans and it took off from there [DOUBLEPOST=1409174129][/DOUBLEPOST]

You should check out all of the RoC threads here too then, this discussion has bled over into all of them

Lol, hadn't noticed. This wasn't even supposed to be about RoC at all, just about mods in general lol.

 

[asb3pe]

This was my favorite part - the sentences that came immediately before his statement about ore doubling:

Q: "If you could remove a mechanic from modded minecraft, which one would it be? Why?"

KingLemming: "Mojang.

I kid. Probably. Discounting that? Drama. We'd be better off without the drama. "

The drama part made me laugh out loud. All the drama is quite amusing (since I'm not in the middle of any of it). It seems neverending, like a big constantly bickering family. LOL The Mojang part had me a bit confused, but I think what he meant was revealed in another part of the thread. After all... he's a programmer, and he stated he dislikes drama... so his "beef" is probably programming-related, not drama-related (such as EULA):

Q: "Why can I run Crisis at max settings with no problem but Minecraft brings my PC to its' knees? (Core I5, 16gb mem, 2xgtx660 TI)"

KingLemming: "Voxel engines are way more complex than you may realize, and Minecraft is fundamentally CPU bound.

People rant about it being Java's fault, but that's not really it. Simply the fact that MC utilizes the GPU so poorly.

A lot of this goes back to some pretty fundamental design decisions made by Notch, and to be fair - vanilla runs great. It wasn't built for mods, which in many cases do things that Notch never could have anticipated."

Q: "I hear many people say this of Minecraft. That it is optimized for vanilla, but is built wrong for a modding environment. How could Minecraft be optimized for modding? What fundamental things need to change, if not Java?

King Lemming: "It needs a full on rewrite. They're getting there, slowly.

Ultimately I think they're going to hit a wall where they either kill backwards compatibility or they'll stagnate.

The game isn't designed for threading, but Java is, in a big way. The way certain mechanics just happen is well...off. It's bad. We'll see where it goes."

 

[acker]

If you read the thread, you would know we are debating balance between the mods. Not resource balances as such. How you can obtain so and so many resources it not really the issue, that is a debate for another day. Feeling forced to go with one mod over all the rest because it is more efficient is.


And for crying out loud! No one is trying to enforce limitations on anyone. We are having a debate in an attempt to come to a conclusion if it might be a good idea for modders to voluntarily use some basic guidelines that they themselves set up! At least that was my proposal. And it was what worked in the past(be they unwritten guidelines or not, I was not part of making those mods or the inner circles of the modding community so I don't know). But the TE/BC/IC2/RP2/Forestry/etc. authors seems to understand this as they have for years kept their mods balanced with each other.

1st of all, I read about half of the second page, and you are mostly right. But I think I didn't expressed myself well (was leaving my work).

I get it, its all balance between the mods. But you should play what you feel it's right. I like to try a new "Ore Processing" mod every world I create, to try and make something new. Why? Because I, and I play SSP, like it. So, do balance matters in my case? Not really, because that's the way that I play.

Ok, so, If the community of players start talking about a guideline or "rules-that-you-might-consider-following", some modders will create mods according to that guidelines. Which is great! Really! For that community, in our case, the FTB community.

There are a lot of pro's - the main one is forgetting about ore processing and focusing on bringing new mechanics! Which is really great! But I'll say that it's not the case. We got RotaryCraft and Flax's Steam Power. And there is no guidelines to balance mods. There is no rule to follow. They followed what they thought that was right (I think so, so I might be wrong). See, I do not managed to start Reika's and not even Flax's. Why? Because I play a lot of other games and I'll start to try IC2 to see the new changes.
It's way harder than TC3 and Mekanism, I think. But I'll play it. Why? Because I like to.
Why all this story, you say? After all these months reading and posting here, on the FTB forum, I was amazed about the contact of the modders with the community, and for me, it's like reaching out for a rockstar of some kind. It does really matter. So, if someone could create a x20 ore processing I would say: "Geez M8, add some Metallurgy Add-On, pls. I would try to create this monster, bring it on."

Why? Because I would love to play this. And I can only assure that this won't harm me. But guidelines will. And it's only my opinion. And you didn't asked for it.

So, I could say in my case, because there is no competition on the worlds that I play, that it doesn't matter if the mods are balanced or not, because I have some rules of engagement of each mod.
Imagine if Mojang could add Guidelines to mod's (and I think they sorta can). So, if you play the X mod you couldn't play on servers, because it's unbalanced? Why should only the modders and/or the community be part of this? Not all players join the forums to discuss, only download. And I can go on and on, and on...

But that's just a theory, a gam... Just my opinion.

 

[Azzanine]

I think that all this mod balance nonsense is an unintended consequence of public mod packs (namely FTB) also it's a double edged sword for modded multiplayer.

Most of these balance complaints come solely becasue the mods are forced to rub shoulders with other fundamentally incompatible mods. Usually the mods are balanced when you judge them on their own merits even mods like DartCraft are balanced, but as soon as you add harder mods that get circumvented by DartCraft things start to look un balanced. I agree with fans of DartCraft, it's not OP but it is when you put it next to other more complicated mods that reward less Dartcraft "LOOKS" OP comparitively.

Either way all this talk of balance is rendered moot in a single player scenario becasue you can remove/ add mods as you see fit. Adding mods can be tricky but removing mods is simple.
Now enter the Multi-player scene, now your choice of mods is removed, even if you are an admin as adding a mod to a pack makes it more difficult for players to join as the client has to match the server perfectly, adding mods to packs will kill your attendance. (of course you can make your own pack but it still has the same drawbacks)

It can't be argued that Mod packs benefit the multi-player arena more then the single-player, I think that was the whole purpose of modpacks. To provide a stable stock standard client/ server solution that minimized the complexity of joining a modded server. Instead of giving a spreadsheet of mods and sending a config you just send them a link the the FTB launcher and say pick Monster.

Of course this means the players choice is at the whim of the pack compilers, if you want to play with certain mods but hate the guts of another mod in the pack well... you are shit out of luck, you can either; Put up with the offending mod, give up on Multiplayer or complain to the mod pack/ modder to change things to suit you.

I think this mulitplayer mod pack aspect may have made modders feel obligated to balance their mods around other mods due to a good portion of their users do so through mod packs in a multi-player scenario.
This also fuels the power competition too. No modder want's their mod to be the one where 95% of their content is ignored and only added to a pack in for one item.
Essentially, upon realizing most of their users mostly experience their mod via mod packs modders are forced to balance their mod around other mods in the packs. This is achieved with cross mod compatibility features that end up making parts of their mod obsolete which the modder will then rectify by buffing their stuff so not become obsolete within the popular pack, then we get power creep.

Modpacks also forces modders design choice, look at GregTech; On it's own merits it's actually a good mod, it works well and achieves it's goal. There was no reason for it to be such a contentious mod as it was, but by the sheer virtue of being in the Ultimate pack it was forced on to players that would have otherwise avoided/ dropped it without qualms. Now there most likely will never be a version of GregTech in a FTB pack and rightly so as the playstyle was pretty niche and works better on it's own anyway. But Greg had to have seen a huge decline in people who play his mod, while I'm sure Greg is fine with that, being shunned by the bulk of the FTB community might not be a great prospect for other modders. Modders might compromise their vision to fit in with FTB and it's player-base.
This has become even more obvious with the advent of this RF only FTB malarkey, if modders don't want to be left out they may need to adopt RF if they want to be in a FTB pack.

All that being said though this balance problem only exists for official FTB packs or other poorly balanced packs that are trying to cater for all. This is only a problem with allsorts packs, personal picks and purpose built packs can be made balanced, we even have tools like MineTweaker to at least make crafting and materials fit your vision of balance.
I think for all it's benefits FTB and packs like it have it also comes with a inevitable amount of toxicity.

 

[rhn]

I think that all this mod balance nonsense is an unintended consequence of public mod packs (namely FTB) also it's a double edged sword for modded multiplayer.

Most of these balance complaints come solely becasue the mods are forced to rub shoulders with other fundamentally incompatible mods. Usually the mods are balanced when you judge them on their own merits even mods like DartCraft are balanced, but as soon as you add harder mods that get circumvented by DartCraft things start to look un balanced. I agree with fans of DartCraft, it's not OP but it is when you put it next to other more complicated mods that reward less Dartcraft "LOOKS" OP comparitively.

Either way all this talk of balance is rendered moot in a single player scenario becasue you can remove/ add mods as you see fit. Adding mods can be tricky but removing mods is simple.
Now enter the Multi-player scene, now your choice of mods is removed, even if you are an admin as adding a mod to a pack makes it more difficult for players to join as the client has to match the server perfectly, adding mods to packs will kill your attendance. (of course you can make your own pack but it still has the same drawbacks)

It can't be argued that Mod packs benefit the multi-player arena more then the single-player, I think that was the whole purpose of modpacks. To provide a stable stock standard client/ server solution that minimized the complexity of joining a modded server. Instead of giving a spreadsheet of mods and sending a config you just send them a link the the FTB launcher and say pick Monster.

Of course this means the players choice is at the whim of the pack compilers, if you want to play with certain mods but hate the guts of another mod in the pack well... you are shit out of luck, you can either; Put up with the offending mod, give up on Multiplayer or complain to the mod pack/ modder to change things to suit you.

I think this mulitplayer mod pack aspect may have made modders feel obligated to balance their mods around other mods due to a good portion of their users do so through mod packs in a multi-player scenario.
This also fuels the power competition too. No modder want's their mod to be the one where 95% of their content is ignored and only added to a pack in for one item.
Essentially, upon realizing most of their users mostly experience their mod via mod packs modders are forced to balance their mod around other mods in the packs. This is achieved with cross mod compatibility features that end up making parts of their mod obsolete which the modder will then rectify by buffing their stuff so not become obsolete within the popular pack, then we get power creep.

Modpacks also forces modders design choice, look at GregTech; On it's own merits it's actually a good mod, it works well and achieves it's goal. There was no reason for it to be such a contentious mod as it was, but by the sheer virtue of being in the Ultimate pack it was forced on to players that would have otherwise avoided/ dropped it without qualms. Now there most likely will never be a version of GregTech in a FTB pack and rightly so as the playstyle was pretty niche and works better on it's own anyway. But Greg had to have seen a huge decline in people who play his mod, while I'm sure Greg is fine with that, being shunned by the bulk of the FTB community might not be a great prospect for other modders. Modders might compromise their vision to fit in with FTB and it's player-base.
This has become even more obvious with the advent of this RF only FTB malarkey, if modders don't want to be left out they may need to adopt RF if they want to be in a FTB pack.

All that being said though this balance problem only exists for official FTB packs or other poorly balanced packs that are trying to cater for all. This is only a problem with allsorts packs, personal picks and purpose built packs can be made balanced, we even have tools like MineTweaker to at least make crafting and materials fit your vision of balance.
I think for all it's benefits FTB and packs like it have it also comes with a inevitable amount of toxicity.

There is really no reason to start start calling other peoples opinions "nonsense" and "toxicity". That tone is nothing but destructive to any proper discussion, and is usually an good indication of peoples own arguments being somewhat inadequate. So lets keep it a bit more civil.

Either way all this talk of balance is rendered moot in a single player scenario becasue you can remove/ add mods as you see fit. Adding mods can be tricky but removing mods is simple.

So in the future, people just have to reduce their mods list down to fewer mods if they cant balance the mods(that they really want to play) out with each other? Do you really find that a desirable outcome? Because I do not, and it was the whole reason I got into this debate. Some people might enjoy playing very narrow and simple modpacks, other of us like packs with more variety.

Of course this means the players choice is at the whim of the pack compilers, if you want to play with certain mods but hate the guts of another mod in the pack well... you are shit out of luck, you can either; Put up with the offending mod, give up on Multiplayer or complain to the mod pack/ modder to change things to suit you.

So basically, everyone should just sit back and do nothing, with the possibility of modpacks becoming increasingly hard to make/balance. And if they don't like how things are evolving, they should stop playing? Why is this preferable to try and talk about if anything could be done to make sure we don't end up in that situation?

This is only a problem with allsorts packs,..

Well a lot of people enjoy playing those packs(me included). Just because you might not be one of them, doesn't mean it couldn't have large implications down the line for a lot of players/modpack makers. So just because it might not impact you, we should not be talking about how it might impact the rest of us?

 

[HeilMewTwo]

-snip-

Mate, chill. If everyone keeps up this kind of tone then it is one step away from a flame war.

 

[Pyure]

{stuff}

I think a lot of your phrasing promotes the premise that improvement is wrong to seek.

I want my cake and I'd like to eat it too. If I can make a mod that makes azzanine happy regardless of balance implications but also has flexible compatibility, isn't this something I can justifiably strive for?

If the most interested parties never submit their thoughts and ideas, all we get is stagnation and recycled mods. Nobody wants that. And if enough voices share an opinion, things tend to happen.

Mate, chill. If everyone keeps up this kind of tone then it is one step away from a flame war.

Azzanine's post was cleverly well-worded to engender precisely that response. So he got it.

 

[rhn]

I think a lot of your phrasing promotes the premise that improvement is wrong to seek.

I want my cake and I'd like to eat it too. If I can make a mod that makes azzanine happy regardless of balance implications but also has flexible compatibility, isn't this something I can justifiably strive for?

Exactly! I don't understand all these objections and animosity for just proposing that modders and players alike might get a benefit out of if a rough baseline for certain values were established(voluntarily by the the modders themselves!). I have not even attempted to set or enforce any of the values myself LOL.

I would personally have thought that someone like @King Lemming in conjunction with some other prominent mod authors(Reika would be an obvious candidate as well I think, he seems to know a lot about what is within the realistic possibilities) could sit down and agree on and throw down a few of the (what seems to me to be) unspoken baselines that seemed to have existed earlier. If these were available to any new modders, they could then choose to look them up when designing new ore processing, power production, whatever. And by doing so a certain amount of inter-mod balance would be guaranteed that way.

I cannot see how everyone wouldn't benefit from this arrangement.

Mate, chill. If everyone keeps up this kind of tone then it is one step away from a flame war.

My words might have been a bit harsh, did just have my opinions called "nonsense" and "toxic".

 

[Azzanine]

There is really no reason to start start calling other peoples opinions "nonsense" and "toxicity". That tone is nothing but destructive to any proper discussion, and is usually an good indication of peoples own arguments being somewhat inadequate. So lets keep it a bit more civil.

Hmm, OK. But I did feel those terms where apt, maybe not the nonsense part but definitely the toxicity part.


So in the future, people just have to reduce their mods list down to fewer mods if they cant balance the mods(that they really want to play) out with each other? Do you really find that a desirable outcome? Because I do not, and it was the whole reason I got into this debate. Some people might enjoy playing very narrow and simple modpacks, other of us like packs with more variety.

Yes, it's a desirable outcome for those that value balanced play. But for those that want variety will have to come to terms that the variety may make for unbalanced play as there is no feasible way to make balance work in such a varied environment.


So basically, everyone should just sit back and do nothing, with the possibility of modpacks becoming increasingly hard to make/balance. And if they don't like how things are evolving, they should stop playing? Why is this preferable to try and talk about if anything could be done to make sure we don't end up in that situation?

I never suggested you do nothing, in fact I suggested 3 of the only viable courses that I can see. In multi-player you can't easily modify your pack as the game doesn't allow for it. Any incongruencies in the client files and server files will lead to not being able to join the server. So if you don't like a mod but want to play multi-player you can't just remove the mod from your client, you have to either learn to like/ ignore the mod or play predominately single player. ORRRR you you bug the modpack compiler to remove it for you or modders to change the mod and in conjunction change it for everyone else.


Well a lot of people enjoy playing those packs(me included). Just because you might not be one of them, doesn't mean it couldn't have large implications down the line for a lot of players/modpack makers. So just because it might not impact you, we should not be talking about how it might impact the rest of us?

I never said you couldn't talk about it... I just said it's nonsense. If I typed anything that seemed like that highlight it. But I never implied that you should all shut up, I just gave my 2 cents.

So I am sorry that we are here putting this "nonsense" in your face...

Essentially what I was trying to say was that I see the influence the FTB community is having on the mods individually, it's affecting their design and not always in a good way. The power creep for instance is an example of this, there would be no one upping if there was no need for it.

 

[HeilMewTwo]

My words might have been a bit harsh, did just have my opinions called "nonsense" and "toxic".

If someone insults you then report them, this is not a forum for insulting other people.

 

[rhn]

Essentially what I was trying to say was that I see the influence the FTB community is having on the mods individually, it's affecting their design and not always in a good way. The power creep for instance is an example of this, there would be no one upping if there was no need for it.

I just don't see any alternative, other than deleting all modpacks from existence and going back to www.minecraftforum.net
Modpacks are here to stay, and I really don't think anyone would be developing a mod for Forge or the likes and expecting it to never go into a modpack. Nor would I see why they wouldn't want it to happen.

What I have been proposing all the time, would(might) just be a way to lessen the friction that arises between mods when they get out there in the "real world" of modpacks.

I also don't see any mods suffering their "individuality" for just having their "Oreprocessing/material needs" and "power production/power needs" factors scaled a bit to match other mods a bit more. The first would require recipes to be changed a bit: use 3 ingots of iron instead of 5 for example, the second is just changing numbers in the code.

 

[HeilMewTwo]

I just don't see any alternative, other than deleting all modpacks from existence and going back to www.minecraftforum.net
Modpacks are here to stay, and I really don't think anyone would be developing a mod for Forge or the likes and expecting it to never go into a modpack. Nor would I see why they wouldn't want it to happen.

What I have been proposing all the time, would(might) just be a way to lessen the friction that arises between mods when they get out there in the "real world" of modpacks.

I also don't see any mods suffering their "individuality" for just having their "Oreprocessing/material needs" and "power production/power needs" factors scaled a bit to match other mods a bit more.

Then how would you propose this be put into place? Minecraft modders are people who want to put their own ideas into the game so bad that they give up hours of their regular lives trying to do so. Even if you managed to get some basic guidelines down, within two months there would be someone new to the modding community that has made a successful mod and did not follow the guidelines. I think that it is quite impossible to make modding follow any kind of pattern, no matter what is done.

 

[Padfoote]

I also don't see any mods suffering their "individuality" for just having their "Oreprocessing/material needs" and "power production/power needs" factors scaled a bit to match other mods a bit more. The first would require recipes to be changed a bit: use 3 ingots of iron instead of 5 for example, the second is just changing numbers in the code.

While I agree, there is always going to be someone that breaks that pattern and throws everything into an "arms race", since that's apparently how we're describing mod features currently. Plus, it isn't up to dev 1 to balance against dev 2 who is balancing against dev 3, etc.. simply due to how impossible that is. Would it be nice if there was some sort of better balance? Absolutely. But it's at the point where it's up to the pack creators because everyone wants something different.

But this is why I stick to either a small, heavily modified set of mods, or total conversions like BTW. Never a complaint about recipe balancing with a mod that only runs with itself.

 

[Azzanine]

I just don't see any alternative, other than deleting all modpacks from existence and going back to www.minecraftforum.net
Modpacks are here to stay, and I really don't think anyone would be developing a mod for Forge or the likes and expecting it to never go into a modpack. Nor would I see why they wouldn't want it to happen.

What I have been proposing all the time, would(might) just be a way to lessen the friction that arises between mods when they get out there in the "real world" of modpacks.

I also don't see any mods suffering their "individuality" for just having their "Oreprocessing/material needs" and "power production/power needs" factors scaled a bit to match other mods a bit more. The first would require recipes to be changed a bit: use 3 ingots of iron instead of 5 for example, the second is just changing numbers in the code.

You are getting me wrong here mate...
I am not making prescriptions here I am just stating what I see, trust me I know the benefits mod packs bring I even mentioned it in my post but I also see the consequences behind it.
I am not calling for the removal of mod packs, that would be silly as I like modded Minecraft.

 

[rhn]

Then how would you propose this be put into place? Minecraft modders are people who want to put their own ideas into the game so bad that they give up hours of their regular lives trying to do so. Even if you managed to get some basic guidelines down, within two months there would be someone new to the modding community that has made a successful mod and did not follow the guidelines. I think that it is quite impossible to make modding follow any kind of pattern, no matter what is done.

Not sure how many times I have to repeat myself on this:
I do not suggest any way to enforce anyone to do anything. I was merely proposing that if such a thing was made, then maybe more/some modders would follow it and we would be in a slightly better situation than we are now or at least not a worse one.

Of course there will be someone along the line(if not immediately) who doesn't follow it. That is their prerogative, and I will in no way propose anything to interfere with that. I could only hope that enough modpack makers/players would then request the balance option in the mod as at least a config option/config possibility or something.

 

[HeilMewTwo]

Not sure how many times I have to repeat myself on this:
I do not suggest any way to enforce anyone to do anything. I was merely proposing that if such a thing was made, then maybe more/some modders would follow it and we would be in a slightly better situation than we are now or at least not a worse one.

Of course there will be someone along the line(if not immediately) who doesn't follow it. That is their prerogative, and I will in no way propose anything to interfere with that. I could only hope that enough modpack makers/players would then request the balance option in the mod as at least a config option/config possibility or something.

Okay then, that makes sense. I may have not been able to find these points in the wall of texts that you seem to be so fond of.

 

[rhn]

But it's at the point where it's up to the pack creators because everyone wants something different.

This would be great as long as the pack creators have the tools available for configurating this. But take a mod like RoC: I have not been able to find either power or oreprocessing configs for it. So because I don't find it balanced with the rest of my mods, I am forced into the choice of using it(and trivialising most other mods) or not using it at all(which is what I am doing so far to my big regret).

But this is why I stick to either a small, heavily modified set of mods, or total conversions like BTW. Never a complaint about recipe balancing with a mod that only runs with itself.

I can understand why, small "single mod packs" will completely avoid all these problems. But I cannot see why this becomes an argument against trying to do something towards alleviating the problems happening in the medium-large packs.