RC/ReC/ElC/CC Policy Changes

Pyure

Not Totally Useless
Aug 14, 2013
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While I agree with that last point, I wouldn't say it's ethically acceptable to ignore and override someone's licence by wholesale copying their work and publishing the result. I also think it's somewhat hypocritical if the result is then used by a community that prides itself on respecting those same permissions and licences.
I concur when it comes to non-modding work, but for work based on modding someone else's game, I'm of a different opinion than you. Don't mod if you don't want to be modded. Don't take the risk if it bothers you too much. Or, instead, if you do, realize that people like myself aren't going to sympathize too much when it doesn't work out in your favor.

Red Power is a decent example of this. There are clones of it. This is excellent, because there was DEMAND for this product that wasn't being delivered. End of story. There's no onus on the original developer to do anything, they just have to accept that that's how the world works.
 
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wolfenstein19

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Look, here is a point about how making modpacks work (especially if you are making a kitchen sink type pack):

You look at mods and see if you would find them interesting/fitting enough to put them in. Then you do some cursory bug testing. You don't really know the mod or what it does by then. You take a quick look at the features, see what you could consider OP. Then you disable whatever doesn't fit your idea of balance. After all you can always enable stuff later, disabling it later is more difficult. You make some changes to configs to see what sticks. Then you let it go for a while. A few months down the line you might make changes to those - or not, dependant on how much you care.


If you aren't looking to make a very specific themed pack the idea of going through an approval process and documenting any changes you make is really a hassle, especially if you have 200 mods and you usually don't expend a second thought to changes you make. Following on that it won't change my opinion in so far as that I will not include RC in any Packs I make that aren't specifically designed around it.
 

Reika

RotaryCraft Dev
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Look, here is a point about how making modpacks work (especially if you are making a kitchen sink type pack):

You look at mods and see if you would find them interesting/fitting enough to put them in. Then you do some cursory bug testing. You don't really know the mod or what it does by then. You take a quick look at the features, see what you could consider OP. Then you disable whatever doesn't fit your idea of balance. After all you can always enable stuff later, disabling it later is more difficult. You make some changes to configs to see what sticks. Then you let it go for a while. A few months down the line you might make changes to those - or not, dependant on how much you care.


If you aren't looking to make a very specific themed pack the idea of going through an approval process and documenting any changes you make is really a hassle, especially if you have 200 mods and you usually don't expend a second thought to changes you make. Following on that it won't change my opinion in so far as that I will not include RC in any Packs I make that aren't specifically designed around it.
So, you are saying that the majority of pack devs make the same kind of changes I decried servers for - i.e. no-research first-glance "it looks OP" changes - and if things break, so be it, leave it for the mod dev to clean up?
 

wolfenstein19

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So, you are saying that the majority of pack devs make the same kind of changes I decried servers for - i.e. no-research first-glance "it looks OP" changes - and if things break, so be it, leave it for the dev to clean up?
Almost all packs I have played and worked with, and those I have made myself. You simply don't have the time most of the instances to spare any of your 200 mods that you didn't balance your pack around a second glance, much less inpepth testing and configuration. If something looks like its op, its getting turned off, it may or may not be enabled later.

Obviously this affects your mod alot, since alot of the stuff looks op on first glance. Its just a reality of pack development for such packs, though.
 
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Reika

RotaryCraft Dev
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Almost all packs I have played and worked with, and those I have made myself. You simply don't have the time most of the instances to spare any of your 200 mods that you didn't balance your pack around a second glance, much less inpepth testing and configuration. If something looks like its op, its getting turned off, it may or may not be enabled later.

Obviously this affects your mod alot, since alot of the stuff looks op on first glance. Its just a reality of pack development for such packs, though.
I rest my case.

For all you other pack devs getting insulted at getting the "server owner" treatment, what is your response to this?
 

psp

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Jul 29, 2019
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Almost all packs I have played and worked with, and those I have made myself. You simply don't have the time most of the instances to spare any of your 200 mods that you didn't balance your pack around a second glance, much less inpepth testing and configuration. If something looks like its op, its getting turned off, it may or may not be enabled later.

Obviously this affects your mod alot, since alot of the stuff looks op on first glance. Its just a reality of pack development for such packs, though.
Then that person, or you, shouldn't be making modpacks, lol.
 

wolfenstein19

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I rest my case.

For all you other pack devs getting insulted at getting the "server owner" treatment, what is your response to this?
Its not meant in a disrespectful way though. Most of the times when you add a mod that you have never heard of its because some player keeps bugging you about it. At that point you expend only the effort of figuring out if something in there would break your balance. That seemingly beeing the case, you disable said item. Ofc you don't have time or energy to do indepth testing of a complicated mod just because some players really want it in.
 

Padfoote

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So, you are saying that the majority of pack devs make the same kind of changes I decried servers for - i.e. no-research first-glance "it looks OP" changes - and if things break, so be it, leave it for the mod dev to clean up?

He is saying that but I know for a fact it is typically not true and agree with what @psp said.
 
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Reika

RotaryCraft Dev
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Then that person, or you, shouldn't be making modpacks, lol.
Agreed, but is that going to stop them? No. Especially if, as I am getting increasingly suspicious is the case, people like Iskan_Dar or Jaded or Eyamaz or similar are rare exceptions, and that 95% of pack devs are actually like the above.

Remember, as has been said before, this community is much better and more reasonable than the majority of the MC community. To get them, shave off 20 IQ points, add half a liter of adrenaline and/or testosterone, and start believing the world is owed to you.
 
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ICountFrom0

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This is a good question, actually. Can someone name one other mod where the reputation of the mod or the author has been tarnished by people modifying the mod?

I'm reluctant to be the one to say this but...

If we are going to look for examples, lets look at mods that have been modified by GT over the years.

The removal of "forestry bronze" by GT make all of forestry less accessible and lead to a number of complaints. The only upside of that at least the community of the time was aware enough to point the blame at GT.
 

keybounce

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Almost all packs I have played and worked with, and those I have made myself. You simply don't have the time most of the instances to spare any of your 200 mods that you didn't balance your pack around a second glance, much less inpepth testing and configuration. If something looks like its op, its getting turned off, it may or may not be enabled later.

Obviously this affects your mod alot, since alot of the stuff looks op on first glance. Its just a reality of pack development for such packs, though.

Its not meant in a disrespectful way though. Most of the times when you add a mod that you have never heard of its because some player keeps bugging you about it. At that point you expend only the effort of figuring out if something in there would break your balance. That seemingly beeing the case, you disable said item. Ofc you don't have time or energy to do indepth testing of a complicated mod just because some players really want it in.

And ... I'm one of those oddballs that actually try to understand a mod before I use it.

I inquired about RoC initially, when I did hear that it was OP; this was from before any of the major rebalancing things, and it is no where near OP without massive time. Heck, as someone said, you can give yourself unlimited resources and still have trouble making it do things.

A player that I play with wanted forestry. What little I knew of forestry at the time was: Bees make all resources infinite with very little work. Since then, I've learned that the time and effort to breed them is significant, and they actually produce rather slowly. Combined with the serious shortage of princesses, and they aren't that excessive until you've been playing for a long time.

I'm still playing with another half-dozen mods just getting them tweaked the way I want (worldgen in various different dimensions, no dimension has everything -- this server will be based on exploration)

I spent a while trying to understand Steve's carts, and played with it. But I never figured out how to do any of the excessive stuff people said could be done with it. And no one has "Here's how to abuse Steve's carts" websites.

I am curious about Chromatic Craft, which is why I asked. But I actually have too many things on my plate already to add learning it, so rather than try to do a cursory glance, I'm just not including it.

The only mod going into my server that isn't well understood by me first is RfTools. Here I'm trusting that McJty has a decent job of balance in, and the whole idea of "get a massive power source for abusive dimensions" is just a different flavor than "abusive ages have instability" (*).

This is a good question, actually. Can someone name one other mod where the reputation of the mod or the author has been tarnished by people modifying the mod?
How about Flower Child? I'm not that familiar with BTW, in fairness.

(*): I thought I knew how to abuse Mystcraft ages to no end. Then, someone one-upped me. Turns out that a boat counts as shelter from the sun, so obelisks in an ocean age are really cheap.
 

wolfenstein19

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If you make a modpack, say for a server you're running, you do not have time for that stuff. Most servers with their own modpacks and quite a few modpacks on their own could not give two shits if they completly mutilate or break the balance of a mod in their pack. They also do not give two shits about reports of that. On alot of modpacks you will see the disclaimers "Do not report any bugs with the mod itself to me, only to the mod authors" which is taken by players as defaulting to pestering the mod devs with whatever issue they have.

As an added bonus big modpacks have very, very long update cycles so you often end up with the response "Yeah I know and see this mod is broken right now because of a wrong version or because we messed up trying to fit it into our pack, but the next update is in 2 months or so, until then stop bothering us with your problems." This happens a lot, not just with small obscure packs. Its really not meant maliciously either. Most modpack devs do not pursue this as their main job, they don't have time to track down every single mod issue and tend to default to "don't bother me with bugs I can't fix". Thats where mod devs get a lot of the shit bug reports from.


Case in point: FTB Monster with Reikas mods. Due to the slow update cycle always versions behind of the real mod, ends up generating a lot of duplicate bug reports. Understandably, the modpack devs also don't want to hear them, so they get redirected to the mod maker. Thats how that dynamic works.

Im sorry to be this blunt but im tired of the blame shifting that goes around. And ofcourse every other person is gonna stream into here and say "But X isn't like that." like hell they are. Most people are guilty of this in some way. Be it not with RC then with some other, smaller mods. Take a wet guess at how much consideration is usually given before a mod is included in a pack, no matter the effects. It even goes so far as to say that sometimes, you add a mod simply because you like how a block in it looks. I know this has been done in the past and is still happening.
 
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zerotheliger

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Jul 29, 2019
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It should always be up to the mod pack author to fix bugs relating to tweaking mods. not the mod author, the mod author aint the one who made your special pink fuzzy wool recipe for a damn jet turbine which broke the balance of the whole mod.

if you tweak the mod it becomes your responsibility to fix said mod or combinations of mods that you broke by tweaking them, unless you can prove that it is actually at base game level the mods code itself and not because of the tweaks you made.

If mod pack authors are really trying to push off stuff they broke by screwing with recipes, balance, using mine tweaker or even using mods that intentionally break balance onto the mod authors they are being lazy. Fix your pack it ain't the mod devs fault like i said above.
 

Padfoote

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Even if what you say is true, the "diamonds in a sea of mud" principle unfortunately still seems applicable.

The ones who refuse to do any sort of testing are the ones who don't care about keeping a world for more than a handful of days. I'm of the mindset that if someone isn't willing to put in the effort to test something to prevent world eating issues, let said issues devour their worlds. Perhaps it will teach them to test a pack before releasing it. Same goes for not testing a mod to understand the balance behind it.
 

wolfenstein19

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The ones who refuse to do any sort of testing are the ones who don't care about keeping a world for more than a handful of days.
No true scotsman fallacy, just saying.

FTB Modpacks throughout have had all sorts of issues, world breaking, crucial server breaking, not-giving-even-a-single-shit issues. FTB has been just as guilty of this in the past as the rest of the modding community has. If you want I can give you a dozen or more examples. Modpack devs don't have to care to make modpacks popular.

Source: been a server admin for years and had to deal with 100s and 100s of issues myself because modpack makers openly stated they didn't care, and yes, even FTB strongly falls into that category.

Now, if you suddenly started replacing your team halfway into Infinity, I might be inclined to believe you a little more here.
 
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FyberOptic

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You know, more effort goes into preventing other mods from affecting it than it would take to just drop Forge entirely and not have to worry about modpacks messing with it to begin with.

I don't think I'll ever understand how this mod goes through pages of controversy so regularly. I still think Reika just worries too much but he can do whatever he wants. All of this back and forth never seems to get anywhere. RotaryCraft isn't like Forge or something, nobody has to use it.
 

Padfoote

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No true scotsman fallacy, just saying.

FTB Modpacks throughout have had all sorts of issues, world breaking, crucial server breaking, not-giving-even-a-single-shit issues. FTB has been just as guilty of this in the past as the rest of the modding community has. If you want I can give you a dozen or more examples. Modpack devs don't have to care to make modpacks popular.

Source: been a server admin for years and had to deal with 100s and 100s of issues myself because modpack makers openly stated they didn't care, and yes, even FTB strongly falls into that category.

Now, if you suddenly started replacing your team halfway into Infinity, I might be inclined to believe you a little more here.

It's impossible to catch every single issue that will ever exist in an environment with over 160 mods attempting to work together. There's a reason pack updates are released and not immediately pushed to recommended, and it's to attempt to catch the issues the testers didn't hit so that the majority of the people playing don't have to suffer through them. I'm not saying FTB packs don't have issues, I'm well aware they do, but claiming the team doesn't care when putting anything together is blatantly false.

Now that we've successfully gone so far from being on the topic of the thread Reika has created, I suggest we move back on topic. Immediately.
 
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