Open Letter to Slowpoke
Firstly, thank you for coming onto this thread and clarifying a few things. I hope you manage to find time to read this post, written in the spirit of friendly and open communication with no drama or nerdrage in sight, and give what I'm going to say some consideration. I'm nobody in the grand scheme of things.. no public youtube channel, no gaming blog, no webcomic. Just an ordinary guy who plays minecraft to relax and likes the idea of a heavily modded game bundle. I don't claim to speak for anyone else, nor do I think that the FTB team (or the original modders) owe me anything.
From all the buzz I've seen online about it, there does seem to be a big disconnect between what a lot of people think Feed The Beast is and your own vision for the project. Paraphrasing what you've said here (and please do correct me if I've misunderstood), your primary focus is on the custom adventure maps, and all the other subprojects, like the launcher and the mod packs are there to support them. You've stated that Balkon's Weapons Mod (which I admit is my personal "want to have") would not be used in the maps, and therefore has no place in the Feed The Beast mod pack. Fair enough. It is your project (and I mean "your" in the general sense: I've no idea about the current FTB leadership, whether it's a collaborative effort or a one-man-one-vote-and-Slowpoke's-the-man deal
) You have every right to work on what you want to work on.
But..
What a lot of people seem to think FTB is, and what they're hoping for (myself included) is quite frankly a legit updated version of The Mod Pack That Shall Never Be Spoken Of. Maybe not 100% exactly the same selection of mods but essentially a nicely bundled, cohesive collection of mods that play nicely together and enhance the possibilities of the game. Maybe that wasn't what you set out to produce, but that's what I think a lot of people are expecting. (As an aside, I think it's no coincidence that when you hit the FTB website, there's no "About" or "What Is Feed The Beast" to explain what it is. Just a thought?) Right or wrong, when these expectations rub up against your original, different project goals, that's when you get friction like we've seen in this thread.
Alright, so you just need to post a clear mission statement on the FTB landing page, and we're all good. Right?
Maybe but..
You're in the process of building something that is 85-90% of what a lot of people are hoping and asking for. Would it not be worth taking a step back and broadening the scope a little bit to consider things that, while having no place in the FTB maps would enhance the mod pack in its own right a stand-alone entity. You have the opportunity to make an awful lot of people happy by stepping beyond your original goals.
I know you're never going to make everyone happy, the internet being what it is, and for everyone who'll want Equivalent Exchange included, there'll be someone else cursing it as unbalancing and overpowered. And I'm not merely whining for the inclusion of My Favourite Mod, though I'm going to allow myself one paragraph to make the case for it below. If you decide that it doesn't enhance the game, or is unbalancing, or won't play well with others, or one of a host of other reasons not to include it, then fair enough. But I'm hoping that you'll at least start considering mods in the wider context than "it has no place in the FTB maps"
Now, if you've read all this, please just think about it for a moment. If you decide the answer is still no, that you want to continue to focus on the maps and people can take the resultant mod pack or leave it, then fair enough. It's your right to work on the project you want to work on, nobody has the right to demand anything else. But I do hope you'll at least consider broadening your scope to give a lot of people what they really want.
My case for Balkon's Weapons Mod: I see Minecraft and by extension Tek... The Mod Pack That Shall Never Be Spoken Of, and by extension the Feed The Beast modpack, all as excellent platforms for doing Steampunky things. Steampunks are by nature creative types, and the Brass Goggles steampunk forums have about four different Minecraft/TMPTSNBSO servers run by members. Now in addition to a dazzling array of melee weapons, Balkon's mod has a couple of gunpowder weapons which really fit in well with the steampunk theme. They are not uber powerful, while they are one-hit kills on most common mobs they are very slow to reload and limited range. But they are weapons from the early industrial age, that fit nicely conceptually alongside Heath-Robinson-esque contraptions of Buildcraft pipes and Industrial Craft machines. More importantly, they make an incredibly satisfying BOOM when fired. In the TMPTSNBSO world I'm playing at the moment, I have a mining laser for work, but for defence I pull out my trusty musket (with bayonet). It just feels more aesthetically right. That, sir, is the experience I would like to be able to get playing a world based on the Feed The Beast modpack, and one I would like to be able to share with other players without too much painful effort installing "unapproved and unsupported" mods.
I could go on extolling its virtues - or pointing out that although he generally has a no-modpack policy Balkon seemed quite open to his mod's inclusion in FTB, but I said I'd limit myself to one paragraph. If you decide that BWM still has no place in FTB, for whatever reason, then so be it. I'll either have to learn what's required to patch the mod in to FTB on both server and client and get it playing nicely with the other mods and THEN find a way to talk my painfully non-technical friends through installing it on their client, and then hope that an update doesn't break things further down the line.... or I'll have to step away from FTB and go back to TMPTSNBSO.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you decide against what I propose then please don't feel the need to reply on a point by point basis, or even explain your choice. Make FTB the project you want to work on, we the public have no entitlement to demand anything else. But I hope you aren't offended if we ask, respectfully and politely, for the things we want.
Regards
Dr Vesuvius
(PS .. and if anyone in the peanut gallery is feeling the need to flame me for this post... ask yourself why.)