No that was a special pack made just for that event. Ultimate was the 1.4 mappack. However the only map made was for PAX. We couldn't have a tournament with a map that took 8-9 hours. So the pack was scaled down and a map was made from that.
Weekly News Issue #2
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No that was a special pack made just for that event. Ultimate was the 1.4 mappack. However the only map made was for PAX. We couldn't have a tournament with a map that took 8-9 hours. So the pack was scaled down and a map was made from that.
When I read that post a trend kept appearing; many of those mod packs are made based on what X person(s) wants. Which is excellent since all of those individuals have an established fan base that wants to use the same mods as them and follow them along in their gameplay (and those mod packs make that possible.) However, I did not see a phrase that I was expecting; what the community wants to play (not what a group of people think the community wants to play).
Now hold those pitchforks, I do understand that FTB has achieved this level of success thanks in large part to the YouTubers, Streamers, etc. and thus the justified need to create mod packs that THEY want to play (and - in extension - their fanbase). Nonetheless, FTB has grown into other markets as well:
1. Server Owners/Admins who need mod packs created/hosted for their user group.
2. As mentioned: modded Minecraft 'internet celebrities'
3. FTB Map user group (or what remains of it)
4. FTB's own user group/fan base/community/crazy cat people/whatever you want to call us.
The first two are serviced marvelously, the third meh, but the fourth are those of us who until this moment probably thought that the other mod packs - Monster, Ultimate, Tech, Magic etc. - had been made with US in mind (the people, not the country). And yet, not one of those invisible bullet points said "what the FTB community wants to play".
Of course, I'm not writing this post as I'm sitting at my car dealer's lobby bored because they are taking forever to change the oil... Ok maybe I am. HOWEVER, (I love this word) my intention is not to offend nor 'demoralize' the FTB team, but rather to provide constructive criticism (even if such was not requested) and to promote the following suggestion:
Create a poll/vote/town hall meeting where people say yay or nay, and find out what the FTB community would like to see in a mod pack in the future, perhaps add a list of mods and see which top 30-60 are most voted for and introduce those into a mod pack. Make a big deal out of it, call it whatever the community wants to call it, and then
I agree. They do a great job of making these packs. But, maybe put a poll soon after launch of the new group of what people want and then make a "fan's choice" pack. The only problem I can see is that not everyone will be happy. Some people will want more tech, others more magick, some GT, others TC.
Thus you then create category of mods and allow folks to select only an X amount of mods on each category they want introduced. Allow peeps and creeps to choose which style of mod they want: magic, tech, gregtech crazyness, insert-style-here, mix. Sure some bumps will be found on this new road, but weren't all paved roads rocky and bumpy at first?
Thank you. I think a lot of us have been looking for the motivation behind packs like Monster for a while. I know I have been asking for it several times to no avail. But this kinda leaves more questions with me:
- From what I understand the majority of the players want a well rounded pack with lots of content. Are you saying that you aren't actually developing a play pack for that target group? Because what comes closest then is the 3rd party DW20 pack, which doesn't really have that much content IMO.
- Were Ultimate and Unleashed really specifically build for the single purpose of the FTB map? If so it seems a bit weird to keep making these packs if they are never used for that purpose. You would kinda suspect that the focus have changed towards it being a play pack instead, after all why would you spend so much time and effort on building/maintaining them if the entire last 2 versions was never used for their main purpose.
Won't the new launcher and universal configs somewhat make this a moot point? Meaning, the FTB team makes a few packs, (e.g., Monster, Horizons) and people just add and subtract whatever they want from there. Some people already do this, and it is kinda a pain, but if I understand the plan for the new system, it seems like this is what it is designed for.
(Then again we are talking about people who apparently make modpacks designed for maps that never get made, so who knows?
)The mappack also fills the "all the things" playstyle just by the number of mods in it. And if you combine Tech World 2 and Magic World 2 (which you can) you then have another general use pack. Sure we could just never release the mappack unless a map is made, however it would be silly for us to have one pack that close to what people want and then make another almost identical pack.
Basically what people are saying is there's on average 4-5 mods missing from monster that they want for a general use pack. Why should the mod pack team put together another pack that only has 5-6 more mods? The time and effort spent maintaining the packs means we are not going to make packs that close to being identical. It just doesn't make sense. If you really can't find any pack on the launcher that meets your style either by itself or with a few drag and drop mods, please make your own pack. These are not thrown together in a few mins. Each pack update takes me 2-3 hours per pack.
People are not asking for a neat new different pack that would be worth us spending the time to make they are asking that we remake a current pack as a new pack with a couple added mods just so they don't have to spend 5-10 mins per update moving mods.
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What about adventure and utilities mods? There has only ever been one adventure pack on the launcher and it had one mod in it.
When "the community" gets together and creates it's own pack I would be happy to see it hosted here.
However, seeing that people like Direwolf and the Mindcrack guys spend their own (free) time developing and testing their packs prior to turning them over to FtB for hosting is a far cry from "the community" demanding, or even politely asking that every mod in creation be included... After all, that's what would be required to keep everyone happy.
Remember the old saying... An Elephant is the end result of a Race Horse being designed by committee.
FTB packs are not made by committee. There is a community pack being made by reddit where people can vote on the mods that got included and the config options etc. Horizons is geared towards how people want to play just without some of the "classic" mods. Tech and Magic World are geared towards all the users that want either magic or tech but not both. FTB Lite is geared towards the users with lower end computers that just can't run the heavy weight packs. Thats 4 packs geared towards users not celebrities. Magic Farm is geared towards the users who want a challenge. The community vote pack is being done by the reddit community for the part of the community who wants a vote.
If we leave mods out there's a good reason behind it. It either does not add enough new things to the game that aren't added by a different mod already, it has major cross mod issues, it has huge performance issues, it has even more bugs than the ones we are using.
We are also not going to release a pack thats practically identical to DW20 which is what the community keeps asking for. I am maintaining and updating 5 packs currently on the launcher, Eyamaz is doing the other 3 packs plus holding down 2 full time jobs and a family. For us to be willing to compile another pack it will have to be completely different from any pack on the launcher already whether the pack is ours or thrid party.
The community keeps saying :
"Well DW20 would be perfect if it just had these 3 mods" And those 3 mods differ from person to person
"Monster really needs these 5 mods" : again different from person to person.
To solve that we would need to add 100 mods each to monster and DW20 or make 30 variations of each. Or the user could just add the mods he/she wants.
Meanwhile the people downloading the pack are mostly downloading Horizons , Tech and Lite and not worrying about "missing mods"
We gave you configs that let you add a lot of the popular "missing" mods to any pack and not have to worry about ID conflicts. Use them.
As a good example of the problems caused by following community wishes: Everyone wanted Ars Magica2 and Railcraft in packs. The packs with those 2 mods have huge issues we can't fix without pulling those mods from the packs. We can't even push those packs to stable because of the bugs. And now people are mad at us for including them. Why not give us the benefit of the doubt and instead of assuming we are just ignoring users assume if we leave a mod out there's a good reason for it.
And no I am not going to sit down and list all the issues with every mod we left out. It would take too long and no one would read it anyway. Because if people actually read the stuff we write they would know about a lot of the bugs before making a bug report and often the known fix.
You keep saying we don't communicate enough. Except we have been communicating all over the forums , reddit and twitter since the packs started going out... and no one is reading them. The announcement thread with warnings doesn't even have 1/3 the views of the number of registered users on the forums. We are communicating. You aren't listening/reading.
I'd read anything you guys put out. But I'm a strange person
On the topic of communications, could you elaborate on how they're handled? I know that generally if an announcement is made on the forums, you or FTB Support tends to make a tweet directing us to it. Is there times where information is released, for example, on reddit and no mention of it elsewhere? I'll be honest and say I never really touch reddit at all. Kind of the same with IRC. I spend a LOT of time on these forums (browser always has it open and I tend to check it almost every 10 mins) and wonder if I miss information elsewhere by avoiding reddit and IRC as I assumed any info there would be brought to the forums. Is this the case?
To my knowledge, nothing official is ever posted on reddit first. But I could be wrong.
No. If its incredibly important I'll post on reddit afterwards. But reddit threads vanish after a time so I do not use it as a good news reporting site.
Thank you for the clarifications Jaded. Understand however, that the driving force for my original post was based on the quoted post that kept indicating "what X person wants to play" while not once was it indicated that any certain mod packs were geared towards FTB's community. Your clarifications drive the point home. HOWEVER, I was not aware that a community mod pack was being voted on in Reddit because I do not use Reddit. Perhaps it would help those that do not use Reddit and other news outlets to announce on the forums whenever a project such as this is occurring?
Those that are asking for the above are simply ignorant to the process and hard work needed to put a pack together and assume that it is as simple as a 1 click process. I disagree with their requests completely and agree with you fully on these statements, it was not something I indicated on my other posts. An idea; perhaps someone in the team should create a video indicating the process that needs to be taken whenever a new mod pack is created, post it on YouTube, and announce it. It may help those that are ignorant to the process to learn exactly how much work ya'll have to dedicate and therefore be more considerate.
I can tell you with certainty that the true FTB fans trust the FTB team fully and we do NOT believe you are ignoring us. Quite the opposite, you have shown you are listening to the community with all the changes recently implemented and this precise post I am responding to. My other post was simply as indicated; suggestions and constructive criticism:
Nope, I haven't said anymore that ya'll do not communicate enough, that has greatly improved! In fact, I said the following after the first Weekly News thread:
Glad to see that changes have started and that the community has been listened to
Anyway, I didn't mean to ruffle any feathers nor to upset anyone, just to provide my own point of view through constructive criticism. Keep up the good work FTB team!
I'd read anything you guys put out. But I'm a strange person
You're not the only oddity here...
Maybe we should get a support group together.
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