Why no new launcher.

[QueWhat]

Yeah.. But, I believe that is mostly due to a lack of a new 1.6 launcher. I'll bet those numbers reverse once the the 1.6 packs have been released. I know I've been using the vanilla launcher to play my custom magic world until the 1.6 packs are released. Then I plan to use the FTB launcher again.

I agree, and the poll indicates most will return to FTB. However, each time this failure in communication occurs FTB's user-base decreases and its market share shrinks. Therefore, the question remains; will the difficult - albeit necessary - changes and reorganization desperately needed occur, and - more importantly - will the communication with the community improve? I have high hopes, but only time will tell.

PS: Comment # 200

 

[Physicist]

I agree, and the poll indicates most will return to FTB. However, each time this failure in communication occurs FTB's user-base decreases and its market share shrinks. Therefore, the question remains; will the difficult - albeit necessary - changes and reorganization desperately needed occur, and - more importantly - will the communication with the community improve? I have high hopes, but only time will tell.

Wait, doesn't your sig say FTB community relations and Official FTB Announcements?

 

[fps_master91]

Lack of communication and updates will kill off nearly every community, we like to be informed simple as that. Not to mention that but Iv seen a Moderator or two on here won't name names lash out at people simply asking for insight yet they seem to forget that without that very same community they wouldn't be here. On the note of the FTB user base falling yes I was one of them, with places like Technic or the ATlauncher offering the exact same mods and more but rather the updated versions regardless if a certain Moderator wants to admit that or not it was simply easier to go there. And that brings me back to lack of communication....for a while there it seemed like all that was going on in the FTB was store store money money, and now we've caught wind of finally an update coming and that's just floated away into a bunch of miss leading information ( Referring to the FaceBook Posts ). But anyway i hope that FTB sorts itself out and brings back it's players me including.

 

[RowdyScot]

Looking forward to it when it arrives, but I will happily continue playing the 1.5 Direwolf20 pack until updates come along. Everyone is volunteering their time - the delays are perfectly reasonable for that very reason. Take the time needed - it sounds fantastic.

 

[QueWhat]

Wait, doesn't your sig say FTB community relations and Official FTB Announcements?

Forgot about that, there, changed it. I used to be in community relations for a short time but that proved an impossible task, I will not go into detail. Suffice to say that I am now a supporter but with an ample amount of constructive criticism.

 

[Molten]

Communication is important, yes. And it's an area that FTB and other mod pack makers have always fallen short on.
But Slowpoke knows, and has said himself many many times. The main reason that Technic/Tekkit lost it's place and market share in the first place was a faliure to update and release relevant products people wanted. (They since have got their act together, but in the mean time people moved elsewhere - to FTB.)
Features are awesome. But people come to FTB and other launchers for one reason only. To download updated and relevant mod packs. Unless that happens in a timely manner with future updates the market will move elsewhere and new launchrs will spring up out of nowhere to fill the void.
And don't count on them returning... People say they will, but then they get comfortable elsewhere. Most people don't like change, and will hit an update button rather than change launcher if they don't have to.

That sounds doom and gloom but we are a long way from that point yet. FTB still rides along on a wave of good will. I think that will continue for the near future at least.
As long as FTB doesn't take that good will for granted (which I don't think they do) they will survive and prosper.

 

[WuffleFluffy]

Hi SlowPoke,

I have been participating as a server operator and player of Modded Mine-craft via FTB since it came out and have enjoyed many hours of pottering around with various mods, i'm STILL learning things about
1.5.x Unleashed and will be happy on this for months to come.

However, as a 22+ year veteran of I.T management (got the T-Shirt(s) and the scars lol) may I be so bold as to offer feedback on your honest appraisal?

Firstly, I can only imagine that putting together mod packs like Unleashed, DireWolf and Unhinged etc must be like herding cats, and Mojang probably don't make things any easier.

However, having said that. I read with some interest your views on how mod packs are being released and how you would like to make things a lot more 'dynamic'.
Firstly, whilst This sounds interesting I think it will add unnecessary complexity to your processes, the reason being that having users download a 'big pack of stuff' for modded mine-craft
keeps things nice and simple. Also from what I have seen, the same 'big pack of stuff' also needs to be the exact same at the server side.

So I'd be wary of this whole dynamic thing, you've got a mechanism that seems to work, I'd stick with that. The Launcher you have already seems to do everything we need it to do.

I understand that this approach can mean that packs don't change all that much or that mods within packs remain fairly stable or can fall behind the latest versions but I think that
stability and compatibility should be the top priority.

Just take your time, pick the one most pressing issue you have (1.6.x version of mods?) and work on that, then after that.. pick the one most pressing issue you have.. and so forth. One thing
at a time, it's the only way to keep a project on track.

Hope this helps, I think you and your team have done an absolutely wonderful job with FTB and I am confident that your team will deliver.

 

[jokermatt999]

Communication is important, but I can definitely understand the devs being hesitant to say anything solid. People tend to hold to estimates as absolutes, and there's a lot that can come up to delay anything, much less something like trying to get several dozen mods to update and be bugfree.

However, I would like to know what kind of bugs are holding them from a wider beta release if the packs are working. Is it world eating bugs, or just crashing? Because I think people can tolerate minor bugginess/instability, and if it's released via a private pack code (like the 1.5.2 packs at the start), they should understand it's a beta and to be expected. I've got a friend who I want to introduce to FTB. He's an old school Tekkit player (EE2 days), and I think he'd love FTB, but we're waiting on 1.6 before we start a world to put a lot of effort in.

As a side note, that poll seems to show what I assumed: most people hadn't switched launchers or are planning to switch back. I tried AT Launcher, but I didn't find a pack that was really to my liking. I could roll my own with SolitaryCraft, but that's more annoying to play on a server with. I tried Resonant Rise and making a decent size SC pack, but I continually got out of memory errors (which I never got with FTB). So, I just resorted to using AT Launcher to beta test a handful of updated/newer mods in creative, but I don't feel like I can actually play on it for a full world.

Best of luck to the FTB Team. Keep up the hard work, and let us know what's going on please.

 

[Hambeau]

Hi SlowPoke,

I have been participating as a server operator and player of Modded Mine-craft via FTB since it came out and have enjoyed many hours of pottering around with various mods, i'm STILL learning things about
1.5.x Unleashed and will be happy on this for months to come.

However, as a 22+ year veteran of I.T management (got the T-Shirt(s) and the scars lol) may I be so bold as to offer feedback on your honest appraisal?

Firstly, I can only imagine that putting together mod packs like Unleashed, DireWolf and Unhinged etc must be like herding cats, and Mojang probably don't make things any easier.

However, having said that. I read with some interest your views on how mod packs are being released and how you would like to make things a lot more 'dynamic'.
Firstly, whilst This sounds interesting I think it will add unnecessary complexity to your processes, the reason being that having users download a 'big pack of stuff' for modded mine-craft
keeps things nice and simple. Also from what I have seen, the same 'big pack of stuff' also needs to be the exact same at the server side.

So I'd be wary of this whole dynamic thing, you've got a mechanism that seems to work, I'd stick with that. The Launcher you have already seems to do everything we need it to do.

I understand that this approach can mean that packs don't change all that much or that mods within packs remain fairly stable or can fall behind the latest versions but I think that
stability and compatibility should be the top priority.

Just take your time, pick the one most pressing issue you have (1.6.x version of mods?) and work on that, then after that.. pick the one most pressing issue you have.. and so forth. One thing
at a time, it's the only way to keep a project on track.

Hope this helps, I think you and your team have done an absolutely wonderful job with FTB and I am confident that your team will deliver.

As a 35+ year veteran of Computer/Lan/Network Tech level support, repair and design (not that experience makes anyone an expert) I have to pop in and say that while most of what you say is true, Slowpoke's plans to make FtB more modular and dynamic are keeping in line with the way Mojang is steering Minecraft these days.

Mojang's new loader does it exactly this way today, and their Curse Pack server celebrated their 500th registered pack earlier this week. As far as I can tell the main difference between the two is that FtB is testing for compatibility and providing config files. Mojang is serving individual packs that may or may not conflict.

This has been in the works since at least 2012... watch the '12 Minecon presentation. They state that with their planned system you will eventually be able to replace parts of MC itself.

Mojang has taken a few years to get things this far, not wanting to upset modders and players too much. I'm assuming that most 3rd parties have only had since the 1.6 snapshots to see what the new system is.

People angry that the large packs compatible with the current launcher should have been released first should realize that doing so is a massive duplication of effort, one of the first things that can kill a creative volunteer workforce.

 

[b0bst3r]

Ok I'm gonna say it, because no one else seems to want to.

We don't give a rats ass what the launcher looks like FTB is about the mod packs and how they work, how they perform, how free the pack is of bugs. Once the game is launched the launcher is no longer seen or part of the workings of the launched game.

It's all about mod packs and their themes.

But I despair at the streams and videos of the testing, I have yet to find any stream or youtube video (apart from Jadedcat) of any tester having extensive knowledge of the game. In fact the last one I saw the guy was trying to punch trees in the spawn area and didn't even know ....... really ......

It has to come out again ....

 

[eashonk]

But I despair at the streams and videos of the testing, I have yet to find any stream or youtube video (apart from Jadedcat) of any tester having extensive knowledge of the game. In fact the last one I saw the guy was trying to punch trees in the spawn area and didn't even know .

I hear ya, it is difficult to trust that the testing is really that efficient when those testing don't understand basic mechanics of the game. How can you know if something isn't working properly, if you don't even know how the game is supposed to work properly? I watched slowpoke derp around trying to get his gamemode changed because he didn't know how to properly use the new NEI in 1.6, I was like "Dear Lord, he doesn't even know how to play the game he is trying to extensively test for errors." SMH

I would think that the "testing" should be done by people who extensively test the limits of the game and mods like Jaded and Direwolf20, and BevoJ, those people really know their stuff.

 

[Nerixel]

snip

Sure it's got a new look, but that's not the main feature they're working on, which I believe is delta updating. Beyond that, giving users the ability to create private modpacks more easily is on the agenda too.

You also failed to note that there are separate modpack, launcher and testing teams. 1.6 packs are being readied for the current version of the launcher, whether the new launcher's out or not. Development of the launcher does not slow down development of packs.

 

[eashonk]

Development of the launcher does not slow down development of packs.

Sure it does, if you consider the fact that this is volunteer work, and that someone has to manage all the different teams. If one team is falling behind, then it is draining resources and effecting the timeline of the others. Even the simplest organizational structure understands that the smallest hiccup from one part of the entity sends shock-waves throughout the entire operation.

 

[Jadedcat]

The testing team is made up 50/50 of very experienced players and less experienced players. Its important to see how a player who hasn't played some of these things goes about doing stuff, and it does reveal issues things that a more experienced player would just work around. It gives us 2 very different and important views of the packs. We have a couple mod developers, 2 experienced server admins , the mod pack team, and then a mix of people at different levels of modded experience.

 

[QueWhat]

I am happy to see a thread of this nature full of so much usefull constructive criticism and other great comments with very few flaming going on good job community!

 

[Hambeau]

The testing team is made up 50/50 of very experienced players and less experienced players. Its important to see how a player who hasn't played some of these things goes about doing stuff, and it does reveal issues things that a more experienced player would just work around. It gives us 2 very different and important views of the packs. We have a couple mod developers, 2 experienced server admins , the mod pack team, and then a mix of people at different levels of modded experience.

In my opinion lesser experienced players sometimes make the best testers. They tend to ry things the designers never had in mind when they flow-charted the application.

In my stint as part of a game development team (early 80s, where I learned I'm NOT a professional grade programmer, btw... See last line of Sig) we found that it's easy for people very familiar with the code to predict how to react correctly to in-game stimuli. I worked on a Pac-Man clone for the Apple II so understanding the algorithm that passed for Mob AI back then made the game too easy. It wasn't until the financial backer's employees started what would a closed beta today that we actually found problems to fix.

My definition of "beta" is the phase of a project where the developers know that the program works if everything is done correctly so it's time to let a group of new players do the wrong things and break stuff so the Devs know what needs fixing. Unfortunately, a lot of commercial software companies seem to treat this stage as "Final Release"

 

[QueWhat]

I have to agree with Jaded here. If there's something FTB has it is very talented people. Look at the art by BigBad, the website and forum work by Captain, the Wiki articles by the teams, etc. I also believe Slow and co. also have exellent ideas for their products.

The true problem is the management of those assets. An example; Jaded herself indicated that she isn't necessarily the most skilled spokesperson. Which is fine because we all have our strengths and weaknesses, and Jaded already has plenty of strengths. But if Jaded and Slow aren't the greatest spokespersons then why not assign a person or team to do precisely that? I know as owner you enjoy being the 'face' of the company but there is a reason why companies hire media relations and spokepersons.

Also, tell me how many companies use Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit as their primary news/media outlet.

 

[BanzaiBlitz]

I am happy to see a thread of this nature full of so much usefull constructive criticism and other great comments with very few flaming going on good job community!

Might also be Vauthil stalking the crowd with ready hammer of smiting.

But if Jaded and Slow aren't the greatest spokespersons then why not assign a person or team to do precisely that? I know as owner you enjoy being the 'face' of the company but there is a reason why companies hire media relations and spokepersons.

I say they make Direwolf20 and Soaryn do it! Just give Soaryn a bell the spits UU. Everything else will sort itself out.

 

[eashonk]

off topic, am i the only person on the internet not afraid to show my real face?

 

[KKeys]

Afraid to show their real face? That's a funny way to word it, are you gonna dare people next?

As for the FTB launcher, #1 priority should be getting a working usable version out to the public ASAP. I barely see a reason for me to switch back, other then some insane loyalty I have to some internet group of volunteers.