Why this mod become hardcore ?

[Teagan75 14]

Whenever I see a post where people are bashing the Devs or their game, it always gets me thinking.

 

1. This is free to play, no money or contracts changed hands so why do people think they have the right to dictate how things are developed?

2. People have freedom of choice, no one is forcing an individual to play so why not try another game/pack/mod instead of getting upset over this one?

3. The Devs use code to make everything work, it is not simple to do what they do and they have no wizards wand to make everyone's personal wishes come true. 

4. Going onto a public forum and throwing the verbal toys out the cot makes an individual look bad. 

5. Final point, if it means so much, make one yourself. The Devs did just that, this is their vision and they are doing it their way, and so they should.

 

So before folks get angry because I have made the points above, take a moment to consider your position as supporters of the work being done by the Devs. You are helping them reach their dream, they are working hard to make it happen. They do not exist for your personal entertainment and the world does not revolve around you. 

 

Try to feel the community spirit folks, a little gratitude never did any harm. 

 

Dawn 

 

I do not make a habit to bash the devs. I have always told them that I actually like 90% of the mod as is. I know this is free. However, we can call them on their lack of PR. I assume the devs are young, high school or college, because of the mention of midterms and such. I have been out of college for 20 years, so I have a job, a family, and live in the consumer world. If they want a career in development they need to understand that they need good communication skills. More and more, employers are requiring IT and software developers to have GOOD communication and people skills. My husband is a developer so I actually understand both sides. To write people off and say just deal with it is very POOR people skills. If they want to eventually in the future sell a product they will have to listen to their customers and have good communication skills. You can't live in a hole and expect no one to bug you about your work and keep you accountable. Because this is a game and is free I can walk away without any loss. I was merely pointing out the attitude I have gotten over the years on this forum and how that attitude won't fly in the corporate world. If you are going to sell or promote a product, you better be ready to hear the good and the bad. 

 

Also, they are in the entertainment business, so their game exists to entertain me and if it doesn't I have the right to state my opinion.

[Teagan75 14]

This page might be helpful: http://wiki.terrafirmacraft.com/Configuration

 

You should also try deleting your config files, as some new options might not show up when you update if you don't.

Thanks for pointing this out There is a lot of detail in the configs so I did pass over the cave in part. Still having trouble with the sheep. I still don't know if the sheep issue is mine or a bug.  Like I mentioned I camped out my sheep for three in game months, fed them every morning, and finally they gave me wool. My female, I think is familiar and locked in but the icon actually shows the partial white heart but now with a red smudge at the bottom. This is different than my pigs which I have had no issues with. My male sheep allowed me to shear once and then reverted back to unfamiliar. I sometimes can't even sneak feed him. My current game was built on build 79.10 so the animal issues of before shouldn't be in my game.

[gloryofarioch 4]

Regarding cave-ins, they are simple. Just don't dig up. You can't mine above a support beam any more without risking a cave-in.

[Dawnwraith 11]

I like using the support beams, they look really cool inside the mine. I also like cave-ins because they give a neat element of danger to what is essentially a boring and repetitive task in MC. Nothing is worse in a game in my opinion, than having to do the same thing over and over, with nothing to break the routine. 

 

Dawn

[Kittychanley 1,002]

This topic shows that the majority want the firestarter changed and the forum admin just gave me a direct no.

Link: http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/topic/7275-improve-firestarter/

 

It might help if you get you facts straight before you spread misinformation. I did not give you a direct no for the entirety of your suggestion, and I even stated that I would make the kindling change. The only part of your suggested that was given a very obvious no was the name change. Now go through and re-read through the replies, and you will see that 8 people including yourself responded. Out of those 8 people, 1 person besides yourself explicitly commented on changing the name and agreeing with it. 1 person besides myself explicitly commented on changing the name and agreeing with my decision. Neither of these cases is a majority.

[Bunsan 323]

Yeah it kind of seems like the developers are making the Mod for themselves rather than the community.

You are entirely correct. Devs make mods they want and create their own vision. They then are kind enough to share it with the larger community. They are even kind enough to provide configs to tweak many features to make them easier or harder than their original vision. Sure it is never that black and white, but at the core this is true. They certainly can't do or add all that is asked of them. For cave-ins alone they would end up in an infinite loop with just two people. They reset cave-ins to 78 for Person A. Person B complains it is too easy/unrealistic, back to 79 mechanics. Repeat.

So make your suggestions as clear and convincing as possible. When they say yes, you say thank you. When they say No, accept it and move on.

[RandomASCII 5]

On the original topic, I felt the same way when I started playing this mod again after six months. I felt like everything had become almost impossible and that virtually everything depended on the luck of your world generation. After doing some research and practicing a bit, I don't feel this way anymore. There's still some changes I disagree with, but they're not game breaking changes for me. I recommend that you do as much research on whatever it is you're looking for as you need to feel confident in your abilities to seek it out. Also, keep in mind that this is a game that is practically designed to require quite a lot of exploration, as would be true and even more harsh in real life. Early on, I would highly recommend that you get as well set up as you can in an area close to spawn. Afterwards, I would suggest you prepare in such a way that you will have minimal possibility of dying to natural causes(starvation, dehydration, etc.) and can either avoid or easily kill hostile mobs. If need be, be prepared to live completely nomadically. Also, I would very highly suggest you also use a minimap mod. You can play the game without one, but the game will be far more difficult.

 

As for what the current topic seems to be, I feel the develops sometimes overlook certain play styles when making changes. While they're justified in saying what they have about it, how they say it has sometimes left players, myself included, with a taste that isn't quite as pleasant. I don't think they mean to come off that way though. I think they've shown that they realize it to an extent and offer fixes to subjective issues that most people don't seem to notice because the majority of people who play any game seem to expect the game to work perfectly for them and their style by default. People tend to underestimate the necessity of gameplay related options, and have a tendency to make their way to the nearest form and proclaim their blind frustrations the moment something doesn't work. I've been guilty of this myself, as I'm extremely stubborn about making my play style work with default configurations for the games I play. I may even at times slip into saying things like that myself. They usually lose meaning within myself mere moments after I post them and I either eventually find a way to make it work, or give in and change the settings. I theorize that people may take more issue than usual with the way it was set up because of the connotation changing values in a config file has to people who usually never do it. It feel like you're cheating, and that's something most people don't want to have to do to play the game and thrive in it.

[enenra 5]

Also, they are in the entertainment business, so their game exists to entertain me and if it doesn't I have the right to state my opinion.

 

wut. I don't even know where to begin to tell you how wrong you are...

[Thrainn 2]

wut. I don't even know where to begin to tell you how wrong you are...

Well, I'll try ...@Teagan75 - First of all a business, by definition, is some kind of exchange (e.g. I give you some shiny yellow pieces of rock and want one of your little pigs of your farm for them), now tell me what YOU are giving in exchange for the hours of entertainment that this amazing mod pleases you with!Further, this game/mod most certainly does NOT exist to entertain you or any of us, but only because Bioxx, Dunk, Kitty and who else is involved here WANT it to exist. If there are people enjoying what they create, well, then all the better :)You do have the right to state your opinion, however, don't be surprised if it proves a waste of your time if the devs don't agree with it.And finally, you don't have to try to patronize the devs and teach them how to survive in the entertainment business. You have no idea what they do for a living (neither have most of us, I guess), and to assume all of the devs are "young, high school or college" just because Kitty (officially not a dev, yet) mentioned her midterms once, is truly impertinent at best!If you really want to leave this game and its community, like you said above, feel free to do so for all I care. I'm sorry to say this now, because I really wanted to help with your problems above, but when I read something like this, I really don't know why the devs, especially Kitty, should have to put up with such garbage. I'd rather they put there time in enjoying their lives and work on their not so little baby if they feel to.

[Dawnwraith 11]

When a person sees themselves are superior to another based on, social standing, age, career or gender etc, they do not make a very good base argument for their point of view.

 

So I would like to highlight the fact that not everyone is like this. 

 

As a woman who is drawing closer to 40, and one who has a career founded in a corporate environment. I would like to point out that I do not use my past to make myself seem superior to those around me. 

 

As an individual who enjoys gaming, if something is not working the way I like it to work, I will simply find a work around for it because I am mature enough to understand that small things like that are just that, small things. 

 

As a human being I am supportive of other people's dreams, because every single one of us has vast potential and a little support can move mountains. 

 

As a person I remind myself that being humble keeps me open minded and helps me reach out to my fellow man and woman. 

 

So I would like to say to our Community and our Devs. 

 

Thank you for your support and hard work.

Thank you for your creativity and your suggestions.

But most of all, thank you for your patience.

I know how hard it can be when dealing with people who seem rather narrow minded, arrogant, selfish and spoilt.

 

Keep being excellent to one another, and keep smiling because you are awesome!

 

Oh I almost forgot, @Teagan75, I read your post saying you are leaving. I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all the best on your journey. I hope you find the perfect game and I hope their PR people are up to your high corporate standards. If you ever decide to make a game/mod/pack, please let me know. I would love to stop by and test it for you, give you some constructive feedback on how I want it to be

 

Dawn

[RandomASCII 5]

Further, this game/mod most certainly does NOT exist to entertain you or any of us, but only because Bioxx, Dunk, Kitty and who else is involved here WANT it to exist. If there are people enjoying what they create, well, then all the better  

I disagree. If you only ever care about how the experience is for yourself, it's very easy to lose touch with your users and kill off your fanbase. Ultimately, the mod is your creation and the users shouldn't badger you to cater the game to them, but if the game is becoming unplayable for a significant portion of people, the worst thing you can do is alienate those persons. I don't feel it's quite to the point where serious efforts need to be made to counteract that, as the game still seems to have a decent following that loves the mod and is passionate about it. After all, where would the mod be if the only people who liked it and found it to be playable were Bioxx, Dunk, and Kitty? Sure, you could argue that the devs might be okay with the mod hypothetically turning into that, but I would like to think that they are appreciative of the fact that they have such a passionate following of what they do and have created somewhat of a community for themselves. I would like to think that at the end of the day, they can find solace when looking to the people that do like what they've done and continue to support it. I would like to think that they enjoy the fact that people are putting so many hours into this with satisfaction the entire time. I would like to think they enjoy the fact that people make texture packs just for the mod itself. I would like to think that they enjoy the fact that there's quite a few other mods that support theirs. If they remember that, then I would imagine it makes it all the while worth it to deal with stupid people on the internet, as well as those who actually have legitimate criticism of the mod.

[Teagan75 14]

*face palm* you've missed my point entirely and I won't waste time explaining it again.

 

edit: directed at Dawnwraith and Thrainn

[Trenix 14]

I completely agree with all of RandomASCII's responses. In my perspective, the devs are clearly trying to create a community but at the same time filtering it based on their own needs which is counteractive. Here is some things I was told... 

 

At some point you got this idea in your head of what TerraFirmaCraft is, and what it should be. Unfortunately, this idea is different from our Developer's ideas, and therefore it is wrong. You may not agree with that statement, but as you are not a developer of this mod, it doesn't matter.

 

 

We do strive to build a good relationship with our community. However, our community has been around for over 2 years now, and when new members come barging in attacking many aspects of the mod, we usually protect our current community, rather than accept this new person into it.

These are not "pro" community statements. Why bother making a dedicated site/forum if you're not wanting to build up a community? Also people saying the mod is free, so therefore we should be thanking the devs for it. Yet what Minecraft mod isn't free? They're all based on donations, just like this one. However unlike other mods, those devs actually listen to their community and make their mods for them. That gives the community a reason to support them through donations, but what's the purpose of donating to this mod when the developers are just building the mod for themselves? Having a wiki requires you to have a strong community as well and no one gets thanked and paid to keep it up to date. What about us being bug testers and providing suggestions to future improve the mod, how are you going to say that a community has no part in a mod?Also have you ever listened to some Q&A's before? Whenever a suggestion comes up the devs don't just flat out say no, they instead say it's an interesting idea and then counter it if necessary. However they never directly say no. This brings a more positive atmosphere and maybe that's why I felt like I needed to strengthen my arguments. I've worked at a call center before as customer service, we're simply not allowed to say no. Go call a customer service line, you'll see for yourself. If they say no, they're going against their own policy.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Having a wiki requires you to have a strong community as well and no one gets thanked and paid to keep it up to date. 

 

To the contrary, the TFC wiki is not open to public editing. It is a private wiki, and only a very select few users actually have the ability to edit it. In reality, about 75% of all wiki maintenance and updates are done solely by me. Another 20% of the edits are done by my primary helper, Kreicus. The remaining 5% are itty bitty edits by one of the very few users who have editing rights, and maybe make a small edit to a page every few months or so.

 

I get thanked on a fairly regular basis for the wiki, and there is even a donation button the side of the wiki, which users do indeed use to donate to me for my efforts.

[Trenix 14]

To the contrary, the TFC wiki is not open to public editing. It is a private wiki, and only a very select few users actually have the ability to edit it. In reality, about 75% of all wiki maintenance and updates are done solely by me. Another 20% of the edits are done by my primary helper, Kreicus. The remaining 5% are itty bitty edits by one of the very few users who have editing rights, and maybe make a small edit to a page every few months or so.

 

I get thanked on a fairly regular basis for the wiki, and there is even a donation button the side of the wiki, which users do indeed use to donate to me for my efforts.

That truly is awesome and I respect you for that, but there will come a time where you'll need more help than just a handful of people or yourself. I appreciate your hard work for maintaining it, but the more people working on it, the more up to date it will be. There may be people out there who will want to screw it up, but there is a history tab that can quickly clean up vandalism. I used to work on Wurm Online's Wiki, getting whitelisted was extremely easy. I've fixed VARIOUS of grammar issues and added much needed information for free. Wurm Online's wiki is updated continuously and is managed by hundreds of people, making it be up to date as soon as a patch gets released. I highly suggest you open up the doors for that, use the community you have, cause we're all here for the same cause, to play an awesome mod.

[WetCheerios 24]

One thing I definitely agree with in the original post, is the intensity of some seeds and world generation in general. I'm not sure if it is entirely intensional or not, but if you're playing strictly in survival mode some seeds are very unforgiving in terms of finding resources, heck it's even difficult to find things flying around in creative mode. Even on a decent sized community we have yet to find many tree types, and graphite took just under a month to find a single vein. I've basically come to the conclusion that birch and white cedar don't exist on our seed, as I have flown around many nights in a row searching from the equator to the deep Northern corners. I know not all seeds are this bad, and maybe we just got very unlucky, but it sounds like so many others are having the same struggle. I think this is one of those cases, that the bounds of "believability" can be stretch so that players can experience all aspects of the game within a single world, as far as world generation goes anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I love the new generation features as far as design and landscapes look!

[Reyvinn 18]

I am truly amazed by people who don't like a feature and believe every other person in the world don't like it as well. When Devs say they won't do something its mostly becouse they know majority of people won't like the change. Bashing into the forums and telling devs of a well developed and popular mod what is wrong with their creation os rude to say the least. There is a fair amount of people enjoying the mod as it is, and they won't necesarily agree with your statements. I suggest being polite and using a search function. Amount of people asking about the same thing/ posting the same suggestions in thos forum is too damn high. In general, 80% of things you'd like to see was already mentioned and talked to death more than once in a past. So please, don't be so self-centered.

It is not wrote for anyone specific, just some thoughts from browsing the forum lately.

Cheers.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

That truly is awesome and I respect you for that, but there will come a time where you'll need more help than just a handful of people or yourself. I appreciate your hard work for maintaining it, but the more people working on it, the more up to date it will be. There may be people out there who will want to screw it up, but there is a history tab that can quickly clean up vandalism. I used to work on Wurm Online's Wiki, getting whitelisted was extremely easy. I've fixed VARIOUS of grammar issues and added much needed information for free. Wurm Online's wiki is updated continuously and is managed by hundreds of people, making it be up to date as soon as a patch gets released. I highly suggest you open up the doors for that, use the community you have, cause we're all here for the same cause, to play an awesome mod.

 

Originally the wiki was open to public editing. However, Bioxx very quickly made the decision before I was even a member of staff to close it. TFC is a very large and very complicated mod, and because of that a lot of the information that gets passed around tends to be speculation, and often isn't completely accurate, or outright wrong.

 

While I cannot speak directly for Bioxx, I believe that he has the same mentality as myself in that no information, or information that is up to date for a slightly older version is infinitely better than incorrect information on an official wiki. This is also why there is a fairly strict set of requirements in order to be able to get wiki editor status.

 

By keeping the wiki closed, there is also better regulation before edits are actually made, so there is no need for random public editors fixing grammar issues, because it is an extremely rare case for a grammar issue to show up in the first place.

 

Perhaps some day I may be forced to step away from my position, and the wiki would then be opened to the public, but I don't see that happening for a very long time.

[VaiN 2]

I have to agree about the seed generation. I'd like to point out that I really do like the concept of it, but sometimes you get a world that just doesn't have what you need. For example, our multiplayer server we had one world where there was no clay, another where there was no copper (panning worked out okay) and also no cows. Being stuck without a resource can easily leave you trapped in an age with no way to advance short of finding a needle in a stack of hay stacks, or with no way to gain your full max hp potential (lack of dairy). I ended up trying over 15 seeds in single-player before finding one that seemed decent enough to use for the server. Things have been great since then. I think the lack of land, and really large biomes makes the chances slim to find a world that has everything you'd need by default.

 

I definitely do not envy the dev's in trying to find a balance for all of the wonderful content they've added. I do salute them in their efforts though.

[Bunsan 323]

This is a Minecraft mod. Minecraft is a procedurally generated world based on seed. That is a fundemental part of the engine. Best they could do is provide decent seeds people could use, which is what the seed forum thread is for. The world is for all intents and purpose infinite. Everything can be found; it just may be a really long trip.