Vanilla MC "stealing" ideas from mods?

[Cheap Shot]

Really, I don't see it an issue of "Mojang's slowly adapting concepts from other mods into their game to make up lack of content" and more "there are thousands of mods with very mundane, none unique, real worlds solution, objects, animals, what have you". Every example I see of someone going "they're stealing ideas" or "they are unoriginal" or "they're lazy" is usually pointing at a completely unique mundane thing from the real world or a feature that has been screamed at them from the community for years (such as the redstone block, which has been something people bitched for since Beta). Really, I'd be more raising my eyebrow if the dev's started adding actually unique mod ideas, like the a copy of the Twilight Forest or the Vis Node system from TC if they ever decided to expand upon magic in MC outside of enchantments.

Oh I have no problem with them harvesting ideas from community mods. In fact it's a great idea they should take about 10 times as much. Clearly we like mods. Modders must be doing something right, hey?

My problem is with them doing such a half-assed job of everything. This is a multimillion earning game. It has it's own (admittedly crappy) global convention. That they can't do a little more with it than just throwing in a little nick-nack or useless doo-dad here and there at such a snails pace. We get so little, and even less of value, and we get it over a long period of time, whereas many modders add game overhaul levels of content in a much shorter span, and it's not even their jobs. The stuff that is added from mods is often implemented worse than the mod version, and only a fraction of what the mod ads is included into vanilla. If that's the case than what's the point? Why bother? Thanks but no thanks, I'll take the mod please. Pretty much our mentality with Technic is "If you can't do something better, then don't." Plenty of other people do what we do now, but we give it our all. I would expect no less than that from people charging and earning millions rather than releasing all their hard work for free.

I remember years ago when wolves were first added, and it was the final straw for a certain modder. He was tired of every update adding very little, and being mostly worthless. Unfortunately he turned out to be a very creepy lunatic with a hate-on for everything, but at the time people either didn't know that yet or looked past it, because everyone was too busy completely agreeing.

[Enzer]

Oh I have no problem with them harvesting ideas from community mods. In fact it's a great idea they should take about 10 times as much. Clearly we like mods. Modders must be doing something right, hey?

My problem is with them doing such a half-assed job of everything. This is a multimillion earning game. It has it's own (admittedly crappy) global convention. That they can't do a little more with it than just throwing in a little nick-nack or useless doo-dad here and there at such a snails pace. We get so little, and even less of value, and we get it over a long period of time, whereas many modders add game overhaul levels of content in a much shorter span, and it's not even their jobs. The stuff that is added from mods is often implemented worse than the mod version, and only a fraction of what the mod ads is included into vanilla. If that's the case than what's the point? Why bother? Thanks but no thanks, I'll take the mod please. Pretty much our mentality with Technic is "If you can't do something better, then don't." Plenty of other people do what we do now, but we give it our all. I would expect no less than that from people charging and earning millions rather than releasing all their hard work for free.

I remember years ago when wolves were first added, and it was the final straw for a certain modder. He was tired of every update adding very little, and being mostly worthless. Unfortunately he turned out to be a very creepy lunatic with a hate-on for everything, but at the time people either didn't know that yet or looked past it, because everyone was too busy completely agreeing.

Oh, I completely agree on most points.

The dev team's work is atrociously slow. Though I wonder if how much of that is due to Grum apparently being a stickler for how things are done and if that doesn't cause things to get bogged down, as well as them not fully working as a team, Jeb constantly being out of country as the face for MC at conventions, interviews, etc, as well as personal life stuff like Jeb getting married or Dinnerbone moving again last week. All minor things, but they build upon each other to cause major slowdowns in development. No one at Mojang seems to have any form of leadership or group development experience and that really shows, that is one thing they really need to work on, because until the current team is able to function better as an actual team and until Mojang as a company stops breaking up their team for side projects or events, shit is going to get bogged down in some places. I'm also wondering how much of the slow down is because of Notch's code, how much they have to tip toe around to not bring the whole fucker down while they try to replace large parts of it. No one can really say for sure unless the team became more transparent about the issues they are facing, but yeah, something needs to be done about the speed they work at.

And I agree that they shouldn't half ass implement mods into vanilla, but I am also of the mind that outside Horses and Pistons, at least one of which they had the help of the mod dev to implement their own version, they haven't actually added anything straight from other mods. In my last post I outlined that any example I see on content they added that is also present in another mod is such an none-unique, mundane, general concept from the real world, that I have heavy doubts that they decided to pluck that one feature from such larger mods, especially when there could have been better things to rip from say BTW or RC and I also highly doubt that the developers even play with mods outside of Grum or even browse to see what is available out there. I highly doubt DB sat down with the fireworks mod, played with it for a bit, and went "Oh this is cool, should add this to the game". Most of the "weird" things they seem to add are suggestions that get thrown at them all day either on Twitter or Reddit, and even if some of those suggestions are coming from players wanting features from a mod they like, I doubt the developers even know that.

Yes the updates tend to add very little for the time they take and that mod developers in general seem to code at a crazy break neck speed and add way more content (though I would argue that their slow addition of content to the game is more them arguing about what would disrupt the "feel" of vanilla and put off core vanilla players, I mean hell people freaked when they added the extra cube for a pigs noes, people freaked out about pistons being added, about enchantments being added, about the new horses to be added having knees despite it not being the only mob to have them.. much easier to leave big content changes in the hands of modders so people can choose, but again you get the issue of them needing support via the API to do that better). But regardless, despite all that, it doesn't mean shit how much better or faster or more content the modding community adds because the modding community in general is shit and until it grows up as a whole (no more goddamn drama, no more bickering over licenses, no more bickering over "but his mod did it first!", no more attacks on the players, no more stupid attacks on fellow modders, etc), it soils anything that comes out of the community, it is that toxic. Who cares how awesome the modders are when we are almost at the point, and have been for a while now, where you have to do research on the mod developer themselves to see if they are fucking crazy or not so that you wont have to worry about the mod itself fucking you over either through a direct targeted attack, or attacking another mod developers mod because they are having a hissy fit or if a mod that has some really cool features happens to also be for no reason at all be filled with a lot of really sick shit (honestly, if I was a parent with a kid that played MC, I wouldn't allow them to visit the curse forums or install mods, people slip some fucked up shit in and don't really document it, goddamn). At least with the MC Dev Team I don't have to worry about BDSM becoming part of a core mechanic of invisible blocks that follow me everywhere that break my nether portals and pistons.

And just to stress, that isn't saying that all modders are shit or complete psychos, there are good ones out there (Azanor half the time, King Lemming, PowerCrystals, MachineMuse, and maybe a small handful of others), but the problem is that the shit far out weighs the good both in terms of damage it causes to the community and the amount of idiots out there.

And now I've gotten way off topic. :P