Can we all agree to not be like this?

[Drew Kerman]

Famous Modder Walks Away After Too Much Abuse (Kotaku)

Yea, I've seen abuse here. Mostly when some mod doesn't do something a user wants it to do, and the author refuses to make it do what the user wants it to do, because the author doesn't want it to do what the user wants it to do because it's not what the author wants it to do.

If that made no sense to you read it again. If it still didn't make any sense than just remember that mod authors are making things because it's what they want to make. They release it to the public for anyone else who might want the same thing they want. And they do it FOR FREE.

So stop and think before you make any kind of demands from any mod author. I'm honestly terrified of seeing one of our awesome community contributors chased off like this. I've been deeply involved in the Flight Simulator X community and I've seen it happen, and it's always bad for everyone in the long run. This community as a whole is very kind and supportive, and I hope it stays that way. Accept what a mod does, and accept that a mod author is not beholden to your wishes, however awesome you may think they are.

I wanted to post this in General Add-On Affairs, but I also wanted it to have more visibility. If a mod wants to move it there, I understand.

[rodion_herrera]

Famous Modder Walks Away After Too Much Abuse (Kotaku)

Yea, I've seen abuse here. Mostly when some mod doesn't do something a user wants it to do, and the author refuses to make it do what the user wants it to do, because the author doesn't want it to do what the user wants it to do because it's not what the author wants it to do.

If that made no sense to you read it again. If it still didn't make any sense than just remember that mod authors are making things because it's what they want to make. They release it to the public for anyone else who might want the same thing they want. And they do it FOR FREE.

So stop and think before you make any kind of demands from any mod author. I'm honestly terrified of seeing one of our awesome community contributors chased off like this. I've been deeply involved in the Flight Simulator X community and I've seen it happen, and it's always bad for everyone in the long run. This community as a whole is very kind and supportive, and I hope it stays that way. Accept what a mod does, and accept that a mod author is not beholden to your wishes, however awesome you may think they are.

I wanted to post this in General Add-On Affairs, but I also wanted it to have more visibility. If a mod wants to move it there, I understand.

My two cents. Even if a modder gets "elevated" into the status of a developer, if there are people who hate him/her, then the hate will come. It's just a matter of being steadfast with your vision for your mod or product.

Here's something that Dean Hall (creator of the Arma mod 'DayZ' and now the lead developer for 'DayZ Standalone') tweeted some hours ago...

You can't please them all. It takes a strong personality to be a developer.

[Dortmunder]

Yeah, I've seen some people complaining about slow updates here in the showcase section, which is ridiculous.

If it isn't fast enough for you, fix it yourself. These people make mods for free then allow others to use their hard work.

Generally people in the KSP community are pretty good though, can't say that for almost any other game community.

[AlexinTokyo]

While it's true that you can never please all the users, it's also true that it shouldn't be too much to ask for even the unpleased ones to be curteous.

This is especially true of modders, who are donating their effort and time for free.

[KaBob]

Boohoohoo the angry kid said mean things to me on the internet, boohoohoo I give up, farewell, boohoohoo.

Grow up, seriously. You don't realize how tiresome it can be to spend a large portion of your free time working on something only to have a ton of people continuously bash you for no good reason. It completely drowns out all the people who do enjoy it and kills all your motivation to work on something that you were just doing for fun.

[FleetAdmiralJ]

Yeah, I've seen some people complaining about slow updates here in the showcase section, which is ridiculous.

If it isn't fast enough for you, fix it yourself. These people make mods for free then allow others to use their hard work.

Generally people in the KSP community are pretty good though, can't say that for almost any other game community.

All one has to do is look at minecraft mods, and see how many are still mired at version 1.6.4, and then you feel a whole lot better about KSP's mod situation, heh

[Kerbart]

It's good to be familiar with the Kano model. According to Noriaki Kano, customer satisfaction can depend on properties that fall in one of three categories:

• Essentials; the customer will be unsatisfied if this attribute is not fullfilled. Think of having a bed in your hotel room. The TV might be 75" and the view stunning, without a bed the room will likely tank in the reviews
  
• One Dimensional; depending on how this attribute is fullfilled the customer will be happy or not. Think of bathroom cleanliness in a hotelroom; a dirty bathroom will turn off customers, an exceptionally clean bathroom (with everything wrapped in paper/plastic, etc) will delight them
  
• Delighters; the customer doesn't expect this but will be very happy when it unexpectedly shows up. Think of a hot cup of coffee and warm chocolate cookies on the desk when you enter the room.
  

What is important to know is that over time, all attributes will move down the ladder and transcend from delighters into one-dimensionals into essentials. For this reason you want to be careful with over-fullfilling customers' expectations; delighters don't deliver extra money, do cost extra money, and over time will turn into essentials that dissatisfy customers when they're missing.

Mods are a lot like delighters. They come for free with the game and it's not what we paid for. Win! But... over time, we get used to certain mods. We get upset with a new release because it breaks certain mods. And then comes the point when certain mods (you know which ones) are considered “essential.†What's wrong with the developer of Mod X. It's been two weeks since the release of zero point something and there is STILL not an update for his mod. Seriously, does this lazy ass have nothing else to do?

It's a human tendency for this to happen, and it's good that some of us are pointing out that we should be careful with this. Don't take mods for granted, and realize that the authors make them for the rewarding feeling of being appreciated by the community and nothing else. Let's be grateful!

[Tortoise]

Shouldn't developers already know that they'd get criticism, and know how to ignore it or fix what most people are complaining about?

Tbh I don't really think the players that criticised him are really gonna care if this guy goes on the news and tells about how he's gonna stop coding updates for a mod, because people keep talking about it.

I'm just being real here.

[Guest]

Shouldn't developers already know that they'd get criticism, and know how to ignore it or fix what most people are complaining about?

Shouldn't people try to be more considerate of other people on the internet? There's criticism and then there's crapping up threads with idiotic posts that don't provide a shred of useful information.

[Tw1]

.... And then comes the point when certain mods (you know which ones) are considered “essential.†What's wrong with the developer of Mod X. It's been two weeks since the release of zero point something and there is STILL not an update for his mod. Seriously, does this lazy ass have nothing else to do?

It's a human tendency for this to happen, and it's good that some of us are pointing out that we should be careful with this. Don't take mods for granted, and realize that the authors make them for the rewarding feeling of being appreciated by the community and nothing else. Let's be grateful!

A very good point. Frankly, the dedication of KSP modders, or anyone who makes an elaborate mod is amazing. It's true, we come to rely on them, (It is fortunate when people are willing to pass on their work when they can no longer maintain it), but at the core, they are fan made, as a hobby. We have no real entitlement to anything.

Edited July 28, 2014 by Tw1

[Drew Kerman]

Off the rails already. It's a bit disappointing to see people saying how the devs should man up when my post was all about the users being more understanding. Of course there are going to be haters. All I'm saying to you is don't be one of them.

[technion]

It's one thing when some jerk randomly decides to troll you (it's the internet, grow up, etc etc).

It's another when you spend literally months of your life working on something to give to the community and just get whingers and people deciding to make personal attacks in return.

I maintain or contribute to a string of open source projects and it's ridiculous how strongly a person can decide to get childish and offensive when a request that either contradicts the entire goal of your project ("please remove these security features because I don't understand why they are needed so they should just be removed"), or constitutes tonnes of work for no gain ("this C should be rewritten in assembly" - I kid you not).

[Vanamonde]

You are free to disagree with each other, but please keep in mind that your fellow forum members are not your enemies, and avoid insulting each other.

[syfyguy64]

Can't take the heat, then don't be a DEV/modder.

Not to hate on the guy, because being called names for not putting in a small feature that a minority wants is hard, but if you can't learn to suck it up, why are you a dev? You're at risk of people stating their opinions because this is all public domain, anyone could use it, from neo-....'s to social justice warriors. You guys see all the stuff we say about new updates to KSP, how we don't like the contracts even though we complained about not having contracts (Browsing /kspg/ on 4chan, they have the general titled "It's here and it sucks!"), but we should have every right to say that.

That's how mods and games get better. By us criticizing the stuff we don't like, and hope that the DEV changes it. The DEV doesn't have to, though, because 1, Their are essentially god for their creation, and 2, they own the rights to the game/mod.

So,l for all of you who hate the fanbase for telling the Dev what they like/didn't like, imagine if we never told Squad to do this and that, we'd probably not even have anything as fundamental as docking right now.

[razark]

So,l for all of you who hate the fanbase for telling the Dev what they like/didn't like, imagine if we never told Squad to do this and that, we'd probably not even have anything as fundamental as docking right now.

There's a difference between "I think Squad should add docking!" and "I think Squad (and every one of their family members) should be hung, drawn, and quartered because they made the new fuel tank the wrong shade of grey!".

[xcorps]

It's the freedom of anonymity.

If you posted something hateful and were guaranteed a kick in the balls because of it you'd never see the crap that gets posted toward other people. Freedom from consequences equals rudeness.

I agree that people should behave correctly.

I agree that people never will.

I agree that modders will and should quit releasing mods because they feel unappreciated.

[Wanderfound]

Off the rails already. It's a bit disappointing to see people saying how the devs should man up when my post was all about the users being more understanding. Of course there are going to be haters. All I'm saying to you is don't be one of them.

Yeah. Wheaton's Law seems like it might be appropriate here: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wheatons-law

[MegaFlop10]

And then comes the point when certain mods (you know which ones) are considered “essential.†What's wrong with the developer of Mod X. It's been two weeks since the release of zero point something and there is STILL not an update for his mod. Seriously, does this lazy ass have nothing else to do?

People complain about the modders being a lazy butt, while the people who complain are too lazy to make their own mods.

Doing a self-reflection every once in a while is very important.

[SkyRender]

It's rather sad that a thick skin is a requirement for releasing any sort of content these days... It seems inevitable that someone will come along and complain sooner than later that you did not make whatever you made to their specifications, often in a very rude, condescending, and/or vitriolic fashion. I rather dislike this trend; it says little good about the people who engage in that kind of behaviour, and even less about the societal pressures that convinced them that such behaviour is acceptable.

[TNM]

Wait wait....this is too spimple, lets get a bit more into it shall we?

1. You do something because YOU want it, YOU enjoy it for yourself...and then you share it because you can, why not?

2. You do something and share it because you like the recognition for it, beeing part of a community, talking about what you did and getting good feelings out of it.

Now, if you are type1...then who cares about feedback anyways? Yea, its nice if ppl like it, but as its your vision for your playstyle its easy just to not listen to the "always angry ones" that come with the territory.

BUT

if you are type2...this quickly becomes a problem. Often type1 modders get to like their "nerdfame" and become type2s. Now they depend on the feedback from their releases. They want recognition, if it doesn't come it hurts them and they will stop.

Lesson: never become type2...or at least, always retain type1 = do it for yourself first, then share it. Ignore the haters AND the fanboys (its easy, ignore options exist), converse with critical (good and bad) voices to improve yourself.

The world including the internet is not a place where everyone is just waiting to welcome your genius to praise you, on the internet they will tell you outright...

[Mister Spock]

Well said, SkyRender. I'm pretty new to KSP, but I'm astonished by the richness of the mod support for this game. We're pretty lucky.

[neamerjell]

I believe one thing we should all remember is that most people have lives outside of gaming and programming mods for games. Sometimes life takes priority over hobby. That's life. Learning to program and making mods is a huge undertaking in most cases. I appreciate the good will of the people who dedicate their time and effort to crafting free mods for us to enjoy. To all those who make mods and to the developers of the game: thank you and keep up the good work!

[blizzy78]

Can't take the heat, then don't be a DEV/modder.

That is exactly the mind set that will drive away modders. For example, why do I need to read this in one of my threads?

Your mod... really... sucks.

Instead of just stating what's wrong or what's to dislike, in an objective way, and perhaps giving suggestions about what can be improved, this person turns to language. I don't like that.

Now, the forum rules forbid that I just go ahead and answer the way I'd like to. So I do as you say, suck it up, and just ignore that person. But in the longer term, all that sucking up is building up frustration - and that's a thing I don't think any gaming community could want for modders to happen.

[Masakakihara]

For me personally, i don't think i would have been so addicted to KSP if it werent for the mods.

It's like KSP is a huge christmas tree, and the mods are all the lights and extra decoration.

Specially now with the 0.24.1/0.24.2 patches and 64bit making its entree, it must be very annoying keeping everything up to date and

eveyone informed about the situtaion. I really hope this love story can last, feels too good to be true sometimes.

Many thanks to ALL the modders (and Squad) for giving me one of the best gaming experiences of MY LIFE

This game is filling a whole i didnt even know existed.

[Guest]

Grow up, seriously. You don't realize how tiresome it can be to spend a large portion of your free time working on something only to have a ton of people continuously bash you for no good reason. It completely drowns out all the people who do enjoy it and kills all your motivation to work on something that you were just doing for fun.

You realise that you're on the internet and then laugh about how your life is better.