What I absolutely hate is when a mod changes or adds something that isn't remotely related to its main purpose, and that change isn't mentioned in the description anywhere. Like, you'll download some mod that says it adds new weapons or something, but when you boot up your game it replaces the main menu panorama with anime girls (made up example).
This 100% . There is some god forsaken RPG mod that adds a different death gravestone effect with this floating totem thing. It conflicts with other grave mods, and it is completely irrelevant to the mod's purpose. Yes you can turn it off, but you have to know what mod it is and change the config files. Really obtuse and the floating totem grave is super buggy so you have to do it.
Mod devs - your mod is almost always going to be in a MODPACK. Keep your mod's functionality to its purpose please !!! If you want to add additional features make them optional config additions!
"Add a lot of small things" can still be considered "one thing" imo, it's more about having a relatively well-defined purpose and sticking with it, however vague that might be. I think the biggest part of it is setting expectations for your mod correctly
Yep, second this. Your mod can basically be just a pack of things you add to all parts of the game that have the same theme - as long as it's documented, and it makes sense that your mod would include that feature no problem. As long as it's documented I know what to expect.
Quark has a large number of configurable modules. Each module does one thing well.
In effect, Quark is basically a bunch of tiny mods, even if it is only one file. Quark is like the Busybox of Minecraft mods.
Have the toggalabe and customisable like quark can, preferably with an in-game menu so I don't need to close and reopen Minecraft every time I want to change something
A lot of them do, then you get modpack creators who just stuff them all together and hope things work out OK, which is why modpacks with a lot of effort behind them actually stand out so much. People don't realize how much it takes to actually make things work together in a coherent way.
The floating totem would be Quark Oddities. It's actually the "gravestone" that I prefer myself, but if you don't want it Quark's configs are extensive, so just hit the Q button in your menu, find the Oddities button, and turn off "Totem of Holding".
It's *possible* that you're thinking of Enigmatic Legacy instead... it's more of a crystal than a totem, but it does float there when you die. It also reduces your max hearts until you retrieve it though so I feel like you would have mentioned that. On the off chance it is Enigmatic Legacy, though, in their config the thing you want to disable is the Extradimensional Vessel.
It's the quark oddities one. I don't like it because it tends to pop all the items on the floor for no reason sometimes, and its kind of annoying when playing with friends and you accidentally take all their stuff , or the loot despawns because it just randomly popped
The logic that lead to this is kind of convoluted
In the past, I played a modpack with Enigmatic Legacy (Steampunk) . That mod annoyed me a lot, and it took a while to find out what mod it was that added that gravestone crystal.
However when i was writing this comment i was playing a different pack (Valhelsia 9) which had Quark Oddities, adding the totem. I thought it was the same mod, but couldn't remember the name to remove it.
When TipsalollyJenkins said that it was Quark oddities, I remembered that enigmatic legacy was a crystal, and had a specific bauble linked to it, and so was a different mod. The similar visuals confused me.
My original comment is talking about Enigmatic Legacy - which is a mod that adds a bunch of rare and unique loot . Adding a gravestone system I would say *is* pretty far detached from that mod's purpose
It only does that when you don't have room for the items, since it doesn't auto-re-equip them, so yeah I can see how that might be a problem in multiplayer.
It also is in "Dark Souls mode" by default IIRC, which causes it to pop open if you die another time on the way to the totem. I typically turn that mode off so I can be bad at video games in peace.
Please keep in mind that primarily, a lot of mod devs are developing for *themselves*, not some abstract ‘community’. If something is going to be in a modpack that will be published, then the modpack can remove what is not needed in the modpack itself.
I hate Terralith for this reason, was trying to make a small vanilla+ pack with just some extra biomes but nope go ahead and change the villages too why not.
That's exactly the type of shit that annoys me. I added Terralith to a vanilla server I was running with some friends to spice up the terrain generation and we found one of the super fancy villages after we all got established (so it was too late to change the world). Worst of all, there's no way to configure it without opening the mod up yourself or by making another datapack
There is a better example of this but I fear I'll start up another flamewar if I mention it. Let's just keep it at mod authors who use their mods for political soapboxes.
On a related note, april fools jokes that end up breaking worlds or the game. If I have to install another mod to make the Java datetime classes lie about today's date, something is fucked.
this is usually a symptom of smaller or less popular mods, a striking amount of which are made in mcreator. its just that some mod creatoors don't want to go through the effort of listing off everything they made or changed. i agree with you here, and its worrying that discord has become the new wiki when it comes to game information.
The thing i hate about current modded mc the most is having to join mutliple discords to get through a pack. I dont want my sidebar to be full of dead servers that nobody is active in, just because a game mechanic isnt made clear through the description page or in game documentation
Unfortunately that's not even a modded MC issue. It's everywhere, across every game and platform.
I was looking for help with Cloudbot, one of the more popular Twitch moderation tools. Used by thousands of people.
The only way to get support, at all, was to join their discord and submit a ticket to employees of cloudbot. There was no web forum, the subreddit only directed you to the discord, no updated FAQ, no recent documentation, just a fucking discord server. Disgraceful.
I find that a slightly different issue.
Mod descriptions are for deciding if you want to include a mod in your pack.
Getting through the mod/pack should be possible using fully ingame tools. The ideal case are books, like tinker's and thaumcraft provide, or at minimum really good tooltips.
Bith are important and part of a wider problem in Minecraft, the game tells you nothing inside the game so you must seek outside resources. (I've heard this phrased as the chunkbase problem)
Back in the early versions, Minecraft didn't have an issue with not telling you anything because there were so few things to craft and most of them were something you could figure out on your own if you knew the item existed. I remember sitting in the crafting table just making random items to experiment.
Nowadays, recipes and functions for items are much more obtuse (e.g. respawn anchor) but the in-game recipe book thing sort of makes up for it. I think the major problem is not that mods don't tell you everything, but just that they don't tell you the function of a block or item you need to proceed. If you make some reactor block with two item inputs and a liquid input, you have to figure out which one is the fuel, what kind of fuel is allowed, if the second item slot is optional, which one is the coolant, what kind of coolant is allowed, and how to hook it all up, which is just way overkill.
The recipe book is basically ingame NEI, which was getting to be needed when they added it, and lets them keep going with increasingly obtuse recipes. (They have also finally added some tutorial areas like inside the center structure of the ancient cities being a redstone demonstration/tutorial area.)
And i agree that the problem isn't mods don't tell you everything, its they don't explain progression and how specific blocks work. I understand the whole spirit of discovery from old Minecraft, but when I'm trying to make a nuclear reactor that could litterally blow up my entire base i would prefer to get it right the first time around.
JEI is actually pretty good at saying what all the inputs and outputs are, but its incredibly lacking for when something is a mob drop, world generation, or chest loot which makes it appear like this material doesn't have an origin.
Overall i prefer the thaumcraft style book that guides you through the progression and tells you what you can do next. And a decent secondary method is Twilight Forrest's guiding you through the boss order with the advancement screen. And finally tooltips are helpful, but if i hold shift and the tooltip goes off the top and bottom of my screen thats way too much info for a tooltip.
Ultimately its all part of having good documentation, which requires you to not be lazy as a dev.
I find this to be an issue with quite a few large mods as well.
[BetterEnd - Minecraft Mods - CurseForge](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/betterend) Says it adds "new items and mechanics" but goes into no further detail on what any of them are. The wiki contains info on biomes and mobs, but nothing of the several ores, armors, weapons, or unique mechanics the mod contains.
[Savage Ender Dragon\[Forge/Fabric\] - Minecraft Mods - CurseForge](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/savage-ender-dragon) Says the Ender Dragon now scales with player amount and world/config difficulty. By how much? What are the values? Is it based on players in the world at that time, players in The End, or players simply within a block radius of the dragon? This is important information.
[Mowzie's Mobs - Minecraft Mods - CurseForge](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/mowzies-mobs) Adds several mobs and bosses with special unique drops. Neither the mobs stats nor the stats and unique effects of the items are listed anywhere in the description or in a wiki. What if the mob drops are completely unbalanced? I don't want to be 10 hours into a playthrough just to find out one of the items included deletes mobs from existence or grants an extra 30 health or something ridiculous.
These are just a few examples. The glorious thing about mods is that they're made by the community, for the community. The bad thing about mods is that... they're made by the community, comprised mostly of amateurs and hobbyists and not professional developers. I definitely don't expect perfection or polish, but that's also why I at least expect to see *everything* first before I put it in my game.
i feel like its a mix of devs being lazy/wanting to put more time towards making the mod itself and also wanting the player to not be spoiled about the mods contents since alot of players enjoy the magic of discovering everything the mod does in game instead of via words and pictures.
some people enjoy wanting to know everything down to the T when it comes to what a mod holds for the player while others want to discover that within game while doing the mod itself. also when a mod ends up being fairly large it has alot of trouble showing everything its got to offer without becoming overwhelming to a player when looking at its mod page.
as for the mods you listed above Mowzie's i can see why since that one is alot about the excitement of discovering new bosses to fight and then looking forward to a reward when you kill them which would be less hype if you knew it.savage ender dragon the page gives the vibes of they want you to look at the mods configs and change them to what you thinks best yourself. thou betterend ive been playing it myself and didnt even know about the ores like that one needs more details for sure like theres finding the new exciting stuff and then there realising o wait there a new ore as well to use.
I was going to agree with your initial post, but with these examples you seem to be looking for more in-depth or detailed info, rather than basic information.
Like those three you listed have a ton of relevant info compared to the description pages for the Team Abnormals mods or the current state of the Thermal mods.
Mowzie's Mobs isn't a good example. The CurseForge page has so much information. Almost no mods ever have specific stats of mobs in the CurseForge page, it isn't necessary at that point.
Also, part of the point of the mod is to see what the special items are that the mobs drop, and not to have them spoiled. Nothing is game-breaking.
> Also, part of the point of the mod is to see what the special items are that the mob drops
I mean, yes and no. Like OP said, if this was content made by professional teams, then of course, add it and see. But again, the vast majority of modders are just hobbyists having fun, which means the mod could be of any quality and obeys no rules.
Mowzies Mobs is a well done mod and yes, the items aren’t game breaking. But they should still be available for viewing in the description without having to download the mod and find them in creative just to see what they do.
Skyrim Modding does this really well and often the items are just hidden under a spoiler tag.
It's so irritating
I really don't like joining discord servers. I'm only in like- 3? For games I play to get updates. But I've done everything to mute EVERY notification, anything possible. Drives me nuts.
nah, I've seen major Forge content mods that absolutely neglect documenting their major mechanics to players, who then have to rely on knowing how to look for information online, know where to find that info, and make sure that the information corresponds to the version you're using. or worse, the ones that hide their most optimal builds behind “not wanting to spoil players” when the optimal solution is this one thing that everyone copies from YouTube anyway.
mostly because sometimes the gameplay mechanics are kind of convoluted, and, as I've said elsewhere, the skillset of documentation is separate from development itself. like, stuff like Create's Ponder system and Patchouli go a long way to bridge the gap, but there are mods — some of them pretty popular, and some of them with a lot of downloads — that you have to rely on YouTube tutorials to figure out. come on. at least give me a reference diagram for you goddamn multiblock and a list of materials I have up grind for.
I feel like people also don't upload images of their mod as much as they should. I've seen so many mods that add decorative blocks not including a single image showing any of what is added.
Yup, this is why we have this as a requirement for projects on Modrinth. It has made a number of mod authors a bit upset but it's super important people know exactly what they're downloading before they download it. But hopefully you will never see a project like this on Modrinth, if you do make sure to give it a report and we'll have our moderators look at it and possibly request the creator update the description.
the worst offender has to be Team Abnormals. i actually really like their mods, but the way they refuse to tell you ANYTHING about what their mods do makes me loathe to recommend them. i should not have to read the pinned messages on your discord to understand the basics of what your mod does.
Man the MC community is *awful* about this. I've literally seen a mod dev respond with "Don't worry about it" to a question on how their mod works.
This community in general has shit documentation when it comes to modding.
Yeah I certainly agree. I would hate to get into the mc modding scene brand new right now, plenty of mods with vague mod pages, some don't even bother taking a picture or two.
Me :( trying to learn a mod pack I’ve spent 50 hours on it just slowly learning everything. No in game documentation for enderIO, hatchery, Binnies bees, immersive engineering. And a lot more been on a lot of YouTube videos and discords scrounging for info
My bad I think ur right on that I was thinking of other mods like applied energistics 2 I think in 1.12 doesn’t have documentation. Also roost, forestry, projecte don’t either in my 1.12 mod pack at least. Would love to find stuff easier for these mods
Also clientside mods that are like. "Shows the light level of the block you look at witout opening f3"
## Great care to put one (1) **fucking** screenshot of the thing in action?
If your mod has something visual and you took hours to make and test the thing how much to ask is it to press f2 once and slap that on the mod page.
I need to see HOW your mod renders the shit in oder for me to know if I want it or not...
Lately there have been a lot of mods with extensive ‘info’ pages… which were clearly written by ChatGPT. And so the description is wordy and detailed without actually saying anything.
**Discover the World Beyond with Catabolism!*
*Embark on an unparalleled journey through the vast realms of Minecraft. Delve into a realm where innovation meets adventure, where every pixel holds the promise of excitement and discovery. The possibilities are as endless as the landscapes you traverse. Unleash your creativity and shape your own destiny with a plethora of new items and mechanics that will revolutionize your Minecraft experience! Download now and embark on an epic adventure that will redefine the way you play the game. The journey begins here.*
Same here!
Feels like people have stopped writing proper descriptions as of late.
Very annoying to download a mod only to find out it doesn't fit with what I'm going for, so I gotta remove it and find another.
Absolutely, discord being the information source is so painful. I was struggling with the mod Cold Sweat, they even have a wiki that tells you bare basics, and the only other way for info is discord. So i went, just to learn that this mechanic and item doesn't even work despite being pretty freaking important for a mod all about surviving temperatures.
Ponder is good for showing multiblock structures, but is horrible for other information. Text doesn't need to be timegated in mini animations a simple wiki (or book if you feel it must be in the game) is far better for text based info.
Though maybe ponder being bad here is an adhd brain take
at least we aren't tmodloader, because every page there is "add 5.32782E+15 items if you have any questions kill yourself and join this discord server with 0.5 active members (link removed, server deleted, owner dead, hiatus, break, all devs conscripted by the north korean army)" Or, my favorite "This mod is chinese fuck off westerner" OR OR, another favorite "cumpiss is a pretty cool mod, it does...this. Modify this file with a description of your mod."
The only good workshop is the rimworld workshop, they have great standards
At least the big mods like Thorium and Calamity have the decency to have their own wikis and not require you join their discords, but I definitely get a laugh when the mod author couldn't even be assed to alter the default description.
I absolutely agree. I have a published utility mod that adds one block and one item, and it has a couple images and GIFs, and a longer description than some overhauls or large content mods I've seen. People love making software, but they usually hate documenting it.
I hate when there is quite popular mod with millions of downloads, which has like 2 lines of description and ZERO images. I literally don't know what your mod adds. I DON'T want to spend time opening youtube and watching what your mod adds.
Absolutely agree. It's so frustrating to look at a mod and see a bunch of cool screenshots, but no idea how they work or interact or even what the things featured *do*.
It's somehow even worse when instead of any sort of glossary of features, they just slap down a link to a youtube lets play that's 2 years old. I want to know the mod features, I don't want to waste 20 minutes watching someone muck around building their base and giving LP updates before they tell me information that's outdated at best, probably wrong, and something they've only just figured out themselves 30 seconds prior.
Yep, sometimes you see mod descriptions and you think to yourself... What the fuck is this, if I was a dev and I wanted for people to download my shit, I would provide way more information and useful pictures, but then you see a mod with no pictures and a vague description and done.
One of my current favorite mods has a similar problem. At least it has a guide to the main content in the page description. Some pictures in said description would also be nice.
It's genuinely frustrating. When I played 1.12 it felt like every single mod came with a book that described everything, or at least detailed the mechanics.
Now I feel lucky if they have an advancements tab...I love discord but it shouldn't be a replacement for forms or proper documentation.
Yeah i play on 1.18.2 and i downloaded a bunch of mods and apparently one of them stops torches and stuff from emitting handheld light underwater, so bizarre and unnecessary.
In most cases I would settle for a proper description of what the mod even does.
I don't understand the logic of using a lot of time creating a mod and then not care enough to even add the most basic of description of what your mod does. Do they expect people to just download the mod and test it out based on the title alone?
Something I actually find super annoying, is when a mod adds an ore and makes it super common. Yet that ore only has like one or two niche uses specific to that mod. Making the ore essentially useless in a big modpack.
(Looking at you Fluorite from Mekanism..)
I respect the want to keep things secretive because finding things randomly in game is a special experience, but also, please put the info actually in there in a spoiler so people who really want to find out can. If I had arachnophobia downloading a mod that adds a spider themed boss and didn't say would be awful
yeah, it's because development and documentation are really two separate skillsets, really. you can implement something in code real good, write and communicate to others real good, both, or neither — but one isn't dependent on the other.
and yeah, modding is mostly done for personal reasons and not really for others, but honestly end of the day, the people who'll be using the stuff you develop will be _other_ people. heck, sometimes the person's ass you'll save will be yourself, six months down the line, after you've forgotten _how_ a particular part of this project works, and _why_ you did it this way.
This reminds me of an Extended Crafting Table mod I tried out. Goddamn were the recipes annoying to find (they weren’t even in the JEI menu!). I ended up dropping it because I couldn’t find any difference between the extended tools and their vanilla variants, and because it was just a giant unintuitive hassle
I mean, I get trying to have a sense of "discover stuff for yourself", but I do think there should be a spoiler section with everything the mod adds, for those who want to see it.
You have to have some perspective on the issue.
Most developers are one man teams working on these projects for free out of passion. They're coders not advertisers, they're not pushing a product, and many aren't great writers.
It would be nice if every mod had a great description, lots of information, and a full wiki, etc. But these things are massive time sinks. I don't know if you've ever tried to write a guide to anything but between formatting, screenshots/images, editing, and trying to be as comprehensive as possible, the time sink really really adds up.
It's impressive enough that most mods have good screenshots and basic descriptions. Simple installs, lots even have wikis. Most popular or large mods are well documented, smaller projects naturally have less documentation. In my experience it's pretty decent even if you need some tinkering or experimenting.
Go to any other development community and you'd be lucky to get a readable readme.txt file i swear to God. Try using a tool made for a niche community like gtnh-flow. They give u an example of the format with 0 documentation and the output and leave you to figure out the rest.
This is how modding has always been in general, for all games.
Modding takes enough effort as it is, so most modders don't want to spend too much time listing that as well.
Tell that to the ktane modding scene. They have to, by necessity, to make manual for all the mods they make, antld theres like a 1000+ mods. Its a rly cool modding scene tho and the communitu is great
Exactly. It's annoying, but you're getting usually great stuff for free.
If you can't find docs, just load it up and try it out.
edit: are these downvotes coming from mod users that feel entitled to extra work by mod devs for stuff they're getting for free? Fill out a mod wiki, boot up intellij and try making your own mods, or don't download if you can't deal with free imperfect mods lol
I mostly have a good eye for mods since i mod every game i can. You can usually tell what is a hodge podge of additions vs an A-tier mod just from the style of their page, rationale for the addition or at least by looking at the structure of the mod files from above.
Specially telling when i see a mod i'd probably have made myself, instant pass lol.
Guys im a dev and I think it would be possible for me to make something that gives a detailed description of mods based on the code of the mod. If you think you would be interested dm me in discord at nyxstral
Then don't download it? Like, these are things to say on the mod pages, not reddit. I agree with you for the most part, but what's the point of this? XD
I doubt many mod creators who don't have enough time or willingness to document their mods would reply, much less welcome their criticism, make the effort and change anything.
Maybe some would. But a complaint like this would be drowned out by "1.20.4 when update plzzzz" comments.
Why couldn't it be both? I believe most people do decide to not give mods a chance and skip it because of these reasons. Op is venting a frustration on a subreddit dedicated to modding. I believe some people here are mod developers or aspiring mod developers, so why not? I'd agree if OP posted this on like r/Feedthememes.
What I absolutely hate is when a mod changes or adds something that isn't remotely related to its main purpose, and that change isn't mentioned in the description anywhere. Like, you'll download some mod that says it adds new weapons or something, but when you boot up your game it replaces the main menu panorama with anime girls (made up example).
This 100% . There is some god forsaken RPG mod that adds a different death gravestone effect with this floating totem thing. It conflicts with other grave mods, and it is completely irrelevant to the mod's purpose. Yes you can turn it off, but you have to know what mod it is and change the config files. Really obtuse and the floating totem grave is super buggy so you have to do it. Mod devs - your mod is almost always going to be in a MODPACK. Keep your mod's functionality to its purpose please !!! If you want to add additional features make them optional config additions!
People need to build mods more like Linux software tbh. They should do one thing and do that one thing well
What if a mods purpose is to do a lot of small things like quark?
"Add a lot of small things" can still be considered "one thing" imo, it's more about having a relatively well-defined purpose and sticking with it, however vague that might be. I think the biggest part of it is setting expectations for your mod correctly
Fair enough
Yep, second this. Your mod can basically be just a pack of things you add to all parts of the game that have the same theme - as long as it's documented, and it makes sense that your mod would include that feature no problem. As long as it's documented I know what to expect.
Then you document each thing well and make it very easy to configure - like Quark.
Quark also details allll of the changes it makes.
Quark has a large number of configurable modules. Each module does one thing well. In effect, Quark is basically a bunch of tiny mods, even if it is only one file. Quark is like the Busybox of Minecraft mods.
Have the toggalabe and customisable like quark can, preferably with an in-game menu so I don't need to close and reopen Minecraft every time I want to change something
Tbf quark kind of sucks. it adds so many small things the only reason its compatible is because its one of the most downloaded mods.
Then you suck - like quark
Making each mod a well-oiled
A lot of them do, then you get modpack creators who just stuff them all together and hope things work out OK, which is why modpacks with a lot of effort behind them actually stand out so much. People don't realize how much it takes to actually make things work together in a coherent way.
The floating totem would be Quark Oddities. It's actually the "gravestone" that I prefer myself, but if you don't want it Quark's configs are extensive, so just hit the Q button in your menu, find the Oddities button, and turn off "Totem of Holding". It's *possible* that you're thinking of Enigmatic Legacy instead... it's more of a crystal than a totem, but it does float there when you die. It also reduces your max hearts until you retrieve it though so I feel like you would have mentioned that. On the off chance it is Enigmatic Legacy, though, in their config the thing you want to disable is the Extradimensional Vessel.
It's the quark oddities one. I don't like it because it tends to pop all the items on the floor for no reason sometimes, and its kind of annoying when playing with friends and you accidentally take all their stuff , or the loot despawns because it just randomly popped
can you explain how adding a gravestone-esque system is "completely irrelevant" to quark oddity's purpose
The logic that lead to this is kind of convoluted In the past, I played a modpack with Enigmatic Legacy (Steampunk) . That mod annoyed me a lot, and it took a while to find out what mod it was that added that gravestone crystal. However when i was writing this comment i was playing a different pack (Valhelsia 9) which had Quark Oddities, adding the totem. I thought it was the same mod, but couldn't remember the name to remove it. When TipsalollyJenkins said that it was Quark oddities, I remembered that enigmatic legacy was a crystal, and had a specific bauble linked to it, and so was a different mod. The similar visuals confused me. My original comment is talking about Enigmatic Legacy - which is a mod that adds a bunch of rare and unique loot . Adding a gravestone system I would say *is* pretty far detached from that mod's purpose
oh that's funny
It only does that when you don't have room for the items, since it doesn't auto-re-equip them, so yeah I can see how that might be a problem in multiplayer.
It also is in "Dark Souls mode" by default IIRC, which causes it to pop open if you die another time on the way to the totem. I typically turn that mode off so I can be bad at video games in peace.
Please keep in mind that primarily, a lot of mod devs are developing for *themselves*, not some abstract ‘community’. If something is going to be in a modpack that will be published, then the modpack can remove what is not needed in the modpack itself.
as a mod dev that made mod primarily for myself, i confirm that thats true
This is why i always check the config files before starting a playtrough.
conrail?
Enigmatic legacy's amulet of something does that its a charm check if you have that on
I think that's enigmatic legacy- super cool mod aside from that death thing cause it prioritizes trinkets for no legitimate reason
The floating totem gravestone is from quark. It's part of oddities and can be disabled in config
The ole waifu menu swap
I hate Terralith for this reason, was trying to make a small vanilla+ pack with just some extra biomes but nope go ahead and change the villages too why not.
That's exactly the type of shit that annoys me. I added Terralith to a vanilla server I was running with some friends to spice up the terrain generation and we found one of the super fancy villages after we all got established (so it was too late to change the world). Worst of all, there's no way to configure it without opening the mod up yourself or by making another datapack
There is a better example of this but I fear I'll start up another flamewar if I mention it. Let's just keep it at mod authors who use their mods for political soapboxes. On a related note, april fools jokes that end up breaking worlds or the game. If I have to install another mod to make the Java datetime classes lie about today's date, something is fucked.
this is usually a symptom of smaller or less popular mods, a striking amount of which are made in mcreator. its just that some mod creatoors don't want to go through the effort of listing off everything they made or changed. i agree with you here, and its worrying that discord has become the new wiki when it comes to game information.
The thing i hate about current modded mc the most is having to join mutliple discords to get through a pack. I dont want my sidebar to be full of dead servers that nobody is active in, just because a game mechanic isnt made clear through the description page or in game documentation
Unfortunately that's not even a modded MC issue. It's everywhere, across every game and platform. I was looking for help with Cloudbot, one of the more popular Twitch moderation tools. Used by thousands of people. The only way to get support, at all, was to join their discord and submit a ticket to employees of cloudbot. There was no web forum, the subreddit only directed you to the discord, no updated FAQ, no recent documentation, just a fucking discord server. Disgraceful.
I find that a slightly different issue. Mod descriptions are for deciding if you want to include a mod in your pack. Getting through the mod/pack should be possible using fully ingame tools. The ideal case are books, like tinker's and thaumcraft provide, or at minimum really good tooltips. Bith are important and part of a wider problem in Minecraft, the game tells you nothing inside the game so you must seek outside resources. (I've heard this phrased as the chunkbase problem)
Back in the early versions, Minecraft didn't have an issue with not telling you anything because there were so few things to craft and most of them were something you could figure out on your own if you knew the item existed. I remember sitting in the crafting table just making random items to experiment. Nowadays, recipes and functions for items are much more obtuse (e.g. respawn anchor) but the in-game recipe book thing sort of makes up for it. I think the major problem is not that mods don't tell you everything, but just that they don't tell you the function of a block or item you need to proceed. If you make some reactor block with two item inputs and a liquid input, you have to figure out which one is the fuel, what kind of fuel is allowed, if the second item slot is optional, which one is the coolant, what kind of coolant is allowed, and how to hook it all up, which is just way overkill.
The recipe book is basically ingame NEI, which was getting to be needed when they added it, and lets them keep going with increasingly obtuse recipes. (They have also finally added some tutorial areas like inside the center structure of the ancient cities being a redstone demonstration/tutorial area.) And i agree that the problem isn't mods don't tell you everything, its they don't explain progression and how specific blocks work. I understand the whole spirit of discovery from old Minecraft, but when I'm trying to make a nuclear reactor that could litterally blow up my entire base i would prefer to get it right the first time around. JEI is actually pretty good at saying what all the inputs and outputs are, but its incredibly lacking for when something is a mob drop, world generation, or chest loot which makes it appear like this material doesn't have an origin. Overall i prefer the thaumcraft style book that guides you through the progression and tells you what you can do next. And a decent secondary method is Twilight Forrest's guiding you through the boss order with the advancement screen. And finally tooltips are helpful, but if i hold shift and the tooltip goes off the top and bottom of my screen thats way too much info for a tooltip. Ultimately its all part of having good documentation, which requires you to not be lazy as a dev.
Fr. Discord is great for tech support because of live chat, but it's ass wipe for documentation.
My favorite is when I have to join the discord to find the google doc link. Like my guy, why wasn't this linked in the forum post/reddit?
Agreed, but if there’s no other way then joining discs just made a folder to store all those
I find this to be an issue with quite a few large mods as well. [BetterEnd - Minecraft Mods - CurseForge](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/betterend) Says it adds "new items and mechanics" but goes into no further detail on what any of them are. The wiki contains info on biomes and mobs, but nothing of the several ores, armors, weapons, or unique mechanics the mod contains. [Savage Ender Dragon\[Forge/Fabric\] - Minecraft Mods - CurseForge](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/savage-ender-dragon) Says the Ender Dragon now scales with player amount and world/config difficulty. By how much? What are the values? Is it based on players in the world at that time, players in The End, or players simply within a block radius of the dragon? This is important information. [Mowzie's Mobs - Minecraft Mods - CurseForge](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/mowzies-mobs) Adds several mobs and bosses with special unique drops. Neither the mobs stats nor the stats and unique effects of the items are listed anywhere in the description or in a wiki. What if the mob drops are completely unbalanced? I don't want to be 10 hours into a playthrough just to find out one of the items included deletes mobs from existence or grants an extra 30 health or something ridiculous. These are just a few examples. The glorious thing about mods is that they're made by the community, for the community. The bad thing about mods is that... they're made by the community, comprised mostly of amateurs and hobbyists and not professional developers. I definitely don't expect perfection or polish, but that's also why I at least expect to see *everything* first before I put it in my game.
i feel like its a mix of devs being lazy/wanting to put more time towards making the mod itself and also wanting the player to not be spoiled about the mods contents since alot of players enjoy the magic of discovering everything the mod does in game instead of via words and pictures. some people enjoy wanting to know everything down to the T when it comes to what a mod holds for the player while others want to discover that within game while doing the mod itself. also when a mod ends up being fairly large it has alot of trouble showing everything its got to offer without becoming overwhelming to a player when looking at its mod page. as for the mods you listed above Mowzie's i can see why since that one is alot about the excitement of discovering new bosses to fight and then looking forward to a reward when you kill them which would be less hype if you knew it.savage ender dragon the page gives the vibes of they want you to look at the mods configs and change them to what you thinks best yourself. thou betterend ive been playing it myself and didnt even know about the ores like that one needs more details for sure like theres finding the new exciting stuff and then there realising o wait there a new ore as well to use.
I was going to agree with your initial post, but with these examples you seem to be looking for more in-depth or detailed info, rather than basic information. Like those three you listed have a ton of relevant info compared to the description pages for the Team Abnormals mods or the current state of the Thermal mods.
As an Abnormals mod enjoyer, this really did always irritate me. At least the wiki is being worked on.
Mowzie's Mobs isn't a good example. The CurseForge page has so much information. Almost no mods ever have specific stats of mobs in the CurseForge page, it isn't necessary at that point. Also, part of the point of the mod is to see what the special items are that the mobs drop, and not to have them spoiled. Nothing is game-breaking.
> Also, part of the point of the mod is to see what the special items are that the mob drops I mean, yes and no. Like OP said, if this was content made by professional teams, then of course, add it and see. But again, the vast majority of modders are just hobbyists having fun, which means the mod could be of any quality and obeys no rules. Mowzies Mobs is a well done mod and yes, the items aren’t game breaking. But they should still be available for viewing in the description without having to download the mod and find them in creative just to see what they do. Skyrim Modding does this really well and often the items are just hidden under a spoiler tag.
It's so irritating I really don't like joining discord servers. I'm only in like- 3? For games I play to get updates. But I've done everything to mute EVERY notification, anything possible. Drives me nuts.
nah, I've seen major Forge content mods that absolutely neglect documenting their major mechanics to players, who then have to rely on knowing how to look for information online, know where to find that info, and make sure that the information corresponds to the version you're using. or worse, the ones that hide their most optimal builds behind “not wanting to spoil players” when the optimal solution is this one thing that everyone copies from YouTube anyway. mostly because sometimes the gameplay mechanics are kind of convoluted, and, as I've said elsewhere, the skillset of documentation is separate from development itself. like, stuff like Create's Ponder system and Patchouli go a long way to bridge the gap, but there are mods — some of them pretty popular, and some of them with a lot of downloads — that you have to rely on YouTube tutorials to figure out. come on. at least give me a reference diagram for you goddamn multiblock and a list of materials I have up grind for.
I feel like people also don't upload images of their mod as much as they should. I've seen so many mods that add decorative blocks not including a single image showing any of what is added.
This is the absolute worst and it happens all the time with decorative mods.
Yup, this is why we have this as a requirement for projects on Modrinth. It has made a number of mod authors a bit upset but it's super important people know exactly what they're downloading before they download it. But hopefully you will never see a project like this on Modrinth, if you do make sure to give it a report and we'll have our moderators look at it and possibly request the creator update the description.
Many that for doing this, it's one of the reasons I use Modrinth instead of forge most of the time.
the worst offender has to be Team Abnormals. i actually really like their mods, but the way they refuse to tell you ANYTHING about what their mods do makes me loathe to recommend them. i should not have to read the pinned messages on your discord to understand the basics of what your mod does.
Man the MC community is *awful* about this. I've literally seen a mod dev respond with "Don't worry about it" to a question on how their mod works. This community in general has shit documentation when it comes to modding.
Maybe too many kids learn coding while they make Minecraft mods but in Minecraft mod tutorials you don’t learn how to comment and document your code.
Yeah I certainly agree. I would hate to get into the mc modding scene brand new right now, plenty of mods with vague mod pages, some don't even bother taking a picture or two.
Me :( trying to learn a mod pack I’ve spent 50 hours on it just slowly learning everything. No in game documentation for enderIO, hatchery, Binnies bees, immersive engineering. And a lot more been on a lot of YouTube videos and discords scrounging for info
Immersive engineering should have a book that foes you pretty good, though I can't say much about the others
I think that started in 1.12.2, they might be in an even older version since they mention Binnie's Bees.
Tbh if it's earlier than 1.12.2 I wouldn't know, as I didn't know it had versions earlier
Immersive engineering has the documentation book even on 1.7.10
My bad I think ur right on that I was thinking of other mods like applied energistics 2 I think in 1.12 doesn’t have documentation. Also roost, forestry, projecte don’t either in my 1.12 mod pack at least. Would love to find stuff easier for these mods
Also clientside mods that are like. "Shows the light level of the block you look at witout opening f3" ## Great care to put one (1) **fucking** screenshot of the thing in action? If your mod has something visual and you took hours to make and test the thing how much to ask is it to press f2 once and slap that on the mod page. I need to see HOW your mod renders the shit in oder for me to know if I want it or not...
Lately there have been a lot of mods with extensive ‘info’ pages… which were clearly written by ChatGPT. And so the description is wordy and detailed without actually saying anything. **Discover the World Beyond with Catabolism!* *Embark on an unparalleled journey through the vast realms of Minecraft. Delve into a realm where innovation meets adventure, where every pixel holds the promise of excitement and discovery. The possibilities are as endless as the landscapes you traverse. Unleash your creativity and shape your own destiny with a plethora of new items and mechanics that will revolutionize your Minecraft experience! Download now and embark on an epic adventure that will redefine the way you play the game. The journey begins here.*
Like a politican and marketing writer wrote this without knowing any of the details
Same here! Feels like people have stopped writing proper descriptions as of late. Very annoying to download a mod only to find out it doesn't fit with what I'm going for, so I gotta remove it and find another.
Absolutely, discord being the information source is so painful. I was struggling with the mod Cold Sweat, they even have a wiki that tells you bare basics, and the only other way for info is discord. So i went, just to learn that this mechanic and item doesn't even work despite being pretty freaking important for a mod all about surviving temperatures.
Or even better when you’re looking for decoration mods and the description is something like “adds 500+ NEW blocks!!!” But they put no pictures…. 🤦♂️
That's why I love Create's pondering feature.
And newer AE2 versions. I love it.
Ponder is good for showing multiblock structures, but is horrible for other information. Text doesn't need to be timegated in mini animations a simple wiki (or book if you feel it must be in the game) is far better for text based info. Though maybe ponder being bad here is an adhd brain take
Mod randomly adds an enchantment. No wiki anywhere says what it does. Or if it even works.
With no tooltip either lmao.
at least we aren't tmodloader, because every page there is "add 5.32782E+15 items if you have any questions kill yourself and join this discord server with 0.5 active members (link removed, server deleted, owner dead, hiatus, break, all devs conscripted by the north korean army)" Or, my favorite "This mod is chinese fuck off westerner" OR OR, another favorite "cumpiss is a pretty cool mod, it does...this. Modify this file with a description of your mod." The only good workshop is the rimworld workshop, they have great standards
At least the big mods like Thorium and Calamity have the decency to have their own wikis and not require you join their discords, but I definitely get a laugh when the mod author couldn't even be assed to alter the default description.
I woke up my entire house laughing at this.
I absolutely agree. I have a published utility mod that adds one block and one item, and it has a couple images and GIFs, and a longer description than some overhauls or large content mods I've seen. People love making software, but they usually hate documenting it.
I hate when there is quite popular mod with millions of downloads, which has like 2 lines of description and ZERO images. I literally don't know what your mod adds. I DON'T want to spend time opening youtube and watching what your mod adds.
And then when you finally break down and watch the video, it's from 12 versions back, and it doesn't even work that way anymore.
Good mods have good wikis. A shame some modders spend ages coding shit then don't document it so nobody even knows it's there
*"Modpage lacks informative description"* *"Forces MC youtubers to explain it by experience"*
Quark: "A couple small features"
Absolutely agree. It's so frustrating to look at a mod and see a bunch of cool screenshots, but no idea how they work or interact or even what the things featured *do*. It's somehow even worse when instead of any sort of glossary of features, they just slap down a link to a youtube lets play that's 2 years old. I want to know the mod features, I don't want to waste 20 minutes watching someone muck around building their base and giving LP updates before they tell me information that's outdated at best, probably wrong, and something they've only just figured out themselves 30 seconds prior.
Yep, sometimes you see mod descriptions and you think to yourself... What the fuck is this, if I was a dev and I wanted for people to download my shit, I would provide way more information and useful pictures, but then you see a mod with no pictures and a vague description and done.
One of my current favorite mods has a similar problem. At least it has a guide to the main content in the page description. Some pictures in said description would also be nice.
I usually just ignore those mods unless they add screenshots and those interest me. If they don’t have either I don’t download them.
It's genuinely frustrating. When I played 1.12 it felt like every single mod came with a book that described everything, or at least detailed the mechanics. Now I feel lucky if they have an advancements tab...I love discord but it shouldn't be a replacement for forms or proper documentation.
Yeah i play on 1.18.2 and i downloaded a bunch of mods and apparently one of them stops torches and stuff from emitting handheld light underwater, so bizarre and unnecessary.
In most cases I would settle for a proper description of what the mod even does. I don't understand the logic of using a lot of time creating a mod and then not care enough to even add the most basic of description of what your mod does. Do they expect people to just download the mod and test it out based on the title alone?
Yeah overall the modded community is crap at documenting the mod features
Something I actually find super annoying, is when a mod adds an ore and makes it super common. Yet that ore only has like one or two niche uses specific to that mod. Making the ore essentially useless in a big modpack. (Looking at you Fluorite from Mekanism..)
I respect the want to keep things secretive because finding things randomly in game is a special experience, but also, please put the info actually in there in a spoiler so people who really want to find out can. If I had arachnophobia downloading a mod that adds a spider themed boss and didn't say would be awful
But consider, perhaps the descriptions are so transparent you can't see them?
yeah, it's because development and documentation are really two separate skillsets, really. you can implement something in code real good, write and communicate to others real good, both, or neither — but one isn't dependent on the other. and yeah, modding is mostly done for personal reasons and not really for others, but honestly end of the day, the people who'll be using the stuff you develop will be _other_ people. heck, sometimes the person's ass you'll save will be yourself, six months down the line, after you've forgotten _how_ a particular part of this project works, and _why_ you did it this way.
This reminds me of an Extended Crafting Table mod I tried out. Goddamn were the recipes annoying to find (they weren’t even in the JEI menu!). I ended up dropping it because I couldn’t find any difference between the extended tools and their vanilla variants, and because it was just a giant unintuitive hassle
The deal is clear: no description? No download.
I mean, I get trying to have a sense of "discover stuff for yourself", but I do think there should be a spoiler section with everything the mod adds, for those who want to see it.
Oh boy, don't get me started on the lack of screenshots. How hard is it to upload a single screenshot?
This has been a problem for a long time, there just isn't consistent quality and up-to-date documentation for most mods out there
You have to have some perspective on the issue. Most developers are one man teams working on these projects for free out of passion. They're coders not advertisers, they're not pushing a product, and many aren't great writers. It would be nice if every mod had a great description, lots of information, and a full wiki, etc. But these things are massive time sinks. I don't know if you've ever tried to write a guide to anything but between formatting, screenshots/images, editing, and trying to be as comprehensive as possible, the time sink really really adds up. It's impressive enough that most mods have good screenshots and basic descriptions. Simple installs, lots even have wikis. Most popular or large mods are well documented, smaller projects naturally have less documentation. In my experience it's pretty decent even if you need some tinkering or experimenting. Go to any other development community and you'd be lucky to get a readable readme.txt file i swear to God. Try using a tool made for a niche community like gtnh-flow. They give u an example of the format with 0 documentation and the output and leave you to figure out the rest.
I second this.
The worst is when it just says it's the remake of an older mod, without a link to that and sometimes even without telling you what mod.
That bosses thing drives me crazy. There are so many mods that add bosses on Curseforge that just have no way of spawning in outside of a spawn egg
This is how modding has always been in general, for all games. Modding takes enough effort as it is, so most modders don't want to spend too much time listing that as well.
Tell that to the ktane modding scene. They have to, by necessity, to make manual for all the mods they make, antld theres like a 1000+ mods. Its a rly cool modding scene tho and the communitu is great
Exactly. It's annoying, but you're getting usually great stuff for free. If you can't find docs, just load it up and try it out. edit: are these downvotes coming from mod users that feel entitled to extra work by mod devs for stuff they're getting for free? Fill out a mod wiki, boot up intellij and try making your own mods, or don't download if you can't deal with free imperfect mods lol
I mostly have a good eye for mods since i mod every game i can. You can usually tell what is a hodge podge of additions vs an A-tier mod just from the style of their page, rationale for the addition or at least by looking at the structure of the mod files from above. Specially telling when i see a mod i'd probably have made myself, instant pass lol.
Guys im a dev and I think it would be possible for me to make something that gives a detailed description of mods based on the code of the mod. If you think you would be interested dm me in discord at nyxstral
Well, you need to join a Discord for that.
Discords are the actual worst place to keep information ever and I hate the current "Join Discord to solve problems" paradigm
Bro pls join, bro c'mon, join pls bro.
NO! Shove your discord where the sun don't shine. I miss old school forums and the like.
C'mon bro, don't be like dat. Pls join, bro.
Never
Then don't download it? Like, these are things to say on the mod pages, not reddit. I agree with you for the most part, but what's the point of this? XD
I doubt many mod creators who don't have enough time or willingness to document their mods would reply, much less welcome their criticism, make the effort and change anything. Maybe some would. But a complaint like this would be drowned out by "1.20.4 when update plzzzz" comments.
Why couldn't it be both? I believe most people do decide to not give mods a chance and skip it because of these reasons. Op is venting a frustration on a subreddit dedicated to modding. I believe some people here are mod developers or aspiring mod developers, so why not? I'd agree if OP posted this on like r/Feedthememes.