If such a huge amount of Masterwork is optional, why is it even all bundled together to begin with?
Because this way it's optional. That's what the bundling does!
Why bother creating something if your creation, if bad, attracts few-to-no users, and if good, is merely absorbed into Masterwork?
Well, if it's bad, then it shouldn't attract users in the first place... And if it's good, why wouldn't you want it included as an option in an easy-to-use collection of similarly good things?
When the very real possibility of having your creation absorbed against your wishes into this blob is constantly present...
That is actually not a possibility, at all. Meph is very careful to ask for permission and give credit where due.
How long until there are just a handful of big mods that don't work with each other?
What about having big modular mods where people can turn things on and off as they like?
How long until people have to release their mods quietly so as to keep them out of the large modpacks?
This is an absurd "concern", and has nothing to do with Masterwork. Meph asks permission and gives credit. If somebody else doesn't, then feel free to take it up with whoever that is.
How long until DFHack scripts stagnate due to conflicts over ownership and maintenance?
This has nothing to do with Masterwork.
If I make a tool, I know how this tool works, and I can use it to make other tools that all work together.
That's one thing Meph did, and everyone else is welcome to try to do it as well!
If I borrow a bunch of tools from different people, I have to rig everything else together based on this non-standard group of tools which are not mine and which I do not understand.
That's another thing Meph did, and everyone else is welcome to try to do it as well!
Perhaps the largest issue with MW simply is Meph putting every little neat thing he sees into his pretty box.
And that is an issue because...? The box is too pretty and full of neat stuff!? God...
Dear gord - this has to be the loudest complaining that the grapes are just too sour that I have ever heard in my life! =D
"In an old fable by Aesop, a hungry fox noticed a bunch of juicy grapes hanging from a vine. After several failed attempts to reach the grapes, the fox gave up and insisted that he didn't want them anyway because they were probably sour. Nowadays when somebody expresses sour grapes, it means that they put down something simply because they can't have it. The phrase is often used incorrectly as another way to express bitterness or resentment." (
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sour+Grapes)
I've been turned off of masterwork most by the need for a launcher to manage all the various components that don't all make sense, the necessity of extensive documentation which isn't effectively provided, the sheer number of component parts and the standardized materials system. You can't opt-out of that. But what if you want to? Then don't play masterwork, apparently. ??
Yep! If only having several types of wood is just too problematic for you, rather than the hundreds of near-identical types of wood just with different names that vanilla uses, then you are welcome to customize the mod to do that.
How do you even keep mods from other modders that you include up to date and compatible?
Yea, how does Meph even do that, anyway? By putting an immense amount of time into it, that's how. Let me know when you put a tenth as much in!
Its also remained unclear to me; just how friendly is masterwork's raw structure towards introducing other mods which rely on the vanilla raw structures? Are all the normal materials, tissues, interaction templates and inorganics still there or would every other mod need to be made compatible with masterwork?
Eh, you've got to tweak it a bit, but it's doable, as exemplified by the fact that multiple other people besides Meph have made excellent races for Masterwork that have been added in, to excellent effect!
Every mod needs to be made compatible. I completely gave up on making a race for Masterwork due entirely to the general (ironic) bloatedness of the raws.
If the raws are so impossibly bloated, why do you think other people were able to make such cool races for Masterwork, then, and not any other mod in existence? Smakemupagus (Orcs), Boltungs (Succubi), IndigoFenix (Gnomes)... -Nihil- just got a new race working a few days ago.
If someone is jealous of Masterwork, I would expect them to come up with all kinds of weak-sauce reasons to complain about it. I think the onus is on folks who complain at things like MW, without constructively working on solutions, to demonstrate that they aren't just yowling out of jealousy