Why do you like hardmode/grindy minecraft?

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zilvarwolf

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I like progression that isn't tedious, and that also includes powering stuff. If I cannot construct a stable closed loop system that is server friendly there's an issue. Anything that requires a constant input or babysitting is pretty much right out. Don't care how good it is. It's why I don't care for power loss systems or perdition. It's why I don't care for machine wear and tear or exploding junk, because real life happens and having to pick up the random bits of your base or figure out a way to kickstart your power generation because SomethingWentWrong isn't hard. It's annoying.

But by the same token, if I don't have progression, then I have an issue with boredom. I'm not a builder, as my bad efforts have revealed. I'm a problem solver. When I run out of problems, I stop playing. So I need problems to solve. That's what brings me back and makes 'hard' fun. When there's a problem that I need to figure out, or a process I want to try to setup, or even if I want to see if there's a better way to make barrels full of glass :)

That's why I like things to have a certain amount of difficulty. It brings me back for more.
 

JoeDolca

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Why put difficulty in an open ended game though? I am currently playing the Yogscast pack (ATL, I know, but mods are mods regardless of modpackers) and all the "difficult" things like hardcore end and leveling up spells in ars magica (jegus crust that's hard) and several bosses are just... in the way. I'd get it if you had a serious quest and clear goals, but when you play what basically amounts to a sandbox the enemies should be a minor nuisance, not an actual challenge. I could stay in the overworld and just deal with zambos and skellies, but where's the fun in that?
 
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GreenZombie

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Why put difficulty in an open ended game though? I am currently playing the Yogscast pack (ATL, I know, but mods are mods regardless of modpackers) and all the "difficult" things like hardcore end and leveling up spells in ars magica (jegus crust that's hard) and several bosses are just... in the way. I'd get it if you had a serious quest and clear goals, but when you play what basically amounts to a sandbox the enemies should be a minor nuisance, not an actual challenge. I could stay in the overworld and just deal with zambos and skellies, but where's the fun in that?

I think what you are looking for is called "Creative Mode".
 
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midi_sec

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Why put difficulty in an open ended game though? I am currently playing the Yogscast pack (ATL, I know, but mods are mods regardless of modpackers) and all the "difficult" things like hardcore end and leveling up spells in ars magica (jegus crust that's hard) and several bosses are just... in the way. I'd get it if you had a serious quest and clear goals, but when you play what basically amounts to a sandbox the enemies should be a minor nuisance, not an actual challenge. I could stay in the overworld and just deal with zambos and skellies, but where's the fun in that?
Why do the modders choose that the players follow a sort of progression path?

In Ars Magica 2's case, it's a very powerful mod and would be ridiculous from a game design perspective not to force the player to earn his/her power. At the point it's at, it's almost a game within itself.

I think what you are looking for is called "Creative Mode".
I hate this as a put down. C'mon bro..
 

JoeDolca

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Why do the modders choose that the players follow a sort of progression path?

In Ars Magica 2's case, it's a very powerful mod and would be ridiculous from a game design perspective not to force the player to earn his/her power. At the point it's at, it's almost a game within itself.


I hate this as a put down. C'mon bro..
I think calling it creative mode is justified since I just lashed out at the diffuclty factor. Yes, creative mod could be used, but having to actually deal with food and enemies add the level of depth that the game would need to be more than a 3d modelling semi-tool. It's the ULTRAHARD BASSES and SLOOOOOOW PROGRESS that really get on my nerves. I hate slow progression, I have very little time to use on games nowadays so I'd rather play something for a week 3 hours a day than for a month 8 hours a day to see the end of it. I get gating content, that's fine, but add an option to either get to the gate faster, get past the gate faster or make it less of a hurdle.

This is why I like DArtcraft, Mekanism and Chocolate Quest. Dartcraft makes powergen a breeze and enchanting tools fun and easy, Mekanism gives me really useful really powerful upgradable machines like the digital miner which is an absolute beast, and Choco Quest gives me high powered gear from beating a series of small enemies and some boss (Or getting cheeky and skipping things by building bridges or digging tunnels. Or just quarry the whole thing that works too). Big reactors is another thing that I enjoy since it's simple and it has a real cost (tons of iron adn coal) yet it doesn't feel slow or out of pacing.
 
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buggirlexpres

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Hard mode mobs are cool, unless they are RNG ZOMGWTFBBQ overpowered.
I'm... keeping this.
I'm still waiting on a few of the folks who have stated before that they prefer the hard mode mods to chime in, and maybe some mod makers too, as to why they make the mods the way they do.
I with some people in that Minecraft is lacking in difficulty in several key areas. Admittedly, I don't enjoy mods like Hunger Overhaul because of the way they go about it. They nerf food and things just for the sake of nerfing. It adds challenge, but it just ends up being grindy and meaningless once one gets a good farm set up.
However, I do enjoy mods like Spice of Life and Enviromine, because they add new and interesting mechanics without making it grindy. Spice of Life is literally the anti-grind and prevents people from having to create a huge farm of the same crop. Enviromine makes things interesting by adding new mechanics that not only add depth to the game, but aren't the standard grind for food. Sure, you can automate water, but you still can't automate your heat level.
*Edit*
Welcome back from your break @Gideonseymour
AAI_Miles_Edgeworth_Bowing.gif

I dislike the one-upmanship inherent in a lot of tech mods: the bedrock tools offered by RoC are an unnecessary "my tools are bigger than yours" inclusion in a mod that is otherwise a well considered power system and set of machines. (Not to single out RoC in a negative way - its just (to me) an extremely good mod making this small wart all the more annoying).
Agreed. Personally, I enjoy the Bound Tools, because they are balanced - sure, they never break, but they also need something to keep going.
I like progression that isn't tedious, and that also includes powering stuff. If I cannot construct a stable closed loop system that is server friendly there's an issue. Anything that requires a constant input or babysitting is pretty much right out. Don't care how good it is. It's why I don't care for power loss systems or perdition. It's why I don't care for machine wear and tear or exploding junk, because real life happens and having to pick up the random bits of your base or figure out a way to kickstart your power generation because SomethingWentWrong isn't hard. It's annoying.
I would enjoy having shit explode if I set it up wrong. I mean, that's what happens in real life. You can't hook up a generator to a Microwave without expecting something terrifying to happen.
But by the same token, if I don't have progression, then I have an issue with boredom. I'm not a builder, as my bad efforts have revealed. I'm a problem solver. When I run out of problems, I stop playing. So I need problems to solve. That's what brings me back and makes 'hard' fun. When there's a problem that I need to figure out, or a process I want to try to setup, or even if I want to see if there's a better way to make barrels full of glass :)

That's why I like things to have a certain amount of difficulty. It brings me back for more.
Agreed.



EDIT:
\o/
I finally made one of those huge posts that responds to everyone!
 
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zilvarwolf

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I would enjoy having shit explode if I set it up wrong. I mean, that's what happens in real life. You can't hook up a generator to a Microwave without expecting something terrifying to happen.
On the other hand, this isn't the Minecraft Real Life Simulator (for exihibit, selective gravity) :)

(late edit: BTW, I'm pretty sure you can hook a microwave up to a generator...

http://www.sears.com/lawn-garden-generators-portable-generators/b-1023267

;) )

In seriousness, however, yes, I can see that. I like consequences, I don't like punishment, and in my personal worldview Taking Things Away From Players is punishment. (Full disclosure, I'm a parent...it's an effective punishment for children too!)

Not working with a 'TOO MUCH POWER' message, working slow, setting you on fire for touching it, or having an additional machine inventory slot or metadata for a circuit breaker that has to be replaced maybe (and is notably easier to make) or even giving you an audible 'This machine will self-destruct in ## seconds if you don't remove power' alarm is a much better teaching tool than BOOM!WHATTHE%%%%JUSTHAPPENED?

Explosions are easy and lazy. Punishment is easy and lazy, IMO. I also believe it is almost never the best way to enlighten people. The goal is to draw people into a system or an experience or a mindset, not beat them over the head with a stick for missing the point.
 
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buggirlexpres

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Not working with a 'TOO MUCH POWER' message, working slow, setting you on fire for touching it, or having an additional machine inventory slot or metadata for a circuit breaker that has to be replaced maybe (and is notably easier to make) or even giving you an audible 'This machine will self-destruct in ## seconds if you don't remove power' alarm is a much better teaching tool than BOOM!WHATTHE%%%%JUSTHAPPENED?
See, that would be amazing. A mod that does have shit explode if you do it wrong, but tells you what you're doing wrong. Hey, @SatanicSanta and @Strikingwolf ? Can I make your lives worse by asking to add this to E-Flux?
 
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RedBoss

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I think what you are looking for is called "Creative Mode".
You're more articulate than that. This is not a put down, this is a lazy way of saying, "I don't agree with your play style and I wish to offer derision in such a way that I look superior when I'm actually not." Creative mode just gives blocks, it cuts to the chase. I doesn't:
  1. Place blocks to create a system or infrastructure
  2. It does not solve problems of building a system incorrectly
  3. It does not, despite its claim, make you creative.
  4. All it does is give you blocks, it does NONE of the work.
  5. It IS a perfectly valid play style for MANY people.
Now, that being said, I don't like mods that add more barriers. I'm using mods to decrease the grind of vanilla. I'm here to build a little model world much like people who build train dioramas.
Bekonscot-1.jpg

I like making a cool little world that I can walk around in and enjoy, like the people in this picture. If I want to grind for materials, I'll just play vanilla. I don't mind paying the price of admission to a quarry. I'll grind for the materials, I'll set up energy and logistical infrastructure, but I just want to have a point where I get materials to build my digital diorama.

I don't care for grindy mods or mod packs. I avoid packs like Agrarian Skies mainly because its a pure grindfest (that and I don't like being told what to do, so no HQM at all for me). I don't care for very complex mods like RotaryCraft because I just don't want to do math for fun. That's my play style. That's not knocking those that like that stuff, its just not for me. I'll gladly marvel at your machine room but I don't want to duplicate it in my base. I'm perfectly happy with my Mekanism windmills and TE magmatic dynamos.

I also dislike mods or mod packs that drastically change the things I'm used to in vanilla. I watched one LP episode of BnB and I cringed the entire time. I don't want to micromanage my food situation, I don't want random mobs being more destructive than vanilla, and I don't want to learn a new recipe-chain for tools and weapons. To me its like 3d chess. It looks cool, but its different enough from the regular game that it doesn't interest me.
 

MigukNamja

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There are many different kinds of players and many kinds of playstyles. Even more interestingly, the same player may enjoy different kinds of playstyles depending upon several factors, such as 'change of pace', whom they are playing with, etc.,.

As for the topic of grindy == hard, I have to agree that grindy doesn't make it more difficult, it simply prolongs the amount of time it takes and it requires more patience. And, the difference between "enjoyable progression" and "grind" is a function of both the complexity (mod design) of the progression/grind and its enjoyment (player reception).

Not every mod or every pack is for every person and that is *more* than fine. It would be a sad, sad MC modded community if there was only 1 pack and 1 acceptable way of playing. Fortunately, we live in a very diverse modded community.
 

Ritt

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What an interesting topic!

I started out with vanilla Minecraft, like a lot of other people, and played it until I knew the drill pretty well. My first mod pack was a "Lite" one from one of those *other* launchers, back in the 1.4 days... and while it had a lot of problems, I had the time of my Minecraft life with it. Finite water was a real eye-opener, since water tends to be more of a minor annoyance in Minecraft than an actual resource. I didn't understand Buildcraft too well at the time and got frustrated with exploding pipes and engines. I started trying out different packs from different dev teams and eventually got into assembling my own packs, which I still enjoy doing.

Over time, I got into more and more "magic blocks" kind of mods, which were quite seductive for a while, but I soon found that teleporting all the ores out of the ground in the blink of an eye and rapidly smelting them up into three or four or five times the vanilla yield left me with a lot of stuff, often more than I'd get around to using for anything. Modded Minecraft just about always encroaches on creative mode eventually, unless one stays close to a vanilla feature set. I really do enjoy creative building, but I need a certain amount of "game" to keep me interested in doing that.

My current compromise is not what I'd consider "hard mode", rather I would term it "interesting mode". And what makes tech mods interesting for me is constraints. The pack I'm playing now is similar to what CJ uses in his Dark Tower series on Youtube, minus Twilight Forest and adding some things I can't live without, like Carpenter's Blocks, Chisel, JABBA, SC2, Tinkers' Construct, QuarryPlus and Logistics Pipes. For what I want out of mods at this point in my journey, I think I've just about hit the sweet spot. It's definitely not "hard mode"; I haven't changed any recipes or added GregTech. But the mods I'm not playing this time around are worth noting as well: namely, Thermal Expansion, EnderStorage, and anything involving spooky action at a distance, aside from Thaumcraft's Magic Mirror. My innate laziness tends to overcome my good intentions to build logistics infrastructure when I can just pipe some nether lava into some inexpensive dynamos and never have to think about power again.

What I really like about mods is bodging all the toys and gadgets together and seeing everything work. I like for the engineering problems to be in base design and logistics more than in resource-getting, which almost every mod can do now using brute-force methods anyway. For example, what I used to find annoying about BC pipes seems interesting to me now that I have absorbed a bit more knowledge. Engines that need fuel, water, and engineered control systems in order not to explode not only makes a certain kind of sense, but it provides an interesting challenge to operating a base that I can't really get from plopping down a compact solar and filling up what amounts to a big battery. LP seems to fit the feel of Minecraft better to me than Applied Energistics does, and I like how it's easy to build an LP system on top of the same chests and barrels I make when starting out in a world, not to mention the absence of idle power usage.

No doubt it may seem strange to some, as it does somewhat even to me, that as the mod world speeds towards Redstone Flux I'm now playing a pack that only has Buildcraft power. I understand why RF has become the dominant paradigm, but I do hope that the MJ-based mods will continue to behave in the same way they do now even though they may change to use the RF API internally, as Buildcraft is already beginning to do. The MJ API might be old fashioned, but the play style of the classic mods really is fun and just more "Minecrafty" in my estimation. Perhaps I missed my true calling as a railroad modeler? :) Or maybe I'm just a sentimental old fool.

Pace is as important to me in games as it is in fiction. That seems to be true for others as well to a greater or lesser degree, and it's just a great thing that there exists such a variety of mods and mod packs. It has become one of my major considerations when putting a pack together. I find more and more that I prefer the pace of the MJ mods. Clearly, most folks don't these days, and so it is just great that everyone can find something to suit their ideas of fun.
 
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FyberOptic

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I like tiered progression, and sometimes I like it under limiting conditions. In packs like Crash Landing, you start out doing everything by hand and struggling just for a piece of iron or cobble, but eventually you move to that next tier where all of that is automated and not a concern anymore. Then you can start working towards more advanced things. Unfortunately though there just aren't that many tiers to ever have to work towards in Minecraft.

In regards to difficulty or grinding in general though, I don't like elaborate crafting recipes. I personally don't think it benefits the gameplay for me to build sub-items of sub-items of sub-items, and it makes the game feel like more of a time sink. If somehow the elaborate crafting recipes were done with items you had reason to automate or speed up production of in later tiers of the game, with reason to keep a lot on-hand, then that might be different. But many times it's one-offs, and unless you have an AE or LP system, you're doing it by hand.
 

SatanicSanta

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See, that would be amazing. A mod that does have shit explode if you do it wrong, but tells you what you're doing wrong. Hey, @SatanicSanta and @Strikingwolf ? Can I make your lives worse by asking to add this to E-Flux?
Something similar will be added, but not "You gave this machine too much power so it exploded" because that's not how electricity works. Instead, giving a cable too much power will make it explode, and only cables of a specific tier can connect to specific machines :)
 

Strikingwolf

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Something similar will be added, but not "You gave this machine too much power so it exploded" because that's not how electricity works. Instead, giving a cable too much power will make it explode, and only cables of a specific tier can connect to specific machines :)
yes yes, anyway on that note we need to start on cables
 
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TheMechEngineer

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See, that would be amazing. A mod that does have shit explode if you do it wrong, but tells you what you're doing wrong. Hey, @SatanicSanta and @Strikingwolf ? Can I make your lives worse by asking to add this to E-Flux?

lol yeah....gives me flashbacks to one of my first FTB Ultimate worlds when I hooked up an MFSU to an industrial blast furnace in my basement. It killed me, destroyed a lot of valuable stuff and left behind a nice crater. Sometimes the only way to learn is the hard way when you use them wrong as a learner.
 

asb3pe

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Tiered progression is def what I play this game for... gotta work to unlock something... which then unlocks something else down the road with more work... FTB Ultimate with Gregtech pretty much did it perfectly for me, but I sure don't want to get into any of that drama/mess. Just look at what Gregtech added to FTB Ultimate from a purely technical/mechanical standpoint. Therein lies the answer to the OP's question IMO. Compare Ultimate and how it played, to Monster and how it played. To me, Monster was great, but it was missing something... but I find it hard to describe what "it" was... just that whole progression thru various machines ending up with the matter fabricator and UU matter... a huge progression/grind, but oh what a sense of accomplishment when I finally got there. And yeah... machines with the potential to blow up and destroy some hard work was definitely part of the equation, I forgot all about that! :) Gotta have some danger in the mix, but not just random mobs doing random things... I want to use my brain when I play, I want to have puzzles to be solved, but they can't be too repetitive, simplistic or tedious. It's not an easy equation for a game designer, I'm sure!

Oddly, I don't like the modpacks like AS or CL, they're too "tiered" for me I guess, too restrictive. :) They're awesome modpacks, please don't misunderstand my words, but for me I struggle with the repetition of dying and starting over again and again. No thanks. I want open-ended difficulty, not "here's your next problem, solve it and you get a reward" type of connect-the-dots or carrot-on-a-string thing.
 
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YX33A

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For me, I only dislike "Hard-Mode" mods that are a grind for the sake of a grind. For example, Hunger Overhaul. Makes one have to pay attention to hunger and health. Why? Because that's what it does, punish you for not eating super awesome foods and getting hurt(aka until you have the best foods from Pams HC and Diamond Armor, expect to get shrekt no matter what you do). And what does it add? Difficulty for the sake of Difficulty.
Now, a flipside: Spice of Life. Spice of Life adds a diminishing return on your food after a certain about of "meals". And to increase how much the do fill you up, you have to cook and eat other types of meals. Eating nothing but baked taters? Eventually, you'll want something else. Thus, it fill you up less.
Both pretty much need Pam's HC, but one isn't as painful to me.

So, as another example, and one I feel is interesting: A total Conversion mod VS a normal mod(aka not a TC Mod). TerrafirmaCraft VS GregTech.
Now, some may say GT is a TC mod, and they are wrong. A Total Conversion changes as close to 100% of the game as it can.
A good example of one from another game? Nehrim: At Fate's Edge, for TES: IV: Oblivion.
Keep that in mind y'all. A TC changes as close to 100% of the game as possible, often adding a totally new plot line, quests, everything. GregTech is more of a difficulty increasing mod.
But TFC is interesting, if not really my style. A Great Mod, but not my cuppa tea.
GregTech, for all the hate, is a nice mod.


In closing, Hard-Mode mods that only make things more difficult for the sake of that added Difficulty(EG: Hunger Overhaul) are boring to me. Mods that make things more difficult but add new things to do, and not just to allow you to buy back things you already used to do, like GregTech, are nice.

And RotaryCraft is weird. It can be safely ignored in any instance you have it(usually), thus, it's only a "Hard Mode" mod if you want to use it, and suck at it. Or in the case of RoC, if you want to use it but suck at math and don't want to use it so much as some of the things in it.
 
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GreenZombie

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I must strongly disagree with any assertion that *blowing stuff up* makes for better gameplay.

Simply put, stuff blowing up, discourages experimentation.

Please, DO have a hard mode config option, there are those die hards who like that kind of thing. But for the majority of players, stuff blowing up is probably not a good failure mode and will turn people off the mod.

Most pernicious is the unpredictable nature of the interplay between minecrafts chunk loading strategy and the resulting way a machine might be disassembled and reassembled by the movement of players.

Requiring players to *know* that an entire machine needs to be built within the confines of a single chunk or it may randomly blow up if a chunkloader is not used is unfair, and even more 4th wall breaking. And chunkloading is not a general solution as various mods have ongoing chunkloading costs, and players could prefer that when they are offline, limited resources are not continually consumed and exhausted.
 
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midi_sec

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Requiring players to *know* that an entire machine needs to be built within the confines of a single chunk or it may randomly blow up if a chunkloader is not used is unfair

I'm going to have to be the weird one here too. Back in my day it gave you an edge to know the "quirks" of a game (and games of the time had many quirks). This doesn't bother me one bit. :)
 

FyberOptic

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Requiring players to *know* that an entire machine needs to be built within the confines of a single chunk or it may randomly blow up if a chunkloader is not used is unfair, and even more 4th wall breaking. And chunkloading is not a general solution as various mods have ongoing chunkloading costs, and players could prefer that when they are offline, limited resources are not continually consumed and exhausted.

This reminds me of back on a Tekkit server, where I'd set up a big remote oil refinery over a well, with a long railway to cart the oil back. Eventually I shut it down when I had enough, and removed the chunk loader as not to waste server ticks for no reason. Another player didn't realize the danger and started the engines back up, only for me to return eventually and find the massive crater left behind.

While it's certainly a downer at the time to lose something to a chunk loading mishap, I think it gives us enough things to laugh about or remember to make it a unique game mechanic, even if it wasn't necessarily intended to be.