Init(1d20+5)=23; Wall of Text hits you for (4d6+4)=18 damage.
So, this thread isn't really about gregtech in itself, and it's certainly not about greg or the recent malicious code he inserted into his mod - there's a whole thread for that, and please don't bring it here. While GT is used as an example, I do not mean to condone greg's action or say that gregtech was a successful method of doing what I'm discussing here; I'm discussing it as a phenomenon. That's also why I don't post it in this thread, because that is specific to the mod and would result in drowning in discussions about different topics while this is pretty specific.
Also, sorry for the frequent bolding/italics; it's a way to point out keywords where I think they're important.
It's about the _type_ of changes gregtech made, the "balancing" changes. Basically, changes that make certain things harder to get than they are without the mod. Gregtech isn't the only mod doing this (TerraFirmaCraft does this a LOT, for example) but is the primary example since it's included in FTB and it's around GT the debate has been centered.
Basically, some players are saying gregtech adds "much-needed difficulty" and others are saying it adds "unnecessary tedium". Whether it's needed or unnecessary is a debate in it's own, but I think the dichotomy between difficulty and tedium is simply... non-existant.
I don't think either word is useful as the primary description of what mods like Gregtech tries to achieve. The correct term I believe, would be "technology advancement pace" or "tech pace". Mods like GT and TFC _slows down_ the advancement pace because the developers think it's too fast.
Primarily, it's done through increased complexity. It's not as simple as difficulty, and while tedium can be a consequence of complexity it's not as simple as that either.
tl:dr; on the spoiler: Mods like gregtech can add both difficulty and tedium, depending on players and playstyle.
However, difficulty and tedium is not at the center of this - the key thing is about tech pace. Basically, it's about "at how many hours of gameplay should I have access to technology X?", and of course also "how much of those hours should be put towards actually getting technology X?".
I consider the tech pace in FTB without gregtech to be quite high. Without gregtech, after about 2 days even an average player can get all base resources in the game freely pumped into your base at quite high speed. After an additional 2 you can have gotten access to about any technology at all in the game (not necessarily every, but any).
Some people consider it too low, and make mods that increase it, or play creative (which is a perfectly fine thing to do - this is not in any way meant to shame people who increase teching speed and/or play creative). Some people consider it too high, and mod the game in different ways to make it slower (even before I got gregtech, I lowered EU yield from geothermals to 10eu/t on my server).
Also, the tech pace in different mods are very different - the obvious examples being Equivalent Exchange 2 and Railcraft which where both in the old tekkit packs in the days before FTB. Railcraft allowed you to make like 2 steel per hour after like 6 days of playing, EE2 allowed you to make a house of diamond blocks after two days of playing. "Balancing" modpacks is usually about the balance between mods - making different ways of accessing certain goals all have noticeable pro's and con's so that it's a real choice. Nowadays much of that balancing is made by the mod developers themselves, knowing that mods are likely to be used in modpacks and seeing what pace other mod makers put it to. Gone are the days where it was very ineffective to run a quarry on lava-fueled engines but very effective to run them on electricity-fueled engines where the electricity came from lava generators...
This of course means the modpacks automatically get much more balanced now than they where in the past where everyone developed their mods primarily for usage standalone, but it also means there isn't any choice in what tech pace to have; there is just one global. Mods like gregtech are meant to change this tech pace, slow it down for players who want it slower. In some cases, this can make the game harder. For some players, this can make the game more tedius. Both are more side effects than goal, however.
Since appropriate tech pace is very much a matter of preference, I think it's sad that discussions about that get so heated. I understand it's inflamed because of Gregtech itself being what it is and using the methods it is - but it's preventing a healthy discussion about fitting tech pace, and potential mods/settings to adjust this. I'd love a good mod that lowers tech pace in different ways, and does it across the board for most mods, but the climate is very hostile for such a mod to be released, or even for methods to do this well to be discussed.
So, this thread isn't really about gregtech in itself, and it's certainly not about greg or the recent malicious code he inserted into his mod - there's a whole thread for that, and please don't bring it here. While GT is used as an example, I do not mean to condone greg's action or say that gregtech was a successful method of doing what I'm discussing here; I'm discussing it as a phenomenon. That's also why I don't post it in this thread, because that is specific to the mod and would result in drowning in discussions about different topics while this is pretty specific.
Also, sorry for the frequent bolding/italics; it's a way to point out keywords where I think they're important.
It's about the _type_ of changes gregtech made, the "balancing" changes. Basically, changes that make certain things harder to get than they are without the mod. Gregtech isn't the only mod doing this (TerraFirmaCraft does this a LOT, for example) but is the primary example since it's included in FTB and it's around GT the debate has been centered.
Basically, some players are saying gregtech adds "much-needed difficulty" and others are saying it adds "unnecessary tedium". Whether it's needed or unnecessary is a debate in it's own, but I think the dichotomy between difficulty and tedium is simply... non-existant.
I don't think either word is useful as the primary description of what mods like Gregtech tries to achieve. The correct term I believe, would be "technology advancement pace" or "tech pace". Mods like GT and TFC _slows down_ the advancement pace because the developers think it's too fast.
Primarily, it's done through increased complexity. It's not as simple as difficulty, and while tedium can be a consequence of complexity it's not as simple as that either.
Just swapping iron ingots for iron blocks in the recipes and nothing else would be mainly an addition of tedium, as the added complexity is marginal and it's mostly a matter of mining more. However, adding a load of machines and new recipes that needs to be done in order increases complexity a lot. For the "perfect player" that has the ability to know every recipe of the top of their head and always pick the optimal road, and that don't particularly enjoy mining, the addition still boils down mainly to tedium, but for most of us it adds an actual layer of skill required to do it effectively (quick mental maths for calculating the optimal number of ingots to turn into plates, good memory to keep 10 times more recipes in the head or good NEI skills to quickly find what you need).
And to some degree, minecraft itself is repetition. A lot in minecraft is based on tedium. To get a stack of diamonds you have to dig quite a bit of rock. So it's not really about "should we have tedium?"; it's about "how much tedium do we want?"
When it comes to difficulty, it depends a lot on the goals in question. If we define difficulty as "the probability that you can achieve a certain goal", which seems a reasonable definition in this speicifc case, difficulty becomes completely reliant on goal, and hindrances in question. Now, the main hindrance in minecraft is time; since there's no permanent "death" (as in you can never more play Minecraft, compare New Caprica City lol) in the game, you can always restart worlds until you finally succeed. In this regard, all minecraft can be said to have 0 difficulty if you don't have a time limit. Most players do, however, and most have another goal: Making something in a single world. Now, if you play on any difficulty but Hardcore, this is also a difficulty pretty close to 0 regardless of what you want to do; given time, any build you like is possible.
To meaningfully discuss difficulty, we must thus set up a particular goal that is more likely to fail. For example, say that the goal is:
1. Build three of these nuclear reactors, connect to matter fabricators and fill a chest with EU matter.
2. Do this on a single save on hardcore mode.
Or:
1. Build a fully automated biofuel farm fully powering a set of 4 HP36 boilers.
2. Do this before the server restart a week from now.
Now, this is a task that actually has a difficulty; ie you can fail at it, by dying or running out of time. Now, if we put two players at this, using the same seed and with about the same player skill, both being decent players with some experience but neither being "the perfect player that can never die", one playing FTB without gregtech and one playing with gregtech - which is more likely to do it?
So, in this circumstance - yes, gregtech (and similar mods) add difficulty. With other goals (for example removing bullet point 2) it might be different.
And to some degree, minecraft itself is repetition. A lot in minecraft is based on tedium. To get a stack of diamonds you have to dig quite a bit of rock. So it's not really about "should we have tedium?"; it's about "how much tedium do we want?"
When it comes to difficulty, it depends a lot on the goals in question. If we define difficulty as "the probability that you can achieve a certain goal", which seems a reasonable definition in this speicifc case, difficulty becomes completely reliant on goal, and hindrances in question. Now, the main hindrance in minecraft is time; since there's no permanent "death" (as in you can never more play Minecraft, compare New Caprica City lol) in the game, you can always restart worlds until you finally succeed. In this regard, all minecraft can be said to have 0 difficulty if you don't have a time limit. Most players do, however, and most have another goal: Making something in a single world. Now, if you play on any difficulty but Hardcore, this is also a difficulty pretty close to 0 regardless of what you want to do; given time, any build you like is possible.
To meaningfully discuss difficulty, we must thus set up a particular goal that is more likely to fail. For example, say that the goal is:
1. Build three of these nuclear reactors, connect to matter fabricators and fill a chest with EU matter.
2. Do this on a single save on hardcore mode.
Or:
1. Build a fully automated biofuel farm fully powering a set of 4 HP36 boilers.
2. Do this before the server restart a week from now.
Now, this is a task that actually has a difficulty; ie you can fail at it, by dying or running out of time. Now, if we put two players at this, using the same seed and with about the same player skill, both being decent players with some experience but neither being "the perfect player that can never die", one playing FTB without gregtech and one playing with gregtech - which is more likely to do it?
So, in this circumstance - yes, gregtech (and similar mods) add difficulty. With other goals (for example removing bullet point 2) it might be different.
However, difficulty and tedium is not at the center of this - the key thing is about tech pace. Basically, it's about "at how many hours of gameplay should I have access to technology X?", and of course also "how much of those hours should be put towards actually getting technology X?".
I consider the tech pace in FTB without gregtech to be quite high. Without gregtech, after about 2 days even an average player can get all base resources in the game freely pumped into your base at quite high speed. After an additional 2 you can have gotten access to about any technology at all in the game (not necessarily every, but any).
Some people consider it too low, and make mods that increase it, or play creative (which is a perfectly fine thing to do - this is not in any way meant to shame people who increase teching speed and/or play creative). Some people consider it too high, and mod the game in different ways to make it slower (even before I got gregtech, I lowered EU yield from geothermals to 10eu/t on my server).
Also, the tech pace in different mods are very different - the obvious examples being Equivalent Exchange 2 and Railcraft which where both in the old tekkit packs in the days before FTB. Railcraft allowed you to make like 2 steel per hour after like 6 days of playing, EE2 allowed you to make a house of diamond blocks after two days of playing. "Balancing" modpacks is usually about the balance between mods - making different ways of accessing certain goals all have noticeable pro's and con's so that it's a real choice. Nowadays much of that balancing is made by the mod developers themselves, knowing that mods are likely to be used in modpacks and seeing what pace other mod makers put it to. Gone are the days where it was very ineffective to run a quarry on lava-fueled engines but very effective to run them on electricity-fueled engines where the electricity came from lava generators...
This of course means the modpacks automatically get much more balanced now than they where in the past where everyone developed their mods primarily for usage standalone, but it also means there isn't any choice in what tech pace to have; there is just one global. Mods like gregtech are meant to change this tech pace, slow it down for players who want it slower. In some cases, this can make the game harder. For some players, this can make the game more tedius. Both are more side effects than goal, however.
Since appropriate tech pace is very much a matter of preference, I think it's sad that discussions about that get so heated. I understand it's inflamed because of Gregtech itself being what it is and using the methods it is - but it's preventing a healthy discussion about fitting tech pace, and potential mods/settings to adjust this. I'd love a good mod that lowers tech pace in different ways, and does it across the board for most mods, but the climate is very hostile for such a mod to be released, or even for methods to do this well to be discussed.
