About difficulty/tedium and the terms we use (GT and similar)

[EternalDensity]

Suppose that Z is a nifty endgame thing you want, and the shortest way to get it is by doing steps ACEGIK.
We can make it more difficult by adding some intermediary steps: ABCDEFGHIJK.
Ooooor, we can be a lazy designer and make it require more of the same steps: AACCEEGGIIKK.

Now I was about to say that nerfing wood-> blanks is like changing A to AA, but then I realised that B equals using a saw to get more wood. So there's either AA (twice as much wood) or AB (use a saw) and it can't be just changed to B on its own since you still need to be able to get wood without a saw.
So maybe the wood nerf wasn't as bad as I imagined?

 

[RedBoss]

Wood nerf is bad because it's tedium not challenge. It's also bad because in terms of FTB, the targeted user who would enjoy the wood nerf is using a general purpose pack. General purpose packs, ie Ultimate, put non-"nerfallthethings" users in dire straights. Place wood nerf in a targeted brutality pack, AND include intelligent configs to alter odd recipes, and then there's some logic being processed.

 

[Enigmius1]

@Enigmus1

The problem with having a system like that is that, once one's progressed to a certain point in the game, progressing back to that point is no harder than it would be without that system or any sort of nerf.

So how about not a learning-based system for precisely this reason?

Anyways, I felt like TFC's method of metal-gathering (save all that Sluicing, ugh) was semi-grindy, but still quite interesting enough to work better than the current system.

Learning curve was just one component I mentioned. As far as people being bored and wanting more, I have no issues with that whether they want a grind they can just settle in to or they want a challenge. Nobody has to justify that to me. I'm just delineating between true challenge and tedium because they are not synonymous or even necessarily similar.

 

[Dee_Twenty]

Suppose that Z is a nifty endgame thing you want, and the shortest way to get it is by doing steps ACEGIK.
We can make it more difficult by adding some intermediary steps: ABCDEFGHIJK.
Ooooor, we can be a lazy designer and make it require more of the same steps: AACCEEGGIIKK.

Now I was about to say that nerfing wood-> blanks is like changing A to AA, but then I realised that B equals using a saw to get more wood. So there's either AA (twice as much wood) or AB (use a saw) and it can't be just changed to B on its own since you still need to be able to get wood without a saw.
So maybe the wood nerf wasn't as bad as I imagined?

I'd still say it's just as bad because the motive is still trying to force the players to use Greg's sawmill instead of improving the gameplay experience.

 

[Whovian]

Ah. Margin for error.

The only problem is, if, for similar reasons, we omit any sort of learning-based system here, whether one hits the margin for error properly is going to be left up to chance. And this, in fact, effectively the entire reason for using a chance-based method in the first place, ends up still being tedium.

 

[EternalDensity]

I'd still say it's just as bad because the motive is still trying to force the players to use Greg's sawmill instead of improving the gameplay experience.

True, it is bad to increase the difficulty of a mod in such a way that either increases the tedium of all other mods or else forces everyone to use something from your mod to do stuff in other mods.

It would be like adding a backpack mod which also adds a machine for turning string into wool and changed the string to wool recipe to need 9 string to make people use the machine. Then if it's on a server, even people who don't choose to use the backpacks are affected.

As for learning-based progression, remember TC2? And TC3 is a bit better but it still gets old pretty fast.

 

[SpitefulFox]

As for learning-based progression, remember TC2? And TC3 is a bit better but it still gets old pretty fast.

Researching the entire tree for the first time: "Yay! I wonder what cool thing I'll unlock next! "

Researching the entire tree for the second time: "At least I already know what all the aspects are so it'll be easier this time."

Researching the entire tree 3+ times: "EFFING TUTAMEN ASPECT. Just kill me now."

 

[Dee_Twenty]

True, it is bad to increase the difficulty of a mod in such a way that either increases the tedium of all other mods or else forces everyone to use something from your mod to do stuff in other mods.

It would be like adding a backpack mod which also adds a machine for turning string into wool and changed the string to wool recipe to need 9 string to make people use the machine. Then if it's on a server, even people who don't choose to use the backpacks are affected.

Exactly, I know there are some people who prefer to use strictly tech, and other people who prefer to use strictly magic, personally I like to use both, but for someone who wants to play a pure magic user on a server they'd have to either put up with lugging around a handsaw or be forced to use machines in order to get a decent output in terms of planks.

As for learning-based progression, remember TC2? And TC3 is a bit better but it still gets old pretty fast.

I love Thaumcraft 3, but the biggest issue with it is really the whole research aspect, it's not a terrible idea having the thauminomicon and using research to unlock the recipes in it, but if you already know how to craft warded blocks or how to create thaumium you should be able to just do it regardless of whether or not you've completed the research, especially when it's the dozenth time you've made a new world and have gone through the research tree in full every single time.

 

[Enigmius1]

Ah. Margin for error.

The only problem is, if, for similar reasons, we omit any sort of learning-based system here, whether one hits the margin for error properly is going to be left up to chance. And this, in fact, effectively the entire reason for using a chance-based method in the first place, ends up still being tedium.

I think you're trying to diminish the concepts. I can list games for days where margin for error is the central challenge dynamic, it's a very functional challenge dynamic, and it's anything but tedious because it can be applied to countless different situations. These are also typically games where continuous learning continually shifts the functional margin for error. Nothing a modder does can ever really make Minecraft truly challenging relative to alternatives because at the end of the day it's still lego, and lego is not hard.

 

[Chocorate]

Let's pretend you're seated at a table. In front of you is a red bowl, and a blue bowl. Inside the blue bowl is a ball.

I tell you to take the ball out of the blue bowl and put it in the red bowl, which you do.

I then tell you to take the ball out of the red bowl and put it into the blue bowl, which you do.

As a reward for doing so, I give you a scoop of ice cream.

This is not a difficult exercise.

Now I tell you to repeat the exercise 100 times for that same scoop of ice cream. Did it suddenly become difficult? No. It became tedious. And for many people, tedious is synonymous with dull. You have to have a specific outcome that is sufficiently attractive to you to continue with the exercise in order to not just stop and go find something else to do. Do you really want a scoop of ice cream so bad you want to move the ball back and forth 100 times?

Difficulty is learning curve, as in you can't progress until you learn specific things. Learning how to write your own scripts for ComputerCraft with no prior programming experience would probably be one of the most difficult things to do in modded Minecraft because not only is the learning curve steep, the margin for error is very small. By itself, margin for error can very readily contribute to difficulty. So learning curve and margin for error. Those are the qualifiers. So when someone tells me <x> is more difficulty because it requires more mats than it used to, I can't agree. And when people keep tossing this "hardmode"/"easymode" configs nonsense around it's more like "easymode w/ ubergrind" or "easymode w/o ubergrind". If a person knows how to play Minecraft, telling them they need to gather more resources doesn't up the difficulty. You have to go out of your way to do things poorly and increase the number of errors you make to approach difficult from margin of error on the back end.

Great analogy Enigmius, very simple/easy to understand. I also think this is the case with DivineRPG. They aren't changing the Minecraft mob AI from the old "run straight towards player" into something better, they're just mucking around with HP and numbers.

I love Thaumcraft 3, but the biggest issue with it is really the whole research aspect, it's not a terrible idea having the thauminomicon and using research to unlock the recipes in it, but if you already know how to craft warded blocks or how to create thaumium you should be able to just do it regardless of whether or not you've completed the research, especially when it's the dozenth time you've made a new world and have gone through the research tree in full every single time.

I could not have said this better. Researching should still be in the game and it's awesome for the fisrt time, but after that I think it should be up to the player to know. Also you should be able to look at a wiki and get the same info. The research is just for fun. :3

 

[Hoho]

People claiming wood nerf (and requiring plates-tools) to be pure tedium and in no way increases difficulty have apparently missed what I have said about it earlier:

What do you do for gathering resources? For me in early game it means cave exploring. Having to explore a dangerous world for more time to get to state where it isn't as dangerous any more most definitely increases the difficulty of playing. In a non-gt modpack all you need is one trip to a cave to get enough stuff to set up fully automated mining and never to return there again.

Exactly the same thing can be applied to all sorts of other "artificial time sinks"

 

[SpitefulFox]

The nice thing about TC research is that you end up with SMP players who haven't completed the entire tree having different specialties, which kind of encourages cooperation and trade when only certain players have the ability to even craft certain items...

And then people start finishing the research tree and that all goes away.

 

[Dee_Twenty]

The nice thing about TC research is that you end up with SMP players who haven't completed the entire tree having different specialties, which kind of encourages cooperation and trade when only certain players have the ability to even craft certain items...

And then people start finishing the research tree and that all goes away.

You know, that could be added as a feature in a much less tedious manner, just make it similar to D&D with schools of magic, give players an option to select a certain school in which you specialise and another which is locked to you, you get access to certain things which are only available to your school and a discount on essentia when dealing with that school that stacks with the discounts from the robes of the thaumaturgist, in exchange you can't craft things belonging to the school you chose to lock yourself out of.

 

[schyman]

In terms of difficulty, not everybody has the technical/mathematical expertise to create balanced, automated, efficient and redundant systems (i.e. They take the time to specifically design the system so that it is expandable, tweek-able and after its all done and built, spent the time to make it more efficient.) Like I always say, not everybody who plays this game is an engineer.

Fully agreed. Yet another reason to have different adjustable settings, whether they are through config options or submods.

The problem with GT, like a few other posters in this thread have already mentioned is that it does not make the game more difficult. It just makes it take longer to get to x. Even then, it's not difficult at all. If I played ngt, I would lose interest in FTB. Though your argument is technically right, from a "playability" perspective, the new changes to GT are nonsensical. They don't really prove to make the game more interesting or provide an additional "problem" to solve. It just simply makes things stupid.

Again, as I wrote in the OP: Difficulty is only relevant in comparison to a goal, and many (most?) minecraft players have goals that are harder to achieve with GT than without, so GT does make the game more difficulty for many players. Of course, difficulty isn't necessarily something good - it has to be interesting too. The last two sentences are purely a matter of taste, and you are of course entitled to yours (which is probably a very common taste). I'm not trying to change that - what I'm saying is that having more options on how the game is played would be great.

The intents and goals surrounding this changes have been made obvious by his actions.

Not going to discuss Greg's actions or all the things surrounding GregTech here, GT is just an example of a rebalancing mod (since it's the only one I know of for FTB at current date). Again, I want to focus on the future, not the past.

If you are trying to make clear to those without any perspective, the difference between making something time consuming and difficult, power to you. You make it sound like that is the issue at hand though, which it really isn't.

No, the thing is, there seems to be two "camps", those who say gregtech makes it more difficult and not more tedius and those saying it makes it more tedius and not more difficult. I'm saying it does both but that neither really is the design goal, or at least not what should be the design goal of a rebalancing submod or method like the one GT is using. I'm saying we can learn from these debates that there isn't just "one size fits all" or "like it or shut up" solutions to this, there are other methods at meeting this want for different tech paces.

 

[Vermillion]

Suppose that Z is a nifty endgame thing you want, and the shortest way to get it is by doing steps ACEGIK.
We can make it more difficult by adding some intermediary steps: ABCDEFGHIJK.
Ooooor, we can be a lazy designer and make it require more of the same steps: AACCEEGGIIKK.

Now I was about to say that nerfing wood-> planks is like changing A to AA, but then I realised that B equals using a saw to get more wood. So there's either AA (twice as much wood) or AB (use a saw) and it can't be just changed to B on its own since you still need to be able to get wood without a saw.
So maybe the wood nerf wasn't as bad as I imagined?

This particular nerf adds more options than just ABC, there's also machines, trees and technology from other mods that would normally be considered inefficient or pointless that can now be incorporated in tandem with GT's nerf to gain standard or more planks allowing the possibilities of ABCDEFG. That being the manual crafting, the GT saw, the GT Sawmill, the TE sawmill as well as combining Forestry's Carpenter with Thaumcraft's Trees can also generate large quantities of planks and there's likely other means available that aren't coming to mind right now.

As for the tediousness of GregTech, you'll only really experience the high degree of tedium if you utilize IC2 and GregTech alone and ignore the other mods. The Macerator could be considered the Fourth or Fifth tier of grinding tech available, as a trade-off between bonus outputs vs speed. With the significantly higher cost of the macerator balancing it's use over the cheaper and slower Pulverizer and Quartz Grindstone machines from TE and AE. Skipping the progression from Mortar to Macerator in this case increases tedium for those not willing to branch out their play style and try something in the in-between stages (not that anyone uses the GT Mortar besides me).
So while GregTech is mostly linear, it's high cost and tedium in the in-between stages between 2 tiers of machines allows the players to try a different route to skip ahead on the Tech tree without being overly confined by it.
Without GregTech, maceration ends at an abominably cheap macerator. Tedious and Linear it may be, but it gives you something to aim for; it only takes time and patience to achieve. Without it, there just wouldn't BE anything to aim for.

 

[schyman]

Learning mechanisms are one way of doing it, and might be a good path depending on implementation, but there are also different learning mechanisms; mainly, character learning and player learning.

See, TC3 has character learning. The character puts in A and gets recipe B which wasn't accessible before even if the _player_ knew the recipe.
Then there's player learning. TerraFirmaCraft has this when it comes to both smithing and, more easily explained, meals. Basically, there are tons of food in the game that can be combined into meals. Some meals will have special effects, like Speed. The thing is, what the meals are is random and based on the seed - so you can't look up optimal recipes online, you have to experiment. Of course, this knowledge (or the meals themselves) can be shared between players at a server.
Likewise, when smithing you have to hit the ingot in the right way a combinations of time to get it into a perfect shape - if you do it sloppily, it'll have less durability. The combinations are also random based on the seed (though there are some common patterns), which means again it's up to player learning.

I don't know how one could implement that in tech mods though, since they're usually all about automation rather than like TFC being all about manual work. Randomizing recipes based on seed feels iffy and as long as NEI's around would be hard to do meaningfully.

However, one large thing that can make things feel more or less tedious is the amount of ways towards a goal; to use EternalDestiny's example of wanting Tech Z which originally requires ACEGIK, just adding to it so it's ABCDEFGIJK might very well make it feel more tedious for some players. However, if it's changed so that instead of ACEGIK being the correct and only reasonable way to do it, there are steps added between each but a few different methods for each; so instead of A>C>E, it's A>(B or P or R)>(C or D)>(D or L or N)>E. It might still take longer to get TechZ than without the additions, but it might still be less boring to do those steps because at each step you have different methods to use which makes it more fun.

 

[Runo]

This particular nerf adds more options than just ABC, there's also machines, trees and technology from other mods that would normally be considered inefficient or pointless that can now be incorporated in tandem with GT's nerf to gain standard or more planks allowing the possibilities of ABCDEFG. That being the manual crafting, the GT saw, the GT Sawmill, the TE sawmill as well as combining Forestry's Carpenter with Thaumcraft's Trees can also generate large quantities of planks and there's likely other means available that aren't coming to mind right now.

As for the tediousness of GregTech, you'll only really experience the high degree of tedium if you utilize IC2 and GregTech alone and ignore the other mods. The Macerator could be considered the Fourth or Fifth tier of grinding tech available, as a trade-off between bonus outputs vs speed. With the significantly higher cost of the macerator balancing it's use over the cheaper and slower Pulverizer and Quartz Grindstone machines from TE and AE. Skipping the progression from Mortar to Macerator in this case increases tedium for those not willing to branch out their play style and try something in the in-between stages (not that anyone uses the GT Mortar besides me).
So while GregTech is mostly linear, it's high cost and tedium in the in-between stages between 2 tiers of machines allows the players to try a different route to skip ahead on the Tech tree without being overly confined by it.
Without GregTech, maceration ends at an abominably cheap macerator. Tedious and Linear it may be, but it gives you something to aim for; it only takes time and patience to achieve. Without it, there just wouldn't BE anything to aim for.

This is a good post and explains what I think the gregtech mod has been aiming for. There are two sides to the mod, the ic2 standalone add on and the mod pack rebalancer. Almost all of the recent machine additions are meant for the former as a result of gregtech's common usage in the latter. The sorting machines were added in response to their ubiquity in mod packs and their benefit, and the redstone machines for the same reason. This expands the mods standalone functionality and reduces its reliance on the whims of red power and the likes.

The rebalancer aspect aims to forcibly correct inter-mod balance rather than let imbalance fester as well as counteract either trivializations to other mods via gregtech and trivializations to gregtech via other mods. The first example is best shown with bronze: as ic2 adds ore doubling unavailable in forestry and ic2 has a higher copper+tin spawn rate, they halved bronze output in the modpack as to not trivialize forestry. The latter is kind of touched onwith wood. In short, the goal is to make a complex machine worth the cost of production without making the complex machine overpowered. As balance currently favors biofuel and planks in boilers, you've seen attempts both by sengir and Greg to tone it down. The biofuel nerf on sappiness didn't work because of planks, so Greg attempted to reduce power output of trees while preserving the value of more complex production methods. The result obviously didn't work out the way he anticipated.

In short, I'm saying that I don't think the intention of the changes is tedium, but instead preserving value of machines and mods within a larger pack. Players perceive it as tedium because some don't like certain aspects of the game that GT re-introduces which may have been trivialized by other mods, such a the caving period at the beginning, or they don't want to use the bonuses certain machines are intended to provide and feel cheated because their non-gt method of production was downsized. Its not really about tedium but about providing incentive for GT progression.

Do I think its the right way to do things? No. But I do see why the actions were taken, and don't see many alternatives other than runaway feature and production inflation that would result from the other methods. Its either reduce plank output or make the sawmill produce 8 planks, requiring a buff to all other power gen methods to keep up with boiler's cost/benefit ratio. One method is far simpler than the others.

 

[Katrinya]

I've never been a big fan of building things that look nice just for the sake of building them. If I do something I want there to be an actual reason behind it and aesthetics isn't good enough for me. For people whose aim is building things for aesthetics obviously resource gathering is just a tedious timesink and I see no reasonable way how both me and them could be playing with same set of mods and rules and be happy.

I want to highlight this part of your post because I think it accurately articulates the crux of the problem. I'm the opposite kind of player. For me, modded MC is all about developing tech to aesthetically build more efficiently in survival mode. This is why EE2 was my favorite mod. (Before anyone starts sneering about creative mode, creative is generally not as much fun for me. I want a certain sense of progression, I just don't want to spend as much time mining as you do.). I seem to be one of the more openly softcore players on this forum, which is weird from my perspective, because my friends and family all consider me to be rabidly obsessed with Minecraft.

That said, I'd like to point out that the issue isn't as divisive as people make it out to be. Of course we can both be happy playing the same mods, in spite of our differing playstyles. If we weren't both similarly engaged, we wouldn't be spending all this time in fervent debate over the pros and cons of balancing mechanics.

 

[MacAisling]

I want to play with the new toys. Forcing me to spend more time doing what I am already bored with before giving me the new toys is a big turn off for me. You want me to play with your toys make better or more interesting toys, don't break all the other toys in the box. I don't really like the processing speed or the multiple crafting steps in Railcraft, but I can accept it because it gives me options to make better things, & it also gives me things I can play with without ever building a single rail. MFR does some real cool stuff, but it is too easy & convenient to be as satisfying as finishing that first blaze spawner farm or developing your first successful redstone contraption that wasn't copied from someone else (please don't change MFR, I've already done those other things & like having a quick way to get past it & on to new things). I love the Thermal Expansion machine set up as a starting point for automated systems. I love the barrels from factorization, but have so far have preferred going with the ME network from AE over learning how to chain my way through a completely new power & machine set up for advanced storage & crafting. Those wrath lamps, though...do I go through all those steps or just cheat in what I need?

 

[SpitefulFox]

Those wrath lamps, though...do I go through all those steps or just cheat in what I need?

Wrath Lamps aren't that bad to craft. The Wrath Igniter in the recipe loses a bit of durability instead of getting used up, so it's not like you have to cook up a new batch of diamond shards for every few lamps. The only hiccup is that Greg forces you to play IC2 in order to make the diamond block needed to make the diamond shards in the first place, if you have GregTech installed.