Ars Magica

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bsb23

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Jul 29, 2019
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Posted this thread to alleviate arguing in the suggest mods thread I will expand shortly. Now the argument is on whether or not Ars Magica should be in the pack or not or fixed or waited for or whatever this came from a conversation between Bellaabzug21 and Jyzarc, I'm copy pasting the conversation into spoilers as we speak.
First post, starting the convo
Xeno's Reliquary, Thaumic Bees and Ars Magica would all be great additions to magic world! As it stands Magic World is very lacking mod-wise and these additions would fill it out some. I do not think they would work in the other mod packs(except for Thaumic Bees.)
A reply
I read in Ars Magica thread that it not compatible currently with Optifine. A lot ppl use optifine and adding Ars Magica in current state will create problems for they.
Bellaabzug21's first reply
The latest update included a patch that should fix the bulk of the issues being given to people by combining it with optifine. I'd also like to ask you to please spell people correctly.
Jyzarc's argument
I think ars magica would ruin pretty much any pack you put it in. At least as it is now. In my opinion the world gen/mobs part of it is really over done. The structures appear way to often and the mobs in it appear pretty much as often as regular hostile mobs. Since they do so much damage they just become really annoying. And the nature of them would make you thing they should be a little more rare. Not too mention the mana creeper which in itself is somewhat pointless. And again I wouldn't mind if it was like a really rare thing or something. And the dryads seem to have no spawn limits. They spawn everywhere no matter day or night, your Y level, what the ground is. It would be better if they only spawned on grass or something. It makes no sense how they spawn now. Even if these issues were fixed I don't think it should be in the ultimate pack. Possibly the magic pack
 

bsb23

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Its all good, no worries at all, happy to help.

Edit: I'm going to use this second post as the extension as we have a limited character limit

Bellaabzug21's refute
It's a WIP mod. The structure generation as you put it is often and this is a bug that is being worked on. This is caused because ars magica has it's own specific form of chunks that cause structures to spawn once per chunk. The mana creeper is there to give you magical scrolls as well as the mages in the case that you don't enjoy exploring the world. The drayads are also, an alternate source of essences. The mod author is trying to please people, and these are the things that have been asked for.
Jyzarc on the meaning of WIP
WIP doesn't really mean anything when talking about minecraft and its mods. Because of how the updates are, the game will never be finished until it gets abandoned, same goes for all mods. So in theory they are all WIP as long as there are stil updates to it. But I get your saying that a lot of bugs haven't been worked out. Which is why it SHOULDN'T be in the pack. And ok the bug with structure gen is understandable but I don't think there should be that many structures in the first place. I don't really like when mods add in their own types of creepers (like tropicraft, christmascraft etc) I guess because creepers are such classic minecraft mobs that it feels weird. But if there is gonna be another type of creeper it should be a lot more useful/scary and not just based on a mana system of one mod. I never said the dryads were useless. But it is entirely possible to have mobs that are useful and also not completely annoying. Look at cows in vanilla. Are they useful? extremely. Do they spawn freaking everywhere? no. They spawn on grass and when a chunk is loaded for the first time, they don't despawn or respawn, But at the same time they are renewable if the player wants to spend the extra time/resources on it. And at the very least they drop XP. My friends and I put it on our modded LP server and every time we entered our house (which the floor is made of wooden planks and its a good 20 blocks above sea level) there were 5-10 dryads. They just become extremely annoying, and we ended up spending more time killing them then actually playing so we just deleted it entirely. Then of course you can't even set it to a lower spawn frequency. I really like the spells and overall magic feel in it but its just not fun because of the mobs and world gen. And it definitely seems very unbalanced when playing with other mods because of the amount of mobs, structures, and even changes to the default inventory (mana bar) compared to the actual amount of content.
Bellaabzug21 on content and balance
So you don't like the fact that it is adding things in and expanding them later? That's EXACTLY what thaumcraft is doing. Is there something wrong with that? The creeper (along with a battle chicken avatar) was added in to be something comical yet useful at the same time. And yes, you have said dryads were useless about six times now. You have expressed this opinion by saying that they should be a lot more useful and are annoying. Plus, there's this new thing called a "config file" it lets you change the how much mobs spawn in your world. Amazing right? Those two phrases in the same sentence express that you feel they are completely useless.the reason for having so many structures in the first place is because they are the main way of obtaining spells. If you had actually played the mod you would know this. And balance? Name a single thing that isn't balanced in it? Even the fabrication system is balanced in this mod. How exactly do mobs and structures unbalance mods? They're mobs and structures! I suppose you could live in the structures but that's about it. Is that a downside? No! It's an upside, it would allow new players to get into the "fun stuff" of mods with more ease not having to waste time gathering dirt to make their ugly little dirt huts that they'll desert in a day or two anyways. The default inventory? Okay, a little understandable. But really is that unbalanced? You are just wasting your personal opinion in the most sloppy way ever, there is not a single thing unbalanced about adding something to the default inventory. Does it give you any ridiculously large advantage in the game? No. And even if it did, ALL PLAYERS HAVE ONE. So as the line goes "If everyone's special, then nobody is." same here. if everybody has something overpowered, then it's not really that overpowered at all. Now you go on to say there's more mobs and structures than content! MOBS ARE CONTENT. STRUCTURES ARE CONTENT. Even without the mobs and structures, there is close to seventy spells added in the mod as well as an energy system and PLENTY of machines to use the energy on. You can make a teleporter, a shield for your base, a way to pull items out of thin air by sacrificing other items as long as you can make one of those items, a new furnace that works just as well as your powered furnace and has a small chance to double the XP you get, armor that replenishes it's durability as long as you have the mana to do it, and soon there will be a questing system, an API, and a way to choose between light and dark mages. Mithion is also considering the following to be added (this has been talked about in beta chat) a new item movement system, a way to absorb spawners (for the people that don't enjoy killing a thousand mob for that tier 5 soul shard) that involves sucking in levels of mana, a sorting system using keystones for the crystals, an actual story to the mod, a boss mage, and you don't even want to know how many other things the beta testers have cooked up. So tell me, does this look like a mod that's short on features?
Jyzarc on unnecessary features
Last time I checked out this mod there was no config for mob spawning. in fact im still not sure if there is one. I don't mind them adding in stuff and expanding on them later I just don't think it should be called WIP. I'm not quite sure if dryads have any uses but they are extremely annoying, they spawn everywhere and thats my biggest problem with the mod. What I meant by balanced wasn't over power/ under poweredness I meant like actual balance of the content of the game. Like the ratio of mobs/worldgen to other content. Thaumcraft for example has one generated structure that I know of and one naturally spawning mob and also a lot of other content. I think the only mods that should have a lot of mobs/structures are the actual like minecraft overhaul ones (like divine RPG) or mods that are dedicated mainly to adding mobs/structures (like mo creatures or better dungeons) I like the other features of this mod (the nexus, spells, the machines) but the mobs structures and mana bar make me not want to play it altogether
 

Jyzarc

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Jul 29, 2019
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Is it possible to make a poll on here? so people can vote on if they want it or not?
 

bsb23

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And another for the same reason, please don't merge these otherwise this post won't work. (hopefully its not automatic)

Bellaabzug21 on structural purposes
Their use is to get essences that can be used to craft essential items in the mod. As I said before the structures are there for exploration to get the spell recipes to research and create spells with. That is the reason for the many structures. How exactly can you play the mod without the mana bar? It is the key feature to the mod and without it, the mod would be useless.
Jyzarc, Mana to XP
Theres a reason for the mobs and structures, still too many of them. I guess the solution would be to not use mana altogether. With all these mods I feel like regular XP is sort of ignored, and for this mod it would just make sense to use XP, because in vanilla its used for enchanting which is of course magic related and of course there could be new machines to generate XP, move it around in pipes and package it into bottles.

Edit: I don't see why not, what do you want it to say, yes, no, wait or edit as options?
 

Maffeo404

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Jul 29, 2019
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In response to Jyzarc:

Theres a reason for the mobs and structures, still too many of them. I guess the solution would be to not use mana altogether. With all these mods I feel like regular XP is sort of ignored, and for this mod it would just make sense to use XP, because in vanilla its used for enchanting which is of course magic related and of course there could be new machines to generate XP, move it around in pipes and package it into bottles.

Experience is not undervalued in Ars Magica, it is used for mana level. In fact, Ars Magica uses more xp levels than any mod I have seen or played.
 

Jyzarc

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In response to Jyzarc:



Experience is not undervalued in Ars Magica, it is used for mana level. In fact, Ars Magica uses more xp levels than any mod I have seen or played.

But to me it would just make sense to make this mod XP based. To me its sorta like if there was an IC2 addon that added a new form of power. It just wouldn't really make sense. Ars magica could be (and is to some extent) a really good mod. But even then some of the features arent as useful with the other mods. Like the teleporters with mystcraft for example. But a lot of stuff seems like its not useful enough to justify having it and some stuff just seems completely random and doesn't really make sense. Maybe for the magic world pack eventually but I would hate to see it in the ultimate pack.
 
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LazDude2012

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Jul 29, 2019
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It actually seems like a really awesome mod to me. It's true that having its own leveling system is a bit odd, but its levels are strongly linked to vanilla levels. Plus, one of the big points about mana is that it regenerates. If it simply used XP, as you said, the players' XP would have to constantly be increasing, devaluing XP. In AM, XP is actually quite valuable, as you need to vanilla level in order to mage-level.
 

Jyzarc

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It actually seems like a really awesome mod to me. It's true that having its own leveling system is a bit odd, but its levels are strongly linked to vanilla levels. Plus, one of the big points about mana is that it regenerates. If it simply used XP, as you said, the players' XP would have to constantly be increasing, devaluing XP. In AM, XP is actually quite valuable, as you need to vanilla level in order to mage-level.

You have a good point, but wait till you walk in your house and see 20 dryads, it gets annoying quickly
 

Maffeo404

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I agree with LazDude2012, it would not make sense to just use xp as mana. The mana must regenerate for the spells to be useful and regenerating xp would be OP :). And it is very xp based, it takes hundred of xp levels to level the mana levels up. And you lose them when you die. And perhaps, you misunderstood my original post which sparked the debate, I am only suggesting Ars Magica for Magic World. I do not think Ars Magica would make sense for the Ultimate pack. But it would make perfect sense for the Magic pack.[DOUBLEPOST=1357792828][/DOUBLEPOST]Sorry for the double, but I have not seen that many dryads...That just sounds like you get unlucky mob RNG.
 

Bellaabzug21

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You have a good point, but wait till you walk in your house and see 20 dryads, it gets annoying quickly

You've said this many times, we get it, you think dryads are useless. You don't have to say it so many times. The spawn rate of them isn't that high, contrary to your belief, it's set to spawn only two per forest, and jungle biome.
 

Maffeo404

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What I am curious about is Slowpoke's post. I am wondering if the Magic Pack is going to get Ars Magica or not? There was that one post about it and then silence. Did Mithion not allow it or are we waiting for some update?
 

WTFFFS

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The answer to "too many Ars mobs" is live in an EBXL biome then you ONLY see vanillla mobs ever or you could just grow a pair and kill the damn things it's not like they are that tough they just hurt a bit (hardmode, no armor other than for it's secondary effects is the way I roll) and truthfully it's nice to have something in the game that CAN kill you if you aren't prepared for it vanilla mobs I tend to completely ignore whether I'm armored or not..
ADV chainsaw is the answer to pretty much anything that doesn't pewpew I've found, don't care if they have armor or not and things that hang back and pewpew, you pewpew em right back but better with the gun from Xeno's reliquary. Wasn't it Conan that said something along the lines of "a wizard can't cast spells very well with steel in his ribs" extend that to a wizard can't cast very well while eating high V lead (that chases them down :D)
The XP thing I actually like Ars Magica since it is giving me a reason to actually build an XP farm, mob spawner again. Haven't built one of those since lvl 50 enchants and no XP from mining\smelting I also like building them there was just no point until Ars gave a higher value to XP overall, also choosing between a possible good enchant or another couple magic levels is a real thing, I love it.
EDIT: Ars also has something that is not really available anywhere else, the personal utility spells. They are frankly awesome I don't much enjoy the combat spells yea they do work and they do work well but mana is a very limited resource early on and wasting it on combat is not a very good use I've found but infinite torches, a ladder that appears out of nowhere, returning to your base with ease now these are utility.
 

Bagman817

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The Ultimate pack should have everything. People can disable what they don't want, but the point is that the don't have to mess with configs for 50+ (more like 100+, now that I think of it) mods. More choice is good, people. Saying something should be excluded from Ultimate is the same as saying "I don't like it, so no one should have it."

Edit: spelling is hard
 

Captain Neckbeard

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Jul 29, 2019
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Between Ars Magica and Thaumcraft 3, it's the same difference as Thaumcraft 2 and Thaumcraft 3.
Thaumcraft 2, you must deal with. Things happen that affect you, pretty much no matter what you do, most notably Taint.
Thaumcraft 3, if you don't mess with it yourself, doesn't affect you much at all. Barring problems with your neighbors spreading flux around or setting up right next to a Barrow.
Ars Magica is a game-changer in the same way Thaumcraft 2 was, and most of FTB seems to be avoiding the mandatory participation route.
 
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Maffeo404

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Umm....Neckbeard, Slowpoke101 said they wanted to add it in Magic World. I would really like an update to that post. Sadly, that can only come from the mod pack team or someone in the know.
 

Jyzarc

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You've said this many times, we get it, you think dryads are useless. You don't have to say it so many times. The spawn rate of them isn't that high, contrary to your belief, it's set to spawn only two per forest, and jungle biome.

Then why do 5-10 spawn in my house every day when i'm in an ocean biome? in theory they don't spawn a lot but in reality they do
 

Jyzarc

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In a response to basically everyone, if they fixed the spawning I would be ok with it being in the magic pack, but it seems too obnoxious (best word I could think of) to have in the ultimate pack. In that it changes a lot of stuff. If your someone like me who plays with a lot of mods (and I would assume you are) ars magica machines and spells are a very small part of your world. but you have to be constantly fighting mages, mana creepers and to me the idea of humanlike mobs in minecraft kinda ruins it (outside of villages) Speaking of villages has anyone else noticed ars magica messing up village spawning? Apart from houses usually being generated weirdly more then half of the village is usually the ars magica houses.Anyways realistically I probably wouldn't use ars magica that much altogether if I had all the techmods and such. And of course the magic pack seems to be missing basically every magic mod entirely right now as well, just throwing that out there. Also one final note it's not as much how much damage the hostile AM mobs do its more the fact that its magic damage. It just seems like it happens to often IMO, mages should be more rare. I play with Mo creatures which has a ton of mobs that not only do a ton of damage/hard to kill but also do quite a bit of world damage (ogres,golems werewolves) so I can deal with the mages
 

electroscape

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But to me it would just make sense to make this mod XP based. To me its sorta like if there was an IC2 addon that added a new form of power. It just wouldn't really make sense. Ars magica could be (and is to some extent) a really good mod. But even then some of the features arent as useful with the other mods. Like the teleporters with mystcraft for example. But a lot of stuff seems like its not useful enough to justify having it and some stuff just seems completely random and doesn't really make sense. Maybe for the magic world pack eventually but I would hate to see it in the ultimate pack.
actualy, mffs adds just that. a new type of energy, FP.