Balance and what that means...

[1SDAN]

Reading is so hard...



Now if you want to discuss the actual point I brought up, then I am all ears.

Sorry, but in my defense I was between periods at school and couldn't find a TL;DR.

Secondly, I think you meant obsolete

Finally, I both agree and disagree. When you're balancing something, often you want a feeling of increasing importance. By this I mean like how in RPGs, you at first can only deal 5 damage per hit, but later you can deal 50. The amount of hits needed to kill a foe for the most part doesn't decrease with this however, and usually even increases. But the fact that you can now OHKO that boss that used to take 5 minutes makes you feel like you accomplished a lot. Even the -500 when you unleash your ultimate attack does.

Likewise, at first when you're using auto-mining, you may only get 1 iron per tick. (Let's call it IPT) But later you are get a new mining machine that can mine 10ipt. This makes you feel accomplished. And while you may be using 20 iron for your machine's drill every 10 ticks as opposed to the last tier's 2, you're not getting any more efficient.

Basically, some games purposely make some items obsolete to make sure you always can improve.

 

[Lumaceon]

Every mod is 100 percent balanced with itself. It's up to the people putting the mods together to balance them or have the sense not to put them with each other.

 

[neosatan]

I don't think that balance is just 'how expensive item X is'. Also, it's really hard to say that mod X is unbalanced. Or even over powered. It all depends on your POV. Cause if you are aiming into a semi-playground it does not really matter if you have free flight, or huge pile of materials or great surplus of energy. You want to build and that is the aim. So specific pack of mods provide you with tools for that.
On other hand mc has also vanilla that does not have any ore duplication mechanism, many of items are really limited (no infinite tools), no magic blocks that are doing multiple thing. Basically you have to gather resources and by that you have to go into the world. So sometimes it forces player to relocate his base or make a forward base somewhere else. That is very cool cause it gives players sense of achievements. An infinite amount of achievements.
Some of the mods are built around such ideas. Thaumcraft is a great example. It does force player to wonder the world and look for node or dungeons or cultists. It super cool cause transportation becomes a task. Not a side effect. That is why in most of vanilla world players are making nether transportation (the 8 to 1 block ratio). The whole dimension becomes a solution. With mystcraft or ender io or portal gun there is no need for such solution.
I could bet that most of ftb players don't know how horses work. Or the details of pig riding. And about redstone logic I will not say a word. It sound silly, but important part is that all of such little things did serve a purpose. And there are mods that are destroying them. Mostly not by design. Mostly it's a side effect of main mechanics.
Whenever purpose of doing something is removed player that want a game experience (rather than a playground one) is being robbed.
Thus the balance of game vs playground experience vary from player to player. But also it depends of aim on the game. For example when playing casual world, I like to keep mods/play style that will enable my creativity in visuals and problem solving. I like tinkering. But on other hand, when playing a map like ftb or crash landing I don't mind mods/items/blocks that will basically grant you everything. EE2 or ExNihilo. Both of them give you ability to get nearly everything from very basic materials (like cobblestone, dirt and so). They are pretty much broken when it comes to creative/problem solving game, cause they take away various task from player (yeah, ok. They give some tasks, but far less that they take away). Still, both mods play perfectly in maps like ftb or crash landing. And that is just fine.

 

[Zandorum]

But please try to avoid stirring up excessive amounts of shit with the community. Drama is kinda irritating after a while.

I have no intention of doing as such, in which I only brought up mods that have been almost fully agreed upon being unbalanced or having problems with it. This topic is less about stating what mods are or aren't overpowered but more your opinion on the concept of balance and whether or not it even belongs in minecraft.

 

[madnewmy]

Balance... There are no such thing as universal balance...

Like blood magic armor. Can be considered OP in a pack where surviving is harsh, but in a pack where MPS, botania, quantum armor are present, it ain't so hard anymore...

some people think monster is balanced, while other find madpack or crash landing easy and not hard enough. Balance just depends on who you are and what you want

 

[Zandorum]

Balance... There are no such thing as universal balance...

Like blood magic armor. Can be considered OP in a pack where surviving is harsh, but in a pack where MPS, botania, quantum armor are present, it ain't so hard anymore...

some people think monster is balanced, while other find madpack or crash landing easy and not hard enough. Balance just depends on who you are and what you want

Hence why I'm asking what YOU see as balance and should there be a form of balance.

 

[retep998]

Balance is always relative and always depends on the style of gameplay you are going for.
When creating packs balance is making sure that every option is valid and that one option doesn't completely obsolete the other.
As an example MFR and Forestry are both mods that add tree farming. On their own they play fine, but if you combine the two mods in one pack players will almost always choose the MFR tree farm simply because it is so easy to setup and run compared to the complexity of the Forestry tree farm. So the pack author has to adjust the costs and recipes such that Forestry and MFR both have approximately the same reward to cost ratio, and thus it becomes balanced.
I personally prefer complex mods with an enforced progression, and resource management. I don't like getting things for free unless I've spent a massive amount of effort into getting the required technology and creating a fancy setup. But that's just my preferred style of gameplay, and I'm sure other people have their own preferred styles.

 

[Darkone84]

Mods don't really need to be balanced it's the packs that do.
But saying that having a mod that can turn dirt into diamonds....

 

[Skyqula]

Finally, I both agree and disagree. When you're balancing something, often you want a feeling of increasing importance. By this I mean like how in RPGs, you at first can only deal 5 damage per hit, but later you can deal 50. The amount of hits needed to kill a foe for the most part doesn't decrease with this however, and usually even increases. But the fact that you can now OHKO that boss that used to take 5 minutes makes you feel like you accomplished a lot. Even the -500 when you unleash your ultimate attack does.

I get what you a trying to say here, but I dont see how this applies here. Most modpacks offer little to none in terms of extra monster that require such an increase in damage. In vanilla with the best gear you get to 2 shot creepers and 3 shot enderman. With modded you get to 1 shot creepers and often enderman aswell. Big power creep without anny added challange. You probably mentioned this to get to your mining point though.

Likewise, at first when you're using auto-mining, you may only get 1 iron per tick. (Let's call it IPT) But later you are get a new mining machine that can mine 10ipt. This makes you feel accomplished. And while you may be using 20 iron for your machine's drill every 10 ticks as opposed to the last tier's 2, you're not getting any more efficient.

If automated mining requires maintenance, sure. If we actually had a gradual transition from manual to automated mining, sure. But do we?

If we look at automated mining in modded minecraft we get a few iterations. We have a few that require maintenance, like Thaumcrafts Arcane Bore or Railcrafts Tunnel Bore. I'd say these are balanced and probably the most "Minecraft like". We also have a few that require creative thought, like Turtles or moveable frame miners. They require you to design there behavior and take all possibilities into account (Assuming you dont cheat and download a turtle program). I'd say these are balanced as well and are along the lines of vanilla enderman/iron golem/pigman farms. We then have the place, power, replace variations, like the quarry/ender quarry. You place them down, provide power and some storage and you dont need to look at it again untill its moving time. They often make the maintenance and creative options obsolete because they dont require maintenance, they dont require creative thought and are often cheaper. And then we have the worst offender of them all, MFR's laser drill. Wich doesnt even require moving every now and then. Very convenient. Also realy server friendly. But is there still anny mining gameplay left?

Idealy, we would have maintenance into creative thought. That way you always have gameplay around mining and can eventually reach that fully automated no maintenance mining state. The reality however is that the maintenance and creative thought options are skipped and that those place, power and replace options are used instead. Wich is cool for those that like it, but actually balanced?

 

[madnewmy]

Hence why I'm asking what YOU see as balance and should there be a form of balance.

Depends on the pack
Monster or those kinds don't need balance
Hardcore/guideline/story pack should havesome sort of balance in order to keep the game hard/interesting

 

[epidemia78]

When you play with a lot of mods installed, its up to the player to decide whats fair. Ive played quite a few modded worlds and have developed my own style of play but I would never try to force it on anyone. I would highly recommend it, however. In my experience, quarries and other extreme automated resource gatherers just ruin the game and turn it into some kind of pseudo creative mode where everything is in unlimited supply and theres nothing left for me to do but build. Sure I like building but I like mining and exploring too. So Ive learned to use the mods creatively so that I have at least be awake to make things happen. Mining with my tinker's hammer is very productive except when it comes to acquiring gold and emeralds so I grow my gold and trade for emeralds. I could just grow everything but variety of activity is the key here. I make sure theres always something that needs mining, harvesting or killing and I am the only one who can do it. I just do it a lot faster and more efficiently than I ever could do in vanilla.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

I'll give you an example on why "balance" is impossible in modded MC...

On there own these mods are not OP or unbalanced in the slightest:
Ex Nihilo
Thermal Expansion
Extra Utilities

However them together in crash landing means I can get almost every resource from wood(see pic below). And once I tech up a bit(need a magma crucible and that's it) I'll switch to solar so no need for even wood...

Cobble gen to left of shot, couldn't fit it all in.

 

[1SDAN]

I get what you a trying to say here, but I dont see how this applies here. Most modpacks offer little to none in terms of extra monster that require such an increase in damage. In vanilla with the best gear you get to 2 shot creepers and 3 shot enderman. With modded you get to 1 shot creepers and often enderman aswell. Big power creep without anny added challange. You probably mentioned this to get to your mining point though.



If automated mining requires maintenance, sure. If we actually had a gradual transition from manual to automated mining, sure. But do we?

If we look at automated mining in modded minecraft we get a few iterations. We have a few that require maintenance, like Thaumcrafts Arcane Bore or Railcrafts Tunnel Bore. I'd say these are balanced and probably the most "Minecraft like". We also have a few that require creative thought, like Turtles or moveable frame miners. They require you to design there behavior and take all possibilities into account (Assuming you dont cheat and download a turtle program). I'd say these are balanced as well and are along the lines of vanilla enderman/iron golem/pigman farms. We then have the place, power, replace variations, like the quarry/ender quarry. You place them down, provide power and some storage and you dont need to look at it again untill its moving time. They often make the maintenance and creative options obsolete because they dont require maintenance, they dont require creative thought and are often cheaper. And then we have the worst offender of them all, MFR's laser drill. Wich doesnt even require moving every now and then. Very convenient. Also realy server friendly. But is there still anny mining gameplay left?

Idealy, we would have maintenance into creative thought. That way you always have gameplay around mining and can eventually reach that fully automated no maintenance mining state. The reality however is that the maintenance and creative thought options are skipped and that those place, power and replace options are used instead. Wich is cool for those that like it, but actually balanced?

But those are not problems with Minecraft itself, the problem is not that we can't fix them, but instead that we aren't.

The mob problem can be fixed with Mob Properties and the machine problem seems like it would just take some MineTweakering and a handful of Tech mods with the required machines and tools and stuff.

 

[immibis]

Time to open THAT can.

What if a mod's creator has a different idea of 'balance' than other devs?

Then you have GregTech.

 

[1SDAN]

Then you have GregTech.

Or BTW

Or to a lesser extent MITE

 

[tedyhere]

Or BTW

Or to a lesser extent MITE

Or TFC

 

[1SDAN]

Or TFC

Or Dirt to Diamonds

 

[tedyhere]

Or Dirt to Diamonds

Or.. OreSpawn

 

[1SDAN]

Or.. OreSpawn

I was going to say that but I thought it wasn't as funny

...I mean, or GregTech!

 

[Sawney]

Does no one have any self control while playing? It strikes me as incredibly stupid that people feel the need to balance, nerf or disable anything in any mod or modpack. Choices are choices. I can drink 18 beers and get sick. I can make a projectE power flower and have a DSU filled with diamonds. If either doesn't suit me I have the will power to not do them. Sorry for dumb analogy I just get annoyed by the idea of anyone dictating how I play in any way.

The best nerf is simply not doing things that are not fun to you. If you nerf it I will simply cheat mode my ass off.