I had a most interesting discussion with Zorn, which was continued in PM's to avoid derailing the thread it started in, concerning Challenge and its place in a game. We had different perspectives on several aspects, however it did get me thinking that perhaps this is the real crux of the matter when it comes to certain well beaten dead horses on this forum, and perhaps a bit of clean debate and non-judgmental expression of opinions could help 'clean the air' so to speak.
But first, a few ground rules of the thread. I will be reporting violators to the moderators.
Challenge. It means different things to different people. Which has been the cause of many arguments on these forums. Some mods provide different challenges and different types of challenges, whereas some mods work to reduce the challenge.
Reward. It is what you get out of tackling the challenge. For some people, the self-gratification of having successfully tackled the challenge is reward enough. Others want something tangible (or at least as much as anything in a virtual world can be called 'tangible') to show for their efforts. I would also like to point out that 'reward' is rarely 'stuff'. A mod which allows you to craft dirt into diamonds has very little actual gameplay enjoyability or 'reward', because you didn't need to do anything to do it.
There's a sliding scale of Challenge vs Reward which people end up on. Some people love tackling challenges, and don't need much in the way of Reward, and would find something which had a high Reward to be 'OP'. By that same token, there are those who are on the other side of that sliding scale who would feel that something with high Challenge and low Reward would be 'punitive'.
So, who is right? Both of them. And neither of them. There is no right or wrong here. There is only what fits your play style and your criteria for 'fun'.
I would also like to throw in another dynamic into this, and that is the type of challenge presented. I previously used an example of IC2-EX vs Thaumcraft4 to demonstrate this, however, I shall briefly sum it up.
Standing in front of a crafting table grinding out combines is not very fun for most people. It presents zero actual challenge, it gives the user nothing entertaining to do, just 'click a button', and in general is about as entertaining as watching paint dry. I won't make an absolute statement and say that this is not fun, but inevitably, there will be someone who finds this entertaining, if not the majority.
Therefore, the new mechanic with IC2-EX of needing a hammer and snips in making plates and wires is an innovative method, however it does have some problems. First off, as I said, grinding out combines is not very interesting. It doesn't require any particular skill to press a button, so there is, for most people, no sense of accomplishment for doing it.
Second off, the durability of both tools is very low. For a mod attempting to 'bring some reality' into a game, a hammer that can only be used eighty times is the exact opposite. Speaking as someone who has been trained by an actual smith, I have used hammers that are hundreds of years old. The idea of a hammer breaking after five minutes of use is... ridiculous. Therefore, the actual reason behind this is to produce 'resource bleed' by needing to continuously make more hammers as you use them. But since you need a good amount of iron for a hammer, and iron is not a renewable resource, it is irritating to some to need to 'burn iron' to make plates, wires, and components crafted from them.
Third off is obsoleting tools. There's a machine you can create which functions as both a hammer and shears. This will stop the 'resource bleed' of needing to constantly make new tools. However, it means that the tools you have used will now rot away in an inventory somewhere, never to be used again, because you don't want the resource bleed associated with using them.
So basically, you have a boring grind involved in passing items through a combine whose sole exclusive purpose is to generate resource bleed of non-renewable resources, and when you are done you are left with tools you have zero interest in using and will be taking up inventory space for the rest of your game unless you end up destroying them.
One of the arguments presented here is 'well, isn't a furnace also a pointless grind? Why not have the iron ores just drop ingots?'. First, I find this to be a rather stretched Hyperbole, and rather disingenuous, however I shall address it as well.
A furnace requires less micro-management than a crafting recipe. You can stick a stack of ore and some coal or charcoal in the furnace, then walk off and do something else while it processes. Furthermore, a furnace can be run on Charcoal, which is a renewable resource, so you don't have a resource bleed of non-renewable resources involved in the process.
Therefore it is my personal opinion that this whole setup is largely punitive in nature and a boring grind designed to create artificial difficulty.
By contrast, Thaumcraft 4 also has some fairly harsh restrictions on progressing through its tech tree, but it does so in a different manner.
First off is the scanning mechanic, which requires you to go out and explore and, while you are doing so, scan all the things. This doesn't really take up much of your time because you are already going to be going out and exploring to obtain resources, and you are going to be passing by said things, scanning doesn't take very long, it has shiny graphics to keep the player entertained while it is undertaking this process, and gives you a little 'ding' when done.
Now then, the Thaumometer is a tool you will be using your entire career, even after you get access to the Goggles of Revealing. However, even if you don't want to use one after you research the Goggles, it is a necessary component of those goggles, so there is still a use for it. It doesn't have durability, you don't need to keep making it over and over again, so there is no resource bleed. And it doesn't really get in the way of playing your game. It's rather like a value-added rather than 'sit at the crafting table and grind out some combines'. It enhances gameplay rather than takes away from it.
Then there's the research system, which has gotten the most negativity. Aspects are not exactly common. You can use up a lot of aspects very quickly, particularly your first time through TC4. Combining aspects to make something is, in fact, a boring grind. However, there is at least some challenge involved in this process by remembering which aspects create which other aspects which are needed in research. Also, research has a random factor, depending on the aspect you research, which can be very frustrating.
However, even there, you've got a logical, if complex, system to use. It requires some forethought and some player skill to be able to optimize this. So for those players who like to tackle a challenge and learn a new skill set, this is highly rewarding. It can, however, be seen as too Challenging for some players.
Now let's talk about wands to bring up a parallel and contrast to the outdated tools. At first, you will only have an iron-capped wand. Then you get more powerful wands that do better things. However, even when you've got your uber-tier wand, your basic iron-capped wand is still useful in making things in your Arcane Workbench. It can still store a small amount of essence, which can be used to perform useful tasks.
Furthermore, it can just sit in your Arcane Workbench most of the time and not take up any other inventory, and your arcane workbench will always have a wand in it which can be used to make things. And when it gets low, you can go recharge it normally. It might not be your first tool of choice, but it is still valuable even when you have higher tiers of wands.
Not to beat on a dead horse or to commit a 'Godwin', but I suppose it is inevitable that I bring up GregTech in this discussion as a contrast.
Many people find GregTech to be a very long, boring grind. It doesn't require a lot of skill on the part of the player to play GregTech, it just takes forever with a bunch of sub-combines and progressively rarer materials as you progress in tech tiers. Finding rare materials does not impart a challenge to the player's skills, it just requires a time sink to be able to find the bloody bastard. This, I believe, is why GregTech has encountered such hostility... not just the difficulty level, which is actually not all that high once you break it down... but the boring grind involved with the mod before you are allowed to do anything. Many people seem to feel that the reward given for the challenge is not compensatory. Also, the developer seems to have mistaken the word 'reward' for 'stuff', which is generally not the case. It doesn't matter to me, at least not after the very early game stages, if I can double, triple, or quadruple my ores. What matters most to me is the enjoyment I get out of progressing through the mod.
This also ties into the problem with IC2 and dependent mods: machine explosion. Some people see it as a challenge, others see it as punitive. Some would point out 'well, what do you think would happen if you stick your cell phone straight into a wall socket'. Unfortunately, what actually happens in that case is not an explosion, the cell phone shorts out and ceases to function. It might catch on fire, but that's about it. It does not destroy everything in a three meter radius of itself. Large machines in the actual industry have circuit breakers and fuses to prevent just such a problem, that industrial machines do explode because they don't have such safeguards is, again, breaking the verisimilitude which they are attempting to introduce, in the name of 'challenge'.
So, why don't we share our ideas on challenge and reward and have some friendly debate on these topics and how the mods fit in here.
But first, a few ground rules of the thread. I will be reporting violators to the moderators.
- Your opinion is just that: your opinion. It is not a fact, nor should it be mistaken for one.
- Facts can be right or wrong, because they are universal objective statements. Opinions are inherently subjective. You can disagree with the opinion, however it does not invalidate either that opinion or yours.
- Someone disagreeing with your opinion, or having an opinion which is mutually exclusive from yours, is not 'wrong'. It's kind of hard to be 'right' or 'wrong' on a subjective topic, after all.
- The proper response to someone misunderstanding your point of view is to clarify your point of view, not to flame or make personal attacks.
- The proper response to someone making a personal attack or flaming you is to report the post to a Moderator, not return fire.
Challenge. It means different things to different people. Which has been the cause of many arguments on these forums. Some mods provide different challenges and different types of challenges, whereas some mods work to reduce the challenge.
Reward. It is what you get out of tackling the challenge. For some people, the self-gratification of having successfully tackled the challenge is reward enough. Others want something tangible (or at least as much as anything in a virtual world can be called 'tangible') to show for their efforts. I would also like to point out that 'reward' is rarely 'stuff'. A mod which allows you to craft dirt into diamonds has very little actual gameplay enjoyability or 'reward', because you didn't need to do anything to do it.
There's a sliding scale of Challenge vs Reward which people end up on. Some people love tackling challenges, and don't need much in the way of Reward, and would find something which had a high Reward to be 'OP'. By that same token, there are those who are on the other side of that sliding scale who would feel that something with high Challenge and low Reward would be 'punitive'.
So, who is right? Both of them. And neither of them. There is no right or wrong here. There is only what fits your play style and your criteria for 'fun'.
I would also like to throw in another dynamic into this, and that is the type of challenge presented. I previously used an example of IC2-EX vs Thaumcraft4 to demonstrate this, however, I shall briefly sum it up.
Standing in front of a crafting table grinding out combines is not very fun for most people. It presents zero actual challenge, it gives the user nothing entertaining to do, just 'click a button', and in general is about as entertaining as watching paint dry. I won't make an absolute statement and say that this is not fun, but inevitably, there will be someone who finds this entertaining, if not the majority.
Therefore, the new mechanic with IC2-EX of needing a hammer and snips in making plates and wires is an innovative method, however it does have some problems. First off, as I said, grinding out combines is not very interesting. It doesn't require any particular skill to press a button, so there is, for most people, no sense of accomplishment for doing it.
Second off, the durability of both tools is very low. For a mod attempting to 'bring some reality' into a game, a hammer that can only be used eighty times is the exact opposite. Speaking as someone who has been trained by an actual smith, I have used hammers that are hundreds of years old. The idea of a hammer breaking after five minutes of use is... ridiculous. Therefore, the actual reason behind this is to produce 'resource bleed' by needing to continuously make more hammers as you use them. But since you need a good amount of iron for a hammer, and iron is not a renewable resource, it is irritating to some to need to 'burn iron' to make plates, wires, and components crafted from them.
Third off is obsoleting tools. There's a machine you can create which functions as both a hammer and shears. This will stop the 'resource bleed' of needing to constantly make new tools. However, it means that the tools you have used will now rot away in an inventory somewhere, never to be used again, because you don't want the resource bleed associated with using them.
So basically, you have a boring grind involved in passing items through a combine whose sole exclusive purpose is to generate resource bleed of non-renewable resources, and when you are done you are left with tools you have zero interest in using and will be taking up inventory space for the rest of your game unless you end up destroying them.
One of the arguments presented here is 'well, isn't a furnace also a pointless grind? Why not have the iron ores just drop ingots?'. First, I find this to be a rather stretched Hyperbole, and rather disingenuous, however I shall address it as well.
A furnace requires less micro-management than a crafting recipe. You can stick a stack of ore and some coal or charcoal in the furnace, then walk off and do something else while it processes. Furthermore, a furnace can be run on Charcoal, which is a renewable resource, so you don't have a resource bleed of non-renewable resources involved in the process.
Therefore it is my personal opinion that this whole setup is largely punitive in nature and a boring grind designed to create artificial difficulty.
By contrast, Thaumcraft 4 also has some fairly harsh restrictions on progressing through its tech tree, but it does so in a different manner.
First off is the scanning mechanic, which requires you to go out and explore and, while you are doing so, scan all the things. This doesn't really take up much of your time because you are already going to be going out and exploring to obtain resources, and you are going to be passing by said things, scanning doesn't take very long, it has shiny graphics to keep the player entertained while it is undertaking this process, and gives you a little 'ding' when done.
Now then, the Thaumometer is a tool you will be using your entire career, even after you get access to the Goggles of Revealing. However, even if you don't want to use one after you research the Goggles, it is a necessary component of those goggles, so there is still a use for it. It doesn't have durability, you don't need to keep making it over and over again, so there is no resource bleed. And it doesn't really get in the way of playing your game. It's rather like a value-added rather than 'sit at the crafting table and grind out some combines'. It enhances gameplay rather than takes away from it.
Then there's the research system, which has gotten the most negativity. Aspects are not exactly common. You can use up a lot of aspects very quickly, particularly your first time through TC4. Combining aspects to make something is, in fact, a boring grind. However, there is at least some challenge involved in this process by remembering which aspects create which other aspects which are needed in research. Also, research has a random factor, depending on the aspect you research, which can be very frustrating.
However, even there, you've got a logical, if complex, system to use. It requires some forethought and some player skill to be able to optimize this. So for those players who like to tackle a challenge and learn a new skill set, this is highly rewarding. It can, however, be seen as too Challenging for some players.
Now let's talk about wands to bring up a parallel and contrast to the outdated tools. At first, you will only have an iron-capped wand. Then you get more powerful wands that do better things. However, even when you've got your uber-tier wand, your basic iron-capped wand is still useful in making things in your Arcane Workbench. It can still store a small amount of essence, which can be used to perform useful tasks.
Furthermore, it can just sit in your Arcane Workbench most of the time and not take up any other inventory, and your arcane workbench will always have a wand in it which can be used to make things. And when it gets low, you can go recharge it normally. It might not be your first tool of choice, but it is still valuable even when you have higher tiers of wands.
Not to beat on a dead horse or to commit a 'Godwin', but I suppose it is inevitable that I bring up GregTech in this discussion as a contrast.
Many people find GregTech to be a very long, boring grind. It doesn't require a lot of skill on the part of the player to play GregTech, it just takes forever with a bunch of sub-combines and progressively rarer materials as you progress in tech tiers. Finding rare materials does not impart a challenge to the player's skills, it just requires a time sink to be able to find the bloody bastard. This, I believe, is why GregTech has encountered such hostility... not just the difficulty level, which is actually not all that high once you break it down... but the boring grind involved with the mod before you are allowed to do anything. Many people seem to feel that the reward given for the challenge is not compensatory. Also, the developer seems to have mistaken the word 'reward' for 'stuff', which is generally not the case. It doesn't matter to me, at least not after the very early game stages, if I can double, triple, or quadruple my ores. What matters most to me is the enjoyment I get out of progressing through the mod.
This also ties into the problem with IC2 and dependent mods: machine explosion. Some people see it as a challenge, others see it as punitive. Some would point out 'well, what do you think would happen if you stick your cell phone straight into a wall socket'. Unfortunately, what actually happens in that case is not an explosion, the cell phone shorts out and ceases to function. It might catch on fire, but that's about it. It does not destroy everything in a three meter radius of itself. Large machines in the actual industry have circuit breakers and fuses to prevent just such a problem, that industrial machines do explode because they don't have such safeguards is, again, breaking the verisimilitude which they are attempting to introduce, in the name of 'challenge'.
So, why don't we share our ideas on challenge and reward and have some friendly debate on these topics and how the mods fit in here.
