Definition of "difficult"

[Sephrik]

Hey guys, I've just recent put together a modpack with 90 different mods, and I started thinking..what mods out there would make the game more difficult, and what do other people consider "difficult" anyway?

So my questions to you guys are these:

• What do you consider "difficulty" in Minecraft, and of that, how would you define levels of difficulty?
• Out of every mod out there, what mods would be able to make Minecraft more difficult?

 

[bsb23]

Terrafirmacraft, good luck making a pack out of it though. It can be done, people are working on it but it is very very difficult to do apparently.

 

[Dravarden]

I don't find stuff in minecraft difficult, just tedious, like wither skulls, endgame recipes...

difficult? survive without enchanted armor. Like with a jetpack, a solar helmet, longfall boots... you should be able to combine a jetpack with a lappack with a diamond chestplate or something...

 

[noskk]

yep, difficult is when you are solo-ing enderdragon with iron/stone swords + leather/no armors..

or collecting the sheldonite ores of GregTech in hard mode without pumpkin helmet and electric jetpack/jetpack..

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Remember the difference between difficult and tedious.
If any of the mechanics become tedious, make sure you have a way to automate it.

Tedious is collecting wither skulls, or making 512 solar panels for your HV array.
Difficult is fighting the wither or building the advanced hybrid solar.
(High end gregtech falls into tedious, as you're constantly grinding iridium, low end is challenging with massive machines and harder recipes)

 

[Democretes]

Everything becomes tedious after a while. How quickly depends on the person. Even a challenge like the Ender Dragon or the Wither becomes tedious if you've done it so many times. It especially becomes tedious when you have end game armor such as the gravisuit. There's a fine line between tedious and difficult. Difficult is something that you don't do often, so when you approach it, it appears to you as a challenge. Tedious is something your forced to do over and over again every game so it hardly seems like fin anymore.

 

[Mero]

*disclaimer: I will be making some gross exaggerations

Difficult does not mean requiring diamonds to be included in every recipe.
Difficult does not mean requiring 3 real life hours for something to process in a machine and require you to do this a couple of dozen times just to be able to make a part of 1/9th of an item.
Difficult does not mean requiring a stack of a super ultra mega rare item that only spawns 1 block per chunk and never closer than 16 chunks from any other piece and can only be mined with 1 specific tool, any other way of obtaining it will destroy it.

As stated above, Tediousness does not make something difficult. Tedious tasks just make you want to go play a different game.

So, what would I consider difficult in Minecraft?

I would consider requiring a "DragonStar" to be needed as a catalyst for many end game processes, much like the minium stone is used.

What is a "DragonStar"?
Well, I'm glad you asked.

A "DragonStar" is created by killing the End Dragon and then withing 5 seconds of killing the dragon killing the Wither within 10 blocks of the same spot you killed the Dragon. Both killing blows must be caused by the player. No withering of the dragon from a wither skull.
This causes the Nether Star to be fused with the Dragon Egg as it is created.
Of course this would also require the ability to spawn more dragons.

That would be "Hard". Killing 2 bosses at virtually the same time and in the same spot.

 

[Democretes]

A "DragonStar" is created by killing the End Dragon and then withing 5 seconds of killing the dragon killing the Wither within 10 blocks of the same spot you killed the Dragon. Both killing blows must be caused by the player. No withering of the dragon from a wither skull.
This causes the Nether Star to be fused with the Dragon Egg as it is created.
Of course this would also require the ability to spawn more dragons.

That would be "Hard". Killing 2 bosses at virtually the same time and in the same spot.

"Hard" would be a weak description. *Language* ridiculous is slightly closer.

 

[WTFFFS]

Hecates on hard difficulty when you don't wear armor other than for it's other effects is "difficult" 2 hits and you are dead from an invisible mob that moves fast..........
The tedious thing I find fun, time is a resource same as any other and in a sandbox game like Minecraft it is the most valuable resource, setting up systems to automate tasks that are tedious to do manually so you can bugger off and do something else is imo the essence of difficulty in a highly modified Minecraft (even in vanilla to a certain extent), you may have to perform the tedious method until you have the resources to automate it but once you have them working out a system to do it for you is fun. Searching for rare resources or coming up with creative ways to otherwise collect them is also to me fun.

 

[Mero]

Hecates on hard difficulty when you don't wear armor other than for it's other effects is "difficult" 2 hits and you are dead from an invisible mob that moves fast..........
The tedious thing I find fun, time is a resource same as any other and in a sandbox game like Minecraft it is the most valuable resource, setting up systems to automate tasks that are tedious to do manually so you can bugger off and do something else is imo the essence of difficulty in a highly modified Minecraft (even in vanilla to a certain extent), you may have to perform the tedious method until you have the resources to automate it but once you have them working out a system to do it for you is fun. Searching for rare resources or coming up with creative ways to otherwise collect them is also to me fun.

There is nothing wrong with tedium. If you enjoy doing tedious tasks thats fine.
Enjoying tedium has nothing to do with this thread though.

Tedium does not make something difficult.
Killing 10,000 skeletons with your bare hands is tedious. It isn't difficult though. I'll go out on limb here and say that everybody who plays minecraft has at one point killed a mob without a weapon.
It's not a difficult task and doing it over and over won't make it difficult.

 

[wolfpax181]

Mero, have my internet babies.

Time required can make something impossible, but time itself is not difficulty. I'm going to pick on GregTech some, because it sometimes grasps that and sometimes flails wildly about with tedium. Adding diamonds into the macerator recipe doesn't make it more challenging to make, it just makes it take more time since you don't have to do anything new, you can just branch mine endlessly to reach the same result you'd have without diamonds being required. Adding steel as a requirement to the mining drill does make it more challenging, mainly due to Railcraft's requirement of magma cream to make the furnace. Now you actually have to do something more risky than just endlessly mining to get resources in the overworld.

Two things that add more time required for early stuff, but do so in wildly different ways, but they perfectly illustrate the right and wrong way to add difficulty. If you want to make your mod pack more difficult, add risk which gives us rewards, please don't just add time sinks for the sake of trying to slow down the progression to the good stuff.

 

[Hydra]

Mero, have my internet babies.

Time required can make something impossible, but time itself is not difficulty. I'm going to pick on GregTech some, because it sometimes grasps that and sometimes flails wildly about with tedium. Adding diamonds into the macerator recipe doesn't make it more challenging to make, it just makes it take more time since you don't have to do anything new, you can just branch mine endlessly to reach the same result you'd have without diamonds being required. Adding steel as a requirement to the mining drill does make it more challenging, mainly due to Railcraft's requirement of magma cream to make the furnace. Now you actually have to do something more risky than just endlessly mining to get resources in the overworld.

A very good point you make there, and this is also why I dislike GregTech so much. Ofcourse in SP you can remove it and etc., that's not the point. I'm talking about servers and the effect it has there. What annoys me that, unlike all the good quality mods in the pack, it stands out as a sore thumb gameplay-wise. BC, IC, Forestry etc. make the game much more interesting because they give you more options. More stuff to do = more gameplay. Greg shows he simply does NOT understand game design and instead of making more stuff, he makes "the same but takes longer to get". That isn't gameplay, it's like filling a balloon with more air and pretend it's 'more fun' simply because it took you longer to inflate.

As an example: iridium. My quarries have no quarried 5x6 = 30 chunks. Iridium ore found? 3. Why? What's the point? This will only lead people to build 10 quarries in separate mystcraft realms just for the iridium. Stuff that doesn't require you to get involved in the game at all, those quarries will just run while people go to sleep thanks to them keeping the chunks they're on loaded. Same goes for rubies: you 'somehow' need them for fusion reactors. The amount you need is completely rediculous and again just leads to people simply making craptons of mystcraft ages (or if disabled just turning the landscape into one big crater with a few floating bases). It just makes it tedious to get stuff and when stuff gets tedious people just stop playing while their quarries do the work. You'd end up with a whole server only logging in once a day for 5 minutes to check up on the status of their quarries.

This is why I personally (and it's just my opinion) think GregTech doesn't have any place in the packs except in a "I'm a masochist with too much freem time"-pack.

And to add insult to injury: although Greg claims some changes are made because he thinks some stuff is 'too easy' he makes exploiting endless Nether lava an even better option with his own geothermal generator that generates even more EU per bucket. Like as if standard IC2 geothermals aren't already too powerful (why bother with a basic nuclear plant if you get the same power from 6 geothermals).

 

[noskk]

I have no problem with GT-iridium, why do you need to quarry it LOL, just go to the end and find some sheldonite ores, 23 ores = 3 iridium plates if you know what to do. Ofc players like to put quarry in mystcraft age and see the next day what they get there.
Or you can do the rich slag thingie, GT author said he wouldn't fix it.

Do you know why the Fusion Reactor is that expensive? Because after you make Fusion Reactor and a good automatic Deuterium/Tritium System you basically don't need any other power system, why? Because you can convert that bazillion amount of EU to MJ. Hint: IDSU+Electrical Engines+Upgrades.

Nether lava will run dry soon (as in you need to move it to other place) if you use it to feed default matter fabricator and most of his hungry machines, you need to do better thing like over-engineered windmill, breeder/producer nuclear reactors or perhaps tons of netherracks/magma crucible/thermal generator.

In conclusion, default GT is pretty easy if you know what to do. Though you need a lot of grinding if you want to make your first fusion reactor.

 

[DanteGalileo]

Difficult and tedious are pretty much interchangeable in today's landscape. Just do hardcore mode and work inside during the day and outside at night. Also, no quantum or nano armor.

 

[wolfpax181]

I included part of what I think GT is doing right for the sake of trying to not help it along into another GT bashing thread, we already have more than enough of those.

The biggest problem mod authors face when they're trying to give us a challenge with their mod is that the game itself is fundamentally flawed. Minecraft is already skewed towards time being used as a challenge, you can trivialize anything with enough time and resources. I don't envy mod authors and trying to find real difficulty when the base mechanics of the game are telling them to go for the veneer of difficulty by making everything take forever.

 

[Hydra]

In conclusion, default GT is pretty easy if you know what to do. Though you need a lot of grinding if you want to make your first fusion reactor.

That's the whole point. He doesn't make stuff difficult. He just makes stuff take longer.

 

[noskk]

That's the whole point. He doesn't make stuff difficult. He just makes stuff take longer.

Yeah it's true, IMO you will feel it takes longer = tedious, if you don't know how to do it correctly. If you see his config you won't see any difficult tags you only see expensive tag because it's not harder, only more expensive. Like the matter fabricator takes 100 times the vanilla IC2, I think it's fine; because with vanilla IC2 mass fab you can just pump lava from nether and forget it to get bazillion amount of uu-matter.