FTB - It´s to easy, how to make it hard?

[Celestialphoenix]

Now I've had time to think about it a little more;

Remove all teleportation options (server commands/beds/tesseracts/enderchests/tele pipes/myst books ect)
-Optional leaving the IC2 teleporter and AE quantum tunnel. (both are expensive to setup and require a lot of power)

This means building infrastructure and piping networks instead of the luxury of teleporting​

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Remove Minimap, waypoints, f3 screen co-ordinates and all the other GPS type things. (so only In-Game mechanics for navigation Eg ender eye/compass)

This makes the world feel a lot bigger, and need your own skills to avoid getting lost.​

Seal in the spawn building- the only way out is to drink a shot of molten ender (which teleports you to a random location across the world)

Remember as beds are removed- each time you die you take the ender shot and end up somewhere random.​

This'll sort you out for a road/rail network across the server. Looks at Dire's/CPW's train stuff- that stuffs friggin EPIC and no-one builds it simple because there's no in-game need other than it looks cool.​

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The final problem being that everythings on your doorstep. You can plop down anywhere in the world and have all you need. (with the exception of bauxite needing forests)- you should look for something like better ore distribution- so different ores only spawn in different biomes, you'll need several bases and there's real value in setting quarries in the right position instead of just sinking them anywhere.

You could probably do it with mineral bees- diamond below y16, bauxite in forest, emerald in a village, valuable in the End ect​

 

[YX33A]

Now I've had time to think about it a little more;

Remove all teleportation options (server commands/beds/tesseracts/enderchests/tele pipes/myst books ect)
-Optional leaving the IC2 teleporter and AE quantum tunnel. (both are expensive to setup and require a lot of power)

This means building infrastructure and piping networks instead of the luxury of teleporting​

Remove Minimap, waypoints, f3 screen co-ordinates and all the other GPS type things. (so only In-Game mechanics for navigation Eg ender eye/compass)

This makes the world feel a lot bigger, and need your own skills to avoid getting lost.​

Seal in the spawn building- the only way out is to drink a shot of molten ender (which teleports you to a random location across the world)

Remember as beds are removed- each time you die you take the ender shot and end up somewhere random.​

This'll sort you out for a road/rail network across the server. Looks at Dire's/CPW's train stuff- that stuffs friggin EPIC and no-one builds it simple because there's no in-game need other than it looks cool.​

The final problem being that everythings on your doorstep. You can plop down anywhere in the world and have all you need. (with the exception of bauxite needing forests)- you should look for something like better ore distribution- so different ores only spawn in different biomes, you'll need several bases and there's real value in setting quarries in the right position instead of just sinking them anywhere.

You could probably do it with mineral bees- diamond below y16, bauxite in forest, emerald in a village, valuable in the End ect​

I can agree with a lot of that. Sounds pretty bitch'n in some ways... Others? Not so much. No beds means you always head back to spawn. Not a issue in of itself until you want to access your old stuff from your old base. The issue is that you drink Destabilized Ender(through I straw I assume?) and that'll chuck you really far in pretty much any direction. Again, not a issue, but you're disabling Minimaps, waypoints, and other navigation aids as well. So any time you die, you have to basically start from scratch, unless you have a ton of minecart tracks going pretty much everywhere...
So y'know that badass Minecart routing system? That can get you anywhere you want in your world, if designed correctly? Not exactly a vanity build now... Which again, isn't a massive issue... Assuming you like building, anyway. Building massive things for no reason other then "if I don't I'm basically fucked if I die" is a hell of a lot less enjoyable then "WHY THE FUCK NOT?!" in my experience.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

I can agree with a lot of that. Sounds pretty bitch'n in some ways... Others? Not so much. No beds means you always head back to spawn. Not a issue in of itself until you want to access your old stuff from your old base. The issue is that you drink Destabilized Ender(through I straw I assume?) and that'll chuck you really far in pretty much any direction. Again, not a issue, but you're disabling Minimaps, waypoints, and other navigation aids as well. So any time you die, you have to basically start from scratch, unless you have a ton of minecart tracks going pretty much everywhere...
So y'know that badass Minecart routing system? That can get you anywhere you want in your world, if designed correctly? Not exactly a vanity build now... Which again, isn't a massive issue... Assuming you like building, anyway. Building massive things for no reason other then "if I don't I'm basically fucked if I die" is a hell of a lot less enjoyable then "WHY THE FUCK NOT?!" in my experience.

I said that because I've honestly played like that- the first death took about 5 hours to recover from, once the world had been explored a little and I'd setup roads/landmarks and caches of tools/food the time went down to less than an hour. My last death took about 5 min to work out my location and less than 25 to get back to base.

The first times you'll start from scratch, after that you find tools/help left from previous deaths. Once you have a compass you can make arrows pointing towards spawn, then find your way back without iron. Each time you die, you make progress exploring/developing the world, and you often come back with a bit of extra loot from dungeons/strongholds.

It does take a bit of getting used to- you have to plan ahead to help with the next recovery, and set up bases/shelters as you go.

The destabilised ender is configurable anyway- so you can have 200 or 90,000 blocks (I used 3000)- just remember a pair of nether portals will cut the distance by 8 times, and end portal will take you back to the spawn. (set it outside the spawn building).

Slightly cheating, but a 3rd party render of the server (like Dynmap), but without tracking player positions is a fairly neat way to enter this kind of gameplay. You wont appear on it (so no GPS), but you'll recognise biomes/landmarks and find a rough position that way...​

Edit- as for building actual rail/road networks- a grid based design around the spawn area is quite effective, say a minor road (clear path+torches, dirt bridges ect) every 512 blocks, and a main road (stone/brownstone ect) every 1024 or 1536 blocks. Its not an exact science but anywhere you spawn- you can walk in a straight line, find a road and therefore a way home.
-the f7 chunk grid is quite useful for counting distance. Its not a GPS so I guess its ok

 

[Mero]

The key is to learn not to die.
Spending a few worlds playing on Hardcore and setting tasks to do, such as defeating the dragon, helps a lot in learning not to die.

After hardcore came out and I tried the challenges put up on the forums back then, I learned not to be careless and ignore death.
There should be no reason to die unless you put yourself in situations that will get you killed, such as attacking a group of mobs or not fighting safely when caving and whatnot.

And really, there is no reason you cannot have a compass made before you ever encounter a mob in the first place.

 

[Shakie666]

To be honest, I don't think that hardcore mode is a very good 'hard' mode. It only forces you to be more careful. Once you have at least iron armour there's little you need to worry about; once you get MPS armour there's nothing to worry about.

A good way to give yourself hardmode would be to remove all tech mods. That means no IC2, BC, TE... (though you may want to keep factorization, since its kinda underused IMO). One of these days i'll have to find time to play the magicfarm pack, except with the tech mods removed and factorization installed.

 

[Hoff]

The suggestions that presume under using a different pack or removing specific types of mods are just... wrong. The OP wanted the same game he's playing to be harder. You're suggestions make vanilla minecraft harder, sure, but that's not what he's looking for. He's looking for the type of mods included in the FTB pack to be harder. At least that's what I would assume. If I wanted a game that was harder to survive then I'd be looking for what's being suggested but not if I'm looking for a tech pack to be harder.

 

[YX33A]

`once you get MPS armour there's nothing to worry about.
A good way to give yourself hardmode would be to remove all tech mods. That means no IC2, BC, TE... (though you may want to keep factorization, since its kinda underused IMO). One of these days i'll have to find time to play the magicfarm pack, except with the tech mods removed and factorization installed.

Have fun with the dying from overheating.

 

[Shakie666]

Have fun with the dying from overheating.

No offence, but you'd have to be an complete idiot to let yourself die from overheating. Slap on a bunch of heat shielding and the cooling thing (can't remember what its called, it goes on the torso piece) and you're golden. Even if you do overheat, you don't die immediately. You have more than enough time to fly out of that lava pool and cool off. Even spamming the railgun doesn't fill it up that quickly. Seriously, I can't understand how someone could die from overheating.

If you want to be really ultra safe you could just wear quantum/gravichestplate.

 

[Enigmius1]

No offence, but you'd have to be an complete idiot to let yourself die from overheating. Slap on a bunch of heat shielding and the cooling thing (can't remember what its called, it goes on the torso piece) and you're golden. Even if you do overheat, you don't die immediately. You have more than enough time to fly out of that lava pool and cool off. Even spamming the railgun doesn't fill it up that quickly. Seriously, I can't understand how someone could die from overheating.

If you want to be really ultra safe you could just wear quantum/gravichestplate.

If you start taking damage from overheating in the Nether (one of the easiest places to overheat) you're pretty much done for unless you can make it back to the overworld (and you don't have a lot of time to do so). And I'm not even talking about swimming in lava, I'm talking about leaving your kinetic generator on even with maxed plating and the cooling system on the chest. The smart option on the surface is to just leave the kinetic generator off in the Nether, but given the unfortunate way energy scales with regards to charging the suit, turning off on-board charging options just seems wonky.

More to the main topic, I'm reading the suggestions and ideas and it's very clear that there are as many notions of "challenge" as there are people playing the game. Minecraft is not a combat game for me and there's nothing I've ever seen from any mod that changes that. You can add all the monsters with all the health that know exactly where you are at all times and exactly how to get to you and I'm going to call it stupid before I call it challenging because there's no engaging combat system supporting it. It's still little voxel players spamming little voxel weapons at little (or not so little) voxel mobs with no real encounter tuning or diversity to make it truly entertaining. Smart players learn not to try to charge skellies from 20m out, new players (or not so smart ones) explode with a face full of arrows. You learn that aggression and proper weapons kill creepers, not panicked assaults with mining picks. Every mob in the game is a one trick pony and once you know the trick the only way the game can kill you with monsters is by crowd spawning them on top of you. When survival (or not) is determined by the luck of the spawn, it's not challenge. It's numbers.

I've noticed with Minecraft and particularly modded Minecraft, there are a lot of people who see mods bringing the game close to something from another genre so they want to treat it like it's one of those games. Minecraft with DivineRPG is not Skyrim or WoW. Not even close. I saw a forum post a while back from some guy expressing concern that the admins of the server he played on had disabled certain items that he felt were important because he "plays a wizard." There's nothing wrong with that...sandbox being a sandbox and all...but at some point a person has to take a step back and ask if they're playing the game augmented by their own imagination, or if they're playing in their imagination and expecting the game to conform to it. The former option is entirely reasonable. The latter leads to people unable to enjoy themselves.

 

[Shakie666]

snip

You overheat from being in the nether? I don't. The only time I overheat is when i'm in lava or jump too much (or the railgun, but I don't using it). The heat produced by my kinetic generator doesn't even come close to the amount of cooling provided by the cooling system.

 

[SatanicSanta]

The suggestions that presume under using a different pack or removing specific types of mods are just... wrong. The OP wanted the same game he's playing to be harder. You're suggestions make vanilla minecraft harder, sure, but that's not what he's looking for. He's looking for the type of mods included in the FTB pack to be harder. At least that's what I would assume. If I wanted a game that was harder to survive then I'd be looking for what's being suggested but not if I'm looking for a tech pack to be harder.

The thing is though, FTB isn't really "hard". It's not really about being hard, unless OP's playing a challenge map.

 

[Larmonade]

Create a mystcraft age with instability, and move your entire base of operations there?

 

[Enigmius1]

You overheat from being in the nether? I don't. The only time I overheat is when i'm in lava or jump too much (or the railgun, but I don't using it). The heat produced by my kinetic generator doesn't even come close to the amount of cooling provided by the cooling system.

It's possible you aren't using as many other attachments/components as I am. It's not like there's a skill component to it. My suit overheats in the nether sometimes, indicated by a temperature of ~640, flames, and damage. I have four maxed heat sink plates, the chest cooling system, and most recently the water bucket (maxed capacity) for a little breathing room when the temperature sneaks up on me.

 

[Shakie666]

It's possible you aren't using as many other attachments/components as I am. It's not like there's a skill component to it. My suit overheats in the nether sometimes, indicated by a temperature of ~640, flames, and damage. I have four maxed heat sink plates, the chest cooling system, and most recently the water bucket (maxed capacity) for a little breathing room when the temperature sneaks up on me.

I know there's no skill involved. I was just saying I can't ever recall taking any heat at all from just being in the nether. In fact, i'm sure I haven't. I'm also using virtually all the attachments on the armour, but I think my power tool only has a railgun and a plasma cannon. Maybe its the power tool thats causing it?

 

[Hoff]

The thing is though, FTB isn't really "hard". It's not really about being hard, unless OP's playing a challenge map.

That depends on what is hard to someone. For some modded minecraft is about building complex "machines" or automation, for some it's the challenge of resource hoarding, for some it's the challenge of survival, and so on and so on.

There are those that don't grasp(Or choose to ignore) the programming of mob AI. They may find massive HP mobs hard. There are those that can't prioritize mob fighting when fighting hordes of mobs. There are those that cannot automate things easily. There are those... I could keep going on but my anime is calling my name so I'll wrap it up.

Different strokes for different folks.

 

[SatanicSanta]

That depends on what is hard to someone. For some modded minecraft is about building complex "machines" or automation, for some it's the challenge of resource hoarding, for some it's the challenge of survival, and so on and so on.

There are those that don't grasp(Or choose to ignore) the programming of mob AI. They may find massive HP mobs hard. There are those that can't prioritize mob fighting when fighting hordes of mobs. There are those that cannot automate things easily. There are those... I could keep going on but my anime is calling my name so I'll wrap it up.

Different strokes for different folks.

I was more talking about the overall "goal" of FTB. I don't think it was ever to be very hard, it was to have fun. Yes, it is possible to make it hard. But people need to remember that hard ≠ fun. It's often the opposite if I'm honest.

 

[Hoff]

I was more talking about the overall "goal" of FTB. I don't think it was ever to be very hard, it was to have fun. Yes, it is possible to make it hard. But people need to remember that hard ≠ fun. It's often the opposite if I'm honest.

Ahh I disagree. Fun is defined as variable as the number of emotions humans have. Hell more than that. There are many that find stress fun. Many that find pain fun. Many that find relaxation fun. It's not really a good idea to define fun as anything other than the feeling of enjoyment someone gets from some activity.

 

[SatanicSanta]

Ahh I disagree. Fun is defined as variable as the number of emotions humans have. Hell more than that. There are many that find stress fun. Many that find pain fun. Many that find relaxation fun. It's not really a good idea to define fun as anything other than the feeling of enjoyment someone gets from some activity.

What I was trying to say is that, it seems the majority of people do not enjoy uber hard things.

 

[Hoff]

What I was trying to say is that, it seems the majority of people do not enjoy uber hard things.

Oh I totally agree. It's just that if people actually knew what they wanted(Or at least were honest with themselves about it) there wouldn't be a real consensus of fun. Some may flock to certain ideas but they will of course be taken differently.

I'm kinda just being a hardass here as I don't want to group people in "genres", but oh well.

 

[SatanicSanta]

Oh I totally agree. It's just that if people actually knew what they wanted(Or at least were honest with themselves about it) there wouldn't be a real consensus of fun. Some may flock to certain ideas but they will of course be taken differently.

I'm kinda just being a hardass here as I don't want to group people in "genres", but oh well.

Often times this is because of streamers and Youtubers. Don't get me wrong, I love streams, and also occasionally make lets plays, but they are often treated as tutorials on how to do things in modpacks. I remember when I first really started playing modded (I had played with a few before, but never a large pack), back in 1.2.5 when the Yogs had their Tekkit series, EVERYONE made the same things as them.