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Viper-7

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Modded Minecraft certainly provides a unique flavor of batshit insane. FlowerChild and Better Than Dances With Wolves, Sengir and the Tekkit bomb, Where On Earth Is Eloraam Sandiego? and now GregoriousT and mDiyo in an epic battle to decide the fate of all tree punchers in the Holy Nerf War of 2013. Modded Minecraft is Serious Business, kids.

My position on the matter is fairly simple, though. I've booted GregTech out of every modpack I've ever played for one simple reason: Minecraft is not an MMO. Swamping the game in a metric ton of pointless grinding does not a good mod make. Dicking around with other people's work - with or without their consent, it's a moot point - and calling it "balance nerfs" sealed the deal for me a long time ago; this Tinker nuke is just the latest entry on a long list of events that should cue anyone with half a brain in on the fact that Greg does not give a shit about anyone but himself. Fair enough; I can do without his petulant behavior and erratic designs, and rumor has it I'm not the only one.

I'm sure there's much more foaming at the mouth to be had in response to this blurb; if you feel like taking a potshot or two at yours truly, take a step back first and ask yourself: "Who died and made Greg God?"


I've said my piece against everything there, no need to repeat myself, but I had to post to give props for that opener. Nice work :p
 

lolpierandom

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The point is not so much about balance, but about alternative playstiles. Actually greg didnt change most recipies. He did change a few, because they ultimately break the gameplay (most notably the forestry-recipe for bronze, which did in fact change a IC2-Recipe in the first place, he just changed it back).


This is objectively wrong. Forestry and IC2 have never been related- forestry bronze =/= IC2 bronze. In the really old FTB Beta pack pre-GT nerf, both recipes existed; obviously, people used the 3+1 = 4 recipe from Forestry. Forestry is not obligated to balance around IC2, because Forestry has no reason to balance around IC2. Hell, IC2 has less of a claim on bronze if anything, considering all IC2 uses bronze for is Mixed Metal Ingots, whereas Sengir uses (or at least used to, considering that bronze is much lesser used now with multiblock farms) bronze for a large portion of its mod.
 

FlakAttack

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Jul 29, 2019
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Not only are you being selfish by trying to block or revert changes from other modders, not only are you showing everyone how huge your ego really is thinking you can narrow the generous terms Mojang have allowed, to protect your "precious" work, you're even totally in the wrong in a legal sense.
So what you are saying is, if I remove some of GregTech's changes for a personal pack, that's ok? Because previously you stated the exact opposite:
Why should he provide a config option? the blocks he provides truly are *his*, it's one of the only areas where ownership actually matters in this case. If he wants to say you can't play with my toys without jumping through hoops, then you either jump through hoops or you do without. As for him making other mods harder, he's left that choice up to you! He won't nerf a thing, wont mess with your bronze, wont touch your planks, and wont even think about making it hard for you to get rubber - just dont install his mod!

So GregTech can change all my other mods, but if I don't like it, my only option is to not install it? Your opinion is contradictory.
 

Eunomiac

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I know, I know, we're running around in circles, but it's only for a few more hours. As for the part I'm playing in these reruns, I point to this photo of me---it accurately captures my likeness, and should explain everything:

tumblr_mme54mwfdq1r8rauqo1_500.png

... "Who died and made Greg God?"
I've booted GregTech out of every modpack I've ever played ...
Holy internal contradiction, Batman! As you've just pointed out, GregTech is an optional add-on. It's meant only for those people who want the added difficulty GregTech offers, and beyond even that, it's highly configurable to players' individual tastes. It's being forced on no one. GregTech is the only meta-mod out there that's actively meeting the needs of a very large group of players, and it's doing quite well by them. As for the rest of us, GregTech is very clear about its mandate, so it's not as if anyone's being tricked into playing Greg's game. And if Greg's "playing God" merely because he's tweaking mods, then every modder is guilty of the same by tweaking Minecraft, and that's silly.

First paragraph aside (which, by the way, was awesome), the rest of your post is a mix of self-serving wordplay and outright misrepresentation (slightly less awesome):
  • "Minecraft is not an MMO?" For many players, that's exactly what it is, and this is where many of GregTech's biggest fans will be found. While "pointless grinding" is an apt description of SSP GregTech (at least in my opinion), that same grinding in SMP becomes a motive to join forces in what can otherwise be a solitary game. By all but requiring teamwork to get things done, GregTech appeals to a lot of multiplayers (did I just invent a word?).
  • "Dicking around with other people's work"? You've just described every modder ever. The only difference between GregTech and other mods (since you've declared consent to be a moot point), is that other mods change vanilla, while GregTech changes mods. Distinguishing them on that basis alone is arbitrary and more than a little hypocritical.
  • "calling it 'balance nerfs' sealed the deal"? This baffles me, because "balance nerf" is no put-down. To 'nerf' something is to weaken its impact. A 'balance nerf' is to nerf something in pursuit of a chosen standard of balance. GregTech has clearly defined for itself and its fans a standard of game balance that can charitably be called "difficult". The phrase "balance nerf" is an entirely accurate, entirely fair, and entirely benign description of exactly what people expect GregTech to do.
Reading between the hyperbole, I agree with your stance on the TC debacle. That's just flatly inexcusable, and I haven't read a single post in this 50+ thread that's argued otherwise. Sure, I've had to hold back on responding to more than a few attempts at moral equivocation, if only because I know JadedCat is watching this thread and I'm holding out hope of one day getting her to help me breed a Jaded Bee, so I have to maintain at least the outward appearance of restrained sanity :)
 

lolpierandom

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  • "Minecraft is not an MMO?" For many players, that's exactly what it is, and this is where many of GregTech's biggest fans will be found. While "pointless grinding" is an apt description of SSP GregTech (at least in my opinion), that same grinding in SMP becomes a motive to join forces in what can otherwise be a solitary game. By all but requiring teamwork to get things done, GregTech appeals to a lot of multiplayers (did I just invent a word?).
You can't really say Minecraft is a massively multiplayer online game. Yes, it has multiplayer, and there are certainly servers that play with many at once- it doesn't provide the same general... I don't know, tone? It's not quite the same. While you certainly interact with a lot of people, it's hardly on the level of a MMO.
 

Hoff

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You can't really say Minecraft is a massively multiplayer online game. Yes, it has multiplayer, and there are certainly servers that play with many at once- it doesn't provide the same general... I don't know, tone? It's not quite the same. While you certainly interact with a lot of people, it's hardly on the level of a MMO.

Actually with GT it works just like one. Exactly tiered progression. Few workarounds and only long hours of work pay off.
 
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cpzombie

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i hope that the 1.5.2 ultimate pack or the 1.6 ultimate pack does NOT have gregtech, i just dont like it for one thing, all the nerfs make IC2 barely any fun to start out on. i REALLY hope it has TC instead of gregtech.
 

Flipz

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Jul 29, 2019
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I have so much respect for modders and what you freely give to all of us, that it honestly pains me when I find myself in disagreement. (And, just to be clear, I am no fan of Greg.) I also apologize for the wall of text, but I really wanted to be thorough in laying out my case. I'll try to use eye-catching headlines ;)

Meta-Mods Like GregTech Are FTB's Essential "Two-State Solution" to "Builders" vs. "Gamers"
*Awesome eye-opening explanation of many things*

To Accomplish Their Goals, Meta-Mods Require Nigh-Orwellian Control Over the Game, Including Other Mods
*further awesome eye-opening explanation of even more things*

You, sir, remind me of Kant and Hegel rolled into one. (To those unfamiliar with these two philosophers: yes, that is a compliment. ;) )

Modded Minecraft certainly provides a unique flavor of batshit insane. FlowerChild and Better Than Dances With Wolves, Sengir and the Tekkit bomb, Where On Earth Is Eloraam Sandiego? and now GregoriousT and mDiyo in an epic battle to decide the fate of all tree punchers in the Holy Nerf War of 2013. Modded Minecraft is Serious Business, kids.

Even though I disagree with pretty much everything else you've said, I agree with the sentiment of this paragraph, and will likely quote your first line in my sig. :p

*xkcd reference*

*more awesomeness*

...how is it that the two of us have never spoken (well, "typed at each other") before? Regardless, you are a singularly insightful individual.

That said, I do disagree with you at one point:
Holy internal contradiction, Batman! As you've just pointed out, GregTech is an optional add-on. It's meant only for those people who want the added difficulty GregTech offers, and beyond even that, it's highly configurable to players' individual tastes. It's being forced on no one. GregTech is the only meta-mod out there that's actively meeting the needs of a very large group of players, and it's doing quite well by them. As for the rest of us, GregTech is very clear about its mandate, so it's not as if anyone's being tricked into playing Greg's game. And if Greg's "playing God" merely because he's tweaking mods, then every modder is guilty of the same by tweaking Minecraft, and that's silly.

The vast majority of people who have tried (and failed!) to find an Ultimate server without GregTech will disagree. It's unfortunate but true that there is a far lesser degree of freedom where multiplayer is involved; the average multiplayer has (had?) to essentially choose between dealing with GregTech or else miss out on any and all mods that weren't included in Direwolf20. Granted, a certain lack of freedom is inherent in some degree to any multiplayer experience, but I believe that this is one of the bigger reasons why GregTech has been such an issue--to use your terminology, the gamers were more catered to in the multiplayer field than the builders.
 
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Eunomiac

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You, sir, remind me of Kant and Hegel rolled into one.
Kant? You dare compare me to that vacuous sophist? I ... I ... I ... *sputter* ;)
Seriously though, that's one of the nicest compliments I've received, thank you :) When my head inflates like a balloon, know that it was your fault.
Since the rest of your post makes me blush, and since blushing is unmanly, I'll just cut to the part where we disagree:

The vast majority of people who have tried (and failed!) to find an Ultimate server without GregTech will disagree. It's unfortunate but true that there is a far lesser degree of freedom where multiplayer is involved; the average multiplayer has (had?) to essentially choose between dealing with GregTech or else miss out on any and all mods that weren't included in Direwolf20. Granted, a certain lack of freedom is inherent in some degree to any multiplayer experience, but I believe that this is one of the bigger reasons why GregTech has been such an issue--to use your terminology, the gamers were more catered to in the multiplayer field than the builders.


What?! You're utterly, unforgivably, irredeemably ... uh ... right. Come to think of it, I was caught by this myself on my last server. Fortunately, though, I was entirely focused on magic, trees and bees (got all of 'em but ONE, JadedCat ... :(). So I barely noticed GregTech and just traded Alvearies and Balsa-Sequoia-Lime-Chestnut hybrids for my tech. Come to think of it, I don't think I used a single piece of Iridium or more than a quarter-stack of UU-Matter (for Mycelium), and never built a single Machine Casing. (Ruby Bees gave me mountains of Ruby Dust, though; I enraged gaggles of fusion engineers by using Ruby Blocks as decoration :cool: )

Anyways, we don't really disagree, we're just looking at "optional" differently. From the perspective of the end-user trying to find a 1.4 FTB server to play on, GregTech most certainly wouldn't have felt like an option. But, in the context of our debate---whether Greg was playing God by forcing his vision of Minecraft on us all---the fact that a third party (FTB) distributed GregTech in a way that caused it to be less-than-optional doesn't really count. GregTech was always optional; FTB decided to take the option.

This is no longer an issue, thankfully, with the new packs. If anything, I expect to see GregTech's influence start to wane. Plenty of GT fans will miss the mods he cut from Unhinged more than they'll miss GregTech, and will make the switch to Unleashed. (For me, though, Translocators made the choice for me: Direwolf20. I was all aboard Unleashed, until I noticed DW20 is the only one with Translocators.)
 
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BobertThe3rd

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...

tumblr_mme54mwfdq1r8rauqo1_500.png

... so I have to maintain at least the outward appearance of restrained sanity :)

That comic is so epic ... and so me ... it is why I generally avoid these crazy forums. Also sanity is over-rated, come to the insane side, we have cookies (and cake, and pie, and whatever else your sweet tooth longs for).

I any case, back to the point of whomever said that Minecraft is an MMO: It doesn't fit the definition of an MMO, as it is not MASSIVELY multiplayer, no server can or would want to play host to the number of players that it would require to be considered MASSIVELY mulitplayer. Even if the server had the resources, due to the fact that everyone starts at the same point and has to build their first house fairly quickly, which takes up real estate (which most servers start establishing rules for), there ends up being a huge conglomerate of people sprawled out around the spawn point, and any new player has to walk miles and miles and miles to get somewhere they can build (last time I played on a public SMP server I ended up being on the fringe of the map), in any case with the number of people a minecraft server can support there are never enough people online for it be considered massively multiplayer, beyond that the interaction between players rarely gets beyond 4 people at a time, and actual builds usually involve at most 2 people, maybe a 3rd if you count the person gathering resources. So that just leaves it at Multiplayer Online, for which there is no defining game attribute (such as grinding, which is very typical of MMOs). I've already made it clear that I hate grinding so I won't go into that again. Still that the leaves the whole argument I keep hearing popping up (well it's your choice to use Gregtech) ... I say it is about as much my choice to play Gregtech as it is to play Minecraft altogether. With many of the other modpacks out there dying by the wayside due to individual modders ceasing support of their mod, FTB has become the only real choice out there (other than maybe Voltz which always end in complete and utter destruction) ... with FTB, the Ultimate pack has been the one to give the most variety in the mods. Sure I could make my own completely custom pack, or I could just remove Gregtech from Ultimate, that isn't too hard, but that all falls by the wayside when I want to play multiplayer, as very few server admins have disabled Gregtech due to the simple reason that it is much easier to just leave it enabled. Or in the case of my own server admin, whom is in shouting distance, wasn't quite aware of the game breaking mechanics of Gregtech (at least for me, and slightly for him too), and by the time we both realized this he had already constructed a base he didn't just want to delete. So long story short, it is a choice to use Gregtech, but more like a choice you've made after being yelled at by your mother that there is only one right choice (if you don't have one of those mothers, imagine a colossal sized dragon with mind-reading abilities, that will burn you to a crisp the second you think about straying from her idealized vision of you).
 
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