I broke AoE...

[Nuclear_Creeper0]

Free iron...

Infinite Emeralds....

The jam guy trades me 2 emeralds for one pLaple-jam, but then he trades 2 emeralds for 5 Plaple-jam. Each set of jam purchased is +8 emeralds.

 

[Cpt_gloval]

Cool. RNG can be good sometimes.

Then you get RNG jerk that refuses to give you an f-ing ender pearl after killing 30 some odd ender men.

 

[Nuclear_Creeper0]

Cool. RNG can be good sometimes.

Then you get RNG jerk that refuses to give you an f-ing ender pearl after killing 30 some odd ender men.

Dude. Get a jam guy like me. And then get a cleric and get free pearls.

 

[MikW]

Jam guys are broken. Sometimes you can sell them their own jam.

 

[Hambeau]

Jam guys are broken. Sometimes you can sell them their own jam.

That's how I get my emeralds

 

[MikW]

That's how I get my emeralds

All the emeralds I've ever gotten since the beginning of the game was from villagers, and most of those are from jam guys.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Honestly, AoE isn't that *difficult*. It's simply tedium. I suspected it to be the case when watching DW20's videos. Compare the amount of 'screen time' doing something potentially dangerous as opposed to screen time in his base doing all the subcombines. It's almost exclusively the latter, isn't it? It doesn't make the game more challenging in the least, it just means you have to use some of the more obscure mods to get things made. But increasing sub-combine lists does not make anything more *difficult* or *challenging*, it just makes it more *boring*.

As with most 'ultimate' or 'hardcore' packs, all it does is make it take longer to get to where you want to go. It doesn't present any fresh or interesting challenges.

 

[Nuclear_Creeper0]

Honestly, AoE isn't that *difficult*. It's simply tedium. I suspected it to be the case when watching DW20's videos. Compare the amount of 'screen time' doing something potentially dangerous as opposed to screen time in his base doing all the subcombines. It's almost exclusively the latter, isn't it? It doesn't make the game more challenging in the least, it just means you have to use some of the more obscure mods to get things made. But increasing sub-combine lists does not make anything more *difficult* or *challenging*, it just makes it more *boring*.

As with most 'ultimate' or 'hardcore' packs, all it does is make it take longer to get to where you want to go. It doesn't present any fresh or interesting challenges.

Meh, Its Iess challenging than say Infinity Evolved Expert, but the cross mod interaction is much greater. To make advanced things costs more energy forcing you to do different power gen. And your really not just waiting for things to happen, like beyond waiting for a quarry to run or Skyfactory waiting for automated resources to collect.

 

[Cpt_gloval]

ShneekeytheLost, I'm going to have to disagree with you. Yes there is tedium, though it can very easily be said that minecraft, even vanilla, is a game of tedium.

AoE is a game of automation. Yes, making an rf tools machine Frame is a Pita, going through 4 other mods machine base to get there. But it is automatable, with methods most players have never used. Makes you use mods in way you never thought to. Right now I am holding off on moving time next age while I figure out how to automate everything I have available to me.

As always with minecraft in it many forms, neither of us are right, nor are we wrong.

 

[Pyure]

Also we have this conversation every 6.4 weeks or so (tedium vs challenge etc etc etc)

 

[Nuclear_Creeper0]

Also we have this conversation every 6.4 weeks or so (tedium vs challenge etc etc etc)

Isn't that what most forums are?

 

[Cpt_gloval]

Well yes....., but Captain Obvious Must be...............

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Meh, Its Iess challenging than say Infinity Evolved Expert, but the cross mod interaction is much greater. To make advanced things costs more energy forcing you to do different power gen. And your really not just waiting for things to happen, like beyond waiting for a quarry to run or Skyfactory waiting for automated resources to collect.

I will absolutely agree that it has a FAR greater degree of cross-mod integration, and that IS a good thing. In fact, that's probably the single redeeming feature of the pack, and where it really shines. Assuming the mods themselves function as intended (Calculator...), of course.

ShneekeytheLost, I'm going to have to disagree with you. Yes there is tedium, though it can very easily be said that minecraft, even vanilla, is a game of tedium.

AoE is a game of automation. Yes, making an rf tools machine Frame is a Pita, going through 4 other mods machine base to get there. But it is automatable, with methods most players have never used. Makes you use mods in way you never thought to. Right now I am holding off on moving time next age while I figure out how to automate everything I have available to me.

As always with minecraft in it many forms, neither of us are right, nor are we wrong.

I think you miss my point. AoE is touted as 'a challenging pack'. It isn't. There's very little challenge involved in this pack. Even automation isn't really all that much of a challenge, even though the devs went out of their way to find obscure (and buggy) mods to include to 'force' people to do new things. It also 'forces' you to go through mods I personally dislike for a number of reasons we need not go through here.

EnderIO is one of those mods I have grown to dislike, because it really trivializes almost everything. The pack would've been far better without it. Of course, no one would've ever played it without its inclusion because it seems the creativity of the modding community has been crippled by it and people would just include it anyway as a shortcut to everything. I would've used the CoFH Suite instead. This would've also given me access to CoFH World for fine-tuned worldgen in all dimensions, which would've made resource allocation more interesting, and Thermal Dynamics to do piping and sorting instead of EnderIO, and Thermal Expansion instead of EnderIO. It would have at least been a little more interesting, at any rate. Set up the TE machine frame to be roughly the same recipe as the EnderIO chassis, and it sits in the same technological tier.

Calculator was a novel idea, but buggy as hell, and extremely boring once you realize how simplistic it is. Basically, all you need to do is pump in cobble and pump out circuits. Once you automate that, a matter of a couple of pieces of conduit, the entire 'challenge' of the mod is gone completely. The only 'challenge' is knowing ahead of time that you need to get it set up in advance so that you have a supply once it becomes relevant to speed things up a bit for you.

It isn't that there is tedium, which is intentional to encourage automation to avoid it. That much, I get. It is that there isn't anything *BUT* tedium to overcome. There are no other challenges to overcome that cannot be done within a crafting grid or machine.

My problem with the pack is that they had such potential... then fell short of their goal, to be lost with the countless other packs that do roughly the same thing, albeit with less mod integration.

 

[KingTriaxx]

It's just the one dev, and he actually wanted to replicate the feel of Infinity Expert mode. I think he managed it, without being quite so over the top.

As for Tedium vs. Challenge, I catch your meaning, but ultimately, there are only so many ways to introduce challenge. There's a fine line between challenge and tedium. And what one player find's challenging, because they've never used a mod for example, someone else find's tedious because they have.

On the other hand, I'd be very interested to see what you'd do to a pack to make it challenging. I'm currently taking a swing at Age of Progression to see how that works out.

 

[Pyure]

As for Tedium vs. Challenge, I catch your meaning, but ultimately, there are only so many ways to introduce challenge. There's a fine line between challenge and tedium. And what one player find's challenging, because they've never used a mod for example, someone else find's tedious because they have.

Agreed. I can recall a million things, such as thaumcraft or bees or fission power that I once found incredibly clever and challenging, and now I just find tedious....because I've done it enough times.

 

[zBob]

snip...

I would've used the CoFH Suite instead.

/snip

A great plan if COFH was released when this pack was developed...

 

[Nuclear_Creeper0]

A great plan if COFH was released when this pack was developed...

@ShneekeyTheLost Rekt

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

It's just the one dev, and he actually wanted to replicate the feel of Infinity Expert mode. I think he managed it, without being quite so over the top.

As for Tedium vs. Challenge, I catch your meaning, but ultimately, there are only so many ways to introduce challenge. There's a fine line between challenge and tedium. And what one player find's challenging, because they've never used a mod for example, someone else find's tedious because they have.

On the other hand, I'd be very interested to see what you'd do to a pack to make it challenging. I'm currently taking a swing at Age of Progression to see how that works out.

I had an idea for a challenge pack called 'Uplift'. Basically, not only to you have to build your base and automate things, but you ALSO have to uplift the local species (i.e. villagers) by building them structures and machines to work on, teach them how to do so, and protect them from everything from bandit raids to monster invasions.

Then as you continue progressing, you can actually 'pass off' automation of certain goods to the locals as you spread civilization to other villages. Which includes building roads from village to village, setting up trade routes, making sure the trade routes are safe... kinda like FO4's settlement system, but without Preston Garvey pestering you every two or three minutes.

You also have options on how you interact with the villagers. In the end, you can either be a god-king EMPRAH or you can be known as a mysterious benevolent one, depending on how much 'hands on' or 'hands off' you are with respect to the villagers. The former goes by faster, but the latter is more passive and requires less activity on the player's part.

So something like AoE, with an invasion dynamic, and actually requiring you to create significant structures, including eventually a couple of megastructures (of course, by that time, you have the RFTools Builder access), and protect villagers while living near-ish to them. In other words, you also have to keep them from killing themselves on random stuff or all get turned into zombies. Without simply blocking them in, because they get upset when you do that.

So it isn't just automation for automation's sake, it's automation to further your goal of uplifting the local species into a space-faring people who revere/worship you.

 

[Drbretto]

I had an idea for a challenge pack called 'Uplift'. Basically, not only to you have to build your base and automate things, but you ALSO have to uplift the local species (i.e. villagers) by building them structures and machines to work on, teach them how to do so, and protect them from everything from bandit raids to monster invasions.

Then as you continue progressing, you can actually 'pass off' automation of certain goods to the locals as you spread civilization to other villages. Which includes building roads from village to village, setting up trade routes, making sure the trade routes are safe... kinda like FO4's settlement system, but without Preston Garvey pestering you every two or three minutes.

You also have options on how you interact with the villagers. In the end, you can either be a god-king EMPRAH or you can be known as a mysterious benevolent one, depending on how much 'hands on' or 'hands off' you are with respect to the villagers. The former goes by faster, but the latter is more passive and requires less activity on the player's part.

So something like AoE, with an invasion dynamic, and actually requiring you to create significant structures, including eventually a couple of megastructures (of course, by that time, you have the RFTools Builder access), and protect villagers while living near-ish to them. In other words, you also have to keep them from killing themselves on random stuff or all get turned into zombies. Without simply blocking them in, because they get upset when you do that.

So it isn't just automation for automation's sake, it's automation to further your goal of uplifting the local species into a space-faring people who revere/worship you.

Is that a modpack that is possible to make, or is that a mod you're wishing for?

This is relevant, because if you're going to sit here criticizing modpacks and can't actually come up with a better one, then maybe it's your expectations that need a bit of a shift, you know?

If you make this one, I'm sure many of us will be interested. In the meantime, we have to stick with what's out there.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Is that a modpack that is possible to make, or is that a mod you're wishing for?

This is relevant, because if you're going to sit here criticizing modpacks and can't actually come up with a better one, then maybe it's your expectations that need a bit of a shift, you know?

If you make this one, I'm sure many of us will be interested. In the meantime, we have to stick with what's out there.

It's possible to make, although it requires some scripting from the invasion mod to work with HQM or whatever base questing mod I go with, and figure out how to get HQM to realize construction of buildings, which might be a bit tricky. Everything else are base mods and Minetweaker. There's a couple of villager based mods out there that let them be able to interact with basic scripting, but most of the villager interaction will be abstracted through HQM, including the supply lines. Basically, you can end up using it to link chest inventories from one village to another so you don't have to keep going back to base to get stuff. If I wanted to 'cheat', I'd probably just use the Quantum Entangled stuff from AE2 to get stuff back and forth. Or instead of villager trade routes, just have the player set up Quantum Bridges at the various villages.

The problem is a) I don't have time to maintain such a large pack (IIRC, AoE is maintained by a team, and still has issues), and b) I would probably be releasing on ATLauncher due to my issues with Curse, which would be a not so insignificant nightmare when it comes to permissions. The time investment is far in excess of the likely popularity of the pack, and I'd likely get far too worked up over someone inevitably jacking it and putting it on the Technic launcher, and I'm already dealing with enough ulcers to put this extra several levels of stress on myself, since it would effectively be a one-man project. It's not that it is impossible, it is that the stress to reward ratio is skewed against it.

You can do a far simpler but broader pack, though. The key here is to require goals other than simply crafting or automation. Automation for the sake of automation is boring. Automation because you want to build something that will stand the test of time, on the other hand, is at least a worthwhile goal. Set up dungeons, either through the Ruins mod (which lets you pre-create entire dungeons to be spaced out as worldgen) or something like DOOMlike Dungeon Generator (from ATM3) and have some resources found only there so you are required to occasionally get your gear and get involved in combat. Probably not low-tech stuff, just things you'll occasionally need because they are required for automation stuff. That's simple enough to do, AoE already does it to a certain extent. And without ExUtil2 or EnderIO, it'll be harder to automate player-interaction drop. Set up megastructure build requirements in your questline.

SOMETHING, for Notch's sake, other than staring at a crafting/machine interface for x hours and calling it 'hardcore'.