Me neither. Both are just a grind, pure and simple. And the worst kind of grind at that, one that is completely random. I play Minecraft for fun, not monotonous grinding, and actively cull anything I do not find fun from my worlds. TC3 was dropped from my play 3 worlds back. Mystcraft, about the same time. Forestry, same. There is nothing in those minds that I feel I need. If you find them similarly unfun, cull them from your worlds. You'll probably find you'll not miss them one whit and find your worlds more enjoyable to boot.
Is "discovering" fun?
- Thread starter PhilHibbs
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Me neither. Both are just a grind, pure and simple. And the worst kind of grind at that, one that is completely random. I play Minecraft for fun, not monotonous grinding, and actively cull anything I do not find fun from my worlds. TC3 was dropped from my play 3 worlds back. Mystcraft, about the same time. Forestry, same. There is nothing in those minds that I feel I need. If you find them similarly unfun, cull them from your worlds. You'll probably find you'll not miss them one whit and find your worlds more enjoyable to boot.
I burned up a few boots myself before realising that four leather to make an item that gives you three "armour" research points is a bad deal when each individual leather item is worth one such research point on its own. Then it was just a matter of camping my T5 mooshroom soul shard for a couple of minutes every now and then, rather then doing that and also crafting unstackable items to put into the research table one at a time.
I enjoyed my thaumcraft research, and went through the entire tree with minimal wiki referencing (I used it to suss out what knowledge shards were for, then again to determine when to stop making them).
However, I didn't start it until I was well advanced in FTB (gravichest plate), and I didn't start FTB until my world was well advanced in vanilla (ender ender). Those resources I was capable of running out of were easy to replenish and all I really wanted was aura bees anyways. I got everything else because I enjoyed finding out what items there were to see; I honestly wasn't aware of half of them until they popped up in research.
I enjoyed my thaumcraft research, and went through the entire tree with minimal wiki referencing (I used it to suss out what knowledge shards were for, then again to determine when to stop making them).
However, I didn't start it until I was well advanced in FTB (gravichest plate), and I didn't start FTB until my world was well advanced in vanilla (ender ender). Those resources I was capable of running out of were easy to replenish and all I really wanted was aura bees anyways. I got everything else because I enjoyed finding out what items there were to see; I honestly wasn't aware of half of them until they popped up in research.
I'm enjoying Thaumcraft other than the research. Golems are cool, especially with bowties and fezzes.
So how do you get drones to stack? Do you just wait until the breeding stabilizes and the princess and drones are identical, and therefore produce two identical drones rather than two different cross-breeds?
I don't mind Mystcraft. There's something to "do" with that, ie. going and finding the temples for more pages and the same for villagers. That's the kind of exploration I don't mind.
I don't know about you guys, but I actually had much more fun trying to find all the different vanilla bee hives than doing the actual bee breeding itself. I'd enjoy the bee stuff a lot more if all the different bees had their own hives to find in the world.
The only traits you need to match are the species ones, both the active and inactive traits on the princess and drone. If you get something like short and shorter active/inactive lifespan trait on them don't worry about it, just make sure the species traits are all the same then you have a stable bee. Eventually your mismatched traits for 'worker', 'lifespan', 'pollination' and 'effects' will sort themselves out after a number of life cycles (up to 10 life cycles or so) and they'll start stacking okay then but until then have a chest or something to keep them in. I kept all my bees in an Indexer, you can shift click them in or even attach a pipe into it if you want to automate the storage. Don't throw them away as they can be used to make liquid DNA with the genepool machine - that's when you start genetically modifying them, eg. putting nocturnal, flyer and fast worker traits on your imperials so they work super fast 24/7.
Anything which dumps more on villagers also makes me grumpy. But, truth be told, I dumped Mystcraft back when it was still at the "spam blank books to learn pages" stage. So the temples would be neat, but when I saw they were going down the trite villager route I decided to leave it out of my world.
I always keep mystcraft installed, however for me it's not about making ages that are silly, it's about creating a world to quarry in, so as to stop my overworld becoming ugly, and being able to pick up bauxite and emeralds in the same quarry run.
On a server with quarries and without mystcraft, the world can get ugly, FAST.
On a server with quarries and without mystcraft, the world can get ugly, FAST.
On a server I can understand specialized dimensions. However, I am primarily an SSP player so if the world gets ugly I know who to blame and know where they live. 
Well, even on a server quarries aren't the problem. I'm pretty sure most servers these days frown on newb-towering, right? The basic underlying principle behind no newb-towers isn't to not make them, but rather to clean them up when you're done. Same can go for a quarry. It isn't like we don't have the Filler. Heck, don't even need the filler. Just make a rule that quarries are not allowed on the surface. The first quarry in my cirrent world was a 20x20 centered on my base but 9 blocks deeper than my basement. I then carved out stairs leading down to bedrock and used a filler to put in a 3 block layer every 8 blocks. So 5 blocks of air, 3 blocks of cobble. I now have 6 sub-basements to expand into.
Well, even on a server quarries aren't the problem. I'm pretty sure most servers these days frown on newb-towering, right? The basic underlying principle behind no newb-towers isn't to not make them, but rather to clean them up when you're done. Same can go for a quarry. It isn't like we don't have the Filler. Heck, don't even need the filler. Just make a rule that quarries are not allowed on the surface. The first quarry in my cirrent world was a 20x20 centered on my base but 9 blocks deeper than my basement. I then carved out stairs leading down to bedrock and used a filler to put in a 3 block layer every 8 blocks. So 5 blocks of air, 3 blocks of cobble. I now have 6 sub-basements to expand into.
"Is "discovering" fun?"
I'm with Greyed on this matter. For me, it was.. interesting the first time around, discovering all those new toys and blocks and techs... but it definitely is no more, when you are forced to do the very same thing for the fifth or seventh time. So, short and long answer, concerning ThaumCraft solely, is: No, it is absolutely not 'fun'.
Mystcraft, on the other hand, is a bit different, as it's less 'grindy' and involves more searching and hunting. As well as a trading aspect, due to the fact that usually I find different pages than someone else on my server. Compared to TC's merely semi-random "ToDo Grindlist", this offers at least 'some' fun. Of course it's nowhere near 'really funny stuff' as it leans towards "Oh look, I just found my 8th [green] page. Yay...not. -.-" the more pages you find. I wish there was a block that would trade you another random page (you don't own yet) for a duplicate page you stuff in it.. thus far, it gets more and more boring the longer you collect pages, as we all have better stuff to do, other than run through a flat mystage in order to scavenge MsytTemples for days on end, just to find more copies of pages we already own.
F.
I'm with Greyed on this matter. For me, it was.. interesting the first time around, discovering all those new toys and blocks and techs... but it definitely is no more, when you are forced to do the very same thing for the fifth or seventh time. So, short and long answer, concerning ThaumCraft solely, is: No, it is absolutely not 'fun'.
Mystcraft, on the other hand, is a bit different, as it's less 'grindy' and involves more searching and hunting. As well as a trading aspect, due to the fact that usually I find different pages than someone else on my server. Compared to TC's merely semi-random "ToDo Grindlist", this offers at least 'some' fun. Of course it's nowhere near 'really funny stuff' as it leans towards "Oh look, I just found my 8th [green] page. Yay...not. -.-" the more pages you find. I wish there was a block that would trade you another random page (you don't own yet) for a duplicate page you stuff in it.. thus far, it gets more and more boring the longer you collect pages, as we all have better stuff to do, other than run through a flat mystage in order to scavenge MsytTemples for days on end, just to find more copies of pages we already own.
F.
It depends. In Thaumcraft I am OK with the research. With bee i don't like it and look it up. The thing is Thaumcraft shows when an aspect is not in the research after some failed attempts, with bees i could breed over and over with bad luck and never knew really what i am doing..seems like pure luck. Even with looking up the bees i takes a lot of time (without using uberbreader like things).
I didn't mind the Thaumcraft research at all. Once you get past the initial learning curve there's nothing difficult or daunting about it. It's a resource sink, and continues to be a resource sink for as long as you use it. I've just come to dislike the vis aspect of it. If I farm up a nether star to make a wand for crafting, that wand better let me craft every damn thing I want to make when I want to make it, and dance a friggin' jig for me when I'm not crafting. I don't care what kind of game or genre it is, arbitrary gating is bad design.
Discovery is only fun if you're totally and completely blind.
The first time I played Minecraft, I was in the dark. First time playing terraria, I was in the dark. First time playing with mods, I was in the dark. And I had fun every time figuring things out on my own.
Azanor is trying desperately to make it so that the more knowledgeable of us can relive the experience of learning Thaumcraft. Which is terrible, because that brings it way too far for anybody else trying to play TC. If you try to start learning TC for the first time, it's not fun trying to figure things out. He ruins the experience he's trying to give the more knowledgeable players by giving you a magical book that you can summon with a magic wand that tells you everything, and that completely ruins the experience of figuring it out on your own. And if you try to not use the book, you won't figure out the crafting recipes (Yes, discovering crafting recipes is discovery aswell, but it's pretty boring and pointless). NEI is let off the hook a bit, because it functions as the wiki and you can use it only if you want. Also, he failed to give people who haven't played around with TC the experience of learning it, because you randomly throw away your items to 'learn' things. If you figured something out about an item or a block and you wanted to try and make it, the research system jumps up into your face and says "No no no! You need to burn up yo' diamonds dawg before you can do dat!" and bores you for another few hours before you can finally use what you learned.
Also, I'm talking about the research system in TC, not the mod itself. The mod itself is completely fine.
TL;DR: If Azanor wants to 'improve' his research system, the best way to do that is to remove it and instead expand his mod as far as he can items-wise to keep that 'discovery' experience for the people who already know about TC.
Or he could, y'know, completely destroy his mod and all his hard work and remake the research system for the third time. That would be fun too.
I shall be back to rant some more on the 'discovery' aspect of different mods.
The first time I played Minecraft, I was in the dark. First time playing terraria, I was in the dark. First time playing with mods, I was in the dark. And I had fun every time figuring things out on my own.
Azanor is trying desperately to make it so that the more knowledgeable of us can relive the experience of learning Thaumcraft. Which is terrible, because that brings it way too far for anybody else trying to play TC. If you try to start learning TC for the first time, it's not fun trying to figure things out. He ruins the experience he's trying to give the more knowledgeable players by giving you a magical book that you can summon with a magic wand that tells you everything, and that completely ruins the experience of figuring it out on your own. And if you try to not use the book, you won't figure out the crafting recipes (Yes, discovering crafting recipes is discovery aswell, but it's pretty boring and pointless). NEI is let off the hook a bit, because it functions as the wiki and you can use it only if you want. Also, he failed to give people who haven't played around with TC the experience of learning it, because you randomly throw away your items to 'learn' things. If you figured something out about an item or a block and you wanted to try and make it, the research system jumps up into your face and says "No no no! You need to burn up yo' diamonds dawg before you can do dat!" and bores you for another few hours before you can finally use what you learned.
Also, I'm talking about the research system in TC, not the mod itself. The mod itself is completely fine.
TL;DR: If Azanor wants to 'improve' his research system, the best way to do that is to remove it and instead expand his mod as far as he can items-wise to keep that 'discovery' experience for the people who already know about TC.
Or he could, y'know, completely destroy his mod and all his hard work and remake the research system for the third time. That would be fun too.
I shall be back to rant some more on the 'discovery' aspect of different mods.
Actually, if I had one whish free, it would be a shortcut. Let it be a stack of emeralds or the dragons' egg, just let me skip the research. As it is now, I skip the whole mod because, even though I have plenty resources at hand, I just can't be arsed to do the mindnumbing boring fake research for the umpteenth time. Of course, this is just my very own personal opinion, so take it with a grain of salt.
That would be good. Put a fragment in, uncover all the obscured aspects. Even better, a knowledge fragment could be used as an alternative to an uncovered aspect. Using one or 2 of those instead of a load of armour/tools would also save on the headaches.
Thaumcraft - I changed the config to allow the cheat thaumanomicon (sp???) which gives you all research as complete. I hate the research portion, it's boring and frustrating as hell trying to figure out what you need by trial/error. I've had to stumble through it a few times and if I couldn't cheat/look it up I prob wouldn't use the mod.
Mystcraft - the gathering of pages doesn't bother me at all as the library in the ages are a great idea. Generate a few ages and do a bit of exploring you'll have more books/pages than you need. I'm not a fan of the new way of making worlds though. I think it desperately needs an overhaul of the interface for writing books. I think a wizard type GUI where you walk through the options in a step-by-step manner would be the way to go. The top half displays the step information and a little why/about/whatever that option, while the bottom half is the pages that apply to that step.
//Just my 2 cents
Mystcraft - the gathering of pages doesn't bother me at all as the library in the ages are a great idea. Generate a few ages and do a bit of exploring you'll have more books/pages than you need. I'm not a fan of the new way of making worlds though. I think it desperately needs an overhaul of the interface for writing books. I think a wizard type GUI where you walk through the options in a step-by-step manner would be the way to go. The top half displays the step information and a little why/about/whatever that option, while the bottom half is the pages that apply to that step.
//Just my 2 cents
Kinda agree about Mystcraft and the current implementation. One thing I think it desperately needs is a "master" book that you can carry round with you when looking for the pages. When you find the pages you should be able to insert them straight into the book rather than have them clog your inv or have to send them off via an ender bag and if you have already found a particular page then it tells you so. That is the most annoying thing I find about the mod : when you find a new page the first thing you ask yourself is "do I already have this one?".
You do know, the notebook works outside of the writing desk, no? Select it, right click - put page in.