January News

[Feed the Beast]

Modpack News

FTB Presents Skyfactory

​

In collaboration with BaconDonut and Darkosto, we released Skyfactory 3 for minecraft 1.10.


Last month we wrote that a new pack, FTB Evolved, was being developed. The choice of name, a throwback to our 1.7 pack, was a bit controversial.

Back when we released the original FTB Infinity, we hoped to use it a flagship pack, a well known name we could keep across minecraft versions. The numerous changes in modded minecraft between 1.7 and 1.10 made the new packs too different to stick with the Infinity name. We tried keeping some connection to the old pack with the "Infinity Lite" and "Evolved" names, but after all the feedback we've decided to scrap the idea.

We're pleased to officially announce FTB Beyond. We're still working on it, fixing up some bugs and waiting for a few more mods to release, but we're hoping for a release in the next month or two.

FTB One Community Applications

We've received a fantastic response to the call for applications to join our Content Creator Community. We're sifting through and sorting all the applications but it is going to take some time so please bear with us! We should be in a position to do a batch of invites in the next week or so.

Content Creator



This month's featured content creator is WeAllPlayCast. WeAllPlayCast consists of Rajacent and Hermyone. They dual stream weeknights at 8:30PM EST.

 

[Stroam]

12 hours and I"m the first comment. Interesting. Beyond is a good title. Generic enough that it doesn't imply anything, yet lets you know there's more to come. I'm waiting for FTB Hodgepodge and FTB Playground.

 

[Hambeau]

12 hours and I"m the first comment. Interesting. Beyond is a good title. Generic enough that it doesn't imply anything, yet lets you know there's more to come. I'm waiting for FTB Hodgepodge and FTB Playground.

Wait until they combine the current and new packs and call the result "Infinity & Beyond!"

 

[Nezraddin]

Really looking forward to Beyond

I guess - in case it's planned - a possible expert mode like with Infinity Evolved will take another few months to come out? (really looking forward to that, love challanges in progression)

 

[Watchful11]

I guess - in case it's planned - a possible expert mode like with Infinity Evolved will take another few months to come out?

Yes, we'll start work on expert mode as soon as the pack releases and it will be another few months before it's done.

 

[Pyure]

Yes, we'll start work on expert mode as soon as the pack releases and it will be another few months before it's done.

Watchful, this is a bit of a tangent and I apologize for that, but do we have any kind of numbers on how popular Infinity Expert was?

As an outside observer, it seemed to garner an awful lot of attention from streamers and the like. I'm wondering if you have anything more concrete than that.

 

[Henry Link]

Also, the term "Expert Mode" has always bothered me. I played it in Infinity and there was nothing expert about it. Grind yes, longer progression path yes. Harder yes. Expert just NO. Just my 2 pennies on the term.

 

[Pyure]

Also, the term "Expert Mode" has always bothered me. I played it in Infinity and there was nothing expert about it. Grind yes, longer progression path yes. Harder yes. Expert just NO. Just my 2 pennies on the term.

This argument is as old as minecraft. There's nothing expert about any game ever when broken down this way.

There are different types of difficulty in gaming: grind and twitch.

Grind can be broken down further into knowledge-grind (determining the thousand steps required to accomplish a thing) versus activity-grind (acquiring the thousand resources required to build a thing)

Infinity Expert has a lot of both knowledge-grind and activity-grind. People gripe when there's not enough of the former, but its purely subjective: once you know a lot about the mods involved, its really easy to say "there's no intellectual grind to that pack" when the truth of the matter is that you, as a player, have simply exhausted the content of the mods being used.

 

[Watchful11]

Watchful, this is a bit of a tangent and I apologize for that, but do we have any kind of numbers on how popular Infinity Expert was?

I do not. We started a project called Mercurius, though it's grown a lot bigger than just us, to get better data. But I don't know what our plan for releasing the data is.

Also, the term "Expert Mode" has always bothered me. I played it in Infinity and there was nothing expert about it. Grind yes, longer progression path yes. Harder yes. Expert just NO. Just my 2 pennies on the term.

The entire point of expert mode was to force the player to build automation to avoid grinding. Yes there was some early game grind type mechanics, but if you spent most of your time manually doing stuff, you were playing the pack wrong.

 

[CaptPanda]

This argument is as old as minecraft. There's nothing expert about any game ever when broken down this way.

There are different types of difficulty in gaming: grind and twitch.

Grind can be broken down further into knowledge-grind (determining the thousand steps required to accomplish a thing) versus activity-grind (acquiring the thousand resources required to build a thing)

Infinity Expert has a lot of both knowledge-grind and activity-grind. People gripe when there's not enough of the former, but its purely subjective: once you know a lot about the mods involved, its really easy to say "there's no intellectual grind to that pack" when the truth of the matter is that you, as a player, have simply exhausted the content of the mods being used.

Can you give some examples of good 'twitch' mods then? Mods that require skill to progress rather than knowledge?

 

[Pyure]

Can you give some examples of good 'twitch' mods then? Mods that require {physical} skill to progress rather than knowledge?

I edited your quote with curly braces to ensure we agree we're talking about the same thing.

My answer: no, I cannot think of any mods that require twitch skills rather than knowledge.

Stuff that buffs the Wither and Ender Dragon and such are probably examples. I don't have any interest in these mods since I'm a tech-player, and I prefer mods that provide logistical problems to deal with (Gregtech and such)

 

[Scottly318]

Pyure... wouldn't a "twitch" mod be a mod that actually speeds up progression? Stuff that buffs bosses would not be considered twitch then imo. I can't think of a "pure" twitch mod but since you used gregtech I'll counter with thermal expansion. Getting power and ore doubling is very easy to do in te.

 

[Pyure]

Pyure... wouldn't a "twitch" mod be a mod that actually speeds up progression? Stuff that buffs bosses would not be considered twitch then imo. I can't think of a "pure" twitch mod but since you used gregtech I'll counter with thermal expansion. Getting power and ore doubling is very easy to do in te.

By any definition I'm familiar with, twitch simply means hand-eye coordination, quick reactions, and so forth. FPS's are twitch games.

 

[Scottly318]

Twitch in physiology corresponds to how long it takes a muscle to reach its full contraction. To put it into the terms of minecraft gregtech (grind) is more like a marathon. Whereas te (twitch) is a sprint.

 

[Quetzi]

The term "expert mode" was chosen because it is more fitting than "hard mode". Having a very defined route to progress through the mods does not make it "hard", we felt that "hard" would closer fit a pack where the process of staying alive was the whole challenge. Whereas, "expert mode" is a closer fit to a pack that requires you to build a lot of infrastructure and automation as you progress through the tech tree. Is the term perfect? Probably not, will it do? I think so. It's certainly a lot better than "build lots of infrastructure and automation mode" isn't it

 

[Hambeau]

Would "Infrastructure Mode" be a better fit?

 

[Pyure]

The term "expert mode" was chosen because it is more fitting than "hard mode". Having a very defined route to progress through the mods does not make it "hard", we felt that "hard" would closer fit a pack where the process of staying alive was the whole challenge. Whereas, "expert mode" is a closer fit to a pack that requires you to build a lot of infrastructure and automation as you progress through the tech tree. Is the term perfect? Probably not, will it do? I think so. It's certainly a lot better than "build lots of infrastructure and automation mode" isn't it

I think Expert Mode is perfect. In order to accomplish tasks, you need a wider understanding of the mods involved. That's essentially the definition of an expert.

It doesn't need to be "hard" per se. It certainly doesn't need to be hard for expert players. But players who tend to stay strictly in their comfort zones (e.g. only use Lava power and Ender IO conduits for everything) are forced to broaden their knowledge.

 

[Niels Henriksen]

I can see its using 8 GB memory. Can that be lowered? I often get crashes on my computer with 16 GB.

 

[zBob]

Oh I just wanted to chime in and say thanks for writing a news post this month. It was short and to the point but if that is all you have that is fit to be printed ,then that is all the longer it has to be. Please keep them coming for 2017.


*Edited* typo

 

[Stroam]

Now that we have two hands, has anyone seen a mod that allows you to combine the things in your hands? Like flint and an iron ingot to make flint and steel?