This is a BS thread. Fair warning to you. It's about game design, mods, minecraft, and armchair cognitive science. It is intended to be taken only about half seriously.
Last night after doing some work on Resonant Rise and helping some friends with recordings, I sat down and read this thread about how "Equivalent Exchange has to go", another person arguing that EE3/2/whatever is overpowered. At the same time I've been wrestling with my own feelings over the so-called "Infinicore" device that DoctorOr has cooked up on our Resonant Rise server that uses Ars Magica; it makes infinite vanilla materials perpetually using a combination of MFR (for timers and control), TE machines (to mutate materials), some buildcraft pipes (to drop stuff), and some Ars Fabricators to make the fuel that powers the system and your desired output. It's compact, it's not slow, and it can use minium stone recipes without consuming minium.
And at first, I was a little perturbed by this. I know DoctorOr has some mixed feelings as well. The machine is not as fast as the crazy EE3+Xeno's Reliquary+Xycraft Fabricator trick that people were using, but it's not slow. And I found myself asking, "Well why build an ore pipeline when I can just magic up infinite metals? Why bother with any power but this one?" I voiced this to my wife, who in traditional fashion rolled her eyes and said, "Why do you do anything in minecraft? You build something because it's fun to build things." She's a smart lady.
I'm starting to wonder if maybe there is an unstated premise that modded Minecraft provides a lot more structure and guidance to Minecraft than Vanilla Minecraft does. IC2 puts you on a path: build this then that then worry about these problems. TE does less so, but definitely has a technology curve. Forestry and Railcraft have very elaborate paths (Forestry especially) that they expect players to follow. Most people I see playing modded Minecraft seldom build epic castles to live in; their structures tend to be ruthlessly pragmatic caves or minimalist huts that allowed them to build exactly what they needed to escalate through technology curves, process ores, and have equipment available. Meanwhile, most vanilla players are spending time making dainty little houses or working on impossibly elaborate redstone creations.
Is this a bad idea for modded minecraft? Maybe the reason the Ars Infinicore makes me so uncomfortable as a gut reaction is that I am feeling the nice little track laid out for me by mods derailing and suddenly I have to confront that same sort of, "What the heck now?" feeling I get from Vanilla.
Last night after doing some work on Resonant Rise and helping some friends with recordings, I sat down and read this thread about how "Equivalent Exchange has to go", another person arguing that EE3/2/whatever is overpowered. At the same time I've been wrestling with my own feelings over the so-called "Infinicore" device that DoctorOr has cooked up on our Resonant Rise server that uses Ars Magica; it makes infinite vanilla materials perpetually using a combination of MFR (for timers and control), TE machines (to mutate materials), some buildcraft pipes (to drop stuff), and some Ars Fabricators to make the fuel that powers the system and your desired output. It's compact, it's not slow, and it can use minium stone recipes without consuming minium.
And at first, I was a little perturbed by this. I know DoctorOr has some mixed feelings as well. The machine is not as fast as the crazy EE3+Xeno's Reliquary+Xycraft Fabricator trick that people were using, but it's not slow. And I found myself asking, "Well why build an ore pipeline when I can just magic up infinite metals? Why bother with any power but this one?" I voiced this to my wife, who in traditional fashion rolled her eyes and said, "Why do you do anything in minecraft? You build something because it's fun to build things." She's a smart lady.
I'm starting to wonder if maybe there is an unstated premise that modded Minecraft provides a lot more structure and guidance to Minecraft than Vanilla Minecraft does. IC2 puts you on a path: build this then that then worry about these problems. TE does less so, but definitely has a technology curve. Forestry and Railcraft have very elaborate paths (Forestry especially) that they expect players to follow. Most people I see playing modded Minecraft seldom build epic castles to live in; their structures tend to be ruthlessly pragmatic caves or minimalist huts that allowed them to build exactly what they needed to escalate through technology curves, process ores, and have equipment available. Meanwhile, most vanilla players are spending time making dainty little houses or working on impossibly elaborate redstone creations.
Is this a bad idea for modded minecraft? Maybe the reason the Ars Infinicore makes me so uncomfortable as a gut reaction is that I am feeling the nice little track laid out for me by mods derailing and suddenly I have to confront that same sort of, "What the heck now?" feeling I get from Vanilla.