This was an answer to a question in a recent IC2 thread; which, had I answered it there, would have been buried. It is also truthfully about a much more general topic; that of balance as a whole.
This post has allowed me to clarify a lot of things, and figure out how I really feel where balance is concerned. I've realised that I'm not completely against it, no; but I am mostly. I've tried to be civil here, and I think I've largely succeeded; but this is a topic that I am passionate about.
The archetypical advocate of "balance," (or arbitrary difficulty) usually seems to me, to be someone who doesn't realise that if he is able to get through all of the content he can find within the first week, it's probably a sign that he should put Minecraft down for a while, and go and do something else.
As a result, said people loudly and ceaselessly demand that various tasks within said mods, be made to take 2-3 times longer than they need to be, on an entirely arbitrary basis, in order to stave off the inevitable point at which they will once again be forced to define their own objectives, rather than having the developer of the mod in question do it for them.
Contrary to how the above sounds, I do not advocate a complete lack of balancing mechanics. I do, however, feel that they should not be arbitrary, or exist purely due to the reflexive assumption that everything should be more difficult, purely for its' own sake. Again, if you need things to be more difficult within Minecraft in order to prevent yourself from having nothing to do, then please, seriously stop and reconsider what you are doing in this game.
The Dartcraft Wrench, is a good example which comes to mind here. It offers a sufficiently valuable function to me, that it would feel wrong if it did not require some sort of energy source. The system with the Force gems and running them through the Squeezer to get liquid Force, is a good fit in my opinion. You don't need to do anything overly tedious, but you do need to do something which allows for an acknowledgement that a trade is taking place. You're doing a bit of work in order to get something of equivalent value.
On the other hand, the people who are insisting that there needs to be some sort of drawback to turning into a bat in Morph, in my mind do not have a legitimate argument. I have the Infernal Mobs and Hardcore Ender Expansion mods installed. This means that I have fought a couple of mobs whose passive health regeneration is at the same rate which the player has on Peaceful difficulty. Having fuel-less flight in that type of context, does not give me a proverbial automatic "I Win," button at all. It gives me a fair degree of dexterity and evasion, yes; but given that most of these mobs also have powerful damage over time attacks, one hit from them is often all it takes, for me to keep dying after I fly outside of their melee range.
This is why (for the MOST part) I am not an advocate of "balance."
a} Difficulty to me comes primarily from mob combat. I really haven't seen any mechanic added to an engineering mod yet, which was supposed to offer satisfying difficulty, which for me actually has. An extra step involving an iron hammer or tin snips, for making a machine block in IC2 is not challenge; it is tedium and inconvenience. The two are entirely different things. Likewise for adding an extra 100-500 (or whatever) MJ to the power equivalent for a machine. It's not challenging, it's boring; because likely all it means is that I will need to make one or two extra repetitive iterations of what I've been doing already.
I am not concerned about balance where combat difficulty is concerned, either. If I install DrZhark's Mo'Creatures mod, then I will also install Balkon's Weapon Mod, but Balkon's does not make me invincible. Against a lot of the monsters in Mo'Creatures, I will still die often, and very quickly. What Balkon's does in that context is give me slightly more of a chance than the vanilla weapons do, and also allows for a greater degree of choice where tactics are concerned.
So I will go and install the hardest mob combat mods than I can find, and then install the most seemingly OP weapon and aspect mods (such as Morph) that I can find, and experience World War 3 in Minecraft. It will still be hard, and I will still die constantly, even with all those weapon mods. But it will be EPIC. Give me Morph, and free Bat Form, and a +7 damage Claymore from Tinker's Construct which is made out of Vyroxeres from Metallurgy 3; but then give me so many heatscar spiders that they are all jumping on me, to the point where I can hardly fly anyway. Give me Endermen with 150 hit points, dot attacks and passive regen, like I have right now. That is balance, just as much as nerfing everything is.
b} To the extent that I do find engineering mods satisfying, it is when I am given a sufficiently large pile of primarily generic blocks, (which is what Red Power 2 in particular did) and am then able to assemble them in entirely my own manner. I do not like "magic blocks" which are more about what the programmer has written, than about what the player needs to do; and for the same reason, I tend not to like pre-defined multiblocks such as Forestry's farms, either.
Granted, multiblocks are definitely an incremental improvement over the single white block design, but that is truthfully only the case because the fact that I need to lay them out, allows me to feel as though I'm having some sort of involvement in the process. If King Lemming writes the code for a Pulverizer block, or Alblaka writes the code for a Macerator block, and all I do is put that one block down in the world and attach a wire and some pipes to it, then what have I really done? How much involvement in that process do I, as a player, really have? This is not to say that I am ungrateful for these mods; but this was one of FlowerChild's main points with Better than Wolves, and in my opinion it is a valid one.
On the engineering front, I want to see a revival of mods like ToggleBlocks, Neph's Missing Blocks, and Pfaeff's Allocator. From that point of view, Steve's Factory Manager is great, because it allows for the sort of modular design I'm talking about.
c} I particularly can not stand developers and users who insist that I can only do things in rigidly defined, stereotyped ways. That is the opposite of the reason why I play this game.
If Greg is making a total conversion, and he expressly stipulates it as such, then that I can tolerate. FlowerChild stated that up front, and I could respect that, because I had informed consent about whether or not I was going to enter an environment which he completely controlled. Greg, however, did not (at least initially) create a TC. He created a standalone mod, and then attempted to dictate interactions with other mods from there.
This is the other central problem that I have with balance advocates.
Balance advocates hate freedom.
You do not want self-determination for yourselves, but you also do not want it for anyone else, either. I never hear about a balance advocate suggesting that a config option should exist for a mod, where they can nerf things in their own way as much as they like, whereas everyone else can do their own thing. They don't say that, because that is not how they think. They want to destroy freedom in this game, for everyone. It's not enough for Greg as a developer, to write his mod the way he wants. He has to try and make sure that he has complete control over how everyone else plays, as well.
The real question for balance advocates then, more than anything else is:- Who died and made you God? On what basis do you claim the right to decide how I, as another person, play this game?
I know I will get the usual canned response here about "modders' rights." Fine. Here's my response to that.
If mod developers want to start dictating balance terms to that degree, then I think it really is time that we start introducing contracts, which come with the distribution files for every mod whose author feels that way. I would, of course, consider that extremely regrettable, and I think it would also demonstrate just how pathological and mean-spirited a lot of people on both the modding and playing sides of the fence in this community really are; but at the end of the day, it would be a solution to the problem. If mod developers (to say nothing of a lot of other players) really want to so completely control what I'm allowed to do in the game, then the least they can do is give me clear terms, so that I am able to make an informed choice.
This post has allowed me to clarify a lot of things, and figure out how I really feel where balance is concerned. I've realised that I'm not completely against it, no; but I am mostly. I've tried to be civil here, and I think I've largely succeeded; but this is a topic that I am passionate about.
The archetypical advocate of "balance," (or arbitrary difficulty) usually seems to me, to be someone who doesn't realise that if he is able to get through all of the content he can find within the first week, it's probably a sign that he should put Minecraft down for a while, and go and do something else.
As a result, said people loudly and ceaselessly demand that various tasks within said mods, be made to take 2-3 times longer than they need to be, on an entirely arbitrary basis, in order to stave off the inevitable point at which they will once again be forced to define their own objectives, rather than having the developer of the mod in question do it for them.
Contrary to how the above sounds, I do not advocate a complete lack of balancing mechanics. I do, however, feel that they should not be arbitrary, or exist purely due to the reflexive assumption that everything should be more difficult, purely for its' own sake. Again, if you need things to be more difficult within Minecraft in order to prevent yourself from having nothing to do, then please, seriously stop and reconsider what you are doing in this game.
The Dartcraft Wrench, is a good example which comes to mind here. It offers a sufficiently valuable function to me, that it would feel wrong if it did not require some sort of energy source. The system with the Force gems and running them through the Squeezer to get liquid Force, is a good fit in my opinion. You don't need to do anything overly tedious, but you do need to do something which allows for an acknowledgement that a trade is taking place. You're doing a bit of work in order to get something of equivalent value.
On the other hand, the people who are insisting that there needs to be some sort of drawback to turning into a bat in Morph, in my mind do not have a legitimate argument. I have the Infernal Mobs and Hardcore Ender Expansion mods installed. This means that I have fought a couple of mobs whose passive health regeneration is at the same rate which the player has on Peaceful difficulty. Having fuel-less flight in that type of context, does not give me a proverbial automatic "I Win," button at all. It gives me a fair degree of dexterity and evasion, yes; but given that most of these mobs also have powerful damage over time attacks, one hit from them is often all it takes, for me to keep dying after I fly outside of their melee range.
This is why (for the MOST part) I am not an advocate of "balance."
a} Difficulty to me comes primarily from mob combat. I really haven't seen any mechanic added to an engineering mod yet, which was supposed to offer satisfying difficulty, which for me actually has. An extra step involving an iron hammer or tin snips, for making a machine block in IC2 is not challenge; it is tedium and inconvenience. The two are entirely different things. Likewise for adding an extra 100-500 (or whatever) MJ to the power equivalent for a machine. It's not challenging, it's boring; because likely all it means is that I will need to make one or two extra repetitive iterations of what I've been doing already.
I am not concerned about balance where combat difficulty is concerned, either. If I install DrZhark's Mo'Creatures mod, then I will also install Balkon's Weapon Mod, but Balkon's does not make me invincible. Against a lot of the monsters in Mo'Creatures, I will still die often, and very quickly. What Balkon's does in that context is give me slightly more of a chance than the vanilla weapons do, and also allows for a greater degree of choice where tactics are concerned.
So I will go and install the hardest mob combat mods than I can find, and then install the most seemingly OP weapon and aspect mods (such as Morph) that I can find, and experience World War 3 in Minecraft. It will still be hard, and I will still die constantly, even with all those weapon mods. But it will be EPIC. Give me Morph, and free Bat Form, and a +7 damage Claymore from Tinker's Construct which is made out of Vyroxeres from Metallurgy 3; but then give me so many heatscar spiders that they are all jumping on me, to the point where I can hardly fly anyway. Give me Endermen with 150 hit points, dot attacks and passive regen, like I have right now. That is balance, just as much as nerfing everything is.
b} To the extent that I do find engineering mods satisfying, it is when I am given a sufficiently large pile of primarily generic blocks, (which is what Red Power 2 in particular did) and am then able to assemble them in entirely my own manner. I do not like "magic blocks" which are more about what the programmer has written, than about what the player needs to do; and for the same reason, I tend not to like pre-defined multiblocks such as Forestry's farms, either.
Granted, multiblocks are definitely an incremental improvement over the single white block design, but that is truthfully only the case because the fact that I need to lay them out, allows me to feel as though I'm having some sort of involvement in the process. If King Lemming writes the code for a Pulverizer block, or Alblaka writes the code for a Macerator block, and all I do is put that one block down in the world and attach a wire and some pipes to it, then what have I really done? How much involvement in that process do I, as a player, really have? This is not to say that I am ungrateful for these mods; but this was one of FlowerChild's main points with Better than Wolves, and in my opinion it is a valid one.
On the engineering front, I want to see a revival of mods like ToggleBlocks, Neph's Missing Blocks, and Pfaeff's Allocator. From that point of view, Steve's Factory Manager is great, because it allows for the sort of modular design I'm talking about.
c} I particularly can not stand developers and users who insist that I can only do things in rigidly defined, stereotyped ways. That is the opposite of the reason why I play this game.
If Greg is making a total conversion, and he expressly stipulates it as such, then that I can tolerate. FlowerChild stated that up front, and I could respect that, because I had informed consent about whether or not I was going to enter an environment which he completely controlled. Greg, however, did not (at least initially) create a TC. He created a standalone mod, and then attempted to dictate interactions with other mods from there.
This is the other central problem that I have with balance advocates.
Balance advocates hate freedom.
You do not want self-determination for yourselves, but you also do not want it for anyone else, either. I never hear about a balance advocate suggesting that a config option should exist for a mod, where they can nerf things in their own way as much as they like, whereas everyone else can do their own thing. They don't say that, because that is not how they think. They want to destroy freedom in this game, for everyone. It's not enough for Greg as a developer, to write his mod the way he wants. He has to try and make sure that he has complete control over how everyone else plays, as well.
The real question for balance advocates then, more than anything else is:- Who died and made you God? On what basis do you claim the right to decide how I, as another person, play this game?
I know I will get the usual canned response here about "modders' rights." Fine. Here's my response to that.
If mod developers want to start dictating balance terms to that degree, then I think it really is time that we start introducing contracts, which come with the distribution files for every mod whose author feels that way. I would, of course, consider that extremely regrettable, and I think it would also demonstrate just how pathological and mean-spirited a lot of people on both the modding and playing sides of the fence in this community really are; but at the end of the day, it would be a solution to the problem. If mod developers (to say nothing of a lot of other players) really want to so completely control what I'm allowed to do in the game, then the least they can do is give me clear terms, so that I am able to make an informed choice.
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