so basically,what im reading is, people dont like surviving in survival multiplayer, yet still play it and are complaining that they have to go into a scary cave.
....
You can just cheat in quantum or go into creative mode if you don't like it. Don't advocate diluting my game experience because you don't like an aspect of the game. Risk, loss, and difficulty are a factor MANY enjoy, including me. Its also a basic tenet of game design, because a game without any challenge gets boring and stupid fast. There isn't a legitimate argument for leaving resource loop exploits in the game, all it sounds like is entitlement.
Oh man time for a discussion. On game design. From me. Run while you still can!
So, yeah, it's
that post. You're discussing the new Bearcraft nerf, and some people are saying 'maybe he went to far'. So they're posting their arguments, some are just grumbling, and then
that post shows up. All smug and missing the point by a nautical mile. Why people make
that post is pretty varied, but to violently beat people because they got close to your tree is human, so I'll just slot them into either lazy idiot, fly-by poster or confused. That probably covers, like, 30% of
that post creators, which is certainly a valid sample size if it were a absolute value and not a percentage.
So yeah,
that post. In essence,
that post is the simple statement 'if it's too hard, use creative'. It's generally an attempt to invalidate someone's argument by somehow suggesting they play incorrectly or something. It's a pretty terrible argument, that needs dissecting no several levels. So let's go.
Firstly, is that it creates a false dichotomy. The argument set forth suggests exactly two options are present; the current level of difficulty in Survival mode, or Creative mode. It's suggests that preferring less difficulty in requiring resources is equivalent to wanting no difficultly in that area. However, difficulty is not a binary setting. It's an analogue scale, and a fuzzy one at that.
Which I think brings us nicely to our second point. The
that post argument generally does not consider the quality of the difficulty or design in general, and instead focuses on the fact that difficulty exists, and that people don't like it because difficult. However, difficultly should be judge on how it is created. While TV Tropes is fairly hit and miss, the pages on
Fake Difficulty and
Fake Balance list many example of difficultly that is just bad, including things that appear in Minecraft mods. An example of this is the 1.6 Forestry bee nerf. 80% of bees are now 'ignoble' and have a random chance to 'die off'. So now you have to sent roughly 5 times longer finding princesses that don't have this problem. Of course, such luck-based systems are everywhere in bees. Mutation chances start at 15% percent and go down. And vanilla forestry contains no way of affecting this chance
in either direction in and upward direction. No player input, just RNG. 'Difficult' maybe. Well designed? In Minecraft mods? It's less likely than you think!
Finally, the
that post argument is one directional. The inverse is never present. No one says 'Oh, if it's so easy, why not get out of creative mode' when an excess of power is present. (Except for EE2, which while very fun, was also very Creative Squared). It's a subtle, perhaps not intentional suggestion that difficult will always increase enjoyment. Buffs of underpowered mechanics are rare. Instead, everything is brought down. Don't bring me down, Bruce! But seriously, when was the last time something was described as UP in Minecraft modding. It's as easy to create something something that's underpowered as it is to make something overpowered. Seriously, Push was a waste of energy better spend explode stuff. And Explode was cheaper than Teleport, but dug up treasure, killed stuff and gave a way back. Game design isn't just nerfing. It's providing interesting things, and something bring something up to the level of everything, instead of being Bruce and bringing everything else down.
And now look! Discussion of
that post has caused yet more cross-contamination! Before long you'll know exactly which open-source freeware game I mod! Eep!
