Objective based mods.

[zorn]

Was reading this thread from Mikemoo on reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/feedthebeast/comments/1uasaa/objective_based_mods/

He says:

I see a lot of people asking for ideas of what to build, how to avoid getting bored and how to get back into it.

My feeling for quite a while now is that modded minecraft is starting to get old enough for the need for more than the standard sandbox. We have hundreds of mods, almost all in some way focused around increasing, producing and sorting resources in almost any way you can dream of. Mod blocks are getting more sophisticated so there's less need to create crazy tube inventions like the old RP days.

Some people will forever love creating their own objectives, I know that.

I feel there's space for more mods that add objectives in some way. What mods out there do you consider to be the best at this kind of thing? Do they have issues when it comes to maintaining difficulty when installed with other resource based mods?

Edit: To add to that, what objectives in other games have you really enjoyed? Regardless if you think the mechanic could translate nicely to Minecraft. For example, I played Lord of the rings online for quite a long time, and we spent weeks and weeks trying to kill raid bosses, working out mechanics, with a real sense of achievement being the first group to work out how to kill a particular boss, or being able to kill him in the fastest time.

This kind of goes against what others often say, but I agree with mikemoo here. KingLemming once told me 'play the game, dont let the game play you' in response to me saying that msot current mods have no real goals to obtain, like gregtech does. Why cant we have both?

Then a guy posts this comment

I want to start in a continent surrounded by a nuclear wasteland (any kind of wasteland really), simply standing in it would start to poison you - there are no trees, no animals, just snow over contaminated dirt. There are one or two clean biomes around spawn, your job is to decontaminate the entire continent, repopulate the wildlife, trees, terraform the biomes back to their original type, rebuild the villages. Doing this with a few ultra-highend blocks in steps.

1. Clean toxic waste with a cleaner block, consumes fresh water, sand and some other stuff to clean waste off the land, this leaves you with a clean, but dead dirt block and a ton of waste which preferably could not be "trash-canned" or "void piped" (needs to be stored safely or possibly destroyed through some non-trivial mechanism).
2. Clean all water - required some sort of filtration multiblock and a special pump which will suck up poison and replace it with clean water.
3. Get grass growing again - consumes mulch (or something), created through farm waste (plant and animal)
4. Get trees growing again - consumes saplings and bonemeal/fertilizer
5. Repopulate the fauna to a certain "self-sustaining" level
6. Rebuild destroyed villages (must have x amount of villagers living in them)

This is a good idea, one of many that mod authors could create. Twilight forrest is really aobut the only mod I can think of that adds true content, not just ways to get resources and power which are then used to get more resoruces and power.

What if someone made a mod that required you to work up to building a huge fusion reactor because it was the only thing with enough power to open up some huge Stargate type portal. The portal then let you access another dimension, like a Twilight forest mod, but obviously one that would mesh with late game ideas (whereas twilight forest is ruined by other late game items like an MPS suit, etc.) Instead we have a fusion reactor whose only use is to let us make more things that give us even more power or resources. Which is ok... if there was some big event or goal that you could then use all that stuff on.

This kind of goes against the 'sandbox' idea a bit, but does the entire game have to be completely open ended? I think some mods that were morelike the wasteland that is converted back to a livable habitat idea are a good thing. Maybe the beauty of minecraft mods could be that you can set up objectives and get there in many different ways, vs a typical game that only gives you a couple paths to take, and always take you to the same place in the end. Over time, everyone gets bored with 'complex systems' that are getting simpler every day, as mods that offer shortcuts are replacing other mods all the time. I mean honestly... quarryplus in a modpack with no gregtech? You can't possibly use it for anything other than being able to say you had 5000 diamonds in storage.

Thoughts?

 

[DREVL]

I've got an idea kinda like that... After doing vanilla for a year, I wanted to try and accomplish everything in minecraft without damaging the environment. Kinda the anti mine craft experience some how. Of late there are a few mods that could possibly help in that but there isn't anything completely there yet. Also making me think at what point is environmentalism is counterproductive or impossible if taken seriously.[DOUBLEPOST=1388763527][/DOUBLEPOST]but yeah... i like that terra forming idea.

 

[Kyll.Ing.]

I think GalactiCraft is a step in the right direction. I haven't played it yet, but from what I've gathered, it seems like the point is to get into orbit, then to the moon, and later to Mars. Getting to Pluto or something could be a lofty goal to aim for, requiring lots of infrastructure and bases on planets with hostile environments along the way.

Adding to the "end goal" thing, there could be planets visible in the night sky. Perhaps one of them could have something visibly wrong with it for you to fix. Every night, you could gaze up on the planet, reminding you that up there is...
a) Great evil.
b) Something for you to fix/exploit.
c) Innocents in dire need of your help.
d) A combination of the above.
Once you've fixed this, the planet would shine brighter, or look bigger, or get the right colour, or something like that.

Getting to the "Troubled planet" would be an end-game goal in itself, but actually fixing it could require loads of work, or be difficult even then somehow. You'd need a lot of infrastructure, tons of resources gathered on several different planets, rare items obtained on the highest mountain peak or in the deepest cave of the solar system, etc.


Either way, an end goal should be hard and time-consuming to achieve, but not stupidly hard or time-consuming. Chopping down a million Jungle trees using only Diamond Hoes is a challenge few would dare to take on, but that doesn't make it good.
Likewise, it should be rewarding, proportional to the amount of work put into it. Nobody would bother with GregTech's Fusion Reactors if they gave nothing in return. Or, to take a more Vanilla example, slaying the Wither. You actually get a good reward for it, but the way there is long and strenous.
If the quest is really long (and the end quest should be), there should be milestones along the way, both challenge- and reward wise. If a single Great Tree Demon appears after a million Jungle Trees, most players would stay satisfied never seeing it. However, if the Lesser Sapling Dragon spawns after the first thousand, and its defeat gives your Hoes twice the chopping power, it gives players some motivation to continue to the end. Especially so if the Bigger Sapling Dragon teases you with another Hoe upgrade down the way.
It should also be clear early on what the End Goal is all about, how you begin taking the challenge on, and what you'll get from finishing it.
In short, the ideal end-goal is clear, just hard enough, and rewarding enough to keep players interested along the way.