Should ftb be... harder?

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DoctorOr

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Jul 29, 2019
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so if time sinks=hard, i have a bad news about your creativity, because you cannot create a goal for yourself(which is survival mc is all about) to utilize all resources you`ve gathered, and instead you want someone to create a goal for you, by asking more time sinks.

Funny people saying that, all of which don't realize that the most popular things in all of history are time sinks. Although, some people call it "Gambling" or "Slots"
 
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zorn

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Jul 29, 2019
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Does Greg hang around anywhere, it'd be fun to meet him. Very very cool mod, and its just an addon! he has cool ideas, cool machines, and a sense of humor. Is he like some hermit that never appears or something, people talk like he is some mythical being. the Keyser Soze of Minecraft. "and like that... he's gone..."

edit: as for time sinks...

http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

Game desiggners have figured out that a reward is more fulfulling to a player when they... have to perform BORING and tedious tasks to get there. If the path to the reward is full of fun things to do... the reward is actually less satisfying.

This is why people stand around a crafting table moving icons to make something, rather than cheat it into existence. IMO.
 

namiasdf

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Jul 29, 2019
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Think about it this way though. Energy storage shouldn't really be an issue. For most players, the way they go is that they fill up as many high energy storage containers, then dump it into whatever they were going to go.

i.e. They uses whatever means they have to generate energy, whether it be sustainable or not, just to get the energy into their system. The ability to generate energy from exploitable resources would be something worth looking into to balance, i.e. solar panels. The limiting reagent is UU-matter, and those require quite a bit of energy to produce.

GT just makes the transition from A to B a lot longer and to require a lot more work/time. If UU-matter only required 1 million with such cheap solar panels, I'd be at fusion in a couple days even (if that was my intention).

Having abundant energy storage is the same as having abundant storage space. You still have to fill that energy storage in order for it to be useful and if you find that energy through non-exploitable sources, then meh tbh.

(Though I have no idea what other things you can do with those gems that is really important, other than storage devices.)
 

Loufmier

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Jul 29, 2019
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the gems are definitely not 'balanced', you can have a few dozen diamonds mined up by hand and have a few hundred sapphires and rubies. obviously letting players use more common materials to build powerful items is not what greg intended.

side note: why couldnt someone just increase the cost of items, and not complexity like greg did? Can't a recipe just call for a stack of an item? Change a quarry to require 5 diamond picks and 20 iron gears, not 1 pick and 2 gears. No added tedium, but it makes it more of an investment. Longer time to mine up those resources, and harder to build a second or third quarry. Shouldnt a machine that does so much be pretty hard to build? There is a reason almost every single player uses them, other than people who get fancy like turtles and mining wells, etc.

the EE3 ideas are awesome... just not balanced. An enderpearl should be like 8 gold bars to make, not 4 iron. Or a diamond or something. I heard the guy doing EE3 made some new system that is supposed to figure out EMC values nomatter what mods you use to stop exploits, but it should be expensive to change things into other materials. Really, ender pearls go from super hard and rare to aquire, to super cheap and easy. That isn't the definition of an 'equivalent exchange', is it?

everything is imba compared to gt. period. seriously, it would be easier to "buff" gt than "nerfing" everything else, to achieve "balance".

you cant do that because of technical limitations of mc. you could implement multistage crafting process with bunch of useless mid-products, but its just nothing more than pain in the ass, with 0 complexity.
i hardly see any complexity in gt except of fusion reactor and distillation tower. fusion reactor takes its complexity in automation of fuel supply and has a bit of output variability(although AS`s fusion reactor simply owns gt on this one). distillation gets its complexity from cell requirements, which seems to be cause by certain limitation, it would be too simply for me otherwise anyway. ind. grinder can be complex to automate but it all comes down to mod used for automation.
the problem with simple cost increase in ic2 environment is that almost everything in the mod is a single block, and thus increasing cost adds 0 complexity and just move milestone a bit further.
take a look at atomic science, and its fusion and fission reactor possible design with variable output, cost and complexity.
ic2 reactor have similar complexity to AS but they suck, which makes them rather a "fun toy to mess around" than a decent tool.

enderperls are not hard to get, but endermen are rather pain the ass to come by. so i see 0 point in changing ee3 recipe because it remove that annoyance of finding those damn mobs, that tend to teleport underground...
 

giesergast

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Jul 29, 2019
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mods already got harder a time ago i played tekkit where it was a matter of spending a diamond for a philopihers (i thinks thats spelled wrong) stone making a 2energy condensers and some macerators some blaze rods for a kickstart and you basicly set now even without gregtech its way way harder to get trough the "tech-tree"in my opinion itss alredy hard enough oke not really but it is if you put limitations for yourself i usually do no solar no lava and when you still get trough the "tech-tree" there is always the challenge of auto producing everrything in the game or/and building 100 fusion reactors easy or hard isnt really clear at some point its easy to make a fusion reactor while in the beggining you cant even think about it
 

Loufmier

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Jul 29, 2019
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Funny people saying that, all of which don't realize that the most popular things in all of history are time sinks. Although, some people call it "Gambling" or "Slots"
its an example of time sinks that are well designed, because people playing slot dont feel like they do something really boring and annoying, and actually have fun.

and no its not a justification of possible financial health damage cause by slots and gambling.
 

Nefroz

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Jul 29, 2019
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I wish to point out my signature. Gtech allows it to be plenty grindy in singleplayer in multi-player this is different. If you crave difficulty and or grinding that much go play terrafirmacraft.
 

namiasdf

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Jul 29, 2019
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I feel like GT makes you be more efficient or have to develop continuous systems. Generating 1 million EU vs. 16 million EU is a matter of time and efficiency. If you can't build automated, redundant and efficient systems, that 15.6 million EU gap becomes a lot greater than for those who can continuously build their EU generation at a continuous rate.

It also makes waste a bigger problem, which is an issue for those who have tens of thousands of extra stuff lying around. Build systems that don't have those kinds of flaws and you'll see where things can take you.
 

KirinDave

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Jul 29, 2019
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Like what, turtles? other than setup time, i think turtles are amazing. 4 turtles out run a quarry at comparable cost to the non-gregtech quarry, and use far less energy doing it.

I guess im saying the progression IS part of the fun.


Watch my YouTube series. I have the most absurd autominer ever for 1.5.2 working in a test world. It makes frame machine miners look like a joke. It'll start next week.
 

atheneftw

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Jul 29, 2019
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from my point of view i think ftb is balanced, the only things that are over the top are mfr tree farms and nether lava pumping, everything else is fine. (though a macerator should not require 3 diamonds..)
 

PeggleFrank

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Jul 29, 2019
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I'm fairly sure some things were intended to be hard but other mods tend to indirectly make them easy.


Fighting tall black demon things which have insane health and can wipe you out in a matter of seconds, just to get ender pearls. In which you need tons of to convert into ender eyes to guide you to a dungeon which has a magical portal in it which leads you to fight a dragon.

EE3 lets you convert an incredibly small amount of iron into the ender pearls needed.

IC2 and MPS let you kill the dragon in under a minute.

Mystcraft and DD let you travel between the end and your base quickly, without any troubles.

IC2 and MPS let you find the stronghold quickly.


That was supposed to be the hardest thing in Minecraft to fight. And it was supposed to be a challenge.

So the wither was made to be harder than the ender dragon to fight. Obviously it's a very deadly opponent, in full nano + a Tinker's Construct sword, which are among the most expensive items. /sarcasm


Infernal mobs makes normal mobs a little bit of a challenge, but it's still not much. And it makes the early-game incredibly hard, to the point where you can't even go outside at night.



The same applies to all other challenges. Gregtech is another story, it makes things harder to craft, but once you're up to the point where you have an automated tree farm and a quarry it's still not that hard at all.
 

Symmetryc

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Jul 29, 2019
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I was just searching through the TConstruct config and I saw an option that turned off auto regen health and makes it UHC-like. Seems like a pretty interesting style of play, definitely makes FTB harder.
 

PeggleFrank

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Jul 29, 2019
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Isn't doNaturalRegeneration a 1.6 thing? So far the pack and TC are 1.5.

Oh, yeah. My bad.

I thought it was 1.5 for some reason, possibly because 1.5 actually added interesting things and 1.6 just added some horses and a couple storage blocks.
 

schyman

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Jul 29, 2019
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That was supposed to be the hardest thing in Minecraft to fight. And it was supposed to be a challenge.
Honestly, while it's certainly _easier_ with FTB, in vanilla games I've played the dragon has died far earlier than in FTB games, because when you play FTB there's a crapload of stuff you want to do first. Last time I played vanilla it was with another friend, we two played for three days and then we killed the dragon. Now, we played a lot, but we're not that awesome at MC and don't know triangulation well enough to find the stronghold with that. But the dragon is honestly quite easy, just get diamond pickaxe and enchanting table, start enchanting till you get fortune 3, get a shitload of diamonds in like an hour, make full diamond armor and enchant it a bit, same with a bow, get a few decent extended duration potions just to round things out and go kill the dragon.

The ender dragon isn't a challenge at all IMO, how long it takes to kill it seems really to just depend on how fast you can get enough ender pearls which can be pretty quick once you get a looting I or II sword.
 
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PeggleFrank

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Jul 29, 2019
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Honestly, while it's certainly _easier_ with FTB, in vanilla games I've played the dragon has died far earlier than in FTB games, because when you play FTB there's a crapload of stuff you want to do first. Last time I played vanilla it was with another friend, we two played for three days and then we killed the dragon. Now, we played a lot, but we're not that awesome at MC and don't know triangulation well enough to find the stronghold with that. But the dragon is honestly quite easy, just get diamond pickaxe and enchanting table, start enchanting till you get fortune 3, get a shitload of diamonds in like an hour, make full diamond armor and enchant it a bit, same with a bow, get a few decent extended duration potions just to round things out and go kill the dragon.

The ender dragon isn't a challenge at all IMO, how long it takes to kill it seems really to just depend on how fast you can get enough ender pearls which can be pretty quick once you get a looting I or II sword.


How about the Wither then?

In full enchanted iron it can kill you, and last time I tried diamond isn't an exception but you can dodge the shots to avoid the damage. Which makes it skill based, and it's more important that the battle depends on skill than your gear.
 

Symmetryc

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Jul 29, 2019
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How about the Wither then?

In full enchanted iron it can kill you, and last time I tried diamond isn't an exception but you can dodge the shots to avoid the damage. Which makes it skill based, and it's more important that the battle depends on skill than your gear.

Were you using regen? If you have 3-5 regen potions, a good bow and diamond sword you can kill it in enchanted iron.
 

Harvest88

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Jul 29, 2019
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Step 0: Define 'hard'.

Seriously do this before talking about balance/difficulty/marmots because in Minecraft 'hard' varies between players. Remember, some people liked their EE2 Red Matter farms.

Also, nerfing is not the only way to balance. Sometimes things need buffing.
Good example is those stupid IC2 reactors. Like really 5 eu/t for an uranium single cell?? A generator can act as 2 separated uranium single cells and ho easier to get going of it's renewable and a lot cheaper than a 0 chamber reactor.