Alright fine, I'll check it out, just quit talking about it
Since when is added complexity and difficulty more fun?
- Thread starter deadscion
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I second this, I've had a blast so far. Thank you @KingTriaxx for recommending it to me. It's not as easy as like FTB Beyond or the Skyfactories, but it's not as tediously grindy as like Project Ozone 2 Kappa Mode.
I accept that we have different viewpoints and different wants and needs in a video game.
The problem is that in virtually every 'expert' or 'hardcore' pack, there isn't an alternative until much later gated behind some obnoxious grind. In fact, most packs brute-force things, like Continuum, to remove any part of any mod which MIGHT help mitigate, and consider it 'cheating' to try to see if there is a better way to do things.
I would have zero problems with a pack that made me explore my options. My problem is with packs that are so railroad-constrained that any deviation from the 'expected path' is considered, at best, an exploit to be fixed. Which seems to be 'all of them'.
No, the point is there ARE no tricks that the packs offer you to improve that pace. Everything is locked behind higher tech. And yes, packs have the right to design a new resource baseline. But that does not impart upon me a requirement to play or enjoy them.
Making a fundamental design change like altering base resources should be done with a purpose, and that purpose must have some value added. If you had, for example, had splitting logs manually return two planks, but setting up a horse mill system like Sevtech has to get more planks out of it, or at a minimum to automate the chopping of said logs, I would be totally on board with that. But there isn't. There is just 'lol halve resources because screw you'.
Either that or there IS no new mod content, and half or more of the mod content from the mods already included are disabled so that you must tred the One True Path and deviate not from our gloriously divinely inspired plan.
It's not that the pack devs are lazy... it's that they're incompetent at best.
Minecraft is an open world. You spawn in... enjoy. Have fun. Expert or Hardcore packs say "No, you are not permitted to enjoy your experience in any way other than what I insist you do."
This. This right here. Or maybe not, it's mainly, lack of new mods and lack of different paths. At least SevTech has different mods.
The entire gating system in Age of Engineering is power based. There are tons of ways to make the required power, but that's it. Most things are fairly cheap, and by Age 6, you have a void ore miner sooooo.
Having a linear progression path with the same mods is boring. No matter what way you shape Tinkers, its Tinkers. I have done Tinkers in every pack since Infinity.
This is just generally a great response. I don't agree on all your points, but appreciate the way they're delivered.
The "trick" is "grind for a short while to earn the tool that improves things." In continuum I believe there are machines that restore the vanilla wood ratio.
And my concern with the general-dismay at tweaking this vanilla baseline is that I never felt 1:4 was magically "perfect" in the first place. I wouldn't call it "totally random", but its not far off.
The value added here is that you can do things like add wood-chopping mechanisms without generating resource-inflation.
(I'm not super familiar with the horse-mill approach, but so long as it has a early-game-penalty...such as slowness...I'm equally on board with this as a "trick")
I don't really get this last thought at all and I wonder if you really meant it. I mean, you're declaring the difference between a kitchen-sink pack and its polar opposite. On the very worst end of the spectrum, the player has virtually no choices at all. That would be some sort of adventure pack.
Somewhere at that end of the spectrum (but not super close) would be your hard-core void/pre-gen-map packs, where people follow generally the same progression because there's no alternatives.
But you'll agree that those types of packs can be insanely popular (See your Sky Factory, Agrarian Skies and Crash Landings). They're not for everyone obviously, but saying "you are not permitted to enjoy your experience in any other way than what I insist you do" is a bit disingeneous. Its like repudiating the sport of hockey because the officials insist on keeping the rules. The restrictions in that game define the challenge and create the fun.
The weird thing is, I know for a fact that you're not in the game for a full sandbox experience (otherwise I'd only see you playing total kitchen-sink packs). So I hope you can redefine your last thought a bit.
And that's why I am enjoying this friendly debate... because that is precisely what it is. We are both mature adults, we both respect one another and respect the fact that while we may have different points of view on a topic, we acknowledge that the other party has an equal right to their viewpoint. That's how debate is supposed to go. And in hashing this out together, we might stumble into a methodology or technique which introduces complexity and engagement at the same time. Or at least that's my hope.
Okay, I see where you are coming from, and I freely admit that the initial vanilla baseline resource progression was fairly arbitrary. I'm not even sure if Notch had a concern about game balance when he set up those ratios in the first place. Remember, it was his very first foray into java programming and that was likely his initial focus.
Having said that, it has become the de facto standard, and your typical expectation when playing Minecraft is going to be to see something roughly like this. It is... let's say the 'industry standard', the 'status quo'. Its merits or flaws can certainly be debated, but meritous or flawed in its inception, it is the default that every player of Minecraft is going to expect. Therefore, deviation from that standard is going to be judged, and basic psychology says that it is not only going to have to prove that it is equal to the standard, but some measure superior. See also the competition between VCR and Betamax. VCR won not because it was superior, but because it had already established itself as the standard that Betamax had to prove it was not only superior to (which, mechanically, it definitively was), but enough superior to in order to warrant the change. Call it 'institutional momentum', if you like.
In my case, I look for a clear 'value added' when I change any sort of mechanics, be it adding a mod to a pack or changing how something works. I ask myself 'what are both the short and long term consequences to this action', what are all the results this action will cause.
You cite automation without generating resource-inflation as a value added for modifying the base resource balance, however I feel that this isn't accurate. Once you have a tree farm whose output exceeds the demand of wood, resource-inflation is inevitable. The only thing you are changing is how large your automation process needs to be or at least how much wood your automation process needs to supply you for you to continue to progress. However, wood is not commonly used in mid to high tier components, therefore as you progress, your reliance on wood inevitably and naturally declines, and I find that you have a simultaneous increase in wood automation capability at the same time you have this reduced demand for wood in your progression which causes resource-inflation and mass surplus inevitable because your tendency will be to over-build your automation based on your previous wood needs, when those needs are going to significantly decrease in the near future.
In other words, reducing the amount of wood produced in the early game does not cause a reduction in wood surplus in the mid to late game.
A better way to handle this, assuming you wanted to reduce the wood resource gathering component initially, and still have a value added in the mid to late game, is to require some measure of wood for every component going forward, either as material (for example, prohibiting the stamping of gears, but instead insisting on crafting tiered gears that require a wood gear base, to have a 'baked in' wood requirement for every gear), as a fuel for a resource (requiring specifically charcoal and not coal to run a step in the iron refining process so that for every ingot of steel produced, you consume roughly two logs of wood in resource consumption, thus making wood production a potential choke point for steel production, as happened back in 1.7.10 in Regrowth), or as framing for multiblock structures or something. So long as there will continue to be a steady demand of wood.
Now, if that was the case, if you needed wood after your initial stage as a major component going forward, or if there was a more primitive means of automation that wasn't as effective but at least *existed* after the initial base establishment, then suddenly not only does the early game 'punishment' pay off with a significant reward once you get to automation, but it continues to pay off, and even cause you to expand your production as you expand your industrial infrastructure.
Another example would be Bob's Mods for Factorio, specifically how the Basic Circuit Boards require wood, and are the foundation of literally every other technological component in the game. As the game progresses, you actually have to expand your wood harvesting process, whereas in regular Factorio, you only need wood until you get to the second tier power lines, then you need zero wood going forward.
THAT sort of thing, I would 100% agree with you would be awesome. Unfortunately, that's not what Continuum does, and that's my problem.
The distance to the automation from the early game in Continuum is sizable, and is gated behind several mods (or at least what parts of them exist in the pack) before you get to a means of automation. That's a long time before you can see any kind of even rudimentary automation. Heck, you're going to be using a Lumber Axe until you damn near get all the way up to Steve's Carts or Industrial Foregoing. It's completely unable to be automated until then. And that's where I have the problem. It's not just that you are being punished early-game, it is that by the time your automation capability is established, you no longer *need* that capability.
It was actually pretty clever. First, you have to find a horse, then you have to tame it (they added a saddle recipe that is early game, but contains about twenty steps all told, and requires a half dozen machines at various stages of progress, most of that in the leather curing process which is very similar to how TerraFirmaCraft handles leather production), then you have to lead it to a set up multiblock structure, and attach the horse's lead to the machine. The horse then slowly marches around the machine, describing the outline of a 5x5 square, and progress is slowly made without your direct input. However, the process for making saddles can be done in bulk, the time it would take you to make the materials for six saddles is the exact same time it would take to make the materials for a single one, so if you can find a herd of horses, you can then tame them all and set up all of the horse-compatible machines for slow but steady automation. You then have to protect the horses from hostile mobs, of course, and automating in Sevtech is... non-trivial. You will start off with it spitting items out onto the ground, and work up to eventually being able to use crude hoppers.
However, it was Tier 1 automation, available almost as soon as you get your initial base set up. You could have four different machines, each with a horse slowly plodding around it, before you hit Age 2. If that was what you wanted to do.
Okay, let's see if I can convey this in a coherent manner...
The base vanilla Minecraft game is an open world. Kitchen sink packs follow this. The base expectation for the average individual going into a minecraft experience is going to be framed in this manner. Some other types of packs permit this as well.
Then you get into... let's use the term 'quest packs', because they have some sort of questing manual. They have changed things around, and the quest log is your roadmap. You have tiers of things you can do, with roadblocks in the way you need to navigate or overcome. The key to success or failure of these packs boils down to conveyance of that path, and what options are available to you at each stage.
From there, you have 'expert/hardmode quest packs' which are like above, however they've made significant changes to mechanics, resource acquisition or refinement, and typically have a 'gimmick' that you have to deal with/use.
You cite Skyblock as a constrained progression, but I would almost say it is the opposite. You have bountiful resource production almost right out of the gate, at least bountiful enough to continue with your projects. You don't feel like you are getting 'punished' for trying to play the pack, it feels 'right'. It is a challenge to obtain the resources (typically involving setting up a cobblegen and hammering for ores), but the resources are, at least in theory, infinite. You have unlimited cobblestone. You have enough trees growing to provide the wood for the wooden components of the hammer. You can sit at this manual stage and gather a couple of chests worth of resources if you want, which will keep you going with the raw materials you need to get to a level of automation. Or you can just make enough for each individual project, and take a few minutes between projects gathering materials for your next project. Either way, you the player are engaged, and typically alternating between relaxing and stressful periods in a manner that encourages you to continue playing. Once you have your resource production line fully automated, you can shift your focus exclusively to building projects or quest progression, however those building projects or quest progression are no longer particularly stressful to the player. You know what you want to do, how to do it, and now you are just wanting to put the pieces together to show off your new model to
And the key here is one simple word: engaging. A pack needs to engage the user, has to get the user invested in it, get the player engaged and interested. Get him hooked. Give him something to play with. Kicking him in the head with an immediate halving or quartering of resource allocation right out of the gate... doesn't do that. You need to have a more clearly presented carrot to say 'yea, it's rough now, but just wait until you get to the next step...'. And then, and this is the important part, follow through on that promise. It doesn't have to be much. Maybe give him an early-access lumber axe type tool that reduces the grind, or a way of consuming hunger to 'twerk for trees' to reduce waiting around for the trees to grow at the cost of hunger... which I would've felt would have been very neatly balanced by the addition of Spice of Life and lack of food variety in the early game, and would've made for a much more engaging mechanic and forced you to consider a whole new dynamic that most people hand-wave... hunger and food management. THAT would have been engaging, because you the player are constantly at the keyboard doing something, being engaged. Maybe it's just tapping on the shift key, fine, but it's doing something.
Continuum, on the other hand, forces you into focusing on progression by the initial reduction of materials gathered. You won't have enough to continue going, especially not at first, which will be both stressful and frustrating. It pressures you into going one way and only one way because you know that, sooner or later, you'll get to a point where you can get this awkward phase behind you. Only that's not going to be for a very long time, because of how the pack is structured. Instead of having a balance of relaxing and stressful, it's almost 100% stress all the time. And it makes the carrot it is dangling about a third of the way through the pack seem like a sick joke. The payoff keeps getting put off and put off and put off until the player just... stops bothering to try. It's like the old image of a hobo trying to pick up a dollar bill that is attached to a fish hook that someone is periodically yanking to keep it just out of his reach. It feels like the goalposts are constantly moving further away every time you make 'progress'.
There is no victory without the risk of defeat, and the tougher the challenge will result in the sweeter the victory. However, if the player gets so discouraged, frustrated, or annoyed by the obstacle course (excuse me... confidence course) you've laid out in front of him, then he's never going to bother trying in the first place.
And the worst part is, there are no new tricks, there are no new mechanics to enjoy or explore. Well, there is that damn Efab, but that's not a joy to explore, it's the waiting line where you have a four digit number and the sign says 'now serving '3' ' at the DMV. And it makes you think "You know... I could be doing this... or I could be mowing the lawn. Right now, I think I'd rather just go mow the lawn". That's how utterly boring and unengaging Continuum is to me... I would rather go out and mow the lawn than sit down and play the game. Because there is a significant amount of time that is literally doing nothing but waiting for a timer to tick down. I could go completely AFK and there would be zero difference. But other than that, there's nothing new to be found here. It's all well-trodden ground (at least the bits of ground that remain).
Compare and contrast Dishonored with Megaman. Dishonored has a tightly constrained plot, but you can achieve the plot directives however you want, and the game acknowledges and applauds your creativity. In Megaman... you jump, shoot, and move right. Both games are enjoyable for different reasons. If I want to play a game where I have options on how to go about doing things, I play Dishonored. If I want to play a game of twitch-reflexes and pattern recognition, I play Megaman. But Continuum feels like Dishonored... where getting on rooftops is considered 'out of bounds' and a bunch of invisible walls have been set up to keep you from 'exploiting movement mechanics', then removing the nonlethal means of completing assassination tasks, forcing you into the high chaos ending regardless of what you wanted to do. It feels like a bait and switch, for some reason.
If I had to guess... I'd say it is because I read the list of mods, and from that list of mods, I knew what tools I had available to me, because I'm intimately familiar with all of these mods and their mechanics. And then three quarters of those mechanics simply don't exist, forcing me into one and only one path for progression that I know, from my in-depth knowledge of these mods, is the most painfully annoying way possible. I know exactly what I have to do. I just don't feel inclined to do it.
For all of its faults, Sevtech did an exponentially better job at player engagement. At times, I felt it was too convoluted, too many steps that had to be manually repeated too many times, but at least I was doing something. Early game Continuum is merely a waiting game. A boring and bland pack that feels like someone took a kitchen sink pack, then randomly put in traffic lights that would turn red when you approach them, then removed the side-streets to force you to wait through the stop light, then forced you into a well-known detour through the Bog of Eternal Stench. Because that's the path, and the ONLY path, the developers want you to take. It's a brute force approach, and one I don't appreciate.
So, I suppose my argument isn't that added complexity and difficult isn't fun... because they certainly can be. It's when boring and pointless grind replace complexity and difficulty that I become disinterested.
Quite the wall o' text here, I suppose, but I hope my rambling has given insight to my position.
Big thumbs up from me, brilliant post, especially for mentioning "Bog of Eternal Stench"
I've always adjusted the wood recipes myself (2 planks from a log) purely as a counter balance to automation, but will admit I've overlooked the supply/demand aspect you mention. Food for thought there. Just my logical mind has issues adding planks into a high tech component recipe.
I've been playing SevTech a little myself. Don't have any horse powered stuff yet, but already have whoppers. I personally feel some of the primitive era is a bit "meh" and needs some further thought. I have a simple grill that can cook virtually anything for no fuel cost, but there's a whole long process for making leather that I'm just not that inclined to even attempt. Likewise, with stone tools still being available, the usefulness of the flint tools is virtually nill, another ball ache to go through just to get started. Might as well just kept to wooden tools tbh. Now from watching Direwolf20 last night looking at the basic engine recipe for Steves Carts, I'm like, what!?!?! nope. That's an even bigger ball ache for an already ball ache mod. Oh, plus the Immersive Chest storage method is another needless ballache. As a result, I'm not feeling engaged in SevTech anymore and I've only just scratched the surface.
I've always adjusted the wood recipes myself (2 planks from a log) purely as a counter balance to automation, but will admit I've overlooked the supply/demand aspect you mention. Food for thought there. Just my logical mind has issues adding planks into a high tech component recipe.
I've been playing SevTech a little myself. Don't have any horse powered stuff yet, but already have whoppers. I personally feel some of the primitive era is a bit "meh" and needs some further thought. I have a simple grill that can cook virtually anything for no fuel cost, but there's a whole long process for making leather that I'm just not that inclined to even attempt. Likewise, with stone tools still being available, the usefulness of the flint tools is virtually nill, another ball ache to go through just to get started. Might as well just kept to wooden tools tbh. Now from watching Direwolf20 last night looking at the basic engine recipe for Steves Carts, I'm like, what!?!?! nope. That's an even bigger ball ache for an already ball ache mod. Oh, plus the Immersive Chest storage method is another needless ballache. As a result, I'm not feeling engaged in SevTech anymore and I've only just scratched the surface.
Create a recipe for making steel that requires consumption of charcoal to produce. Not coal, just charcoal. And charcoal can only be obtained by... smelting logs. Congratulations, you have your wood consumption in your high-tech environment, baked (if you'll excuse the pun) into the manufacturing of the steel needed to build everything.
Oh, I'll 100% agree the pack is a ball-buster and I gave up on it as well, but the horse automation was there, and from the sound of it, you were right at the tech level needed to achieve it. The leather production system looked like it got cribbed off of TerraFirmaCraft, and yes it was an absolute nightmare, but at least it existed, and you had Age 1 automation using woppers and chests and your horse. Granted, it was annoying to get automation, and required a painful number of steps, but it was there.
Continuum? Not so much.
Yep, my two current "challenges" are to find a darkland biome for a sapling, to get "better" storage chests, and to craft leads to get the early automation in place. Just hoping that I can use Pigs (if enabled in config), as that's all I have spawning anywhere near me.
The latest update just added nature's compass, so you can find that, I must be the only one who somewhat enjoys those, and yes, yes they do
If you get into Totems mod, you can also use buffalo, which I believe are actually better than horses. Be a bit of a pain for the ritual, and will require some cows, but it might be worth the effort.
Totemic's one of those cool mods I'd never have discovered if I hadn't seen someone using it in SevTech. The ritual to accelerate crops is awesome. As is the war dance that gives you a strength buff.
Some people are just masochists, aren't they?
Now seriously, it's just the fact that we get bored after playing minecraft for years and search for new ways of entertainment, some find it in difficult/complex/tedious packs, some not. And the popular pack makers (mainly FTB) avoid adding new, less-known mods, probably because it requires more time for testing when you can, say, just slap in an array of well-tested "old" mods, thus saving time to develop a pack. I think having one or two secondary packs with entirely new mods would benefit us, because of new things to explore. Even if they are somewhat buggy, hence the word "secondary".
Now seriously, it's just the fact that we get bored after playing minecraft for years and search for new ways of entertainment, some find it in difficult/complex/tedious packs, some not. And the popular pack makers (mainly FTB) avoid adding new, less-known mods, probably because it requires more time for testing when you can, say, just slap in an array of well-tested "old" mods, thus saving time to develop a pack. I think having one or two secondary packs with entirely new mods would benefit us, because of new things to explore. Even if they are somewhat buggy, hence the word "secondary".
Fun is a relative term. What is fun to me might be meaningless grind to you. What is fun to me today, might be meaningless grind to me tomorrow. The trick is to know what you enjoy and play that.
Yep. That's me for A Polychromatic World. Its not to everyone's taste, but its exactly to mine
@ShneekeyTheLost you have lot of really good points and I wanted to add something that might or might not give you ideas for your packs. I think the shop addition to the quest book in Sky Adventures is a brilliant idea that could be expanded in so many great ways. I love the gated progression concepts that SevTech brought to the table but despise maps and wawla being turned off. I think using the shop in the quest book to unlock these types of quality of life improvements is a neat idea.
Another idea for the shop in a quest book would be to use points to unlock kits. Perhaps the first milestone is ore doubling. You have a choice to achieve this with TiC smeltery, EIO sag mill / alloy smelter, or pulverizer from TE. Lets say I decide to go down the EIO path to achieve this milestone. The reward is a kit for a TiC smeltery or a pulverizer and a redstone furnace from TE. You really gain no new power in the kit, but you do gain flexibility and options for your base.
Another idea for the shop in a quest book would be to use points to unlock kits. Perhaps the first milestone is ore doubling. You have a choice to achieve this with TiC smeltery, EIO sag mill / alloy smelter, or pulverizer from TE. Lets say I decide to go down the EIO path to achieve this milestone. The reward is a kit for a TiC smeltery or a pulverizer and a redstone furnace from TE. You really gain no new power in the kit, but you do gain flexibility and options for your base.
Sky Adventures is a pretty neat pack imo, unfortunately, I don't like projectE, but that is my preference, not the mod's fault. Some of the rewards in the shop are rather good too, such as the creative energy cell. Granted you would have to complete every quest in the book to get it, but worth going after.