Survey - Future Quest Based Modpacks

[Feed the Beast]

What do you look for in a quest based modpack?


We have recently started development on several new mod packs, one of which has taken a new direction in the last couple of days that has encouraged me to come directly to the community to seek input with regards to how we go about creating it. From what was initially going to be something fairly generic, it now looks like we are going to add some story elements into the pack, along with our custom questing solution.


With this in mind, it would be useful if some of you would take the time to complete the following survey:


https://goo.gl/forms/404cqjb9pUOtpS9F2


The information from this will be used to help us refine this pack and hopefully make it a better experience for all.


Thanks to everyone who takes the time to read this.


The FTB Team.

 

[DinnerBeef]

Let See What People Are Going To Say

 

[DinnerBeef]

All right who but Bananas in there

 

[Magzie]

I look to see if the pack has Hunger Overhual. If it does then I don't play it. Also it is nice to have maps to goes with story based packs. Always wonder why no one did like a mod where you can pick from a small list of starter bases to start in. You know like the bare Minimum like furnace, bed, and few storage things. Not just plain chest ether.

 

[Pyure]

I look to see if the pack has Hunger Overhual.

Ditto although I'll make exceptions for a good pack that scales it back brutally.

 

[Drbretto]

I did the survey, but I want to expand here for discussion sake.

I pushed a little bit toward the linear side of things here because I'm sure that will be the less popular option given Minecraft is especially attractive to those who like to have total freedom. It's kind of a central theme.

But, if I want total freedom, I can just throw up my 85 favorite mods and go do whatever I want. I don't need someone to build that for me at all. If someone is building a pack for me to play, that pack should usher the user towards a certain intended experience. To do that, you need to step at least a little bit into hand-holding territory.

In a case like this, the freedom is still going to be there naturally unless the pack comes with a custom-built world to play in as well. You still build whatever you want. You still build wherever you want. And in the end, your goals are still your goals. But, where I DO want some guidance is in the progression of the mods themselves. Given absolute freedom, the majority will default to the paths of least resistance. IE, the same old cliches over and over again.

As an example, I never bothered with any Tinker's stuff because it just looked more complicated than it was worth. I went to start one day, but I didn't really know where to start, so I didn't bother. Until one day I tried out the Infinity quest mode (for like a day, sadly) and the first thing it does is walk you through the basics. I want that. But the tools themselves being gated helps ensure that as long as the pack goes on, there are still more things to discover. I can't tell you how many times I've started a pack with aspirations of experimenting with all these different power generation options only to stumble on something overpowered and forgetting about the rest that I blew right past.

Another thing is while I've gone through my open custom packs, with the idea being that I throw all these packs together for the purpose of exploring these different mods, not necessarily knowing up-front what each of these mods has to offer, I found myself often overshooting the effective range of the mods I wanted to explore. Having a quest mode move you through a natural progression helps ensure that you discover these mods at the appropriate time to get an appropriate reward for your efforts.

I don't know about straight linearity or hard-gating things behind other quests. I don't think that's necessary. A beginner quest chain to get started, opens up 3 - 5 chains that the player can choose between freely while you gear up for the next tier, etc.

Again the freedom is still in what you do with it. You can't hard-code in the requirement that someone uses these tools to build and awesome castle. That's all up to the player.

As for "grindy" recipes, I'm actually OK with this as long as there exists something like RS storage that I can use to help with the components. I like the idea of an item not just requiring this one item, but rather requiring you to figure out a way to automate the mass production of that item in order to use it for this crucial step. I don't think of that as grindy. If that's grindy to you, you're solving the problem the wrong way. It's not about taking the time to make 64 of that item. It's about the solution you come up with that makes coming up with a stack of them for crafting purposes manageable.

 

[Drbretto]

Oh, and for length, I would so much rather end a world with still more to do than being having a blast in a world right up until there's nothing left to do. 4-5 months was the highest option on the survey, but I'd love it if there was a year's worth of stuff to do if I could.

 

[GamerwithnoGame]

I did the survey, but I want to expand here for discussion sake.

I pushed a little bit toward the linear side of things here because I'm sure that will be the less popular option given Minecraft is especially attractive to those who like to have total freedom. It's kind of a central theme.

But, if I want total freedom, I can just throw up my 85 favorite mods and go do whatever I want. I don't need someone to build that for me at all. If someone is building a pack for me to play, that pack should usher the user towards a certain intended experience. To do that, you need to step at least a little bit into hand-holding territory.

In a case like this, the freedom is still going to be there naturally unless the pack comes with a custom-built world to play in as well. You still build whatever you want. You still build wherever you want. And in the end, your goals are still your goals. But, where I DO want some guidance is in the progression of the mods themselves. Given absolute freedom, the majority will default to the paths of least resistance. IE, the same old cliches over and over again.

As an example, I never bothered with any Tinker's stuff because it just looked more complicated than it was worth. I went to start one day, but I didn't really know where to start, so I didn't bother. Until one day I tried out the Infinity quest mode (for like a day, sadly) and the first thing it does is walk you through the basics. I want that. But the tools themselves being gated helps ensure that as long as the pack goes on, there are still more things to discover. I can't tell you how many times I've started a pack with aspirations of experimenting with all these different power generation options only to stumble on something overpowered and forgetting about the rest that I blew right past.

Another thing is while I've gone through my open custom packs, with the idea being that I throw all these packs together for the purpose of exploring these different mods, not necessarily knowing up-front what each of these mods has to offer, I found myself often overshooting the effective range of the mods I wanted to explore. Having a quest mode move you through a natural progression helps ensure that you discover these mods at the appropriate time to get an appropriate reward for your efforts.

I don't know about straight linearity or hard-gating things behind other quests. I don't think that's necessary. A beginner quest chain to get started, opens up 3 - 5 chains that the player can choose between freely while you gear up for the next tier, etc.

Again the freedom is still in what you do with it. You can't hard-code in the requirement that someone uses these tools to build and awesome castle. That's all up to the player.

As for "grindy" recipes, I'm actually OK with this as long as there exists something like RS storage that I can use to help with the components. I like the idea of an item not just requiring this one item, but rather requiring you to figure out a way to automate the mass production of that item in order to use it for this crucial step. I don't think of that as grindy. If that's grindy to you, you're solving the problem the wrong way. It's not about taking the time to make 64 of that item. It's about the solution you come up with that makes coming up with a stack of them for crafting purposes manageable.

I'm basically with you pretty much 100% on this one. My exception was the grindy quests, and for me that depends on what the nature of them is. I take as my bad example of it, Agrarian Skies and the Octuple Compressed Cobble. Because all other in-block cobble gens apart from the TE one were disabled (as memory serves), I had no choice but to spam spam spam the ingeous extruders. Which honestly was just tedious, and didn't feel rewarding.

What I quite like the thought of (though I get why people wouldn't) is something that follows the clicker model (if I'm interpreting that correctly): as you progress gathering your large amount of X item, you can build/purchase/upgrade things (perhaps with some of that item) that allow you to then progress faster with the task of gathering X. Does that make sense?

 

[Nedrith]

I prefer to have quests that make sense in which quests are required and which are optional. If I already had a quest to make RF power through a certain machine I don't want more quests that are required and tell me to make this type of generator to make power. If there's something really important about making that kind of power generator than sure, IE a extreme reactor to get the cyanite by products but generally those quests should be optional. My thought on a perfect quest system is a core central line of required quests along with optional quests along the way that suggest improvements.

When it comes to grindy quests, I'm mostly against them. They don't require skill half the time. In order to do that Octuple Compressed cobble I could let a single extruder run a very long time and eventually get it. If they are optional fine and there's no end quest that requires you to complete everything. However in the end I find they are bad for servers, 100 extruders per a person doing nothing other than completing a quest isn't great for a server.

Personally though I only like quest maps, if the Map has a great idea with it, Skyblock is getting old but another Infinity Evolved Expert Skyblock could be cool with actual quests. Running red did great using Blood Magic as a background with a good story. Regrowth was great with a dead world. Infitech 2 was great since everything had gregtech style recipes and the modpack served as a gregtech tutorial and is a great basis at looking at well made quest flow with a good balance between optional and required quests, granted the non gregtech mod side of questing was lacking. Just throw a large kitchen sink modpack and put quests in it to cover mods and personally I probably wouldn't be interested in it even if there were a decent story to it.

 

[Drbretto]

Edit: was in response to gamerwithnogame, Nedrith snuck on in while I was typing

Did that pack not have ExU2? The cobblstone generator you can make there is practically lag-free and generates at a crazy rate. I'm using it now on my pack to make octocobble.

This is actually important, IMO, too, because that could well mean that the solution you came up with wasn't what the pack maker had in mind when they came up with that challenge. (or, of course, it could well be poorly thought out, I'm not familiar with these packs, I'm just talkin')

But you're right in that the challenges should at least be well thought out. There should be at least one solution in mind when designing those challenges. You can't just arbitrarily increase the costs without thought. I'm 100% with you there. But, if it's thought out well enough, it can be a huge boon.

I used to work on a hard-mode mod for Final Fantasy Tactics called FFT 1.3. We made that game unforgiving because it was intended to be a challenge forever, specifically for those who have tons of experience with the game. Even if you know the mechanics better than 99% of the players out there, you were going to be tested on a regular basis. We had new players all the time come in and complain about how they thought the game had a lot of "fake difficulty", but the truth was, these people just didn't have the experience of a top notch player to avoid these pitfalls in the first place. We all started that way and we learned how to handle what the game throws at you in stride.

This is how an expert pack really SHOULD be. As long as there is a reasonable solution to these problems in the design phase, it's ok if players new to the pack struggle at first. You live, learn, grow and start over with a better game plan next time.

Continuum has a chance here of being a very long term flagship pack. In order for it to remain there, it needs to cater to the most advanced players, and that might include something like the octocobble generation, even if it means that the player needs to figure out a better cobblestone generation machine to keep up (or eventually catch up).

 

[Nedrith]

It was a 1.6.4(I believe might of been earlier) pack so well before ExU2, extruders were the only real decent way to make cobble fast. This was also before extruders were upgradable so It was literally place extruder, give it lava and water connect it to storage and repeat. Don't believe we even had storage drawers to easily compact them either, Think I used AE.

Agrarian Skies had a lot of grind quests like that to complete. Granted it kind of had a decent story reason for it, you were creating an entire new world.

 

[Drbretto]

On story, BTW, from my perspective is only for packs that are meant to be about the story. Something like Continuum should probably let the player invent their own "story". While something a little more RPG-esque like Sprout benefits from a little bit of story.

If I want story, though, I'll play another game generally. This one just isn't that conducive for it. At best, you can sort of replicate the parts of an RPG that people skip over on their way to the next objective. I don't think that means much. The story in Continuum should be "you wake up naked in this strange land, now you need to survive!" and that's about it.

It was a 1.6.4(I believe might of been earlier) pack so well before ExU2, extruders were the only real decent way to make cobble fast. This was also before extruders were upgradable so It was literally place extruder, give it lava and water connect it to storage and repeat. Don't believe we even had storage drawers to easily compact them either, Think I used AE.

Agrarian Skies had a lot of grind quests like that to complete. Granted it kind of had a decent story reason for it, you were creating an entire new world.

OK then, yeah, if there really weren't any viable options then it may have been a little bit of poor design. But, of course all the things I said about linearity and all that assume a degree of competence from the pack creator. To that point, there is no real right or wrong answer here, as you can have a great quality linear experience and a great quality open experience, great quality is great quality.

 

[zBob]

Before this conversation gets too far into the weeds, yes Agrarian Skies was 1.6.4, yes it had Extra Utilities 1, it also had world interation upgrades for transfer nodes intentionally disabled.

The point everyone is trying to make and I hope has been heard, is that end game queusts and goals should take some time to complete, but not be completely tedious nor should the solution put into practice become server killers either.

 

[Nuclear_Creeper0]

An idea is maybe if you're on a server. The quests need more resources. Since things like quarries can be running 24/7 instead of only when I'm online.

 

[Nuclear_Creeper0]

I did the survey, but I want to expand here for discussion sake.

I pushed a little bit toward the linear side of things here because I'm sure that will be the less popular option given Minecraft is especially attractive to those who like to have total freedom. It's kind of a central theme.

But, if I want total freedom, I can just throw up my 85 favorite mods and go do whatever I want. I don't need someone to build that for me at all. If someone is building a pack for me to play, that pack should usher the user towards a certain intended experience. To do that, you need to step at least a little bit into hand-holding territory.

In a case like this, the freedom is still going to be there naturally unless the pack comes with a custom-built world to play in as well. You still build whatever you want. You still build wherever you want. And in the end, your goals are still your goals. But, where I DO want some guidance is in the progression of the mods themselves. Given absolute freedom, the majority will default to the paths of least resistance. IE, the same old cliches over and over again.

As an example, I never bothered with any Tinker's stuff because it just looked more complicated than it was worth. I went to start one day, but I didn't really know where to start, so I didn't bother. Until one day I tried out the Infinity quest mode (for like a day, sadly) and the first thing it does is walk you through the basics. I want that. But the tools themselves being gated helps ensure that as long as the pack goes on, there are still more things to discover. I can't tell you how many times I've started a pack with aspirations of experimenting with all these different power generation options only to stumble on something overpowered and forgetting about the rest that I blew right past.

Another thing is while I've gone through my open custom packs, with the idea being that I throw all these packs together for the purpose of exploring these different mods, not necessarily knowing up-front what each of these mods has to offer, I found myself often overshooting the effective range of the mods I wanted to explore. Having a quest mode move you through a natural progression helps ensure that you discover these mods at the appropriate time to get an appropriate reward for your efforts.

I don't know about straight linearity or hard-gating things behind other quests. I don't think that's necessary. A beginner quest chain to get started, opens up 3 - 5 chains that the player can choose between freely while you gear up for the next tier, etc.

Again the freedom is still in what you do with it. You can't hard-code in the requirement that someone uses these tools to build and awesome castle. That's all up to the player.

As for "grindy" recipes, I'm actually OK with this as long as there exists something like RS storage that I can use to help with the components. I like the idea of an item not just requiring this one item, but rather requiring you to figure out a way to automate the mass production of that item in order to use it for this crucial step. I don't think of that as grindy. If that's grindy to you, you're solving the problem the wrong way. It's not about taking the time to make 64 of that item. It's about the solution you come up with that makes coming up with a stack of them for crafting purposes manageable.

I feel like more of half and half should be what we see. Some of the quests are gated but some are just open to be completed. Like if you need 10 Yellorium ore. That can be done at any time, not just after you make like a tinkers pickaxe. But something like Seared Bricks can only be made after you make Grout.

 

[Magzie]

Oh and as a after thought tier based quest packs i would like to see more people use the recipe unlock system. Someone could build a well good pack with guest and the only way to unlock recipes is getting the recipe book through questing, drops, or some kind of shop system.

 

[Nuclear_Creeper0]

Oh and as a after thought tier based quest packs i would like to see more people use the recipe unlock system. Someone could build a well good pack with guest and the only way to unlock recipes is getting the recipe book through questing, drops, or some kind of shop system.

Yes, that could be awesome, I remember there was like a command. /dorecipelimit? You can only make things you've unlocked.

 

[Drbretto]

Actually, isn't that functionality built into 1.12 anyway? With that recipe book or whatever? Is that something modders can tap into or is that more or less bypassed in any modpacks?

I'm still stuck in 1.10 land. I've gone as high as 1.11, but never logged into 1.12.

 

[Nedrith]

An idea is maybe if you're on a server. The quests need more resources. Since things like quarries can be running 24/7 instead of only when I'm online.

I would have to say no. First it's a grindy quest if a server matters and I'm not too happy about that and second a lot of the major servers people play on don't even maintain 20 TPS and some of them ban offline chunkloading. Quest difficulties to make something like that optional could be a choice though. On that same note, I leave my single player instance running 24/7 while I'm AFK during the first week of most skyblocks if not for longer because I'm too lazy to close out minecraft and have a decent computer where running it doesn't affect my computer. So even in single-player I have all the time of a server player just without the other people to help out if needed.

Oh and as a after thought tier based quest packs i would like to see more people use the recipe unlock system. Someone could build a well good pack with guest and the only way to unlock recipes is getting the recipe book through questing, drops, or some kind of shop system.

Recipe unlocks could work well if done right, personally I prefer adjusting recipes such that they are gated behind a certain thing. However for certain powerful items that you wouldn't want to change the recipe enough that it could be balanced, extreme reactors is something that could come to mind, a unlock system could work.

 

[SolManX]

Apart from packs like the original FTB pyramid, where gathering X amounts of resources is the whole point of the pack, I dislike any quests that require tons of any resource. If you need to get a lot of something to make something else, then that's going to happen naturally and doesn't need to be forced.