Hello there, mDiyo here. I'd like to share something with all of you that I could only put into words recently.
I have rarely played with tech mods in Minecraft. They've either been too out of place in the world or have so little documentation that it takes an outside source of information - usually a wiki - to get anywhere. I thought that it just wasn't my style or that there was some sort of gameplay I was missing. "They just aren't for me", things like that.
Recently I stumbled across Factorio. For those who don't know what it is, Factorio is a game about building a factory. You spend the entire game building up your base so that you can research technology to make your factory better. This sounds incredibly droll. In practice, the technology serves as a meter for your progression. The factory becomes ever more complex as you need more machines to craft more parts and you'll need more raw resources to keep up with it. The whole thing gets bulky and you're going to have problems where you need to build something right in the space of something else, and you'll tear down the entire thing just to iron it out.
The act of building a factory is both a problem and a solution wrapped up in a bit of gameplay. You're given new things to build as you research, and they need to be put somewhere. The feeling of accomplishment when crafters start spitting out circuits made of 10 different materials and parts made from more materials is astounding. It unlocks a whole new line of things you can do, and yet it's only one step in the process.
There is a flow, there is a process, and there is a goal. This is the one thing Minecraft's tech mods lack. They're either haphazardly thrown together or rely on some other mod that is designed around working by itself, which is usually a collection of random toys to play with. "Have a sandbox of things" ends up as the goal. There's rarely any progression outside of awkardly forced crafting processes and any sense of flow is thrown out when you have three ways to pipe items around on top of vanilla hoppers and water channels.
Minecraft is supposed to be a creative game about rearranging blocks and making large, impressive builds, or about exploring the world to see what's out there. The tendency of tech mods to compress things down into a single machine block coupled with a cable system completely belies the way the game is supposed to play. Most of them tie you down to a single point that has the player dumping resources into ever more expensive blocks without actually giving any creative leeway. For a creative game, tech mods are remarkably uncreative.
To sum everything up: Minecraft's tech mods completely miss the point of what they're trying to do.
A notable exception goes out to older versions of Forestry. While it does still need a wiki, it has all of the gameplay elements that makes for a good game. Another mention goes to Mekanism for the same reason.
I have rarely played with tech mods in Minecraft. They've either been too out of place in the world or have so little documentation that it takes an outside source of information - usually a wiki - to get anywhere. I thought that it just wasn't my style or that there was some sort of gameplay I was missing. "They just aren't for me", things like that.
Recently I stumbled across Factorio. For those who don't know what it is, Factorio is a game about building a factory. You spend the entire game building up your base so that you can research technology to make your factory better. This sounds incredibly droll. In practice, the technology serves as a meter for your progression. The factory becomes ever more complex as you need more machines to craft more parts and you'll need more raw resources to keep up with it. The whole thing gets bulky and you're going to have problems where you need to build something right in the space of something else, and you'll tear down the entire thing just to iron it out.
The act of building a factory is both a problem and a solution wrapped up in a bit of gameplay. You're given new things to build as you research, and they need to be put somewhere. The feeling of accomplishment when crafters start spitting out circuits made of 10 different materials and parts made from more materials is astounding. It unlocks a whole new line of things you can do, and yet it's only one step in the process.
There is a flow, there is a process, and there is a goal. This is the one thing Minecraft's tech mods lack. They're either haphazardly thrown together or rely on some other mod that is designed around working by itself, which is usually a collection of random toys to play with. "Have a sandbox of things" ends up as the goal. There's rarely any progression outside of awkardly forced crafting processes and any sense of flow is thrown out when you have three ways to pipe items around on top of vanilla hoppers and water channels.
Minecraft is supposed to be a creative game about rearranging blocks and making large, impressive builds, or about exploring the world to see what's out there. The tendency of tech mods to compress things down into a single machine block coupled with a cable system completely belies the way the game is supposed to play. Most of them tie you down to a single point that has the player dumping resources into ever more expensive blocks without actually giving any creative leeway. For a creative game, tech mods are remarkably uncreative.
To sum everything up: Minecraft's tech mods completely miss the point of what they're trying to do.
A notable exception goes out to older versions of Forestry. While it does still need a wiki, it has all of the gameplay elements that makes for a good game. Another mention goes to Mekanism for the same reason.
