Thaum 4... a dichotomy.

[ScorpioOld]

From one side TC4 is technically superior mod featuring very cool visual effects and neat gadgets. When I see what people do with this mod I always want to repeat the same.

From other side TC4 lacks deterministic approach toward research, apparently, this is main complain of people. I would rather be ready to toss exactly half stack of gold and exactly ten diamonds into The Crucible and get research what I preselected done than spending time crafting inks. I would rather build complex structure or perform ritual for appearance of Aura node above my head than run around with wand.

Ironically TC4 introduces deterministic approach toward vanilla enchantment and in the same time does random staff with player

 

[Redius]

From one side TC4 is technically superior mod featuring very cool visual effects and neat gadgets. When I see what people do with this mod I always want to repeat the same.

From other side TC4 lacks deterministic approach toward research, apparently, this is main complain of people. I would rather be ready to toss exactly half stack of gold and exactly ten diamonds into The Crucible and get research what I preselected done than spending time crafting inks. I would rather build complex structure or perform ritual for appearance of Aura node above my head than run around with wand.

Ironically TC4 introduces deterministic approach toward vanilla enchantment and in the same time does random staff with player

This is exactly what I would say about it. I've completely ignored TC4 this play through, simply based on the research and unlocking. TC was a pain, but at least you could direct the research and power through it, with enough resources. There's no "shortcut" to what you want in TC4, and while that's great for some people and the integrity of the mod, it's a definite turn off if you don't like the methodology behind the design.

TL;DR

I love golems, but not enough to dick around with moving runes, scanning grass, and waving my wand. I'll stick to Ars and Blood magic to get my arcane fix.

 

[CodaPDX]

Azanor did a great job designing the mod. Amazing stuff, once you've got your silverwood wand, golem servants, and bank of captive nodes. It just has hands down the worst new user experience I think I've ever seen in a mod before. It's a mod that is ostensibly about discovery and progression, but the actual process of doing so has multiple points of failure that lead to the player being frustratingly stuck. Ever listened to the developer commentary in Portal? They talk a lot about how they used playtesting to see what new players did, and how to guide them into doing what they needed to do and learning the skills they needed to learn. A week or two of the same kind of work with TC4 would have made a world of difference. I mean, consider the insanity of having to research advanced research and research mastery. The system is difficult as it is, but forcing people to play it on hard mode until they unlock a few researches? Madness.

 

[Revemohl]

There are only two things I find annoying about TC4:

• Impossible research. It's not fun to waste time and aspect points on something, then in the end realize that you can't do anything with it because one of the dots is one space away. At least by now I've kind of figured out how to detect if a research is possible or not.
• The new crucible mechanics. Throwing all aspects in then an item to get what you want is neat, but but the aspects you have in the crucible breaking down so quickly is not. If you take 1ms too long you're just going to end up with a mess in your cauldron. I wish the tiered crucibles from TC2 came back exactly to stop this from happening, the second one could be slower at messing you up and the final one could completely stop it from happening.

I don't find the research/exploration system is as bad as you guys say it is, and I've never run out of points with the personal modpacks that have around 100 mods each I've used recently to play with it. Figuring out what each aspect means is not hard if you read the tooltips, and guessing which aspects are part of a research is just a matter of logic most of the time. Also, here's a small tip: get a deconstruction table and dump rotten flesh into it, you'll get about 1 point of each basic aspect after every three of four items.
At least the new system is still better than the "dump stacks of cobblestone and come back one month later" from TC2 and the "waste all your items to see your research stop one point short of the end" from TC3. I wish the Doodle God part of the mod was actually useful, but since analyzing things manually gives you double points of whatever new aspect you find instead of only two there's absolutely no reason to use it.

 

[Vauthil]

There's a lot of "I'd say what I think but that'd violate the forum rules" I'm seeing here (I actually appreciate people opting to self-filter).

That's telling me this is a topic in need of a cooldown, though. Locking, for now.