The Wall of Why

[KingTriaxx]

I'm curious if anyone else gets this. What I'm talking about is the point, that happens in every mod pack, where I get to a point and look around and ask Why? Why am I continuing to play in this world? Why am I continuing to play with this mod pack?

This thought occurs to me because I've just managed to butt up against it in Space Astronomy. I've reached the point where it's too tedious to continue with Galacticraft. All the new planets are the same as the previous planet. I'm sure there are new bosses to deal with but the rockets all require the previous tier of materials. And since Tier 2, the sticking point has been Meteoric Iron. There is, an ahem 'astronomically small' chance of finding an asteroid in the belt with a core of it, and I didn't seem to luck into one in my day's worth of searching. 10,000 blocks in an expanding circle, checking the middle of every large asteroid, and using a Digital miner to search the little blocks floating around. I built a big underwater base, and that was fun, including an underwater launchpad. I fought with a crash problem that eventually just needed a redownload of the pack to solve, but I get to the point where: I've done all the stuff I want to do.

I butted up against it while playing Modular Mayhem as well. And that's one of the most enjoyable packs I've played so far. It doesn't get enough love for what it was doing, but eventually I reached that point where I wanted to know why I kept playing. I had automated ore processing, I had a power system capable of running the Immersive Engineering Extractor non-stop, and then I reached the question again. Why am I still playing?

I've built things as well. Mighty Wizard Towers? (Mightiness may vary.) Towns, Castles, Undersea mansions. I built a treehouse in the Twilight Forest. (Two of them in fact.)

I'm just curious, and possibly sleep deprived, but does anyone else run into this? Is there a cure? Or just power through it and inspiration will strike?

 

[Nedrith]

If you are playing in a single player server or a multi-player server where you just don't care about the people then yes it happens to me all the time. I'm actually currently in that situation with infinity Evolved Skyblock. I've hit the end-game of every mod basically except for the tediousness of BM tier 6. Haven't killed the gaia guardian yet but that would take all of a few minutes to setup the fight and kill it. I haven't made the creative energy cells, but my reactor outputs more power than I could ever need, currently up to 1.5m RF/T. I don't ever use enough mana to make the guilty pool and don't really need enough liquids of anything to make the creative tank. Just expanded my UU network with 2 more 8192 EU/T lines and double the recyclers with a few extra overclockers thrown into the existing ones. But I have 350 buckets of UU matter that I never use.

Honestly I think I'm at the point where the only thing I could do is refine my DE Reactor control program, it could use some more features though it does what it needs to do and works like a charm. Usually this is the point where I find another pack that sounds cool and go to it. Probably doesn't help that I'm not a creative builder, I don't like making fancy structures but I like making things work and work well.

 

[KingTriaxx]

I play only single player. I don't have the kind of internet to let me do MP.

I can manage some moderately fancy structures, but mostly I end up with form following function. I need a building to do a thing and when I finish building it, you can tell what thing it's there to do. I built a train track construction building. It ended up looking like a train car. Which isn't to say that's bad either. Hitting the wall usually means I've built all the buildings I need or that fit into what I want the base to be.

 

[Inaeo]

Everyone hits that point, eventually. Some people last year's on a world before all the projects that tie them to a world are finished. Others last only a caffeine riddled weekend. Since the thing that drives us all on this sandbox is different, so too is our limit of what we can, or even want to, accomplish before the letdown feeling sets in.

In my experience, my will to endure a pack is insanely increased when playing on a server (not hosted on my machine). I like to think this is mostly due to the increase in performance I get over a SSP environment, but I'm certain the community setting has as much, if not more of an impact. That said, my will to play a pack beyond the end of a tech tree severely outlasts all of my usual server mates, so the end of a pack is usually just a SSP environment being hosted on a friend's server, which begins to lose its luster after the rest have faded away.

A good friend of mine reaches this state roughly mid game in any pack we play. Usually, around the time when resource scarcity stops being a major concern, he sees all the things that can be done, and stops seeing the point of actually doing any of them. Different strokes for different folks.

I'll give this a bit more thought, then drop a line. Just know you aren't alone.

 

[Vaeliorin]

A good friend of mine reaches this state roughly mid game in any pack we play. Usually, around the time when resource scarcity stops being a major concern, he sees all the things that can be done, and stops seeing the point of actually doing any of them. Different strokes for different folks.

This is how I tend to be. Once I get to the point that I know I can do everything in the pack, it's just a matter of putting in the time, I tend to get bored. I often try and do some creative building, but I find that if I start a base, I am loathe to go through the effort to move everything (I've done it before, and it sucked spending multiple hours just moving storage stuff.)

 

[DireChyymeras]

one of the things I do is try and add elements of story to my play, maybe limit myself to begin with and build a medieval kingdom, then eventually try and build a self sufficient underground bunker and play post apocalyptic style. you could try doing one of the kingdom challenges if you need help with that style of play

 

[KingTriaxx]

Among the challenges I've set myself, includes using only Railcraft for transfer, power, items and fluids. (Power being transferred either as fluid fuel, or charcoal/coal.) No flight is a constant one, since that always tends to ruin things for me. No AE automation. (I've never played Minecraft that didn't have AE as an option.) All ore processing must be at least triple. No ore processing at all. No quarries. No manual mining beyond what's necessary to get a mining well. Only Lava power, no lava power. Oil power only. Renewable power only. Magic mods only. Build everything out of microblocks.

 

[malicious_bloke]

I reached that point with my current world today.

So I deleted it, changed up the modlist and started a new one.

In fairness, the main reason is because my automated apiary setup got so over-the-top it was lagging out my entire base (we're talking almost 400 industrial apiaries), oh and I wanted to tidy up and colour code Colin's noodly appendages but the whole thing was such a massive tangle I literally couldn't be arsed.

Oh and my Rotarycraft version was seriously outdated, so it was just time to freshen everything up

 

[KingTriaxx]

As good a reason as any. I must admit, I've started TerraFirmaPunk, and I like it mostly. Though I'm not really sure about the Twilight mobs. I'm on my second world because I burned through all available lives in one night due to a Minotaur who really had it in for me.

 

[KingTriaxx]

*cough* 'I love exploration!' *plays exploration free skyblock*

I really like things with Roguelike dungeons. TFP has that in it, and I've actually set up in one, which is handy actually, once I blocked off the entrance at least.

 

[Zarkov]

I'm just curious, and possibly sleep deprived, but does anyone else run into this? Is there a cure?

Playing while being well rested and with an adequate amount of caffeine might help. If it doesn't, taking a break and playing something different for a while probably will.

 

[KingTriaxx]

It was more sleep deprived while asking the question than while playing the game.

I normally cycle in and out of a desire to play certain games, or certain types. For the moment I'm on an 'I wanna Minecraft end of the swing, and I just realized I'd run out of reason to continue playing that pack.

 

[Henry Link]

Let me sort of flip this for you from my side being a server owner. I'm tired of setting up server inviting people to play on it. Then after a week or two almost all of the players leave to go find the next new shiny. And, I wind up the only person still playing on my server. The longest I had players on my server was about a month for Infinity Evolved: Hard mode. I'm to the point of just setting up a server for myself. The problem with that is there is no one to encourage my to show off my builds to.

When we do get a stable good building pack in 1.9, I'm going to setup a server but, I'm going to try and invite builders not tech tree racers.