What exactly is offensive about being told to play in creative mode?

[casilleroatr]

Everyone likes to hear that something they spent time on and enjoyed is enjoyed by others. The definition of what difficult is doesn't matter and it really depends on the person on how difficult something is. To direwolf20 a fancy castle is really difficult to build, for others his tech stuff is hard to build. My point is that if anyone enjoys gregtech they get yelled at and told 'tedium is not difficult!' Ok thats fine... but If i point out that its not difficult to build 100 boilers because you use turtles and quarry plus in your pack... im the Devil.

Even the people who say 'minecraft isnt hard!' in any mode are really defending their own playstyle and imagining that their ideea on how to play the game is superior. They make 'complex systems' and are super duper creative. Isn't this just another type of one-upping someone? To me its no different than saying 'go play creative then!' "Minecraft isnt hard, its about building... and of course that is what i do and I think I do it well." This is really what those people are saying. Everyone wants to know that what they enjoy is worthy and admirable of attention.

This is why if TE3 is said to be 'easy' people get upset. And yet everyone admits that setting up iC2 is 'harder' because... people have shit blow up in their faces. But no one wants to admit they want something simple and easy because that doesn't get admiration and respect. So the words are changed to 'intuitive'. This is why people say gregtech is tedious, not hard. Tedious just implies that it takes time, but is not osmething people should admire or respect.

Is it no wonder people get defensive when people say 'gregtech is just tedious and tedium is not hard!' Its THE SAME THING as saying 'why don't you play creative!' both statements are downplaying the praise someone shoudl get for doing well in that style of game.

After going to bed last night quite a few comments were made that I didn't get time to respond to. I would like to soon but for now I will limit myself to responding just to this.

With the whole easy/intuitive argument, I think what it boils down to is that Minecraft is not a game which is designed to be (near) impossible. From the basic game, through to Thermal Expansion, right the way up Gregtech style mods, pretty much every release ready item is made to usable through some gameplay process. These processes invariably require an investment of real time and in game resources. I think that no matter what our playstyle is we all hope to get some enjoyment out of the "investment" we have made. Resource acquisition or waiting on machines is not really difficult whether you are getting stuff for a GT Fusion reactor or a humble TE ore processing lineup. Any difficulty that the player must work through is in my opinion all about arranging your machines in the right way for you (to do the job you want*). By extension this goes to creative house building or castle building. The true difficulty is usually not in acquiring the resources to make the house, but in making the house look the way you want it. And to be honest, I don't want to be wasting my very limited brain power deciding on a sane way of generating barrels upon barrels of forestry planks or other expensive decorative blocks when I am trying to make a home befitting of Anna and Elsa and their friends. When I am playing creative, all I am doing is abstracting the part of the game which contributes in no way to the challenge I have given myself. However, we are still playing the same block placing game and we are both trying to make machines that work well or houses that look good (or whatever else people do in this game!).

I have another idea too. I don't really understand your playstyle all that well and maybe that is because you are always making the defensive case for it. I don't know why my little joke yesterday should have made you more so, especially as I was only poking fun at the analogy and not the underlying point which I said was decent. However, if you could put that behind you, maybe you could make the positive case for your playstyle and you might win more people over. A way of doing this which might appeal to many here is by going into community showcase and show off some of the builds you have done to rationalise the resource acquisition elements of Gregtech, or how you chose to automate persulfate generation. I remember someone, possibly you, who posted pictures of a GT heavy base in 1.4 and it was interesting.

 

[Succubism]

Remember when people would just install a mod on Risugami's mod loader and maybe they'd get to play it?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Y'all are spoiled.

 

[Petrus]

I was going to respond to this thread again, but have made the decision not to.

 

[SatanicSanta]

Remember when people would just install a mod on Risugami's mod loader and maybe they'd get to play it?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Y'all are spoiled.

Those were the days. The times when it would take an hour+ to install a single mod. /me sighs in relief.

 

[RedBoss]

This is my issue. I wont tell people they are inferior for playing creative mode or whatever but if you come to this forum and try to talk about balance, you are lumped in with people who say things like that. And told that I am only enjoying tedium and tedium is not difficulty.

So basically what I enjoy is not difficult, which implies that what I enjoy does not deserve any praise or respect. This is exactly what the 'go play creative mode people' are saying, and its hwy its so offensive. And then people wonder why those who feel this way either get defensive or just dont post here.

The responses you receive have NOTHING to do with your play style and EVERYTHING to do with your delivery. You display a lot of passive aggressiveness in your replies and posts and it elicits a negative response from people who read your content. By passive aggressive I mean this definition from a psychology article, "Passive-aggressive may also refer to a person who refuses to acknowledge their own aggression, and who manages that denial by projecting it. This type of person insists on seeing themselves as the blameless victims in all situations."

Even moderators have attempted to explain this issue to you in the past. You entice people to berate you through your own expression of hostility, such as through hostile jokes, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness. I rarely see any positive statement in your replies. You begin with a logical statement then devolve into hostility. The evidence for this is in the direct quote from you which I put in bold and italics. You DO get praise for your work. I've seen your thread on reddit and it had almost 100 upvotes IIRC. There are people who post on these very forums who actually agree with your play style and enjoy GT. They just aren't snarky or rude about it.

The problem isn't your play style. The negative way you present yourself is why you don't curry a lot of favor here. People do want to debate with you, they just end up being hostile because you attack instead of reply. No one particularly wants to be negative about how you choose to play your game. People also don't want to be attacked or trolled when they just want a conversation.

 

[zorn]

After going to bed last night quite a few comments were made that I didn't get time to respond to. I would like to soon but for now I will limit myself to responding just to this.

With the whole easy/intuitive argument, I think what it boils down to is that Minecraft is not a game which is designed to be (near) impossible. From the basic game, through to Thermal Expansion, right the way up Gregtech style mods, pretty much every release ready item is made to usable through some gameplay process. These processes invariably require an investment of real time and in game resources. I think that no matter what our playstyle is we all hope to get some enjoyment out of the "investment" we have made. Resource acquisition or waiting on machines is not really difficult whether you are getting stuff for a GT Fusion reactor or a humble TE ore processing lineup. Any difficulty that the player must work through is in my opinion all about arranging your machines in the right way for you (to do the job you want*). By extension this goes to creative house building or castle building. The true difficulty is usually not in acquiring the resources to make the house, but in making the house look the way you want it. And to be honest, I don't want to be wasting my very limited brain power deciding on a sane way of generating barrels upon barrels of forestry planks or other expensive decorative blocks when I am trying to make a home befitting of Anna and Elsa and their friends. When I am playing creative, all I am doing is abstracting the part of the game which contributes in no way to the challenge I have given myself. However, we are still playing the same block placing game and we are both trying to make machines that work well or houses that look good (or whatever else people do in this game!).

I have another idea too. I don't really understand your playstyle all that well and maybe that is because you are always making the defensive case for it. I don't know why my little joke yesterday should have made you more so, especially as I was only poking fun at the analogy and not the underlying point which I said was decent. However, if you could put that behind you, maybe you could make the positive case for your playstyle and you might win more people over. A way of doing this which might appeal to many here is by going into community showcase and show off some of the builds you have done to rationalise the resource acquisition elements of Gregtech, or how you chose to automate persulfate generation. I remember someone, possibly you, who posted pictures of a GT heavy base in 1.4 and it was interesting.

I posted my ultimate base in the community showcase thread, the sticky one. I posted it on reddit when they had a similar thread. I wouldnt make my own thread in the community forums because to me Id think you have to reaaaaaaally do something amazing to do that, and I don't think mine was that interesting. Here is an imgur gallery if you are interested.

http://imgur.com/a/FuRTp

As for defensiveness... passive aggressive is just an immature way of dealing with people. if you think its ok to poke fun at someone and then smile so they look bad getting defensive... well it works but its not how mature adults are supposed to interact in my opinion. You go ahead and make jokes at someone's expense if you want, Ill tell you to shove off.

In real life you can get in trouble doing that and then people can actually hear your tone and read your body language. even then, making a joke at someone's expense is not something most people do with strangers.

But you want to do it here, and then be surprised that someone might get defensive?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive-aggressive_behavior

Check out what passive aggressive means. Its not a valid strategy or way to deal with people. You 'liked' hoffs post where he advocates just doing the same in return, and whoever gets mad loses. Ahhhh... no. this is what kids so, and i am teaching my kids not do that. If my kids think i did something wrong, I tell them to come to me and explain, politely, what they disagree with and to provide evidence as to why I made an error. If they can prove it, I reverse my decision.

now tell me which one sounds more mature, that, or... "hey kid if you are unhappy with something someone did, make a joke that puts them down, but pretend its a joke! If they get mad, they lose!"

if you notice ive replied as to why I felt your idea was wrong, AND shown evidence to back up what I am saying. The part about how people dont act this way in real life, body language and why people should be more careful online, not more sarcastic. passive aggressive link shows its not healthy behavior, etc.

But go ahead, call me weird and clunky again.

The true difficulty is usually not in acquiring the resources to make the house, but in making the house look the way you want it.

So you're saying your playstyle is more difficult than someone who enjoys resource gathering? Whats interesting is that no one will bother you for saying this, but if somoene came in and said 'the true difficulty is in acquiring the resources to make the house, not in making the house look the way you want.' there would be 100 replies saying 'minecraft isnt hard! tedium is not difficulty!' Why is that?

 

[SonOfABirch]

I wont tell people they are inferior for playing creative mode

Don't tell them they're playing creative mode at all

My point is that if anyone enjoys gregtech they get yelled at and told 'tedium is not difficult!'

The only time I ever see that phrase (which I beleive is entirely accurate btw) is when a fan of Gregtech comes to the forums and "yells" at people for not playing with Gregtech, telling them their playstyle is worth less or some other assinine BS.

 

[zorn]

Don't tell them they're playing creative mode at all

The only time I ever see that phrase (which I beleive is entirely accurate btw) is when a fan of Gregtech comes to the forums and "yells" at people for not playing with Gregtech, telling them their playstyle is worth less or some other assinine BS.

Telling someone that gregtech is JUST tedium and tedium is not difficult is "telling them their playstyle is worth less or some other assinine BS." Do you not understand that saying that phrase is JUST AS BAD as telling someone to 'go play creative'?

 

[SonOfABirch]

Telling someone that gregtech is JUST tedium and tedium is not difficult is "telling them their playstyle is worth less or some other assinine BS." Do you not understand that saying that phrase is JUST AS BAD as telling someone to 'go play creative'?

nope, because it's not. That statement has nothing to do with Gregtech and is true for EVERYTHING. Writing out the alphabet on a sheet of paper isn't hard. Writing it out 1000 times isn't hard either, it's just tedious.

 

[zorn]

The responses you receive have NOTHING to do with your play style and EVERYTHING to do with your delivery. You display a lot of passive aggressiveness in your replies and posts and it elicits a negative response from people who read your content. By passive aggressive I mean this definition from a psychology article, "Passive-aggressive may also refer to a person who refuses to acknowledge their own aggression, and who manages that denial by projecting it. This type of person insists on seeing themselves as the blameless victims in all situations."

Even moderators have attempted to explain this issue to you in the past. You entice people to berate you through your own expression of hostility, such as through hostile jokes, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness. I rarely see any positive statement in your replies. You begin with a logical statement then devolve into hostility. The evidence for this is in the direct quote from you which I put in bold and italics. You DO get praise for your work. I've seen your thread on reddit and it had almost 100 upvotes IIRC. There are people who post on these very forums who actually agree with your play style and enjoy GT. They just aren't snarky or rude about it.

The problem isn't your play style. The negative way you present yourself is why you don't curry a lot of favor here. People do want to debate with you, they just end up being hostile because you attack instead of reply. No one particularly wants to be negative about how you choose to play your game. People also don't want to be attacked or trolled when they just want a conversation.

No i disagree. I also dont think its fair to make this thread about me directly. If you have an issue with me specifically, can you PM me about it and not hijack this thread?

I tried PMing you months ago but you never even replied, so to me youre just playing the a game here and not trying to be what you pretend to be. Prove me wrong, PM me.

 

[zilvarwolf]

nope, because it's not. That statement has nothing to do with Gregtech and is true for EVERYTHING. Writing out the alphabet on a sheet of paper isn't hard. Writing it out 1000 times isn't hard either, it's just tedious.

Possibly painful. Hand cramps! OWOWOW!

 

[PierceSG]

Who are you guys replying to?

 

[Succubism]

I was going to respond to this thread again, but have made the decision not to.

Honestly, that's probably the best decision.

 

[SonOfABirch]

Who are you guys replying to?

hahahaha XD love it

 

[Pericus]

I agree with the sentiment that people who tell others to go play creative are complete wankers.

I completely, utterly, totally DISAGREE with the way you seem to think discussing mod balance is a stupid thing to do. There needs to be balance and it needs to be considered, addressed and applied effectively at all stages of both game and mod development. To do otherwise is ridiculous. And the balance in vanilla Minecraft itself is already somewhat broken. To quote the Escapist: "This is a game where having the resources to bake a cake is a mark of considerable status"

It is something that easily gets out of hand though. I don't like EnderStorage. I believe it is a vastly overpowered mod that makes large sections of both the vanilla game and many mods completely invalid, for what is effectively free. I am allowed to have this opinion. I am allowed to say this, online, but for some reason, anyone who loves the mod feels the need to rant about my tedium-based hardon and clear affectations for GregoriousT.

I think EnderStorage needs a drastic balancing factor brought in. It needs something to make it not completely invalidate Railcraft, the QuantumBridge in AE, Tesseracts from TE, or any other method of transporting items more than a couple chunks. It needs to cost energy, or randomly lose items to the ether, or something. It is an inherently unbalanced addition to the game.

I DON'T run around telling people that "They should play creative" if they play with EnderStorage. It just makes me think they've cheaped out and taken the easy option, when there are infinitely cooler, more interesting and ultimately "fairer" ways of playing.

If the response to the above two paragraphs is to tell me "I'm playing wrong" or that "I should let people do what they want" then all it does is tell me the person isn't interested in gameplay, so much as they want the way they know is easy to remain functional.

It's funny, as a high school IT teacher, I see kids playing a fair amount of games. The one that gets me is the "godmode" style cheats / hacks. There's a game out there, called "The worlds hardest game". It's 30 levels of "You're a red box. Get through this obstacle course without touching a blue circle. Collect the yellow circles as you go". And if you touch a blue circle, you restart the level.

Nice and tricky, right? Some might say it needs balancing. It gets damned difficult. It is called "The worlds hardest game" though, right?. You know what >50% of kids do after playing it for 10 minutes? They find "The worlds hardest game - hacked" which makes it so touching a blue circle doesn't kill you. It doesn't even act as a wall. You can just travel straight through. There's even an "ultra hack" version where the level walls don't stop you. Here's what that game looks like:

Somehow, this is fun. Kids will load this up, and play it through to completion 2-3 times in a row, and then again the next day. When the page they load it from has thousands of other games as well.

And personally, this is how things like EnderStorage, MPPS, Early Dartcraft and Mystcraft feel like to me. It's the easy solution. It detracts from finesse, skills and the inherent puzzle that playing this game is supposed to be.

I agree with you there should be a challenge in a game. I do not get the cheated version of the worlds hardest game either. I agree it's silly. with this game it takes away the gameplay. It would be like playing notpron without solving any of the puzzles (BTW I love those puzzles !). I hope I understood what the example is to illustrate. What I understood is this: The designer's of the game set certain goals for winning, if you play not by these rules you are missing out of parts of the game.

I do think minecraft is somewhat different from those games. This because I think the goals in the games are different. I agree in minecraft and the other games there is an obstacle which you have to work around. I agree one should at least try and play the resource gathering, surviving it's part of the game. But I do think minecraft offers something extra, one of it's goal is to be used like a box of Legos. And just like with Legos creating something complex or beautiful is a valid achievement. And sometimes I think the resource gathering is just in the way. I now I can do it, it just takes more time that I am willing to spend on it.

 

[PierceSG]

Isn't LEGO's only goal is to get embedded into some unfortunate soul's foot?

 

[casilleroatr]

<snip>

My last post was a small attempt at an olive branch, but unfortunately it seems like you will only be satisfied with an entire olive grove.

You can call me passive aggressive all you like, but this

But go ahead, call me weird and clunky again.

is just plain old aggressive. I would also like to remind you that I said that your analogy clunky (because it made no sense, obscured your point, and seemed to be more about asserting your manly Jack Daniels drinking ways). I also used the word weird, that is true. I said that the effect of your analogy on your post was to make it weird. Maybe not the finest word choice but it served my purpose of saying that I felt your argument was compromised by a poor analogy. What it didn't do was attack your character.

Many people on these forums have made attempts to understand your point of view, but you seem more interested in acting persecuted.

So you're saying your playstyle is more difficult than someone who enjoys resource gathering? Whats interesting is that no one will bother you for saying this, but if somoene came in and said 'the true difficulty is in acquiring the resources to make the house, not in making the house look the way you want.' there would be 100 replies saying 'minecraft isnt hard! tedium is not difficulty!' Why is that?

I didn't say that my playstyle is more difficult. I said that there is a difficult aspect of Gregtechy builds and of creative aesthetic builds and everything in between. Here is what I said

I think that no matter what our playstyle is we all hope to get some enjoyment out of the "investment" we have made. Resource acquisition or waiting on machines is not really difficult whether you are getting stuff for a GT Fusion reactor or a humble TE ore processing lineup. Any difficulty that the player must work through is in my opinion all about arranging your machines in the right way for you (to do the job you want

To clarify, getting iron, ore block by ore block is not difficult on that per block basis. I complex resource acquisition system like a steve's carts drill or a quarry array or Arcane Bore clearly can be difficult and is equivalent in my opinion to deciding how to make my main gate look in a castle. The design process is difficult. Everything else is moving a cursor and right and left clicks (this goes for a lot of what I do by the way, something I am not afraid to admit. I lay railways and build long walls with repeating patterns. That is tedious and easy, so what?).

 

[Dorque]

I'm not really in the mood to read through this right now, but I'll give you my short take on this one, since it's one I've used myself, albeit amongst my group of friends:

I had several friends who loved EE2. I argued that it was "Creative for people who don't want to play Creative" since it literally did, after a little basic work, create infinite resources. The only real investment was setting up the first couple of collectors, waiting for them to collect, upgrading. A few "flowers" gave me anything I wanted at incredible speed.

The reason it upset me; I'm not really a very good builder. Unlike my brother and many of my friends, I've never been able to create three-dimensional art with ease. My strength is in resource-gathering and my primary "achievement" on most servers is, "I've got more stuff than you. Look at all of my stuff. You may use my stuff, I have no problem sharing my stuff, but I desire you to be impressed by it." You can't impress anyone with your collection of stuff with EE2 installed. The response is inevitably: "Yeah, so what, I can make infinite resources really fast too."

I do realize a lot of people use it as a lazy insult, but there's some justification to it, in many cases. I'm getting better at design but my friends still outstrip me there every time; if I'm to play on a server, I'd like to feel that I have a niche.

 

[Lordlundar]

Ehh, short answer, because people are insecure that others don't play the exact same way they do and should be punished for it. The game itself won't administer that punishment so they lash out instead.

 

[zorn]

My last post was a small attempt at an olive branch, but unfortunately it seems like you will only be satisfied with an entire olive grove.

You can call me passive aggressive all you like, but this



is just plain old aggressive. I would also like to remind you that I said that your analogy clunky (because it made no sense, obscured your point, and seemed to be more about asserting your manly Jack Daniels drinking ways). I also used the word weird, that is true. I said that the effect of your analogy on your post was to make it weird. Maybe not the finest word choice but it served my purpose of saying that I felt your argument was compromised by a poor analogy. What it didn't do was attack your character.

Ahh you misunderstood, my apologies. I was poking fun at myself for the jack thing, saying that many people do it and I did too. I was trying to use my own flaw to show that others might be doing the same thing, not pretend i was better. really. Im not good at putting my thoughts into words unfortunately. The passive aggressive thing... well you 'liked' hoffs post where he admitted he did that very thing on purpose, so I just thought you were admitting it was a jab.

To clarify, getting iron, ore block by ore block is not difficult on that per block basis. I complex resource acquisition system like a steve's carts drill or a quarry array or Arcane Bore clearly can be difficult and is equivalent in my opinion to deciding how to make my main gate look in a castle. The design process is difficult. Everything else is moving a cursor and right and left clicks (this goes for a lot of what I do by the way, something I am not afraid to admit. I lay railways and build long walls with repeating patterns. That is tedious and easy, so what?).

To answer this, look at Dorque's post.

The reason it upset me; I'm not really a very good builder.

you said the difficulty isnt in gathering resources, its in building things, making houses look nice. Its frustrating for non creative types to hear.

Then Lordlundar's post:

Ehh, short answer, because people are insecure that others don't play the exact same way they do and should be punished for it. The game itself won't administer that punishment so they lash out instead.

This is about as clear as it can be.