What if every mod had a Gregtech version?

[zorn]

IMO there is no right or wrong with gregtech arguments, everyone likes to progress at different speeds and everyone has different ideas on how 'hard' the game should be.

So why couldn't each mod just have configs to enable harder or easier recipes, and let the players decide what they want? It cant be too hard can it? TE machine frames could add diamonds to the recipe where blank spots exist right now, etc. People who spend hours a day playing the game might want the tougher recipes, but those that are more casual could stick to the basic ones.

It also might allow server operators to tweak things a bit. "well we have EE3 installed so ender pearls are easier to get, lets use the expensive tesseract recipes to try and keep them from being stupidly easy to acquire".

Just about every game ever made has difficulty settings, why couldn't mods create Easy and Hard modes? Just adding harder recipes can't be too tough, can it?

 

[Hydra]

Why would a mod author add tediousness if he doesn't think tediousness is fun? To me it seems most mod designers have a better sense of what good game design is than the author of GT. For a mod author it's a lot of extra work and I for one don't see any benefit. If you want the effect of GT just throw away half of what you mine and spend 1 minute between each crafting step. That's the 'difficulty' GT adds.

 

[Staxed]

Why would a mod author add tediousness if he doesn't think tediousness is fun? To me it seems most mod designers have a better sense of what good game design is than the author of GT. For a mod author it's a lot of extra work and I for one don't see any benefit. If you want the effect of GT just throw away half of what you mine and spend 1 minute between each crafting step. That's the 'difficulty' GT adds.

Pretty much my opinion on this matter as well. Of course as mentioned, everyone has different opinions.

I can see where some people view having to take longer and acquiring more materials is difficult, but in my opinion that's just tedious, not difficult. Especially in a pack that's about automation. My idea of difficult is building something unique and challenging. I just want the materials to do it, I don't want it to take me forever. So to increase my difficultly...I prefer to have more materials quicker...not faster. I guess the idea of 'difficulty' in a game like minecraft is very, very, VERY subjective...but of course, this dead horse has been beaten a lot...

As to authors adding in different recipes for their items to make it harder...it's of course possible, but it requires 3 times the planning and 3 times the coding time in order to do it. A mod author most likely has their own ideas of difficulty and they are going to prefer to spend most of their time on making the mod the way they think it should be made, not trying to make it on 3 different levels (though of course some would be willing to do so).

 

[Golrith]

Not that this is feasible on big mods, but the energy manipulator mod actually has the recipes for it's blocks in the config file, as a series of ID numbers. This allows you total freedom to "balance" the blocks to your tastes.

 

[Emasher]

From the perspective of a mod author, I want to point out that adding recipes, balancing them for what the block/item does, as well as taking into account how the circumstances might change if certain mods are installed (both in terms of how the difficulty of obtaining the ingredients might change, and well as how the block/item might interact with other mods), and trying to balance them for that is difficult and tedious enough as it is. Having to do that a second time because one mod changes the game's difficulty enough to unbalance your recipes is about as tedious as actually playing with Gregtech.

 

[RedBoss]

Gregtech is not a measure of difficulty or balance. It's just a mod in a sea of mods. To me it's slightly condescending to think that all mod authors should approach the game in the same manner as one mod.

Also, many mods have configs that are independent of any GT-esque approach to game play. Many mods do not. It's all within that modder's vision of their contributions to the game.

Also, did we REALLY need another GT thread?

 

[Pokefenn]

I just wanna pop in and say my opinion:

Greg alot of the time hides his stuff behind a expensive recipe, some of the stuff can be VERY good/strong, but its expensive to make.
Thats the way how greg wants to balance things, but there is another way.
Cheap, but expensive to run.
And configuring that instead of recipes.
Thats kinda like the stride that MFR took and people love it, just he kinda didnt make it that expensive to run :3

But thats just my BIAS opinion, dont take all of that for truth :3

 

[SpitefulFox]

Calling GregTech-style recipes "Hard Mode" is fairly disingenuous. A better name would be "Expensive Mode".

And as mentioned above, mod authors shouldn't be forced to work on alternate versions of their own mods just to be in line with someone else's. Configs are nice, but don't expect mod authors to bend over backwards to provide a config for each and every teensy tiny little thing. If you don't like the way a mod works, just don't use it.

 

[Malexion]

It may be just me, but I would prefer to progress like this.

And I have a couple ideas of how to make it work and replace towny, economy plugins.

 

[namiasdf]

I really like that flow chart.

 

[netmc]

I will say that I do like the integrated approach that some mods use like MFR. The mod author added in the basic recipes and TE style recipes, but the GT style recipes were added by a contributor. I myself like the various levels of difficulty (I find the TE style balances material difficulty vs use the best), but it ultimately comes down to what the mod author wants to do. If the mod author is open to it, and someone wants to create and maintain the hard mode patches necessary to make it work, that's great, I'll take it. if not, that's fine too.

In modded minecraft, it ultimately comes down to the work the mod pack maintainer/creator takes. It is that person that has to make the hard choices of what mods to include and what level of difficulty or expensiveness they want to give it. It's a lot harder than just throwing a bunch of mods together and calling it good. Also, with all the config options in mods like TE, forestry, railcraft, IC2, etc. You can easily scale the perceived difficulty without using GT style recipes.

By just tweaking the ore generation a bit, you can drastically alter the pain level and difficulty someone will have. Just think about all the issues people have with AE and certes quartz. There is never enough to equip a system the way you want. Until you reach "end-game", you will constantly struggle with having enough quartz. The ability in 1.5.2 to use nether quartz for cabling has taken a lot of the wiring pain away, but the amount needed to set up "everything" is still staggering. If you use TE's ore generation and tweak the settings, you can end up with a lot or not enough of a specific resource, and you haven't even touched any mod item configs!

As an example of difficulty, I'll give you thaumcraft. The current research system is not difficult, be is currently tedious. (Azanor is already addressing this). Even after researching everything in Thaumcraft and TT, there are still quite a few items that I haven't wanted to make. It's not hard, and not difficult, but you have to take the time to do it. It can't be automated (without turtles). I grant this mod a high perceived difficulty level even though the actual mod is relatively simple.

With MFR, the standard recipes are dirt cheap. I think the most difficult one is the chronotyper, and that is only because it requires 3 emeralds. The difficulty with MFR is not in making the machines though. The difficulty is in setting everything up and powering the systems. So many of MFRs blocks require other MFR blocks to fully utilize its capabilities, it can be rather daunting to get it all set up efficiently and powered.

Thaumcraft and AE and MFR all have their method for making things difficult. Is any of these methods better or worse than the others? I would wager that they all work the way the mod author intended.[DOUBLEPOST=1377296445][/DOUBLEPOST]

It may be just me, but I would prefer to progress like this.

And I have a couple ideas of how to make it work and replace towny, economy plugins.

This looks like the flowchart from Civilization.

 

[Malexion]

This looks like the flowchart from Civilization.

That's pretty much the whole idea.

 

[zorn]

I just wanna pop in and say my opinion:

Greg alot of the time hides his stuff behind a expensive recipe, some of the stuff can be VERY good/strong, but its expensive to make.
Thats the way how greg wants to balance things, but there is another way.
Cheap, but expensive to run.
And configuring that instead of recipes.
Thats kinda like the stride that MFR took and people love it, just he kinda didnt make it that expensive to run :3

But thats just my BIAS opinion, dont take all of that for truth :3

Well i think SOME People love MFR, but personally I wish it wasnt so easy.

I dont understand something. People complain that they get to 'end game' within hours (or maybe not complaining, they are bragging) of starting a new world, but then no one wants gregtech recipes? People talk about having more resources than they know what to do with in just a few quarry runs, but then suggesting more expensive recipes makes no sense?

Also... the whole GAME is tediousness and grind. Why do we craft anything at all? People say they dont like gathering resources, they like building things... why not use Cheat Mode on NEI then, and just cheat in all your stuff, then run a quarry but have it just export into void pipes I guess.

I guess to me it seems obvious that part of the satisfaction is building something that you 'earned'. This is why people brag that they had 10 million cobble, or that new compressed cobble, why woudl anyone compress 43 million cobble down into one block that has no real use at all? Its a trophy to say 'i did all this work'. Even just collecting cobble.

hell i saw people playing VANILLA minecraft with rows and rows of cobblestone in chests, just to say they had stored up all that cobble stone. If that isnt tedious, i dont know what is.

I just think that there are many aspects of the game, we all like building, but if you play survival without cheats, then you also enjoy the grind of the game. Building is not the only thing people enjoy, if they did we would all be in creative mode 100% of the time, or survival with cheats anyway.[DOUBLEPOST=1377298413][/DOUBLEPOST]

Also, did we REALLY need another GT thread?

Gregtech is an easy way to discuss harder/more tedium vs simpler mod designs. Im not arguing for gregtech or against, just saying 'what if other mods offered more expensive recipes?'

 

[RedBoss]

Recipes are only one part of most mods. Sure MFR blocks have powerful functionality, but setting up automation is a challenge to achieve at first, and continues to be a challenge because of the myriad options available to do so. So from this perspective, the expense of the block isn't really the issue. What you are able to do with that block is the focus.

 

[Azzanine]

Judgeing by the config TE actually does have an expensive mode recipes for it's machines.

Looks like this.

  ####################
    # recipe
    ####################
 
    recipe {
        B:MachineFrame.UseSteel=false
        B:Machines.UseGears=false
        B:Pulverizer.AddDiamonds=false
        B:Smelter.AddDiamonds=false
    }
 
}

Not sure if that makes them Greg style hard but the example you used can already be done.

 

[Ember Quill]

The simple fact is, not many mod authors want to balance their mods twice, which is what you're asking them to do. And there are plenty of players who don't play Minecraft just to show off about the things that they accomplished despite having to undergo massive amounts of tedium. I certainly don't.

People who spend hours a day playing the game might want the tougher recipes, but those that are more casual could stick to the basic ones.

That's quite a faulty assumption. I play for several hours a day, sometimes staying up all night to finish building something, but I still would never bother enabling expensive-mode recipes. Does that make me a casual player, despite the fact that I could spend hours writing ComputerCraft code or attempting to build a puzzle of pipes, conduits, liquiducts, wires, and other stuff in the smallest amount of space I can manage? Expensive recipes just make the game tedious to me. But complicated mechanics not related to recipes (power, fuel, automation, space requirements, etc.) make Minecraft a whole lot more fun, fun enough for me to keep playing multiple hours a day.

So I kind of resent the assertion that I am a "casual" player.

 

[TheAbstractHippo]

Just adding harder recipes can't be too tough, can it?

DON'T GIVE THEM ANY IDEAS!

 

[immibis]

If every mod had a GregTech mode, Minecraft would be like most MMORPGs, where they have to add things designed to waste your time.

 

[frederikam]

Remember that gregtech is making the game harder, it actually adds a lot of endgame gameplay. If you're patient enough you'll see. A very different gameplay experience.

 

[Dravarden]

no, just no.