Where is my enthusiasm?

[Thelisis]

I've always found Minecraft to be a game of chores, where a small part of the day was dedicated to a maintenance routine and the rest for new or in progress projects. The FTB mod packs intrigue me but I find myself stalling with them at a given point and left wondering "why am I doing this?"

I think I have basic understanding of starter machines for a few of the different tech mods and, for the most part their uses make sense to me: increased returns on productivity = a good thing. It's when I get past this initial stage that I struggle. You see, I've always enjoyed the chore aspects of Minecraft. After watching multiple YouTube vids and streams the conclusion I have come to is that by and large, a ultimate goal of modded Minecraft is automations. A common theme seems to be "this will automate this thing, so I have more time to focus on automating something else".

While I find many of the builds people have done with machines to be fantastic, I can't find the enthusiasm to push myself past this sort of FTB slump I appear to be in. The "why am I doing this?" question leaves me wondering why I would make any of this these things when the very basic infrastructure seems to be all that's necessary.

I guess the long winded question I was hoping to get at is this: Does going deeper into FTB offer anything for people who are intrigued by the tech aspect but who may not necessarily be in it for the automation?

 

[Chocorate]

Don't use Gregtech. Don't ever use Gregtech. It will turn your entire existence into a material-grinding puddle of unhappiness.

You could try automating TNT and blowing stuff up. Also theme your buildings like a demolition company. Also change to the Demoman skin. Or you could be a lumberjack like me. :3

 

[Mash]

We can't tell you why you want to play it.

I don't do well in a SSP world, for instance. I play it, but never with the same enthusiasm as a SMP world. This is because I thrive on competition. My best work is always in a competitive atmosphere. While I do enjoy SSP, and I love screwing around with the mods, my best work will always be in an atmosphere where I can create something that dwarfs somebody else's contraption.

That being said, my limited attention span would be even shorter without GregTech. Once I hit endgame, I usually stop playing unless I have an immediate, alternative goal that I'm after. With GregTech, my trip to endgame is loaaaaaads longer than without.

The best way for me to keep going is to just think of a goal, and work towards it. For me, it's fusion reactors. That's about as endgame as you can get, and it provides me with a tangible reward, which is exactly what I need. If I want to be creative on the way, I always have the option to be.

 

[hutchkc]

Put me in the same boat as you and Mash. I enjoy the climb but not the view. Once I reach god-mode or 'want of nothing' if you will, I start losing interest and start over. I can't help you as I don't have an answer myself and if I did it may not apply as it's what you want/desire. I'm not really a creative person so that may be the issue as I seem to go I've climbed the mountain, now what. I'm sure there are a ton of people that could say do this/that, but it's what you want to do. Why yes I probably could build a life-size replica of the Titanic by why would I want to. So unfortunately I think that's only an answer you can come up with.

 

[xSINZx]

Mmmm Chores the mundane but necessary chores. This was a must do on a daily basis in WoW (if you wanted a certain recipe or reputation with someone).
I'm no power player in the Minecraft World, but I would gather to say we all get a bit bored of it here and there. I'm still working on my Main House/Base and alot of it is Chores (not fully Automated) I do however have a long term plan. Just started building a reactor building to power the large township I intend to build. I'm pretty new to it all so very slow going for me.
The possibilities are endless from what I can see..... and just because i can't get into it on one day dosnt mean i wont go hard the next.
You just need to find something You want to do.

 

[Enigmius1]

I guess the long winded question I was hoping to get at is this: Does going deeper into FTB offer anything for people who are intrigued by the tech aspect but who may not necessarily be in it for the automation?

For me, infrastructure is just the beginning. It's a very robust beginning and one that I enjoy but I've always got things to work on when the infrastructure is in place. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who don't see it that way. These were the people who defended GregTech by saying they were tired of rushing to full quantum gear in a couple of days and then being bored because they had 'nothing' to do. And the whole debacle over EE2 appears to have sparked the expanding belief that if something is in any way fun or cool. it's overpowered and should be nerfed. The end result is a lot of upheaval in mod packs as devs change direction and new concepts are added into the mix. It becomes harder and harder to identify those things that we can tinker with post-infrastructure that are fun and challenging. I like to think I'm fairly creative with RP2 frames but that can't be the full extent of what I have to work with. And there have been more changes to other mods that I used to use in conjunction with frames that make prior builds more difficult or impossible than there have been changes that bring new opportunities to the table.

But that's my thing. That's why I'm in such fervent opposition to the idea that a particular machine block or piece of gear can magically delineate between "this is fun" and "great, now I have absolutely nothing to do." But as long as we've got mods like GregTech and (to a lesser extent) Facorization that the sheople drool over until they're getting ready to start their second world with those mods, we're always going to have a needless disruption in synergy between mods that could otherwise work very well together. That leaves it up to us to sort through the mountain of crap that comes with these mod packs to find the little interesting gems before we can sit down to the fun part of deciding how we want to make them behave.

 

[Dravarden]

get to end game, start over, do stuff better than how you did them before so you reach end game faster, repeat till you can get end game before the first night (which will take ages to master)

or you can just try using as much mods as possible, instead of quantum, MPS, instead of tubes, routers, instead of sorting machine, golems, instead of turtles, steve carts, instead of quarries, frames, instead of pulverizers, rock crushers, instead of electric engines with solar panels, steam, instead of mining at all, bees, instead of tesseracts, rails and trains.

 

[McMutton]

Why am I doing this?

Because you want to do this. There is no other reason to do anything in the game.

But I should be trying to help a bit at least.
Most of the players start of by making something which starts doing a lot of the work for them (some sort of automated mining + storing stuff and sorting it).

After that you are at the same point as before: Why am I doing this?
Now you should search your own project.... i.e. "I want to build an Oil Plattform and refinery" or "I want to learn about forestry-bees/trees/farms" or "the magic thingies seem interessting".
Making your stuff visually appealing doesn't only make it more fun for other players to look at, but you'll like it more to work in those areas yourself. (for example build your Thaumcraft research stuff into a mage tower, build a farmer house in front of your wheat/cow/... -farms, etc.)

Last but not least: Don't rush through the game... there are a lot of mechanics to explore and when you understand them it's fun and helps you a lot at later projects. It may be nice that you can do a lot of things nearly instantly, but it is fun to do stuff taking your time as well, so don't always try to look for a way to automate everything directly... you want to play the game... not let the game play itself. (bees would be a good example... there are ways to automate them, but it's nice to figure them out on your own as well just for the sense of exploration)

(as you have said: You are not in it for the automation... so don't make your game only about it. Find other stuff to do and let the automation help you along the way)

Personally: I'm in the process of setting up an ender bag, which keeps me supplied with my favorite building blocks (a stack each) just to avoid running around too often when building something big and fancy in my world.

 

[Saice]

If you ask yourself why do you play this game and you can not find yourself that answer.

Asking others will do little for you. Like many things we the reason we do them often is because we find some sort of amusement or enjoyment out of them. If you are no longer getting this with minecraft it might be time to take a break.

 

[Poppycocks]

Same place as my mind!

In the gutter!

 

[Skirty_007]

I say if you're not having fun, go play another game (or do something from another of your hobbies) for a while, and come back to Minecraft when your enthusiasm comes back or your interest is piqued by an update. Alternatively, have you considered playing on a server, where the game changes depending on server settings and the other players - there are some servers where you have to hide because griefing is part of the meta game, this could be quite exciting perhaps?

 

[slay_mithos]

The good part about having tech mods is that, with a bit of work, you can automate most of the chores.
Like farming, cutting wood, branch mining...
You are not forced to do any automation you don't want, but if that was your wish, you could automate nearly everything in the game.

I also tend to be bored at some point, and just delete the world and restart fresh with other goals, so my advice might not help, but find something you like (building, exploring, caving, fighting, making unnecessarily complex contraptions...), and try to spend more time on this than on the rest.

If fighting was your favourite, you could build a small arena to fight in, or you could start hunting the various monsters in twilight forest.

 

[Poppycocks]

In case you're utterly desperately bored, then you can start modding. Add things which you think might be fun.

ALSO! I'd suggest you try something vastly different for a bit I suggest terrafirmacraft or better than wolves. That might change your views on life, the universe and everything.

 

[LightKnight]

I just always play on a server , i don't like playing in SP . also you can start building amazing buildings especially with micro blocks and modded decorative blocks there is no limit for it .

 

[Abdiel]

For me it's mostly "because it's cool" and "because I've never seen anyone do this and wonder if it will work".

 

[MrZwij]

If you want chores, don't make your systems perfect. Leave bits out or make them slightly imprecise. Learn the basics of each block and then design the systems yourself rather than copying somebody's 100 percent efficient design.

For instance, I have a boiler farm fed by Steve's Carts logging carts. It's reliable but not totally fire-and-forget. I still have to watch the numbers of logs and saplings in my system and decide how they get allocated, and whether now is the right moment to add another boiler, and deal with the consequences if it isn't. I'm constantly tweaking and fiddling with it. That's one of my chores. Another is checking in on my remote resource gathering (quarry or now frame bore). Another is looking in on my bees and seeing how they're doing.

 

[BeastFeeder]

I guess the long winded question I was hoping to get at is this: Does going deeper into FTB offer anything for people who are intrigued by the tech aspect but who may not necessarily be in it for the automation?

There's always another tech or mod to explore, building to build, or something.

 

[Matthew83]

Yeah I get this "why am I doing this" feeling a lot once I reach a certain point. Starting a new world is one way to go or just stop playing for a long while and come back to the game later might help. Stop playing for a few days helped me to rekindle my enthusiasm a few times on my latest world.

What I'm amazed at though is just the shear amount of hours I have put into Minecraft (modded and vanilla). I mean no other game has given me hundreds (more like thousands) of hours of gameplay. For me the longest "normal" games like Fallout 3, Skyrim, GTA, and others I have at most played for about 60-80 hours and then stop from boredom. So minecraft is amazing that even when I get bored it will somehow pull me back in.

 

[Skirty_007]

What I'm amazed at though is just the shear amount of hours I have put into Minecraft (modded and vanilla). I mean no other game has given me hundreds (more like thousands) of hours of gameplay. For me the longest "normal" games like Fallout 3, Skyrim, GTA, and others I have at most played for about 60-80 hours and then stop from boredom. So minecraft is amazing that even when I get bored it will somehow pull me back in.

I know what you mean! WoW is probably the game I've put the most hours into, but I've only been playing MC for a year, so that'll change over time. I'm the sort of person that doesn't finish games, I think the only ones I've finished in my collection (that one can finish) are the Broken Sword games and Grim Fandango type things.