I have no need to be privy to them. Balance is 100% subjective. Period.
If they take into consideration sure but if they allow the public to control the direction of their mod it's not okay.
Where is the line between contraption and exploit?
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I have no need to be privy to them. Balance is 100% subjective. Period.
If they take into consideration sure but if they allow the public to control the direction of their mod it's not okay.
You claimed there were no facts argued. That's not a claim you can make without being privy to the conversations being discussed. Then you admit that you were not privy to them. You are therefore lying about there being no facts argued.
Your criteria is entirely subjective as well, and one that no normally socialized person would agree with.
You cannot argue facts about balance. They don't exist. If you wish to be completely technical about it and argue that someone saying that the collector MKI produced 4 EMC/s is a fact then sure. Except that's not the context of the conversation. The context of it is the balance of the mod and there are no facts about balance of a mod only opinions.
As I have stated multiple times in most of my posts on this thread as such and please do tell what a "normally socialized person" is to you. Pahimar shouldn't make his mod for everyone else he should make it to achieve the goal he has in mind.
Provide one.
I'll agree with Hoff's statement that anything about balance is opinion. Much of it might be widely agreed-upon opinion, but it's still opinion.
Please do explain how I should agree with the balance of someone's views that don't coincide with my own when I have no real reason to since this is a sandbox game. Oh and if you're just trying to be a prick by nitpicking my statement as if it wasn't solely directed at minecraft and related mods, please, do not respond.
I agree with you. In all manner of games there is this attitude that the developers must listen and change the game based on arbitrary player feedback, which is not the case at all. The developers will have an idea in their mind for what they want to create. User feedback can often be a great source for further inspiration but at no time should a developer feel or be seen as obligated to change because the vocal minority screamed long and loud on a forum somewhere.
As much as I go on about my dislike of 'one magic block' mods and balance of pacing or cost vs rewards.
I 100% agree with this statement.
We can go on about our point of view all we want but at the end of the day its the guy making the mod and their vision and ideas that get to call the shots not us.
Nor should we development is not a democracy and if you want something to be crowd sourced feel free to learn to code and start up your own project until then let the developers of what ever mod you like or hate do there thing there way.
I'd define something as being overpowered the moment a single item takes over and makes all "other ways of doing it" obsolete.
The problem is that mod authors each want their own mod to be useful so they keep upping one another. Minecraft is becoming easier and more automated with every new mod addition. The second one (automation) I'd consider a good thing but the startup cost and the knowledge how to set it up is sometimes too easy compared to the alternatives.
I don't mind Gregtech and Bee rewards for example because they take quite a lot of time, knowledge and space to set up. I also applaud Thaumcraft for its sense of balance while adding completely unique items as well.
Making the switch from SP to MP has changed my perspective on what is balanced and overpowered though.
I personally love mechanical systems, pipes, tubes, logic gates circuits, wiring, you name it. But lag and server friendlyness also play a role now.
Back in the days without teleportation, setting up a quarry was rather troublesome. Now it's just a matter of hooking up only 2 blocks next to it... Combined with chunkloaders and the server running 24/7 means getting stuff is many many times easier and faster compared to SP.
But because I have already done it the other (harder) way, I don't mind it becoming easier with 'magic' teleportation this time. Especially when it's a lot more server friendly.
I think a large part of the 'subjectiveness' discussion has to do with how many times you've already done the same setup before. Once you've "been there done that", having another improvement seems more interesting.
As far as personal pet peeves go; mine is spawners, especially with soul shards.
They remove any need to get items the way it was intended. I like the idea of going to the end when you need ender pearls, or having a reason to visit the nether when you need blaze. Having it all in infinite quantities right underneath your base just diminishes the need to ever go to those dimensions ever again.
They're also magic. They just spawn unlimited mobs (and thus items) out of thin air. At least with EE you have to input something.
And thirdly, worst of all, the sheer amount of items you can get with spawner farms also means mod authors keep making their recipes more and more expensive till the point where you almost *have* to set up a spawner.
Even being able to pick them up with a portal gun changes things and now with soul shards they have become so mainstream that it's hard to call them exploits though, even when they do break certain core gameplay mechanics imo.
The problem is that mod authors each want their own mod to be useful so they keep upping one another. Minecraft is becoming easier and more automated with every new mod addition. The second one (automation) I'd consider a good thing but the startup cost and the knowledge how to set it up is sometimes too easy compared to the alternatives.
I don't mind Gregtech and Bee rewards for example because they take quite a lot of time, knowledge and space to set up. I also applaud Thaumcraft for its sense of balance while adding completely unique items as well.
Making the switch from SP to MP has changed my perspective on what is balanced and overpowered though.
I personally love mechanical systems, pipes, tubes, logic gates circuits, wiring, you name it. But lag and server friendlyness also play a role now.
Back in the days without teleportation, setting up a quarry was rather troublesome. Now it's just a matter of hooking up only 2 blocks next to it... Combined with chunkloaders and the server running 24/7 means getting stuff is many many times easier and faster compared to SP.
But because I have already done it the other (harder) way, I don't mind it becoming easier with 'magic' teleportation this time. Especially when it's a lot more server friendly.
I think a large part of the 'subjectiveness' discussion has to do with how many times you've already done the same setup before. Once you've "been there done that", having another improvement seems more interesting.
As far as personal pet peeves go; mine is spawners, especially with soul shards.
They remove any need to get items the way it was intended. I like the idea of going to the end when you need ender pearls, or having a reason to visit the nether when you need blaze. Having it all in infinite quantities right underneath your base just diminishes the need to ever go to those dimensions ever again.
They're also magic. They just spawn unlimited mobs (and thus items) out of thin air. At least with EE you have to input something.
And thirdly, worst of all, the sheer amount of items you can get with spawner farms also means mod authors keep making their recipes more and more expensive till the point where you almost *have* to set up a spawner.
Even being able to pick them up with a portal gun changes things and now with soul shards they have become so mainstream that it's hard to call them exploits though, even when they do break certain core gameplay mechanics imo.
saying a developer is at fault for discontinuing a mod is a horrible distortion of logic. And if that is an opinion you have then I am not interested in any opinion you hold.
Out of thin air yes, but the amount of time one needs to kill monsters and get the good spawners (1024 mob kills) is quite a time-consuming effort. So you either go hunting or caving for days in order to get the 1K kills or try to find vanilla spawners to absorb 200 souls at a time. Personally, I believe the effort justifies the result in this case.
There's a lot of vanilla exploits using spawners, too. Want to know the reason why i think soul shards isn't overpowered? You can make mob traps in vanilla using the vanilla spawners.
Food? Use a piston to push any spawner in the world in a torch, and it drops as a pig spawner. Infinite food. (Vanilla Exploit)
Skeleton & Zombie spawners are vanilla as well, just find one and make the mob trap exploiting the spawner. A lot of tutorials on how to make an efficient mob trap using the spawners, underground. A lot of work? Yes, but so is killing a minimum of 171 mobs to get the T5 Soul Shard. Endermen mob traps are also a lot of work, but possible in vanilla. In fact the only mob which is impossible to make farms for in vanilla is the Wither Skeleton and Ghast. In fact, the Wither Skeleton is even possible to farm (Just build a normal mob trap in a Nether Fortress), but extremely inefficient. All the others are possible. You can even make a Pigmen farm in the Overworld using a lot of Nether Portals (and creating massive lag). Distance is not an object as well, since you can use railroads through the Nether to reach basically anywhere really fast. The Soul Shards mod doesn't introduce anything groundbreaking, except a way of making the vanilla mob traps easier to build, and more compact.
Food? Use a piston to push any spawner in the world in a torch, and it drops as a pig spawner. Infinite food. (Vanilla Exploit)
Skeleton & Zombie spawners are vanilla as well, just find one and make the mob trap exploiting the spawner. A lot of tutorials on how to make an efficient mob trap using the spawners, underground. A lot of work? Yes, but so is killing a minimum of 171 mobs to get the T5 Soul Shard. Endermen mob traps are also a lot of work, but possible in vanilla. In fact the only mob which is impossible to make farms for in vanilla is the Wither Skeleton and Ghast. In fact, the Wither Skeleton is even possible to farm (Just build a normal mob trap in a Nether Fortress), but extremely inefficient. All the others are possible. You can even make a Pigmen farm in the Overworld using a lot of Nether Portals (and creating massive lag). Distance is not an object as well, since you can use railroads through the Nether to reach basically anywhere really fast. The Soul Shards mod doesn't introduce anything groundbreaking, except a way of making the vanilla mob traps easier to build, and more compact.
Yes, in the same way an engine run on dirt producing 1000 MJ/EU isn't groundbreaking either because it's just power that's already in the game, it's obtainable in another way, and this way it's just "easier to build and more compact".
that's the problem I have with AE, it's so much better than any other system that I don't find it interesting. It's just a couple of grey boxes that do everything.
Then where does the fault(Or responsibility if you prefer that word) for a discontinued mod lay?
He chose to end the mod and thus any disappointment that comes after that falls on him. It may not seem fair to you but it comes with what he chose to do. When you choose to develop a mod all blame for anything that mod causes ultimately falls on your shoulders. It's simply a fact.
If a person ruling a country is in power when a catastrophe happens, even if it couldn't be stopped, he will be blamed. It's the same principle.
I think I should pronounce myself on this. I have an utter love for self-sufficient bases, and I play two worlds by now. Achieving a self-sufficient base is easy with nothing but vanilla and EE3 (which I think it's preety nifty). Achieveng a self-sufficient base on my old 1.4.6 world (Mindcrack pack, still play it) is easy using several mods, such as the "breeder room", with peat-fired engines.
I am not so lucky with my Ultimate world. From several contraptions such as a battery for Thaumcraft alchemy that is timed perfectly to my vannila + BC3 cactus farm that I just have to relax and eventually they will fall, to my not-so-efficient breeder room (compost instead of fertilizer) and several other things.
I did not use any exploits as how I see an exploit. An exploit is something that breaks the game entirely. EE2 DID NOT break the game entirely. It was OP, sure, but you had to get an ludicrous amount of material to get it to that point and a constant time. Despite the "out of thin air" energy, it wasn't that much OP as turning using coal to make a never-ending diamond armor as long as you have power.
Yes, it is OP. But for God's sake, if you can defy that one with "exploits" (according to several people around here) despite not being as fast as (or even faster) by other means, than it isn't as OP as your favorite mod is.
I am not so lucky with my Ultimate world. From several contraptions such as a battery for Thaumcraft alchemy that is timed perfectly to my vannila + BC3 cactus farm that I just have to relax and eventually they will fall, to my not-so-efficient breeder room (compost instead of fertilizer) and several other things.
I did not use any exploits as how I see an exploit. An exploit is something that breaks the game entirely. EE2 DID NOT break the game entirely. It was OP, sure, but you had to get an ludicrous amount of material to get it to that point and a constant time. Despite the "out of thin air" energy, it wasn't that much OP as turning using coal to make a never-ending diamond armor as long as you have power.
Yes, it is OP. But for God's sake, if you can defy that one with "exploits" (according to several people around here) despite not being as fast as (or even faster) by other means, than it isn't as OP as your favorite mod is.
Actually, you only need to kill 10 mobs, and only 1 of them actually needs to be the mob you spawn.
See, soul shards track how many souls they carry with durability. And when you combine two items using an anvil, it adds the durabilities together then adds 10% on top of that. So if you hammer 10 soul shards, each containing one soul, together, you get a full T5 shard.
Yes and this really is an exploit I do not believe the mod maker intended for this to be the way to use the shards. I do hope he moves the soul data to meta data instead or makes them unrepairable it is ridiculous just how quickly someone can have a full collection of T5 shards by using the repair system the only hard cost is diamond which are easy to create in most mod packs.
The base IC2 UUM also does not get you nearly as many resources. GregTech actually adds a lot of extra UUM recipes. And by the time you get to UUM you already have everything that you could build with it, with or without GT. GT just adds a ton of extra stuff you have to go through to get to the point of UUM. That is one thing that GT does right, nerfing UUM production. But GT also adds a bunch of UUM recipes, so it all balances out.
Base IC2 is generally considered a bit OP anyway, but only when you add in other mods that make passive energy generation easy (e.g. pump lava from the Nether and quarry lots of coal). GT, unlike it claims, does little to solve this, it only makes the early to mid game an even bigger pain in the ass.
Basically very few mods (aside from the obvious EE2) OP on their own. Any bit of imbalance is brought in with interactions with other mods. GT is one of the few that explicitly do something to try to solve the imbalances of mixing mods, but it often nerfs in the wrong direction (example: bronze nerf makes Forestry damn near useless). Everybody wants to do something really cool with their mod (turning resources into other resources is very popular), and those ideas often conflict. Is one piece of gold worth 8 iron, 4 iron, or something completely different? How much coal do you need to make a diamond?[DOUBLEPOST=1364641582][/DOUBLEPOST]
Actually the mod maker explicitly added in that capability for anvils. It's a temporary measure until they add in something to replace it (I believe this is the future purpose for Soul Crystals, which are currently unobtainable).
Who cares where the 'blame' falls or whatever? I mean, it's one thing if, like in the case of EE2, the maintainer discontinues it and the original author refuses to let anyone else update it, but for mods that are less childish about intellectual property, someone else can easily just pick it up and maintain it themselves, like what happened with buildcraft (when SpaceToad stepped down) and MineFactory (when powercrystals went on hiatus).
Like, this whole discussion of 'blame' seems immaterial to the things that actually matter, which in the case of Minecraft I think is primarily making and maintaining cool things that people enjoy using.