oh snap, not good... looks like we may need a Why do people still like Applied Engergetics? thread
Why don't people like IC2 anymore?
- Thread starter TheBaconator
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Its quicker to get 5 iron and make plates (Which, by the way, definitely does not take 10 seconds, more like 2. Try making the right amount BEFORE you start crafting the other stuff) then wait for refined iron to smelt (Well, early game, not late game), so it actually saves you time for a little bit more clicking
Not really. Which was kind of my point about initial time investments. Yes, if you know ahead of time exactly how many you plates need and have the recipe memorized, shifting the time cost upfront is more efficient. But if you don't know that yet, perhaps because you just downloaded the mod, then it takes subjectively longer to get to those plates than just tossing them in a machine and coming back after doing some mining. Even if the overall time spent is shorter, by moving the time from a spread out period while the player is off doing other things into a solid block right up front, it presents an obstacle that it didn't before.
And again, it's not just those couple seconds to make the plate. It's taking those seconds to make the plate, then figuring out that you need a cutter as well. Then adding more seconds to make plates to get the cutter. Then more seconds to make the cutter. Then more seconds to use the cutter. It really does all add up, to the point where you begin to wonder if it's worth all that time and effort for a machine that you just wanted to try out on a whim.
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Wouldn't matter. I'm not considered evil because of the modpack. I'm considered evil because I am blunt, tactless opinionated, snarky and feel that diplomacy is a socially acceptable form of deception that is deplorable reprehensible and a waste of my time. Also because according to twitter "I am stupid and have no experience in minecraft". I am occasionally considered evil because I apply forum rules to everyone regardless of my personal opinion of them. My propensity for trolling may also have something to do with it.
MF2 is the way I like to play. Its balanced the way I like its not about being evil
all lies, jaded is a sweet and innocent gal
Oh no! A whole minute to make a single machine! >.>
The Metal Former* maybe, but it is not tier one, where the forge hammer is.
I setup AE to craft plates using an iron hammer, and it worked just fine. Compared to my overclocked metal formers it was obscenely FAST. But for big projects, it used quite a bit more iron. So I ended up going back to using the metal formers.Its quicker to get 5 iron and make plates (Which, by the way, definitely does not take 10 seconds, more like 2. Try making the right amount BEFORE you start crafting the other stuff
@Above It should work with AE
My main beef with IC2 is not so much the plates but that the hammer you have to build wears out so fast. 80 uses seems like a lot until you find you need plates and casings for many many different things. Then its not enough. Is there a config option for the hammer durability?
To be honest, I hardly mind early-game hammers and cutters. They make sense and hardly cost more time.
I haven't yet explored too much of IC2, because I never really play minecraft anymore (which is too bad, wish I could find the courage to hold on to a SSP world for longer than a few hours), so I am not going to give my opinion on the rest of IC2 until I actually reach those stages.
I haven't yet explored too much of IC2, because I never really play minecraft anymore (which is too bad, wish I could find the courage to hold on to a SSP world for longer than a few hours), so I am not going to give my opinion on the rest of IC2 until I actually reach those stages.
IC2 is moving toward being balanced solely for experienced IC2 players. 100% horrible idea.
Explain?
Its not like the recipes got THAT much more complicated. Refined iron cancels out the plates, but then you still have the occasional use of casings and wires, but its not particularly hard to figure out
RR is in the process of developing an RRLite pack for lower end comps and our reworked server building challenge. The very first thing I said when we made the initial mod list was "IC2 is gone". From the standpoint of a semi-competitive multiplayer challenge, I cannot possibly justify a mod that can destroy a good portion of a team's base because a team member did not do their EU transmission maths right or didn't quite understand the power net.
IC and IC2 were amazing for their time. The modding community as it is would not be this robust without them. However, outside of a massive paradigm shift in its tedium and punishment for lack of experience, IC2's time as top tier is over.
To be constructive in my criticism, I would be willing to get behind the chance to lose a machine on wrenching if the mechanic were shifted from the wrench and onto the machines themselves. Look at it from the view of complexity. A person should be able to move an oven from one place to another in their home. I can do that in my own home. I need to unplug it and use a wrench to disconnect the gas line, but I have nearly zero chance of screwing it up. If I were to try to move a plate-bending machine, I would probably mess it up since the complexity is much higher.
Have the higher tier wrenches, such as the electric wrench, represent the player's greater understanding of the intricacies of the more complex machines. Simply, a tier 1 machine like an electric furnace or extractor would have a zero chance to break no matter what wrench is used. Give a Matter Fabricator a 25% chance to break with an iron wrench and a progressively lower chance until an electric wrench has no chance to break the machine.
Here's a suggestion for the powernet. Breaker boxes. I have one in my basement. If I try to pull more electricity than an appliance can handle, the breaker trips nothing on that circuit gets power until I reset the switch. Maybe I don't have a breaker box. My appliances will burnout. 99% of all electronic appliances have breakers built in by law so that a person can't kill themselves(purposely or accidentally)through a power surge. Use a wrench or hammer on the machine to fix it. The durability loss on the tool will represent the materials used to make the repairs. Crap, man, I can build an electric furnace from the raw ore all the way to the finished product, but I don't have the skill to make repairs on that same machine? I'm not asking for reality here, but even a small amount of logic would be appreciated.
IC and IC2 were amazing for their time. The modding community as it is would not be this robust without them. However, outside of a massive paradigm shift in its tedium and punishment for lack of experience, IC2's time as top tier is over.
To be constructive in my criticism, I would be willing to get behind the chance to lose a machine on wrenching if the mechanic were shifted from the wrench and onto the machines themselves. Look at it from the view of complexity. A person should be able to move an oven from one place to another in their home. I can do that in my own home. I need to unplug it and use a wrench to disconnect the gas line, but I have nearly zero chance of screwing it up. If I were to try to move a plate-bending machine, I would probably mess it up since the complexity is much higher.
Have the higher tier wrenches, such as the electric wrench, represent the player's greater understanding of the intricacies of the more complex machines. Simply, a tier 1 machine like an electric furnace or extractor would have a zero chance to break no matter what wrench is used. Give a Matter Fabricator a 25% chance to break with an iron wrench and a progressively lower chance until an electric wrench has no chance to break the machine.
Here's a suggestion for the powernet. Breaker boxes. I have one in my basement. If I try to pull more electricity than an appliance can handle, the breaker trips nothing on that circuit gets power until I reset the switch. Maybe I don't have a breaker box. My appliances will burnout. 99% of all electronic appliances have breakers built in by law so that a person can't kill themselves(purposely or accidentally)through a power surge. Use a wrench or hammer on the machine to fix it. The durability loss on the tool will represent the materials used to make the repairs. Crap, man, I can build an electric furnace from the raw ore all the way to the finished product, but I don't have the skill to make repairs on that same machine? I'm not asking for reality here, but even a small amount of logic would be appreciated.
Explain?
Its not like the recipes got THAT much more complicated. Refined iron cancels out the plates, but then you still have the occasional use of casings and wires, but its not particularly hard to figure out
From your perspective. Personally very little of the mod makes sense. Some things like hammers, wire cutters, and rubber make sense. Imagine trying to understand IC2 without going off of a guide, wiki, or previous knowledge. Some of the stuff is just extremely nonsensical in my opinion.
It's not just IC2 though; that ring of "big mod" devs all seem to have moved toward a similar way of thinking through their own personal playstyle and as they come to understand their own mod more-so through playing it. As well as FC offering a mixed mod play with their mods. This means they grow to understand ways the mod can be mingled and balance to prevent that mingling from shortening the playable time of their mod(Through personal experience which IMO leads to poorer judgement for newer and different playstyles as all of those devs seem to submit to a very similar power gamer playstyle). This leads to the idea that everyone will play with the same mods and the some possible mod mingling; they don't for the most part.
I'm not saying they can't do it or that they should change their mod for anything other than their own personal visions of it BUT, if they do want to maintain the same appeal they've always had they must compromise.
The punishment is that you are getting less value for your time, i.e. your ores. That, for some people, me included, leads to the described bad feeling. As I said, the game is not forcing you to double ores, but it is rewarding that behavior with increased efficiency. Which is, in my opinion, the wrong incentive to give.
Like why would you choose to build a treefarm using BUDs and OpenBlocks block destroyers over an MFR or Forestry Treefarm?
Explain?
Its not like the recipes got THAT much more complicated. Refined iron cancels out the plates, but then you still have the occasional use of casings and wires, but its not particularly hard to figure out
As stated earlier... I needed gold wire for MPSuit earlier.. I threw a few gold dust into the furnace, got it out and went to craft the old recipe for gold wire. 3 gold in a line. Simple, clean, made sense.
Realized it was different.. then I needed to smelt up a bunch of iron for a hammer for iron plates and gold plate to make cutters for the gold plate to turn it into wire. Too many added steps for 2 pieces of wire I needed for MPS copper wiring.
Usually I go straight from regular armor to Nano to eventually quantum, but the lack of flight made quantum unappealing this time around. EE rings in older times and Grav suit was great previously.
It was a huge jump and felt very forced. It was a bug in MPS had that broke the other MPS copper wiring recipe, but it still made me touch IC earlier than I wanted to. Thats when I realized how much more tedious the mod has become and reasserted the "GregLite" analogy. Obviously it is your (and the other devs) mod, so you don't have to take any advice from the public, but the current 14 pages does have a major majority saying "WTF." Before I knew this thread existed I actually posted in my own thread asking what was happening to IC2.
Edit: Actually.. that being said.. I remember when IC was the first mod you touched so that you could get your sorting system going. Sucks that the "earlier than I wanted to" portion even exists. I think the question should probably say, "Why isn't IC2 the first mod everyone turns to in tech mods anymore?" and perhaps we can get the answer to the question at hand. For me, TE has taken it's place in the beginning, so I end up getting the TE power system in order to power it more efficiently and get more machines that will play nice with my first power grid.
Why I chose TE over Macerator? BC pipes are not intuitive enough in the beginning. RP tubes were great, but since those are gone, earlygame automation is too tedious. TE earlygame automation is pretty simple. Plop a couple chests down, a hopper, set output, input, done.
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As far as ore doubling is concerned, I'm pretty sure anyone playing FTB, or with mods in general, have plenty of experience with the boring grind of minecraft. People turn to mods to enhance the gaming experience and when machines require quite a bit of ores to make, the thought of manually mining with a basic pickaxe is nothing more than a chore. I'd say most are bored with that or they wouldn't be playing modded MC. I'd also say making it harder to get than getting a bunch of ore and putting the machines together would be an attempt at making the gameplay last longer... GTech does that fine. No need to forcefeed it on people who don't want it.
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Explain?
Its not like the recipes got THAT much more complicated. Refined iron cancels out the plates, but then you still have the occasional use of casings and wires, but its not particularly hard to figure out
It's not that it's hard to figure out. It's that it shouldn't be necessary at all to have to do so.
Again, you are introducing extra steps and complication to the initial "getting familiar" phase of the mod. Which is fine for people who are really experience or committed to a goal within the mod. But isn't so good for anyone who isn't. Anyone who is either new, or just not that familiar with what the mod brings to the table. If someone just wants to try a small piece of the mod out, like with Hoff's example of making gold wire for MPS wiring, making him jump headfirst into the deep end to figure out a bunch of different mechanics is not likely to get him more interested in continuing to explore. Often they'll just get frustrated that a seemingly simple task is taking way too long and either give up, or just get a bad impression of the mod as a whole and never try anything else in it.
You don't see it, probably because you're already invested and planning to make a full array of IC2 machines from the start, so a few extra steps in return for less resources spent seems like a net benefit to you. But to people who are not yet sure that they'll make anything more than a single wire, making that single wire into a more complicated endeavor is offputting.
For me, the problem is purely with the number of steps involved. Each extra step in creating something increases my "blah" level, regardless of the actual time investment.
Once I have the materials in hand, I want my "cool thing" - components are not cool. They are deliberately-introduced busywork that add nothing of value to the experience.
IC2 has always been the mod for busywork, and to me, it is unfortunately becoming intolerable. I flat out consider having more than three combines to make any device to be bad design, and I honestly feel I'm in the majority there.
Well, maybe 3 is a little much since almost all mods require vanilla components that you'll sometimes not have on hand. Call it 5 max. Look at TE machines for examples of how to do it right.
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Once I have the materials in hand, I want my "cool thing" - components are not cool. They are deliberately-introduced busywork that add nothing of value to the experience.
IC2 has always been the mod for busywork, and to me, it is unfortunately becoming intolerable. I flat out consider having more than three combines to make any device to be bad design, and I honestly feel I'm in the majority there.
Well, maybe 3 is a little much since almost all mods require vanilla components that you'll sometimes not have on hand. Call it 5 max. Look at TE machines for examples of how to do it right.
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I'm just running a server with a couple of friends - we've had this discussion several times in the last days.
To sum it all up, it's pretty much what has already been written here - the slow pace of progress, the tedious work, increased need for resources and, most of all, complicated crafting recipes with unnecessary steps.
The first can be attributed to us playing with Gregtech, the last one though still fits.
Personally, I am quite excited about the way that IC2 and GT are going and I like most of the changes.
The real strength of IC2 lies in Gregtech though, in my opinion, and I wouldn't wanna play it without it. As such I would love to see IC2 and GT consolidating even more, incorporating some of GT's great concepts into vanilla IC2 and streamlining both mods accordingly.
I think that:
- IC2 should get more user-friendly, more intuitive and transparent. It should be more clear how things have to be done (Example: Using the canning machine), and failure shouldn't be punished as hard as destroying a good portion of your equipment as easily. I like the idea of fuses burning out instead of your machine blowing up. Oh, GUI hint-tabs would be lovely to have.
- IC2 and GT should more thoroughly build on their tiers system, but should make starting up more easy and/or more rewarding. Players who just want a better furnace, some ore multiplication and some means to automatically move items around in a simple way, should be able to be happy with lowest tier equipment for a good while. Equipment that is most useful in the early game should be available early.
Now many of GT's tier 1 machines become practically useless once you have gathered enough steel for tier 2 machines, even though their cost is staggering for that kind of starter technology. With GT I now also need an industrial blast furnace to get myself a simple standard drill. This forces me to rush to the higher tiers if e.g. I wanna be able to use those new tools to dig out my base before the end of the server. I stopped using the vanilla IC2 orewasher because it was so expensive to power.
- IC2 should incorporate more of GTs simply useful items (like pipes) to make it more complete and featurewise up to par with e.g. Thermal Expansion.
- IC2 should slowly add more stuff that goes beyond resource-gathering and -processing, be it for utility, combat, adventuring or whatnot. Scaffolding still is a hit for example, eu-driven lasertowers would be awesome to have. Yes, I see that plasma launcher prototype in there. ;-)
In general I see both IC2 and GT rising again if they can manage to satisfy more users. As was said over and over again, many players just want that basic tech infrastructure and don't wanna spend hours just on building it. On the other hand they don't wanna have the feeling to miss out on something if they are not using such infrastructure at all.
To sum it all up, it's pretty much what has already been written here - the slow pace of progress, the tedious work, increased need for resources and, most of all, complicated crafting recipes with unnecessary steps.
The first can be attributed to us playing with Gregtech, the last one though still fits.
Personally, I am quite excited about the way that IC2 and GT are going and I like most of the changes.
The real strength of IC2 lies in Gregtech though, in my opinion, and I wouldn't wanna play it without it. As such I would love to see IC2 and GT consolidating even more, incorporating some of GT's great concepts into vanilla IC2 and streamlining both mods accordingly.
I think that:
- IC2 should get more user-friendly, more intuitive and transparent. It should be more clear how things have to be done (Example: Using the canning machine), and failure shouldn't be punished as hard as destroying a good portion of your equipment as easily. I like the idea of fuses burning out instead of your machine blowing up. Oh, GUI hint-tabs would be lovely to have.
- IC2 and GT should more thoroughly build on their tiers system, but should make starting up more easy and/or more rewarding. Players who just want a better furnace, some ore multiplication and some means to automatically move items around in a simple way, should be able to be happy with lowest tier equipment for a good while. Equipment that is most useful in the early game should be available early.
Now many of GT's tier 1 machines become practically useless once you have gathered enough steel for tier 2 machines, even though their cost is staggering for that kind of starter technology. With GT I now also need an industrial blast furnace to get myself a simple standard drill. This forces me to rush to the higher tiers if e.g. I wanna be able to use those new tools to dig out my base before the end of the server. I stopped using the vanilla IC2 orewasher because it was so expensive to power.
- IC2 should incorporate more of GTs simply useful items (like pipes) to make it more complete and featurewise up to par with e.g. Thermal Expansion.
- IC2 should slowly add more stuff that goes beyond resource-gathering and -processing, be it for utility, combat, adventuring or whatnot. Scaffolding still is a hit for example, eu-driven lasertowers would be awesome to have. Yes, I see that plasma launcher prototype in there. ;-)
In general I see both IC2 and GT rising again if they can manage to satisfy more users. As was said over and over again, many players just want that basic tech infrastructure and don't wanna spend hours just on building it. On the other hand they don't wanna have the feeling to miss out on something if they are not using such infrastructure at all.
What I got from your post is IC2 is only worthwhile right now with GregTech. This is my line of thinking, although I doubt it was yours/your servers.
This is exactly how I feel at the moment about IC2: useless without GT. Which is an issue considering many dislike GT in its 1.6 state.
I will ask one question: what does IC2 offer that no other mod offers? I can see literally nothing at this point. Blood Magic replaced Quantum Armor, Mekanism replaced the extreme speeds of the Induction Furnace/overclockers, the Vajra and the jetpack, Big Reactors and Atomic Science replaced the nuclear reactor, Redstone Arsenal replaced end-game tools, TE3 replaced Nano Armor and the early-game setup and crops......just need to be their own mod.
So really, name one thing that IC2 Exp. offers that no other mod offers and is useful. Please.
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