On this point, people also say 'balance' as if it means something. Both are subjective, yet so often people seem to assume or at least word things like they assume that both of these are objective.
Would you play a pack that has greg tech in it?
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Sigh I want to post in this but its like asking for a flame war with greg fan boys. Sigh. My thing is this. Greg vastly changes the experience of other mods. This can be great or terrible depending on what mod he changed and how you feel about that change. This leads to massive flame wars. I don't enjoy people acting like having to work a long time at a puzzle means its more challenging. This is true for some and not for others. To me I find my pleasure in minecraft coming up with really complex builds. Finding out how to make everything work together. Spending a massive amount of time to build that project doesnt make it harder it makes it take longer. Longer can be great! But its not harder. This is a basic misnomer that people miss. Anyways I should keep my mouth shut I am sure I offended people but long story shot I have made several packs with GT and I am pretty sure I wont be doing it anymore. The changes in 1.7 are pretty intense and now that greg has its own power system (called eu lol)
My point on "Balance and grindy are subjective, not objective" displayed in timely and beautiful grandeur.
I think you can apply a lot of objectivity to the word "balance."
I can say that in a world where everyone has 10 hitpoints and a sword costing 3 iron does 3 damage, adding another sword that also costs 3 iron but does 50 damage would be imbalanced.
This is actually a common logical fallacy. The difference between learning to become a neurosurgeon and learning to become a gardener is purely a product of the quantity of knowledge to consume, the duration of time to consume it, and the physical apparatus (steady hand, mental acuity, so forth) to implement it.
The difference between GregTech packs and DireWolf packs is identical. There's more to do, it all takes longer, and you need to pay more attention in order to do it properly. People will frequently say "longer isn't harder", but for all intents and purposes, that's precisely what it is.
Yet I'm sure there is a kid out there somewhere who loves slaying monsters in a creative-like way who would disagree with you, and think that 3 iron for 50 damage is perfectly balanced for his playstyle, and never liked spending 3 iron for 3 damage. And would his/her opinion be wrong? Is he/she playing the game incorrectly?
The big thing that makes balance subjective, is that it relies heavily on fun as a unit of measure. And fun is entirely subjective.
Yes, and you should have said that fun was subjective in the first place
(You should immediately see where your statement was wrong now, by equating balance to fun. Makes sense?)I guess.Yes, and you should have said that fun was subjective in the first place
I don't really see much point for balance to exist as a separate thing from fun, though. Without fun, balance serves no purpose in game design. It's simply a statement of 'x is [less/greater] than y'.
Perhaps for your brain but I am able to visualize patterns better then most people. For me the fun is understanding that pattern. For others is spending a lot of time constructing said pattern. You cant say one is more objectively right then the other. Each person has their own way of learning and their own personality type. Some people are intuitive some people are more sensation/thinking types. The way to understand this is you have engineers and designers. Engineers build it and Designers come up with the idea. Each type of intelligence and thought pattern are needed in the real world. So to say just because something takes longer to get done does not actually add choices or details to work out in the system. Thats the lie that is gregtech. When you biol it down its just more distance between steps. Again you are talking to someone who has played gregtech a lot. I have run through its entire progression in my own packs I have made.
Anyways you might learn something studying the myers-briggs personality test. Or Jungian psychology in general. TLDR: People think, learn, and play differently.
Boring stuff. Feel free to skip this below. *I* find it fascinating, but I'm weird:
Depending what your background is, chances are you've never had to study anything as ephemeral as the notion of "fun." Its a bizarre thing, and it essentially boils down to a challenge for oneself that, at your current stage of development, you're capable of potentially overcoming.
Anything that you can consider "fun" falls into this category. (It gets weirder when you consider, say, playing with dolls, but it still works as a function of social challenges). "Fun" then becomes a positive feedback loop engendered in all life to reinforce practicing skills that will be useful to us (to wit, a kitten and a ball of yarn)
Anything that you can consider "fun" falls into this category. (It gets weirder when you consider, say, playing with dolls, but it still works as a function of social challenges). "Fun" then becomes a positive feedback loop engendered in all life to reinforce practicing skills that will be useful to us (to wit, a kitten and a ball of yarn)
Ultimately, "balance" is mathematical. There's nothing subjective about it; its purely a case of what you're deciding to weigh in the scales.
And whereas balance is absolutely, crucially important to providing me any sort of challenge I might consider fun, I fully respect that others are able to experience their challenge without it.
(Hence why I need to logically defend balance in gaming)
Glad you mentioned this, because I'm totally incapable of visualizing patterns, and hence I'm totally restricted to finding fun in other ways. Different folks...
(1) Edit: I'm rethinking this statement.
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I've edited out a phrase that, after the fact, I don't agree with anymore. Saying "balance is a nonfactor in all modpacks" woulds be catastrophic. But saying "balance is critical in all modpacks" would be no different, assuming that player tastes are more or less equally distributed.
This is very interesting to me, and I indeed never have studied fun and really never gave it much thought. I now realize that you are right in saying that fun is, in fact, measurable, and therefore objective, even if there are nearly infinite variations in brains and forms possible in the universe. (And it probably gets even more objective if you narrow things down to only the brains that have existed in the head of a human, which is a very large but ultimately finite number.)
And it would make sense for fun to arise as a benefit to creatures, by encouraging them to address challenges in a way that is less dangerous/more possible than actually going out and doing them.
Unless I'm taking this in an entirely wrong direction? I'm very cold and kinda tired and not thinking too straight because of that...
I actually definitely didn't say fun was objective. But now that you mention it, in the coldest, strictest, robotic terms, it kind of is
How depressing!I think he was more saying that fun was subjective, but balance is not.
E: Hrm, I can see what you're saying about fun being objective in the sense that it can be defined in generalized terms... But, it's still subjective when it comes down to what that means to each person.
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Oh, well, Gry's post kinda sparked an idea in my head, and your post brought that idea to fruition. Even if I did go a little too far, apparently.I actually definitely didn't say fun was objective. But now that you mention it, in the coldest, strictest, robotic terms, it kind of is
And yes, I tend to have the philosophy that the universe exists simply because it does, which tends to lead to some of the colder, more robotic conclusions. I think it has a tendency to be closer to the truth, though, even if it can sometimes seem depressing.
Im in his boat as well.I have never tried GregTech but I have heared so many (good and bad) things about it that I sure want to try it out at some point. As I generally like things with a challenge it turns out that I may actually enjoy it
Balance is still highly subjective. Even in a very well made game with expertly crafted balance, such as, say, Team Fortress 2, some things occasionally just are objectively better and some are highly subjectively "better". For example: When you need to cap a point quickly, you use a scout, and no one would question this. But when you need to defend a cap... who would use a scout? Or why send a Heavy to cap alone? A heavy with the Intel is a very easy target, and yet a spy is worse.
Would you use the Backburner as a Pyro, and why use it instead of the basic flame thrower?
Balance is occasionally objective, and then it's just numbers and math. Pure logical deduction of which is better at what and why it is better. But there are the outliers to keep in mind. If I cap a point as a medic while I solo it, I am one hell of an outlier here. No one caps as a medic solo as far as logic would tell us.
But back to fun being subjective and objective... I agree. Fun is a thing that can change meaning and definition from person to person. But we almost all enjoy cutting loose and having a OP but hella fun joy now and then. And Minecraft is fun for many people, but the why's change quite often. I enjoy the challenge of attempting to master a new mod and mucking about along the way. GT can be quite fun for me since it makes things last longer and has good end game content.
I would be happy to use Gregtech in a mod pack but I don't like his new oregen as you have to travel all over the place looking for different ore's. I tried a pack with Gregtech in it. I spent most of my time having to travel all over the place looking for hills that might have some tin ore is a pain. On a slow computer it can be very bad having to world gen a large area looking for ore.