Jerigord

Two posts in a row consisting of different content/ideas is not a double post. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for doing it, including in actual conversations in real life.

Gaming community is not the same thing as gaming developers. :-D Of course there are still grindy games out there, but they're not as readily accepted and are openly ridiculed a lot more than they had be.

Just another idea to toss out there. Could something be done with experience? Perhaps if XP was gained through other means (as it is from mining coal in vanilla), it could be seen as a constant, non-grindy currency, which can then be exchanged for character improvements. Such a system could be gamed, I suppose, but maybe there's some merit there? I don't know.

I agree with those points as well, Kim, which is why I'm not really advocating any of them. I recognize that grinding doesn't solve anything. The gaming community theoretically learned that years ago with first gen MMOs, so I'm not interested in repeating it here. I'm hoping the points will spark other creative ideas from folks. :-)

There are a few routes that come to mind on this. I see advantages and disadvantages to each. 1.) Higher skill imparts better efficiency. If I'm a skilled miner, I mine things faster and my tools take less wear. This does provide a small differentiation between players, but not much of one. As I play/mine more, I can gather more materials so my productivity per hour is higher than yours, which means I can sell that. For solo players, they'll get this eventually or simply have to spend more time doing something for the same reward. It's not my favorite solution, but it does help. 2.) Higher skill in a given area is necessary to extract higher level materials. In other words, I can't mine iron unless I'm a journeyman miner or kapok if I'm not an expert lumberjack. The advantage to this system is that you clearly need a higher level person to advance past certain thresholds. This becomes even more evident if there's branching in the system so that you need two people smithing for red and blue steel (they're mutually exclusive on a single smith). The downside to this system is that it can feel artificial and it screws the solo player in a lot of ways. In SSP, this could make the mod unplayable. Solo play in SMP would still be possible, but would require the occasional interaction with some players in order to thrive. This system would also allow some communities/guilds to race advance to maximum and use their power to prevent anyone else from succeeding. That being said, I can see that happening even without this system. 3.) You implement an actual job system akin to Final Fantasy or any other number of games. For the sake of discussion, let's say I put in my lumberjacking hat. Now I'm awesome at chopping trees and get the best stuff, but I can't mine to save my life and I can't even equip a sword. Each person in town has an actual assigned job and interaction and trading is mandatory. For solo players, you have a "jack of all trades" job that can do everything, but not as fast or as well. The downside is that this system is extremely artificial and, frankly, alien to Minecraft. Additionally, if there's no cost of some kind to changing jobs, then this system won't really work either. So there's three things off the top of my head for the sake of discussion. Or suggestion if this thread gets moved. I am interested in hearing what others have to say, particularly how we can achieve community without specialization from those who advocate it. I'd much rather have something that fits naturally into the game rather than forcing it, but I'm not seeing it right now.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm not sure how to encourage specialization without some sort of skill-based aspect to it, either through a skill system in game or minigames that require player skill. Right now on my server, I've been trading with another guy for a while, but the trades have always been awkward. I'm trying to trade for his old wrought iron anvil so I don't have to make one. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time finding anything to offer because he can do everything I can just as well. We both have equal access to minerals, crops, fruit trees, stone, etc. We can both mine and chop wood at the same rate, so I can't offer him time. The only thing I've been able to offer thus far has been charcoal because he doesn't like making it. The problem with a lack of support for specialization within the game is that there's no way to differentiate oneself - to make a name in some given trade. Recognition comes from having a skill, talent, or ability that few others have. While vastly improved from vanilla Minecraft, TFC is still largely homogeneous in terms of what its players can accomplish, which limits the ability to create a diverse community. In other words, there's no incentive to work together because everyone can do everything just as well themselves; the only difference is the amount of time we can spend playing the game. In a close knit group of friends, this can be overcome to an extent, but a server of people who don't know each other well or only casually at best, distrust means that isolation is often safer and more productive since you can do everything yourself. This has been stated before, so I'll try not to rehash it much. Dock's post above, while lengthy, does hit on the important points. If there's some way I can be better at wood cutting or charcoal making than my iron anvil owning neighbor, then I suddenly do have a skill I can market and trade against. I think that accomplishing this through an in game skill system or tree is the most flexible and natural, but there has been hesitance to this. Personally, I'm not a fan of the minigame based system, but it does solve this problem as well by putting the emphasis on player skill rather than character skill. But without something to artificially impart a skill aspect to this, I don't think the mod is going to evolve any sort of specialization or community aspect to it. There's simply too little payoff compared to the loss of independence and safety that playing solo can bring.

Aeroc's suggestion worked. Destroying the bloomery and recreating it worked and the server doesn't crash when I interact with it.

Thanks. I'll give this a shot tonight. I'll be out about a quarter bar of copper and 12-15 charcoal, but it's better than a dead server.

On the MP server we've been playing, I've got a bloomery that will consistently cause a server crash if I interact with it. I've used the bloomery previously without any issues, smelting several copper ingots for it. Last night, I loaded it up with charcoal and then started adding ore. When I right click on the bloomery, the interface comes up and I see what I put into it as well as the fact that there's a little in the output. Once I leave that screen, however, I can no longer interact with anything and the server timed out with a read error for everyone a few seconds later, requiring a server restart. I don't have access to the server logs to see if any errors are being printed, but I'll try to provide any other information I can if someone asks. I haven't tried destroying the bloomery yet because it's got stuff in it, but I will do so if there are no other suggestions.

You were naming your baby Dunklesaurus Bioxx Dock the Third.

Even creating new bloomeries from scratch is crashing the client. Could we try upgrading to build 69?

Nope, same world. Man, so glad to have this server back.

Hey Trystan, have you been able to connect recently? I logged a bit after I did that lumberjacking for you and haven't been able to connect since. :-(

After reviewing the discussion in this thread, I went ahead and donated directly using the Donate link on the download page. If people would like to support the mod and don't want to click on adf.ly, I recommend doing the same. I don't think the amount matters as much as the simple act. Can you put a price on the fun you've gotten out of TFC? Can you afford to donate a fraction of that? If so, it's just a click away!

Server appears to be down. :-(