Shiphty

I withdraw.

Before I read this suggestion I thought I wasn't going to like it.  But I do.  I think the difference between what I thought it would be and what you wrote is the fact that the player can do something about the challenge or difficulty, there's a solution.

However, I think this feature won't work so well unless there's a way of securing land and making sure that enemies won't spawn within your wall.

There's a huge difference between tunneling in a map that was designed explicitly for tunneling, and tunneling in a map that was designed in such a way that they don't want players tunneling.

 

Here is a metaphor for essentially what I believe you are asking for:

 

You wish for the developers to spend months if not a year designing, coding, developing, testing, and balancing a tower. This tower has custom combat, and areas that already include spots where you might be able to parkour and get an advantage from high above, or something to briefly hide behind. The tower takes into consideration that players who rush in will likely die, and instead includes rooms where the player can recuperate in relative safety. The tower includes completely new custom mobs with new abilities, as well as new abilities and gear for the player to use. These abilities and gear would be designed in such a way that if used correctly the player should in theory easily be able to defeat the enemies, without making it a cakewalk. Perhaps the tower also contains puzzles or a small maze or other obstacles that would take strategy, and not just straight rushing to defeat. At the very tippy top of the tower is a thing that officially defeats the island, as well as some sort of awesome next tier loot that will greatly help you defeat future towers.

 

I want to make sure you are really imagining this awesome, epic tower that the developers spent a very long time working on and finally releasing to let players enjoy. Alright? You've got the most epic tower you could ever imagine pictured in your mind?

 

You are asking for us to then make it so a player can come up with a few stacks of plank blocks, and use them to pillar straight up to the top of the tower and collect the reward. The player never even entered the tower, or experienced any of the new gameplay the devs had worked so hard on. But they still get the awesome reward.

 

Does that really sound fair to you?

If you go back and re-read my response and re-read what you wrote, you will see that what was being discussed at this juncture is general play-styles.  What I took exception to was the suggestion that the way I play minecraft, in general, is somehow cheating, that it ought to be scoffed at, that it is some lesser form of playing the game.  If I can take the time and mental energy to remember that your way of playing minecraft is worthy of respect simply because it is your choice, you can do the same for me.  It is, as you say, a game after all.

In my family we've always improved and changed the rules of games.  We invented job classes and combat rules for monopoly and three dice charts for Jenga.  For someone to tell me that unless I approach a game the way they do I'm doing it wrong is offensive to me and I'm almost inclined to do things differently out of spite, even if I'd otherwise done things the same.

Tell me, will the creative option be gotten rid of as well?  What about those people who will fly to the top of the tower?  You think Bioxx will lose sleep over them?

One of the great things about gamers in general is that they find loopholes.  It can be hugely frustrating but it's actually a wonderful boon.  Their consistent ability to find ways around things that you didn't think of forces you to grow.  I'm not a coder, in case there was any doubt, but I have done some DMing for various RPGs and they've constantly kept me on my toes.  I think using a heavy-handed invisible wall is an easy way out.  And it's a shame.  It punishes everyone because some folks might abuse the system.

We saw this with the cave in mechanics.  Simply because some folks were throwing caution to the wind and not using tunnel supports cave ins became immensely harder to avoid.  I think it made the game less enjoyable, not because I didn't want to employ safety measures but, for one thing, afterward I could never come close to tunneling into a cave system without half the thing collapsing before I got there."There's a huge difference between tunneling in a map that was designed explicitly for tunneling, and tunneling in a map that was designed in such a way that they don't want players tunneling."

Thing is, I understood this forum to be a place where Bioxx gets feedback from folks who play TFCraft and who will want to play TFCraft 2, a place where he bounces ideas off of us and gets our opinions.  He obviously isn't bound to following our opinions, as I said a couple comments ago, it's his baby and anyone with half a brain will respect that.  However, since TFCraft certainly is a "map designed for tunneling" and one would assume that TFCraft 2 would be at least loosely based upon its namesake, I'd no previous reason to believe that the sequel will be a game which is not designed for tunneling as a default.  If Bioxx wants to go that way, it's his prerogative but I don't think any of us knew that before this conversation.  And so, as a first response to the idea "Hey guys, what do you think about making TFCraft 2 a mod where you can't tunnel at certain junctures" my response is that I don't care for the idea at all.I think if TFCraft 2 is made without the option to place and destroy blocks before you take towers, at least in the config files or game menu, you'll be narrowing the scope of players.  Though I do reserve the right to be wrong, I've said before that I want to like TFCraft 2 and I'm going to try it before I officially knock it.

I don't think written anything unintelligent or disrespectful in this entire discussion.  My major exception, as I wrote above, is that I find it demeaning for folks to talk down on the way that I play.

There's a huge difference between saying "I want to design a minecraft map/mod wherein players will not be able to break the blocks until they've done x." and "Players who build or destroy terrain during combat are cheating."  I've played maps where you weren't supposed to break the blocks and I didn't enjoy them very much (except one mystery map which had a pretty incredible plot so I actually played the whole thing through) so it's possible, maybe even likely, that folks like me won't be terribly interested in TFCraft 2 if that's the direction it goes in.One of the most lovely things about minecraft is that you can alter the terrain, it is one of minecraft's defining features.  How many other games have you played where you couldn't move or destroy or place something which, in real life, you ought to have been able to move or destroy or place?  When I first played minecraft one of my inward responses was "FINALLY!"

I'd also like to say that I think there could be other ways to solve this issue.  I remember playing an awesome map for vanilla minecraft a long time ago, it involved looting a pyramid.  The player started a good distance from a huge Egyptian tomb with a little treasure chest and a patch of grass or some such.  You had to survive and build up enough strength and resources to loot the tomb.  All of the blocks in the tomb that you weren't supposed to break were made of bedrock.  I loved that map.  I died quite a bit and always restarted because I wanted to leave the tomb with all the treasure and many of my deaths involved my stuff melting in lava.

Anyway, couldn't these towers simply be made of an unbreakable block?  Or a temporarily unbreakable one?  That second option might be a tall order, I don't know.  Or what about making the blocks from which the towers are constructed out of a material which can only be broken by the metal tier which you will be gaining once you have taken the island?  I think that's a really good suggestion, I hope it's considered.

 It's one thing to try and stop folks from pillaring to the top and it's another thing to stop folks from placing a block here or there on their way up the tower to gain a tactical advantage or block off the area you've made safe from the area that you haven't.

I have been participating in this and other discussions on this forum because I want to help, albeit a little, to make TFCraft better.  Everything I've written thus far has either been with the aim of productive brainstorming or a defensive, yet civil, response to what I see as disrespectful comments or suggestions.

In my opinion, if you have to resort to using blocks and altering the terrain in order to progress then you are playing something that is above your skill level, or the area and expected combat is poorly designed. I watch a lot of CTM let's plays and I can say that there is a huge distinction in the level of entertainment of watching someone actually fight their way through and conquer something, versus someone who does nothing bug dig through the walls, or pillar up out of reach.

 

For an example, I'm currently watching Ragecraft 2 being played by both the GOB team, and by Zisteau. GOB is constantly tunneling through the edges of the map, just avoiding combat in hopes to get the wool. To me, completely avoiding the combat and terrain that a map maker has painstakingly designed and balanced with difficult areas, custom mobs, custom gear, etc is really disrespectful. If an area has a big tower with custom mobs all the way and specially designed staircases and such with the wool at the top, and the player just pillars straight up outside the tower to the top, grabs the wool and then leaves without every actually encountering any of the combat in the tower, to me that is essentially cheating. Why bother even playing the map if you aren't going to at least try to experience it in the way that the map maker had imagined? I've played CTMs myself as well, and I will admit that I've done the tunneling and I've done the towering and at the end of the day, there's really no sense of accomplishment, because you didn't actually defeat anything.

 

Watching Zisteau on the other hand, the map is played like it was intended to be played. He's running through and torching things up and breaking spawners to completely neutralize the area. He explores everything, and very rarely ends up having to use blocks to get some sort of an advantage. The blocks he does place are done very strategically, and he really only does it because at that point in the map, it might as well be impossible to defeat that area otherwise, because grinding through and killing hundreds of mobs that just keep funneling through an area that you need to progress through does not make for good video. When he does get the wool, it's like this huge sense of accomplishment because he has actually truly conquered the area and defeated all the obstacles that he was meant to defeat. He earned that wool.

I've never played Ragecraft 2 or watched anyone play it so I can't speak with authority on that particular map/mod/thing, but have you ever played Vech's Super Hostile CTM maps?  I suspect they're made with tunneling in mind.  As a matter of fact, off the top of my head, I can think of a huge area in the sea of flame that you cannot get to without altering the terrain.

It's under the lava out in the sea, you have to discover it and then create a way through the lava in order to get to it.

 His maps are made to be played over the long haul.  That is, you don't just bee-line your way through, you conquer them and make them into a home.  In my opinion the man is a genius.

And there's a huge difference between enjoying watching someone play a game and enjoying it yourself.  I don't think I'd be terribly interested in watching myself play minecraft.  I take a LONG time to do anything.  I work on major builds.  It wouldn't be fun for someone to watch me play.  But I have a tremendous time playing the way I do.

Again, I'm going to push for respecting the way other people derive enjoyment from the game.  Talking about the way I play as though it's cheating or deserves to be looked down upon for whatever reason is a darn good way to alienate me.  I think it's disrespectful and rude.  You think I play minecraft wrong.  There goes the conversation.

Edit:

I want to add that it is a challenge for me not to look down on people who, in my view, foolishly rush right in instead of taking their time and "doing things right."  I see it as a waste.  Instead of taking their time to gain every advantage they can reasonably acquire, they run in, get killed over and over, and use up what little resources they have.  For me to watch someone play that way... well, it's similar to watching someone use their pick to dig dirt.  But if I looked down on folks for playing that way it would be wrong.  That is how they get their fun.  I've no right to demean them in the least.  It's a kind of enjoyment I cannot relate with but that doesn't make it wrong.

I also have to ask, if altering terrain to gain an advantage is distasteful to you, then do you not burrow in and wait for day ever?  There are some folks who see that as wimpy or cheaty, they want combat... that's what the game is about to them and any attempt to avoid combat is cheating.  Do you see?  We all play differently.

I'm definitely not sold on the idea.  It took me three and a half years of wandering before I settled down.  That trek would've been made much harder if the mobs got harder as I traveled further from spawn.  I don't like this idea at all.

 (This will probably have to be toggleable)

When you say that this will probably be toggleable, do you mean that the no-build/no-break mechanic?

That is probably the single most cheaty way of handling combat in minecraft without actual cheats and is something which no mod has ever been able to solve. Don't take this as an attack, but if you're saying that is your preferred method of combat, then you're saying that you don't want to actually fight anything at all. 

"Don't take this as an attack but your favorite way to play that game you like so much is wrong and you're cheating."

I obviously disagree.  I still die to mob attacks.  I still fight mobs.  A lot actually.  Even in vanilla minecraft if you want to build up a defensive position it takes time, and during that time you're going to be attacked.  In TFCraft it takes years, literally years in game, to build up a base to the point where the enemy cannot get in.  I think it's pretty unfair to call a style of play which incorporates a more creative way to facing your opponents "cheaty."

Placing and destroying blocks to create a tactical advantage is far from peaceful mode.  It'd make just as much sense to say that wearing armor and creating a better weapon in order to gain a tactical advantage is cheating.  A person who enjoys melee combat might call someone who fights with a bow a cheater as well.

I guess I refer to them a lot but the Super Hostile Vechs maps are really hard.  If you tackle them by altering the terrain... they're still nearly impossible to beat.  You still end up fighting countless mobs.  One thing that really makes them fun, aside from the fact that Vechs is a genius when it comes to creatively torturing the player, is that there are no holds barred concerning play style.  That's a huge difference between those maps and the maps where one of the rules is that you cannot place or destroy any blocks.

I was careful to avoid using descriptive terms like 'lame' in speaking about play styles I don't enjoy while typing this up.  I've mentioned this before but I think we all tend to view our preferred play style as the "right" way of playing and other play styles we enjoy less (or not at all) as "wrong" in some way.  I have an eleven year old sister who plays minecraft in creative mode and just stacks blocks on top of one another in a haphazard fashion.  She spawns in tons of neutral mobs, all the while talking about how she made them a home.  I could NEVER enjoy that kind of play style... but she loves it.  She's having a good time.  Who am I to say she shouldn't play that way?

Gamers are largely nerds.  Nerds are passionate about their interests.  Passionate people tend to be elitists about the object of their passion.  Minecrafters are usually elitists and TFCrafters more so.  Maybe it's inescapable that most folks are going to look at someone else's preferred way to play the game and decide they're doing it wrong.  I dunno.

And, at the end of the day you, Bioxx, are calling the shots.  It's your baby.  You're the one who had the idea and labored over it.  I don't think that it's unfair to say that anyone who doesn't recognize and respect that shouldn't be on this forum.

Having said that, I hope you will consider acknowledging folks with play styles such as mine as legitimate players and make room for us in TFCraft 2.

I did say that I was holding out judgment until I actually try to play TFCraft 2, I really want to like it.  But if that mechanic is mandatory, I don't have high hopes.

Thanks!  I'm still laboring away... up to February 4th in the year 1010.  I've got the base of the wall surrounding my land and I'm focusing on filling in all the dangerous pits and replacing any exposed stone or gravel with grass for the whole lawn.  It's slow going.

The right to bear arms was written into the Constitution, not for the purposes of hunting or defending one's home, family, and life against individual criminals, but as a check against tyranny.  That was the intention.  The founding fathers believed that a people cannot remain free if they pose no real threat to their own government.  The pro gun control folks who want to have any kind of reasonable discussion need to address this position, not the straw man positions of hunting and individual protection from low level thugs.  You will never win an argument against someone if you do not address his actual position.

I'm not saying you'll win the argument and persuade the folks who are against gun control anyway... but... ya know... bad form and all that.

I personally agree with the founding fathers.

Yeah, I try to refine them as soon as I harvest but sometimes it has to wait till I get back to the house... which only takes about thirty seconds.

I've been really slow to use the food and preservation mechanics of the game because I'm so geared toward mining and building.  I cook because it makes sense to cook, but it even took me a long time to start cooking after I settled in one spot.  I finally earned master chef... which is a huge leap forward from the previous level.  One of these days I'll have to sit down and figure out how to make the best sandwich for my character.

I think I want to retract much of what I wrote about preservation.  I'm finding that pickling the food makes it last more than long enough for me.  My only trouble is that you cannot pickle grains.  It'd be nice if there was something you could do to grains... dry them out maybe.

After thinking about it for a little while I've come up with an idea which might be a sort of "meet in the middle" solution.  Rather than not allowing the player to place/destroy blocks on an unconquered island, what about simply prohibiting farming on unconquered islands?  This would keep other styles of play besides straightforward combat viable and also prevent players from really living on an island till they've dealt with the malicious occupants.

"Before an island is pacified, building/living there should be impossible."  

If you've understood this accurately I may not be playing TFC2 very long.  My play style involves altering the terrain and building in order to gain an advantage over the mobs.  When I played the Super Hostile Vechs maps, for instance, I often burrowed along-side tunnels filled with hostiles and broke intermittent holes to lay down torches, thus making the hallway safe.  Again, I'm keen to try TFC2 in whatever form before I knock it but if it involves straight up fighting alone and no alternatives, I'm probably going to move on to something else.  It's one thing to gear a mod to incorporate various play styles but if you exclude a play style, particularly one which (I think) is pretty popular, you have to expect that you'll narrow your audience.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, just a true thing.  I will be a bit sad though, I've been a real fan of TFC thus far.

Bioxx said "you'll need to have conquered the current island in order to attain the materials to progress to the next tier of islands."

Does that mean that once you have "conquered" an isldn it will stay "conquered"?  as is no more hostile mobs spawning?

I doubt it.

Actually Kitty, first her referenced the better gear... and then he said that you ALSO level up.  He didn't mean better gear but the actual levels.

We are using Towny in our server, it works fine, but I think maybe too good. Once you claim a chunck no mobs will spawn on it and if some wander inside they will despawn quickly. I think it takes all of the danger away, so in the next map reset we are talking about changing the settings, so even though no mobs will spawn inside your town, theywill be able to come into it, so you will have to build fences and walls. It will make the game more realistic, and give a reason for people to build walls around towns.

Yeah, the mobs despawning wouldn't be for me.  If you don't build some kind of defense the baddies should be able to get to you.

Another problem is the question of whether the town protection goes all the way down to bedrock.  It's one thing to have protection where you've actually built up and civilized a place but if you didn't go down and clean out those caves... they should still be crawling with nastiness.

Another plugin I saw which kinda sorta addressed this issue had protection stones which you could buy and place, the protection, depending on the level of stone you bought, went out a certain radius in all directions from where you placed the stone.  I don't remember the name of the plugin though.

"Leveling up" means having more hit points.  You don't hit harder or faster or have better armor from gaining levels.  I'm not complaining and I'm not necessarily against this (I enjoyed Vechs' CTM Super Hostile maps) but I will say that it seems to me that some folks are way more into combat in TFC and regular minecraft than I am.  I see combat as a spice added to a food I like whereas I think some folks see it as either a large side dish (mashed potatoes to the game's steak) or even the main coarse.

My version of combat usually involves outsmarting the bad guys.  I enjoy a challenge so, as I said, I'm not necessarily against the greater difficulty, but if I'm constantly going toe-to-toe with zombies and/or being jumped by them while at home, I've either failed or I'm playing the wrong game.

Another approach might be to employ whatever mechanic is used by different servers to make certain areas free from mob spawning.

Perhaps some kind of multi-block structure... totems or something like that... which marks off an area in which mobs cannot spawn.

This scares me but I won't knock it till I try it.

I'm pretty sure there ISNT a tag if dirt was placed by the player. I'm almost certain it is that if the block is a grass block when hoed, it gets the nutrients, if it is a dirt block when hoed, it gets none.

The last time I tried to place dirt it began with zero nutrients.  It takes player placed dirt a long time to gather nutrients and be useful for gardening.

It might be useful if you are working with a community.

I really doubt we'll see plastic in TFCraft.

I almost skipped salads entirely.  I made a set of bowls, discovered they are paper plates and moved on to sandwiches.

Perhaps food could be rethought into travel rations and home meals.  Most people don't (and didn't) carry food around with them in a pot, they went to a central location and prepared food or ate the food which was prepared for them in that location.  Travel ready food is bound to be less nutritious and sustaining.

I keep going to start working on upgrading the way I preserve food and take care of my animals and cook but whenever I start I lose interest and find another project to work on.  I'm currently building a wall around the perimeter of my land and cleaning up the coal field.

The wall will extend into the bay and there will be a sea gate.

At first I was swimming down to place each block but then I had an idea; why not just let the cobble block carry itself to the seabed?  This worked, they stack by themselves nicely under water and I get to stay dry.  Not so with the corners where I'm using smoothed stone.

I quarified the coal field.  I like working on projects which serve multiple purposes.  Here I can gather coal and cobblestone at the same time.  Of course I had to take the time to build a solid roof because I'm not interested in marring my yard with a pit.  I started on this project when I ran out of cobblestone for the wall.  Yes, I ran out.  I suspect I'll eventually run out of gravel and dirt when I finish making my lawn pretty.

I think what I lack is someone to take care of the domestic stuff, I'm no cook and while I can catch animals, I'm not much use with breeding and taming them.  Ah well, one does what one must. If anyone is sitting there thinking about a mod or addon or whatever to write for TFCraft my vote would be another tech tier in food preservation where you could rest assured that your food would keep after you labored to preserve it.  :shrug: Just sayin'.

Perhaps a weapon with lead in it, a lead weapon alone wouldn't be worth using, lead is too malleable.

And if it caused mining fatigue I'd never use it.

There's nothing forcing you to cut decay. The world isn't going to end if your food gets more than 1% of decay on it. That 11 years for pickled cheese in vinegar is without trimming any of the decay off of it. If you want to trim the decay, it will last even longer.

:shrug:  We're just expressing our opinions.  Some of us enjoy the challenge of having to preserve food but would like to reach a point when we "beat" that challenge.  Saying that the cheese lasted 11 years is a little misleading because that's how long it took to completely disintegrate.As far as grains and pickled things go, if preserved properly grains should last indefinitely and pickled goods nearly so.  There've been grains found after hundreds of years which were still good.  I myself have eaten dried grain which wasn't even cared for particularly well (it was a part of a thanksgiving wreath) and if I keep a jar of pickles in my basement for a year I don't worry whether I'll have to cut away the "bad" spots.

And when folks used to preserve food it was with the intention that the whole portion they put away would be good when they needed it.  People would smoke, salt, dry, pickle, sugar, things and put them up for the winter, and those things would generally be completely good when they went and took them for use.

I agree, cutting decay gets tedious.  There ought to be a point which you are freed from that tedium.