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danagor

How SSP players should play?

79 posts in this topic

I do sorta like the devs for being brutal about breaking the game for releases because it's a work in progress, it's not necessarily playable. But at the same time it's hurting them. At this point in the mod balance is not a thing to consider as they are just trying to make systems work and introduce all the intended mechanics. If you add too much stuff to farming now it'll require a bit of a rework when you get to properly feeding animals, for example. So the emphasis is really on getting a lot of people to play so they can test all the features and report bugs. Cutting off a majority of people who play this mod at this point in time may be a bit unwise, especially since the features that prevent singleplayer use are not permanent.

I'm asking them to add an easymode crop that grows much faster than other crops. And possibly add other such features to other systems if they are so brutally cut off from specific crowds of players. It's the minimal amount of work needed to include SSP players and can be dealt with later when the game is in a place to think about balance. When everything they want is in they can completely drop SSP support as they won't need us to test things anymore.

It would be nice in the future if they made playing multiplayer simpler/easier, but I struggle to think about how they could achieve that. I do wish them luck in finding the most successful decision in the face of this new information, and I thank them for looking into what their decisions affect.

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I played ssp the other day, I built my house near chickens. I literally spend my days mowing down grass by hand, which is food intensive. I can't eat the eggs fast enough to deplete them, eventually I'll probably have to stop collecting them. I collect string as well in case ragnarok happens and all the chickens instantly die off and I need to fish. I've killed 3 pigs for leather, and have otherwise not touched wildlife. I'm not saying the length of time isn't excessive, just that solo play is still very playable if you use your noodle.

Also, a lot of plants grow in a single season or two in the real world, couldn't a few plants be "fast growers" like a post above said? Or even multiple harvest plants like tomatoes. I say tiers for everything, but it works for metals for a reason, having lower tier plants would satisfy the cry for faster crops without having to mess with length of year.

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True but that means a big chunk of gameplay is still not workable for SSP players, something bioxx worked a long time on.

and as I said before SMP player probably want longer years since there is always someone to help them with the crops (if they coop that is), if not they have a chance of missing their harvest.

I guess I have to start playing with my friends so that solves my problems with this, but the majority still play solo.

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I still haven't seen anyone list a single reason why a changed/configurable timescale or shorter-growth-time crops would negatively impact their gameplay. Whether it is implementable or in the spirit of the mod can only be answered by dunky/Bioxx, and (as I have mentioned before) they can decide to take it or leave it on such grounds.

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There is no reason beside that it will take some time off Bioxx making more SMP stuff or other things.

Maybe thats why he is asking us how we play, hopefully it will tell him he needs to do something about it so solo players can enjoy their solo playing =).

I looked at some comments on that voting, and it seems my friend was not the only one setting up a server just so he can enjoy all that this mod has to offer.

(Tip to solo players, donate 1$ and mark your donation as "better SSP!" ;)

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Are you saying Bioxx can be bought? If that's so, Bioxx, shut up....

What could it be?

... and take my money.

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Lol, one way of saying it.

I would see it more as the most devoted fans donate, many see that donate button and think "well this mod/game is so good many have probably donated a lot already".

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I wish i could donate something but in my country there's lots of restrictions with dollars, i already tryed to donate but no profit :( i guess i won't be able to support the development :( i was even going to help a servers comunity... :mellow:

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I wish i could donate something but in my country there's lots of restrictions with dollars, i already tryed to donate but no profit :( i guess i won't be able to support the development :( i was even going to help a servers comunity... :mellow:

pobrecito :(

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I think the biggest hurdle to large scale SMP (I consider large scale being you are actively in a town with a great many sugh as 10+ not multiple bands of 2-4) is the fact that smp has pretty much zero consequence, and that there is almost no way to figure out who has been stealing from the town vault unless you catch them red handed. At least that is why I avoid larger villages even when I go into a populated server.

I think implimenting security measures to give the same sense of 'my stuff will at least somewhat be here when I get back' that you have in ssp to smp then that would be stellar and likely raise the larger-scale SMP percentage.

Final thought, the idea of a config file with scaling vars for ssp would be a good idea for SMP. One thing bethesda modding community has taught me it is that more end user control the better: always.

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The problem I have with this mod is the focus on multiplayer at the detriment of the single player mode. There is not one thing that you could conceivably be planning to do in single player that would kill multiplayer. In fact, most of what I think is wrong with it would make for a BETTER multiplayer mode. But by giving the single player people the shaft, as it were, you're alienating a large part of your audience, and who I think the core audience would be, given how this mod was advertised.

When I think, "Survival as it should have been..." I'm not thinking, "Well, you COULD put in twenty hours of gameplay and have something happen, or you could make it easier by playing with others". That's not what I want to do, and that's not what I thought this experience would be about. I'm not looking to take other people's stuff and have a happy happy community environment that's lacking challenge: I want to explore, to have to survive, grow my own food, find my own clay, and have it be challenging, but not to the point of ridiculousness, and not be as easy as minecraft.

That you have to breed animals...that's a challenge. That you have to play for days, literally, before getting the stuff to do it and to do it...that's stupid. It's the same thing with trees, or even, I would say, finding clay or your starting ore. These should be parts of the game that are the basics, that you should be able to do just like any of the other basics, and in a similar amount of time. Most games have a LIFE of less time than it would take to grow some of these trees. There is a line here, people. It's like saying, "Here. Your challenge is to create a circle of lave from this big diagonal shape, but you can only see it from the sides, and you can only alter three blocks in a minute. Don't die!"

I want a huge challenge, and that's what was promised to me, but when confronted with broken aspects of single played that make things go from huge challenge to broken, what I see is, "Screw you single player guys. If you're having issues with something being too ridiculous, go to multiplayer and it will be easy." But that's not what I came here for, and that's not what, I thought, you wanted people to do. There's no real reason why the singleplayer should be broken with the multiplayer being the excuse: It's being used to mask issues that exist in the game, but they're still THERE if you're in multiplayer, just not as pronounced because of how easy it is.

I do not understand the rationale behind trying to say that you don't care about problems with your mod instead of fixing them, and if you're just not going to, I'd hope that you adjusted the minecraft forum page to say so, because there are a lot of single player people who are going to feel let down by the support for the mod as well as the flaws.

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Bashie that was a good post. I think you're right, agriculture taking as long as it does now is absolutely a broken mechanic. Even for SMP it's too long. We can go from nothing to our entire group having steel armor before a single crop grows. Some large SMP servers also reset every month or few, which is only time for a few harvests.

If anyone's ever played the Harvest Moon series, I wouldn't mind seeing something similar to that in TFC.

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Well i just know that TFC is on beta ATM and it's a really fun mod/game just give it some time, i'm sure Bioxx is going to find a very nice solution to all the SSP and SMP unbalance, right now we just need to wait his thoughts about the results of the poll, there's a lot of people playing SSP right now, about 53% so, we'll wait and see... i also wonder what Crysyn, Mead, Sinlust and the rest of Bioxx's team thinks about the poll and all the SSP SMP discussion so far, dunno just curious...

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Well i just know that TFC is on beta ATM and it's a really fun mod/game just give it some time, i'm sure Bioxx is going to find a very nice solution to all the SSP and SMP unbalance, right now we just need to wait his thoughts about the results of the poll, there's a lot of people playing SSP right now, about 53% so, we'll wait and see... i also wonder what Crysyn, Mead, Sinlust and the rest of Bioxx's team thinks about the poll and all the SSP SMP discussion so far, dunno just curious...

I know it's a beta, and that's why I didn't complain before. But when someone pretty much says, "Yeah, we know what's wrong...we just don't care," something is wrong, and it's rather frustrating for the creators to just miss so hard on something that should be so essential to the project.

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I know it's a beta, and that's why I didn't complain before. But when someone pretty much says, "Yeah, we know what's wrong...we just don't care," something is wrong, and it's rather frustrating for the creators to just miss so hard on something that should be so essential to the project.

Well HOPEFULLY Bioxx did that poll to really see how many do play SSP, I would guess its way more many then he thought.

So before bashing we should hear him out.

Hopefully he will tell us "Sorry did not realize so many played my awesum mod alone, I will make sure the mod will work well for you to".

As said before, all we single players really want, is easier croping/breeding.

Have a option between 80 hour year (or if SMP want longer) and 30-40 hour year for us singles ^^.

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if the year length was configurable in relation to minecraft days I think it would be a benefit for both SSP and SMP; and changing things like farms so that it's decay is based on date rather than x time after ripening it would allow SMP communities to make the year longer so that there was plenty of time to catch your crops.

Everyone wins, everywhere. :D

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Hello, I'm a new TFC player... I just installed this amazing mod yesterday and I'm quite disappointed with the insanely huge amount of time that crops take to grow in Singleplayer, like a lot of people in this thread. Maybe one solution could be to implement some real-time check when the game is resumed, and then match up the crop growing with that real time. It's a pity, because when I started playing yesterday I thought: I'll probably never come back to Vanilla MC, but.... I'm affraid this impossibility to reach the farmer stage will accelerate my turn back to vanilla or other mods... I hope some solution can be found.

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I think the biggest hurdle to large scale SMP (I consider large scale being you are actively in a town with a great many sugh as 10+ not multiple bands of 2-4) is the fact that smp has pretty much zero consequence, and that there is almost no way to figure out who has been stealing from the town vault unless you catch them red handed. At least that is why I avoid larger villages even when I go into a populated server.

I think implimenting security measures to give the same sense of 'my stuff will at least somewhat be here when I get back' that you have in ssp to smp then that would be stellar and likely raise the larger-scale SMP percentage.

Final thought, the idea of a config file with scaling vars for ssp would be a good idea for SMP. One thing bethesda modding community has taught me it is that more end user control the better: always.

This wouldn't really be that hard to deal with (as far as stealing goes). There's a vanilla server I still play on called Civcraft that uses a few interesting mods to solve the issue.

The first is a mod one of the players wrote, called Citadel, that allows blocks to be reinforced using either smoothstone, iron, or diamonds. A block so reinforced has to be broken 25, 250, or 1800 times to actually be broken (though the player who initially placed the reinforcements can un-reinforce it with a console command). It makes true vaults actually possible.

The second is actually part of the Precious Stones mod-- it converts Jukeboxes into a "proximity snitch" that takes a record of block breaks, chest openings, etc in its area of effect (which is about 10 blocks in every direction... I think). The owner of the snitch block is notified every time someone enters its AoE, and can right-click on the block to check the full record.

In conjunction, the two make security of even a small, private vault more than plausible. Find some hard-to-break blocks (obsidian is best), reinforce with high-grade tool material, build vault. Keep important things inside. Put a snitch block somewhere nearby, hidden, so that anyone trying to break in is recorded on the alarm.

Of course, there'd need to be a lot of work to incorporate either of those into Civcraft (larger variety of metals means Citadel would need to have values for each written in, while Precious Stones isn't compatible with TFC, so the snitch concept would need to be added to a block in this game). I'd love to see it done (I've been pushing to get Civcraft to convert to TFC), but am completely ignorant of programming.

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Depending on how this mod developes, they could port to Bukkit. Then you could just use security plugins. That would depend on how stable the builds are coming out, and I don't see it happening anytime soon.

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I like how everyones all like I don't care if I downloaded an smp focused mod to play solo and it isn't what I want it to be it should be changed because I say so and I donated so my opinion is more important.

Its an smp mod, simple as that, it doesn't matter that half the people that responded to the pole play the smp mod on ssp, its an smp mod.

Shortening the game year is a poor workaround to fixing this, according to one persons calculations of his play time equaling crops being 2 months, shortening the season scale to 60 hours instead of 80 means its still a month and a half. 40 hours is still a month.

Also, someone mentioned that it takes 80 hours to beat the average good game, hate to break it to you but it takes 80 hours to beat the average generic crap form fitted game with horrible story. Which by the way is an argument that has nothing at all to do with minecraft. Minecraft doesn't have an end untill you get bored and want to have nothing again and start a new world.

So far the focus of complaint is about crops takeing so long, but even if you plant you crops and go mine and persue the minerals and don't cheat, on the same 4 hours on a weekend scale meaning crops in 2 months of real time your still only going to be in tier 0 metals, maybe tier 1 or 2 if you got lucky with ore, your going to be in red steel sometime in 2014. Its a ludicrist argument, everything in tfc takes forever and the amount of stuff that takes forever is probably only going to increase.

I guess haveing tfc read system time could work, unless your system time gets messed up and borks your world. We will just have to wait and see what Bioxx comes up with.

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I like how everyones all like I don't care if I downloaded an smp focused mod to play solo and it isn't what I want it to be it should be changed because I say so and I donated so my opinion is more important.

Its an smp mod, simple as that, it doesn't matter that half the people that responded to the pole play the smp mod on ssp, its an smp mod.

Bioxx only said RECENTLY it will be SMP focused so you can edit our post and just scratch that.

  • That is very clearly when most of his fanbase is playing single player + many SMP players play in small groups just because croping and breeding takes so long time (both which are very new features).
  • When he asks us how we play and that it might impact the future dev.

Shortening the game year is a poor workaround to fixing this, according to one persons calculations of his play time equaling crops being 2 months, shortening the season scale to 60 hours instead of 80 means its still a month and a half. 40 hours is still a month.

I think it is a start by making it 40 hours, if Bioxx actully does that I don't think it will be much harder shortering it even more.

It is after all the duration of the years we, the majority are complaining about.

Also, someone mentioned that it takes 80 hours to beat the average good game, hate to break it to you but it takes 80 hours to beat the average generic crap form fitted game with horrible story. Which by the way is an argument that has nothing at all to do with minecraft. Minecraft doesn't have an end untill you get bored and want to have nothing again and start a new world.

It was me, and please give me some facts about "it takes 80 hours to beat the average generic crap form fitted game with horrible story". Because the average 80% out of 100% game (yes, we are talking about metascore) don't take much longer then 80 hours, or is not played longer then that and yes we are talking about single player (and yes we are talking about the majority not hard core fans of the franchise).

If you try to read what a person TRIES to say.

Which was when you get your first harvest and going towards your second you will probably be, as you said "bored and want to have nothing again and start a new world".

Which is why we the majority complain about the year duration (you see, it's like a cirle!)

So far the focus of complaint is about crops takeing so long, but even if you plant you crops and go mine and persue the minerals and don't cheat, on the same 4 hours on a weekend scale meaning crops in 2 months of real time your still only going to be in tier 0 metals, maybe tier 1 or 2 if you got lucky with ore, your going to be in red steel sometime in 2014. Its a ludicrist argument, everything in tfc takes forever and the amount of stuff that takes forever is probably only going to increase.

Do you even read the posts here?

We aint complaining about the Ore, its all good. Or its playable atleast.

We are complaining that we miss out on some big features, that one wants to start a new world (for whatever the reason) or because Bioxx has released 53 new updates before we hit harvest / second harvest.

Harvest = breeding so we miss that too.

I guess haveing tfc read system time could work, unless your system time gets messed up and borks your world. We will just have to wait and see what Bioxx comes up with.

Word.

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So far the focus of complaint is about crops takeing so long, but even if you plant you crops and go mine and persue the minerals and don't cheat, on the same 4 hours on a weekend scale meaning crops in 2 months of real time your still only going to be in tier 0 metals, maybe tier 1 or 2 if you got lucky with ore, your going to be in red steel sometime in 2014. Its a ludicrist argument, everything in tfc takes forever and the amount of stuff that takes forever is probably only going to increase.

It doesn't take forever to get through the metal tiers. In a single play session (2 - 3 hours) I can usually go from a new world to T0 pickaxe and propick. Next session I find that T0 vein right under the rocks and I get a full set of metal tools. 2 or three more play sessions I can usually find some copper and get through T1 and T2. After that, a few more play sessions and I can find iron and get through T3 and T4. Going beyond that is the hard part, because then you have to find the really rare stuff like nickel and gold (I've yet to actually find some in any world I've played). That's the way it should be, I think TFC got the ores and metal progression perfectly right. You can get through most stuff with an average amount of play time. The higher stuff (red/blue steel) is a real end-game thing and should take much longer.

The problem I have with agriculture and animal breeding, is that it doesn't follow the same progression as the metals do. In a single play session you could plant a lot of seeds, sure, and that's great. It should take some effort to find all the seeds and get the land plowed and everything planted. But it should only take one or two more play sessions to actually grow some stuff and make progress. The amount of time and effort required for agriculture / breeding should be balanced with the amount of time and effort for metal progression.

This is a game, not a simulation, and it's been said that realism is NOT the goal. Believable, but challenging and fun. Right now agriculture and breeding is believable (it takes months in real life to grow crops), but it's definitely not challenging or fun. I haven't even tried to grow anything after my first attempt, where nothing happened. Even on SMP, where "time passes faster", that just creates the problem of missing your harvest time if you can't be online then. Especially a problem for people who only play on the weekend.

The challenge in agriculture should be in getting larger harvests and better quality crops by ensuring the crops have exactly what they need.

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It doesn't take forever to get through the metal tiers. In a single play session (2 - 3 hours) I can usually go from a new world to T0 pickaxe and propick. Next session I find that T0 vein right under the rocks and I get a full set of metal tools. 2 or three more play sessions I can usually find some copper and get through T1 and T2. After that, a few more play sessions and I can find iron and get through T3 and T4. Going beyond that is the hard part, because then you have to find the really rare stuff like nickel and gold (I've yet to actually find some in any world I've played). That's the way it should be, I think TFC got the ores and metal progression perfectly right. You can get through most stuff with an average amount of play time. The higher stuff (red/blue steel) is a real end-game thing and should take much longer.

The problem I have with agriculture and animal breeding, is that it doesn't follow the same progression as the metals do. In a single play session you could plant a lot of seeds, sure, and that's great. It should take some effort to find all the seeds and get the land plowed and everything planted. But it should only take one or two more play sessions to actually grow some stuff and make progress. The amount of time and effort required for agriculture / breeding should be balanced with the amount of time and effort for metal progression.

This is a game, not a simulation, and it's been said that realism is NOT the goal. Believable, but challenging and fun. Right now agriculture and breeding is believable (it takes months in real life to grow crops), but it's definitely not challenging or fun. I haven't even tried to grow anything after my first attempt, where nothing happened. Even on SMP, where "time passes faster", that just creates the problem of missing your harvest time if you can't be online then. Especially a problem for people who only play on the weekend.

The challenge in agriculture should be in getting larger harvests and better quality crops by ensuring the crops have exactly what they need.

Clap... Clap just perfectly said ^^

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It doesn't take forever to get through the metal tiers. In a single play session (2 - 3 hours) I can usually go from a new world to T0 pickaxe and propick. Next session I find that T0 vein right under the rocks and I get a full set of metal tools. 2 or three more play sessions I can usually find some copper and get through T1 and T2. After that, a few more play sessions and I can find iron and get through T3 and T4. Going beyond that is the hard part, because then you have to find the really rare stuff like nickel and gold (I've yet to actually find some in any world I've played). That's the way it should be, I think TFC got the ores and metal progression perfectly right. You can get through most stuff with an average amount of play time. The higher stuff (red/blue steel) is a real end-game thing and should take much longer.

The problem I have with agriculture and animal breeding, is that it doesn't follow the same progression as the metals do. In a single play session you could plant a lot of seeds, sure, and that's great. It should take some effort to find all the seeds and get the land plowed and everything planted. But it should only take one or two more play sessions to actually grow some stuff and make progress. The amount of time and effort required for agriculture / breeding should be balanced with the amount of time and effort for metal progression.

This is a game, not a simulation, and it's been said that realism is NOT the goal. Believable, but challenging and fun. Right now agriculture and breeding is believable (it takes months in real life to grow crops), but it's definitely not challenging or fun. I haven't even tried to grow anything after my first attempt, where nothing happened. Even on SMP, where "time passes faster", that just creates the problem of missing your harvest time if you can't be online then. Especially a problem for people who only play on the weekend.

The challenge in agriculture should be in getting larger harvests and better quality crops by ensuring the crops have exactly what they need.

Yeah, I'll agree with this. Metals isn't a huge problem, although I do think it could use some tweaking. But it's very important that all parts of the game mesh together well. An excellent point.

I like how everyones all like I don't care if I downloaded an smp focused mod to play solo and it isn't what I want it to be it should be changed because I say so and I donated so my opinion is more important.

Its an smp mod, simple as that, it doesn't matter that half the people that responded to the pole play the smp mod on ssp, its an smp mod.

Shortening the game year is a poor workaround to fixing this, according to one persons calculations of his play time equaling crops being 2 months, shortening the season scale to 60 hours instead of 80 means its still a month and a half. 40 hours is still a month.

Also, someone mentioned that it takes 80 hours to beat the average good game, hate to break it to you but it takes 80 hours to beat the average generic crap form fitted game with horrible story. Which by the way is an argument that has nothing at all to do with minecraft. Minecraft doesn't have an end untill you get bored and want to have nothing again and start a new world.

So far the focus of complaint is about crops takeing so long, but even if you plant you crops and go mine and persue the minerals and don't cheat, on the same 4 hours on a weekend scale meaning crops in 2 months of real time your still only going to be in tier 0 metals, maybe tier 1 or 2 if you got lucky with ore, your going to be in red steel sometime in 2014. Its a ludicrist argument, everything in tfc takes forever and the amount of stuff that takes forever is probably only going to increase.

I guess haveing tfc read system time could work, unless your system time gets messed up and borks your world. We will just have to wait and see what Bioxx comes up with.

What world do you live in? What game have you played that lasts that long ever? I mean, they're not UNHEARD of. I guess a really detailed RPG might get you to 80, or a game with bitching multiplayer...but the average game? Sorry, but it's not even close. 20-30, and I'm being very generous.

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