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Shiphty

Challenge vs. Annoyance

55 posts in this topic

In some of the posts and comments on this forum I've read it hinted or overtly stated repeatedly that TFCraft needs to be more challenging.  This seems to me, a legitimate suggestion, in and of itself.

 

However, the proposed ways that that suggestion could or should be accomplished are very often, in my view, more of a list of ways to simply drag out the game or make playing it more annoying.

 

I don't have a quick fix or brilliant plan on how to achieve the challenge level so many of us desire.  I'm merely calling attention to the fact that difficulty alone will not necessarily do the trick.

 

While there should be challenge, there should also be accomplishment and victory over challenges.

 

When we first start off we've got no equipment, no food, no shelter, no water, no fire... there's a lot of challenge to be had.  But we can gather resources and eventually, with determination, skill, and luck, fix those problems.  After we make a shelter, we have one... and we're safe in it.

What I'm getting at is that dragging out old challenges or making them impossible to overcome will only make the game more tedious.

 

Some folks seem to desire it to be impossible for you to make your home safe from hostile mobs, or establish some kind of farm where you are thriving and don't have to constantly worry about where you will acquire food.  Others seem to think that it ought to take even longer to break through stone, even with a steel pick.  Rather than dragging out these old (but essential) challenges, why not add new challenges?  Some of this has been done... we didn't have thirst with vanilla minecraft... now we do.  Others seem to be in the works, there is temperature change but we don't feel the effect on our Steve's body yet.

 

I'm not sure what direction Bioxx and Dunk want to take TFCraft concerning tech trees but I don't think that simple wind power and water power would be out of line.  We have a quern... why not a mill?  Yes, I know that BTW did it first... who cares?  You know who did it before BTW?  Folks for hundreds of years in real life.  Dungeons and Dragons had zombies... minecraft has zombies.  Some ideas are just good.  Why not take another page from Dwarf Fortress and employ lava power?  Or use primitive mechanical power to pump water (actually I hear that is also in the works)?What about more mobs of different kinds?  Not necessarily ones that will attack you but maybe ones that will try to steal your stuff (goblin thieves) or deeper rock layers with more precious minerals below... and terrible creatures?

 

Anyhow, new challenges... that's what I suggest, rather than making old ones more annoying and insurmountable.

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The main problem with challenge over tedium is this: What is tedious to one person is a fun challenge to another.

 

For example, I am in favor of creating an inventory that is limited by volume and mass instead of stack size and slots. I want the player inventory to be limited to carrying more realistic amounts and weights of items (i.e. no castle in your pocket), with carts/wagons/pack animals to pick up the slack.

 

I would find this a fun and interesting challenge that requires more decision making and prioritization, and would also add in a need for resource investment in wagons, carts, animals, and the infrastructure to properly use, build, and repair them. It would also make multiplayer cooperation more important when working on larger projects.

 

The thing is, to many other people, this would be pointless tedium. Needing to make multiple trips to get the resources for a house, or to move some items from one base to another, or to get the ores out of a mine, is more work than is currently needed.

 

My point is that, depending on playstyle and viewpoint, one person's fun, legitimate challenge, is another's pointless random artificial difficulty crap the devs added because they're lazy (according to their viewpoint).

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Of course you first need to think about something funny and entertaining to add, then, and only then, think about how to make it difficult to get it.

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of everything said, that is the smartest thing you've ever said sting. Ideas that change the world are seen from many viewpoints. Some cases its 'too hard, and tedious', other times its 'too easy', some times its fun, sometimes its not. Sometimes its 5 minutes to make, other times not even the devs would touch it with a 10 ft pole. its all perspective.

 

that does not mean I disagree with OP. in fact, I agree entirely. many things in tfc constantly border on and even are beyond tedious and pointless to the overall gameplay. Barrels for example(first implementation) really didn't do anything for the game except drag it out. granted they now are a bit more useful, but first implementation is a perfect example.

 

on to what I can confirm for the future:

 

the developers have confirmed

 

Forms of power

- mechanical power

-- wind power

- steam power(its a bit iffy, but its been spoken of many times)

 

Large quantities of mob changes

- will include new mobs

- may include unique mob actions

 

Skills

- clarification: Certain actions raise stats to mimic the body adapting.

 

sources: IRC, Forums, Various VoIP programs

 

mind you, these are only confirmed by word of mouth and things do change. what is 'yes' today, could be 'no' tomorrow.

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The main problem with challenge over tedium is this: What is tedious to one person is a fun challenge to another.

 

For example, I am in favor of creating an inventory that is limited by volume and mass instead of stack size and slots. I want the player inventory to be limited to carrying more realistic amounts and weights of items (i.e. no castle in your pocket), with carts/wagons/pack animals to pick up the slack.

 

I would find this a fun and interesting challenge that requires more decision making and prioritization, and would also add in a need for resource investment in wagons, carts, animals, and the infrastructure to properly use, build, and repair them. It would also make multiplayer cooperation more important when working on larger projects.

 

The thing is, to many other people, this would be pointless tedium. Needing to make multiple trips to get the resources for a house, or to move some items from one base to another, or to get the ores out of a mine, is more work than is currently needed.

 

My point is that, depending on playstyle and viewpoint, one person's fun, legitimate challenge, is another's pointless random artificial difficulty crap the devs added because they're lazy (according to their viewpoint).

You see, if we adding carts and wagons, it's all good to have more limited inventory. Just limiting inventory is not good and tedious.

Limiting inventory to realistic amounts is quadrouple of that. Carrying a single building block at a time in a building game just cause it's realistic is not good, not fun and tedious, even with wagons, that can pull ten times that. Because ten building blocks is not enough to build a single wall for a house, we all know that. Unless the "house" is an outhouse one by one by two inside, which is ten blocks exactly.

Sure, guarding your wagon on the way can be fun. If fighting is fun, when it really is not in Minecraft, even more so with limitless zombie spawns of 1.6.2. Yes, I'm aware of the mod that did just that forcing player to fight every single second of their playtime with hundreds of zombies that can break blocks and build towers with their mates' bodies

Like the opening post says - there should be balance.

How many 2-kilometers trips you have to do one after another for it to not become stale activity? All of them? And two kilometers is too easy, let's make it ten?

Do you really have to carry a single block out of the mine and dump it on the surface to mine the next block? And then the next and the next, all those three and a half hundreds of blocks it took you to find the next copper deposit? Or can we just have, like, eight trips and not completely ruin the landscape?

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I think the thing people complain is monotony. Eg. doing same thing over and over again. People get easily bored. The reason why big modpacks are so popular is that there is always something interesting to do. And even when you get bored with one thing, there are dozen other that you can do.

 

The reason why TFC is percieved as "boring" or "grindy" is because actions required to progress are monotonous. Dev's must do something to break this monotony, in this case the look for metals and minerals is the biggest problem. There are IMO 2 ways to break the monotony:

  • Make the actions themselves much more interactive. There must be change in how the actions go from time to time. Like for example, that different types of stone require different ways of mining. Not sure how that would work, but it is first thing that came to my mind. Or make prospecting different based on stone. In one stone, you can prospect a more vertically, while others have more horizontal coverage. This would require you to change the way you mine and actually make you think a little while you do so.
  • Second way is to add something you can do in parallel. So when you get bored with mining and prospecting, you can progress somewhere else. This is why people beg for things like mechanical power, alchemy/chemistry, better agriculture and food/cooking system, etc.. So they can take break from monotonous mining. And it would be even better if those other things had same importance as metals. Like you need to do some alchemy to get materials to produce some high-level metal. Or that you need some mechanical power to process the metals. Right now, the metals is THE progression. But it would be best if there were different parallel progression trees, that would then depend on each other. This would allow people to jump between them and that would reduce the feeling of grind.

But both of those would require frequent content updates. And when new content is added, people soon find optimal way how to do things and then the feeling of boredom sets in again. For Bioxx and Dunk, this is same as fighting against windmills.

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Second way is to add something you can do in parallel. So when you get bored with mining and prospecting, you can progress somewhere else. This is why people beg for things like mechanical power, alchemy/chemistry, better agriculture and food/cooking system, etc.. So they can take break from monotonous mining. And it would be even better if those other things had same importance as metals. Like you need to do some alchemy to get materials to produce some high-level metal. Or that you need some mechanical power to process the metals. Right now, the metals is THE progression. But it would be best if there were different parallel progression trees, that would then depend on each other.

 

This, I like.

 

However, I don't completely agree with the point on monotony.  In vanilla minecraft and any other mod I've played, I have always made big projects.  Lot's of digging, mining... monotonous occupations to be sure.

That hasn't bothered me.

 

My point was, and is, that folks are craving challenge and it seems like a lot of the ideas which they come up with are to make things we currently do more difficult, rather than adding challenges that are actually new.  I may as well play vanilla and force myself to only use a wooden pick... that'd be more difficult too.  But it wouldn't be more fun.

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I think the thing people complain is monotony. Eg. doing same thing over and over again. People get easily bored. The reason why big modpacks are so popular is that there is always something interesting to do. And even when you get bored with one thing, there are dozen other that you can do.

 

The reason why TFC is percieved as "boring" or "grindy" is because actions required to progress are monotonous. Dev's must do something to break this monotony, in this case the look for metals and minerals is the biggest problem. There are IMO 2 ways to break the monotony:

  • Make the actions themselves much more interactive. There must be change in how the actions go from time to time. Like for example, that different types of stone require different ways of mining. Not sure how that would work, but it is first thing that came to my mind. Or make prospecting different based on stone. In one stone, you can prospect a more vertically, while others have more horizontal coverage. This would require you to change the way you mine and actually make you think a little while you do so.
  • Second way is to add something you can do in parallel. So when you get bored with mining and prospecting, you can progress somewhere else. This is why people beg for things like mechanical power, alchemy/chemistry, better agriculture and food/cooking system, etc.. So they can take break from monotonous mining. And it would be even better if those other things had same importance as metals. Like you need to do some alchemy to get materials to produce some high-level metal. Or that you need some mechanical power to process the metals. Right now, the metals is THE progression. But it would be best if there were different parallel progression trees, that would then depend on each other. This would allow people to jump between them and that would reduce the feeling of grind.

But both of those would require frequent content updates. And when new content is added, people soon find optimal way how to do things and then the feeling of boredom sets in again. For Bioxx and Dunk, this is same as fighting against windmills.

 

 

I couldn't agree with you more. There are so many things I love about Terrafirmacraft but I rarely play it because there's so much monotony.

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I think the thing people complain is monotony. Eg. doing same thing over and over again. People get easily bored. The reason why big modpacks are so popular is that there is always something interesting to do. And even when you get bored with one thing, there are dozen other that you can do.

 

The reason why TFC is percieved as "boring" or "grindy" is because actions required to progress are monotonous. Dev's must do something to break this monotony, in this case the look for metals and minerals is the biggest problem. There are IMO 2 ways to break the monotony:

[*]Make the actions themselves much more interactive. There must be change in how the actions go from time to time. Like for example, that different types of stone require different ways of mining. Not sure how that would work, but it is first thing that came to my mind. Or make prospecting different based on stone. In one stone, you can prospect a more vertically, while others have more horizontal coverage. This would require you to change the way you mine and actually make you think a little while you do so.

[*]Second way is to add something you can do in parallel. So when you get bored with mining and prospecting, you can progress somewhere else. This is why people beg for things like mechanical power, alchemy/chemistry, better agriculture and food/cooking system, etc.. So they can take break from monotonous mining. And it would be even better if those other things had same importance as metals. Like you need to do some alchemy to get materials to produce some high-level metal. Or that you need some mechanical power to process the metals. Right now, the metals is THE progression. But it would be best if there were different parallel progression trees, that would then depend on each other. This would allow people to jump between them and that would reduce the feeling of grind.

But both of those would require frequent content updates. And when new content is added, people soon find optimal way how to do things and then the feeling of boredom sets in again. For Bioxx and Dunk, this is same as fighting against windmills.

 

 

I couldn't agree with you more. There are so many things I love about Terrafirmacraft but I rarely play it because there's so much monotony.

I agree as well. The mining is what kills it for me. I hate how long it takes to find metals. You can't really get to red/blue steel before the next big update comes out that changes worldgen or ID's and you have to start over. I usually end up progressing as far as I can normally and with low tier metals and then use cheaty cheats to find the higher tier metals to get to red/blue steel and then go about building better structures etc. I still go mine the ores instead of just giving the ore to myself, but I get help locating the ore veins.

This is the only "cheating" I do in the game and it is only done because the game was designed to have multiple people digging around for metals and I don't play SMP. If there were a single player worldgen setting that would make smaller ore veins closer together, or speed up the efficiency of picks(preferred solution), that would be absolutely wonderful for us SP'ers.

There has to be a balance between "realistic/believable" tasks and just plain boring tasks. I love everything else about this mod by the way, it is just the mining that I think needs work.

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I stopped just to say...

 

POWDER KEGGS!!!!

 

LOL

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The monotony of the mining has been a large issue to me too. If I could make a suggestion, make two type of veins. Keep the massive underground veins like the ones they have now, but add smaller ore deposits in cave systems/ravines similar to vanilla, maybe a little larger.

 

Also, redo the progression system. As others have said before. Bronze is not inferior to iron in any way, shape, or form. In fact, it is superior in durability. The thing is, Bronze is HARD to make and use in reality, and the iron age came about because Iron is far CHEAPER and more abundant. In fact, limonite, a form of iron ore, which is, atm, only found deep inside the ground, often forms in deposits above ground In reality.

So, in theory, instead of the bronze age being an age prior to iron, it should be a parallel to iron, and predecessor to the steel age. 

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The main problem with challenge over tedium is this: What is tedious to one person is a fun challenge to another.

 

For example, I am in favor of creating an inventory that is limited by volume and mass instead of stack size and slots. I want the player inventory to be limited to carrying more realistic amounts and weights of items (i.e. no castle in your pocket), with carts/wagons/pack animals to pick up the slack.

 

This is what I'd like most to see in the game, as a matter of fact. This is my fundamental beef with vanilla minecraft - The "Castle in pocket" problem. However, it's obvious that limiting inventory size without providing the appropriate infrastructure to act as an alternative isn't going to work. That's why I love TFC so much - It's building that infrastructure. We're seeing the foundations for this sort of thing being laid with the clay vessels, which can act to extend a player's storage space in a dynamic fashion.

 

How great would it be if you could no longer vaporize blocks out of the way when digging, to have to actually move them out of the way and put them somewhere? It would make surface constructions far more practical, as it is in real life, and would add a real logistical challenge to a lot of otherwise mundane and (My opinion) uninteresting activities.

Of course, a lot of people would disagree with me here (As evidenced by a few replies in this very thread). Such a system would probably make finding minerals, as an example, far more tedious. For such a system to be practical we'd need to see significant changes to worldgen and the way minerals are distributed and found by players.

 

But speaking more generally, I think that providing a logistical challenge is the key to reducing our annoyance/challenge ratio. Force the player to consider alternatives that would have their own distinct advantages and disadvantages. This sort of dynamic is already in place with surface ore nuggets, and I think it works quite well. Instead of digging hundreds of meters underground to find an elusive deposit, the player can simply pick up rocks on the surface and build sluices for a consistent (Albieit low-volume) mineral supply.

In the example I gave above with non-vaporizable soil, the player could choose between subterranian and surface construction. Surface construction would be faster and easier, but possibly less secure, and typically more expensive in terms of absolute resources. Subsurface construction would require planning on how to dispose of fill, infrastructure to remove the aforementioned fill, and support structures to prevent collapse (Which is already implemented), but is potentially more secure from attack/detection and can be less expensive in terms of resources.

 

I personally would love to have to account for such logistics when making excavations, but I'm sure plenty of people have shorter attention spans and just want to be able to vaporize 300 m^3 of rock in 5 minutes. My thoughts are that TFC isn't the best choice of a mod for the latter audience.

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This is what I'd like most to see in the game, as a matter of fact. This is my fundamental beef with vanilla minecraft - The "Castle in pocket" problem. However, it's obvious that limiting inventory size without providing the appropriate infrastructure to act as an alternative isn't going to work. That's why I love TFC so much - It's building that infrastructure. We're seeing the foundations for this sort of thing being laid with the clay vessels, which can act to extend a player's storage space in a dynamic fashion.

 

How great would it be if you could no longer vaporize blocks out of the way when digging, to have to actually move them out of the way and put them somewhere? It would make surface constructions far more practical, as it is in real life, and would add a real logistical challenge to a lot of otherwise mundane and (My opinion) uninteresting activities.

Of course, a lot of people would disagree with me here (As evidenced by a few replies in this very thread). Such a system would probably make finding minerals, as an example, far more tedious. For such a system to be practical we'd need to see significant changes to worldgen and the way minerals are distributed and found by players.

 

But speaking more generally, I think that providing a logistical challenge is the key to reducing our annoyance/challenge ratio. Force the player to consider alternatives that would have their own distinct advantages and disadvantages. This sort of dynamic is already in place with surface ore nuggets, and I think it works quite well. Instead of digging hundreds of meters underground to find an elusive deposit, the player can simply pick up rocks on the surface and build sluices for a consistent (Albieit low-volume) mineral supply.

In the example I gave above with non-vaporizable soil, the player could choose between subterranian and surface construction. Surface construction would be faster and easier, but possibly less secure, and typically more expensive in terms of absolute resources. Subsurface construction would require planning on how to dispose of fill, infrastructure to remove the aforementioned fill, and support structures to prevent collapse (Which is already implemented), but is potentially more secure from attack/detection and can be less expensive in terms of resources.

 

I personally would love to have to account for such logistics when making excavations, but I'm sure plenty of people have shorter attention spans and just want to be able to vaporize 300 m^3 of rock in 5 minutes. My thoughts are that TFC isn't the best choice of a mod for the latter audience.

I would say that TFC isn't the best choice for the audience you describe yourself to be in.  At a guess the type of folks who, like you, would want to mine a single block before having to go find a place for it, is a very, very "elite" crowd.  I imagine if you took a poll most of the folks who play would describe themselves as being outside of this particular group.

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I would say that TFC isn't the best choice for the audience you describe yourself to be in.  At a guess the type of folks who, like you, would want to mine a single block before having to go find a place for it, is a very, very "elite" crowd.  I imagine if you took a poll most of the folks who play would describe themselves as being outside of this particular group.

 

 

I don't think my preferences to be so outlandish. But I do agree that such a feature would not be without contention... I think I will take a poll on it.

But that's for a different thread.

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This is what I'd like most to see in the game, as a matter of fact. This is my fundamental beef with vanilla minecraft - The "Castle in pocket" problem. However, it's obvious that limiting inventory size without providing the appropriate infrastructure to act as an alternative isn't going to work. That's why I love TFC so much - It's building that infrastructure. We're seeing the foundations for this sort of thing being laid with the clay vessels, which can act to extend a player's storage space in a dynamic fashion.

 

How great would it be if you could no longer vaporize blocks out of the way when digging, to have to actually move them out of the way and put them somewhere? It would make surface constructions far more practical, as it is in real life, and would add a real logistical challenge to a lot of otherwise mundane and (My opinion) uninteresting activities.

Of course, a lot of people would disagree with me here (As evidenced by a few replies in this very thread). Such a system would probably make finding minerals, as an example, far more tedious. For such a system to be practical we'd need to see significant changes to worldgen and the way minerals are distributed and found by players.

 

But speaking more generally, I think that providing a logistical challenge is the key to reducing our annoyance/challenge ratio. Force the player to consider alternatives that would have their own distinct advantages and disadvantages. This sort of dynamic is already in place with surface ore nuggets, and I think it works quite well. Instead of digging hundreds of meters underground to find an elusive deposit, the player can simply pick up rocks on the surface and build sluices for a consistent (Albieit low-volume) mineral supply.

In the example I gave above with non-vaporizable soil, the player could choose between subterranian and surface construction. Surface construction would be faster and easier, but possibly less secure, and typically more expensive in terms of absolute resources. Subsurface construction would require planning on how to dispose of fill, infrastructure to remove the aforementioned fill, and support structures to prevent collapse (Which is already implemented), but is potentially more secure from attack/detection and can be less expensive in terms of resources.

 

I personally would love to have to account for such logistics when making excavations, but I'm sure plenty of people have shorter attention spans and just want to be able to vaporize 300 m^3 of rock in 5 minutes. My thoughts are that TFC isn't the best choice of a mod for the latter audience.

 

The problem with logistics is that people expect to use it for long time, compared to how long it took. Lets say this is in 1:10 ratio. So if I spend one hour building this infrastructure, then It would be useful for 10 hours. And right now, there is nothing except your own base, that would give you this ratio. Even mining of ore itself doesn't take this long. And building something like this just to blindly prospect is crazy. Even worse, some people expect bigger ratios. 

 

But I agree that there should be choice in how to solve the given problem. Having different ways to find ores would definitely make things more interesting. 

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Although I'm on board for more restrictive inventory systems, I think the one-block idea is excessive and underestimates the sheer amount of objects that the player must move in order to accomplish even very basic things. But limitations in general can only do good things for the game. Tedium and difficulties lead to innovation and innovative gameplay is what drives entertainment in a game/mod such as TFC.

 

For example, if you could place 'piles' of most/all block types in the way you can place log piles that don't need to be re-mined, you could have people creating piles of resources used in construction. Piles of dirt, piles of cobblestone, piles of lumber, all placed within easy access of a building site so that transportation time is minimal (once the resources have been collected and moved). The footprint of block 'piles' would of course be much smaller than the footprint of the actual mined materials (perhaps 12 blocks per 1x1 'pile'), but some abstraction is necessary in order for things to not get ridiculous.

 

As a settlement grows more advanced then the task of quarrying might be an involved process; handcarts, horse-drawn carriages moving large amounts of stone and wood from ideal sites and stockpiling them at the settlement, in order to keep the construction machine fed.

 

The idea of 'ideal sites' is novel as well. By making the task of collecting stone more tedious you also make stone more valuable, and sites with easily accessible stone would be more valuable. You might have an actual rock quarry that has its own structures and infrastructure to support it. Something which is more or less unthinkable in the current game.

 

Persistence of objects is also important. Because such a vast quantity of objects can be placed into the inventory and into chests, physical objects have a tendency to 'vanish' from the world. Having limited inventory space would mean that these objects would need to go somewhere eventually. In theory, at least. In practice you can simply discard blocks onto the ground in icon-form and wait for them to disappear. Perhaps it could be devised that after a time, instead of a block 'icon' disappearing it would reform in the world as a cube, then this 'persistence' of objects could be stressed. And people would need to think more carefully about how they dig and how they store things.

 

If you could carry, say, 20 dirt blocks, then you would need to find somewhere to place them. You might create a dirt-stockpile outside of your mine to get rid of it all. There it remains, a big pile of dirt and gravel beside your mine entrance, just a convenient dumping ground for all that refuse.Things like minecarts and handcarts and other tools may actually become important time-saving devices, and represent a layer of challenge to overcome. It might take a lot of work to produce your first tool, but as time goes on and the ability to develop things like infrastructure presents itself, these are new challenges, new goals, new things to build. Not just because they look neat, but because they are practical. Because they reduce tedium. And it feels good to overcome tedium, lemme tell ya.

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From a point of view of a newb player (not progressed into different ages much) i think the biggest problem in the tedious gameplay is just how different people perceive it.

 

Most simple example is even in vanilla MC, but other games i played also (and encountered myself). People tend to want to jump straight to the resolution if there is a way for it, whether it is mining for new metal, creating a big home/shelter, farming or just simply exploring for new things. It happens when you see the goal, but think that using a short-cut is plausible. Some just get halfway to the target, some just let themselves be moves straight to it. This is hard and always will be, just like spending a lot of time IRL on something (even travelling).

 

The first time i was digging for copper veins (decided on that more than anything else and found a couple places where native copper fell out of rocks on the surface) with a standard and prospectors pick it  WAS very difficult. Not knowing much about how to do this and with mixed signals not really sure if i'm doing the right thing... Spent a whole ProPick and two standard picks before i found the vein. I practically knew where it was, but dug around it a bit.

 

After some time i got to reflect on the matter. I could have been more aggressive in my digging and stay with my previous choices of mining, instead of changing directions and level on which i dug. I now know that veins can be even by the dirt, which seperates the ocean and stone layers (have to stop being closed minded, because i don't know much about mining). Thirdly, i know i am not mining blindly, but have to use a series of techniques (watched a few videos) to effectively search for metal, when i know it's there somewhere.

 

Most importantly, TFC has a ProPick! I was always grinding teeth that i don't have enough resources in vanilla. Never used any mods or tools for finding metals (wanted it like this!). Thought numerous times about mods that could help with everything and was jealous of people who would create big things, but i was drawn back by the lack of resources. Always found caves or created great mining projects, hoping to find anything... I still have my SMP world where i build a pretty neat base with what i had at that time (it even has a cart transportation system towards various places in that world).

 

Summarizing, things can't be too easy and people will feel bored and angry when digging around the ores. But it is also satisfying (for me at least) to finally find the ore, especially if it's a big vein. There could be a page describing various techniques of using the ProPick to find ore and minerals (i'm sure some of you have different ones or quite one and the same). Maybe an information that it's the most tedious and hard thing to do, but still very rewarding (hell, i dug out the copper and welded the ingots to finally create an anvil!). Additional updates to the whole process would be interesting, but i find this method of finding metal a lot more interesting, challenging and easy than the one in vanilla.

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Maybe it is just my generated world, but I cannot for the life of me find cassiterite (tin) to proceed to making bronze and hence a bronze bloomery block. I haven't given up the search yet but it is bordering on annoyance...

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Maybe it is just my generated world, but I cannot for the life of me find cassiterite (tin) to proceed to making bronze and hence a bronze bloomery block. I haven't given up the search yet but it is bordering on annoyance...

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If you have Sphalerite and Bismuthinite, or Silver and Gold, you can make Bismuth Bronze or Black Bronze.

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Although I'm on board for more restrictive inventory systems, I think the one-block idea is excessive and underestimates the sheer amount of objects that the player must move in order to accomplish even very basic things. But limitations in general can only do good things for the game. Tedium and difficulties lead to innovation and innovative gameplay is what drives entertainment in a game/mod such as TFC.

 

For example, if you could place 'piles' of most/all block types in the way you can place log piles that don't need to be re-mined, you could have people creating piles of resources used in construction. Piles of dirt, piles of cobblestone, piles of lumber, all placed within easy access of a building site so that transportation time is minimal (once the resources have been collected and moved). The footprint of block 'piles' would of course be much smaller than the footprint of the actual mined materials (perhaps 12 blocks per 1x1 'pile'), but some abstraction is necessary in order for things to not get ridiculous.

 

As a settlement grows more advanced then the task of quarrying might be an involved process; handcarts, horse-drawn carriages moving large amounts of stone and wood from ideal sites and stockpiling them at the settlement, in order to keep the construction machine fed.

 

The idea of 'ideal sites' is novel as well. By making the task of collecting stone more tedious you also make stone more valuable, and sites with easily accessible stone would be more valuable. You might have an actual rock quarry that has its own structures and infrastructure to support it. Something which is more or less unthinkable in the current game.

 

Persistence of objects is also important. Because such a vast quantity of objects can be placed into the inventory and into chests, physical objects have a tendency to 'vanish' from the world. Having limited inventory space would mean that these objects would need to go somewhere eventually. In theory, at least. In practice you can simply discard blocks onto the ground in icon-form and wait for them to disappear. Perhaps it could be devised that after a time, instead of a block 'icon' disappearing it would reform in the world as a cube, then this 'persistence' of objects could be stressed. And people would need to think more carefully about how they dig and how they store things.

 

If you could carry, say, 20 dirt blocks, then you would need to find somewhere to place them. You might create a dirt-stockpile outside of your mine to get rid of it all. There it remains, a big pile of dirt and gravel beside your mine entrance, just a convenient dumping ground for all that refuse.Things like minecarts and handcarts and other tools may actually become important time-saving devices, and represent a layer of challenge to overcome. It might take a lot of work to produce your first tool, but as time goes on and the ability to develop things like infrastructure presents itself, these are new challenges, new goals, new things to build. Not just because they look neat, but because they are practical. Because they reduce tedium. And it feels good to overcome tedium, lemme tell ya.

 

It seems like folks in your camp (if I may make a generalization) either desire to make TFCraft a mod which insists that the player always be fighting for survival and never thriving... or are at least assuming (if not desiring/insisting) that we're all playing on servers with other folks.

 

Being able to cart forty five stacks of thirty two rocks out of my mine at a time is like not having to read how the hero wiped his butt for the millionth time in a fantasy novel... it's assumed.  It does feel good to overcome tedium... I'd say it also feels good not to have to overcome tedium.  I mean, that's not a real selling point of a game "overcome tedium!"

And not having to store all that rubble in real space also works along the same lines.

 

I'm currently mining/building/excavating/sculpting a dwarven city.  I'm doing it by myself.  Seeing as TFCraft is such a unique mod there are already comparatively few minecrafters who play.  There are even less who would come both with the desire to help me in my task and the willingness to labor to my specifications.  I've spent at least a month on this project and am nearly finished excavating (but not building) the first chamber.  The change you suggest would increase the length of time on my project so exponentially that I would never get it done before the next update when worlds on servers will start being reset.  The type of TFCraft you desire fits an overly specific niche.

 

I'm not lazy and I'm not afraid of tedium.  It's likely that I've more endurance to it than you do (as though that can be boasted about.)  The chamber I've been excavating has taken days of real time.  It's 41x41 with a ceiling about 20 cubits from the floor.  The ceiling had to be carefully constructed out of smoothed stone before I could really begin to mine out the rest.  If I had to cart out 12 rocks at a time... let alone find a place for them all... I think I'd just give up on TFC altogether.

 

Your ideas almost preclude any major builds altogether excepting that you find not one but ten or twenty folks who're willing and able to spend hours a day performing very extremely tedious labor to the exclusion of all else.

 

This discussion honestly reminds me of the coin discussion and the discussion on forced labor roles (id est; you are a wood cutter, you are not allowed to acquire metal, you trade wood to the miner and he gives you metal in return) in that it's an idea that you think is neat which you could practice on your own (you could easily limit how much of anything you carry) but you want to insist that everyone else play that way too.  I don't think the idea adds to the game.

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-------------------------

 

If you have Sphalerite and Bismuthinite, or Silver and Gold, you can make Bismuth Bronze or Black Bronze.

 

Oh snap! I could make Bismuth bronze. Cheers mate!  ;)

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I think it is also worth pointing out that there are ways of getting around limited inventory space.  I don't mean making back packs or employing mules.  I mean, if a person doesn't want to haul tons and tons of stone little bit by little bit... why pick it up?  The only people who'll play by your rules in that case will be the folks who want to build with the stone.  But the gamers... the ones who seem to make it their goal to get to Red/Blue steel as quickly as possible and don't bother building anything they don't absolutely have to in order to achieve that end... they're just going to leave trails of sprites everywhere and really slow down the servers.

 

I'm reminded of how on some servers you had folks digging up whole deserts and leaving the sand just to level their digging skill and get diamonds.  It killed the server's ram with a quickness.

 

Of course, to deal with this you could decide that if someone broke a block they had to have it in their inventory... you could do away with sprites completely.

 

But then, if I was mining over a lava pit there wouldn't be a chance that any of my precious ore would fall... I'd be guaranteed to keep all of it.

 

You're not going to achieve what you want to with limited inventory space.  You'll be kneecapping the builders but the gamers won't even notice, it'll be a blip on their radar.

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Another workaround is destroying all of the refuse with a cactus or lava.  And again, the only way to prevent this is the removal of sprites entirely.

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It seems like folks in your camp (if I may make a generalization) either desire to make TFCraft a mod which insists that the player always be fighting for survival and never thriving... or are at least assuming (if not desiring/insisting) that we're all playing on servers with other folks.

 

Being able to cart forty five stacks of thirty two rocks out of my mine at a time is like not having to read how the hero wiped his butt for the millionth time in a fantasy novel... it's assumed.  It does feel good to overcome tedium... I'd say it also feels good not to have to overcome tedium.  I mean, that's not a real selling point of a game "overcome tedium!"

And not having to store all that rubble in real space also works along the same lines.

 

I'm currently mining/building/excavating/sculpting a dwarven city.  I'm doing it by myself.  Seeing as TFCraft is such a unique mod there are already comparatively few minecrafters who play.  There are even less who would come both with the desire to help me in my task and the willingness to labor to my specifications.  I've spent at least a month on this project and am nearly finished excavating (but not building) the first chamber.  The change you suggest would increase the length of time on my project so exponentially that I would never get it done before the next update when worlds on servers will start being reset.  The type of TFCraft you desire fits an overly specific niche.

 

I'm not lazy and I'm not afraid of tedium.  It's likely that I've more endurance to it than you do (as though that can be boasted about.)  The chamber I've been excavating has taken days of real time.  It's 41x41 with a ceiling about 20 cubits from the floor.  The ceiling had to be carefully constructed out of smoothed stone before I could really begin to mine out the rest.  If I had to cart out 12 rocks at a time... let alone find a place for them all... I think I'd just give up on TFC altogether.

 

Your ideas almost preclude any major builds altogether excepting that you find not one but ten or twenty folks who're willing and able to spend hours a day performing very extremely tedious labor to the exclusion of all else.

 

This discussion honestly reminds me of the coin discussion and the discussion on forced labor roles (id est; you are a wood cutter, you are not allowed to acquire metal, you trade wood to the miner and he gives you metal in return) in that it's an idea that you think is neat which you could practice on your own (you could easily limit how much of anything you carry) but you want to insist that everyone else play that way too.  I don't think the idea adds to the game.

 

TFC is not the best mod to be used for 'model building.' Pretty much every single task in vanilla Minecraft takes longer and is more involved in TFC. In some cases wildly more involved. However, I've had no trouble building large structures once advanced tools are available. It takes longer, particularly because you need to perform many other tasks during the process of building, but it's never taken me enormous amounts of time to build a reasonably large structure. I can only assume that you're taking on this project at a point in the game where your tools are substandard, if it is taking you that long. And well, that's your decision.

 

Why not just have one level of tools that work extremely fast? Why force the player to work through tiers of metals in order to work at their maximum potential? Why prolong things at all? If all we're here to do is just build model dwarven cities then maybe we're playing the wrong mod. TFC is very much more about the journey between point A and point B, that's why all of these systems exist, that's why it's 'tedious' to players who are mostly concerned with the end result. TFC forces you to build infrastructure and take extra steps and spend time exploring in ways that vanilla doesn't even come close to. It boggles my mind that someone would use TFC to build a model city and then complain about tedium. TFC is rewarding because it is harder, because it is more of an investment of time and planning. In vanilla minecraft you could bake any metal in an oven. In TFC you have the option of doing it slowly in a campfire or using one of the several installations you can construct in order to do it progressively more efficiently. The fact is that smelting metals over a campfire is tedious. If you think that 'overcoming tedium' isn't a selling point then I don't know what you get out of TFC. I assume it's something, but I don't know what.

 

The point I was trying to make is that yes, certain tasks are hard and time-consuming until you have the right tools and the creativity to mitigate those things. Which was a point you seem to have utterly missed.

 

A limited inventory is only time-consuming as long as you i) don't have the right tools to mitigate it, or ii) aren't innovative enough to find solutions.

 

There are two possibilities for building an underground dwarven city more quickly.

 

1) Wait until you have the tools and technology to build infrastructure to support its construction. Build minecarts and rails that you can fill up with far more blocks than you could normally carry, push it outside, empty it into a pile, and repeat. Yes, the net result is that it takes longer than it does currently, but it has also given you an excuse to engineer something you wouldn't have otherwise. Frankly, taking the time to engineer the infrastructure required to build something magnificent is almost as satisfying as (and occasionally more than) building the project itself. If you're clever you can make many jobs easier by investing a little time and resources into preparations rather than just running at a wall and swinging your pick blindly until it breaks.2) Pick a site that actually makes sense. You could dig out a whole mountainside or, like peoples in the past have frequently done, settle a site that makes that job easier. Maybe it's a natural cavern you're simply shaping. That reduces your workload by an enormous magnitude. Maybe you've picked a site that has a natural vertical cave drop next to it, so that you can easily dump your excess dirt/stone into it rather than carting it outside. 

Don't be afraid of challenges, find ways to overcome them. That's part of why I like TFC. In vanilla minecraft any location is as good as any other location. It's lego for adults. I like games that force me to find ways to overcome a difficult process. I like games that make me build structures and infrastructure because they provide some tangible benefit, instead of just building them because they look neat. If somewhere along the way I end up with a fortress built of carefully crafted stone, I know that it was because through planning and labor I made it possible. That is rewarding. Chewing through 800 cubic meters of stone, pocketing it, and rapidly constructing a castle, is in my opinion wildly more tedious because it lacks the interim stages that make that process interesting.I don't think that's a niche in TFC players, I think that probably makes up the majority of us. We might all disagree on the finer points of what constitutes tedious, what our limits and preferences are, but I don't think there's many TFC players who want TFC to be more like vanilla. I think most of us want more depth and complexity. But there's no point introducing new tools like handcarts and wagons and functional roads if the player can carry a castle in his pocket. There's already a pretty advanced system for minecarts available and nobody uses those. Because they are absolutely unnecessary. That's my point. By placing limitations on the player you give them the opportunity to find creative and interesting ways to overcome their limitations. You open up myriad possibilities for future content to help mitigate those limitations.

 

I said 20 blocks of stone off the top of my head. That's not necessarily the number I'd choose. Where it comes to inventory limitations everyone has a different threshold for what is annoying. If you could carry one less block of stone would it bother you? Two less? Ten less? Twenty less? A hundred less? For Mossman his threshold (he thinks) is one. For me I think it's closer to twenty. For someone else it might be one stack of 64. Etc etc. The number isn't important, it's the spirit of it. Limitations lead to innovation.

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Another workaround is destroying all of the refuse with a cactus or lava.  And again, the only way to prevent this is the removal of sprites entirely.

 

I dunno about the cactus. But I don't actually have a problem with people using a lava pit to destroy objects. It's pretty hard in TFC to get to a point where you can move lava around, and sites that have accessible lava pits are also very rare. I don't have an issue (personally) with lava blocks providing this unique benefit, given that it will not affect most players during the period where they would be most useful (pre-steel).

 

I am also not against the removal of sprites for dirt/gravel/stone blocks altogether. Instead of becoming a sprite the block could go straight to the inventory of the last person to strike it.

 

But what I suggested was that sprites would reform into blocks after a short while. Meaning that if you dug a stone tunnel without picking up the sprites, you'd soon turn around to find that the tunnel behind you has filled up with cobblestone. Not exactly an ideal situation. You would basically have to pick them up or you would end up buried. I am not sure which I like better, removing sprites or reforming sprites into blocks.

 

There's plenty of interesting directions the game could go. I won't claim to have the right answers for anyone but myself, but the whole 'you people want to force everyone to play your way!!!' argument has never sat well with me. Ultimately suggestions are just suggestions and the devs will make the call about what goes in and what doesn't. Either they want limited inventory or they don't. The suggestions themselves are innocuous, and there's no point in feeling threatened by them. More than that, though, aren't you forcing people to play YOUR way by insisting on sticking with the status quo? ;) The current inventory system and a more limited inventory system are both viable options, but they are also mutually exclusive. In order for you to get what you want, other people can't have what they want. In order for them to get what they want, you can't have what you want. You can't make everyone happy. Don't pretend that people suggesting their preferred changes is somehow less fair than you suggesting things you want.

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