Challenge vs. Annoyance

[PublicToast 8]

That's really the problem with this game, there's no fun in something taking forever, and everything takes forever. Mining is a great example. Oh, lets make mining stone take extremely long, and make the ability to get better tools to mine stone faster require mining a bunch of stone. Why make it take so long in the first place? Just to annoy the player? There's no point, I might as well keep my crappy tools if getting better ones takes so long and is so ridiculously boring, especially since the work/benefit ratio is too high to make it feel worth it. Having to do something more or have something take longer isn't challenge, it's damn boring.

 

I like having to do more than in vanilla, but doing one thing a lot more isn't really doing more, it's slowing progression artificially. Having more steps adds great depth and interest, and that should be the focus. I can't understand how some people want to slow/nerf things down to an almost realistic level. That's not the point, in real life most progressive shit takes forever, which is why you hire people to do that monotonous work. I see TFC as more of a simulation of the fun/cool bits and giving you a sense of accomplishment over time, not a representation of reality.

[Terex 108]

That's not the point, in real life most progressive shit takes forever, which is why you hire people to do that monotonous work.

 

That's why one of the devs said TFC is increasingly targeted at SMP (multiplayer) mode. Also, you can be a bit clever about mining by checking the right rock types. Once you need to find iron ore, your best bet is to find a contact between two sedimentary rocks on the middle / lower layer (~y =60). An additional useful tip is to do everything in bulk. Don't be satisfied with one pit kiln or one forge. Heck, make 4 of each! Or more.

[wyrmofvt 14]

One of the things I find disappointing in this thread is that it's taken for granted that challenge and tedium are completely subjective. While this is true to some extent, in a general sense there is a distinct difference between tedium and challenge. I think the following episodes of Extra Credits are enlightening:

 

Intrinsic or Extrinsic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAjc_fwz424

When Difficult is Fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toVNkuCELpU

 

Here's the skinny — In general the difference between a tedious task and a challenging task is a challenging task has an intrinsic reward. You do the task because you like doing the task and get a feeling of accomplishment from completing the task, in isolation. A tedious task is one that you do because you need to do it to get at the thing you're really after — the only reason you do it is because you know you have to slog through it and are willing to put in the effort, or the compulsion has been trained into you by a Skinner box — the Skinner box creates the illusion of engagement while not actually making the activity any more engaging.

 

This leads us to the central paradox of Minecraft: its most distinctive element —mining— is by its nature something you do for an external reward. You don't mine because you find the act of mining itself enjoyable; you mine to get resources or to carve out a cavern. The only exception is when you just want to shut your brain off for a while and just mindlessly dig. The fact that mining in isolation is a boring task is one of the big reasons branch mining was banned in Mindcrack's ultra hardcore games — mining for resources is dull, and branch mining is very dull to do and even duller to watch. Spelunking not only makes things more fun for the viewers, but also makes it more fun for the players: you didn't just mine out some ore or stone, you mined out ore and stone while in a potentially dangerous cavern filled with monsters that want to kill you.

 

So, making mining more difficult by lengthening the time it takes to mine stone will only make it more tedious, because you haven't actually added to the engagement of mining, only in the amount of time you must invest in mining. It's a Skinner box technique and a cheap and boring way to add difficulty. Now, adding some thought to mining would make it more challenging because people like to engage their brains. This is what makes cave-ins an interesting mechanic, because now you have to think about how you're mining out your ores instead of excavating a big, dumb cavern. Because you need supports to keep from being buried alive by cave-ins, mining engages you more. You can be dumb and spam support beams everywhere, but that will keep you from easily expanding your mine. And since it's easy to break a support, you need to be careful where you dig.

 

As for encumbrance limits, I would ask Hyena Grin and others what additional engagement in the task of hauling they expect from limiting encumbrance and adding carts to the game. Because you never manage inventory as an exercise in itself; you manage inventory to make room for an item or to haul items to another location. Hauling is boring enough as it is without having to add more trips, even with multiple players, and with your snail-pace in-game speed, adding more trips becomes ridonkulous. Vanilla inventory is big enough so that you can carry a lot of stuff without worry of being clogged up.

 

The activities that most easily fall in the "challenge vs. tedium" debate are exactly those activities that would most benefit from thinking about how they engage us, because the fact that a large number of people find the activity tedious is indicative of how engaging the activity isn't on its own, and are far more likely to be Skinner box compulsions rather than real rewarding activities.

 

Now that's out of the way, we need to turn to what makes a difficulty "challenging" rather than "punishing." For this, I recommend you watch the When Difficult is Fun episode, specifically at consistency of rules (I'm looking at you, unburnable wood stairs!) and offering enough tools to solve the problem at the time the problem needs to be solved. The latter is (for the time being) mostly because the game is in an unfinished state, but in the meantime the vanilla mechanics already cover most of the glaring deficiencies were they not removed for features that aren't even implemented yet.

 

 

That's not the point, in real life most progressive shit takes forever, which is why you hire people to do that monotonous work.

 

That's why one of the devs said TFC is increasingly targeted at SMP (multiplayer) mode.

Adding more players will not make monotonous tasks more interesting. That's just spreading out the boredom. The reason why you can get away with it in real life is because some stuff in real life needs to be done and bad things happen if they're not done. Strictly speaking, nothing in TFC needs to be done; they only need to be done so long as you're willing to play TFC. You can always stop playing with no consequence, unlike life.

[Hntrofdmnds 6]

There should be a weight rebalance but also some kind of early storage (Weaving a mat with a string on it [could be crafted out of bush fiber {something they add in an earlier update}]) and I have carried a small tree once (not fun) in my garden before it was a garden.

 

Also you could work up from having a mat on a string to having a pig to having a donkey (Yay donkeysrawesome to having a chest on wheels to having carts. If you carry a lot of heavy things you should get slowness, nausea (differently named) or even die.

 

Chests should have altered capacity depending on what you put in it (ie, you could put a hoe in it but that would make some spots unavailible, but when you take it out, they come back.

[Hntrofdmnds 6]

That's really the problem with this game, there's no fun in something taking forever, and everything takes forever. Mining is a great example. Oh, lets make mining stone take extremely long, and make the ability to get better tools to mine stone faster require mining a bunch of stone. Why make it take so long in the first place? Just to annoy the player? There's no point, I might as well keep my crappy tools if getting better ones takes so long and is so ridiculously boring, especially since the work/benefit ratio is too high to make it feel worth it. Having to do something more or have something take longer isn't challenge, it's damn boring.

 

I like having to do more than in vanilla, but doing one thing a lot more isn't really doing more, it's slowing progression artificially. Having more steps adds great depth and interest, and that should be the focus. I can't understand how some people want to slow/nerf things down to an almost realistic level. That's not the point, in real life most progressive shit takes forever, which is why you hire people to do that monotonous work. I see TFC as more of a simulation of the fun/cool bits and giving you a sense of accomplishment over time, not a representation of reality.

Actually the point of TFC is to make things take longer. I once played vanilla minecraft. Started a world. ten minutes later I found diamond. The next day I went to the nether. The week after that, I defeated the dragon. Vanilla minecraft basically goes on, and on, and on. "But," I hear you say "You can make a whole ton of stuff in vanilla minecraft" Well yes, but there is the inevatable point of hen it is going to run out. I know the secret of mining fast and getting no stone to block up my inventory (it involves a chisel >) and I found the ingredients for black steel before I had steel! You should stop whining and be patient.