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22 posts in this topic

I have an Idea. :D

This is only a sketch, an idea, not a working or even a complete plan.

You may know Thaumcraft. There's a neat system to learn to make new stuffs. I've thinking why wouldn't work the Minecraft someway like this? I mean the origin plan as I know was that you by yourself start to try many recipes, and you'll learn how to make tools and others. That's boring taking too much time and there are Wikies. Pfft.

 

If you want some interesting challenge you can use the "Idea" addon what's working someway like Thaumcraft.

You're new on the world, there's not much to do. You take sticks from the trees and some pebbles. Congrats, you've just take enough XP to have the tier 0 Idea: javelin. Well, try something new, like using pebble on another: you've got a tier 1 Idea! Select or get random idea for shovel head, knife head, others. It would be a copyable "item". I'll explain later.

 

Because you're on the level 1, and you know the "tools", you don't have to step on a next level, just learn about tools and the problems like sand, dirt, crops, and you'll get the other head ideas.

 

You'll have to work with things to get an idea like "I always bring stuffs in my hand, and I have no place to put them." -> storages Idea! You can learn boxes, chests, bags!

These are easy and quick ideas to "feel" the way.

 

I don't want to be it too complex, just some tiny levels, materials, but that would made more meaning to multiplayer.

For example, you don't have any Idea about metal working, there's no way to create a scythe. But you have the Idea of "I need something what can reap fast crops", a "scythe Idea".

 

You have a "book", which contains your ideas. You can copy the scythe idea and give it to your friend who doesn't even think about agriculture, but know much about smithing and as you give him your Idea, he'll learn a little bit of agriculture and he could craft the plan of a scythe head.

 

Or you know much about logistics (learned by carrying and storing things, using your hands and handcarts), you'll get the Idea of transporting on tramways (I'm using Google translater, sorry if I wrote wrong expressions :D), you can give it to the person who know about smithing and materials and boom, there's the Idea of tracks and minecarts!

 

I'm thinking about Idea categories, how could it need the less resources and which would they be, like:

Tools

Materials

Agriculture

Husbandry

Smithing

Building

Metallurgy

Mechanics

Fighting

Logistics

Arts

etc.

 

I don't want this to be too complicated, but it would be a bit more interesting to play. Let's discuss it! :D

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An In-Game directory would be an interesting idea, especially if it is limited to the scope of your current "knowledge". On the other hand, I do not see any way of acquiring that information without using the the Achievement system already in Minecraft.  

It's an interesting idea, but you have this in the wrong location, next time put Idea's in the Suggestion bin. (the only real exception are Polls) 

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Honestly, i think that the best way to "implement" learning new things in the game, would to actually have the player learn new things themselves

 

no arbitrary "research" system, just have the player figure things out as they go along, if they don't know what something is, they can learn through trial and error and actually learn new things for themselves

 

 

 

p.s. when you make a new topic, please try to name it after the general concept of your idea, not just "An Idea" 'kay?

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I actually love the idea of a research system in place, because players don't just figure things out as they go, they look stuff up.  And even if they did try and figure it out themselves, they could miss something that tilts the balance of the game making it overly frustrating, just because they hadn't tried this one thing.  Also, pretend they were able to discover everything on their own.  On their next playthrough they'd already know everything.  So if you balance for people knowing nothing and experimenting it will be boring for the veterans, but if you balance for full knowledge it will be frustrating for the new players.  Also, having a system in a game where you have to stop playing and look something up to progress is immersion breaking.  Having everything there in game draws you in and keeps you there.  

 

I suggested something similar in a different thread, though it was more limited and specific to smithing.  It was also inspired by thaumcraft, their research table.

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First of all:

 

Rhapsodyman2000:

I didn't want to put this in suggestions, because this wasn't a real suggestion.

 

Srgnoodles:

I didn't want to give another name for the post, because this is an idea about ideas. That's why I wrote with capital I. Got it?

An Idea, means:

1: A system named Idea (for the ideas)

2.1: An idea as it is

2.2: An idea which itself is an Idea (but of course not implemented)

This is some fun in titling.

 

Now get back to real things:

Achievement system is nice, it could be good for this, and I didn't think about it before so I don't know how it works. We still should need the way for giving to each other Ideas.

Srgnoodles: I've read your comment several times, and I think we're talking nearly about same thing. My idea is not to "research", just trying to do something which gives you an idea, and after that you can make it.TFC is different, there are many things which is not in the NEI. You will need hints for more flowing game experience.There would be research, but it's the way of modern world. Before the renaissance there weren't many research as-is.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_history_of_scientific_methodI don't want it like "Now I'm going to put stuffs here and there and again and again." I'd like to see it as a flowing stuff. For example the first tools are easy to make, you don't need to learn too much. Just one-two things. After that you may start to collect pebbles, right? Materials, logistics. Chopping down trees, collecting sticks? Materials, agriculture, logistics, building. You've got the idea for fireplace. You make it. Kill some animals for food (husbandry, agriculture, fighting). Let's make some food! Idea of knife (if you didn't get it already)! Idea of pottery too (because you won't see burned clay)! Burn some clay. Smelting! You make your first ingot: smithing! You've got hammer! And so.This is the first time. You'll learn the basic things, if you're playing alone, and making everything by yourself. Got it? Make it flow. Veterans won't really feel the guide, because they working as they can, but newbies will have guides.

As you play longer, learn things will be someway harder. Making better, harder stuffs, making crops more resistant and so.

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And one more thing: Make multiplayer multi-player. Not single with guys on TS.

This could be an addon, not the part of TFC, to make it interesting, not hard when you play alone. If you play online everybody can do anything. Some people can build things nicely, others make awesome systems. But the don't need each other. Well, you may know how to take care of animals, but you're trying to make some tools. No problem in Minecraft, everything works like charm, your tool is always perfect. With this, you may can make a shovel which is good for decoration, but nothing else. Then what? "Can you make me a shovel?" "Yup, give me a chicken" "Mmkay!" "You know what? We are playing multi! YEEEY!"

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this needs to be an addon, i would definitely feature this in my upcoming server.

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Kinda reminds me of the idea I had, but instead of having ideas and books like the thaumcraft thing, I thought it'll be better if each action (farming, mining, smithing, etc) was hard, and difficult to master.

Like, smiting will need you to know the proper temp to work metals, how sharp a tool has to be(how much you need to sharpen it),  how to temper(heat and cool off to make metal hard) it, what heat you need to bring it too, how long you have to cool it off, etc, Farming will need you to know how fertile a land is, what plants need how much water. etc.

Kinda like using the propick. You can master it, or just have a slight knowledge of it's usage and just hope for the best.

 

While I like the idea of learning, ideas, and such, can't a player go single player, find put how to get all the ideas, go to multiplayer/another world, and get all the ideas? Play in one world, then you'll know how to get each and every idea again.

 

Well I think it could be nice if each action you do gives you exp on a certain aspect. like farming gives you agriculture xp, mining gives you mining xp, gathering gives you gathering xp, etc.

Each xp can gather and when you have enough xp, a event can trigger getting an idea.

 

like, you do a lot of swimming, which gives you aquatics xp or something, and you say, accidentally drop some wood in the water. And wow, it floats! that gives you and idea to make some sort of floating thing to get across water easily. You have a bunch of stones, and you wander around, and you drop the stone/smash it against something hard, and it chips, and hey, you get an idea to make tools by knapping, etc.

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Well I think it could be nice if each action you do gives you exp on a certain aspect. like farming gives you agriculture xp, mining gives you mining xp, gathering gives you gathering xp, etc.

Each xp can gather and when you have enough xp, a event can trigger getting an idea.

 

like, you do a lot of swimming, which gives you aquatics xp or something, and you say, accidentally drop some wood in the water. And wow, it floats! that gives you and idea to make some sort of floating thing to get across water easily. You have a bunch of stones, and you wander around, and you drop the stone/smash it against something hard, and it chips, and hey, you get an idea to make tools by knapping, etc.

 

The problem with skills that are only increased by doing repetitive actions is just that, the actions can get very repetitive quickly, and all that does is add to the grindy-ness that the mod is trying to avoid.

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The problem with skills that are only increased by doing repetitive actions is just that, the actions can get very repetitive quickly, and all that does is add to the grindy-ness that the mod is trying to avoid.

 

Well, that's true... 

 

But lets say there is a player that lives near water. he will most likely do a lot of swimming, so he gathers enough aquatics xp to get a boat idea.

Other players who don't live near water won't need to swim or cross water a lot, so they don't need boats. So they don't have reason to swim/boat a lot to get aquatics xp. They won't need it. It won't really be grindy because the player isn't trying to get the boat knowledge, he's just swimming because he has to, and since swimming is not easy, but he has to do it a lot, he ends up getting a boat idea to remove the grindy-ness. Not grinding to get a easier method to do it, but getting a easier method to do it because you want to avoid the grindy-ness of repetitive action

 

Well, that's the kind of idea I had when I was posting that

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The key is the need. You'll get an idea when you need it. You may played games which needed to repeat things to get level up or money. Like killing boars in WoW (maybe. South Park).

That's frustrating. Doing things constantly. In Minecraft you have to do things not to level up, but get better resources. What's understandable. You can't get diamond with your naked ass. You'll need a certain mod for that... Posted Image

You have a purpose, a goal what you'd like to do and start to focus on that. That would come easier to you than anyone else, and your work and knowledge will be valuable. And it have to be flowing to get. Not easy, but not recurrent.

 

I'm thinkig about focus. You can set what you focus on. Those will get more points. For example when you focus on smithing, and you're fighting, you'll start to think "Dayum, this sword is dull. How could I make it sharper? Well, stone can make stone sharper. Maybe this will work too." You've get the idea of sharpener.

And some worktable which can be used anytime but usually before you're going to sleep in MC, to collect your learned things and select an idea for work on.

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Dont use XP, it's lost when you die, what about if I have shitloads of steel and only steel tools? If I die I can't craft them again and I have to live with stone tools while having steel. And when you kill someone with XP it drops XP himself, you don't learn/have ideas by killing someone. That has a simple solution, however. Simply use another "Knowledge bar" that has leveling just like XP bar, but isn't reset when you die.

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This post was actually inspired by this thread, but I thought it would better fit here, so I removed my earlier post to better format it.

 

Something I've never liked about Minecraft recipes is that the player is often forced to rely on wikis and external sources to get anything done. The actual act of creation isn't a game mechanic, it's an exercise in reference until people memorize them. The posts above think about knowledge too much as an rpg mechanic without thinking about actual cognition. Animals, particularly primates, use heuristics to organize phenomena, associations, responses, and behavior. So we have a macaque who has never seen sweet potatoes in her life. She sees that her elders are functionally fixed, using their hands to scrape dirt from the potatoes. But her first association with all this dirt is that water cleans. Her mental instruction set automatically associated dirtiness with water, so she takes it to the stream and washes it. A few generations later, you have entire colonies of macaques washing potatoes in the ocean to make them salty like french fries.

 

In anthropology this sort of discovery and spread of behaviors is seen all over the place. Apes have very vivid and complex imaginations. But only a minority will be in the exact right circumstance to perform a new task with existing heuristics (everyone else just follows along making exact copies). In Minecraft we need to take a thousand year long cultural phenomena and have individuals grasp it within a few hours.

 

This is where I was inspired by the Discovery system in Guild Wars 2.

 

Posted Image

 

When you put an item in the crafting area, the UI greys out basically everything that cannot be used in a recipe with it. Removing unrelated visual data will help the player focus on the available combinations and the task at hand. This is like our little macaque making her cleanliness association in the previous anecdote, but we're forcing it to happen much much faster. This is particularly useful when the game's dictionary contains hundreds of items. Without training, most people are able to keep about seven concepts in working memory. So when a player is confronted with a new task, you will want them to have fewer than seven available options to pursue.

 

Here's a simplified example of what the GW2 discovery mechanic might look like in TFC:

 

Posted Image

 

Once the player already knows the recipe for an item, they might be able to make a blueprint or add it to a recipe book (others here have suggested tracking with achievements or crafting skill level). As it is, a lot of people use NEI or rely heavily on the wiki anyway, so I see it as less cheaty than external resources. This system just gives hints most of the time, so until you already know the solution and have access to paper, the actual crafting recipe won't become part of the UI (also, as suggested in the Paper thread: give access to parchment or cuneiform tablets if there are no reeds nearby. Originally I wanted this idea to give more uses and complexity to Written Books, and Bookshelves so that they have purpose).

 

This is how I imagine the discovery system might look for knapping (the black dots represent clicks):

 

Posted ImagePosted ImagePosted ImagePosted Image

 

Blueprints could also be integrated into ceramics and leather working recipes (but not knapping because writing is bronze age+). A new blueprint slot would automatically grey out all unnecessary portions of the grid.

 

A blueprint slot in the anvil:

 

Posted Image

 

If an empty blueprint is added to the anvil, then any a smithing Technique used afterward will be recorded until an item is produced. Then, when that blueprint is used again, it will display the order of techniques made when it was created (very similar to the current "rules" but they scroll out of view once you complete them. Think of it like Dance Dance Revolution). This way you can practice lining up the arrows, and once you get good enough you can record your perfect technique to blueprints. Now you no longer need to memorize your technique order.

 

As for actual block structures perhaps give tooltips or an error message in chat, like: "The Blast Furnace needs something to draw air upward" and "The Blast Furnace would cause these bricks to crack!" Things like that might give the player a better feel of what to do than just having the block be handed back to them.

 

====

 

It's a big read, and I know you guys are restructuring TFC2 right now. But most of this suggestion appears to use resources which are already part of TFC and mostly involves tweaking the interface. Ideally I'd like to see more useful books/paper products as a long-term goal but this feels more important and useful at the moment.

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Just a note, paper written plans for smithing were actually in older versions of TFC, and were then removed for both balance reasons and because it didn't really make for fun gameplay.

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I've only played the most recent version. What exactly made it less fun? I feel like it would be the same amount of tedium regardless if you memorize it or if it's presented for you. The presentation just eases your memory. Could it be timed to make it more like a rhythm game, or would that make it worse?

 

Edit: For clarity I never wanted to remove the current system, but add to it. So that at the point when you've memorized how to line up the arrows, you can have the blueprints remember it for you.

Edited by DonutGlaze
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I don't like the idea of having to level to be able to do certain actions. The progressive system in place works nicely; granted it could be expanded much more to make progression even slower. 

 

However, some mods use an "in-game" wiki, we could have a book or something that lets you search and calls up the right wiki page url or could even display the page on the book in-game.

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I don't like the idea of having to level to be able to do certain actions.

 

Most posts in this thread are a year old and possibly irrelevant now. I necro'd it to try and stay within forum rules. I'm not sure how the game stores "known recipes," but achievements have been suggested as one method. Similarly, I would prefer to keep the current system in place but find some method of decreasing reliance on the wiki and external resources. I already mentioned an NEI-esque system in my post and I'm trying to think on how to get players to tinker with crafting recipes instead of just looking them up. I think using reference is what you should do after you've learned something yourself or interacted with another player in SMP. Problem is that the game doesn't enable that style of play.

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Attaching recipes to achievements wouldn't be too difficult from what I have seen/done with minecraft code all the recipes would still be there just you could bar certain players from accessing those recipes meaning they would try to craft it and no output would appear.

 

Again I think that as far as progression goes it should be tech based on what you are capable of making and what you aren't able to produce at your current tech level. Of course achievements could be tied into the tech tree and I remember reading that one of the devs really like making achievements...I think Dunk. But it would have to make sense, I don't want to get achievements like "You have swam for 10 mins, you know understand how things float; go make a boat." That would drive me insane. More along the lines of "You know have cutting tools you could try to make a flat wooden board."

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Don't like the idea of skill grinding, for anything. I hated the system in Skyrim, having to do the same thing a thousand times, just to level up is really boring.

I like the idea of real skills, like for example using the support beans for mining, or using a propick. It's a real skill, once you actually learn you can use in any world, and it has real value.

Please, this is not a real suggestion, just something that I though while writing this post. What if to make a boat you had to get 2 logs together horizontally and then carve it with a chisel.

This is just an example, but while some people love using the chisel for micro block sculpting others just have no talent for it. This is the kind of mechanic that motivates people to trade, I will trade people for things that I have no talent or just could not get bothered to do it. 

Like in multiplayer we pay someone to smith tools, because it requires some real life talent.

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Just a note, paper written plans for smithing were actually in older versions of TFC, and were then removed for both balance reasons and because it didn't really make for fun gameplay.

Well, may I don't know how to make it in a proper way, but this "planselection" is a real pain for me. Everytime I put my ingot back to the anvil after heating, I have to select the plan again quickly before the meta loses too much heat again. I don't like it.

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This was changed due to the large number of issues being reported that were solved by selecting the plan manually.

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