Slow Down! The Game Should Take Longer.

[Jivix 21]

We work. We play. The two are synonymous, especially in games like Minecraft. TFCraft is a blast because it makes Minecraft harder, but not in a way that is annoying. It encourages us to explore more, to think, and to build with care. The game pace should be slowed down further so that we can take our time doing the things we love to do. Here are some suggestions that would help slow the technology race down enough to enjoy the flowers:

-Trees should grow much more slowly, and provide more wood. They should also take much more time to cut down. Axes are hard to use, especially on larger trees. Sequioas should take a long time to cut down, the trunks can be over 10 feet wide in reality. Perhaps you could take it to the next level beyond just holding left click on a tree forever. Along with this change, saplings should be much more common. You would need a very, very large amount of tree saplings because they would needs in-game weeks to grow. Perhaps trees could even continue growing, albeit very slowly, as the game time passes.

-Monsters should be fewer in number, but they should be more dangerous. How often do you have fight a skeletons in the wild? Perhaps these spectres should be less common but pack a wallop so you need to play smart in order to take one out. They are already quite smart with the new AI, and the new creepers are devastating while in caves.

-You should get thirsty. No, you don't need to drink every day, but you will be a little sluggish without water. Eating food will rehydrate you some, depending on the food. If you go 3 days without any water, you're in for a nasty demise. But don't worry, you can get water from many sources, not just lakes. Vines can carry water, as well as cactus.

-You shouldn't be able to carry as much. This was already implemented with the new log system, and it obviously adds a lot of character to the mod. This new system should be carried over to other areas, particularly with soil and rock. You might even need a container to hold the rocks/dirt, because it is much harder to carry than a log. Wheelbarrow?

-Blocks should be harder to break. The first 2 days I spent in game were the most fun I've had the entire time, because you had to learn to play without carrying around stacks of dirt you could instantly make impromptu houses with. I suggest that if you are digging out a cubic meter of dirt, then it should take a little while even if you have a nice shovel. Along with this. . .

-Stone tools should have a chance of snapping outright. You never know if the rock you picked has some internal stress or fracture, and it may just snap in two while you're working with it. Stone tools aren't the most reliable constructions, so while they are effective they may let you down when you need it the most.

-Planks should be made of multiple logs. If 1 plank = 1 cubic meter of pure wood, then how come 1 log = 1 plank? Perhaps the Saw could push the efficiency back up to 1 plank per log, which is even still impossible, but we don't want to make it too hard.

And finally,

-We should be able to push the horizons. We are human. We are creative, and like to think of new uses for old things. This could include a huge variety of arts, materials, and techniques, Maybe you could make your own paintings with dyes you found in nature. Perhaps you could synthesize gunpowder with saltpetre from earth, sulphur from water, and charcoal from mines. Maybe you could find a combination of food that "sits well". Perhaps it is a new trap you have devised to capture animals for food. I'm sure everybody has a unique twist on survival, and there should be the options out there so everyone can be their own man. Or woman. Or child. It would certainly be interesting to see how others survive in a multiplayer environment, and the sorts of villages or communities they would develop.

I hope my post gives you all some great ideas. I think we all want to see this mod ascend to something beyond just a mod.

[Rabblerouser 0]

It's slow enough as it is!

It's YOU that needs to slow down. Not everyone works as fast as you. I've been in the stone age for a week sometimes (talking SMP where I can't cheat).

And by the time a week's passed, a new update usually makes a new worldgen necessary.

That said, I've NEVER been into the Metal Age without cheating.

I hate to be the voice of difference (trust me, I really do!), but it's getting to the point where it is starting to just feel annoying to keep playing, hence why I haven't been playing it as much.

[DarkLadyPhoenix 62]

My experience is the same as Rabblerouser. I enjoy the fact that this mod enables the "no chopping down trees without wood" and that wood and the different types of dirt takes up more inventory to add realism, but there is a point where realism needs to be sacrificed in order to enjoy the game.

Personally I don't enjoy having to put a single stick into the fire just to take a stick out. It takes a good portion on my playtime just to make torches. Arguably, so does making other tools, so I really should see this as no different, but do you realize how many torches you use when mining?

Digging dirt and breaking blocks with stone tools has already been slowed down. I see no reason to slow it down even further.

There's a good reason I hardly ever make it past the stone age. Trees are easier to take care of and fit my playstyle- hard to do, but not so much as to cause an annoyance. I spend far more time above ground than under because of the sheer amount of prep work it takes just to go mining, so I collect trees. If you make trees harder, you may scare away the portion of the playerbase that plays as I do.

[Jivix 21]

Point taken. However, it would still be a nice option to have a "hardcore" mode for us hardcore survivalists that really want a challenge, even when our playstyles are optimised.

If you're having a hard time finding metal, I highly suggest getting some cooked meat and going exploring with a few prospector picks. I usually check around the sides of mountains and the low points in fields and whatnot, but you can find ore deposits just about anywhere if you scan the surface enough. Thankfully, you don't need to do as much mining underground which will save you a lot of time.

We're having trouble jumping up to the bronze age because even though we live on a 2,000 block wide granite layer, we can't find any cassiterite! We even went into creative mode and scanned underneath but still found nothing.

[Teranz 37]

A Hardcore mode world be realy nice... Bit more of a challange... Maybe with the other big update bioxx could add it in together with other vegetions and such...

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

Don't worry Jivix, I'm on your side. There were thousands of years of human history before we got into stone work and metallurgy. The first record of metal use was ~6000 bc, while there is evidence of bows and arrows 70 000 years ago. I think the game does need to slow down a bit, give players a chance to experience the beginning, gathering resources, hunting game and surviving. It's how cultures and peoples evolved in real life and I think it would adds something to TFC as well. People try to establish themselves while mining. This is too much work for a single person, or even a server's worth. I think that if people slow down, establish an infrastructure, a safe place to live, a steady source of food and resources, THEN they can move onto advancing technology and growing. The number one goal in life is survival, all else comes second.

To be fair, some of your ideas are a bit far fetched, we want to eliminate tedium, repetitiveness. TFC aims to stretch out the gameplay experience with new content, to allow a player to look at anything and find something new and interesting to do. We realized that some things in minecraft were too quick and we slowed them. From here on, it's mostly just adding more content.

[RogueHydra 32]

Totally agree. I don't want to start a debate or argument using these words but: I feel that the progression is a bit too fast. I think as it is now everyone is jumping straight into mining. I almost feel that a way to slow that down would possibly be to make it possible to form bricks using a stone/flint tool. That way people can have access to a sturdy building material without having access to metals (so they can build that home they want if the really REALLY don't want to explore and find metal). NOW, to balance this, I think that this tool that would work similarly to the chisel, should be much weaker in comparison to the chisels we already have. I feel that would provide incentive to eventually move on to find metals once they've made themselves a comfortable home (if they choose to).

This might be a little too much so feel free to disregard the idea if it seems too powerful a feature. It's just a thought.

Another could be increasing the speed of the hunger bar so you need to eat more often. Say, if you've been running around, jumping, mining, etc., then you need to eat 3 or more times per day. I'm in no way fit and I can do general work in a kitchen or work on the car plus go hiking all in one day on 2 meals and be fine (not great, but fine).

[Devlin 51]

i like this idea alittle but not to this extreme, slowing down tree growth is ok, not to much, maybe 2 to 5 days for the fast growing trees and 4 to 7 days for medium, 5-9 days for slow growing trees. but slowing down block breaking again, tools suddenly breaking, not my personal favorites. if he is going to slow down cetain things though he should also slow down time entirely, so days are twice as long, yes this means that trees take even longer to grow but as more updates come out this will deffinetly be a real life savor. this also means longer nights, which means getting a bed quickly would be even more important, plus rain would happen more rarely but last longer, lots of things to do with this idea. i like the idea but not all your suggestions

[Crysyn 179]

I think we can expect survival to get more and more difficult as more and more development options are put into the game. There is chatter in the agriculture area about realistic growth times for food. So imagine what you are going to be doing when it takes a minecraft year to raise your fields and live stock to get enough food to live in the times when growing is impossible.

Overall I like the general ideas you ahve posted here but I seriously doubt that any of them would slow the game down that much.

Trees growing slower just equates to a larger tree farm so you always have some trees that are available. The increase in sapling drops would certainly lead to this being an easy thing to do.

Monsters are already sidelined as soon as you get a set of torches. They also serve no in-game purpose so there is no reason to go hunting for them so their fewer numbers are also not a change to anything.

Thirst and Carrying capacity again would not slow anything down much.. kill a couple of cows to get a water skin and we are already dealing with not being able to carry many of the important resources (Lumber and Ores). Moving that towards stone which will likely happen is just going to come but again, it wont slow down how fast we find metal.

Nobody likes stone tools, hehe.. That is why they are constantly being put down and having other tools replace them.. I am very much hoping for the hammer and chisel/piton for stone harvesting to come along over a stone pick. A pick would only ever get you ore, it would be damn hard to get anything but cobble with it.

As for the planks, I think that has been nerfed enough as is, one per log with an axe is about right and the saw should increase that. If you defined a plank as a 2x4 for example you would likely be able to get half a dozen or more from a single log as you do not cut down trees that are only like 6in in diameter, but the huge 1-2ft trees that can then be cut into multiple planks.

So I like the level of details of tracking and such that you suggest.. But I do have to say I fail to see how this would slow anything down really. I do think some of the things already planned would have more of an effect in this area.

[Bioxx 796]

Crysyn is correct, the ideas are sound but only really serve to introduce tedium. It's a careful balance where the line must be toed between tedium and fun drawn out gameplay. Everyone has their own idea of what point that line is, however the trick is finding a point where everyone finds it at least acceptable . As far as everyone just trying to tech up by mining, its important to note that, that is the only complete feature in place at this time so ofc everyone is jsut doing that. With time, as I can get more areas of the game done, you'll see that things will naturally slow down.

[Jivix 21]

I guess the main problem is I can get up to blue steel in 2 days of play (real days). Not even the whole day. Perhaps I just got lucky, perhaps working together with people makes it too easy. I guess I just want to see the game get hard enough so that if you want to survive, you had better play multiplayer and get help from others. A very strong (and tedious, as Bioxx pointed out) adversary to players (the environment itself) would be a nice thing to force players to come together and combat in multiplayer.

I'm just in need of an extra challenge. Just making enemy mobs deal more damage isn't the sort of thing that challenges me.

[Trickeli 1]

..force players to come together and combat in multiplayer.

Just no. A mod should never force you to do something like this.

[Devlin 51]

personaly i like the idea of more challenging mobs, maybe you could create mobs with diffrent attack styles, like mobs that do hit and runs, they attack you run away then come running back and hit you again, and other mobs that block your attacks, things like this so that if you runn into 1 mob it gets intresting, if you run into alot of the same type it gets fun, and if you run into several types at once it gets challlenging and maybe even scary

[Madman2429 6]

Just no. A mod should never force you to do something like this.

I think that the mod forcing people together for solely combat's sake is a sort of an 'easy way out', so I don't support that sort of a thing unless it's for something such as major area i.e. a ruin or something along such lines that is self-contained and not everywhere. As for bringing people together I've found so far that such tends to happen already due to how in depth some elements can be, like smithing or building houses with support beams in a manner that is aestetically pleasing (which can be quite difficult let me tell you ). I think that when agriculture comes in we'll see people in SMP start naturally assuming to a certain degree specialist roles that they are perticularly good in, without the mod forcing them to stay contained to that single area.

[Beckoner 8]

Wierd thing is, on SMP, I always start (after getting my basic stone tools) by setting up a wheat/cane/animal farm.. Would corral spiders if I could get them to breed!

[Crysyn 179]

Wierd thing is, on SMP, I always start (after getting my basic stone tools) by setting up a wheat/cane/animal farm.. Would corral spiders if I could get them to breed!

Same here actually, food is more important than metal from the get go to me.... Course metals are not overly important to me in any case.. what can I do with em? Go mine.. Oh I can do that already with stone stuff hehe

[Foredwarf 0]

Everyone has their own idea of what point that line is, however the trick is finding a point where everyone finds it at least acceptable .

Another idea is to have config file with adjustable variables. "Hardcore" lovers will just set here high values and people who like to see more easy play will be able to smooth it down.