Random rants about aspects of game Balance and democracy

As far as I can tell, Ender-IO is a mod that basically consists of various ways to create power, which can then be used to double ingot output from ore. That's very mature.

However I agree that IC2 has somewhat lost it's direction. Rewriting the entire concept is maybe a good thing, however I don't really see the big picture behind this. Either because there is none, or I can't see it, I cannot tell. But if there is one I am not seeing, it would be great if those who see it could explain it to me and the rest of the community.

I personally don't see that there is not enough gain for the materials invested. I actually switched some mod settings recently to cut the ingot production in half (I just hate this double-ingot stuff), because I was swimming in resources so fast after deploying the miner, without anything to use them for.

Quote from corinanth

a lot of people are moving away from ic2 as TE and Ender I/O are maturing and this trend is putting yet more nails in the lid of an already fairly tight coffin.

So you consider yourself and your friends as "lots of people" ? I didn't hear about those people sorry. Sounds like a "threat" more than a constructive discussion.

Quote from corinanth

users should have a choice between whether or not they want hard or easy recipies for their industrial mods. just like the games have a difficulty slider so should these mods have configurable options to allow the admins to increase or decrease the difficulties based on user preference

Well, where did you find any difficulty in IC² ??? Did you prefer the old IC² ? Sure, how fun it was when, thanks to CASUC and Solar Pannels not even needing circuits, you could get your Q-Suit in less than 10 hours! A more difficult game is just a game in which the mining, crafting and "survival" part last longer. The rest is just building --'

Quote from corinanth

these new recipes are quite unbalanced for the quantity of materials required most of these changes to the recipes should damn well yield a lot more items than they do for the number of diamonds complex parts and other resource intensive changes to the recipe or just make the recipes for the required components yield more of them basic laws of the universe state that when anything is mixed in any ratio the outcome is generally similar in volume and mass to the combined ingredients yet all that extra material is seemingly randomly lost which always irked me about these mods when it came to alloys and cables it is completely wasteful and doing this to a mod that has already taken a turn towards the asinine is just frustrating and retarded. WE ALREADY HAVE GREG TECH TO DO THIS.

That's your point of view. Objective stuff plz.

That being said, I love the new changes in IC², even though it's a bit too easy (thank you Greg) without GT. What I think is mainly missing in IC² is a whole set of machines designed to extract and process Oil, gasses as a powerful midgame energy (and ressource).

I love how everyone old in this forum is certain that the changes to IC2 to be more Gregtech-like are great, and that everything is too easy, while EVERYONE here is a two years ic2 player and a Gregtech user himself. The whole regular set up is now trivial, but in the sense of complacency rather than ease.

More to the point, all these new recipes don't do much but alienate anyone ne- oh right. nevermind, it's a feature.

Quote from Eliav24

I love how everyone old in this forum is certain that the changes to IC2 to be more Gregtech-like are great, and that everything is too easy, while EVERYONE here is a two years ic2 player and a Gregtech user himself.

I am a >2 year IC2 player and I hate Greg-Tech and don't want IC2 to become Greg-Tech 2.

I just don't really see ic² having a rather low difficulty and being able to use next to other mods like TE in modpacks like FTB.
Seems to me it's taking a path of being a mod that a modpack will be more or less centered around and depends a bit on addons to be fully satisfying. And because of GT being the most popular AddOn, it's having a lot of influence I guess.

Two: How can you hate GT and love IC2? There's way more fun things in GT!

Quote from SirusKing

What you are really complaining is not difficulty, it is not tedium, it is LAZINESS. It seems you would rather AFK waiting for a ton of refined iron to smelt then go into a mine for 20 seconds extra.

And I think that's the only think left that needs saying. There are those of us who don't want to sit and wait on a BC Quarry or a Mining Turtle for all our resources, and then there are those players who just do. Just because a feature requires more 'effort' (if you can really call it that) than it used to does not mean that said mod became more 'difficult'. It only means that the mod now requires a little more thoughtfulness than before. If that's difficult for you to do, then I'm not quite sure that it's the mod's fault...

Quote from SirusKing

What you are really complaining is not difficulty, it is not tedium, it is LAZINESS. It seems you would rather AFK waiting for a ton of refined iron to smelt then go into a mine for 20 seconds extra.

Incorrect. We would rather be able to create Stuff, like machines, without having to make a hammer, smash ingots into plates, cut plates into wires, then take other plates, smash those into a machine casing, make batteries and circuits using the wires/plates, craft those into a conveyor module, add all of the stuff to the crafting table to make a machine, then forget that we need pistons, go back and make a few of those, and finally craft a machine, being one that only increases your platemaking efficiency. It is tedium, plain and simple - because this is a game, where you can mold Diamonds into stuff with your bare hands, break through a cubic meter of anything in under 5 seconds (with some exceptions), carry several tons of stuff around without a vehicle, and much more - and it is not supposed to be as realistic/correct as possible.

Quote from SegFaulter

Incorrect. We would rather be able to create Stuff, like machines, without having to make a hammer, smash ingots into plates, cut plates into wires, then take other plates, smash those into a machine casing, make batteries and circuits using the wires/plates, craft those into a conveyor module, add all of the stuff to the crafting table to make a machine, then forget that we need pistons, go back and make a few of those, and finally craft a machine, being one that only increases your platemaking efficiency.

And you're perfectly fine with punching wood, crafting said wood into planks, turning said planks into a workbench so you can process planks into more stuff, creating a pickaxe out of wood, mining some stone, then turning it into a pickaxe that only mines stone faster? Might as well spawn yourself full diamond when the game starts by your logic.

Not to mention that IC2 recipes were always a bit complex and tedious.
But guess what, complex machines with complex parts need complexity

Quote from Nonotan

Two: How can you hate GT and love IC2? There's way more fun things in GT!

Basically what SegFaulter said: GT for me is not fun but tedious. It basically stretches the IC2 experience by adding intermediate steps that are neither entertaining nor fun, and in the end you - again - sit there with now millions of EU and nothing to spend them on.

The Forge Hammer is an excellent example for this: it adds nothing to the game, it doesn't even have a purpose resource-wise, it is just a time-sink, but at the same time makes building tedious for no other reason but to sink time. Game-dev-wise this is about the easiest way to stretch a game, but as well the worst, and I would love to see IC2 go a different path here.

Realism isn't entertainment, it's just realism. I got plenty of that outside my front door.

Quote from Two

Basically what SegFaulter said: GT for me is not fun but tedious. It basically stretches the IC2 experience by adding intermediate steps that are neither entertaining nor fun, and in the end you - again - sit there with now millions of EU and nothing to spend them on.

GT has AWESOME machines though, IC2 doesn't have even one-tenth the amount of features present in GregTech. I suggest reading into all the new features it adds, especially the automation blocks. The Advanced Regulator is the best thing to happen to Minecraft.

Most of the machines added by GT aren't simply "harder versions of IC2 machines" like you assume; they produce many byproducts useful for a variety of new stuff. Only the GT bronze age is hard, the early electric age is basically equivalent to IC2 in machine cost, except you need a little bit more coal and get auto-output on machines; everything afterward is SUBSTANTIALLY easier than vanilla IC2 because the multiblocks start letting you triple ore yield or beyond and can process things way faster than a mac -> washing plant -> thermal centrifuge chain.

Give GT a go, and focus on enjoying the content rather than rushing progression; I think that part is where most people get frustrated and quit, because they want machines as fast as possible instead of seeing them as long-term goals.

Quote from Nonotan

GT has AWESOME machines though, IC2 doesn't have even one-tenth the amount of features present in GregTech.

That's great, and I love a little challenge, but then I am playing Minecraft for fun and do the work during the other hours of the day and not vice versa. And the main difference between those is tediousness. Features do not add fun just because they exist, they need to be designed properly to be fun.

Example: let's say a recipe takes 20 diamonds to build. Mining diamonds is not a challenge, it just takes time. Give me a few pick-axes and enough time and I mine 100reds of diamonds without dieing once. Effectively the 20-diamond recipe is not adding fun but tediousness, even though it is "hard" to build.
A good example for fun is the IC2 nuclear reactor: it in the end only produces EU/tick for a given amount of resources, but you can spend lots of time fiddling around with the content, trying to squeeze out the most EU for the least resource without blowing it up. You can have a lot of fun with this "minigame", even though it takes time and in the end only converts resources to EU technically similar to a coal generator.

But then it is a lot easier to just write a 20 diamonds into a recipe then to come up with something as fun as a nuclear reactor, and that's sadly why most developers do the first.

Edit: For the pipe network have a look at ProjectRed. Very well done imo, even though it is not yet polished and slightly complicated.

Quote from Two

That's great, and I love a little challenge, but then I am playing Minecraft for fun and do the work during the other hours of the day and not vice versa. And the main difference between those is tediousness. Features do not add fun just because they exist, they need to be designed properly to be fun.

So, mining is ennoying for you ? And steps like the Bronze ages aren't only steps to make the grinding longer, they also have their own fun, like using the Hammer to find ores, setting up a steam generation system and in the End, GT has much more features than IC² ...
What you hate is, I guess, not to get your machines as fast as before, because you ended considering it was normal to get those after X hours playing. I was a bit like that at first, but then I discovered making machines much more difficult to get on GT made MultiBlocks, levelling machines such as the BF, the Impl. Compressor or the I. Grinder extremly enjoying to get, much more than getting a macerator on IC² ...

Quote from Two

But then it is a lot easier to just write a 20 diamonds into a recipe then to come up with something as fun as a nuclear reactor, and that's sadly why most developers do the first.

But that wouldn't be tiers and steps. That would just be expensive recipies. One of the point of GT is to add machines that you use to get the following one. It's very simple, but it makes GT definitely worth playing MC

Quote from SpwnX

You dislike mining for stuff, while the game is called Minecraft?

In no part of my post I said that nor hinted it.

Quote

The same time you spend fiddling with stuff, you can spend to think ways to quickly reach your resource goal.

I could as well spent the time to learn a new language or watching a movie, but I decided to spent it on having fun with Minecraft. However gathering resources is only one part of the game, using them is the second. Let me put it this way: assume you have a full double-chest of every resource available and 10 of the biggest EU storage units available full of EU. What do you do with it?