Hardcore Modes impacting overall balence

[Gen]

Disclaimer: This is just an open letter as to my opinions and arguments, any reader reserves the right to take them on-board or ignore them.



Long have I been a fan of the BTW 'total conversion' mod, and believed that it was as Minecraft should have taken things, rather than as it has progressed. Yet with the last few updates I believe a few elements have significantly undermined the 'development of emergent behaviours', 'the nature of technological/game progression' and the 'fun element' for the player.

Let me start with the last of the three points, it is best summed up with the statement;

“Better than Wolves has become like World of Warcraft; too much grinding.”

The clearest argument I might make here revolves around the recent addition of 'Hardcore Tools' while excellent in principle, it is eroded by;

1. For a good deal of the early game (of which most people will spend the most time on), tools are very low durability. This leads to having to 'grind more resources', 'to grind more resources'. For instance, a Stone Axe is now your primary weapon in the early game, but you may need to craft 10 or more of these items just to defend yourself as it appears that a single axe can only just about deal with ~1 mob apiece. Thus you really want an upgrade.

2. Time taken to acquire resources vs availability of resources in progression. The stone pick is no miners tool of choice (1.), yet given recent changes there is far less capacity to 'get an upgrade'. Iron tools are now 8 times more costly than they were, and given durability concerns, and the additional time to break blocks, plus the addition of hardcore hunger (less time can be spent mining in proportion at mining), means that you are 'wasting more of your life' sat grinding out blocks/items, just to achieve that elusive upgrade.

The great irony being that the time that you spent spelunking to gain the materials for an upgrade is not worth the time saved through having that upgrade. Hence one might as well stay with Stone Picks and Axes until they can create Steel, or can gain enough Diamonds, as infuriating as that may be.

I use Iron tools in this example specifically, because I believe this to be the most applicable area of immediate concern. It is not an endemic problem in my opinion, but it is a strong reason for the second major point.


The nature of technological/game progression. This has two aspects, the first; historical. Part of BTW appeal to players is that it allows one to follow a pesudo-realistic progression through the ages.

Yet, with the movement of wheat to only villages, animal husbandry comes before agriculture. Other than chickens, all other animals are irrelevant (apart from being killed for food) until post-windmill age.

This makes cows for leather a casualty-on-the-wayside for instance. Because by that point you could start to utilise them for lether you have done 'so much grinding' you've got the iron for iron armour. Likewise, because of the time to find a village, set up a wheat farm and infrastructure for it, you have already created a chicken coop that is producing more eggs than you need. So you don't need cows or wheat for food.

In essence, because the only renewable source of food at the beginning of the game is chickens, a player will only build a chicken coop at the beginning of the game. Anything else/more is just 'because you can'.

Rather than diversifying creativity on which form of 'industrialisation' you want to create first/second. The restrictions forced upon you lead to certain content simply not being worth it to try and create/improve on a broader spectrum. This is the same point to not wasting time with iron tool creation; 'you might as well skip the intermediary steps'.

This is bad balance.

The other point within this second point is villages being the only source of crops. Historically one might make the point that early man did not walk in the wilderness until he found the magical village with crops that he could grow. On the otherhand this is a game...

Yet games require good gameplay, and it is the gameplay argument I wish to make in the statement;

“World Generation leads to BTW having a difficulty curve of Tree Puncher, to Bear Grylls style, depending on if you start near a village.”

How many good games have the difficulty level selected at random before you begin? In such a case there is no 'player skill' in being able to 'milk the meta knowledge of village spawning' there is either a village that you find within the first day or three, or you've got to go down the no village root. Because otherwise your going to starve since hardcore hunger reduces a good ability of your capacity to explore in the early game.

Villages represent a jump that might be comparable to starting as a level 1 character with nothing in your generic RPG, to starting as some level 30 character with all the fancy healing spells right away. i.e. too much advance in one location.


My overall critique here is mostly solved by allowing wheat to 'return to its home' in the grasslands and plains of the world. Ok, you might have to still find the 'rare wheat grass' or what-have-you, but its more common and lessens a village as being the truly massive advance it is currently. Even if you find wheat grass you may need to find a village for the other crops. Or mix and match, carrots naturally like sandy soil, potatoes naturally grow on plateaus. It's something to think about.

BTW likes to take the realistic slant, it also likes to encourage emergent behaviour and player creativity to solving problems. Some of this has been lost in the recent updates.



Emergent behaviour is my last point. I have already highlighted two emergent behaviours as a result of the change to iron and wheat/villages “which are bad M'kay?”. The recent changes have also retarded others that were good. Namely transport networks via rail.

As an example, if I am not mistaken it requires 56 blocks of iron ore to get 16 rails. A nether rail to connect Hardcore spawns to a location may be several hundred to perhaps a thousand blocks or so. At your highest efficiency possible, you need around half as many iron ore blocks as the distance to location.

This cost is prohibitive. Hence it kills the emergent behaviour to build such a rail line in single player. In multiplayer you might have enough people to put together such resources, particularly as the utility value is much better to prevent so many people 'failing about in the wilderness', but in single player you are just going to flail around/disable that mode/use a 3rd party program to direct you back/cheat.


If there are any suggestions in any of this they would be;

A) A rethink of wheat/crop availability.

B) The efficiency of iron ore smelting to nuggets.

Thus to help 'even out' the key concerns I raise in this post. However, I want to state this as a matter of discussion if people think similarly to me about these concerns, and if they warrant thought, or if it is just me that thinks these things. Afterall, it is more a question of balance in better than wolves, rather than any content suggestion.


Thankyou for your time and consideration.

Gen

[Graphite]

I'll leave the meat of the matter to those that are more awake than me, but I can atleast address your worries about rail networks. In BtW, iron ore is not intended to be your primary source of iron, only your initial one. If you require loads of iron, a mob-farm is the way to go as you can then smelt down the zombies' iron gear for more than enough iron ingots to build immense rail-networks.

[Shengji]

You may wish to check up on the history of agriculture and animal herding. Agriculture was born in Arabia, shortly after (in the historical sense) the first humans left Africa, yet the nomad animal herders have left cultural artefacts pre-dating the change in the sea level which allowed humans to leave Africa. You may also want to check on the distribution of wild wheat. You can't just scrape any old seeds up from the wilderness and expect wheat. It grew in a specific valley in a specific area on the Arabian peninsular. Are you seriously suggesting you would prefer if the place to get your seeds was limited to one tiny part of the minecraft world?

I've just started a new game. Time taken to iron sword: 5 minutes.... midday on the first day. Yes I rushed to it, but I did so in a sustainable way, after building the nights shelter and gathering food enough for 2-3 days.

Personally I do need to spelunk to find materials, because in my world I have BOD installed and it is more efficient than stripmining. I have BOD installed because I love the emergent gameplay having to spelunk provides! I also love having a mine at a physical location and build up my transport networks to connect. It's my understanding that spelunking is not optimal without BOD because the materials are spread reasonably evenly through the world limited to their various heights, so if one wishes to find iron, one need only dig down to below sea level and stripmine. Seems with my lack of practice and inexperience with non-BOD worlds, I gathered enough for an iron pick in only 6 minutes 10 seconds. Then using my iron pick, I had enough for another in 3 mins 1 second. Perhaps you are just not finding the most efficient way to do things?

I see your point about leather armour, but isn't that the same with every other version of BTW and vanilla - it takes way longer to kill cows and get the leather than it takes to mine out the required amount of iron? At least with HC Movement, FC has given us a reason to make leather armour now!

As you seem to be really hung up on realism somehow being a positive thing in games, isn't the notion that farming cattle is really difficult whereas keeping chickens is simple appealing to you. I say this as someone who grew up on a farm which had both cattle and chickens. I started looking after the chickens when I was 5 and apart from one incidence of a cock chasing me up a climbing frame (pun very much intended) I managed magnificently. I'm yet to see a 5 year old farm cattle, even Dexters.

As for saying there is no reason to farm animals other than chickens at any point in the game - venturing out from your safe walls is dangerous. If I want a suit of leather armour, I don't want to roam the world looking for cows to slaughter, I want them in my farm. That's far more than "because I can"

I could go on but I won't, suffice to say I think you are too hung up on the way you have always done things and not open enough to adapting how you play. As for your comments about emergent gameplay, they seem rather at odds of your dislike of the random starting conditions.

And may I just name one game with a random difficulty which was almost universally acclaimed as the best game since sliced bread? Faster than light.

PS. I find your attempted use at changing text size and bold highlighting obnoxious. I also highly suspect you are an alt of a regular poster, I find this utterly detestable and cowardly.

[Taleric]

I disagree with your view on iron and tool durability.

Once established, iron is in more than sufficient abundance with enchanted speed mining, mob grinding and structure looting (lord I love melting those iron doors back down!) The initial "grind" to establish/return-to your base is the perfect play just short of full hardcore.

On the rail you may have a point. Between abandoned mine shafts, iron on hand and minimizing distance via nether travel, ambitious projects take a great deal of time.

I am torn on wheat as I prefer crops to be with the distant villages to prevent that massive launch pad it provides. I do see the problem with not being able to breed cattle. Chickens and seeds are my go to for first sustenance automation. Not being able to do similar with cattle till much later prevents more leather armor use in lieu of construction materials. Maybe an abundance of clipped grass with low breed rates or have animals in a pen have a low chance to breed would help. Ultimately I seek out my first village before it is too much of an issue cause I gotta have my sandwiches ;)

Hope some of these points moderate your concerns.

[Foxy Boxes]

1. For a good deal of the early game (of which most people will spend the most time on), tools are very low durability. This leads to having to 'grind more resources', 'to grind more resources'. For instance, a Stone Axe is now your primary weapon in the early game, but you may need to craft 10 or more of these items just to defend yourself as it appears that a single axe can only just about deal with ~1 mob apiece.

Now you see, this is where I stopped reading. On easy an axe'll kill maybe six mobs. Let's say that's halved with each difficulty. That means on hard it's around 1.5 mobs. This indicates you're playing on hard. Now a quick glance over gives the impression that you're whinging that it's too hard under the pretense of emergent gameplay being altered.

So yeah no, play on a lower difficulty if you're finding it hard.
Also, stone tools only wear away *that* quickly if you're stripping mining. And if you are, well that's your fault for trying to strip mine with stone tools.

Also:

[Graphite]

Spoiler

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Now you see, this is where I stopped reading.

Also:

If you're going to post tired old memes about posts being bad (seen it thrice in one day now, all on BtW related threads), you could atleast have the decency to actually read said post. Posting something like this is simply borderline troll-baiting intended to dismiss any concerns or points the original poster might've had without actually adressing any of them directly.

Now, being quite aware that me posting this is part of said derailment: let's get back on topic. If you disagree with me, by all means start a thread in off-topic to discuss it.

[Stormweaver]

There isn't a whole lot more that can be said, but what it really comes down to is:
1) Mobs are scary. Steve shouldn't be fighting them.
2) Sticks strapped to rocks are not supposed to be all powerful; crafted iron tools are not supposed to be disposable.
3) Spawning next to a village is virtually impossible, since spawning near one renders it abandoned.

Basically, trying to play the game like you're used to playing vanilla will only end up with tears and frustration. Think more Dwarf fortress or Don't Starve - BTW can, and will kill your steve. Often in fun ways.

[Simurgh]

Wall of text spoilered

Spoiler

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Problem:

tools are very low durability

Solution - upgrade to better tools, spend time gathering enough resources to ensure adequate supply of tools, low level enchantments.

Problem:

a single axe can only just about deal with ~1 mob apiece.

Solution - Craft a bow, craft a sword, loot a sword from a zombie, avoid fighting where possible.

Iron tools are now 8 times more costly than they were

They're 9 times more costly now. Theyre massively better too if you try using them.

The great irony being that the time that you spent spelunking to gain the materials for an upgrade is not worth the time saved through having that upgrade. Hence one might as well stay with Stone Picks and Axes until they can create Steel, or can gain enough Diamonds, as infuriating as that may be.

If you don't enjoy that activity then don't do it? Personally I love spelunking, it's tons of fun, and love the feeling when every branch of a cave system has been conquered and lit up. The loot is just your reward. If you don't find an activity fun then no reward is going to make it satisfying, if it is fun then any reward is a bonus. I also get the impression you haven't spent time using the iron tools, as they are much faster than stone now and last a lot longer than they used to. Also yknow the crucible makes crafting them worthwhile in early game - just ensure you stash them for future recycling.

In essence, because the only renewable source of food at the beginning of the game is chickens, a player will only build a chicken coop at the beginning of the game. Anything else/more is just 'because you can'.

Thats funny, as in my two previous worlds I had no chickens. In one I lived on fish and whatever meat I could hunt, in the other I found a spider spawner - set up a small grinder using some water, fences and a cauldron and subsisted on pumpkin seeds, spider eyes, fish and any meat I could find till I got melons.

World Generation leads to BTW having a difficulty curve of Tree Puncher, to Bear Grylls style, depending on if you start near a village.

If you start near a village you'll find its deserted. Part of the skill in the game comes from adapting to whatever is available

if I am not mistaken it requires 56 blocks of iron ore to get 16 rails.

There are abandoned mineshafts everywhere. They are full of the stuff. Personally once I got to windmill tech level I have never run out of iron - it's been much tighter than it used to be, but never actually none left.

Also about the armour - I have a set of iron armour and do you know what I spend most time wearing? Tanned leather. I keep my iron near a nether fort as its the only place you really have much difficulty with mobs.

You spend time saying this stifles emergent behaviours etc. I have chicken boxes to distract spiders from me when I'm in base, I'm tacking (and failing) at building my first mob trap, I'm going out and exploring the world around my base, building roadways, bridges and rail networks. If anything this mod promotes emergent behaviours and thinking outside the box, something you dont seem to do.

*edit*
In fact exactly what Stormweaver said, that pretty much sums up what I think.

[eternal8phoenix]

Warning: Wall o' text

1. For a good deal of the early game (of which most people will spend the most time on), tools are very low durability. This leads to having to 'grind more resources', 'to grind more resources'. For instance, a Stone Axe is now your primary weapon in the early game, but you may need to craft 10 or more of these items just to defend yourself as it appears that a single axe can only just about deal with ~1 mob apiece. Thus you really want an upgrade.

Yes. That was the point. Otherwise getting iron is just too easy and doesn't feel like an achievement. Also if you're using an axe a mob, you're doing it wrong.

2. Time taken to acquire resources vs availability of resources in progression. The stone pick is no miners tool of choice (1.), yet given recent changes there is far less capacity to 'get an upgrade'. Iron tools are now 8 times more costly than they were, and given durability concerns, and the additional time to break blocks, plus the addition of hardcore hunger (less time can be spent mining in proportion at mining), means that you are 'wasting more of your life' sat grinding out blocks/items, just to achieve that elusive upgrade.

See above

The great irony being that the time that you spent spelunking to gain the materials for an upgrade is not worth the time saved through having that upgrade. Hence one might as well stay with Stone Picks and Axes until they can create Steel, or can gain enough Diamonds, as infuriating as that may be.

Yes it is worthwhile. Once you've got your iron tools, that's a hoe to make a hemp or pumpkin farm
for reliable food. That's a sword for better defense. That's a pick to get diamonds with, or start a strip mine if you're brave. Getting to that stage opens so many doors and is very fulfilling.

The nature of technological/game progression. This has two aspects, the first; historical. Part of BTW appeal to players is that it allows one to follow a pesudo-realistic progression through the ages.

Yet, with the movement of wheat to only villages, animal husbandry comes before agriculture. Other than chickens, all other animals are irrelevant (apart from being killed for food) until post-windmill age.

This makes cows for leather a casualty-on-the-wayside for instance. Because by that point you could start to utilise them for lether you have done 'so much grinding' you've got the iron for iron armour. Likewise, because of the time to find a village, set up a wheat farm and infrastructure for it, you have already created a chicken coop that is producing more eggs than you need. So you don't need cows or wheat for food.

Sure, it's pseudo-historical. And historically animals are easier than plants when you have to travel. Early game nomadic behavior brings greatest rewards. Trying to settle to early, as in real life, leads to tragedy. Hunters existed before farmers.

And eggs shouldn't be your food of choice. They provide very little hunger compared to other foods. They aren't a very efficient late game food.

In essence, because the only renewable source of food at the beginning of the game is chickens, a player will only build a chicken coop at the beginning of the game. Anything else/more is just 'because you can'.

Leather. Wool (admittedly less important). Problem?

Rather than diversifying creativity on which form of 'industrialisation' you want to create first/second. The restrictions forced upon you lead to certain content simply not being worth it to try and create/improve on a broader spectrum. This is the same point to not wasting time with iron tool creation; 'you might as well skip the intermediary steps'.

If I'm getting this right, you're upset because you have to choose which tool to make first and some suck?
Let me count the ways this statement sucks (spoilered just in case):

Spoiler

Show

1 Sword-useful for killing enemies and more effitient slaughter of animals
2 Pick-Faster mining, ability to get diamonds and redstone.
3 Hoe- Begin farming and establish food supply
4 Bucket- Water to remove lava from mines, milk for food and scrambled eggs
5 Compass- Return to spawn
6 Shears- Lure animals to safety for later


Really the only nonviable choice is a shovel.

This is bad balance.

No it's not.

The other point within this second point is villages being the only source of crops. Historically one might make the point that early man did not walk in the wilderness until he found the magical village with crops that he could grow. On the otherhand this is a game...

Ok, I'll give you it's less realistic, but wheat wasn't available from every stalk of grass. This makes it a better gameplay mechanic as it encourages exploring.

How many good games have the difficulty level selected at random before you begin? In such a case there is no 'player skill' in being able to 'milk the meta knowledge of village spawning' there is either a village that you find within the first day or three, or you've got to go down the no village root. Because otherwise your going to starve since hardcore hunger reduces a good ability of your capacity to explore in the early game.

Villages represent a jump that might be comparable to starting as a level 1 character with nothing in your generic RPG, to starting as some level 30 character with all the fancy healing spells right away. i.e. too much advance in one location.

Clearly have no idea what you're talking about. (spoilered just in case)

Spoiler

Show

Villages within a large radius of spawn are abandoned and have no crops. Therefore each seed is likely as good as the others

My overall critique here is mostly solved by allowing wheat to 'return to its home' in the grasslands and plains of the world. Ok, you might have to still find the 'rare wheat grass' or what-have-you, but its more common and lessens a village as being the truly massive advance it is currently. Even if you find wheat grass you may need to find a village for the other crops. Or mix and match, carrots naturally like sandy soil, potatoes naturally grow on plateaus. It's something to think about.

BTW likes to take the realistic slant, it also likes to encourage emergent behaviour and player creativity to solving problems. Some of this has been lost in the recent updates.

I agree that finding a village feels like too big of a leap technologically speaking. But I don't think "wheat-grass" is the way to go about it. And plenty of emergent behaviors have come about from the new updates. Look in the spoiler discussions for proof.

Emergent behaviour is my last point. I have already highlighted two emergent behaviours as a result of the change to iron and wheat/villages “which are bad M'kay?”. The recent changes have also retarded others that were good. Namely transport networks via rail.

As an example, if I am not mistaken it requires 56 blocks of iron ore to get 16 rails. A nether rail to connect Hardcore spawns to a location may be several hundred to perhaps a thousand blocks or so. At your highest efficiency possible, you need around half as many iron ore blocks as the distance to location.

This cost is prohibitive. Hence it kills the emergent behaviour to build such a rail line in single player. In multiplayer you might have enough people to put together such resources, particularly as the utility value is much better to prevent so many people 'failing about in the wilderness', but in single player you are just going to flail around/disable that mode/use a 3rd party program to direct you back/cheat.

Mob farms give you iron. Nether rails are a late game thing. This is a non-issue.



TL;DR You haven't played the new game long enough to understand what you're talking about. Go play survival for a while then think again.

[Shengji]

Haha, I missed that earlier - that you haven't realised that villages close to you are abandoned indicates one of two things - either you have not played the release of the game you are criticising or you have played it but cheated at the beginning of the game.

What you are doing is known on this forum as theoretical wankery - you have no business critiquing a game you have not played.

[DaveYanakov]

Also, wearing full iron armor just because you have enough iron to make the suit is a terrible idea before you get to the point where you can make dinners. The hunger loss rate and inability to swim will kill you if you try to travel long distance that way.

[FlowerChild]

Should I read this? I just woke up with a hangover after a night full of dreams of zombies in gimp suits in cauldrons.

Am I in any shape for this? :)

[Shengji]

Absolutely not, avoid the entire thread!

[FlowerChild]

Absolutely not, avoid the entire thread!

But...but...I can't help it! :)

I'm pretty sure this thread will give me the opportunity to bust out "Haha...noob" at least once ;)

[Shengji]

I'm just trying to help you savour that dream for a bit longer!

[FlowerChild]

I'm just trying to help you savour that dream for a bit longer!

Ok...ok...I'll give it to the end of my second cup of coffee before diving into it :)

Stay tuned for at least one snarky response ;)

[Nekhs]

How many good games have the difficulty level selected at random before you begin? In such a case there is no 'player skill' in being able to 'milk the meta knowledge of village spawning' there is either a village that you find within the first day or three, or you've got to go down the no village root. Because otherwise your going to starve since hardcore hunger reduces a good ability of your capacity to explore in the early game.

Villages represent a jump that might be comparable to starting as a level 1 character with nothing in your generic RPG, to starting as some level 30 character with all the fancy healing spells right away. i.e. too much advance in one location.

It's already been addressed, but I'd like to point out that I've died repeatedly and wandered aimlessly for miles on my server (pumpkins for me are my promised land, and I will settle down wherever I find pumpkins), and despite finding several villages, none of them have had villagers, crops, or windows in their churches. Play the game yourself and try to find a village. The trouble you have to go to more than compensates for the dramatic jump in technological advancement even one village will provide. Then find two more, and pray they have the other two crops you didn't get in the first village. Get back to me when you do.

It's almost as hard to find all three as it is to find a mooshroom biome for your mycelium needs - and ultimately just as unnecessary to early-game survival.

I mostly subsist on brown mushrooms and the occasional hunk of cooked meat, because finding a good swamp will set me up for miles and miles more of travel, but then, I have problems with settling down until I find my promised land. It just bugs me that I don't have pumpkins. :(

Even then, I don't actually need pumpkins to survive in a given area, I just really, really want them.

Also, if you go full-on nomad it is quite possible to over-hunt cows in a given area that you don't plan to come back to and get a suit of leather. And leather certainly does have a place in the tech tree, besides being the first armor you likely find. See, there's this invention called tanned leather, which you will need for just about everything. Therefore, getting cows together to breed them is significantly more important than something you'll do just because you can. In fact, all animals have a place in BTW, except maybe sheep, and just about everyone will disagree with me on that point.

Sheep are the biggest offenders for 'they're food and that's it', for me, because I just don't use wool for much, and even then I'm amused by the idea of horrifically mutating my sheep from over-breeding. Besides, then when I don't get a color I care about I have more mutton. And mutton makes kebabs.

Did anyone else notice that he spelled 'balance' as 'balence'? That's going to bother me now. I just noticed.

[FlowerChild]

Actually, that wasn't as bad as I would have thought. Obviously based on limited knowledge of the game, loaded with inaccuracies, way too verbose for what it was really saying (I skipped over multiple paragraphs) but at least it was fairly well worded.

To the OP: I suggest you get to know the mod better before launching into such an analysis, as you really don't seem to be aware of multiple systems at present. For example, you refer to how chickens are the only early animal you can farm, when dairy is a huge part of the mod at the early stage. You say that you can't farm crops until you find wheat, totally ignoring mushrooms, melons, and hemp. You talk about the durability of iron tools as if it's the same in vanilla when I've given iron tools a *huge* boost in that area to compensate for the effort required to obtain them.

So, my advice to you: play the mod more and become aware of the existing in game solutions to the problems you are observing before making comments on the balance.

It should be noted that the overall balance is something I'm still working on actively. Is it possible iron tools need a further boost to make them really shine? Sure. Is it possible diamonds require a nerf so that they don't overshadow iron so quickly? Sure.

However, such balance observations are of no use unless they're coming from someone that is aware of all the systems at play in it. At present, you're really not.

[Gen]

It is quite possible that I have 'not played the game enough' after-all I only updated from to 4.62+ eailer this week to see what the early game was like.

Yet having staved to death many times than I would like to count, from waiting for mushrooms to grow, and not being able to find apples, wheat or being able to breed animals, left me with the only renewable source in chickens and fishing, of which the latter is fairly more difficult to start than punching grass for hemp seeds and collecting all the chickens you can, and well...

...It just appears to be 'the best way to start'.

Far from giving you opportunity to diversify which is what I loved about BTW in the past i.e. could do the breeder route for leather/steak first, or agriculture route with wheat and hemp, while fishing and hunting would keep you going till then.

Now it just feels like I might as well just live off fried eggs since your 'hunter stock' of early meat gives you enough time to provide for all your exponentially increasing chicken based egg production needs.

Pigs, Cows and Sheep, at least feel to me, to be little more than a meat stock for hunting, since it appears (note: I don't like to read all the spoiler threads I only look something up when in trying to do/achieve something its not working/different from what it was) one cannot breed them in the early game.

It's limiting to the point I'd rather 'hack in' just a single wheat seed or carrot, just to get one started off, rather than spend 3-4 hours of my life wandering round in the wilderness (albeit keeping track of where you've been) before finding a village where it's all at. I get very little satisfaction from that aspect because the time put in conducting the search simply doesn't appear to be worth it for a diversified food stock. The 'Chicken Farm 9000' might be fully sustainable on its own for you in the time you spent searching.

Like in the hunting phase you pick up enough leather for all your strap and belt needs, and pork/beef etc. for tallow.

Then with iron, you make 1 pick then go straight to diamonds since time spent finding diamonds appears to be less collecting the iron for such tools.


What I am trying to get at is the incentive to 'tech up' is fairly lost, since without wheat you don't really need a proper mill, animal farming of cows and pigs can't be started till much later, by which point you've likely moved to diamond tools which reduces the utility of cows, and your chicken farm is already producing like a pig farm.

As far as I am concerned this kills my emergent behaviour to bother with these aspects of the 'total conversion' mod if I want to play strictly by the rules.



Ok, this is my opinion, and you others above, sure call me a noob or someones alt, I don't consider myself to be either. We can all have our opinions and you diagree with mine. That is fine. In my opinion there has been a retrograde step that comes about from the combination of last couple of updates that kills off a good deal of the 'fun and reward' in the early phases of the mod game.

This leads me to want to 'hack in' a small starting kit* at the beginning of a new world simply to save me a load of time in my life that would otherwise be spent 'grinding' just simply for gaining 'access to' the ability to start to build up.

What drew/draws me to Better Than Wolves is precisely that ability to build up and automate resource features in a fairly realistic way. Having to sit in front of my computer exploring vast amounts of the world for the resources to do this does not fill me with great satisfaction.

Satisfaction comes from being able to create something in a single sitting of 1-2 hours, which is about (at least my) typical single play length. Anything that is taking 2, 3, 4 sittings to go anywhere isn't satisfying. Perhaps I lack patience that's all.


So why not play creative one might point out?
What's the point in automating a world to produce resources when you have a menu that is infinite?

* I am literally talking 1 Wheat Seed, and Carrot

[OldMarriedDude]

You seem to feel the need to rush into higher tech why not slow down and enjoy the journey? Ya it takes longer to be able to settle down, but going nomad right off the bat gives you the opportunity to locate your "perfect" build area. Going nomad also gives you the opportunity to mark your territory making it easier to find your way home when you die (assuming you have HCS). Frankly Diamonds are better off being used for villager breeding than tools - except of course for 1 pick for obsidian. There is no reason what so ever to rush through to "end game". Just slow down and enjoy the hunt for what you want. Keep in mind you do not REQUIRE wheat, carrots or potatoes to survive. Also remember that sheep and cows will follow tall grass so you can collect them before you are ready to breed them. The cows give you milk for some recipes. Flowerchilds limiting access to wheat carrots and potatoes has actually given us the ability to live on other types of food, we just have to figure out a new play style. Seriously "hacking" an item into BTW is completely ridiculous and uncalled for. I would recommend adapting your play style instead of cheating.

[Stormweaver]

I can't really see a difference between Minecraft's early game food system (grow wheat, breed cows, get steak) and BTW's (grow hemp/pumpkins, breed chickens, get eggs and chicken) other than that you can, and are encouraged later actually improve on BTW's system instead of being set for life within the first few days of starting a world. After all, playing BTW while relying on omelettes and scrambled eggs is kinda like living of vMC melons; possible, but kinda tedious.

It's not like the diversity isn't there; fried eggs are horribly inefficient when you can milk cows or farm mushrooms to go with them; you're just using different crops to what you would in a vMC game. When you factor in the sheer amount of food you need in order to travel while wearing any form of armour, you *can't* rely on cheap foodstuffs, simply because you won't have the inventory room.

...umm, since I seem to have forgotten where I was going with that spiel, just remember that BTW has rearranged practically the entire vMC 'tech tree' and that simply because you're used to doing something at the beginning of the game, doesn't make it possible here. Breeding is an achievement now, as it should be.

[eternal8phoenix]

snip

You seem reasonable enough, but I do think you need to slow down your playstyle a bit.

Chickens are a great starter farm, sure. But the resources you get from them dwindle in effectiveness for the later game. Fishing and hunting/foraging are also good ways to start. I think you're trying to settle down way too early. Go nomad and find somewhere awesome to build. Who knows, you might find an inhabited village before you want to settle.

No idea how you previously managed to be a breeder of livestock without a farm set up. Pretty impressive there :P
Fishing and hunting are still viable methods of getting going though.

And in regards to wheat/carrots not being worth finding, I think you're wrong. There have been new recipes added and more effective food sources. When you have an established farm going, You can get way better food resources which you can use. Like I said, chickens may be sustainable for the early game, but the late game supplies are so much better you won't remember why you made that argument.

Also if your getting that much leather, I'm bloody surprised. I'm still scrabbling around for a suit of leather armor, let alone belts and tallow.

Sure, diamonds are a bit overpowered at the moment, what with the iron change although I think that's on FC's list of things to do. But you do need 2 diamonds to breed villagers now that FC eliminated their door fetish. And there are other resources that need diamonds too. After a diamond pick, I'm hoarding my diamonds.

I'd argue that a mill is still important without wheat, seeing as tanned leather armor is better than leather without the penalties of Iron. Not to mention you can still progress up the tech tree, especially seeing as you apparently already have enough leather for straps.

You want to hack in a stater kit? Be my guest. We can't stop you. But it does take a great deal of satisfaction out of the game. You didn't have to work for that wheat/carrot field. So there's no pride in looking over what you have made from it.

For me, satisfaction is coming from each day I survive, each tiny step forward. I was giddy with excitement when I found a desert temple with enough diamonds for a pick and getting to the nether. Being able to finish something like a windmill in 2 hours seems....cheap to me. I think patience is a skill you should learn.

[Simurgh]

Yeah I think slowing down and enjoying the game instead of "rush rush endgame woot!" would help you get to grips more with the early game. Bear in mind that it was probably FCs explicit intention to prolong the early game quite a bit - so by going all out to get to the next tech stage you're basically wanting to start the later game stages without the infrastructure and resources to support it.

[johnt]

BTW is a different kind of game than vanilla minecraft, now. It's not a game about building, it's a game about not dying. It's alternatively frustrating and exhilarating. I hate it half the time and love it the other half.

If you're having problems in the early game:

1) Turnoff hardcore spawn, and build close enough to the spawn that you can run to your base in the middle of the night if you die.
2) Do not fight.
3) Don't explore caves, except to grab visible iron near the entrance, during the day.
4) Don't explore the map at all.
5) Build your base underground, no above ground.

It should be many hours into your game before you even consider leaving your base, except for short day trips to scavenge for food. And you should only travel a long distance if you can mark a clear trail back to spawn as you go -- torches, packed earth road, etc. You can do a lot without any villages -- Hemp farm, pumpkin farm, chicken farm, cows for milking, you can go all the way up the vanilla tech tree, you can get enchanted diamond tools and armor.

You just need to be extremely cautious.

That said, I think maybe increasing the drop rate for leather might be a decent way to balance out the early game, considering how useful leather armor is and how hard it is to get now (given how fast the cows near your base disappear and the complete inability to breed them). In my last playthrough, I had an enchanted pick before I had more than one piece of leather armor and that doesn't seem right. I can't think of really any other issues with the early game, though.

[NotEvenOdd]

It's limiting to the point I'd rather 'hack in' just a single wheat seed or carrot, just to get one started off, rather than spend 3-4 hours of my life wandering round in the wilderness.

What drew/draws me to Better Than Wolves is precisely that ability to build up and automate resource features in a fairly realistic way. Having to sit in front of my computer exploring vast amounts of the world for the resources to do this does not fill me with great satisfaction.

I have to say I totally agree with this. The new style of play seems to demand an awful lot of time (and patience) to advance to the 'real' building stage (esp. large scale automation), the part I find most rewarding.