Late-game is too easy

[Peter5930]

The early game is a constant struggle to survive, between avoiding starvation and mobs that can kill me in a few hits, and leave me crippled and starving even if I succeed in fending them off, but I feel nearly invincible when I'm wearing a full suit of plate armour with a smite IV battle axe, a power IV composite bow (doesn't even need to be broadheads; standard arrows are one-hit kill most of the time), feather falling IV on my plate boots and I'm carrying a stack each of healing II splash and fire resistance potions.

Adding any enchants to the plate armour beyond feather falling IV is just overkill, and I've got various arcane scrolls that I could use on my armour but don't bother with because I don't really need them, and I'd rather spend the xp on enchanting diamond items to get fortune III picks and looting II swords (for slaughtering my livestock).

Nether fortresses are no problem, and I can run around shooting blazes and whacking wither skeletons with my axe all I want without any fear; if a wither skeleton hits me, I just chuck a healing II at my feet to regain my lost health. If I end up in lava, I can chug a fire resistance potion, and although I have enough materials to make a 4-tier beacon of concentrated hellfire blocks in my most-visited region of the nether, I haven't really felt the need for one. The ender dragon is a pushover and I can kill withers without even taking damage.

The late game feels more like a limited creative mode than survival, since the danger from both mobs and the environment becomes largely absent, and my biggest worry ends up being that a stray spider will spawn on a surface I missed and will eat a rare colour of sheep. It's possible to die in the late game, but I have to be quite careless to let it happen.

It used to be that games got harder and harder and faster and faster until you died, but now they get easier and easier until you're an invincible demi-god who gives up out of boredom, and I miss playing games that got more challenging rather than less challenging as you played them.

[DNoved1]

You may have a point, but...

...and I can kill withers without even taking damage.

I'd like to call BS on that one, unless you're not actually fighting it directly. Exaggeration doesn't help anything.

During the late game, survival may not be so much of an issue, true. But Minecraft's and Better Than Wolves' strongest aspect is arguably the creative building portion. If surviving in the late game were still an issue, these aspects would most likely be skipped over, thus removing the game's strongest point.

It used to be that games got harder and harder and faster and faster until you died, but now they get easier and easier until you're an invincible demi-god who gives up out of boredom, and I miss playing games that got more challenging rather than less challenging as you played them.

I think you may be thinking too narrowly in terms of what is challenging. In the early game the challenge is obvious: simply to survive. The late game has its fair share of challenges as well however: building an enderman trap, creating auto sorting systems, creating a fully automatic wheat farm. In many ways these projects can be more challenging than simply surviving, and they also require a fair bit more thought to be put into their creation. They may not be a challenge in the sense that you're used to, but they are definitely a challenge nonetheless.

[jkievlan]

Yeah I think you're mistaking this for a combat game. There's plenty of danger, but mainly so that the process of getting resources to build with is a real accomplishment. In the late game, you want resources to be easier to get. First, it makes sense (the more infrastructure you have, the more resources you have), and second, many of the things you can build require vast quantities of resources. If you're looking for something difficult, build beacons. That'll keep you busy for a while.

Frankly, *none* of the game is about combat. Mostly, you're better off avoiding it. The mobs are there to provide resources and force you to be careful and think things through. If you want a combat game, there are plenty of them out there :)

[Peter5930]

You may have a point, but...

...and I can kill withers without even taking damage.

I'd like to call BS on that one, unless you're not actually fighting it directly. Exaggeration doesn't help anything.

I'm not exaggerating. I dig a long 1x2 tunnel, carve out a room at the end where I create the wither, then I back off and shoot it with arrows until it starts deflecting them, at which point I run up to it and whack it with my battle axe a bunch of times. The tunnel keeps it from hitting me with projectiles and I can just back up as it crunches it's way through the rock towards me. I've even been thinking about using withers specifically for the purpose of carving out tunnels to expose ores and provide space to build in.

During the late game, survival may not be so much of an issue, true. But Minecraft's and Better Than Wolves' strongest aspect is arguably the creative building portion. If surviving in the late game were still an issue, these aspects would most likely be skipped over, thus removing the game's strongest point.

It used to be that games got harder and harder and faster and faster until you died, but now they get easier and easier until you're an invincible demi-god who gives up out of boredom, and I miss playing games that got more challenging rather than less challenging as you played them.

I think you may be thinking too narrowly in terms of what is challenging. In the early game the challenge is obvious: simply to survive. The late game has its fair share of challenges as well however: building an enderman trap, creating auto sorting systems, creating a fully automatic wheat farm. In many ways these projects can be more challenging than simply surviving, and they also require a fair bit more thought to be put into their creation. They may not be a challenge in the sense that you're used to, but they are definitely a challenge nonetheless.

Thing is, I see the automation and mob traps as a means to get better equipment and face new dangers, so I run out of motivation to improve on them once I get them to the point where I have enough gear to take on the best the game can throw at me without breaking a sweat and can replace it fairly easily, and it doesn't really take much to get to that point; I just don't have a use for chests full of ender pearls and manually harvesting some wheat from time to time isn't a great hardship, so I lack a compelling reason to build an enderman trap and fully automatic wheat farm, unlike the compelling reason I had to build a cruicible (iron is suddenly reusable and can be obtained from mob drops) or an automated soul urn production line (I need a lot of them and they're a complete pain in the arse to make by hand).

I feel like there's nothing left to do that will yield a substantial benefit, and everything now is just about building things for the sake of it, and the reason I play survival rather than creative is that I don't really like building things just for the sake of it; I need a hoard of zombies battering down my door to motivate me to build things, and the knowledge that if I don't get an enderman farm and automated wheat farm built, something terrible will happen. Kind of like with dwarf fortress, where if you're complacent, next thing you know a necromancer has turned up at your fortress and your dwarves are being slaughtered by reanimated buffalo furs and oyster shells from the garbage heap.

[JakeZKAM]

Well for one the method you use to fight the wither is exactly what Dnoved said, an indirect way of fighting it. As for building.being a challenge making farms is much more difficult for those of us who aren't exceptionally good at redstone. In the end though the game is about building, and if you want to continue the challenge of fighting in game then well build somthing for it. Like say an arena, or better yet let a wither or two loose in your base, try and defeat them and survive out of the rubble they make. Also even with SFS i'd like to see someone take on the hordes of endermen in the end :p

[FlowerChild]

The game has to "end" sometime man, or at least the content that I provide for it. With BTW, that largely happens when you develop SFS and everything else surrounding it.

I can't keep adding on additional content indefinitely, as I am gearing up to moving onto a new game. If you've "beaten" the survival aspect, then you can keep playing as many of us do building up our world further. If that isn't your thing, then I guess you're done.

Really, this thread boils down to you saying "I want more", and me saying "no".

[Blazara]

You said you felt the late game lacks challenge: so you decide to fight the only overly dangerous mob in MC in a way you know you'll come out of alive. You can't complain about a lack of challenge whilst rejecting it. Set a wither free on the surface in a desert.

Automating for the sake of comfort and automation is what BTW is about (IMO). At it's core, it's a hardcore tech mod with bucket loads of balls. If you then say that you don't want to automate something for the sake of it when using a mod like Better Than wolves, or say that you don't want to build for the sake of building, yet play a game focussed around building, then you really should think through what you're playing and how you're playing it. If you want hoards of zombies as your motivation, play DayZ, WarZ, Left 4 Dead, COD for christ sake! I think you need to sit back and think a little before running off at the mouth about a supposed lack of challenge.

[Peter5930]

Well for one the method you use to fight the wither is exactly what Dnoved said, an indirect way of fighting it. As for building.being a challenge making farms is much more difficult for those of us who aren't exceptionally good at redstone. In the end though the game is about building, and if you want to continue the challenge of fighting in game then well build somthing for it. Like say an arena, or better yet let a wither or two loose in your base, try and defeat them and survive out of the rubble they make. Also even with SFS i'd like to see someone take on the hordes of endermen in the end :p

Hitting it with a battle axe until it died seemed fairly direct to me; sorry if I misunderstood.

To everyone: I don't see minecraft as a combat game; the combat in minecraft sucks and will always suck, but the same can be said of Dwarf Fortress. It's not a combat game and the combat in it sucks and is best avoided, but you can bet on getting your guts torn out as soon as you sit back and think you're safe, and decide you can't be bothered building that lava moat or whatever.

Having BTW come to an endpoint is fine, but that endpoint doesn't have to be king-of-the-world, where nothing is a threat anymore unless you deliberately make it a threat (like making a wither in the desert); you could have the tech tree terminate at a point where there are still areas that are extremely dangerous, and which will always be dangerous, even with fully enchanted SFS gear; just more survivable than without it.

[FlowerChild]

Yes, I am aware. However, your OP was talking about *increasing* difficulty as play progresses, not simply making the end state more challenging. I might have even agreed with the latter if it had been voiced in a more reasonable way.

Ok, this boils down to one thing that I should have stomped on immediately, but I initially read this thread right after waking up:

-This is a suggestion thread outside of the suggestion sub-forum. Don't do that.

-Don't post it to the suggestion subforum now. Your whine has been heard already.