Hardcore Bedding Thoughts and Showcases

[FlowerChild]

It's also the reason not everyone can be a good DM in D&D.

Actually, that's a great analogy. There are many similarities between being a good game designer and being a good GM (DM is too D&D specific for this cat ;) ). Non-coincidentally, I spent most of my youth acting as a GM on a daily basis ;)

But yes, a good GM will decide what will be the most fun for the players whether that be to their immediate detriment or benefit. He basically establishes the rules of the world that the players inhabit.

To give you an idea, one of the most successful campaigns I ever ran (which was based on Call Of Cthulhu) ended with one of the players voluntarily shooting the rest of the party dead in their sleep based on the mind games I had been playing with him for an extended period. This wasn't based on loss of sanity points or what have you...this was based on the player deciding it was the only reasonable course of action based on the information I had given him, and thus was the "right" thing to do. Nobody bitched or complained despite losing their characters to it. In fact, the main reaction from everyone involved was "holy shit...that was cool". It became a bit of a legend amongst RPG circles in my own town, and I heard many mentions of it over the years usually from admiring GM's that had heard of it through word of mouth.

I've pretty much devoted my entire life to thinking about games and what makes them fun. Being a nice guy is very rarely part of that equation. Challenge, adversity, consequence of action, inspiring new ways of thinking, and using a player's own perceptions and availability of information "against them", all certainly are.

[tom_savage]

To give you an idea, one of the most successful campaigns I ever ran (which was based on Call Of Cthulhu) ended with one of the players voluntarily shooting the rest of the party dead in their sleep based on the mind games I had been playing with him for an extended period. This wasn't based on loss of sanity points or what have you...this was based on the player deciding it was the only reasonable course of action based on the information I had given him, and thus was the "right" thing to do. Nobody bitched or complained despite losing their characters to it. In fact, the main reaction from everyone involved was "holy shit...that was cool". It became a bit of a legend amongst RPG circles in my own town, and I heard many mentions of it over the years usually from admiring GM's that had heard of it through word of mouth.

If you have any of that campaign written down, I would so love to get my hands on it.

I've pretty much devoted my entire life to thinking about games and what makes them fun. Being a nice guy is very rarely part of that equation. Challenge, adversity, consequence of action, inspiring new ways of thinking, and using a player's own perceptions and availability of information "against them", all certainly are.

I feel like I'm going dangerously off-topic here, and if you feel like talking about this stuff (I could understand declining), I will go make a new thread, otherwise, this will be my last comment on the subject. I once began writing a storyline for a game I wanted to make with RPG Maker (and like all my half-written stories, it never got finished). But the main point of the story was the introduce very gray decisions along the way, leading the player deeper into a couple of different groups. Given certain points of view, eventually, the person would come to believe they were making the right decision, when in the end the culmination of their choices would prove to be a variety of good or evil outcomes.

Aaaand to get back on topic:

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I picture of a way to store minecarts. It will dispense one at a time when powered. This would be useful for any minecart station.

[FlowerChild]

If you have any of that campaign written down, I would so love to get my hands on it.

Nah man, not at all actually. By the end of my GMing "career" (and that was one of the last, if not the last game I ever ran), I never wrote anything down except for the most high-level of notes on major potential plot points, and perhaps sketches of maps of key locations. Everything else was improvised on the fly to give players maximum flexibility in their actions.

Writing out adventures or what have you, tends to lead to an "on rails" experience where the players feel locked into a particular course of action. They know that some dude in the tavern is going to tell them to go to a particular dungeon or what have you, and unless they accept the quest given to them, well, the GM doesn't have anything planned for that contingency, so they'd best just go along with it if they want to play tonight.

I've found exactly that has become a bit of a running gag with RPG groups, where they'll jokingly say stuff like "guess we have to accept".

Anyways, it's something worth giving a try to. You really have to be confident in your knowledge of the source material and your ability to improvise, but if you can pull it off, it provides a much more dynamic experience in which the players feel like they are much more part of a living world, even if that world exists solely within your head ;)

Regardless, I don't have any of my old RPG stuff anymore. I used to own enough individual games to stock a decent store, but all that is long gone now :)

[XboxAddict77]

Aaaand to get back on topic:

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I picture of a way to store minecarts. It will dispense one at a time when powered. This would be useful for any minecart station.

That is really cool i've been wanting to build a Minecraft dispenser for a while just never got around to it. Thanks for reminding me i could even make one!

[FlowerChild]

I picture of a way to store minecarts. It will dispense one at a time when powered. This would be useful for any minecart station.

This may be rather painful to hear, but you realize the BD can store AND retrieve minecarts, right? :)

[tom_savage]

This may be rather painful to hear, but you realize the BD can store AND retrieve minecarts, right? :)

Haha, yes, I do. I just haven't sat down and designed one out yet. I was really just trying to add something to the actual topic. But thanks for the heads up anyway! My new project is probably going to be designing a nice compact minecart receiver/dispenser. Maybe even have a subsystem for sending storagecarts along the system as well. I should have something up in a couple days for you guys.

[devaking]

love the hC beddings!! give it that fear of the dark fealing again.

the only thing is that now i have a bunch of beds around my world doing nothing, and for a second i was sad for them. they no longuer had any purpose in the game..

then i thouth, hey.. they could regen 1 hearth for 1 food, while not changing spawn or making night to day switch. thus encouraging too build a farm and a ranch so you wont loose your new found hearts while starving

but then i remembered.. im a player this time not the GM....

just planting a seed

[Mason11987]

I picture of a way to store minecarts. It will dispense one at a time when powered. This would be useful for any minecart station.

This may be rather painful to hear, but you realize the BD can store AND retrieve minecarts, right? :)

I'm ashamed to say I forgot the BD could retrieve minecarts :(.

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A suggestion outside the suggestion forum, a lame suggestion at that, with bad typing as well. Gonna have a bad time.

[Elensaar]

So my Nether portal failed me, and I dove head-firstinto some lava...

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My waymarker system, established while I was searching for a place to call home, worked out great! :) Thanks for making this two-day trek necessary FC! That was actually quite awesome.

It also made me realize I need to go back to spawn and build a small fortress with at least the bare necessities. I felt very cold and naked without my tools and armour.

[Ecoweb]

I find it Ironic FC keeps Steve from sleeping, as this mod keeps me from sleeping...

[Mad_Scientist]

I'm trying to give hardcore beds an open mind, but I have to say, so far, I'm not enjoying it as much as the other hardcore features. As strange as it seems to say, I miss the satisfaction of going to my bed at the end of a long minecraft day's building. While mob encounters used to be mildly diverting during cave diving, they now take up so much of my time that I'm rapidly finding it tedious.

I look forward to seeing what the plans for beds are in future, but for now, I'll probably give it a rest for a bit..

[Poppycocks]

I'm trying to give hardcore beds an open mind, but I have to say, so far, I'm not enjoying it as much as the other hardcore features. As strange as it seems to say, I miss the satisfaction of going to my bed at the end of a long minecraft day's building. While mob encounters used to be mildly diverting during cave diving, they now take up so much of my time that I'm rapidly finding it tedious.

I look forward to seeing what the plans for beds are in future, but for now, I'll probably give it a rest for a bit..

Weeeell, you could also find it in to you to maybe build a defensive structure, like a wall, instead of using... you know, three pieces of wool and three pieces of wood to almost completely remove mobs as a problem.

I mean, you like building in minecraft, right?

[Ferrus.Manus]

Weeeell, you could also find it in to you to maybe build a defensive structure, like a wall, instead of using... you know, three pieces of wool and three pieces of wood to almost completely remove mobs as a problem.

I mean, you like building in minecraft, right?

The Ender Spectacles also makes lighting surrounding landscape much, much easier.

[Mad_Scientist]

Weeeell, you could also find it in to you to maybe build a defensive structure, like a wall, instead of using... you know, three pieces of wool and three pieces of wood to almost completely remove mobs as a problem.

I mean, you like building in minecraft, right?

I'm not yet at the point in the game where i have sufficient resources to build my giant stone walls yet, and getting to that point has now been made more tedious for me. Beds didn't remove mobs from the game. It simply swung the amount of time spend in game away from fighting them, and towards making other features.

Please understand. No game or mod is perfect. Every game I have ever played has features that I have disliked or I feel could have been implemented better. This doesn't mean it is a bad game, or that the designer doesn't know what they are doing. I've been involved with game design myself, of various different types. This is simply a feature that I personally dislike. I will probably still return to playing BTW again in the fullness of time.

[FlowerChild]

I'm not yet at the point in the game where i have sufficient resources to build my giant stone walls yet, and getting to that point has now been made more tedious for me. Beds didn't remove mobs from the game. It simply swung the amount of time spend in game away from fighting them, and towards making other features.

Please understand. No game or mod is perfect. Every game I have ever played has features that I have disliked or I feel could have been implemented better. This doesn't mean it is a bad game, or that the designer doesn't know what they are doing. I've been involved with game design myself, of various different types. This is simply a feature that I personally dislike. I will probably still return to playing BTW again in the fullness of time.

Can't say I really care man. You just aren't welcome here anymore.

[razar51]

Nowadays I tend to play SSP exclusively on a map with an island spawn, so the only time I ever used a bed was to make it day to grow my initial hemp faster. Since I live on islands, it is fairly easy to light the entirety of the land up, so I never have to worry about mobs anyway and always just continue with whatever I was doing when night occurs.
(I do end up swimming backwards holding wheat for a few thousand blocks to get animals though, should get an iron farm setup with a rail system eventually)

I do remember my newbie days in alpha MC rather fondly though. My first world is littered with waypoint markers and rails and I'm glad to see a change that encourages doing these things again. When I used to co-host a vanilla server I would always end up making a public rail system to various locations around the map, just because watching nice builds roll by was cool.

In short: Rail systems are cool and experimenting with them as a necessity for far out bases is a good thing in my book.

[BigShinyToys]

24 minutes is not long enough for me to bother to do something different at night. Day night same thing, I don't carry armor I have weapons and don't die very often. my spawn is on top of my base and well lit. The recent changes have had little impact on my play style. having played many days in FPS games and having a 1.28 kill / death ratio. the same skills cross over into minecraft making combat a simple task. I play with difficulty set to hard and feel no threat from minecraft creatures.

For navigation composes are very useful when I have been exploring I take surplus to make maps as I go and haven't gotten lost yet.

beds were useful but not much for me I say good ridden to them and brunt mine in a fire.

Random speculation on hardcore spawn.

+ wait time between death and spawn
+ random location within currently generated chunks or withing a x KM radius of origin 0,0 .
+ dieing sends you to the nether or sky dimension and you have to find a portal to reEnter the over world.
+ death is pentameter no matter the choice when creating world.
+ some kind of test of morality you must pass to be worthy of entering the over-word again failure results on world deletion in SSP or banning on SMP.

scared and excited to see what it actually is.

[Last_Jedi_Standing]

Random speculation on hardcore spawn.

+ wait time between death and spawn
+ random location within currently generated chunks or withing a x KM radius of origin 0,0 .
+ dieing sends you to the nether or sky dimension and you have to find a portal to reEnter the over world.
+ death is pentameter no matter the choice when creating world.
+ some kind of test of morality you must pass to be worthy of entering the over-word again failure results on world deletion in SSP or banning on SMP.

scared and excited to see what it actually is.

It won't be permanent and it won't result in world deletion. FC has said he doesn't like that. It's unlikely to be something as simple as a random spawn point, and I'm not sure why a wait time between death and spawn is 'hardcore'. I'm not sure about the Nether/sky dimension one.

Also, do you have some kind of strange auto-correct thing going on here? I notice 'pentameter' especially. :P

[dawnraider]

Pentameter is 1 quadrillion meters

[haphazardnuke]

It's also a poetry format.

On topic: The hardcore bed thing isn't a huge deal, imo. The first few nights, I never find sheep to make a bed with anyway. By the time I do make one, I have a large, well-lit base, at which point it becomes largely a convenience rather than a necessity. I'm with the several people who said they just mine or do other projects at night. I agree with disabling sleep. Hardcore death? We shall see. No sense in passing judgement until we see what it is, and no sense trying to guess what FC's planning since it will be awesome regardless.

[odranoel]

ok, i feel i really owe FC an apology. at first i must admit i was cursing him, and really considering weather to drop the mod or not. as hardcore beds really caught me off guard and sent me into a bit of panic mode at such a drastic change. (at least for me) the problem was intensified with my first day of playing, as i got creepered many times while trying to light up the surrounding areas of my base at night and suffered quite a bit of collateral damage to my structures. i was truly angry and feeling almost somewhat insulted. like this is a cruel joke hes playing on us. alas i couldn't let BTW go and i then made my post here earlier in this thread.

i was not all too surprised with FC's response, and now that i think about it more im lucky i didn't activate the ban button.

well its now been a couple days since being forced to use hardcore bedding and i realize i was missing the most important element of all that came with it. the ender spectacles! im now sure most people who are against hardcore beds, like i was, see it only as the removal of a feature. i my self ignorantly said its the first time btw removed a feature rather then expand apoun it. how wrong i was. the ender spectacles not only soften the blow from the removal of beds, but adds a totally new, unique, but more importantly FUN experience. in other words it again expanded the features the mod adds, rather then simply removing one.

in my childish rage at beds first removal, followed by many creeper hits, i had completely overlooked the spectacles at first. after i got FC's response here i returned to my battered world feeling totally betrayed. i then said fine, ill do it his way as one last time, made a pair of ender spec's and got to work. after about 20 minutes of identifying and lighting the improperly light areas in my base, i found my self having so much fun! not only that, but i was getting a better feel for the way lighting effects spawns and getting to know my own base of many months much more intimately. many times i found areas that i thought were lighted properly but were not.

now a couple days and many torches later, im not only starting to get secure in my base, but finding my self having altered my gameplay very similarly to when i first started playing MC. i made a clock for the first time in ever, and had a great feel of nostalgia. my base is looking better then ever and is for the most part properly light now. i find my self more engaged and aware of my surroundings. my whole MC world feels more "ALIVE". im having more fun then i have in a while.

this is when i realized, my god, he was right! I then felt a wave of great shame for the way i had previously reacted to the change, and how i had cursed FC in my mind many times for it. everything he had said before was right, and then some.

so FC, truly and sincerely, i am sorry. this has reinstated not only my faith in you as the force that governs my virtual MC world, but also the absolute necessity of BTW for this virtual world of mine.

To all those feeling crossed by HC beds, learn from my ignorance. just give it a try. and don't forget the spectacles, its something i believe many who are against HC beds are overlooking completely like i was. its not the loss of a feature, but the addition of several new ones! including reviving some old ones you probably haven't used in a long time, if ever.

edit:spelling.

[FlowerChild]

Thanks man. I really appreciate that.

As I've said elsewhere, I'm a total dictator when it comes to the mod's design, but I'm a benevolent one ;)

[odranoel]

Thanks man. I really appreciate that.

As I've said elsewhere, I'm a total dictator when it comes to the mod's design, but I'm a benevolent one ;)

hahaha well said. thats probably one of your greatest strengths. goes perfectly with what you said about people not knowing what will be fun for them selves. at least we have you to force the fun on us......weather we know we want it or not.... D: ..... :p

[elustran]

Thanks man. I really appreciate that.

As I've said elsewhere, I'm a total dictator when it comes to the mod's design, but I'm a benevolent one ;)

I've even seen you listen to your dread lieutenants once in a while. The important thing here is that you know the distinction between gameplay that's merely inconvenient and gameplay that positively contributes to challenge. You even tend to give heads-ups on rules changes. Never mind the occasional minion that gets flushed into the shark pit (aka back to MCF). It's a hard line to walk - making sure that the game is still fun for players without giving in to players' inherent desire for easy ways to win.

Alright, I'm starting to sound like a sycophant, but it's important to remind everybody once in a while.

[TheAnarchitect]

I also want to note that hardcore bedding has led me to make a clock for the first time ever, so I can mine all night and build all day.