I've played ALOT of mods on MC. All other mods build off vanilla and just add more mid to late game stuff. None are "harder", though some, like TFC and Forestry, add tedious manual activities (Bees, etc) to prolong their play before you become uber powerful.
BTW is as difficult as a Vex map without the need for obsidian encassed spawners all over to make it hard.
Question about challenge relative to other mods
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DreamsofFury
- Posts: 333
- Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2012 1:00 am
Re: Question about challenge relative to other mods
First off, your getting two opinions in this post, mine and my, nubby still dies every other night at best, girlfriend.
A challenge? Meaning, in game terms, a "physical" or skill based one or a "mental" one?
BTW to myself and the girlfriend is mostly under the "physical" category with for me about 10-20% of it being "mental." For myself after coming back for the first 3 or 4 days it was "Holy shit rom-hack megaman" hard until I got the hang of things, for the girlfriend with my help ended up just having issues mostly remembering to eat and feed her chickens so she wont starve to death. Anything beyond that point isn't directly a difficulty thing but more along poor or misguided decisions, while we both have gotten angry plenty of times we realize its by our own fault and not the games or someone else thus preventing rage quits.
TerrafirmaCraft: On a difficulty scale of 1 to 10 I would give it a 6 at best, due to most of its difficulty stemming from as others have said, its tediousness. Otherwise nothing to say here.
Thaumcraft: Great and wonderful mod overall with sadly its only true difficulty coming from its research system, otherwise its vanilla with a buncha cool content.
Buildcraft: Great mod but mostly a feature thing than anything content wise and honestly makes the game easier though I do miss the simpler sorting I had from BTB lol.
IC2: Unlike all previously mentioned mods this one has zero to no physical challenge, its all mental, and that mental challenge comes more from remembering crafting recipes until you can get your "creative mode with a health bar," and that is solved by rocking a wiki.
Now per difficulty the only mods we have played that have any decent difficulty associated with them are not even "tech" mods. Mo'Creatures and Fossils/Archeoleogy. Mo'C is yes mostly artificial due to the extra mobs and stuff like that but even then it can be fun risking death hunting a certain mob for that special item you need for one of your "breeding projects." F/A has its own unique appeal even if you just want a few dinosaurs wandering around to recreating Jurassic Park has thier own challenges, one screw up and you have a Braciosaur breaking your pens and letting everything loose, while yes they are mostly mental challenges they have more challenge than most of the other mods available outside of BTW.
tl;dr: Newcomers might find BTW 'rom-hack megaman" hard but once you learn things then its the one and only mod with the most balanced challenge of both a mental and "physical" difficulty were others are one or the other.
A challenge? Meaning, in game terms, a "physical" or skill based one or a "mental" one?
BTW to myself and the girlfriend is mostly under the "physical" category with for me about 10-20% of it being "mental." For myself after coming back for the first 3 or 4 days it was "Holy shit rom-hack megaman" hard until I got the hang of things, for the girlfriend with my help ended up just having issues mostly remembering to eat and feed her chickens so she wont starve to death. Anything beyond that point isn't directly a difficulty thing but more along poor or misguided decisions, while we both have gotten angry plenty of times we realize its by our own fault and not the games or someone else thus preventing rage quits.
TerrafirmaCraft: On a difficulty scale of 1 to 10 I would give it a 6 at best, due to most of its difficulty stemming from as others have said, its tediousness. Otherwise nothing to say here.
Thaumcraft: Great and wonderful mod overall with sadly its only true difficulty coming from its research system, otherwise its vanilla with a buncha cool content.
Buildcraft: Great mod but mostly a feature thing than anything content wise and honestly makes the game easier though I do miss the simpler sorting I had from BTB lol.
IC2: Unlike all previously mentioned mods this one has zero to no physical challenge, its all mental, and that mental challenge comes more from remembering crafting recipes until you can get your "creative mode with a health bar," and that is solved by rocking a wiki.
Now per difficulty the only mods we have played that have any decent difficulty associated with them are not even "tech" mods. Mo'Creatures and Fossils/Archeoleogy. Mo'C is yes mostly artificial due to the extra mobs and stuff like that but even then it can be fun risking death hunting a certain mob for that special item you need for one of your "breeding projects." F/A has its own unique appeal even if you just want a few dinosaurs wandering around to recreating Jurassic Park has thier own challenges, one screw up and you have a Braciosaur breaking your pens and letting everything loose, while yes they are mostly mental challenges they have more challenge than most of the other mods available outside of BTW.
tl;dr: Newcomers might find BTW 'rom-hack megaman" hard but once you learn things then its the one and only mod with the most balanced challenge of both a mental and "physical" difficulty were others are one or the other.
Re: Question about challenge relative to other mods
Was just thinking it would be amusing if FC made only part of BTW forge-compatible -- all the hardcore modes.
Re: Question about challenge relative to other mods
Why not make his own API while at it or just call every modder to make thier mod a BTW addon?johnt wrote:Was just thinking it would be amusing if FC made only part of BTW forge-compatible -- all the hardcore modes.
And yes - it would be amusing.
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Thalarctia
- Posts: 367
- Joined: Wed Apr 11, 2012 12:54 pm
Re: Question about challenge relative to other mods
FC already made an API - It was called forge... :-pSlstoev wrote:Why not make his own API while at it or just call every modder to make thier mod a BTW addon?johnt wrote:Was just thinking it would be amusing if FC made only part of BTW forge-compatible -- all the hardcore modes.
And yes - it would be amusing.
Re: Question about challenge relative to other mods
He should make a new one called Anvil!Thalarctia wrote:FC already made an API - It was called forge... :-p
On-topic: I used to play Tekkit but quite quickly I quit since it was just... too easy to say the least, even someone brain dead can play it without problems. BTW gives MC a layer of difficulty so hard and yet so finely tuned that it's pleasing to overcome. BTW compared to other mods is hard but not tedious.
Re: Question about challenge relative to other mods
For me, BTW is the only mod that I've ever played that actually adds a gameplay element to MC. Going back to vanilla or any other mod now just feels like playing with a giant virtual Lego set. That's not to say that BTW is inherently more challenging, but that it's the only mod that I've played that actually involves a level of skill and foresight that no other mods require.
BTW has (and I mean this in the most positive way) made every other mod unplayable for me. For instance, when I play Tekkit the first things I do (after the easy 10min or so of gathering tools and finding food) are some mining and building a reliable power source and a quarry. Then I sit and look at my automated solar panel factory and my automated mining and sorting system and go: 'Erm...now what? And what was the point of doing any of that in the first place?' Meeting various survival objectives definitely makes MC more satisfying, rather than: 'Oooh! Let's build a nuclear power plant for some reason!' I just can't describe any of that as being a 'gameplay' experience. But this is obviously a matter of opinion.
Months ago I introduced my ex to the mod and she had never played any form of MC before. After guiding her through the basics, she never suggested to me that BTW was challenging at all. I think her thinking was along the lines of: 'Oooh I get it, it's a survival game. Survival is tough, this all makes sense.'
For me, no other mod that I've played has really been 'challenging'. No other mod has ever filled me with the sense of everything that I've been working towards always being at stake (right up until endgame), and that any time things could take a turn for the worse with even the smallest lack of foresight or misstep. For most mods the focus of the mod is building, whereas in BTW it's the challenge of the actual MC world. So in that sense, as others have said, it's not really comparable at all, and that's a good thing :)
BTW has (and I mean this in the most positive way) made every other mod unplayable for me. For instance, when I play Tekkit the first things I do (after the easy 10min or so of gathering tools and finding food) are some mining and building a reliable power source and a quarry. Then I sit and look at my automated solar panel factory and my automated mining and sorting system and go: 'Erm...now what? And what was the point of doing any of that in the first place?' Meeting various survival objectives definitely makes MC more satisfying, rather than: 'Oooh! Let's build a nuclear power plant for some reason!' I just can't describe any of that as being a 'gameplay' experience. But this is obviously a matter of opinion.
Months ago I introduced my ex to the mod and she had never played any form of MC before. After guiding her through the basics, she never suggested to me that BTW was challenging at all. I think her thinking was along the lines of: 'Oooh I get it, it's a survival game. Survival is tough, this all makes sense.'
For me, no other mod that I've played has really been 'challenging'. No other mod has ever filled me with the sense of everything that I've been working towards always being at stake (right up until endgame), and that any time things could take a turn for the worse with even the smallest lack of foresight or misstep. For most mods the focus of the mod is building, whereas in BTW it's the challenge of the actual MC world. So in that sense, as others have said, it's not really comparable at all, and that's a good thing :)
Re: Question about challenge relative to other mods
Hmm. Interesting question. First, I agree that BTW vs. other games makes more sense than BTW vs. other mods...the way I see it, BTW is basically an entirely new game built on the old codebase, which is true of few (if any) other MC mods.
I would say BTW is *extremely* difficult. It definitely ranks among the most unforgiving games I've played. However, difficulty per se is not a bad thing. It seems to me that most game manufacturers simply add more tedium and reduce rewards when they want to tweak the difficulty. In BTW, every task is incredibly difficult but incredibly rewarding, so its challenges are not so much pointless torture, as a thought exercise. As time goes on, you learn strategies to deal with every danger, and as you do so, you progress. It sucks if you want easy, quick entertainment, but for those of us who like a constant mental challenge, BTW is perfect.
TL;DR: It's the hardest game EVAR. But AWESOMESAUCE.
I would say BTW is *extremely* difficult. It definitely ranks among the most unforgiving games I've played. However, difficulty per se is not a bad thing. It seems to me that most game manufacturers simply add more tedium and reduce rewards when they want to tweak the difficulty. In BTW, every task is incredibly difficult but incredibly rewarding, so its challenges are not so much pointless torture, as a thought exercise. As time goes on, you learn strategies to deal with every danger, and as you do so, you progress. It sucks if you want easy, quick entertainment, but for those of us who like a constant mental challenge, BTW is perfect.
TL;DR: It's the hardest game EVAR. But AWESOMESAUCE.
Re: Question about challenge relative to other mods
After this thread I did some research. Seems like the only two mods that remotely change the vanilla balance are MineFantasy and TerraFirmaCraft.
MineFantasy with Hardcore Recipes (yes, the author is very inspired by BTW) is the only thing coming in the vicinity of BTW's balancing.
MineFantasy with Hardcore Recipes (yes, the author is very inspired by BTW) is the only thing coming in the vicinity of BTW's balancing.
Come join us at Vioki's Discord! discord.gg/fhMK5kx
Re: Question about challenge relative to other mods
I just browsed that mod's thread, and as par with any mod that actually tries to balance gameplay, the poor modmaker is plagued by a bunch "can you put 'foo' in the config file so players can turn it off?" responded to with a "No, that would ruin the entire point of balancing it."Gilberreke wrote:MineFantasy with Hardcore Recipes (yes, the author is very inspired by BTW) is the only thing coming in the vicinity of BTW's balancing.
With the time honored classic return whining of "But it's just making it an option so I can play my Minecraft my way! Gah!"
Sigh...
Re: Question about challenge relative to other mods
The guy's been at his mod consistently for a while now, seems like he has the exoskeleton necessary :)Calo290 wrote:I just browsed that mod's thread, and as par with any mod that actually tries to balance gameplay, the poor modmaker is plagued by a bunch "can you put 'foo' in the config file so players can turn it off?" responded to with a "No, that would ruin the entire point of balancing it."
With the time honored classic return whining of "But it's just making it an option so I can play my Minecraft my way! Gah!"
Sigh...
Come join us at Vioki's Discord! discord.gg/fhMK5kx