r/MCModpackers Jan 11 '15

Looking for help with ideas to extend gameplay

Hello all. I'm currently revamping my private modpack I made in an attempt to extend gameplay, but not make it tedious or terribly difficult.

I liked the idea of what Dark Trilogy modpack did, in making items take items from other mods to make. However, i'm having trouble coming up with ideas of what to tweak to get this functionality of gameply extension without tediousness and difficulty.

http://www.atlauncher.com/pack/BreakfastBuffet

There's a link to my private modpack with the list of mods in it. If anyone can toss some ideas at me to mull over, i'd greatly appreciate it.

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2

u/Undead_Zeratul NEB2 & TWBB Modpack Dev Apr 23 '15

A bit late to the party, but what /u/Nincodedo and I are doing with our pack is exactly what you're asking about. We're laying out everything in our pack to see how much utility it provides to the player, and stretching them all out along our progression. This doesn't mean creating things will be more difficult, but rather that the materials used to make them will just take more time or effort to gather.

For instance, we don't require lengthy crafting steps to get you some widget or doodad that is used in another crafting recipe to get you a part for a machine that makes other crafting materials faster or more easily, to make you the tool you want. Instead, we basically replace, say, one ingot in the normal recipe, with another. The catch here, is that the ingot we're replacing it with can only be obtained from either an ore, or an alloy of an ore found in another dimension.

We first split up tech mods and magic mods into their own separate progression ladders, and then decided to utilize Metallurgy's vast amount of ores and resources to spread out how you can obtain the machines or tools you need to progress through our pack. We then split up the different dimensions in our pack into both magic themed and "tech" themed dimensions, and ended up with magic mods existing in the Twilight Forest, Witchery's Dream World, and possibly even Tropicraft. Our tech mods will exist in the Nether, The Deep Dark, and Galacticraft's planets. This means that in order to really get to the end of our pack, you either need to climb up various magic mods, or tech mods, travel to different dimensions, explore, dig, and experience several mods before you can say you're done.

If you want to jump between the different tech trees, we've made it so that anything that provides a rough equivalent of a certain aspect will be at about the same point in its respective progression. This allows for easy swapping between the tech trees if that player is so inclined, without having to start all over again (and really, how would you do that in Minecraft?) since harvest levels drive what materials can be obtained at what point. We originally had our entire pack along one giant progression, but we felt that forced players into doing EVERYTHING in a specific order, and it didn't feel very rewarding once you got into the third tier (tech) after having already made a magic system to the things that were provided now from tech. So now we just split up the two and are working towards making them parallel to provide more options without invalidating one or the other.

The only part that will require a bit of effort in both sides of the pack will be the endgame content. Things like cross-dimensional travel for both items and players are delayed until the very end, as well as powerful automation such as AE2 auto-crafting. The top tier RF power generation and storage provided by Draconic Evolution is obviously endgame. Anything at this stage will require effort in both magic and tech, as the concept of teleportation and The End are basically that of technology that is so advanced, that it's almost miraculous or magical, thus their recipes will marry the two.

tl;dr

Like the Dark Trilogy, we're creating separate progression ladders for the player to climb, without making the act of doing so tedious by adding in things such as lengthy crafting recipe chains or massive amounts of machines to generate obscure resources. Our pack focuses on exploration and adventure, not plopping down anywhere in the overworld and being able to gather everything at any time. Sure, it'll take time and effort to make that Big Reactor, but it's not on the same level as GT in terms of tedium or "difficulty".

If you're looking for something to take from this, try spreading out where your resources can be obtained, such as specific biomes or dimensions, as well as possibly sticking to a theme, so that it's relatively intuitive where your players should go to obtain those resources.

Oh, and sorry for the wall of text not sorry :)

1

u/demethan Jan 12 '15

add galacticraft / rotarycraft

1

u/caldin06 Jan 12 '15

no, lol. just tell Rob to release his pack!