Elevator pitch for BTW

[Wafflewaffle]

Recently i've ran into a little problem while explaining the wonder of HCH to one of my friends. He asked me "But what is this Better then Wolves thing?"... and boy it was like explaining Quantum Physics to a block of dung.

He was like "I like my bed and my water buckets!" and i was like "YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE!!!"

But then it hit me that before i played with these features, on paper, they looked severe and unnecessary (only now i see how awesome they are.). There is plenty of features in BTW that would be considered scary and too difficult when they really are not. Like keeping yourself fed, thats not difficult but when you tell someone that feeding yourself requires administration of fat levels and food sources they get all "i eat my meats and im fine, why complicate it?". None of this would be a problem if BTW was a separate game, they would be considered game features and would be readily accepted, while game modifications are prone to resistance.

So if you were to explain to someone what btw is without scaring them how would you do it? I've tryed "it makes minecraft a better game" to "it has windmills in it" and i still cant convey my message without sounding like an exited little girl... help?

[SterlingRed]

Triple post!

Yes I've had the same problem with a friend. Except he's a tekkit junkie. I can't seem to convince him that building machines after achieving god like abilities within hours of the game is not an accomplishment. He also put Minecraft on his resume' so this one may be a lost cause. My advice? Host a server and just get them to play it. Btw speaks for itself! All you have to do is to convince them to give it a chance for a few hours.

[johnt]

It makes minecraft into an actual game.

[Ulfengaard]

Warning: Image is large.

Insert BTW, and you've got a good idea of what it does for Minecraft.

Spoiler

Show

[Wafflewaffle]

As much as that is very true Ulf, lobbing casual gamers into BTW servers is pretty much the same as teaching your mom how to play D&D. These friends are not "casual" gamers per say but they played vMC for hours but their brains cant wrapt around the idea that hardcore buckets and hardcore beds are beneficial for them.

Most of them now what mods are, and they understand what the concept of a "obsidian tools" mod is or "this one gives your sharks!" mods. But when i say BTW is about making minecraft a better game they dont get it. For them vMC is a good game as are the thousands of other poorly planned mods out there.

Oh and thx alot for whoever took down the triple posts, my interweb has been kinda crazy lately.

[Sarudak]

I live to serve ;)

[FlowerChild]

My advice to people that have friends that play Technic: find new friends ;)

Seriously though, I've *never* been designing BTW for the casual gamer. I had a stomach full of designing for that kind of audience during my career, and I want no part of it anymore. Right from the start with BTW I was focusing on advanced redstone applications, and the stuff I produced was always way more challenging to use than the equivalent functionality in other mods. That trend has only amplified with time and spread into other areas.

So yeah, I'd say don't even bother trying to sell the idea to casual players. It's the kind of thing you either get or you don't, and through the course of this I'm just happy I met so many like minded individuals that appreciate the same kind of gameplay I do. Remember, I largely design this mod for myself as the target audience, so to me, anyone that also enjoys it is just an added bonus.

[Wgurgh]

I would like to add something to "find new friends" and that is to introduce minecraft to new players with BTW already a part of it. One of the guys I work with finally caved in and came too look at some of the things I had built that I was telling him about. He thought it was really neat so I loaded up the game on a few computers and we started a LAN world together. His first real experience with minecraft already had the real game added.

Now he is always bugging me to come over and play in our world and I often have to kick him out so I can sleep. Funny thing is, he isn't really the type I would expect to go for the extra difficulty of BTW, but he sure likes the extra tools and blocks that can be made. When I added the HC movement he noticed he walked slower through some things. Instead of complaining about it though, he started trying to figure out how he wanted to fix it. He now loves his wooden bridge/road and is planning other road types for our next time. Now next time he comes over he gets to learn about HCH :D

I have to admit, I have never been able to "sell" BTW without getting quite involved in the process. Showing things you have done and letting them know how much work they are will appeal to the right kind of player. BTW isn't for everyone, but it is for more people than think they would like it. Problem is that some people that would love BTW, like my co-worker, would be very hard to sell if they had been "corrupted" with other mods/modpacks.

[FlowerChild]

Problem is that some people that would love BTW, like my co-worker, would be very hard to sell if they had been "corrupted" with other mods/modpacks.

Or vanilla for that matter ;)

It's obviously harder to convince someone to try a harder alternative when they are used to playing the game a certain way already, especially if they consider themselves to have "mastered" the original (at which point questions of ego come into play when they're suddenly a newb again).

It's one of the things I'm looking forward to in starting my own game actually in that there won't be any preconceptions of how it's "supposed" to work. It will simply work the way it does, and I think that will make it a much easier pill for people to swallow, even if the difference is almost entirely psychological.

[Six]

... there won't be any preconceptions of how it's "supposed" to work. It will simply work the way it does, and I think that will make it a much easier pill for people to swallow, even if the difference is almost entirely psychological.

The thing with this, which I've said many times in the past, is that BTW is the game I imagined MC was supposed to become back when it went to survival. Notch talked about many things and plans in his blog and I always pictured survival ending up more like this.

[Litar]

When I've opened a BTW server I tried to find features that a person would like. For example theres one pharmacology student who really loved Hardcore Sheep. He spent every minute to get all the colors;) In the meantime, he was also trying other BTW features and - surprise, surprise - he learned to like them. Other guy - a builder - loved sidings, mouldings, corners and all the aesthetic blocks.

I even converted a BC/IC/RP guy - he played with us at first to prove that the server wont last long and that BTW is shit and now he's one of the eagerest to play (we play only on weekends - he goes on excited that he cant wait for the weekend:D)

So my advice is - if you think your friend might be scared off by HC buckets - don't tell him about them. Tell him about stuff that you think he might like.

[BlackCat]

Redstone redstone redstone a thousand times redstone!

Redstone is worth learning in BTW even if you've been uninterested by it in the past, the amazingness that is BTW redstone is not to be underestimated.

Not to mention vanilla minecraft has little to no *real* automation, even in 1.5 it is janky pseudo-automation

But yeah, redstone in BTW is about as addicting as...well you get the idea :p

[Zerg Rusher]

I actually used to live on the dark side with tekkit but I always had a problem with my friends could fly and shoot lasers after a couple of hours so one of my friends that had the same point of view (he is a player on these forums but shall not be named unless he requests it) installed btw for me and I was so bad at it but that was what i liked about it.

It actually made me think and not just get everything I wanted when I wanted even though when i started i wanted to hack in hemp because was used to tekkit wanted it straight away T.T

For this I Thank flower child for the awesome way to re-enjoy minecraft

[Solymr]

Oh the irony: my friend introduced me to this mod not long after 3.00 came out. I loved it and have been playing with it since then.
That friend hasn't touched the mod until it came for SMP and I made a server with it. He and another friend joined and the only thing they did was poke each other to death with sticks.
What did I do? I gave them hafts and told them they were reinforced sticks, and pitted them into a custom made arena for them to fight to death while I continued going up the tech tree on my own. Then I pwn'd them with my battleaxe and claimed their heads. Fun times.

[AngelWithDirtyHands]

I don't think I've ever felt 'accomplished' with BTW - and that's part of what I like about it. I'm not exactly a hardcore gamer, but although BTW is sometimes infuriating, and I find a lot of the parts that other players take for granted to be quite difficult, I always come back. BTW fits really well with the idea of a sandbox, and gives you the option to work on what you want, when you want to. It means that, even if I've been slain trying to make a mob trap in the Nether umpteen times, I can leave it and work on steel production, or automate a farm. Yeah, it can be bloody hard - but I still get a heck of a lot of enjoyment out of it, and that's why it racks up the hours of play ^_^

[tom_savage]

I usually swing the automation bat. Anyone who likes puzzles can easily get roped in when you show them some automation modules. The workings and blocks are too intriguing to pass up.

[Gilberreke]

It's actually very easy. Sell it to them as "ultra hardcore mode". Lots of gamers love a challenge. Don't try to persuade them, challenge them.

"I play a mod called BTW. I'd let you play, but you couldn't handle it."

Watch them trip over each other trying to play it.

[Lars]

It's actually very easy. Sell it to them as "ultra hardcore mode". Lots of gamers love a challenge. Don't try to persuade them, challenge them.

"I play a mod called BTW. I'd let you play, but you couldn't handle it."

Watch them trip over each other trying to play it.

Haha, nice! I bet that would work =)

My advice is to tell them that BTW is all about mastery. Jesse Schell states in his book of lenses, that mastery is something that really appeals to male gamers. Which is why they don't always care if an interface for instance is difficult, because learning to deal with it also appeals to the mastery hungry beasts that are men.

Better Then Wolves is a mod that challenges you and ultimately makes you feel better about yourself when you get shit done. Also, it gives bragging rights.

Hmm, maybe FC should add HCR (Hard Core Romance), so besides becoming a real men with bragging rights, the game will also teach you how to pick up steaming dames. I bet that would get their attention!

[Gilberreke]

Haha, nice! I bet that would work =)

My advice is to tell them that BTW is all about mastery. Jesse Schell states in his book of lenses, that mastery is something that really appeals to male gamers. Which is why they don't always care if an interface for instance is difficult, because learning to deal with it also appeals to the mastery hungry beasts that are men.

Better Then Wolves is a mod that challenges you and ultimately makes you feel better about yourself when you get shit done. Also, it gives bragging rights.

Hmm, maybe FC should add HCR (Hard Core Romance), so besides becoming a real men with bragging rights, the game will also teach you how to pick up steaming dames. I bet that would get their attention!

Yeah, I think we're talking about the same thing. It's a good lesson for game designers too. In fact, I think part of the reason that Minecraft got popular was because everyone and his dog was saying how this game was killing them fast. The first few months of survival MC were littered with players not knowing the meta at all, and thus just dying all the time.

That did attract me to it and I suspect a lot of others.