4.69 Gameplay Balance Discussion Thread

[chaoticneutral]

Pigs do not feel to me like particularly useful animals, especially since they need a very rare crop or quite a late game technology to reproduce and provide only meat in return so I've been butchering any and all on sight, not caring about keeping a breeding stock. This wounld'nt bother me in vanilla, but with BTW being so cohesive everything has a place and there is a place for everything...but not pigs.

They are intended to be used in the late game as a source of tallow.

I actually just think this is clever. It's actually not that hard to throw a wall of cobblestone up.

True, it isn't hard. But even then, having a wall that grows on its own without work, with a resource that usually clutters chests even in the early game, because the growing mechanics are different of other trees is, well, weird.
(If they need to be changed or not is up to FC.)

[devak]

Pigs do not feel to me like particularly useful animals, especially since they need a very rare crop or quite a late game technology to reproduce and provide only meat in return so I've been butchering any and all on sight, not caring about keeping a breeding stock. This wounld'nt bother me in vanilla, but with BTW being so cohesive everything has a place and there is a place for everything...but not pigs.

They are intended to be used in the late game as a source of tallow.

Actually i agree with him: pigs have little use farm-wise, as cows fulfill their role better (aside from tallow but you get to a point where beef is overflowing anyway and the conversion rate isn't as painful).

However, i have found that pigs provide an incredibly useful early "advanced food" namely bacon and eggs. So yea, their role is to be murdered en masse as you herd cows for their more precious parts.

[Gen]

I must admit I too am a #Bacon & Eggs# man.

I have yet to update to 4.69 from 4.62-4.66c so I cannot comment there. My personal observations so far are only with regards to the HC modes inordinate amount of time to find wheat and the other food crops to allow animal breeding (which still itself requires a fair amount of time to set up, other than chickens [punch grass, get seeds, get eggs, crack and fry eggs/more chickens]). And that Iron is so much less useful than Diamond, since in my opinion Diamond is a more abundant source, whereas iron would take a very long time to collect to do anything. Although FC has said that he has come up with an idea for this.

Those are really my only gripes with the HC modes, since it 'kills off' a good deal of fun for myself, as well as in emergant behaviours instead leaving me with what feels like 'a set way to play'. But I don't think many people feel this way. This is just my 2p.

[pax]

Overall balancing is very good. Game developers might want to study BTW and Starcraft in their balancing workshops.

The nagging details:
1. The one thing, that feels most weird is the asymmetry between wood and stone processing. Wood lovers are allowed to show off with detailed buildings very early. Stone junkies have to make it to the end game first. It feels strange that you start with all that nice 3D constructions to power you raw material processing. A wood construction site requires at least the infrastructure for a saw. Then in late game, you look at a stone construction site and all you see is an anvil.

2. Diamond tools. Honestly, there is exactly one use-case: Build a portal. This is totally weird. Crafting a single diamond tool, dig 10 blocks and throw it away. It feels like a random "age defining" obstacle. [Off-Topic, i guess: remove all diamond tools completely, because they are non-sense. Just give the iron tool a little more power => Dig obsidian w/ iron. Discriminate it from SFS by doubling the digging time or something.]

3. The stack-size filter for the hopper lost a lot (most actually) of it's value since all food stacks are size 16 now. You cannot call this an imbalance, but it is a notable change for loot separation. Esp. since splitting iron and rotten flesh is more important now.

4. RS-Repeater requiring nether access and mining. Though i understand the idea, it just does not feel right. I cannot see any real benefit in the change. I'd rather ignore an ore than (almost randomly) complicating a core recipy. What is the result? People revert to torch repeaters. Side-effect: server load. To me the repeater serves 2 purposes; reducing server load and compacting circuits. That holds for all of the possible applications (even as a memory cell). I prefer server friendly circuits because that's good for my balance ;)

5. Health regeneration feels a little too slow at times. I feel like we lack a kind of context sensitive regen. Out in the dark, almost dead, monsters around... feels like no regen at all. Sitting at the campfire, eating donuts, cuddling the companion thing... feels like back to normal in no time. Ah my bed... Too troubled to rest? Wut? Well... i'm unable to do anything while dying. A fair comfortable rest to death would be fair...

And for the sake of feeling awesome: HC Hunger, HC Movement and visually turning axles, killing the light spam are honking great achievements! I wish the MC dependency could be factored out next.

(edit) PS: 6. The Wither, The Witch and The Potion... Potions are delicate for the balancing. We currently have a runaway wither in our world. Potions... first, they were useless... then HC hunger kicked in and they were very valuable... then the witch dependency kicked in and they were abandoned again... [Off-Topic again: I'd fall for nether quarz as a requirement for healing potion containments because they are such vicious alien like acid style concoctions or whatever. Just nether and special ore would feel right. Even dependencies to the phase of the moon or weather might fit... But witch, gharsty guy and whatnot => potion for the wither (which will probably still win)? Mmmm... it's somehow not right yet.

[Thalarctia]

3. The stack-size filter for the hopper lost a lot (most actually) of it's value since all food stacks are size 16 now. You cannot call this an imbalance, but it is a notable change for loot separation. Esp. since splitting iron and rotten flesh is more important now.

Iron ingots do NOT drop from zombies anymore, making this a non-issue. All iron from mob traps are dropped as items to be smelted down, if you then mix these two items together at a later point, the ball is in your court. Iron bars and ladders are still very viable hopper filters.

4. RS-Repeater requiring nether access and mining. Though i understand the idea, it just does not feel right. I cannot see any real benefit in the change. I'd rather ignore an ore than (almost randomly) complicating a core recipy. What is the result? People revert to torch repeaters. Side-effect: server load. To me the repeater serves 2 purposes; reducing server load and compacting circuits. That holds for all of the possible applications (even as a memory cell). I prefer server friendly circuits because that's good for my balance ;)

Considering the repeater is a tile entity, I highly doubt it does anything whatsoever to reduce server load. Getting to the nether is not hard, and is usually achieved way before most people start fiddling with redstone anyway.

[utakataJ6]

Been out since February or so. First of all excellent upgrade to MC v1.5, I'm unbelievably thrilled with your changes. What you've done with HCH and the early game is more or less exactly what I wanted to do in the past, just with far better implementation. Kudos.

First note. Slabs can be used in bizarre ways to make yourself safe without torches. This feels especially game-y with packed dirt.

My only other comment is to echo the people who've stated that the last gasp toward death is harsh. Reading Pax's post slightly before this, I thought of a rather sinister tweak - what if beds could be used to speed up your last gasp towards death when starving?

EDIT: I havn't yet gathered enough iron to make a dead weight, but I'm curious if anything in-game still allows the renaming of tools - which I believe serves an important function in making the player attached to them. I may have missed you making notes about tool philosophy, so feel free to educate me.

[Benanov]

It's fun in a perverse way that the challenge of flatcore-type maps has finally made it to something where I don't have to twiddle with the server. MC is hard enough as is now. :)

First note. Slabs can be used in bizarre ways to make yourself safe without torches. This feels especially game-y with packed dirt.

I see that as a time investment right now - you have to spend a lot of resources to make a slabbed dark tunnel, or you go hunting for coal to just light the damn thing. This is mostly an early-game tweak anyway. It'd wreck a *lot* of builds to allow spawning on slab.

Once you get a kiln (or an auto-kiln) you can make charcoal and there's no question - just light stuff, with slabs to get those hard-to-reach places and cheap paving.

Torches create lag on low-end cards; there was a lot of joking on Wasteland because I insisted on jack-o-lantern lights. Now, in the early game, that messes with your food supply. That makes dark tunnels preferable to me.

[milkmandan]

First, food balance is awesome and encourages you to get variety of sources as soon as possible. I built my first mushroom farm ever as a result of HCH.

I concur that value of milk seems a bit underwhelming compared to effort. Later game, number of raw eggs/chick gets pretty wasteful.

Given the iron scarcity, cauldrons are no longer viable as early game hopper replacements. Something to fill that gap would be nice as a way to encourage early mob traps/chicken farms. Babysitting fed chickens waiting for eggs isn't much fun.

Also, shovel durability seems a little low when compared to picks. Mostly just from the fact that it's based on number of blocks broken and not time used so it feels like they break too quick.

All in all, relatively minor annoyances from an otherwise great balance.

[FlowerChild]

If I could ask you guys to not reiterate points that have already been addressed by me, I'd be much obliged. Please keep in mind that I am reading all of these in detail looking for useful information, so reading ten posts that say "I know FC said he'd address this, but diamonds feel off" is just a waste of my time.

I concur that value of milk seems a bit underwhelming compared to effort. Later game, number of raw eggs/chick gets pretty wasteful.

Yeah, I agree on that point and plan to add an additional recipe to that end. What I want to basically do is create the early-game equivalent of "hearty stew", in terms of having a recipe that uses everything that is at your disposal in the early game to give you a "top tier" food item. Obviously, it won't have anywhere close to the value of the actual stew, I just mean that in terms of it being the most efficient use of the food that is available to you in the early game, and something that specifically rewards farming *everything* that is available to you at that point.

Basically, if someone creates a chicken farm, mushroom farm, and a dairy farm (and potentially a pumpkin farm, although that's trickier from a recipe standpoint), I want them to feel they've received acknowledgment from the game of that achievement in a "yes, you beat the early game" kinda way.

[ion]

i did a bout 5 restarts lately got bored when achieving SFS. the first days are really well balanced and i got really fast expert on surviving. love exploring and mapping everything. one thing that is a bit off is finding potatoes. they are really useless for a crop, low amount of recipes to be used alone. carrots on the other part opens up lot's of good food recipes. loot in the temples is fine by me

[savagelung]

Basically, if someone creates a chicken farm, mushroom farm, and a dairy farm (and potentially a pumpkin farm, although that's trickier from a recipe standpoint), I want them to feel they've received acknowledgment from the game of that achievement in a "yes, you beat the early game" kinda way.

Am I the only one that uses the cream of mushroom recipe? I have a huge supply of meat at the moment from a brief nomad period, but before that I picked up several dozen mushrooms from my swamp and made a boatload of the stuff.

If you live in or near a swamp, it is an incredibly convenient source of food. Have 2-4 cows in a pen next to a cauldron full of mushrooms and bowls, then milk them whenever you pass by. I will probably be using it until I can make sandwiches.

[Rianaru]

Basically, if someone creates a chicken farm, mushroom farm, and a dairy farm (and potentially a pumpkin farm, although that's trickier from a recipe standpoint), I want them to feel they've received acknowledgment from the game of that achievement in a "yes, you beat the early game" kinda way.

This would be really nice. I find myself stuck at tasty sandwiches until I find carrots and potatoes, and it feels like there isn't a whole lot of variety or progression in HCH at this point, even though I'm well past the early game now,

On another note, I feel like mining for iron becomes completely obsolete after you build a mob trap...I'll likely want to go underground when I want more lenses, but with coal covered by charcoal in the kiln and iron covered by the mob trap, I feel no need to go underground at all other than for more redstone, and that will quickly change when I get my nether mob trap up and running. I might have less qualms about it if there were more mining in the early game, but it feels kind of wrong to only need to do a cursory exploration of the areas caves in order to never need to mine for iron again.

If this was intended, then so be it, but I think that it detracts from the overall experience.

[DaveYanakov]

...
2. Diamond tools. Honestly, there is exactly one use-case: Build a portal. This is totally weird. Crafting a single diamond tool, dig 10 blocks and throw it away. It feels like a random "age defining" obstacle. [Off-Topic, i guess: remove all diamond tools completely, because they are non-sense. Just give the iron tool a little more power => Dig obsidian w/ iron. Discriminate it from SFS by doubling the digging time or something.]

Why on earth are you throwing away a perfectly useable pick that still mines faster than iron? 10 obsidian does not equal immediate access to mattocks.

4. RS-Repeater requiring nether access and mining. Though i understand the idea, it just does not feel right. I cannot see any real benefit in the change. I'd rather ignore an ore than (almost randomly) complicating a core recipy. What is the result? People revert to torch repeaters. Side-effect: server load. To me the repeater serves 2 purposes; reducing server load and compacting circuits. That holds for all of the possible applications (even as a memory cell). I prefer server friendly circuits because that's good for my balance ;)

It seems as if you're underestimating just how common nether quartz is. It's not farmable yet like gold and redstone but it's far from difficult to acquire. It is starting to sound like you have not actually gotten a nether portal up and running yet. By the time you have found a fortress in a newly generated nether, you will have stacks of the stuff.

(edit) PS: 6. The Wither, The Witch and The Potion... Potions are delicate for the balancing. We currently have a runaway wither in our world. Potions... first, they were useless... then HC hunger kicked in and they were very valuable... then the witch dependency kicked in and they were abandoned again... [Off-Topic again: I'd fall for nether quarz as a requirement for healing potion containments because they are such vicious alien like acid style concoctions or whatever. Just nether and special ore would feel right. Even dependencies to the phase of the moon or weather might fit... But witch, gharsty guy and whatnot => potion for the wither (which will probably still win)? Mmmm... it's somehow not right yet.

How are potions dependent upon witches? All their drops do is extend duration and are not required at all for things like instant health potions or splash varieties.

[FlowerChild]

On another note, I feel like mining for iron becomes completely obsolete after you build a mob trap...

For the tenth (or morth) time...mining for iron has been obsolete ever since mobs got iron drops. What I've done is make it relevant to the early game. That's it.

Guys...please read the thread, particularly my posts, before making comments like this. Running in circles over the same topics helps no one, and again, just wastes my time having to go over the same material again and again.

If this continues, I'll be shutting this thread down as it's slowly devolving into irrelevancy again.

[Gfamad]

OK... First hello to BTW community and FC.

Second, here's my feeling/impressions after some hours with BTW and of course the new HC mod. I hope to avoid to be off topic.

-I haven't played BTW since more than 1 years, so in general, the game is really hard. For me it's fine. Yes I'm not a BTW master, just a simple player.

-It looks more and more like a Roguelike and I felt like playing Unreal World. After many "newbie" hours, I think I will soon die of starvation... This is a great feeling in my opinion for people wanting to go back to the roots of survival aspect of Minecraft.

-After many hours of searching food, I thought that thirst would be cool too. That's not a suggestion, just a personnal feeling because it really reminds me Roguelike like I said.

-I saw that people complains about the iron mining becoming unusefull because of traps for monsters. For a lambda player (me), mining is still very important so it's not a balance problem I think.

-Beds are a problem in MC survival mode, I do agree because of the lack of monster spawn. But sometime night were a little long in my small (dirt) house.

Generally speaking, after 2 years of Minecraft, my impression with BTW is that it brings the Survival aspect to this game, an aspect completly missing in the vanillia game.

Good luck FlowerChild, you made a really great job.

[FlowerChild]

-After many hours of searching food, I thought that thirst would be cool too. That's not a suggestion, just a personnal feeling because it really reminds me Roguelike like I said.

This has been addressed before, and while it's an interesting idea in theory, the easy availability of water just about everywhere in MC would make it largely irrelevant, and really just a "chore" feature pretty much everywhere with the possible exception of the nether.

Yes, it is a natural extension of the food idea in some ways, but on the other hand, just doesn't suit the game as is. At present, "hunger" acts as an abstraction of a number of things, actual huger, and fatigue included. It's basically a generic form of energy which Steve consumes as he goes about his activities, and I don't think isolating thirst from that would serve any real purpose.

And yes, it is a suggestion, but I'll let it slide.

[JakeZKAM]

1. Getting established is a huge pain in the ass, so much so that I'm very much OK with not starting over a million times xD. I must be a masochist though because pain in the ass or no it's fun as hell.

2. A couple early game functions that I completely ignore are shears and buckets. I've mostly been on the nomadic life even after finding wheat. Then it usually involves hiking it back to spawn, rotating smallish bases around spawn with pumpkin patches/other food I manage to find in case I die. Shears mean another hoe to me, and even if I settle down pre wheat I can round up a couple cows/sheep with a little effort.

that's all for the balancing changes that feel off for me. A couple vanilla things that are weird though are passive mobs spawning on chunk loads (once they all get eaten it's weird to see more of them if you come back to the area.) And putting on armor with right clicking it in your hand. This just feels weird to me, like instantly putting on a suit of armor instead of taking time to don it.

[FlowerChild]

Ok, I'm sick of reading and responding to the exact same comments over and over and over again. I do believe this thread has run its course, particularly since the version I'm playing now is very different from what you guys are playing.

Thanks to those of you that provided helpful feedback (and there definitely was some). Several of the comments here have lead towards additional changes you should be seeing in the next release.