Convincing friends to switch

[DaveYanakov]

So a recurring theme seems to be having to convince your friends and/or family to make the jump into something more challenging than one or more forge mods. Share your arguments and shakubukus here since they seem to be needed and replying individually to several dozen people can get tiring for all of us.

[Crazylemon64]

In what other mods do villagers toss the milk? What other mods let you power the cake? What other mods push you to design your own contraptions to fit your needs? What mod lets you carefully cross-breed sheep so you can get that elusive blue wool in large, renewable quantities? And finally, which mod allows you to extract souls from netherrack to make a fire so you can make a vase so you can decorate your table? Also, shift click crafting. What's not to love?

[Elevatator]

First: show them all the little tweaks, like the wheat, and crafting.
Second: Show them a fully automated complex machine.
Third: Show them aesthetical uses of the mod, like columns and pillars.
This also includes hidden doors with the turntable, or an elevator.

[Twololcats]

i admit some forge mods are fun/cool but btw is by far the most interesting and creative, it has excellent balance unlike *COUGHEQUIVALENTCOUGHEXCHANGE* and it allows for automation but forces you to be creative and its not insanely easy

perfect amount of challenge

btw also fixes and changes many...imperfections...in vanilla

[Cuchonchuir]

I had some friends who were hesitant about it because of the difficulty; one suggested other tech mods.

So what I pointed out is that Minecraft is easy to "beat". Build a hut out of wood, plant enough wheat not to starve and really, you've won Survival (I do not count the Enderdragon). It's the process of creating that is fun, thinking how best to build things and then making them. Resource-gathering isn't fun. The combat isn't fun (despite the Mojang team apparently thinking that's what everyone wants more of . . .)

Many mods "give" you the end result you want - "put some iron and diamond and MAGIC ACORNS on the crafting grid and get an automatic mining machine/farm/whatever". BTW gives you the ability to BUILD those things in the game world, design them in your head, fiddle around, find better ways, and then suit them to your needs. Then you build upon those constructions to build yet more. Nothing is given to you, you have to earn it - but you do it intelligently, so it's not like some RPG grind. That's what makes BTW awesome in my mind, and when I told them that, they agreed with me.

[jadedcat]

I used steak dinner to bribe my husband to come play. After an hour of playing he was hooked. Just find some way to get them to play for an hour or so and I think lots of people will get hooked.

[Mr_Hosed]

I tell people that BTW makes redstone actually useful! The other one I use is BTW is what Minecraft was meant to be. It doesn't feel tacted on like the other large mods (though I admit the BD doesn't really feel right any more with how it doesn't just work on blocks but certain entities, but I digress) and it's not game breakingly boring after a couple of weeks.

[Scarrboros]

I don't have many friends that play Minecraft seriously, and pretty much all of them don't like to use mods at all. Those guys I find are very hesitant to change that opinion no matter what.

I would probably show them what you can do with Better Than Wolves and show that if you try and fail, eventually manage to build something magnificent that will prove your "worth". I much more like to be finished with a big farm in BTW than having just built a Technical super machine in some other mods. They should too.

[Tekei]

I host a private co-op server on my computer and play with a few of my friends just to introduce them to the mod. So far they haven't really seen the beauty of automation and I've been the one to build most contraptions but I'm planning to introduce them to proper automation once we're through the tech tree.
The thing that has gotten the greatest cheers so far, as stupid as it might sound, is that chickens follow seeds instead of wheat making it very easy to separate them from other animals. :P

[DocHussey]

I just show off the windmills. Everyone loves windmills. If that doesn't work, I play my recorded sound clip from ten millstones full of Netherrack until they start screaming and agree to try it out. Once they actually play, most people find it to be great. Those that don't promptly get slapped into submission.

[Rianaru]

1) Find an engineer
2) Show them some of the rediculous redstone that you guys have come up with
3) Enjoy!

I think it also helps that most of my friends are slightly sadistic college nerds(aka biology majors). Most of the time all I have to do is mention harvesting the souls of the damned to make your armor and bloodwood trees and nether groth.

Oh, and poop. That one got my little brother...

It's also surprisingly easy to get less hardcore people addicted just by showing them the aesthetic blocks. It takes them a loooooong time to realize what they've got themselves into ;)

EDIT: spelling

[Ruinous]

I just talk about btw so much that my friends have begun to think of stuff like the mossy cobble reaction around spawners as vanilla features. In this manner i seed them.

[Katalliaan]

My nephew is in a bit of a Minecraft craze, and when he comes in to watch me play, I treat the BTW features as though they were vanilla in the hopes that, should he ever get an account somehow, he'll do the same (once I explain to him why he's not getting that pleasant squelching sound when you breed animals).