I'd like to make some clarification on the recent discussions regarding balance. Alice has become more tedious between Alice 1.4 and 1.6. The difference has been due to a changeover of who maintains the modpacks since MC 1.5. Previously I did in older versions, with some help from Pyrocommando, famerdave, and TexasGamer. The ModPack team has handled it since MC 1.5. Tedium is not a goal of mine. It may be the goal of some people, but the idea here is to adjust Alice back to 1.4 levels where the tedium is taken away. The game is not enjoyable when you must figure out 20 recipes to make a simple piece of insulated copper cable. It also does not even matter when there are other ways to play the game, because then the tedious route will only be ignored. We'd like to add new more or new ways to enjoy the game by adding new mods or trying new things. Because of the changeover of modpack handling, we've also tried far fewer mods than before. In fact, this version of Alice has had the fewest number of new mods yet. There have been a lot of balancing issues (and many surprise hotfixes) with the last two Alice versions as well. We're going to try to make sure that this does not happen in the future. The number of recipe ingredient variations since Alice 1.5 have also be out of this world, which has made it very hard to figure out what to make and how to make it. Hopefully we can resolve it. We do not plan on removing Forestry's bees. We may not remove KAMI. We will likely remove Gendustry or at least adjust it heavily. We're not sure if we're going to reset, but I will try to have a response in a few days. A reset is obviously a lot of work for all of you, as well as for us, though it does open up the possibility of changing around all the mods that we use.
I quite like the look of these (excluding the Gendustry part). I am sure most of us would not like a restart, but if it is necessary to make the whole server more balanced, then I am sure most of us would not mind (too much). The only problem with that is the copious amounts of work we would have to do in order to get back up to the stage where we are now. In my mind, I enjoy a server more where I have all the necessary components and equipment, not having to go mining every 10 minutes, etc. What about a poll?
On the issue of resetting. Would it be possible to use the existing seed and spawn if we reset? The NPC's at spawn need to be re-balanced of course, but since it's only been a little while, maybe resetting with Greenwell 2.0 would be better than building an entirely new spawn. I've been a long-term advocate for GregTech, and was a vocal supporter when we debated adding GregTech to the mod pack. When Gregtech settings have been discussed, I've typically argued in favor of the "hard" settings. With all that said, I am not at all impressed with the direction Gregtech has been going. It's been quite some time since Gregtech has added new content to provide new features except, primarily to add complexity or tedium. This might not be the time, but have the staff considered removing Gregtech?
Well, if we switch to, say, Biomes o' Plenty, the seed would no longer make the same world. Remember that our current spawn was not built with the right seed -- it was copied in, so we could do the same. Biomes may not match as well, however. I'm honestly fine with GregTech if it's some mod that you can choose to get involved in if you wish, but it touches a lot of other mods. If somehow that could be reduced, then we could keep GregTech. Besides the tedium, GregTech isn't a bad mod as it has a lot of things added on its own.
It is true that it isn't a bad mod. But the way it complicates all the other mods does get a bit tedious. There should be settings to prevent most of that (I hope).
If we did decide to reset the map, could we add mods like geostrata, underground biomes or natura, the underground and nethers atm are kind of boring looking, and would benefit from some different world generation, to make the worlds more fun to explore.
As far as a reset is concerned, BOP is superior to EBXL and has much more interesting, and pleasant looking biomes. That said don't leave them all on. S:
I still don't get why you left the whole modpack (and with that, balance) to a group of people that you just assembled then expected all flowers and ponies? Obviously, at least one thing was bound to go wrong. I don't think the MPT is at much fault here since judging by the way they operate, they were left with little to no training or guidance on maintaining what was once a fun and balanced pack.
Well, it's not like I ever got any training or help when I started doing the modpack. Up until MC 1.5, I don't think I had ever played anyone else's modpack ever, so I pretty much balanced everything by myself. Besides the balance on 1.6, they have done a pretty good job overall.
Glad to see that the MPT isn't being flamed to death in these threads. I'm not going to blame specific people, but I admit that there has been some serious laxity in the assembling and balancing of the 1.6 pack. There has also been a serious lack of testing. We have already discussed some of this, and we are going to make some general guidelines for workflows in the MPT, which will require the members to do extensive testing of mods and balance, for example. "ADD EVERYTHING" "oh, yeah, configs, ehh lets get this over with and get back to ADDING MODS"
That's good for you but you can't expect even a team of people to have the same mind, learn the same way you did and therefore make the same decisions as you would. Surely you see what I mean?
If there is world reset, I hope there will be more mods that add an adventuring aspect to the game. While I know SKCraft-Alice has been classified as an industrial server, I do think it's high time to maybe add a few more niches to the types of playing styles available... I say this because I've recently been drawn away from the industrial side of modded minecraft to the adventure side, so for people who prefer it, it could be an option. As for mods, I hope a few mods like Roguelike Dungeons, Better Dungeons and Ars Magica could be considered . And before I get flamed to hell about suggesting Ars Magica!!, I would just to mention that there are config options to allow players spells, NPC spells AND moonstone meteorites to break blocks in the world!
Honestly I'd like to do some parkour and there is another one forgot what it's called but your basically drop down and try not to hit anything along the way down. I know that modded Minecraft isn't meant for that stuff, but honestly when it takes a plate bender to make an iron file to make chiseled stone that's where I draw the line.
The reason there was not much 'training' is because of time constraints. And you know, it depends on the person. I know people who I can give a job without telling them what to do and they will excel at it, because they do not miss any detail. On the other hand, most people tend to do it in the way that they are comfortable, which is often not what is wanted. We've always tried to avoid being purely industrial server, but there generally aren't many stable mods for adventure. We tried Millénaire, but that was extremely buggy, and we ended up with only simple mods like Better Caves.
How many versions back did you try Millénaire? I can say from experience that millénaire has never really worked quite right. World generation is funky and npcs are never guaranteed to work right. With that said, I would suggest some more static mods if you were to ever try again, that just generate structures to explore and such. I know roguelike dungeons does exactly this, a multi-floor dungeon that has better loot the further down you get. Honestly that would be all I ask if you were to play with the idea of having some adventure mods again.
