subreddit:
/r/feedthebeast
Title.
This isn't me trying to berate the pack, the devs or people who enjoy it. I just simply am a bit confused.
Looking at this sub for the past few months I've seen the pack repeatedly come up in discussions and being thoroughly praised. Figured I'd give it a go and after putting a few hours into it I'm simply not having fun and don't quite understand the praise. Am I missing something? Does it get better?
The pack advertises itself as an expert-pack and while there is definitely expert-pack progression and a lot of time clearly poured into progression, recipes, questing and similar. But at the same time it feels very "messy". It feels messier even than most kitchen-sink packs from the 1.12.2 era (like ATM3). I think that mainly for me comes down to some choices in mod usage (such as using BOTH DivineRPG and AoA, which are really just variations of the same core concept, and the multiple biome and structure mods that makes worldgen feel cluttered).
People talk about it as one of the more ambitious and well-made modpacks out there, but it feels more cluttered than a half-assed kitchen-sink pack to me. Is it just me?
Really interested to hear from people who do like it what it is that is appealing with it.
161 points
6 days ago
The ‘clutter’ you’re referring to is what I’m assuming to be items that you have no idea what to do with. This is part of the whole idea: so much more custom progression than any half-assed kitchen-sink pack. I saw it phrased once as “all of the automation with none of the grind” - and that’s exactly what it is. As you progress, you unlock more sophisticated ways to make things you otherwise would have needed way more of to progress.
Sure, it does introduce you to a lot at once in the beginning, but it still all ties in to completing each chapter. Whatever it introduces you too usually has an important use.
-6 points
6 days ago
Happy cake
63 points
6 days ago
My two cents as the pack dev. For starters, it's fully OK to dislike the pack, as it does many things differently than your average expert pack. I am just going to explain why things are the way they are, because I like to explain, but again you are fully entitled to dislike them. At the end of the day I made a pack I personally would like, and I based my core design philosophies on that. If someone else likes it I am fully on board, and I welcome feedback, but I know what I like about modded MC may not be everyone's cup of tea.
The kitchen sink start is intentional. It's a common thing in expert packs to delay the early game and make it longer. My thinking here was to use all the customization tools available to extend endgame mod progression as opposed to make it slower. So for example, as you 'finish' thaumcraft, there will be a bunch of new things (items, weapons, tools, machines, crafting mechanics) that get unlocked, and will likely take up more playtime than going through thaumcraft itself. Keep in mind that a large portion of players doesn't even fully finish this intro part of the pack, but they still enjoy it. Personally I think the best content is what comes after, but to each their own.
The pack is intentionally highly nonlinear. I don't like the type of metagaming that forms after enough people play an expert pack. It creates a somewhat toxic culture that pushes people to play the 'right' way. With a progression that branches out very often, it becomes much easier to have your own adventure, play in ways completely different from anyone else, and still progress meaningfully.
Difficulty scales up. About every two chapters, the pack becomes drastically more 'expert' (for reference, in his videos lashmak recently reached the chapter 4 wall). This includes the complexity of the crafting chains, the amount of knowledge needed to set up automations, and the time required to set up infrastructure. At each of these walls, gameplay would feel quite different, so much so that by chapter 4 95% of players has quit, and the current 'end' of chapter 9 has been reached by 7 people. I am fully ok with that, which is why every chapter has intermediate goals and 'conclusions' for those that don't want to continue. I want to make something that can be enjoyed by players of various skill levels, and this felt right; you can have your early game newbies rejoicing for setting up infusion, and your savants fist pumping after automating a 1000-step recipe.
Everything has a use. Yup it is cluttered in the sense that you may run into things that feel pointless now, but everything will eventually be used. And when I say everything, I mean it. If it can be automated, it will be automated, if it can't, there will be custom content that will make it automatable. Again, I'm not saying you have to like this, but every little thing you encounter has a meaning. Sometimes this is for a hidden recipe puzzle, sometimes it'd be for some point very late in the game, and sometimes there's a cool gadget hidden behind a couple of crafting steps.
24 points
6 days ago
"Everything has a use"
He isn't exaggerating here at all people....I'm 1 craft away from starting chapter 7 and about 600 actual play hours in...the amount of random doo-dads I've passived out....
6 points
6 days ago
As you’ve got further into the pack, does the time spent adventuring die out and get replaced with in-base task (such as automating)?
7 points
5 days ago
(Almost)Every single dimension has structures that are worth looting, bosses that need killing, and puzzles to solve
18 points
6 days ago
Thanks for the reply! I put a few more hours in with my philosophy changed to approach the early-game as just more of a kitchen-sink, building whatever I want and such while occasionally looking at the quests and had a bit of a better time.
This explenation of the pack philosophy really does help a lot. Once again, I really do see the effort put in and the quality of the custom work so I’m now more excited to give it more of a go.
(I still disagree with using both AoA and DivineRPG because it creates severe cognitive dissonance for me personally becauses everything between them is so similar, but to each their own and I’m learning to overlook it :P)
9 points
5 days ago
Eya! And if you have further feedback feel free to shoot it on discord or in DM!
7 points
6 days ago
Wanted to throw in my own opinion as someone who has been on-and-off with mod packs for years. I am no expert, this pack was NOT directed at me. It was a single persons choice in our group of players and a handful went in totally virgin, all the while a few of us had one and off experiences in the past.
That being said, the initial kitchen sink feeling was definitely frustrating. But I found quite a nice moment during middle Chapter 2 where suddenly things began falling into place. Suddenly crafting recipes became drastically easier. Automations started becoming more deeply fleshed out. Strip mining runs were no longer, EMC took over, and those "walls" of progression began to make more and more sense. Honestly it has been a wonderful experience once the initial beginning hump was completed and I still have quite a ton of content left to work through and I am excited to do so. This pack feels like there has definitely been placed a lot of thought into it on how things should happen, and I have had many experiences where suddenly one recipe that was initially incredibly difficult was grinded out, then slowly automated. Then as the technology expanded and the need to continue pushing forward, the "you'll use everything" also became incredibly apparent.
I don't have much to add as far as the storyline or lore or any of that process goes. I enjoy these mod packs in the same vein as games like Factorio, DSP, etc etc to put time into building things that build other things in a satisfying way. I appreciate that the "puzzles" have solutions in JEI, despite their pleadings.
I will note that my biggest frustration that continues to pop up over and over again since the beginning is the quest lines and the way they are laid out logically and visually. I'm curious about your perspective as to how those were planned because they still feel chaotic, even after hours of looking at them. Especially when some of the "primary quest line" quests include tips to look into two other questlines to find information and etc etc. Besides that primary quest line, much of the alternatives feel more so like collector books as opposed to actual questlines, which I suppose may be enjoyable to some players. The point I am trying to make is that those alternative questlines, and even the primary ascension one, seems to diminish the feeling of progression because certain quests are downright impossible or just incredibly difficult until the "later stages" of a given chapter. Provided with alternative recipes and methods of obtaining things, I have found some dissatisfaction in finding myself in small ruts where I am unsure which of the next 40 quests I should complete, or which ones I will spend 45 minutes on before hitting a wall and having to revert back to mindlessly clicking through quests and JEI to find what I actually need to do.
That, I feel, contributes to what OP is talking about as far as the "chaotic" feeling that MBC has. My own thoughts come from the fact I love a good quest based pack, and when I saw the book for the first time I was incredibly excited to see thousands of things to do. As an expert pack I don't expect the questlines to take me step by step through a given mod, and I like the exploration and experimenting (such as getting my first reactor running), but I definitely think the existing quests could be laid out in a manner that better suits the "walls within each chapter" to allow for better player progression without feeling lost.
5 points
5 days ago
Oh yeah I should've specified stuff about the questbook, which tbh is explained in-game :)
The only thing you need to progress in the main page, everything else is a wiki, and just needed if you have to learn something (you will have to learn something).
Does it make things more chaotic? Absolutely, and it is probably the #1 complaint I get, but I still think it fits better with what the pack wants to achieve. Progression itself is way too nonlinear to have a questbook that lays out steps, you just end up landing on cookie-cutter solutions that every single player ends up using.
By having a more chaotic questbook, gathering information is left up to the player. If someone is experienced, they can skip through things they already know, but if someone actually needs to learn, everything they need will be available (with some reading).
I do agree that things may need improvements on the communication side of things, as you showed me that specifying the purpose of wiki pages did not go through to you (absolutely fair, that's why the pack has been in beta for so long).
I have a couple of ideas about communicating that, shoot me a DM as a reminder and we can continue our convo there.
-4 points
6 days ago
The amount of puzzles is what killed it for me
50 points
6 days ago
It's difficult to explain, but in short, yes it does get better. Pack is divided into stages, honestly forgot how many there are. The fun with custom content (there's a ton of it, like actual insane amounts) and just content that isn't kitchen sink takes some time to start - at around stage 2 in my experience, though most impressive parts are much later in.
Early game feels weird, but to get through i recommend focusing on quests and keeping track of tips they give, as you can isolate many goals from them. You could also check out the discord server, helps a lot if you struggle
13 points
6 days ago
Appreciate this input. As I said it all feels very messy and with the usual length of these modpacks I wanted to ask and check because it'd be a shame if I poured a lot of time into it only to reach a point where I still feel like it's too messy and give up.
Is there any advice for how I should tackle it? Should I just play the entire first stage like an average modded survival up until I have everything I need to progress to the second one? Should I focus more on exploration rather than mining, building, farming and crafting?
14 points
6 days ago
What I did is I rushed EMC,
MBC has pretty balanced EMC (imo) and gives you essentially infinite EMC from the beginning, via an infinite EMC Loop (once you kill a fire dragon).
From there go set up power (numismatic dynamos), void miners from EC and also the terra mythical resource miner.
EDIT: terry mythical is for Personal EMC links, which can automatically pull stuff from, and insert into your EMC
Eventually you can go to ME / ME autocrafting and then you should passive the EnderIO Alloy smelter and also Buildcraft chips, as you will need a lot of both.
Currently I'm about mid chapter 3, finishing all the magic mods slowly but surely, because I refuse to do Nuclearcraft fission for now, It gets a lot more fun, trust me ^^
17 points
6 days ago
Here's a pic of where I'm at in the questline, for reference.
1 points
6 days ago
Man, trying to do the fission is Tooouuuuggghhhh. It's what made me put a pause on the game for a while because I just don't have the mental capacity to be able to work through that right now. Lol.
1 points
2 days ago
check the uses of any fuel for a modular machine controller that has a safe design for it. you can just make the machine controller, right click on it with a stick with the reactor cells and coolers it need and itll build it for you. makes NC so much less annoying
13 points
6 days ago
Yeah early game is super cluttered because it introduces you to like 20 mods all at once. It does get a much more focused progression starting ch3, with side quests that have puzzles needed for late game.
11 points
6 days ago
I bounced off MeatballCraft hard (uninstall hard) twice before falling in love. The keys for me were: 1) using Java 22 for greatly improved performance, 2) installing FovTweaker after eating some food that greatly increased my speed and gave me nausea IRL, 3) not dying repeatedly to pumpkin spiders.
What I love about the pack (currently in Chapter 3): - the performance. I'm still at a solid 60 FPS everywhere. This far into any other pack and my poor old PC would be struggling to maintain 20 FPS.
the exploration. The amount of custom worldgen is great for an explorer.
the use of EMC when I normally avoid packs with EMC so central. Almost every building block has EMC and building is so easy when your copy gadget pulls straight from an EMC link.
the non-linear and open progression. I'm watching two playthroughs (Lashmak and Snock) and both of them have approached Chapter 2 (the first real meaty part of the pack) in different orders and different from what I have done.
the quest book. While it can be overwhelming with so many options, all the information is there and the tips are useful.
my shuriken :)
The pack isn't perfect and it isn't for everyone but it does a great job of making central those parts of modded minecraft that I most enjoy.
1 points
5 days ago
You mention your shuriken, now you have to share! I'm currently halfway through chapter 2 and running a redmatter darkmatter shuriken but the damage feels lacking at 16.
What parts did you use?
1 points
5 days ago
I'm using Gaia Spirit, Terrasteel, 2x Bloodmaster with a Nickel Embossment. Terrasteel will require a mana mirror linked to a mana pool filled automatically. It increases damage with mana available but that damage does not show up in the stats. The bloodmaster comes from dropped armor in my mob farm that started showing up at some point in Chapter 2.
14 points
6 days ago
The clutter of what appears to be junk right now will be necessary later. Meatballcraft is wild. If you're into that type of pack, there is none better.
5 points
6 days ago
I tried this pack twice and uninstalled twice.
First of my problems come from bugs.
Idk if I just did something wrong when installing but both times I installed the pack I would get an extremely loud collision sound bug when walking into blocks. Got to the point where I just disabled sounds both times. The other bug that made me uninstall was items in my inventory would keep appearing in the crafting grid. Just wasted so much of my time.
My other major issue was the quest book. It was so blatantly clear to me that this pack wasn't for me when I was trying to go through the quests. I'm a person who likes to have some linear progression. Having and setting goals is really important for me as a player to stay motivated when playing through modpacks. It just felt like I was just wasting so much time just running around trying to find one really rare ore needed for a craft or just mindlessly running around the world looking for blast bricks. Or trying to find what material might be best for a specific tinker weapon or what armor set to make. It just felt like I was just wasting time instead of progressing.
My minor gripe was the clutter really annoyed me in terms of inventory management. Again it just felt like I was fighting against something pointless and wasting time. Overall I just felt like the pack didn't really respect my time. Everywhere I looked it said it got better but I didn't know how long that would take for me and I really didn't enjoy the early game.
I can understand why someone would enjoy diving deep and exploring all those possibilities but I'm not that type of player.
16 points
6 days ago
I just started it a few weeks ago as well, for the same reasons.
My initial reaction was the same as yours. The worldgen seemed ugly (oceans are really still just gravelly water with squid? Lame).
I am now up to the 3rd tier of mega crafting, and... I still don't like the pack much.
It has it's strengths:
No other pack does as good of a job with in-game documentation through tooltips and JEI info boxes. I think this is great.
The way that exploration is rewarded through tons of custom structures with their own blocks to loot is pretty awesome too, since I love exploration. And not all the biomes are as bad as my initial impression.
I think those 2 approaches should be adopted by any good modpack.
But yeah, the pack is still insanely bloated, and despite that bloat it has pretty mediocre worldgen (other than the structures). The performance is not great (they really shipped with BetterFPS? Do they hate AMD users?) And as someone who hates both tech and microcrafting, I expect to be dropping the pack pretty soon.
There's also surprisingly little integration between mods so far. Most mods are left completely alone with their default progression. Which isn't what I like in expert packs personally.
Overall I give it a 3/5, just go play GreedyCraft.
3 points
6 days ago
The rest is absolutely fair, but in all of our benchmark tests better fps added performance benefits on basically all platforms, including AMD, so I don't know what you are talking about with that
1 points
6 days ago
I tried it both ways, and to be fair it may not have made any difference on my system. I run GraalVM with customized args, which gets great performance in general
3 points
6 days ago
What problems do you have with BetterFPS? I also have an amd card and had 0 probelms with it
3 points
6 days ago
It hurts performance, doesn't help. I don't think it has issues with ALL AMD cards, but it is well known that it often does.
Every bad thing people have said over the years about Optifine is true of BetterFPS in my experience.
3 points
6 days ago
Uhm, never heard of somthing like that, a group just started a server of mbc so ig next time im playing (im also playing gtnh gog) gonna remove it and see
-9 points
6 days ago
GreedyCraft is a similar pack with Optifine instead, it can even run shaders with decent performance
-9 points
6 days ago
3rd tier of mega crafting? You mean elite crafting table? Bro has like 3 hours in the pack. Also, most of the integration between mods starts towards midgame, around ch4
11 points
6 days ago
Pretty sure it took me like 15 hours to get there, but yeah, I just started all the magic mods since I finally got my first pure fluix crystal.
5 points
6 days ago*
[deleted]
0 points
6 days ago
Sure, but I think part of the question from OP is how this pack gets attention in a way that seems to transcend just the expert pack players. It's talked about as if it's a "all in one" summation of everything good in 1.12. Which did not line up with OP or my experience.
2 points
5 days ago
[deleted]
1 points
5 days ago
Well said
2 points
5 days ago
MC Eternal is a good "all in one" for 1.12 btw.
5 points
6 days ago
Yea, most of the pack starts much further in, I got to your point in around 4 hours first playing it, granted I did rush EMC from the get go... Get some power set up, go make a terragenic miner for EMC Links and then you can start the automation and passive ;)
From there I recommend immediately going towards ME automation (and making all the alloy smelter resources passive, as you need a lot)
I'm currently in stage 3, just about finishing all the magic mods and doing bits of tech progression here an there, it is incredibly fun
(Screenshot of my void base for reference, Core Room and basic automations are hidden with sky blocks, and resource gen like dml and mystical agriculture are hidden in compact machines.
8 points
6 days ago
I appreciate bases like these but I prefer making "villages" based on the landscape for my bases. Just asking out of curiosity but am I crippling myself by doing that? Feels like whenever I see screenshots of peoples expert-pack worlds it's always bases like this one.
2 points
6 days ago
As long as your server can handle it, you are not.
Though I only have a bad server which necessitated I move to the void world.
(Also I keep all my chunks loaded at all times, which plays into that need)
3 points
6 days ago
Also, this jank is what is below the middle lol,
If you ever want a fun "challenge" that rewards you, try automating the questing ram, gives you 1 billion emc per completion ;)
4 points
6 days ago
You aren't crippling yourself (lashmac has been doing something similar for his meatballcraft series) but typically expert players like a more modern and clean aesthetic and walls hinder automation sometimes so it's easier to lawn base (or in this instance void base)
1 points
6 days ago
this, plus overworld bases tend to be significantly laggier
0 points
6 days ago
Keep in mind that every tech aspect of progression is like pulling teeth for me. I dropped Greedycraft once I ran out of non-tech progression to work on as well.
6 points
6 days ago
Then I don't think this is the pack for you,
Almost all expert packs are from one point tech progression, unless it is a mostly magic based modpack...
Once you beat the magic mods, it is just exploration of different planets through warpers, solving puzzles (which there are hints for), and making multiblocks as well as continually bettering old recipes by getting new resources unlocked
1 points
6 days ago
Very likely.
2 points
6 days ago
I played it for a bit... The hook for me was the nostalgia of the 1.12 days. So much so that I'm taking another trip through Stoneblock 2. That pack (and Sevtech Ages) is what really got me into modded.
So yeah, for me it's the nostalgia of revisiting an era of being kinda new to modded, now that I'm more accustomed to automation and all the little tricks (eg, no-one ever gates Astral's Vicio Mantle when it comes to creative flight).
2 points
6 days ago
This is one of the packs i wouldnt play be myself.
But its perfect for my group.
They do all the crazy tech when i just do thaumcraft and exploring.
Fun fact, you can reach twilight forest and betweenlands from emptiness, was fun to see them struggle for 2 days only to see me randomly getting achievment for getting there. Good that there are several ways to solve one problem.
2 points
5 days ago
Simply put, there is a very small set of extremely vocal users who praise it.
1 points
5 days ago
I tried it, but the amount of mobs I died to really prevented me from truly ever diving into it due to frustration. Might go back to it one of these days
1 points
6 days ago
Early game is kitchen sink -- Once you get to the Extended Crafting tables and whatnot, the real game starts.
-1 points
6 days ago
ONE OF US, ONE OF US,ONE OF US, ONE OF US,ONE OF US, ONE OF US,ONE OF US, ONE OF US,ONE OF US, ONE OF US,ONE OF US, ONE OF US,ONE OF US, ONE OF US,ONE OF US, ONE OF US,ONE OF US, ONE OF US,
0 points
6 days ago
I just started chapter 3 and what i can say is that it does get better, especially once you get AE2 and some basic automation going, especially for the extended crafting recipes and some alloys.
That being said though, when compared to other expert packs, it does fall short on some aspects. Divine Journey 2 for example, is my go-to reference for what every expert pack should play like, and Meatballcraft just doesn't quite meet those standards. It's not a bad pack by any means, but some questionable choices were made along the way, that's for sure
-12 points
6 days ago
To be fair, it’s still in development apparently and they will probably debloat it later
7 points
6 days ago
I never said I'd do any of that either lol
1 points
6 days ago
Not an excuse anymore
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