Thaumcraft 3?!

[Panda]

So aside from better than wolves, Thaumcraft has been the only other mod i have actively ever played and enjoyed, true it did at times seem a bit overpowered but.... He is rewriting it again and after seeing the new teasers for Thaumcraft 3 i have to say, it looks like hes put a considerable amount of work into balancing things out and not making it an instant gratification mod! I stopped supporting his mod a while ago in my texture pack for that reason but it looks like i might just play some Thaumcraft on the side soon. : )

Does anyone else feel like this creator is also looking past the childish mod ideals and making something awesome?

Of course nothing can touch my Better Then Wolves... *hugs*

[Sarudak]

I am very interested to try it out.

[BinoAl]

Why do so many tech mods keep doing updates like this? IC2, RP2, EE2... I think BTW is the only one to still just be BTW rather than BTW2, lol

[Sarudak]

I think it's because he wasn't satisfied with his previous designs.

[FlowerChild]

Why do so many tech mods keep doing updates like this? IC2, RP2, EE2... I think BTW is the only one to still just be BTW rather than BTW2, lol

I don't think it's the case with Thaumcraft, as this seems to be on the level of a redesign, rather than a recoding, but I think in most cases it's because mod authors realize that their code is a mess and decide to do a complete rewrite.

Obviously, this is a problem I've never run into with BTW, despite the many assertions that I don't know how to "code properly" ;)

[Sarudak]

His basic explanation is here

[Ethinolicbob]

Thaumcraft 2 is the other only mod that I have enjoyed that is not BTW.
Quite interested where he takes it this time.
One thing I liked about it, was that there was a lot of things you had to figure out yourself and information on it was not readily available.
Also, interesting quote:

As much as I love Thaumcraft I feel it has become "just another tech mod". While there is nothing wrong with that I think I can do better

[Gormador]

I'm so glad to see other mod authors that /seem/ to have the concept of challenge in their head... And I'm making it plural to be nice.

Anyway, those videos... OH MY GOOOOOD !! (yeah, my reaction after my jaw accepted to go back into a closed position...)
I hope to see interesting gameplay mechanics coming out of this.

[Detritus]

I am very excited for this, I watched the previews a few days ago!
I really <3 the little golems.

[Sage]

Considering that I was involved with one of the initial ideas for TC3 I'm really happy with its recent development showoff. I was really satisfied to see that my alchemical system got implemented. It should be able to prevent exploits such as transforming reeds -> diamonds typical to mods with a common "transforming value" like EMC, while providing different methods of research that Azanor was able to design and implement.

[Inatun]

I only ever played the original thaumcraft so I never got to make use of the research system, but seeing what it's going to become in TC3 is really exciting. For once I'll actually be able to discover things instead of having to go find a wiki and end up surfing the entire thing by accident as I obsessively follow links and end up ruining it for myself. I have to say that for this mod, not including everything in the OP was a really good design decision.

[HavokSCOUT]

I hope they keep the Eldritch-y stuff. That was my favorite part from TC2, and with the changes Azanor's making, I expect the Eldritch stuff to get cooler.

[nukularpower]

Just throwing it out there that if you are interested in TC3, check out Slowpoke101's Twitch.tv stream sometime. He's been on a kick about his new modpack or whatever the last couple days, but outside of that, he tends to show a lot of the new stuff in Thaumcraft, including the awesome golems (which really seem to have come out much cooler than I thought they would.)

[tom_savage]

I enjoyed Thaumcraft 2 a lot. It was one of the only tek mods I felt that was balancedish. I noticed the person doing EE3 took away collecters, condensers, and a bunch of other game breaking things from that mod. I actually enjoyed EE2 when I took out all the stupid parts and just focused on being able to swap items using EMC, I always felt like there should be some loss involved though. Where in Thaumcraft 2, until you got a nice crystal farm going, and a condenser? to resupply your crystals, each one spent felt painful. My problem with Thaumcraft 2 was there was almost no reason to get all the cool stuff. It was mostly equipment based, and that really killed it for me. The machines didn't provide any functionality like in BTW. But the overall, 'magic' feel to Thaumcraft always enticed me.

[Sarudak]

Funny. The exchanging via emc was the most broken thing to me about EE... But I guess that was becuase of how it trashed every other mod. There was no reason to build automated systems anymore. Just find the system that produces EMC the most effeciently and get everything else that you want.

[Six]

I really enjoyed playing through the entire research tree of TC2, but after getting to the end I didn't feel at all compelled to keep playing. And I think Azanor summed up one of the main problems of it as research being a cobble stack lottery.

I've been loving the vids so far of TC3 and had caught the first Slowpoke101 video, but didn't know there were more. Time to go watch.

[Mr_Hosed]

TC3 is actually the only other mod I'm really interested in installing. Azanor approached his design much like FlowerChild in that it was meant to be played standalone, not installed with 50 other mods. He also created automation options in TC2 that you had to build rather then craft. I can't stress how much I hate the stupidly long craft-acular process of building machines most tech mods use.

The new research system seems like it'll allow a more sensible progress to the mod's tech as well. Before you basically just setup an array of researchers (can't remember the block name now) and researched EVERYTHING before you built anything due to the randomness of it.

[tom_savage]

Funny. The exchanging via emc was the most broken thing to me about EE... But I guess that was becuase of how it trashed every other mod. There was no reason to build automated systems anymore. Just find the system that produces EMC the most effeciently and get everything else that you want.

Yes but with the removal of condensers and the such, EE3 becomes more utility then broken. As long as there is no way to automate EMC production and transmutation, automated systems will still be very much needed. As a utility it became a way to make sure you use up everything and not end up with stacks of something useless sitting in a chest.

I absolutely hated the cobblestone lottery of TC2, but loved the research idea. I'll be interested to see how they fix that.

[Sarudak]

Yes but with the removal of condensers and the such, EE3 becomes more utility then broken. As long as there is no way to automate EMC production and transmutation, automated systems will still be very much needed.

See that's where your wrong. Automated systems are not needed. You only need a single automated system. Whichever system offers the most effecient EMC production. Then when you want more of something you just make that same one system larger and larger and larger. No creativity involved. That's how universal currency ruins the game and that's why EE is bad.

[FlowerChild]

Hehe...the first time someone mentioned EE to me, probably over a year ago now, my response was: "You mean that mod that allows you to convert anything to anything else? Yeah...I'll pass" :)

It may be a fine mod (dunno, never played it), but as an underlying design concept, that idea is seriously flawed. It's basically the pinnacle of the kind of bland homogenous gameplay that I've been worried about vanilla devolving into.

Not sure why anyone would want that kind of gameplay to begin with...but hey, it's obviously popular, so whatever floats your boat I guess.

[Sarudak]

I think it's mostly because people don't really understand what they want... They don't know what keeps drawing them back to minecraft. They do however enjoy the feeling of power it gives them. At least temporarily.

[FlowerChild]

I think it's mostly because people don't really understand what they want... They don't know what keeps drawing them back to minecraft. They do however enjoy the feeling of power it gives them. At least temporarily.

Yeah, I agree. I guess it's just basically an extension of what I always go on about with players having a tendency to seek more power for themselves in-game, to the point where they begin to extend that to the out of game, and wind up ruining their own fun without realizing it.

If you wrap that extra power in a package that gives it an air of legitimacy and gameplay, they'll be all the more drawn to it.

The amount of resistance and backlash I've been getting out of the Hardcore changes has really hammered that point home for me. Some people get downright rabid when you try and reduce their in-game power.

[DaveYanakov]

So I did a search after reading through this thread and the third teaser video which shows the new research system looks really freaking cool. Far more in depth than the 'build research maguffin, add paper, wait' system that existed before. I particularly like the way that after you research the formula you then still need to figure out what to add to the cauldron to get what you want out of it. I imagine that if you screw up, bad things will happen. No more instant crafting recipes.

Screw personal power. If the protagonist has the tools to be better than his adversary, whether that be mob or environment, there is no room for a feeling of power. The only way to get a true feeling of having overcome a challenge is to actually face the damn challenge.

[Psion]

Yeah, i've played thaumcraft 2 before and really enjoyed it, but the research thing bugged me a ton. I'm glad to see he's designed a much more enjoyable and intuitive system than before. And i see he's implemented those animated golems to act similar to buildcraft pipes too, only far cuter! :D

I loved thaumcraft 2, but it didn't quite hold the same appeal as BTW due to lack of automation incentives. Instead it was more geared toward new armors and weapons, as well as lovely new blocks for decoration (nitor makes an awesome light source), and the occasional... accident. Like that time a slime got into my early game lab and started sucking up all the taint... lol. I also enjoyed how many of the items weren't really "overpowered" compared to say, EE2s. The sword of the zephr let you fly, and later on got nerfed so you could still "technically" fly, but at a major cost to the swords durability, among other things... but oh man, was it hard to control. I lost count of the amount of times i tried to use it to hop over a lava pit... and missed the ledge and fell straight into the lava instead. XD The boots let you jump really high, but since they simply reduced the fall damage by however many blocks you could jump up with them... i often wound up jumping up and over a cliff, only to plummet to my death from overbounding. Mainly i loved the boots because they let you walk up a one block high ledge without having to jump, heh.

At any rate, i'm glad to see that he's taking a more balanced and enjoyable approach to his newest incarnation of the mod. The only problem i can see is possibly having to split my time between a TC3 and BTW world. ;-;

[Sarudak]

Yeah... I have some hopes for Thaumcraft 3 to actually be able to hold my interest for a little while. He talked about giving most of the seal powers customized block implementations which would make it more interesting I think. Also the fact that he had a fire under his crucible gives me the hope that he'll be adding more interesting multi block features.