User blog comment:Sir Lazuli/Replacing Redstone/@comment-33763020-20180128143219

 I may be considered a purist by some with my opinion, but I oppose any kind of mechanic that is not related to the „feel” of Middle-earth and immersion through gameplay and while your writing is impressive in its own right and deserves praise for creativity and ingenuity, its intention is misplaced in relation to the intention of why this mod was created.

 I see two separate decisions that I’m sure Mevans played in his mind when creating the mod: should there be any engineering in this mod and if yes, what kind and to what extent. I think your article covered possibilities on the latter quite thoroughly and uniquely. The former however is more important and you dismissed this in a few sentences: „ However this mod is missing one major gameplay style from vanilla Minecraft - redstone building ” Your sentence assumes that redstone mechanics are actually MISSING, as if the mod is not complete without them. In my opinion something is missing if it was MEANT to be part of it ;). I don’t see any reference from Mevans stating that he wanted to create a sandbox game. Everything I see during gameplay is oriented on immersion and adherence to Lore.

 Beside the creator’s intentions, there’s the audience need of course and it’s up to the creator’s discretion to adapt his views as he sees fit, maybe even get influenced by player need (though charismatic creators with a good concept have no need to do so as their work’s success stands in its own right). I read the poll’s results on what people like most and the majority clearly likes Exploration and most people are pretty much familiar with the works of Tolkien, so this is mainly a Tolkien audience, looking for immersion. Imagine exploring through a fictitious world, just to see and experience things that don’t belong there or feel alien and break this immersion, whose interest would this serve? I understand your reasoning and examples of the technology already applied at that time by some races, such as the Dwarven smithies, but if you read the books, it’s still pretty much middle-ages in our perspective and even gunpowder was an innovative extremity that surprised millennia-old wise Gandalf when Helm’s Deep was breached. One of the most important aspects of Middle-earth as Tolkien created it in his mind was the differences from our world in choosing the path of magic and logically unexplainable phenomena versus our dissectable modern technology. The immersion for most readers of his books and those who watched the movies comes from the fact that it is UNlike our world in these ways, in both space and time. It may be that he based it on a possible history of our planet and even the geography was similar, but the age and its characteristics are certainly totally different from ours and this is exactly its strength. Those of my friends who don’t like Tolkien’s work and often say „It’s boring!” are usually those who like more realistic settings and don’t like to immerse in alien worlds as it makes them uncomfortable. We are all different and I respect this difference in taste of course, but if someone has different taste, they should simply not play this particular mod. Trying to change it to their liking would be the wrong thing to do and unfair to both the original work as well as those who want to experience this world as it was meant to be by its maker. While it may be entertaining in a perverted YouTube kind of way of having Darth Vader fight Gandalf, it is something that humiliates the effort put into it an degrades this work of art to just another easily consumable and adjustable product to our own needs. In short: anything divergent from Lore is in my opinion not only disrespect towards the creator of the original work and the creator of this mod, but is detrimental to all who play it, even if it seems like a fun or useful addition at first. I’m sure you mean no harm with your suggestion to make this mod look more like a sandbox, but I think it should continue being developed the way it is now, with leaving modern technology out of the equation. Especially since it plays in a certain age and setting and there is no timeline to speak of, which can be associated with technology. I understand this may limit some players such as yourself in playing the game the way you want to and gotten used to in a total sandbox environment, but in some ways sometimes what we want is not the same as what we need and you may even learn to appreciate these „limitations” after a while ;). I would even go as far as to say that ideally most blocks and builds should be undestructable, as the true immersion is in settings like the Tauredain pyramids or Utumno, where you do not freely break/place blocks or just teleport away to avoid otherwise realistic battle. If coding made it possible, I would support gameplay where I can take weapons from a chest or weapon rack or as loot from kills, but not simply knock through a stone wall in a second to get myself some loot or freely fence me off from NPC’s to avoid battle.