Create: A flawed masterpiece

Epsilon-1 Gamma on 25/06/28

PREFACE

So, the Create mod for Minecraft is revered by many, and for a good reason. However, while a lot of the hype and reverence is deserved, it has its issues keeping it from, in my opinion anyway, reaching its real potential. Issues, which I also feel are either not talked about, or get downplayed under the hype around the mod. Hell, at times it feels like criticism of Create is treated as a taboo of sorts by the overall modded minecraft community, but that may also just be me reading too much into it.

I would also like to add that while this article may read as highly critical and even hostile towards Create, giving the image that I dislike the mod, that is not the intent. In what I have played with it, I quite like Create, and this article is more so meant as constructive criticism combined with a review of sorts.

THE GOOD

Where Create truly shines, and where it got most of its attention from, is aesthetics. Alongside Immersive Engineering it is one of the most polished and visually consistent mods there are, to the point that you could likely pass it off as something straight from Mojang's own art team. The artstyle is doing its own thing, but simultaneously emulating Minecraft's visuals just enough to create (heh) a perfect mixture of originality and consistency with the vanilla game.

The core mechanics around mechanical energy and shuffling it around are also relatively well implemented and polished, barring some minor bugs which can be excused due to the sheer complexity of the mod; it would be unreasonable to expect perfection at such scale. In particular I appreciate the fact that both speed and torque of mechanical systems is useful in different places, which is essentially the mechanical equivalent of voltage and current, something missing from most mods using an electricity analogue. Maybe I should do that in a tech mod some day, actually...

Another great mechanic, or rather, mechanics, are the various crafting systems of Create. The fact that a ton of things are done in-world is fun and feels like a breath of fresh air to the monotony of the classic 3x3 crafting grid. I'm particularly a fan of the handcrafting systems such as sanding rose quartz to polish it, or physically applying andesite alloy on blocks to turn them into casings, which are both just deeply satisfying mechanics. The mechanical crafter is also a cool take on the infamous concept of "bigger crafting grid lmao". It feels like something unique and different rather than just rehashing what Minecraft already does but Bigger, despite technically being just that.

WATER WHEELS UNDER THE FLOOR BOARDS

Despite all the positives, Create has one glaring problem however. That being game design. Specifically, seemingly being unaware of the classic concept of "If allowed, players will optimise fun out of the game". Specifically, Create at its core gives the player means to build cool mechanical marvels, be that factories or mining systems or railways or postal systems. It then proceeds to not only fail to give incentives to actually build cool stuff, but even disincentivises it at times.

For example, power generation. There is a steam engine mechanic in Create, with some automation effort in exchange for mass quantities of power. The usual in techy-leaning mods. However, nothing in Create actually uses that power, and transfering it over long distances is somewhat discouraged, so there is no actual reason to build the steam engine beyond "I want a steam engine". Except even that is somewhat diminished by the inflexibility of said steam engines, you can't for example transfer steam to your factories for local steam engines, because the engines must be stuck on the side of the boiler (because clearly that's how steam engines work). And, so, with steam engines being rather unattractive on both the mechanical and visual fronts, the player simply converges on the optimal solution of hiding water wheels under the floor.

In part I would say this overall is to blame on a combination of nothing costing practically any power to run, and waterwheels being incredibly cheap and powerful. On a server I am playing on at the time of this writing I am running two crushers and a clay production setup entirely off of 3 or 4 small waterwheels, which feels utterly ridiculous. If I wanted to run two of Immersive Engineering's crushers, I would either be setting up an entire wind farm or looking at IE's late game power source, biodiesel. Not sticking a waterwheel under the floorboards.

SO, ANY SOLUTIONS?

Really, when you look at the whole issue, it primarily stems from Create trivialising everything that in any other mod would be used as an incentive to progress and do more complex and cooler things. Like Immersive Engineering's higher powered machines incentivising you to build a biodiesel system.

For example one of the defining features of Create, moving contraptions? they use practically zero power, and devices like drills run automatically on them. Or trains? those quite literally need no power source. And the fixed systems that do need power, like crushing setups, use so little that it's incentivised to stick water wheels under the floor boards rather than actually engaging with the mechanics. This is further exaggerated by the alternative power generation mechanics not being all that interesting to engage with too. Hell, Create 6 disincentivised doing anything interesting even further by making water wheels only require one block of flowing water to run at full speed, meaning you can cram a ludicrous amount of them in a tiny space and get out more torque than a basic steam engine.

Really, the solution if you ask me would be simple. Accept that the player does in fact need to be limited in some ways to drive them to do things, and make things actually cost something to run. Ideally also give some interesting benefits to using alternative means of power generation. A good example of this would be steam pipes, turning steam power's main benefit from just more power, to easily available power; instead of water wheels, you'd require a more complex centralised setup, which then in turn can power your other factories at a distance. This alone would give an actual reason to invest in steam power after you get properly set up, while not completely eliminating water wheels as an earlier power source, or one for far away outposts where you don't need extreme amounts of power.

OTHER MINOR STUFF

While I have covered Create's primary issues in the previous section, I will also mention my other smaller issues with it. The primary one being the fact that conveyor belts, which are otherwise cool, require power. That leads to bad-looking and clunky item transfer setups, and in a pack with both Create and Immersive Engineering installed I find myself just using IE's belts despite liking the actual item transfer mechanics of Create ones better.

Also Create doesn't get how trains work but that's just nitpicking on the part of a train nerd.

I thought I had other minor issues with Create too, but I guess I don't because I can't remember anything else. Well this section ended up being a bit pointless didn't it. Oh well.

CONCLUSION

As hopefully evident by this article, I find Create to be a very cool mod with some glaring issues, or rather, one glaring issue, that keeps it from being among my all-time favourite mods. While, as mentioned in the preface, this may read as rather harsh, it is much easier to write about what you dislike about something you like, rather than what you like about it.

Anyhow, I hope this has brought some new perspectives and ideas to people, and I hope these issues are remedied in future versions of Create; which would put it firmly among my favourite mods.

Also thank you to my wife for proofreading this <3