Perfectly balanced gameplay loop with frequent breathers--incredibly satisfying
Reputation ranks
Ranks only ever go up; points can drop but your rank stays.
About reputation ranks'-- The central gameplay loop of the pack is passively crafting increasingly complex and expensive items, but from beginning to end, you explore new, unusual mechanics to unlock these items, giving you breaks from building up your factory and infrastructure.
-- Despite hating combat, I find it a fun puzzle in MBC, because you don't have to be skilled if you can design a weapon build strong enough to beat bosses (at your current stage) in one or two blows, and craft it (which usually requires tech and magic infrastructure). The pack maker changes the metas regularly--the kind of build you'll need in chapters 9 and 10 is very different from what you'll need in 6-8, etc.
-- About 75% of the pack is factory building. But the factory building is extremely varied. I love GregTech, but GT tends to consolidate all things into itself, while in MBC you'll juggle single-block machines from multiple different mods and MBC's own sprawling multiblocks for every build.
-- The other 25% is exploring, doing magic crafts, solving puzzles, dimension hopping, and fighting bosses--just often enough to be a good break from the tech, more than varied enough that you never feel like you're doing the same thing over and over again.
-- The automation challenges are always changing. Some setups will be straightforward, but every now and then you'll face something new, weird, and puzzling, and this never stops, especially not in the final chapters.
-- I've never felt so committed to finishing a pack and so little like it's a slog. The packmaker is very anti-machine spam--instead of building dozens of assembly lines, you upgrade different parts of each process, or upgrade multiblocks to run faster by solving puzzles or fighting bosses.
-- Vibrant and helpful community in the Discord. Lots of beautiful textures from artists in the Discord, and coders are actively contributing mods to improve performance and push the limitations of 1.12.2 Minecraft. Feels like we're all in it together.