I think you put the finger on something important here...
Personally, I think Notch was a genius but that Jeb is more "busines-oriented" and is making Mojang cleanup up a LOT of the MC code. Major background rework going on on a LOT of stuff. Also, way more time spent on fixing bugs, in fact for the first time ever the Mojang bug tracker number of unresolved issues seem to actually slowly go DOWN instead of wildly going up out of control.
Plus, real progress going on in a LOT of non-direct game features. All the new map makers stuff is the result of the rework on the internal structures of several things. Block Ids using strings sure, growing pains for modders, but ultimately, paving even one step further the way towards the modding API. Data structures removing one by one some limitations on what can be done. Lots of great stuff.
I think overall we get more new features-per-4-months, than before Jeb became big boss, without impacting performance too much. A good deal.
Jeb is going great, It is the community requesting features that will keep them content for a week or so before they are hungry for a next update.
Jeb needs to try and ignore this and more under-the-hood features need implementing.
And to clear myself up to anyone viewing:
Non-Under the hood - Horses, almost everything in 1.4 (Not hating)
Under the Hood - Terrain generators, GUI, Performance.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
This is a legacy account, meaning it is no longer active
Alright, now I have been hearing this form of apologetics ever since the first criticism of Mojangs' development speed was levied. The fact of the matter is when I and most people bought this game it was still in heavy development and we picked it up not necessarily on what it was at the time but what it was promised to be. The issue I take with this particular argument of; "It’s a complete game! Every addition is a bonus!" is frankly, the game is just not done. The beta lagged and content additions were sporadic and silly with mostly incongruent or worse half-baked features. Then for what I am assuming was a move to get original buyers off their back Mojang decided to release the game as completed. What we got as a "finished" product was a pretty buggy game with a scrapped together boss fight and little to no altogether game direction.
For the most part the lack of a truly finished central game is not what bothers the majority of people who are upset with Mojangs decisions; it’s their treatment of the community. I think if most people are completely honest with themselves the reason for Minecraft's extreme success is plain as day and that is the creative community. I think Mojang, and some people here defending their development model seem to believe that it is Minecraft’s 'amazing' design that has created such a phenomenon and massive financial success, when in reality that is only a partial truth. While the original game is certainly fun and what drew in the original players it is really the creative community that has given Minecraft the longevity and ability to expand from a simple game to a household name. If it weren't for theLet's Players’, Modders, Resource Pack and Adventure Map makers this game would have just been a fun toy but a simple flash in the pan. Even if you are one of those people who "don't use mods" you are still affected by these creators. Many items and mechanics that started in mods have been co-opted by Mojang into the game itself, as well as most of the people you play with have been drawn into the game by the massive amount of social media that the players have put out.
Despite all of this free advertising and the fact that the customers themselves are providing essentially expansion content to keep their game relevant, Mojang has not made supporting these people a priority. The occasional bone is thrown out to resource pack and adventure map designers, however the modding community is usually left in the cold. Modding support or 'plugin api' or whatever they want to call it, has been promised long before the game was "completed" at this point almost four yearsago. This really makes the comment of "You should be thankful of anything more you get" completely erroneous. Most of the creative community got on board because there was a claim of supporting the modders long before the game was stated as complete. They have taken so long developing any form of API that the community had filled the void itself with ModLoader, Forge and the like. It’s even arguable that the Plugin API will even be that relevant versus Forge if it doesn't offer the same feature level and it may end having to develop around it anyway.
This generally leaves us with the final defending argument I hear from people concerning the extremely delayed development of modding support; "These people have LIVES! They can't spend all day coding!". Well, I am sorry but this is a ridiculous statement altogether. For all those developing Minecraft this is theirfull time job, for several different people in fact! The fact that Mojang has not been able to at least put out a development form of API leads me to believe that they are either A: Incompetent or B: Not making it a priority, and honestly I don't think it’s A. Seeing how Mojang has madehundreds of millions of dollarsdue to Minecraft revenue alone I have an extremely hard time believing that this should be any less than their top priority. Instead we had several years of knick knack additions and mod co-opted features.
To wrap everything up I just wanted to make it clear that I was not attacking MrSpruceTree or anyone defending Mojangs decisions. I am just doing my best to explain why so many people are upset with Mojang and how most of their arguments hold water. The truth of it is that I have gotten a ton of enjoyment out of Minecraft and its mod community over the years and I would like to see that continue. However, I am upset that Mojang has never really supported the creators and due to the constant maintenance that updating requires, is driving many talented people away and killing some amazing work because of it. This highly delayed lack of support will eventually come to roost when competitors come and offer what Mojang never did and unfortunately I don't think we will ever again see the level of community that surround Minecraft in its prime. Hopefully I am wrong but just remember that many of the people who are disgruntled here have a good reason to be and perhaps we can spend more time discussing how this can be fixed rather than whether or not Mojang has made a mistake.
PS: Thanks for reading this massive rant, try to pardon any grammatical errors but my phone is a chore to type on.
This is exactly why you see threads like this on the forums. Everything in the post above is why people are frustrated.
Add to that:
-The average time for our modded server to update was 6-12 weeks after the official release. We now sit at 6 months and still can't upgrade our 1.6 world to 1.7 due to a critical block id bug on Forge that has to be ported to MCPC+. The server is basically dead and that is not good for the game.
-It looks like 1.8 is going to be more of the same(?), minus the content (biomes, blocks, items, mobs, mechanics). If it went live today, most of my players would only look forward to mining the new stone and making a slime block trampoline, all of which were added in the first week of the snapshots.
-New content is incomplete. Slabs, Stairs, Wood variations of existing blocks, fish mobs to go with fish items, empty biomes like Oceans, villager mechanics for other professions, etc.
Is Mojang lazy, probably not. Are there things that they could to to improve the game and further increase sales, absolutely. I don't want to see the game continue to hobble along, posting in threads like this; rather than, reading, planning for and promoting the new features. This 'rough patch,' or whatever you want to call, it is not good for the game.
At what point do they:
Invest in developer staffing, complete new content for a given release, move past the 'MOD API will change the world expectations?'
This is exactly why you see threads like this on the forums. Everything in the post above is why people are frustrated.
Without a doubt, they've adopted an interesting business model. I scratch my head thinking about it all the time because I'm not sure what to make of it anymore with the decisions they've made lately... They still seem to lack leadership because their product isn't evolving fast enough to accommodate customer expectations. This goes without saying that they likely have the financial assets to maintain their course, or at least, I'm assuming they do, for now. The problem with their approach though (this is just my opinion) is that sooner or later, they'll have a competitor... A real competitor--not one of those stupid knock-offs that paints Minecraft a different color--and when this happens, you might as well say goodbye to Minecraft.
Mojang has essentially laid out a blueprint for competitors to know what NOT to do and between now and whenever, you can bet everything you have that at least someone out there is currently working on a competing product. They'd be stupid not to, especially when it would be within the realm of possibility to pull off for most big game companies (or developer groups). Sooner or later, this will happen if Mojang keeps doing what they're doing.
Just a personal note, I really like the way Mojang is maintaining there small business model despite there financial assets. I don't care if they're a little slower at what they do.
I only bought Minecraft because I wanted to support its development and see it expand hugely, I didn't waste my money to see a bunch of lazy fat-asses getting richer and richer every day and just re-texturing a few blocks.
Exaggerating for an effect is fine, but do be fair and give Mojang credit for what they have really done since the alpha days, which is a whole lot more than retexturing a few blocks. Right now their lazy fat asses are working full time on practically writing large sections of the game again from scratch just so they can give the community a plugin interface and give themselves a better base to work on to develop new content faster.
I would go as far as to say 1.8 could rightfully be 2.0 if they take it far enough, a brand new chapter in the game's life: a plugin interface for the modding community, a clean game code (I wonder how much of notch's original lines are left at this point), some new content added in...
It's not a bug, ids are gone.
It makes modding easier.
True, but in this case it is a bug. All the blocks from 1.6 have to be registered on 1.7 in a new registry which users don't interact with. In this case, there are 4 LIGHTS...errr..bugs. There are actually numbers for each block in the registry, but they are unique to each server now and are referenced by block names.
1) blocks and block items are not linked, so that you can break a dirt block and get an iron pick axe
2) restarting the server can reorder the registration so you get new random drops from blocks
3) when start-up tries to assign the blocks to the registry it can fail to do so and actually prevent the world from starting
4) removing mods on an upgraded world can prevent the server from restarting
The Forge release fixes these bugs, but MCPC has to also port in the bug fix for those users. That is not a Mojang issue, but the long delay between upgrades is just another frustration that server owners/players are feeling right now.
Mojang are releasing updates slower and slower and at this rate we won't see 1.10 in our lifetimes.
Jeb - "Nathan did you finish tetexturing that block?"
Dinnerbone - "yeah and it only took me 8 months!"
Jeb - "good job. Now let's go have that party"
(The entire Dev team then get drunk, celebrating dinnerbones hard work to that block)
You are aware of their huge workload, and the fact that it includes things you don't see but improve the game, right? Hyperbole or not, you are incorrect.
I don't know if things are getting worse or not, but I will say it has been becoming apparent that the forums are dying. The discussion thread has been around for as long as I have and I can't remember a time until two months ago that there was a single day-old thread. Now, I can find on the front page threads that haven't been touched in over a week.
Mojang are releasing updates slower and slower and at this rate we won't see 1.10 in our lifetimes.
Jeb - "Nathan did you finish tetexturing that block?"
Dinnerbone - "yeah and it only took me 8 months!"
Jeb - "good job. Now let's go have that party"
(The entire Dev team then get drunk, celebrating dinnerbones hard work to that block)
Do you even follow Dinnerbone's twitter? He is working on fixing the weak coding that has been in the game for a long time. They have hobbled on this code for so long trying to make it work. Now they're fixing it so that they can give you the long awaited plug-in API and be able to release updates with more content faster.
I don't know if things are getting worse or not, but I will say it has been becoming apparent that the forums are dying. The discussion thread has been around for as long as I have and I can't remember a time until two months ago that there was a single day-old thread. Now, I can find on the front page threads that haven't been touched in over a week.
People are losing interest.
You have got to be joking, please tell me you are.
Look for yourself. There is a month old thread on the front page, and the top 5 are the only recently updated. People are no longer interested and are moving on. Further, the modding movement is dying at a rapid pace as well, as are texturing.
I could paint with all the colors of your ignorance.
Holy crap this community has become overly negative.
I mean, seriously guys...Mojang is a small team that spawned from a game a guy created by himself. It wasn't even a game designed to be sold seriously or anything, he just sold it because people wanted it.
Its no secret that a lot of the code in Minecraft had issues because it was basically just built on top of a hobby, more and more. Of course its going to take time to fix this and implement good design so that in the future they can work an environment that favors adding new content instead of having to spend so much time hacking stuff in to get it to work. The work being done for the plugin API also helps Mojang adding content themselves as well.
Despite all of this backend work that has to be done, they are STILL providing new content for 1.8. Sure the content was shown in the first snapshot, but its a snapshot. This means that 1.8 itself will have new blocks, new command block options, new world gen, as well as backend changes that further the plugin API (and that are also useful for Mod development as well as things like Forge can take advantage of them as well).
Honestly guys, you have gotten a lot out of a ~$20 game. I'm pretty sure most everyone that purchased Minecraft has gotten more out of it then they would a movie at the theatre or a couple hours of bowling. Sure its frustrating when you wait for new content, but you're getting more content for free. Many games would charge extra for that now days.
How about we, as a community, start looking at things from a positive stance. What can we do with the new content, what kind of positive suggestions/criticism can we give Mojang so that in the future, it'll be even better?
Ambient sounds and sounds affected by the environment may be challenging to do though, unless special ambience/effect zones are calculated and saved during chunk generation rather than done real-time during gameplay, because the game world is simply made up of blocks and randomly generated, it's no easy feat to tell the game when you are in a cave, let alone different types of caves. Something like that would require a dynamic sound simulation engine that sits on top of the basic sound system and modifies output sounds based on your location relative to the blocks around you, basically making reverb, occlusion, echo, cave "singing", etc. etc. happen "naturally" in real-time. This would not only make the game sound amazing (if done right) but your interactions with the world would also change how the sound of your environment is.
Ambient sounds are one of my most wanted features in the game so I give that subject quite a bit of thought.
Wow, so the new version finally gets a few really neat features... One is editable terrain gen, props to Mojang for that, for once, and the other isn't even made by Mojang... :\
EDIT: After looking through some recent posts, I'm actually starting to become impressed by some of the changes being made behind the scenes... I just shifted from negative to neutral/positive-ish. However, I kinda would've liked to see these sorts of changes just after the game was released, then truckloads of awesome new content afterwards... (We apparently got the complete opposite)
I actually think the community slightly crumbling and "shaving" off the bandwagon fans and people who just rant about updates could be a good thing, as all that would be left would mostly be those who actually contribute to the community.
I wish everyone could just enjoy the current version of the game rather than talk about all the cool things that could be added to an already feature packed game if the "lazy" developers could get moving.... some updates are "too fast", some "too slow". I guess you can't please everyone.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
*mumble* *mumble* *something about Minecraft*
Click the image above to check out my vanilla server, PrimalCraft. IP: play.primalcraft.net.
Also check out my modded server, Electri!
Making a mod and updating the core game are two very different things. Also, the game is still getting updated a lot. Be glad they didn't stop once it hit 1.0.0
Yes, you are right. The game developers do not have to hack into the code every update and try to reverse engineer every obfuscated name. You are right, creating a mod is much, much harder then rolling an update.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Check out SpaceAge, a new futuristic themed mod on GitHub: Link
I'm popping in to say that I completely agree with this. I started minecraft 4 years ago now. In that 4 years I convinced 4 people to also buy minecraft. My best friend, his wife, and two guys I used to work with. I'm the only one who still even checks up on the game. Other four dropped out and could care less at this point. Slow updates, half a**ed features, and alot of content that shows promise never added or discredited as possible. Last fall I shut down my ten man server after two years running. At that time I was on almost every day, but in three weeks only two other people had jumped on it. And one was accidental and left in five minutes. When swamps were added. Crocodiles, alligators, snakes, or even smaller turtles were pitched and talked about like crazy. Yet still today there's almost nothing life looking in them. It's the same way with every biome, and oceans and the skies desperately need additions, yet are not even touched and have needed it the longest. Also the last post in this thread was 4 days ago, and it was number 5 on front page says something about how alive the community now is.
Jeb is going great, It is the community requesting features that will keep them content for a week or so before they are hungry for a next update.
Jeb needs to try and ignore this and more under-the-hood features need implementing.
And to clear myself up to anyone viewing:
Non-Under the hood - Horses, almost everything in 1.4 (Not hating)
Under the Hood - Terrain generators, GUI, Performance.
This is a legacy account, meaning it is no longer active
This is exactly why you see threads like this on the forums. Everything in the post above is why people are frustrated.
Add to that:
-The average time for our modded server to update was 6-12 weeks after the official release. We now sit at 6 months and still can't upgrade our 1.6 world to 1.7 due to a critical block id bug on Forge that has to be ported to MCPC+. The server is basically dead and that is not good for the game.
-It looks like 1.8 is going to be more of the same(?), minus the content (biomes, blocks, items, mobs, mechanics). If it went live today, most of my players would only look forward to mining the new stone and making a slime block trampoline, all of which were added in the first week of the snapshots.
-New content is incomplete. Slabs, Stairs, Wood variations of existing blocks, fish mobs to go with fish items, empty biomes like Oceans, villager mechanics for other professions, etc.
Is Mojang lazy, probably not. Are there things that they could to to improve the game and further increase sales, absolutely. I don't want to see the game continue to hobble along, posting in threads like this; rather than, reading, planning for and promoting the new features. This 'rough patch,' or whatever you want to call, it is not good for the game.
At what point do they:
Invest in developer staffing, complete new content for a given release, move past the 'MOD API will change the world expectations?'
Without a doubt, they've adopted an interesting business model. I scratch my head thinking about it all the time because I'm not sure what to make of it anymore with the decisions they've made lately... They still seem to lack leadership because their product isn't evolving fast enough to accommodate customer expectations. This goes without saying that they likely have the financial assets to maintain their course, or at least, I'm assuming they do, for now. The problem with their approach though (this is just my opinion) is that sooner or later, they'll have a competitor... A real competitor--not one of those stupid knock-offs that paints Minecraft a different color--and when this happens, you might as well say goodbye to Minecraft.
Mojang has essentially laid out a blueprint for competitors to know what NOT to do and between now and whenever, you can bet everything you have that at least someone out there is currently working on a competing product. They'd be stupid not to, especially when it would be within the realm of possibility to pull off for most big game companies (or developer groups). Sooner or later, this will happen if Mojang keeps doing what they're doing.
I don't even know anymore, I'm afraid.
Exaggerating for an effect is fine, but do be fair and give Mojang credit for what they have really done since the alpha days, which is a whole lot more than retexturing a few blocks. Right now their lazy fat asses are working full time on practically writing large sections of the game again from scratch just so they can give the community a plugin interface and give themselves a better base to work on to develop new content faster.
I would go as far as to say 1.8 could rightfully be 2.0 if they take it far enough, a brand new chapter in the game's life: a plugin interface for the modding community, a clean game code (I wonder how much of notch's original lines are left at this point), some new content added in...
True, but in this case it is a bug. All the blocks from 1.6 have to be registered on 1.7 in a new registry which users don't interact with. In this case, there are 4 LIGHTS...errr..bugs. There are actually numbers for each block in the registry, but they are unique to each server now and are referenced by block names.
1) blocks and block items are not linked, so that you can break a dirt block and get an iron pick axe
2) restarting the server can reorder the registration so you get new random drops from blocks
3) when start-up tries to assign the blocks to the registry it can fail to do so and actually prevent the world from starting
4) removing mods on an upgraded world can prevent the server from restarting
The Forge release fixes these bugs, but MCPC has to also port in the bug fix for those users. That is not a Mojang issue, but the long delay between upgrades is just another frustration that server owners/players are feeling right now.
You are aware of their huge workload, and the fact that it includes things you don't see but improve the game, right? Hyperbole or not, you are incorrect.
If you are planning to make a suggestion, please read this.
If you want to know more, you can read this.
For those who complain about post-Beta generation, you might want to see this.
Completely agree.
Do you even follow Dinnerbone's twitter? He is working on fixing the weak coding that has been in the game for a long time. They have hobbled on this code for so long trying to make it work. Now they're fixing it so that they can give you the long awaited plug-in API and be able to release updates with more content faster.
Let's look at what they are doing.
You have got to be joking, please tell me you are.
I could paint with all the colors of your ignorance.
I mean, seriously guys...Mojang is a small team that spawned from a game a guy created by himself. It wasn't even a game designed to be sold seriously or anything, he just sold it because people wanted it.
Its no secret that a lot of the code in Minecraft had issues because it was basically just built on top of a hobby, more and more. Of course its going to take time to fix this and implement good design so that in the future they can work an environment that favors adding new content instead of having to spend so much time hacking stuff in to get it to work. The work being done for the plugin API also helps Mojang adding content themselves as well.
Despite all of this backend work that has to be done, they are STILL providing new content for 1.8. Sure the content was shown in the first snapshot, but its a snapshot. This means that 1.8 itself will have new blocks, new command block options, new world gen, as well as backend changes that further the plugin API (and that are also useful for Mod development as well as things like Forge can take advantage of them as well).
Honestly guys, you have gotten a lot out of a ~$20 game. I'm pretty sure most everyone that purchased Minecraft has gotten more out of it then they would a movie at the theatre or a couple hours of bowling. Sure its frustrating when you wait for new content, but you're getting more content for free. Many games would charge extra for that now days.
How about we, as a community, start looking at things from a positive stance. What can we do with the new content, what kind of positive suggestions/criticism can we give Mojang so that in the future, it'll be even better?
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Ambient sounds are one of my most wanted features in the game so I give that subject quite a bit of thought.
EDIT: After looking through some recent posts, I'm actually starting to become impressed by some of the changes being made behind the scenes... I just shifted from negative to neutral/positive-ish. However, I kinda would've liked to see these sorts of changes just after the game was released, then truckloads of awesome new content afterwards... (We apparently got the complete opposite)
Also - shouldn't this be in Minecraft Discussion and not Future Updates?
http://www.minecraft...d-mob-spawning/
I wish everyone could just enjoy the current version of the game rather than talk about all the cool things that could be added to an already feature packed game if the "lazy" developers could get moving.... some updates are "too fast", some "too slow". I guess you can't please everyone.
Click the image above to check out my vanilla server, PrimalCraft. IP: play.primalcraft.net.
Also check out my modded server, Electri!
Yes, you are right. The game developers do not have to hack into the code every update and try to reverse engineer every obfuscated name. You are right, creating a mod is much, much harder then rolling an update.
I'm popping in to say that I completely agree with this. I started minecraft 4 years ago now. In that 4 years I convinced 4 people to also buy minecraft. My best friend, his wife, and two guys I used to work with. I'm the only one who still even checks up on the game. Other four dropped out and could care less at this point. Slow updates, half a**ed features, and alot of content that shows promise never added or discredited as possible. Last fall I shut down my ten man server after two years running. At that time I was on almost every day, but in three weeks only two other people had jumped on it. And one was accidental and left in five minutes. When swamps were added. Crocodiles, alligators, snakes, or even smaller turtles were pitched and talked about like crazy. Yet still today there's almost nothing life looking in them. It's the same way with every biome, and oceans and the skies desperately need additions, yet are not even touched and have needed it the longest. Also the last post in this thread was 4 days ago, and it was number 5 on front page says something about how alive the community now is.