Oh god ...I have no idea how much time I used on reading that =P But it was worth it, you pointed out things ive thought about before and hoped someone got the time to write down I did read your last post aswell and had fun cus I enjoy stuff that angers ppl (trolls on servers are fun, I just play with them and pretend I care ... you should try once =P) But back to tpoic, I really liked this post. You should send it as a mail to mojangs support or something so they would read it Hopefully they can use this as some sort of scetch to what they want to do next
Okay, started reading your post and am done with the first one right now (damn those are a long read! XD).
Skeletons being immune to drowning; IIRC, there was a beta version, forget which one entirely, in which both zombies and skeletons were immune to drowning (being dead and all). I have to admit, this did felt right and I believe it should get reimplemented.
Silverfish; Yeah, silverfish are ridiculously rare in their current state. There should be the possibility to encounter the odd pocket of silverfish wen caving. Imagine accidentally uncovering a pocket of silverfish when you're high up the sides of a ravine! Now that's that difficulty and tension right there!
As for the rest of your suggestions, I like a bunch of them, like skeletons being able to shoot through glass (just panes or blocks too?) on hard, or the endermen being more "angry" after beating the ender dragon (though I'm not sure I really like the curse and obsidian encasement thing, perhaps they could throw their blocks at you instead as a ranged attack though, or have increased teleporting range when chasing after you, I dunno...).
I am not sure why this thread exists; you made your opinion known in the other thread and this is in the wrong section. You have done nothing more here than create an egregiously loquacious suggestion post.
The other thread was locked because it was, shall we say, less than polite. This version is much more civil, and thoughtful. Note, also, that the subtitle to the Minecraft Survival forum says "discuss survival mode here." Insurrection has structured his topic such that he begins with a DISCUSSION of a perceived flaw in Minecraft Survival. Opinion? Yes. Off-topic? No. Unless you'd prefer hm to make two separate threads, this location is perfectly acceptable.
Minecraft is so enormously successful in how simply unique, and minimal it is. The game is as big or as small as you want it to be, as involved or casual as possible. I don't understand why people want to change minecraft into a complex amalgamation of other games and ideas. As it was said in the thread several times, it is pretty obvious the intent of survival mode is not to survive but to thrive.
Then why is it not called "thrive-al" mode? What right do you have to declare Mojang's intent, any more than he does?
If the game was finished, I would give you rep for your giant rant as it's quite accurate.
However as the game is constantly being worked on and improved I feel as if you have wasted your time. They improve(try to anyways) minecraft all the time. It's an unfinished game. I am thankful that they let us play it with all it's mistakes.
Submit all these ideas you have for improving the game in suggestions forum! Here people can only argue your idea. In the suggestions forum it can be taken seriously as a suggestion to the game.
A rant, is nothing but a wasted suggestion. Write it well, promote your ideas thoughtfully and calmly, and then all the right kind of people will see them! Good luck. (:
Btw try to remember not to dismiss others opinions. To each their own. Your idea of a better minecraft could easily be the idea of a terrible minecraft in another person's eyes. You cannot declare it truth that minecraft can be better as some people really do see it as perfect. With millions of different ideas of a perfect minecraft, the idea of it ever being perfect in even a million years, is as unrealistic as riding a pig with a saddle.
If the game was finished, I would give you rep for your giant rant as it's quite accurate.
it doesen't matter whether or not it's being improved on-the fact that it has been officially released means that it is finished. Finished doesen't mean "NO MORE UPDATES", it means "We've finished the mechanics and gotten down all of the items and things, now we will bring in updates for it to make it better for everyone".
I am not sure why this thread exists; you made your opinion known in the other thread and this is in the wrong section. You have done nothing more here than create an egregiously loquacious suggestion post.
It's a subforum about survival mode, and this rant is about survival mode. Yeah, there's suggestions, but they're not finalized suggestions- they're up for discussion
Minecraft is so enormously successful in how simply unique, and minimal it is. The game is as big or as small as you want it to be, as involved or casual as possible.
Short of intentionally handicapping yourself, there isn't very much for being "as involved" with the game as there easily could be. It's heavily lacking in content.
I don't understand why people want to change minecraft into a complex amalgamation of other games and ideas.
It's already basically a "complex amalgamation of other games and ideas". MMORPG-like mechanics (Levels, enchanting, grinding to get said things), FPS-like movement and camera style, horror-like intention (although as pointed out, this can be done better), sandbox stuff, adventure, action, building... there's really a lot of things Minecraft obviously tries to be, but never goes past a few simple steps.
The problem is that it doesn't go past those few steps, and people claim it's "intentionally simple", when Mojang actively try to add more to things and have even admitted the game lacks content.
As it was said in the thread several times, it is pretty obvious the intent of survival mode is not to survive but to thrive.
Even if that's the intent, why is that good? Just because you fulfill your intent doesn't mean you've created a quality product. I can intend to make a game where all you do is jump up and down. There would literally be nothing else, but it's what I "intended". Does that make it good?
Furthermore, as I pointed out, the game currently doesn't fulfill what it intends- so even the argument of "intent" doesn't mean all too much.
Your view on the community is flawed as well; you are not really any different than anyone else who posts suggestions. The only difference is that your suggestions are annoyingly center-aligned, and expanded upon by using redundant language as examples.
Redundant language..? I've pointed out various facts, then referred to them later on in my post in more simple terms rather than re-stating the examples (although I might have done that anyway, as it seems people aren't entirely aware of the concept of presenting an example then referencing it more shortly later on in an argument).
And by the way, your romantic view on what a creeper should be (based on your idea of original intent) is apparently misinformed. Creepers are named creepers not because they are creepy or stalkers, but because they started as a erroneous model for the pig, and it looked creepy...
I'm aware of their technical origin, but well, why would they not make idle sounds if they weren't intended to sneak up on players?
Skeletons being immune to drowning; IIRC, there was a beta version, forget which one entirely, in which both zombies and skeletons were immune to drowning (being dead and all). I have to admit, this did felt right and I believe it should get reimplemented.
Huh, really? Wonder why they were made to drown again...
though I'm not sure I really like the curse and obsidian encasement thing, perhaps they could throw their blocks at you instead as a ranged attack though, or have increased teleporting range when chasing after you, I dunno...
Might be a few better ways to go about it, although throwing blocks seems rather uncharacteristic of a rather creepy entity.
If the game was finished, I would give you rep for your giant rant as it's quite accurate.
It's not "finished", yes. That's precisely why I'm ranting and suggesting better ways to do it- it's constantly in progress. I would like to see progress actually go forward.
Submit all these ideas you have for improving the game in suggestions forum! Here people can only argue your idea. In the suggestions forum it can be taken seriously as a suggestion to the game.
The suggestions forum is notoriously ignored, though. Besides, I do want people to discuss things rather than flatly suggesting things. I'd be a hypocrite for stating "Criticism can improve almost anything", then leaving my idea closed to criticism.
Btw try to remember not to dismiss others opinions. To each their own.
I won't dismiss other people's opinions, but I will challenge their "opinion" if said opinion is something that's more like a statement (IE: "Minecraft is fine"). Hiding behind a statement under the defense of "it's just an opinion" is... cowardly, honestly.
You cannot declare it truth that minecraft can be better as some people really do see it as perfect.
Anything can be better- literally, anything. Even the best musicians, the best artists, the best mathematicians- anyone can always improve their work. To claim Minecraft is "perfect" would be flat out wrong, and hiding behind the defense of "it's just an opinion" is even more wrong.
With millions of different ideas of a perfect minecraft, the idea of it ever being perfect in even a million years, is as unrealistic as riding a pig with a saddle.
Millions of ideas, yes, but not all of them are good ideas- look no further than the suggestions forum or the "What type of X would you add to Minecraft?" threads to see what I'm talking about.
That was a very contreversial post. Some aspects of it I heartily agree with, while others not so much. I'll try to summarize my main thoughts:
The lack of a tutorial is definitely a weakness in Minecraft as a game that needs to be addressed at some point in the near future. New players would definitely benefit from this.
The difficulty changes you propose are more of a full-game overhaul than improvements to the current system. While I like the idea of mobs being more difficult in more dynamic ways, it's going to alienate the more casual playerbase and could potentially draw away from other aspects of gameplay. However, if there was a way to change the difficulty setting to match the sort of gameplay we have now, that wouldn't be as much of an issue, but there should still be an option to decrease the damage mobs do to the player. Also, not being able to change the difficulty during the game doesn't mean much since the player can just exit the game and change the difficulty there. Even though difficulty could instead be bound permanently to the level save, this destroys a level of flexibility to gameplay. As for wheat having a 50% seed drop rate on hard difficulty, it's easily trumped by bonemealing grass, but at some point the player will run out of bones and have to hunt skeletons, when they may just want the challenge of defending themselves on hard mode while farming normally.
The changes in mob behavior you describe sound really cool with the exception of behaviors which make it possible for the player's creations to be "griefed" without any reasonable way for the player to avoid the mobs from doing it. In the current game, Creeper's explosions can be avoided by staying at a distance, Endermen and Silverfish can only move/destroy single blocks, and Ghasts can only destroy the softest blocks and are exclusively found in the Nether. It would be difficult to prevent the Skeletons you propose from breaking glass blocks, especially since they can detect the player at greater distances. I'm not sure if you intended to mean that Skeletons would be able to destroy glass blocks, but either way I think that arrows should be able to pass through without breaking them. And although a more formidable Enderman after killing the Ender Dragon is a good idea, the ability for them to spawn Obsidian blocks would make cleaning the mess they make extremely time consuming. Endermen should only be able to spawn stone.
This is more of a nickpicky point than anything, but if realism is the motivation for increasing a skeleton's swimming speed, then there would be no need for a skeleton's swimming speed to increase. Although skeletons weigh less, they also have less surface area to push the water with.
I'd love more varied terrain and biomes. I like your suggestion for there to be variations of similar biomes, and strongly agree that biomes should have more logical neighbors. Personally I'd prefer if there weren't predefined biome names and just biome features that are based on the climate and terrain, but that's more of a seperate idea rather than a criticism of your own.
It would be nice to have more options for player mobility, and the idea of balancing armor by reducing sprinting speed is quite intuitive. However, if a material used in making armor is extremely rare, it does act as balancing by limiting the amount of that armor the player can obtain. A full suit diamond armor is made of 24 diamonds, which will soon be the second rarest mineral in the game. Iron armor, on the other hand, is made of 24 iron ingots, which are relatively easy to obtain. Because of that, it makes more sense for iron armor to put a heavier burden on the player than diamond armor.
There's little sense in improving the "graphic design" of Minecraft, unless it's optional settings for improving shading like you described. There are a lot of people who dislike the models and textures of Minecraft, but also a lot of people who like them. It's highly subjective and it's Mojang's choice to decide whether they want to change it or not. Spending the time and effort spinning their wheels on something that the community will equally like and dislike won't do much to improve the game itself. Also, saying that Mojang should do it because they have a bunch of money sounds very entitled.
You bring up good points with your last section, but you seem to project your perceptions of Minecraftforum and the entertainment industry as a whole rather than focus on Mojang itself. If Mojang was as concerned about making money at the expense of the community as other game companies are, they'd be selling sequels, expansion packs, and/or downloadable content. And Mojang does an excellent job at being engaged with their community, not just for the sake of maintaining their fame, but because they enjoy it.
Antidote potion would be a helpful alternative for removing negative status effects. My problem with milk being the one that does it is that doesn't make much sense, so most players will never even realize that it has this effect attached to it, and then the fact that it is an item you will need to use frequently in the presence of poisonous enemies, but does not stack, and has a hard cap of 1 milk per bucket you choose to take with you. It's an infrequently available resource, which attempts to serve as the solution to a much more frequent problem. A potion would work, as long as it's base ingrediants are reasonable, I'd personally suggest that it not require the player to use a nether wart like most other potions, since it's a potion you are going to need a lot, a lot of, and I barely agree with the ridiculous waste of time that is nether wart farming as is (you have to be in the nether for the entire duration that it takes them to grow, they do not grow while you are in the overworld, and they do not grow if planted in the overworld, otherwise I would be perfectly fine with it).
An excellently written post.
I, for one, am a casual player, preferring to play on peaceful, and I would absolutely love all of these changes to occur.
The difficulty changes you propose are more of a full-game overhaul than improvements to the current system.
Admittedly, yeah, but right now it's immensely simple. I can't really find a way to really improve it the current way without it still having a lot of its existing flaws. Even if there WERE a way, is my way truly so bad? It leaves a lot more options for developing.
While I like the idea of mobs being more difficult in more dynamic ways, it's going to alienate the more casual playerbase and could potentially draw away from other aspects of gameplay.
Remember, I also proposed making them less frequent and easier to avoid. While the actual difficulty of fighting mobs will become more of a challenge, the overall difficulty of the game would probably be easier (except in hard, where they'll be able to see you from farther and lots of other stuff... but then it's "hard")
However, if there was a way to change the difficulty setting to match the sort of gameplay we have now, that wouldn't be as much of an issue,
Like I said, I intend to make the game's difficulty be decided mid-game in a more sensible way. Rather than changing it with a button, it'll be changed via going to X places or staying in Y places.
but there should still be an option to decrease the damage mobs do to the player.
Wear armor! Even by your own (later) admission, iron armor really isn't hard to get. It reduces mob damage by 60%. That's quite a lot. Also, why? With the exception of a creeper to the face, mobs don't do an awful lot of damage even in normal difficulty. Easy difficulty makes it mind numbingly easy (especially if you have diamond and enchants...), and hard difficult makes it arbitrary (and frankly annoying).
Also, not being able to change the difficulty during the game doesn't mean much since the player can just exit the game and change the difficulty there.
Obviously, this would be removed as well... I figured this was a given.
As for wheat having a 50% seed drop rate on hard difficulty, it's easily trumped by bonemealing grass, but at some point the player will run out of bones and have to hunt skeletons, when they may just want the challenge of defending themselves on hard mode while farming normally.
Yeah, but it's still more difficult than the current game. Also, plains have plenty of tall grass for seeds (although I'd probably reduce the drop rate of seeds from tall grass). Also, why would you go into hard just to play "hole up in the impenetrable fortress"? That's widely known to be the thing that makes Minecraft so easy.
It would be difficult to prevent the Skeletons you propose from breaking glass blocks, especially since they can detect the player at greater distances.
Again, they wouldn't be everywhere at night. Plus, that'd just be in hard- play on normal if it's too destructive for your tastes.
I'm not sure if you intended to mean that Skeletons would be able to destroy glass blocks, but either way I think that arrows should be able to pass through without breaking them.
Or, reinforced glass that is much more resistant to explosions, unable to be broken by arrows, and can only be broken by a pickaxe. I know a mod did this before, but yeah.
And although a more formidable Enderman after killing the Ender Dragon is a good idea, the ability for them to spawn Obsidian blocks would make cleaning the mess they make extremely time consuming. Endermen should only be able to spawn stone.
Hm, good point. End stone it is! Although I thought the idea of Obsidian prisons was really cool... especially given the massive obsidian spikes in the End.
This is more of a nickpicky point than anything, but if realism is the motivation for increasing a skeleton's swimming speed, then there would be no need for a skeleton's swimming speed to increase. Although skeletons weigh less, they also have less surface area to push the water with.
Ahaha, realism isn't the motivation, nah. Although I DID say their resistance to flowing water not their swim speed.
Personally I'd prefer if there weren't predefined biome names and just biome features that are based on the climate and terrain, but that's more of a seperate idea rather than a criticism of your own.
I actually do like that idea (goes back to Notch's original idea of biomes being decided by temperature and rainfall), but under the more "organized" system you have a biiit more control over things like "wildcard" biomes such as mushroom biomes, and etc. Still, if I can find a way to more properly implement climate/terrain based generation, I'll definitely try to do so.
However, if a material used in making armor is extremely rare, it does act as balancing by limiting the amount of that armor the player can obtain.
Only to such an extent- it works well in a more linear game (Doom, Half Life), but in a free roaming sandbox game, choice and balance actually can be pretty important. Think of it like this- if you had a weapon that could kill anything in one hit from a distance (a golden gun), but was immensely rare (spawned only in mushroom biomes with a 1 in 100 chance, deep underground), does that make it balanced?
Because of that, it makes more sense for iron armor to put a heavier burden on the player than diamond armor.
I feel as though more "rare" things shouldn't necessarily be an automatic "better than other things". I don't see it very often where more rare things are better in the sense of having more "extreme" stats (really good in X thing, but pretty crappy in Y and Z thing, yet are still the "best" at X thing), and honestly, it'd be really nice to have.
Stuff like durability, of course, is alright to have as a bonus to more rare stuff (it's not a HUGE boost, but is convenient to have).
There's little sense in improving the "graphic design" of Minecraft, unless it's optional settings for improving shading like you described. There are a lot of people who dislike the models and textures of Minecraft, but also a lot of people who like them.
But if it CAN be improved, why let people's subjective opinion get in the way? I know it seems mean to disregard people's opinion (or something), but well... don't make me have to argue why popular opinion reeaaallly isn't something that should be considered. Especially for a popular product.
Spending the time and effort spinning their wheels on something that the community will equally like and dislike won't do much to improve the game itself.
I disagree- people underestimate how aesthetics really affect a game. Really over-complicated grahics can make it hard to actually tell what's going on (this is why I dislike a lot of MMO's). Granted, Minecraft's are simple, but they're not artistically minimalistic. They can retain that "minimalism" and "simple" feel, yet do it in a much more intentional, artistic way. Right now, they really do feel like scaled-down textures taken from a free texture pack, or something. Which was fine for alpha, and maybe beta, but for a "released" game...?
Also, saying that Mojang should do it because they have a bunch of money sounds very entitled.
I didn't say they should do it just because they have the money to do it- I said that they're not held back by a lack of money whatsoever, so they don't really have the excuse of budgeting or the like.
You bring up good points with your last section, but you seem to project your perceptions of Minecraftforum and the entertainment industry as a whole rather than focus on Mojang itself.
My point was that Mojang is going in the very common direction that many other forms of entertainment have gone- and they will end up the same way as the example I brought up if they don't stop for a second and realize what they're doing. That's not just baseless fearmongering or doomsaying, it's a very common pattern. Ignoring criticism on the basis of "pleasing fans" has never led anywhere good.
If Mojang was as concerned about making money at the expense of the community as other game companies are, they'd be selling sequels, expansion packs, and/or downloadable content.
They sold the game for $30 rather than $15 (or so) simply for a very buggy, underwhelming release.
They held a convention solely for themselves for over $100 a ticket.
They've sold the game on two different platforms, with very oudated versions/under-developed features (one of which platforms is very quickly going to be outdated).
They removed a part of their policy that said people who bought the game in beta or full release would never need to pay money for any extra features added later into the game.
They've actually suggested (not sure if they ever followed through with it) ideas to implement botnet software into their software (a very common thing that a lot of "big name" companies do... for the sake of appealing to more people).
Need I go on? There are plenty more ways of being greedy than just releasing rehashes and DLC.
It's an infrequently available resource, which attempts to serve as the solution to a much more frequent problem.
Yeah. It's sort've a temporary thing they did, I feel, but it needs expansion. When I think of "potions", I instantly think of things like antidotes and the like.
A potion would work, as long as it's base ingrediants are reasonable, I'd personally suggest that it not require the player to use a nether wart like most other potions, since it's a potion you are going to need a lot, a lot of, and I barely agree with the ridiculous waste of time that is nether wart farming as is (you have to be in the nether for the entire duration that it takes them to grow, they do not grow while you are in the overworld, and they do not grow if planted in the overworld, otherwise I would be perfectly fine with it).
I always felt that there should be another ingredient used for "base" potions, or something. Nether warts are cool for potion making, but necessary for potion making...? A bit much.
An excellently written post.
I, for one, am a casual player, preferring to play on peaceful, and I would absolutely love all of these changes to occur.
Agh, thank you. I was starting to feel all casual players hated my changes- like I was saying "NOOO THIS GAME HAS TO BE HARDCORE DURF DURR". I want it to be fun, not arbitrarily complex and annoying ;_;
There is a lot of nice ideas here and as such you should have presented them as suggestions in the suggestions forum. Split it up and carefully explain each change in different threads so that it's easier for everyone to focus on each change instead of feeling the need to write an essay with a lot of unrelated topics.
That way you will also to a much lager degree see what's a popular idea and what's not.
If you had sent me PM instead of forever solidifying my contribution to this thread by quoting it, I might have been able to remove or change it in shame, but that train is gone now. Thanks a lot.
Once again, this thread fulfills every desire I have for minecraft to become an even greater game.
One thing: The endermen suggestions you have are rather sub-par. The obsidian encasement thing would be a huge annoyance rather than a difficulty modification, because as soon as the player has to dismantle a few of the shells, spending a good few minutes doing so, they won't be very happy to do it again.
I have an idea for the endermen however.
What if they were capable of phasing through blocks entirely? Perhaps slowly, that way they aren't a dominant threat, and even better they might do this faster/slower depending on difficulty? Then they become fearsome creatures, and the player can't just hide behind a wall as easily.
Right now the only thing I see Minecraft really needing is a toggle switch to change a map from Survival to Creative to Adventure as needed before you load the game. That way you can play test while designing things and do what you want. I'm not talking a console command but an options button on the load saved game screen that lets you set the type of game mode you want for the save.
Finally read your second (or should I say second half?) post, so here are my thoughts;
• Smart biome generation; very nice idea, or at the very least, terrain generation should stop putting taigas right next to deserts. I'm a bit weary of having a bunch of different block that are basically the same and cringing at the idea of having chest for each of the 15 different type of sand, dirt, stone, clay, etc... Perhaps instead of introducing so many new blocks, the various new "sub-biomes" could be made different from one another by their content, such as having one desert biome with low dunes and filled with those large, limbed, western-like cactii, while having another desert being mostly large dunes with no to very little vegetation...
• Raising world height; I'm thinking, if both the X and Z coordinates can go in the negative values, why not do the same with Y? This could allow for more complex caves without the need to raise sea level. Of course mountains could still possibly have their overall heights increased, but increasing depth instead of raising sea levels would leave all this extra room for creation relatively intact...
Of course, this can only be accomplished if Mojang makes chunks into cubes of 16x16x16 instead of the ridiculously large rectangles chunks of 16x16x256...
These sound like great ideas that would definately help improve the general flow of the game. It brings me back to alpha when I had to put serious consideration where I wanted to set up a base due to the crazy world gen.
I think the problem is going to be the fact that people simply won't be all for these changes without having tried them first. Think of it like when you tried smart moving. Not something you think would be absolutely amazing until you've actually played around with it. So even if you don't like bugging people to mod in these ideas, it will probably be a neccessary step to garner support for them as a proof of concept. Besides, it'd be a shame to throw these ideas to the wind and just hope that they take with the developer. A trend with Mojang seems to be see what mods are good, and then adapt them.
It's not like people won't interested in these ideas if you present them in mods discussion. Since it sounds like you've already started with tweaking the code, I guess mod development would be a better place? In any case, you should start a topic over there and link this thread. I know that this is a discussion about improving the base game, which I wholeheartedly agree with, but I think it'd be terrible if it were to just stop here at the ideas level. I know that I would like to try the tweaks that you've made so far.
Reposting this from another forum post that I wrote. It seems relevant here.
The problem with Minecraft is that it tries to be too many things at the same time. It wants to be a building game, and a survival game, and an RPG, and an engineering sandbox, and a simulation, and a million other things at once. But in spreading out the gameplay over so many aspects, it fails to fulfill its potential in any one of them.
Is it a building game? Simple aesthetic blocks like corners aren't even included, and if you want to try and build something in survival, everyone says "go back to creative". Is it a survival game? The enemies' AI is stupid at best, and laughable much of the time. The attack patterns are predictable and shallow; there is no real danger to a skilled player. Combat only consists of clicking repeatedly in one direction, or shooting arrows from afar for no real reason but because you have too much flint.
Is it an engineering game? Anything of actual note is horribly overcomplicated and takes up miles of terrain in-game. In addition, the abysmal optimization and natural slowness of Minecraft causes any significant redstone machine to be inhibited by not the player, who is supposed to have "unlimited freedom", but the game itself.
Is it an RPG? The NPC villagers had no interaction at all until a recent snapshot. They have no voice, no sounds, and no animations. The settlements have no story, the land has no story. Dungeons consist of one room with mediocre rewards you didn't need anyway. Strongholds have nothing of value except for an End portal, which in and of itself is just horrible overall. The final battle makes no sense. It has no backstory, no music, no reason at all. The dragon makes no sounds. You get no reward except experience which is ridiculously easy to get now anyway. The ending is a joke and has no relevance to anything.
Is it an exploring game? All terrain is repetitive, and the only "unique" thing to find is a mushroom island.. which has no real rewards but infinite food, which you can get anyway. If you've seen one desert, you've seen every desert. If you've seen one forest, you've seen every forest. If you've seen one ocean, you're an idiot for staring at a bunch of water for hours and thinking it was anything worth watching. The farlands were taken out, not that they were feasible to reach for an ordinary player anyway, but they were something cool. There are no bosses or "epic" monsters or creatures in the land, no evil lairs or anything of the sort. Just dungeons with more free stuff handed to you in an already boringly easy game.
Minecraft could have been great. It could have been a really good RPG with unique gear and player-influenced dungeons, procedurally generated monsters and NPCs, and a deep and rich world. It could have been a great building game, with smooth, responsive gameplay without mods and a wide, wide selection of blocks to choose from. It could have been a good survival game or even a combat game, with a CTF mode or zombie siege mode, both of which Notch said were going into the game. But instead, it didn't take any steps in any of those directions. It took a step in every direction. But only one. By trying to be so many games at once, Minecraft has failed to be any of them at all. It's a huge waste of potential and I hope a new game comes along, with similar gameplay to Minecraft that everyone will say is "ripping off" Minecraft and that "Mojang should sue" and they go on to say what an innovative genius Notch was and how awesome it is. I want that to happen just so that game can become what Minecraft should have been: a full, finished game. I'm glad I only paid a few dollars for it.
Skeletons being immune to drowning; IIRC, there was a beta version, forget which one entirely, in which both zombies and skeletons were immune to drowning (being dead and all). I have to admit, this did felt right and I believe it should get reimplemented.
Silverfish; Yeah, silverfish are ridiculously rare in their current state. There should be the possibility to encounter the odd pocket of silverfish wen caving. Imagine accidentally uncovering a pocket of silverfish when you're high up the sides of a ravine! Now that's that difficulty and tension right there!
As for the rest of your suggestions, I like a bunch of them, like skeletons being able to shoot through glass (just panes or blocks too?) on hard, or the endermen being more "angry" after beating the ender dragon (though I'm not sure I really like the curse and obsidian encasement thing, perhaps they could throw their blocks at you instead as a ranged attack though, or have increased teleporting range when chasing after you, I dunno...).
The other thread was locked because it was, shall we say, less than polite. This version is much more civil, and thoughtful. Note, also, that the subtitle to the Minecraft Survival forum says "discuss survival mode here." Insurrection has structured his topic such that he begins with a DISCUSSION of a perceived flaw in Minecraft Survival. Opinion? Yes. Off-topic? No. Unless you'd prefer hm to make two separate threads, this location is perfectly acceptable.
Then why is it not called "thrive-al" mode? What right do you have to declare Mojang's intent, any more than he does?
However as the game is constantly being worked on and improved I feel as if you have wasted your time. They improve(try to anyways) minecraft all the time. It's an unfinished game. I am thankful that they let us play it with all it's mistakes.
Submit all these ideas you have for improving the game in suggestions forum! Here people can only argue your idea. In the suggestions forum it can be taken seriously as a suggestion to the game.
A rant, is nothing but a wasted suggestion. Write it well, promote your ideas thoughtfully and calmly, and then all the right kind of people will see them! Good luck. (:
Btw try to remember not to dismiss others opinions. To each their own. Your idea of a better minecraft could easily be the idea of a terrible minecraft in another person's eyes. You cannot declare it truth that minecraft can be better as some people really do see it as perfect. With millions of different ideas of a perfect minecraft, the idea of it ever being perfect in even a million years, is as unrealistic as riding a pig with a saddle.
it doesen't matter whether or not it's being improved on-the fact that it has been officially released means that it is finished. Finished doesen't mean "NO MORE UPDATES", it means "We've finished the mechanics and gotten down all of the items and things, now we will bring in updates for it to make it better for everyone".
It's a subforum about survival mode, and this rant is about survival mode. Yeah, there's suggestions, but they're not finalized suggestions- they're up for discussion
Short of intentionally handicapping yourself, there isn't very much for being "as involved" with the game as there easily could be. It's heavily lacking in content.
It's already basically a "complex amalgamation of other games and ideas". MMORPG-like mechanics (Levels, enchanting, grinding to get said things), FPS-like movement and camera style, horror-like intention (although as pointed out, this can be done better), sandbox stuff, adventure, action, building... there's really a lot of things Minecraft obviously tries to be, but never goes past a few simple steps.
The problem is that it doesn't go past those few steps, and people claim it's "intentionally simple", when Mojang actively try to add more to things and have even admitted the game lacks content.
Even if that's the intent, why is that good? Just because you fulfill your intent doesn't mean you've created a quality product. I can intend to make a game where all you do is jump up and down. There would literally be nothing else, but it's what I "intended". Does that make it good?
Furthermore, as I pointed out, the game currently doesn't fulfill what it intends- so even the argument of "intent" doesn't mean all too much.
Redundant language..? I've pointed out various facts, then referred to them later on in my post in more simple terms rather than re-stating the examples (although I might have done that anyway, as it seems people aren't entirely aware of the concept of presenting an example then referencing it more shortly later on in an argument).
I'm aware of their technical origin, but well, why would they not make idle sounds if they weren't intended to sneak up on players?
Huh, really? Wonder why they were made to drown again...
Might be a few better ways to go about it, although throwing blocks seems rather uncharacteristic of a rather creepy entity.
It's not "finished", yes. That's precisely why I'm ranting and suggesting better ways to do it- it's constantly in progress. I would like to see progress actually go forward.
The suggestions forum is notoriously ignored, though. Besides, I do want people to discuss things rather than flatly suggesting things. I'd be a hypocrite for stating "Criticism can improve almost anything", then leaving my idea closed to criticism.
I won't dismiss other people's opinions, but I will challenge their "opinion" if said opinion is something that's more like a statement (IE: "Minecraft is fine"). Hiding behind a statement under the defense of "it's just an opinion" is... cowardly, honestly.
Anything can be better- literally, anything. Even the best musicians, the best artists, the best mathematicians- anyone can always improve their work. To claim Minecraft is "perfect" would be flat out wrong, and hiding behind the defense of "it's just an opinion" is even more wrong.
Millions of ideas, yes, but not all of them are good ideas- look no further than the suggestions forum or the "What type of X would you add to Minecraft?" threads to see what I'm talking about.
The lack of a tutorial is definitely a weakness in Minecraft as a game that needs to be addressed at some point in the near future. New players would definitely benefit from this.
The difficulty changes you propose are more of a full-game overhaul than improvements to the current system. While I like the idea of mobs being more difficult in more dynamic ways, it's going to alienate the more casual playerbase and could potentially draw away from other aspects of gameplay. However, if there was a way to change the difficulty setting to match the sort of gameplay we have now, that wouldn't be as much of an issue, but there should still be an option to decrease the damage mobs do to the player. Also, not being able to change the difficulty during the game doesn't mean much since the player can just exit the game and change the difficulty there. Even though difficulty could instead be bound permanently to the level save, this destroys a level of flexibility to gameplay. As for wheat having a 50% seed drop rate on hard difficulty, it's easily trumped by bonemealing grass, but at some point the player will run out of bones and have to hunt skeletons, when they may just want the challenge of defending themselves on hard mode while farming normally.
The changes in mob behavior you describe sound really cool with the exception of behaviors which make it possible for the player's creations to be "griefed" without any reasonable way for the player to avoid the mobs from doing it. In the current game, Creeper's explosions can be avoided by staying at a distance, Endermen and Silverfish can only move/destroy single blocks, and Ghasts can only destroy the softest blocks and are exclusively found in the Nether. It would be difficult to prevent the Skeletons you propose from breaking glass blocks, especially since they can detect the player at greater distances. I'm not sure if you intended to mean that Skeletons would be able to destroy glass blocks, but either way I think that arrows should be able to pass through without breaking them. And although a more formidable Enderman after killing the Ender Dragon is a good idea, the ability for them to spawn Obsidian blocks would make cleaning the mess they make extremely time consuming. Endermen should only be able to spawn stone.
This is more of a nickpicky point than anything, but if realism is the motivation for increasing a skeleton's swimming speed, then there would be no need for a skeleton's swimming speed to increase. Although skeletons weigh less, they also have less surface area to push the water with.
I'd love more varied terrain and biomes. I like your suggestion for there to be variations of similar biomes, and strongly agree that biomes should have more logical neighbors. Personally I'd prefer if there weren't predefined biome names and just biome features that are based on the climate and terrain, but that's more of a seperate idea rather than a criticism of your own.
It would be nice to have more options for player mobility, and the idea of balancing armor by reducing sprinting speed is quite intuitive. However, if a material used in making armor is extremely rare, it does act as balancing by limiting the amount of that armor the player can obtain. A full suit diamond armor is made of 24 diamonds, which will soon be the second rarest mineral in the game. Iron armor, on the other hand, is made of 24 iron ingots, which are relatively easy to obtain. Because of that, it makes more sense for iron armor to put a heavier burden on the player than diamond armor.
There's little sense in improving the "graphic design" of Minecraft, unless it's optional settings for improving shading like you described. There are a lot of people who dislike the models and textures of Minecraft, but also a lot of people who like them. It's highly subjective and it's Mojang's choice to decide whether they want to change it or not. Spending the time and effort spinning their wheels on something that the community will equally like and dislike won't do much to improve the game itself. Also, saying that Mojang should do it because they have a bunch of money sounds very entitled.
You bring up good points with your last section, but you seem to project your perceptions of Minecraftforum and the entertainment industry as a whole rather than focus on Mojang itself. If Mojang was as concerned about making money at the expense of the community as other game companies are, they'd be selling sequels, expansion packs, and/or downloadable content. And Mojang does an excellent job at being engaged with their community, not just for the sake of maintaining their fame, but because they enjoy it.
Anyways, that's my mini wall of text.
I, for one, am a casual player, preferring to play on peaceful, and I would absolutely love all of these changes to occur.
My Pathfinder Campaign for the denizens of MCF: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1939035-where-are-we-sandbox-pathfinder-campaign-ooc/
Admittedly, yeah, but right now it's immensely simple. I can't really find a way to really improve it the current way without it still having a lot of its existing flaws. Even if there WERE a way, is my way truly so bad? It leaves a lot more options for developing.
Remember, I also proposed making them less frequent and easier to avoid. While the actual difficulty of fighting mobs will become more of a challenge, the overall difficulty of the game would probably be easier (except in hard, where they'll be able to see you from farther and lots of other stuff... but then it's "hard")
Like I said, I intend to make the game's difficulty be decided mid-game in a more sensible way. Rather than changing it with a button, it'll be changed via going to X places or staying in Y places.
Wear armor! Even by your own (later) admission, iron armor really isn't hard to get. It reduces mob damage by 60%. That's quite a lot. Also, why? With the exception of a creeper to the face, mobs don't do an awful lot of damage even in normal difficulty. Easy difficulty makes it mind numbingly easy (especially if you have diamond and enchants...), and hard difficult makes it arbitrary (and frankly annoying).
Obviously, this would be removed as well... I figured this was a given.
Again, it'd be replaced by the ability to change difficulty mid-game. If anything, there'd be more flexibility ingame.
Yeah, but it's still more difficult than the current game. Also, plains have plenty of tall grass for seeds (although I'd probably reduce the drop rate of seeds from tall grass). Also, why would you go into hard just to play "hole up in the impenetrable fortress"? That's widely known to be the thing that makes Minecraft so easy.
Again, they wouldn't be everywhere at night. Plus, that'd just be in hard- play on normal if it's too destructive for your tastes.
Or, reinforced glass that is much more resistant to explosions, unable to be broken by arrows, and can only be broken by a pickaxe. I know a mod did this before, but yeah.
Hm, good point. End stone it is! Although I thought the idea of Obsidian prisons was really cool... especially given the massive obsidian spikes in the End.
Ahaha, realism isn't the motivation, nah. Although I DID say their resistance to flowing water not their swim speed.
I actually do like that idea (goes back to Notch's original idea of biomes being decided by temperature and rainfall), but under the more "organized" system you have a biiit more control over things like "wildcard" biomes such as mushroom biomes, and etc. Still, if I can find a way to more properly implement climate/terrain based generation, I'll definitely try to do so.
Only to such an extent- it works well in a more linear game (Doom, Half Life), but in a free roaming sandbox game, choice and balance actually can be pretty important. Think of it like this- if you had a weapon that could kill anything in one hit from a distance (a golden gun), but was immensely rare (spawned only in mushroom biomes with a 1 in 100 chance, deep underground), does that make it balanced?
I feel as though more "rare" things shouldn't necessarily be an automatic "better than other things". I don't see it very often where more rare things are better in the sense of having more "extreme" stats (really good in X thing, but pretty crappy in Y and Z thing, yet are still the "best" at X thing), and honestly, it'd be really nice to have.
Stuff like durability, of course, is alright to have as a bonus to more rare stuff (it's not a HUGE boost, but is convenient to have).
But if it CAN be improved, why let people's subjective opinion get in the way? I know it seems mean to disregard people's opinion (or something), but well... don't make me have to argue why popular opinion reeaaallly isn't something that should be considered. Especially for a popular product.
Of course it's their choice- never said it wasn't.
I disagree- people underestimate how aesthetics really affect a game. Really over-complicated grahics can make it hard to actually tell what's going on (this is why I dislike a lot of MMO's). Granted, Minecraft's are simple, but they're not artistically minimalistic. They can retain that "minimalism" and "simple" feel, yet do it in a much more intentional, artistic way. Right now, they really do feel like scaled-down textures taken from a free texture pack, or something. Which was fine for alpha, and maybe beta, but for a "released" game...?
I didn't say they should do it just because they have the money to do it- I said that they're not held back by a lack of money whatsoever, so they don't really have the excuse of budgeting or the like.
My point was that Mojang is going in the very common direction that many other forms of entertainment have gone- and they will end up the same way as the example I brought up if they don't stop for a second and realize what they're doing. That's not just baseless fearmongering or doomsaying, it's a very common pattern. Ignoring criticism on the basis of "pleasing fans" has never led anywhere good.
They sold the game for $30 rather than $15 (or so) simply for a very buggy, underwhelming release.
They held a convention solely for themselves for over $100 a ticket.
They've sold the game on two different platforms, with very oudated versions/under-developed features (one of which platforms is very quickly going to be outdated).
They removed a part of their policy that said people who bought the game in beta or full release would never need to pay money for any extra features added later into the game.
They've actually suggested (not sure if they ever followed through with it) ideas to implement botnet software into their software (a very common thing that a lot of "big name" companies do... for the sake of appealing to more people).
Need I go on? There are plenty more ways of being greedy than just releasing rehashes and DLC.
They've yet to read or respond to any of this. They pretty much ignore the forums, and only pick up the occasional idea thrown to them from twitter.
Yes, they listen to their community, but not the parts of the community one should listen to if they were to make a truly better game.
Yeah. It's sort've a temporary thing they did, I feel, but it needs expansion. When I think of "potions", I instantly think of things like antidotes and the like.
I always felt that there should be another ingredient used for "base" potions, or something. Nether warts are cool for potion making, but necessary for potion making...? A bit much.
Agh, thank you. I was starting to feel all casual players hated my changes- like I was saying "NOOO THIS GAME HAS TO BE HARDCORE DURF DURR". I want it to be fun, not arbitrarily complex and annoying ;_;
That way you will also to a much lager degree see what's a popular idea and what's not.
- #52 by Lambastificate
- #54 by Insurrection
Edit: there you go sheltered
One thing: The endermen suggestions you have are rather sub-par. The obsidian encasement thing would be a huge annoyance rather than a difficulty modification, because as soon as the player has to dismantle a few of the shells, spending a good few minutes doing so, they won't be very happy to do it again.
I have an idea for the endermen however.
What if they were capable of phasing through blocks entirely? Perhaps slowly, that way they aren't a dominant threat, and even better they might do this faster/slower depending on difficulty? Then they become fearsome creatures, and the player can't just hide behind a wall as easily.
• Smart biome generation; very nice idea, or at the very least, terrain generation should stop putting taigas right next to deserts. I'm a bit weary of having a bunch of different block that are basically the same and cringing at the idea of having chest for each of the 15 different type of sand, dirt, stone, clay, etc... Perhaps instead of introducing so many new blocks, the various new "sub-biomes" could be made different from one another by their content, such as having one desert biome with low dunes and filled with those large, limbed, western-like cactii, while having another desert being mostly large dunes with no to very little vegetation...
• Raising world height; I'm thinking, if both the X and Z coordinates can go in the negative values, why not do the same with Y? This could allow for more complex caves without the need to raise sea level. Of course mountains could still possibly have their overall heights increased, but increasing depth instead of raising sea levels would leave all this extra room for creation relatively intact...
Of course, this can only be accomplished if Mojang makes chunks into cubes of 16x16x16 instead of the ridiculously large rectangles chunks of 16x16x256...
I think the problem is going to be the fact that people simply won't be all for these changes without having tried them first. Think of it like when you tried smart moving. Not something you think would be absolutely amazing until you've actually played around with it. So even if you don't like bugging people to mod in these ideas, it will probably be a neccessary step to garner support for them as a proof of concept. Besides, it'd be a shame to throw these ideas to the wind and just hope that they take with the developer. A trend with Mojang seems to be see what mods are good, and then adapt them.
It's not like people won't interested in these ideas if you present them in mods discussion. Since it sounds like you've already started with tweaking the code, I guess mod development would be a better place? In any case, you should start a topic over there and link this thread. I know that this is a discussion about improving the base game, which I wholeheartedly agree with, but I think it'd be terrible if it were to just stop here at the ideas level. I know that I would like to try the tweaks that you've made so far.
The problem with Minecraft is that it tries to be too many things at the same time. It wants to be a building game, and a survival game, and an RPG, and an engineering sandbox, and a simulation, and a million other things at once. But in spreading out the gameplay over so many aspects, it fails to fulfill its potential in any one of them.
Is it a building game? Simple aesthetic blocks like corners aren't even included, and if you want to try and build something in survival, everyone says "go back to creative".
Is it a survival game? The enemies' AI is stupid at best, and laughable much of the time. The attack patterns are predictable and shallow; there is no real danger to a skilled player. Combat only consists of clicking repeatedly in one direction, or shooting arrows from afar for no real reason but because you have too much flint.
Is it an engineering game? Anything of actual note is horribly overcomplicated and takes up miles of terrain in-game. In addition, the abysmal optimization and natural slowness of Minecraft causes any significant redstone machine to be inhibited by not the player, who is supposed to have "unlimited freedom", but the game itself.
Is it an RPG? The NPC villagers had no interaction at all until a recent snapshot. They have no voice, no sounds, and no animations. The settlements have no story, the land has no story. Dungeons consist of one room with mediocre rewards you didn't need anyway. Strongholds have nothing of value except for an End portal, which in and of itself is just horrible overall. The final battle makes no sense. It has no backstory, no music, no reason at all. The dragon makes no sounds. You get no reward except experience which is ridiculously easy to get now anyway. The ending is a joke and has no relevance to anything.
Is it an exploring game? All terrain is repetitive, and the only "unique" thing to find is a mushroom island.. which has no real rewards but infinite food, which you can get anyway. If you've seen one desert, you've seen every desert. If you've seen one forest, you've seen every forest. If you've seen one ocean, you're an idiot for staring at a bunch of water for hours and thinking it was anything worth watching. The farlands were taken out, not that they were feasible to reach for an ordinary player anyway, but they were something cool. There are no bosses or "epic" monsters or creatures in the land, no evil lairs or anything of the sort. Just dungeons with more free stuff handed to you in an already boringly easy game.
Minecraft could have been great. It could have been a really good RPG with unique gear and player-influenced dungeons, procedurally generated monsters and NPCs, and a deep and rich world. It could have been a great building game, with smooth, responsive gameplay without mods and a wide, wide selection of blocks to choose from. It could have been a good survival game or even a combat game, with a CTF mode or zombie siege mode, both of which Notch said were going into the game. But instead, it didn't take any steps in any of those directions. It took a step in every direction. But only one. By trying to be so many games at once, Minecraft has failed to be any of them at all. It's a huge waste of potential and I hope a new game comes along, with similar gameplay to Minecraft that everyone will say is "ripping off" Minecraft and that "Mojang should sue" and they go on to say what an innovative genius Notch was and how awesome it is. I want that to happen just so that game can become what Minecraft should have been: a full, finished game. I'm glad I only paid a few dollars for it.
GENERATION 20: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.