I am never playing Minecraft again since they killed the vast oceans that were a step ahead when they made it. Sorry guys, I'm not going back to a hideous generated world without continents.
I feel you. Wait a little while to see if it gets better, or if anyone makes a terrain gen that makes the oceans more like the old ones.
Personally, although this change doesn't bother me too much, I did somewhat enjoy larger, more expansive oceans. I mean, yes, larger oceans =/= fun oceans. But sometimes, games aren't just about the "fun" or "things to do" part of the game. Tedious parts make games as well.
Take Papers, please. It's tedious. It's repetitive. It's stressful. How can that game ever be fun or rewarding? But it is. People love that game.
I almost feel the same about minecraft oceans, just in a different way. Oceans gave a lot to the sense of exploration. However boring it may have been, it gave the right FEELING, if you get what I mean. It felt right. You would sit in your boat for what seemed like hours, pondering whether or not this direction was the right way to go, when you would see land. Then, you would presumebly jump for joy and get off your stale little boat and go exploring. Smaller oceans just don't give the same feeling. You know you're gonna hit land in a small amount of time. There's no searching. There's no anticipation. There's no feeling of joy when you finally set foot on land.
That is exactly my feeling as well regarding the large oceans, the daunting task of sailing for a long ass time adds a lot of excitement to setting foot on new land, at least for me personally.
It looks like to me that the oceans in 1.7 can still be thousands of blocks long. So you still have to travel a quite long time before you see land again. But there is a difference between ten minutes of boringness, or one hour of boringness, or even more (I saw one flying in Creative over an ocean for more then a half our, and boats are slower). Especially because the new land you then finally will reach, is not that special or rewarding. It is just the continuation of the normal terrain. Beautiful terrain, that's for sure, but in my opinion not worth hours of navigation over an empty, too big ocean.
With the new clustered biomes, the terrain may not be the same on the other side. The first "new terrain" world Jeb tweeted had three continents, basically one snow, one dry, and one forested. In any case, different terrain is often going to require a long trip. Is half an hour in a boat worse than 2 hours or more through swamp and jungle or desert and canyon?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
ShinySnack, Papers, Please is a whole different game then normal games. In that game the tedious gameplay is just part of the game, the story of it. It forces you to see the immigrants as numbers, while you have to decide about moral dilemma's, about their lives and your live.
I know one thing for sure: if a platform game would add many levels with only running for hours, or if an action game would add many levels of fighting only the same enemies, players wouldn't accept that. Some kind of grinding and boringness is good, but it must not last too long.
It looks like to me that the oceans in 1.7 can still be thousands of blocks long. So you still have to travel a quite long time before you see land again. But there is a difference between ten minutes of boringness, or one hour of boringness, or even more (I saw one flying in Creative over an ocean for more then a half our, and boats are slower). Especially because the new land you then finally will reach, is not that special or rewarding. It is just the continuation of the normal terrain. Beautiful terrain, that's for sure, but in my opinion not worth hours of navigation over an empty, too big ocean.
The point isn't there being oceans. The point was that you NEED to cross them to find a new continent. With hundreds of land bridges turning this "ocean" into the Great Lakes v2, it isn't fun. The point of oceans was that you NEEDED to go across them to discover new things, not just walk around it or take a quick swim across!
The new world gen looks like an ugly patchwork of land and water made by a two year old. The old one looks like vast continents to explore. separated by a mighty ocean you need to cross. Also, mushroom islands are made much less common with the smaller oceans, and nearly all of the islands are gone. No more stumbling across a tropical island in the middle of the ocean, it seems.
I prefer continents myself: distinct landmasses separated by contiguous expanses of water.
All I see in the new terrain generation are dozens of large lakes and inland seas, not oceans to explore.
The only reason why oceans are dull right now is because they have no features to explore. No sunken ruins. No coral reefs. Nothing to liven things up.
I definitely prefer continents and large oceans. Essentially they've just turned them into big lakes surrounded by infinite, interconnected land. What I wish they would do is add more content to the oceans instead of practically removing them. I'm very disappointed, to say the least.
Those argueing for oceans have been making really compelling arguements...
They make me support old ocean sizes even more.
But beyond all things; it baffles me Jeb_ has still not worked on the content generation within the ocean. Of all biomes, the ocean is the most barren. We already have sponge that could easily spawn within the ocean and a few other practical block ideas; it shocks me nothing has been done.
Instead we saw a lazy bypass to the lack of content by just cutting the oceans' size down.
This has pretty much removed the last reason for me to build a boat with their crappy controls. Aqua Affinity and Respiration are also going to be less practical for survival. I feel I'm better off riding a horse along the coast now.
I'll still end up getting to the other side with the lack of continents.
Let's say that with the old terrain generation, you had two choices when it comes to exploration: the Columbus approach and the Livingstone approach. You could either venture into the infinite ocean in hopes of discovering new distant continents (Columbus) or you could head inland traveling along rivers and across mountains looking for the secrets hidden in the heart of the continent (Livingstone). Now, with the presumable new generation, the only approach possible will be the Livingstone one.
Dr. Livingstone, I presume?
What I really wish they'd do is leave the oceans more or less as they are, but make the Columbus approach the theme of either the rest of this update or the next one. Right now all we have is little paper dinghies and maps that, frankly, are far too small even at the largest zoom to depict oceans. Some thoughts on what could be done here:
-Proper sea charts with an enormous zoom. These would perhaps have to cut down on the land detail significantly for the sake of readability and not simply being giant maps; perhaps only showing biome, and not actual blocks, would be good. Somehow marking the location of tiny little islands on the map might be a nice feature if it doesn't look too ugly.
-Telescopes. Probably not that difficult to do with OpenGL (just have to change the viewing frustum a bit), and would be great for that explorer feel.
-Larger sailing ships. Ideally at full speed they'd be faster than the boats we have now, and have some internal inventory space to act as a sort of home away from home for explorers. Colombus didn't use a little one man dinghy, after all.
-More rare content (along the lines of desert/jungle temples and mushroom islands), both out on the ocean and on land. Make exploration a worthwhile endeavor.
Before seeing this thread I had half a mind to try modding it myself... but then, someone's got to keep Mazeworld slowly trudging along...
heres my 2 cents on this. Oceans are suppose to be large and vast bodies of water, so the current 1.6 ocean generation embodies that perfectly. that is what an ocean is. however, the generation in 1.7 seems to just be a ton of mini lakes on a very large and broken continent. in other words, 1.7 wont have oceans at all, just numerous small lakes and rivers.
i dont see a point to this. they should just add more meaningful things to oceans like small-large islands rather than cluttering it up with different biomes. the new 1.7 world looks like it wont have oceanns at all which is kinda sad imo.
To be honest, if this stays, I may not actually start a new world for 1.7.
I may not even explore outside of what I've already explored.
I don't to be in a world that looks all patchy like it does in that map.
My world has large oceans, and I want it to stay that way.
While these poll results seem to say the majority is opposed to the new oceans, so did my craftable saddles poll with more votes than this, as well as that 1.6 zombie poll where a larger majority voted "They should tone it down," and nothing was done to change those things.
I'm not sure Mojang even looks at these forums.
Heck, even when they do, if we are opposing one of their decisions, they just tell us we're in the minority and that most people enjoy it.
Much as I love the diversification of terrestrial biomes, I'm not very keen on the smaller oceans. I like having separate continents, and was really hoping that the predicted "changes to oceans" might mean *putting more in them*, rather than drastically reducing their size... which seems to me a bit of an uncreative way to get over the problem of how empty they currently are. It wouldn't be too difficult to:
- add more interesting things to oceans to give people more reason to visit them (ocean temples, shipwrecks?);
- stop treating the entire ocean as a single biome and instead bring in several marine biomes (coral reefs, deep sea vents, kelp forests?) with useful resources specific to each;
- and promote undersea exploration (by e.g. augmenting the Aqua Affinity and Respiration enchantments?)
Just as the differences between nether exploration and overworld exploration help to keep things interesting, the unique challenges of oceanic exploration and resource gathering would add real diversity to the gameplay.
I've been looking at my worlds and random seeds with Amidst, and I can't see why anybody would have serious problems with the current 1.6 ocean system, or any big need to change it. Every seed, without exception so far (10 tried) is in the midst of an enormous land system of hundreds, probably thousands, of biomes and the longest crossing you need to make on any of them is about 600 blocks. Also every seed starts in a subsystem of at least dozen where the longest needed crossing is less than 200, meaning you'll see the next land just by doing a coastal survey. The only way I can see someone would have problems is if their idea of "crossing an ocean" is just get into a boat and head out in some random direction forever, expecting you'll run into something. Does anybody actually do that?
Can anybody post a problem seed just to indicate what problems might even need to be fixed?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Jeb should try balancing the ocean/terrain generation a little more. Like 50/50. Now it looks like terrain is more dominant than oceans, when neither should be dominant at all.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To all of you people who think Notch is still working on the game, he stopped working on Minecraft in late 2011. Get your facts straight and stop spamming his twitter about Minecraft updates.
For me the ocean size is irrelevant, I just need there to be continents to help keep the land more defined instead of an unending mess of land.
I want to one day conquer an entire continent and place outposts all around it and make pathes that cut across it, with ports all around. This is possible (tho difficult) in the current generation.
But the new setup means no continents. The oceans have shrunk past the acceptable point, to where all the would-be continents are connected.
I really liked the idea of less wide oceans, and an ocean biome with tons of islands, but I still want actual defined continents and most open oceans with rarer islands.
I was really hoping the oceans were going to get filled with neat stuff like coral, fish, shipwrecks, and new bigger boats for use to sail, rather than just switching to large lakes with land dominating everything in a neverending land bridge setup.
At the very least, with the current land/water ratio, I'd like forced continent creations where it breaks the land up with extra water biomes places around.
Maybe take the current terrain generator, and turn all the current biomes that border an ocean, into those island biomes. Then a lot of those land bridges would just be ocean with lots of islands, and we'd have continents again, the new island biomes, and shorter empty oceans.
Perhaps the issue could be solved with a world preview ( like Admist does ) in the new world screen. With a checkbox to disable it if people don't want to see it. This way people can click create a new world, get a small 5K x 5K preview, if they don't like it, add a button to randomise / add their own seed.
Then people can flick through random till they find something they like.
This thumbnail could also be used in the single player world selection screen for each world save.
I feel you. Wait a little while to see if it gets better, or if anyone makes a terrain gen that makes the oceans more like the old ones.
Take Papers, please. It's tedious. It's repetitive. It's stressful. How can that game ever be fun or rewarding? But it is. People love that game.
I almost feel the same about minecraft oceans, just in a different way. Oceans gave a lot to the sense of exploration. However boring it may have been, it gave the right FEELING, if you get what I mean. It felt right. You would sit in your boat for what seemed like hours, pondering whether or not this direction was the right way to go, when you would see land. Then, you would presumebly jump for joy and get off your stale little boat and go exploring. Smaller oceans just don't give the same feeling. You know you're gonna hit land in a small amount of time. There's no searching. There's no anticipation. There's no feeling of joy when you finally set foot on land.
Also, persuasive writing is fun.
With the new clustered biomes, the terrain may not be the same on the other side. The first "new terrain" world Jeb tweeted had three continents, basically one snow, one dry, and one forested. In any case, different terrain is often going to require a long trip. Is half an hour in a boat worse than 2 hours or more through swamp and jungle or desert and canyon?
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
The point isn't there being oceans. The point was that you NEED to cross them to find a new continent. With hundreds of land bridges turning this "ocean" into the Great Lakes v2, it isn't fun. The point of oceans was that you NEEDED to go across them to discover new things, not just walk around it or take a quick swim across!
The new world gen looks like an ugly patchwork of land and water made by a two year old. The old one looks like vast continents to explore. separated by a mighty ocean you need to cross. Also, mushroom islands are made much less common with the smaller oceans, and nearly all of the islands are gone. No more stumbling across a tropical island in the middle of the ocean, it seems.
All I see in the new terrain generation are dozens of large lakes and inland seas, not oceans to explore.
The only reason why oceans are dull right now is because they have no features to explore. No sunken ruins. No coral reefs. Nothing to liven things up.
They make me support old ocean sizes even more.
But beyond all things; it baffles me Jeb_ has still not worked on the content generation within the ocean. Of all biomes, the ocean is the most barren. We already have sponge that could easily spawn within the ocean and a few other practical block ideas; it shocks me nothing has been done.
Instead we saw a lazy bypass to the lack of content by just cutting the oceans' size down.
This has pretty much removed the last reason for me to build a boat with their crappy controls. Aqua Affinity and Respiration are also going to be less practical for survival. I feel I'm better off riding a horse along the coast now.
I'll still end up getting to the other side with the lack of continents.
Dr. Livingstone, I presume?
What I really wish they'd do is leave the oceans more or less as they are, but make the Columbus approach the theme of either the rest of this update or the next one. Right now all we have is little paper dinghies and maps that, frankly, are far too small even at the largest zoom to depict oceans. Some thoughts on what could be done here:
-Proper sea charts with an enormous zoom. These would perhaps have to cut down on the land detail significantly for the sake of readability and not simply being giant maps; perhaps only showing biome, and not actual blocks, would be good. Somehow marking the location of tiny little islands on the map might be a nice feature if it doesn't look too ugly.
-Telescopes. Probably not that difficult to do with OpenGL (just have to change the viewing frustum a bit), and would be great for that explorer feel.
-Larger sailing ships. Ideally at full speed they'd be faster than the boats we have now, and have some internal inventory space to act as a sort of home away from home for explorers. Colombus didn't use a little one man dinghy, after all.
-More rare content (along the lines of desert/jungle temples and mushroom islands), both out on the ocean and on land. Make exploration a worthwhile endeavor.
Before seeing this thread I had half a mind to try modding it myself... but then, someone's got to keep Mazeworld slowly trudging along...
i dont see a point to this. they should just add more meaningful things to oceans like small-large islands rather than cluttering it up with different biomes. the new 1.7 world looks like it wont have oceanns at all which is kinda sad imo.
I may not even explore outside of what I've already explored.
I don't to be in a world that looks all patchy like it does in that map.
My world has large oceans, and I want it to stay that way.
While these poll results seem to say the majority is opposed to the new oceans, so did my craftable saddles poll with more votes than this, as well as that 1.6 zombie poll where a larger majority voted "They should tone it down," and nothing was done to change those things.
I'm not sure Mojang even looks at these forums.
Heck, even when they do, if we are opposing one of their decisions, they just tell us we're in the minority and that most people enjoy it.
Ok then. Enjoy your crappy patchwork world.
Exactly.
Can anybody post a problem seed just to indicate what problems might even need to be fixed?
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I want to one day conquer an entire continent and place outposts all around it and make pathes that cut across it, with ports all around. This is possible (tho difficult) in the current generation.
But the new setup means no continents. The oceans have shrunk past the acceptable point, to where all the would-be continents are connected.
I really liked the idea of less wide oceans, and an ocean biome with tons of islands, but I still want actual defined continents and most open oceans with rarer islands.
I was really hoping the oceans were going to get filled with neat stuff like coral, fish, shipwrecks, and new bigger boats for use to sail, rather than just switching to large lakes with land dominating everything in a neverending land bridge setup.
At the very least, with the current land/water ratio, I'd like forced continent creations where it breaks the land up with extra water biomes places around.
Maybe take the current terrain generator, and turn all the current biomes that border an ocean, into those island biomes. Then a lot of those land bridges would just be ocean with lots of islands, and we'd have continents again, the new island biomes, and shorter empty oceans.
Then people can flick through random till they find something they like.
This thumbnail could also be used in the single player world selection screen for each world save.