Whether Notch cares for Minecraft anymore or not is irrelevant. If you like the game, thats all that should matter.
I really doubt development will stop or be nerfed anymore than it should. Mind you, Notch made it clear, back in 1.3, that the game will not be advancing as much as it did back in the Alpha stages. What you are playing now isn't too different from what is meant to be the final version.
It is just about in its finished state now, bug fixing is the only thing I can see being needed from here. Though, some people have their eyes set on certain mods (Pistons, Aether, Mo' Creatures..) being introduced to the vanilla version of Minecraft.
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CPU: Intel 2500K @ 3.9Ghz[]Memory: 16GB Corsair 1600[]GPU: ASUS 560 Ti TOP[]Running Win 7
Minecraft has saturated its target market and isn't going to make much more money. Over two million sales so far; does anyone really think there will be three million or four? And since it's a one-time purchase instead of a subscription, the only incentive Mojang has to work on it now is to avoid angry forum posts from its established suckers-I-mean-customers (which they don't read anyway). But if they put out a new game, they stand to collect that money from us all over again (unless the MC support in the meantime is bad enough to sour enough of us on them altogether). I'd probably focus on other projects as well if I was in that situation.
I'm sorry, but I cannot possibly disagree with you more. It took Minecraft over a year and a half to make it's first million sales and less than FOUR months from that point to sell it's second million. A month later (aka now) they are a third of the way to the next million. By every possible measure, this is NOT a game that has reached market saturation. Also keep in mind that anyone who didn't buy an alpha account will need to buy the full retail version when it launches. Obviously as a corporate entity, Mojang has a vested interest in Minecraft's continued development and success.
The last few updates have sor tof felt like they were making it up as they went along. Maybe it is time to just do one final big update then just release the game so they can go on to work on projects they're still interested in.
Even if this were the case, which I don't believe it is, it would make far more sense to hire a team that IS passionate about minecraft to continue to development on it. It's a near zero-risk investment. (See above)
I've only been playing for a few weeks, so I really have no frame of reference... But is it really all that bad?
I'm troubled now... Someone gimme a reason to think it'll all be okay... =(
Right now things look a little bleak because this patch has been rough, but so have some of the ones in the past. The game is incredibly fun, it is being added to, and there is a vibrant community involved in it. Also, Notch is a smart dude and unless he is allergic to money, Minecraft will have a long future ahead of it. In my mind, this thread is primarily to encourage Notch to bring on more help and start putting processes in place to improve the quality of updates. Minecraft has nigh limitless potential, let's just crank up the timetable of that potential being realized.
Dravenfrost: Beta users DO NOT need to buy again when it releases. They might have to buy additional content (Downloadable Content, expansions), but not the final product.
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It's hard to follow your dreams when you run from your nightmares. --
Dravenfrost: Beta users DO NOT need to buy again when it releases. They might have to buy additional content (Downloadable Content, expansions), but not the final product.
Ah, thanks Beltir, I thought that was the plan when they switched from Alpha to Beta but I didn't give it much heed as I have my precious alpha account, heh.
Ah, thanks Beltir, I thought that was the plan when they switched from Alpha to Beta but I didn't give it much heed as I have my precious alpha account, heh.
Not a problem. I'm alpha as well, but many Beta users have been confused and thought they would have to pay again.
As for this thread, I was looking forward to this patch, because of all of the bug fixes (which is the main thing I want), but some of the bugs are many times worse than the stuff they removed. I think if Notch would have been fixing bugs throughout Beta, instead of focusing on adding content (and more bugs with that content) this wouldn't be a problem now.
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It's hard to follow your dreams when you run from your nightmares. --
i agree that if mojang blew up to Blizzard proportions it would be bad. However, hiring a pair of interns for 10 bucks an hour just to test new patches before they go public would only be about 50,000 for a year out of the 20 or so million that minecraft has made so far.
also, the recent focusing of their resources on making a mobile version of minecraft is cearly a strategy to increase revenue which i can appreciate from a buisness perspective, but the real minecraft still desperately needs to be supported better.
I completely agree they should get at least one person to test patches before they're released.
Not so much about the mobile version. I ported Beta 1.3 to my Android phone after it came out. It only took me about 4 days. Of course, making it run decently might take longer. (I got ~1 fps)
The only way Notch could miss bugs like "the server uses 100% CPU" and "furnaces will only smelt one item" is that he doesn't ever play the game himself, and just writes some stuff, crosses his fingers and then releases it. Seriously?
I completely agree they should get at least one person to test patches before they're released.
Not so much about the mobile version. I ported Beta 1.3 to my Android phone after it came out. It only took me about 4 days. Of course, making it run decently might take longer. (I got ~1 fps)
The only way Notch could miss bugs like "the server uses 100% CPU" and "furnaces will only smelt one item" is that he doesn't ever play the game himself, and just writes some stuff, crosses his fingers and then releases it. Seriously?
From what I know, Notch had a bunch of people from the IRC channel helping him test bugs the day before 1.6 was released.
What they were testing for, I have no idea.
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there appears to be a serious lack of ambition from mojang regarding the Minecraft project.
Very well said, taukarrie. And as much as I don't want to, I completely agree with the above.
There was a day when I was trolling these threads, and trashing them with the "it's beta" and "they're a new company" arguments. But, I just don't feel they apply anymore. I really don't think Mojang has risen to the occasion. You pretty much said it all.
I'm also not a fan of their release methods. It almost feels like they release an update, and then quickly run away so they don't have to deal with it. They typically do a good job immediately after release, but then they just... leave. And we're left waiting several days for them to meander on back to supporting their new update.
At this point, my biggest fear is that Minecraft is just a "company starter"; Something to kick-start Mojang, before they move on to something else they want to do.
I don't know... I hope we're proven wrong in the end, but I have a feeling we won't.
Very well said, taukarrie. And as much as I don't want to, I completely agree with the above.
There was a day when I was trolling these threads, and trashing them with the "it's beta" and "they're a new company" arguments. But, I just don't feel they apply anymore. I really don't think Mojang has risen to the occasion. You pretty much said it all.
I'm also not a fan of their release methods. It almost feels like they release an update, and then quickly run away so they don't have to deal with it. They typically do a good job immediately after release, but then they just... leave. And we're left waiting several days for them to meander on back to supporting their new update.
At this point, my biggest fear is that Minecraft is just a "company starter"; Something to kick-start Mojang, before they move on to something else they want to do.
I don't know... I hope we're proven wrong in the end, but I have a feeling we won't.
Very solid statements.
I've been playing this for a good while, and as a game, Minecraft is wonderful. But what I find grossly appalling is the manner of which updates are pushed to the clients. I've been writing software for years, in many languages, from VB 6, C#, C++, Java, PHP, and the list goes on. And never, ever, ever would a release like 1.6 have been tolerated. If I had an employee push an update to the live clients and it looked like this they would have been fired on the spot. It just makes the company look incompetent, and not incorrectly. Mojang either doesn't take the project seriously, or they don't know how to properly manage the development cycle. (maybe a bit of both?)
I hate to spout garbage like "NOTCH SUX! LERN 2 PROGRAMZ"... but unfortunately when you release 2 minor revisions (1.5 & 1.6) updates where the bugs out number added features/fixed you have to wonder if that statement is really far off base. And don't start in on it being a "beta". The purpose of a beta, is to release fixes and make it stable for release, not release more features, and for the love of God... not release more bugs. If anything, with the features for still coming and the instability of it, it's an alpha, and as such shouldn't have been yet openly released.
With the number of open source/free software available for your development team you have no excuse to not be able to keep your projects features, bugs, and fixed neat and tidy. (SVN/Git, Redmine, TeamCity, on & on...) And with a little testing 90% of the bugs could be caught before release. (How hard is it to take the time and have most the office play games 2 days before release?) And aside from those, making a point release available for download prior to wide spread release.
For a game the cost me roughly $20, and has sold over 2,000,000 copies... (do the math)
For everyone relating this to price, Does it matter? He started off saying it will end up being around 20 euro, so he can't jack the price up without a hellish backlash from fans.
If I found a game I loved, would it somehow make it worse if I spent $20 instead of $60? No. Potential of a game is not measured for how much it is sold for. The only thing price has to do with a game is how much it could be sold for. If Notch sold this game for 5 euro for early alpha players, would it somehow have made the game worse? What if he started off at 30? Would it be better?
So, rather than comparing to the price, can we just talk about the game?
Note: This goes for all threads. It isn't really showing up in this thread, but it normally does eventually as something along the lines of "Shut up, it was $20!"
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It's hard to follow your dreams when you run from your nightmares. --
I'm inclined to agree. We all bought the game knowing it would be changed along the way and sadly that means some bad changes along with the good ones depending on how we personally like to play the game. This latest update seems to have removed more from the game than its added.
Sure we get long grass but at the expense of finding seeds in soil. There's a lot more soil around than long grass. So far I haven't even found any long grass.
We've got maps. I've yet to determine how useful they will be compared to the trusty compass but at least its one of those additions that doesn't harm the game so I'm happy about that.
Same goes for trap doors. Might never use one but its nice to know its available and hasn't hurt the game.
So what did we lose in exchange for 2 new items and a new feature?
As mentioned, its now harder to get seeds to start farming.
Old rail boosters have been nerfed which will upset a number of people who spent half their lives setting up massive rail networks. Guess they now have no choice but to spend the other half of their life modifying them with all the gold they've hopefully been stockpiling.
Water elevators have become nice scenic features to be gazed upon but no longer used. Bet that hasn't pleased everybody either.
Seems to me some features that weren't affecting the game has been removed just for the sake of it. I'm just glad I haven't got any water elevators or old type boosters in my worlds. I did try making some rail boosters but for some reason they never boosted properly. I put it down to my severely nerfed graphics card and slow computer. When you average 4-9fps those boosters just don't cut it.
Also with the new update I've noticed rain is much louder than it ever was before, so much so that I just can't stand it now. Its blares out even when I go underground making it impossible to hear regular sounds. I've been reduced to turning the sound off when it rains and if outdoors switching to peaceful as I leave the computer for 10 minutes to wait for it to stop. Before the update i used to keep working in the rain and actually thought it was okay. So for me at least this update has nerfed rain as well.
Now this is all without the bugs that others have noticed, one that got me was when I start a game if I'm indoors I get injured as though I had tried to exit a cart in a 2 block high tunnel. No biggie but a bug nevertheless.
I used to look forward to updates. After this one I'm now starting to dread what other things will be done to the game in future.
I hate to spout garbage like "NOTCH SUX! LERN 2 PROGRAMZ"... but unfortunately when you release 2 minor revisions (1.5 & 1.6) updates where the bugs out number added features/fixed you have to wonder if that statement is really far off base. And don't start in on it being a "beta". The purpose of a beta, is to release fixes and make it stable for release, not release more features, and for the love of God... not release more bugs. If anything, with the features for still coming and the instability of it, it's an alpha, and as such shouldn't have been yet openly released.
With the number of open source/free software available for your development team you have no excuse to not be able to keep your projects features, bugs, and fixed neat and tidy. (SVN/Git, Redmine, TeamCity, on & on...) And with a little testing 90% of the bugs could be caught before release. (How hard is it to take the time and have most the office play games 2 days before release?) And aside from those, making a point release available for download prior to wide spread release.
For a game the cost me roughly $20, and has sold over 2,000,000 copies... (do the math)
Those of us who are developers in other media, i.e. we lowly web programmers, database programers, day-to-day corporate schmos, etc., know 100% WHY Mojang is a horrible development company. If we who work our butts off every day to fix glitches on web sites and we who cater to paid customers (most of you, by the way, are paid customers from what I can tell) could get away with the level of quality this dang game company gets away with, we'd all be billionaires. We all paid money for this game, and whether Mojang wants to mess around with terms like "beta" or whatever, it's still bad, untested code, for money. If you're a developer of merit, you know that releasing bad code to the public for cash is an ethically wrong thing to do. Programmers like "notch," as he calls himself because that makes him sound cooler than the rest of us lowly programmers who haven't discovered a successful pyramid scheme to make a few cold million from yet, are not respected by the rest of us programmers who work every day to produce quality work.
It's guys like "notch" who make it so that we who are making web sites for small clients have to bust our butts 24-7 to check 20 times to make sure contact forms work, and that every link on a web page is functional in every browser -- they give us a bad name, and force us to be hyper diligent to protect our own, even sometimes beyond rationality, because some of these dudes are just plain lazy and make life difficult for the rest of us.
I agree with this fully. I follow Notch on twitter, and he always says he is playing other games with people from Mojang, or partying. Doesn't really sound like he cares for the game that he hasn't even fully made yet.
I really think the issue is not Notch's personal behavior or the fact that we are "paying customers". The dude made a new type of game with a solid business model and has become a millionaire as a result. If he wanted to spend the rest of his life living off the proceeds, more power to him. For a game we've paid 10 to 20 bucks for, we've all gotten more than our money's worth. Even if you just bought the game this week, it's still worth far more than that in terms of the number of hours of entertainment you are likely to receive from it, even in it's semi-broken state.
The issue at hand is what happens now. Does Mojang switch their focus to other projects? Do they start using any type of QA pipeline to vet their builds? Does Notch hand the reigns off to one of his employees, or another company, continue to try to support it himself, or abandon it altogether? What I think we as a playerbase need to continue to advocate for is improved support for the game, regardless the direction Notch/Mojang decide to go in (and it is their choice).
I've been pondering if there is anything we as a community can do besides vocally criticize/defend. One thought... what if we build a full-on QA test plan for Minecraft builds, like they use in actual game development? We can refine it on the minecraft wiki and the minute a new build comes out, we run through the entire plan and post pass/fail for all the functionality in the game. With a community this large, it could be broken up into sections and fully tested within minutes. The main issue there is coordinating this and distilling the information down, but I'm sure some smart people can figure it out.
Whether Notch cares for Minecraft anymore or not is irrelevant. If you like the game, thats all that should matter.
I really doubt development will stop or be nerfed anymore than it should. Mind you, Notch made it clear, back in 1.3, that the game will not be advancing as much as it did back in the Alpha stages. What you are playing now isn't too different from what is meant to be the final version.
It is just about in its finished state now, bug fixing is the only thing I can see being needed from here. Though, some people have their eyes set on certain mods (Pistons, Aether, Mo' Creatures..) being introduced to the vanilla version of Minecraft.
I'm sorry, but I cannot possibly disagree with you more. It took Minecraft over a year and a half to make it's first million sales and less than FOUR months from that point to sell it's second million. A month later (aka now) they are a third of the way to the next million. By every possible measure, this is NOT a game that has reached market saturation. Also keep in mind that anyone who didn't buy an alpha account will need to buy the full retail version when it launches. Obviously as a corporate entity, Mojang has a vested interest in Minecraft's continued development and success.
Even if this were the case, which I don't believe it is, it would make far more sense to hire a team that IS passionate about minecraft to continue to development on it. It's a near zero-risk investment. (See above)
Right now things look a little bleak because this patch has been rough, but so have some of the ones in the past. The game is incredibly fun, it is being added to, and there is a vibrant community involved in it. Also, Notch is a smart dude and unless he is allergic to money, Minecraft will have a long future ahead of it. In my mind, this thread is primarily to encourage Notch to bring on more help and start putting processes in place to improve the quality of updates. Minecraft has nigh limitless potential, let's just crank up the timetable of that potential being realized.
I would like to see more added to Vanilla Minecraft, but PC titles are great for modding, so I'll probably be looking forward to that most of all.
It's hard to follow your dreams when you run from your nightmares. --
Ah, thanks Beltir, I thought that was the plan when they switched from Alpha to Beta but I didn't give it much heed as I have my precious alpha account, heh.
Not a problem. I'm alpha as well, but many Beta users have been confused and thought they would have to pay again.
As for this thread, I was looking forward to this patch, because of all of the bug fixes (which is the main thing I want), but some of the bugs are many times worse than the stuff they removed. I think if Notch would have been fixing bugs throughout Beta, instead of focusing on adding content (and more bugs with that content) this wouldn't be a problem now.
It's hard to follow your dreams when you run from your nightmares. --
releases thursday middayish, resonds rest of the day,
saturday and sunday are hardly working days, also
http://twitter.com/#!/notch
I completely agree they should get at least one person to test patches before they're released.
Not so much about the mobile version. I ported Beta 1.3 to my Android phone after it came out. It only took me about 4 days. Of course, making it run decently might take longer. (I got ~1 fps)
The only way Notch could miss bugs like "the server uses 100% CPU" and "furnaces will only smelt one item" is that he doesn't ever play the game himself, and just writes some stuff, crosses his fingers and then releases it. Seriously?
From what I know, Notch had a bunch of people from the IRC channel helping him test bugs the day before 1.6 was released.
What they were testing for, I have no idea.
Very well said, taukarrie. And as much as I don't want to, I completely agree with the above.
There was a day when I was trolling these threads, and trashing them with the "it's beta" and "they're a new company" arguments. But, I just don't feel they apply anymore. I really don't think Mojang has risen to the occasion. You pretty much said it all.
I'm also not a fan of their release methods. It almost feels like they release an update, and then quickly run away so they don't have to deal with it. They typically do a good job immediately after release, but then they just... leave. And we're left waiting several days for them to meander on back to supporting their new update.
At this point, my biggest fear is that Minecraft is just a "company starter"; Something to kick-start Mojang, before they move on to something else they want to do.
I don't know... I hope we're proven wrong in the end, but I have a feeling we won't.
Very solid statements.
I've been playing this for a good while, and as a game, Minecraft is wonderful. But what I find grossly appalling is the manner of which updates are pushed to the clients. I've been writing software for years, in many languages, from VB 6, C#, C++, Java, PHP, and the list goes on. And never, ever, ever would a release like 1.6 have been tolerated. If I had an employee push an update to the live clients and it looked like this they would have been fired on the spot. It just makes the company look incompetent, and not incorrectly. Mojang either doesn't take the project seriously, or they don't know how to properly manage the development cycle. (maybe a bit of both?)
I hate to spout garbage like "NOTCH SUX! LERN 2 PROGRAMZ"... but unfortunately when you release 2 minor revisions (1.5 & 1.6) updates where the bugs out number added features/fixed you have to wonder if that statement is really far off base. And don't start in on it being a "beta". The purpose of a beta, is to release fixes and make it stable for release, not release more features, and for the love of God... not release more bugs. If anything, with the features for still coming and the instability of it, it's an alpha, and as such shouldn't have been yet openly released.
With the number of open source/free software available for your development team you have no excuse to not be able to keep your projects features, bugs, and fixed neat and tidy. (SVN/Git, Redmine, TeamCity, on & on...) And with a little testing 90% of the bugs could be caught before release. (How hard is it to take the time and have most the office play games 2 days before release?) And aside from those, making a point release available for download prior to wide spread release.
For a game the cost me roughly $20, and has sold over 2,000,000 copies... (do the math)
You can step up your game.
How they missed all these bugs is beyond me.
If I found a game I loved, would it somehow make it worse if I spent $20 instead of $60? No. Potential of a game is not measured for how much it is sold for. The only thing price has to do with a game is how much it could be sold for. If Notch sold this game for 5 euro for early alpha players, would it somehow have made the game worse? What if he started off at 30? Would it be better?
So, rather than comparing to the price, can we just talk about the game?
Note: This goes for all threads. It isn't really showing up in this thread, but it normally does eventually as something along the lines of "Shut up, it was $20!"
It's hard to follow your dreams when you run from your nightmares. --
Sure we get long grass but at the expense of finding seeds in soil. There's a lot more soil around than long grass. So far I haven't even found any long grass.
We've got maps. I've yet to determine how useful they will be compared to the trusty compass but at least its one of those additions that doesn't harm the game so I'm happy about that.
Same goes for trap doors. Might never use one but its nice to know its available and hasn't hurt the game.
So what did we lose in exchange for 2 new items and a new feature?
As mentioned, its now harder to get seeds to start farming.
Old rail boosters have been nerfed which will upset a number of people who spent half their lives setting up massive rail networks. Guess they now have no choice but to spend the other half of their life modifying them with all the gold they've hopefully been stockpiling.
Water elevators have become nice scenic features to be gazed upon but no longer used. Bet that hasn't pleased everybody either.
Seems to me some features that weren't affecting the game has been removed just for the sake of it. I'm just glad I haven't got any water elevators or old type boosters in my worlds. I did try making some rail boosters but for some reason they never boosted properly. I put it down to my severely nerfed graphics card and slow computer. When you average 4-9fps those boosters just don't cut it.
Also with the new update I've noticed rain is much louder than it ever was before, so much so that I just can't stand it now. Its blares out even when I go underground making it impossible to hear regular sounds. I've been reduced to turning the sound off when it rains and if outdoors switching to peaceful as I leave the computer for 10 minutes to wait for it to stop. Before the update i used to keep working in the rain and actually thought it was okay. So for me at least this update has nerfed rain as well.
Now this is all without the bugs that others have noticed, one that got me was when I start a game if I'm indoors I get injured as though I had tried to exit a cart in a 2 block high tunnel. No biggie but a bug nevertheless.
I used to look forward to updates. After this one I'm now starting to dread what other things will be done to the game in future.
they released easily more content and bug fixes then the new bugs
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Version_history
and they had testers
yet the irc players didnt notcie them.... maybe more should have offered to play test?
Yes you are correct. There 135 features/fixes and 75 Bugs introduced.
I stand corrected. It is completely acceptable to take three steps forward and two back.
That truly is the way of progress.
It's guys like "notch" who make it so that we who are making web sites for small clients have to bust our butts 24-7 to check 20 times to make sure contact forms work, and that every link on a web page is functional in every browser -- they give us a bad name, and force us to be hyper diligent to protect our own, even sometimes beyond rationality, because some of these dudes are just plain lazy and make life difficult for the rest of us.
The issue at hand is what happens now. Does Mojang switch their focus to other projects? Do they start using any type of QA pipeline to vet their builds? Does Notch hand the reigns off to one of his employees, or another company, continue to try to support it himself, or abandon it altogether? What I think we as a playerbase need to continue to advocate for is improved support for the game, regardless the direction Notch/Mojang decide to go in (and it is their choice).
I've been pondering if there is anything we as a community can do besides vocally criticize/defend. One thought... what if we build a full-on QA test plan for Minecraft builds, like they use in actual game development? We can refine it on the minecraft wiki and the minute a new build comes out, we run through the entire plan and post pass/fail for all the functionality in the game. With a community this large, it could be broken up into sections and fully tested within minutes. The main issue there is coordinating this and distilling the information down, but I'm sure some smart people can figure it out.