After the recent reveal of parrots coming in MC 1.12, I'm projecting a similar story to what happened when Jeb revealed polar bears last year; a polar bear picture is tweeted, people get excited, then they get disappointed when 1.10 is released. I've seen and thought of myself ideas for what perks the new parrots could have; that's a sign of extremely high and unreachable expectations, when the next 1.12 snapshot is released or once 1.12 is fully released.
And this has got me thinking of how many features are called upon as "useless" or nearly useless, compared to the observer, elytra, shulker boxes, hopper, mending enchantment, concrete, etc.
Here's a quick list of perhaps most of them:
Poisonous Potato
Bat
Endermite
Silverfish
Polar Bear
Llama
Snow Golem
Pig
Ocelot/Cat
Wolf/Dog
Clock
Compass
Beetroot
It agitates a few people that some of the features Mojang brings to MC are lackluster, and are thus rendered: useless or underwhelming.
I just happen to get overly-protective for this game I play, to an extent that I feel in-need to defend against most of the destructive criticism I encounter or anticipate. If I do not, there's fear of a significant decline in the MC community; who's forfeiting if the concrete blocks don't get slabs and stairs?
But, I don't want to start a fight/argument war here, it won't go anywhere.
--
The jobs of the Minecraft developers at Mojang can get tiring. Working on very fleshed out features or data networks for hours every working-day eventually turns into a sentence of mental fatigue and other personal problems. There's also an old saying/concept of "all-work and no-play". I've followed that statement before, and I wasn't rewarded. In the workplace for MC, the "work" is rewriting old code into something much more flexible, performance-optimized, and future-proof, and the "play" is adding new atmospheric mobs. Outside critical internal changes, the additions/changes from MC updates aren't all taken seriously, and that's ok if they don't break the game. What hurt considerably from adding polar bears, other than creating a rare daytime hazard in ice plains? What about the llamas?
( After this writing, I think I feel a little better about this. )
Poisonous Potato - Useless, but fun to collect due to relative rarity.
Bat - Basically useless, but the noise can help locate caves, and if you make other mobs ride it they look funny.
Endermite -ACTUALLY NOT USELESS! This can be used to make a quick-and-dirty enderman farm by luring the suckers into the exit portal!
Silverfish - Hard to save this one, unfortunately. There are some silverfish farms out there, but they're not really efficient. Good fight in strongholds, though.
Polar Bear - Never seen them in game, and I live in an ice spikes biome surrounded by a map-worth of cold regions. They don't really do anything useful, either.
Llama - Considering that I can literally carry my base around with me in ender and shulker chests, too underpowered.
Snow Golem - Not useless; makes for effective crowd control, and snow blocks are great for scaffolding.
Pig - Sadly, for being one of the oldest mobs in the game, they're overshadowed by cows.
Ocelot/Cat - Nice for pet collectors, but creepers aren't much of an issue at the endgame. Only thing that deters them, though, so could be useful for sorting.
Wolf/Dog - DO NOT DISS THE PACK. THE PACK WILL FIND YOU. Seriously I have over a hundred dogs.
Clock - *snerk* Haven't seen one in ages. Good for decor, but really not worth the price.
Poisonous Potato - Absolutely useless. Not even good if your hunger bar is empty.
Bat - Ambience. They don't do much, but it makes caves less empty and dead.
Endermite - Don't they spawn from ender pearls now? Kind of a punishment for using them too much.
Silverfish - Almost as challenging as baby zombies. At least they're slow and weak.
Polar Bear - Never seen them, but it helps fill in the world, making it less empty.
Llama - Item transportation. I like how they follow each other when you use a lead.
Snow Golem - Free, infinite snow.
Pig - Wasn't there a point where porkchops were better than steak? Thought they had more saturation. Otherwise, alternative food source.
Ocelot/Cat - Creeper repellent.
Wolf/Dog - Skeleton repellent / Body guard. Just don't take them into caves with you, or use arrows near them.
Clock - I always have this with me. It's handy knowing how much time until sunrise/sunset, without needing to be above ground.
Overall, poisonous potato is the most useless, and makes the least sense to me. None of the other crops have "bad" variants, so I don't know why the potato does.
Some of the new animals added have made certain environs feel a little more alive. Snow biomes didn't have animals so they looked pretty barren before the addition of polar bears. Bats really made the underground feel a little more alive and spooky. I think the addition of parrots to the jungle biome would be great and make it feel more tropical. Tropical birds are one of the more common and memorable sights in the jungle.
Not to mention parrots will be the first dedicated above ground flying creature. Command block map makers will be able to use the new AI to do things that weren't possible previously using vanilla commands. And of course modders take advantage of this now default feature too.
Well, there's a few things. Mojang has a tendency to... leave something poorly balanced, or not very useful, or change something that didn't need changing. (1.4 block sounds and 1.5 skeleton buffs, looking at you)
-There's actually an old forum post HERE. Scroll down to the first post by "FireKit." They make great points that still stand today.
Honestly, all the stuff you have listed has a pretty good use barring poison potatoes. The other like Endermites, could simply be expanded upon by the likes of making do things like spawn when a silverfish falls into a portal, and/orspawning in the outer lands of the End.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes their lack of work considering their now titanic budget behind them, along with features that get power creeped and the like. (Connect Minecarts together *cough*)
Granted, all this taken into account, they have to deal with MC's source code rather than a clean, organized API like Forge. I hear the source is a complete and utter mess. I mean, we're playing a game that started as a simple java game made by a single guy almost 10 years ago for pete's sake.
I hear the source is a complete and utter mess. I mean, we're playing a game that started as a simple java game made by a single guy almost 10 years ago for pete's sake.
From what I've seen the changes that Mojang has made in preparation for the "mod API" has made the code MUCH worse; for example, see my post here:
What was once a single line of code is now a convoluted mess; if I ever decided to mod (play in) current versions I'd certainly do something to avoid that (the ChunkPrimer object mentioned there contains an array of numerical data which represents block states; I presume that it works as block ID + metadata * 16 or similar so 1 is stone, 7 is bedrock, etc - yes, just directly read/write to it using those numbers, and, of course, using x, y, z variables and/or a partially precomputed index (e.g. compute x+z and add y inside an inner loop which iterates over y values, which is what older versions did) instead of BlockPos). The same conversions to and from blockstates also occur everywhere else, all requiring multiple steps instead of a simple reference to a block object (ID) or using it as the index in the array holding all blocks.
Even some of the newer features could have been implemented better; for example, in Pocket Edition all types of wood fences use the same ID - they used metadata to determine the wood type, instead of wasting IDs; similarly, Shulker boxes could have used an NBT tag to set their color instead of 16 IDs since they are tile entities (chests use metadata to determine which direction they face in; conversely, fences do not use it at all and determine their appearance when they are rendered).
As for the features mentioned here, and others, I don't use most of the features (the ones that exist in 1.6.4) listed and a lot more actually (for example, my list would include horses since minecarts are much better for personal transportation between an established network of bases, and otherwise I walk to/from where I left off from caving, with exits often hundreds of blocks away from entrances so I'd have to walk back to retrieve a horse and not really save much on walking time, less when factoring in horse travel time, plus they are not very good in rugged, watery, or forested terrain), though for players in general it would probably be poisonous potatoes (they do restore some hunger and only poison you 60% of the time and I eat them).
Also, one significant feature was omitted - minecarts with furnaces, which may be phased out soon, a testament to how useless they are (the main issues being that they are limited to your render distance and they are much slower than and not boosted by powered rails):
Of course, there are other features which were already removed, or at least not used, such as Giants (which were made even more useless in 1.8 since they no longer have any AI; before then you could use custom maps or mods like I did; of note, the Wiki claims that they do not spawn because of light level requirements but that is not true; they are just not present in the list of mobs to spawn since I simply had to add them to it and they spawn just like any other hostile mob).
What was once a single line of code is now a convoluted mess; if I ever decided to mod (play in) current versions I'd certainly do something to avoid that (the ChunkPrimer object mentioned there contains an array of numerical data which represents block states; I presume that it works as block ID + metadata * 16 or similar so 1 is stone, 7 is bedrock, etc - yes, just directly read/write to it using those numbers, and, of course, using x, y, z variables and/or a partially precomputed index (e.g. compute x+z and add y inside an inner loop which iterates over y values, which is what older versions did) instead of BlockPos). The same conversions to and from blockstates also occur everywhere else, all requiring multiple steps instead of a simple reference to a block object (ID) or using it as the index in the array holding all blocks.
Even some of the newer features could have been implemented better; for example, in Pocket Edition all types of wood fences use the same ID - they used metadata to determine the wood type, instead of wasting IDs; similarly, Shulker boxes could have used an NBT tag to set their color instead of 16 IDs since they are tile entities (chests use metadata to determine which direction they face in; conversely, fences do not use it at all and determine their appearance when they are rendered).
As for the features mentioned here, and others, I don't use most of the features (the ones that exist in 1.6.4) listed and a lot more actually (for example, my list would include horses since minecarts are much better for personal transportation between an established network of bases, and otherwise I walk to/from where I left off from caving, with exits often hundreds of blocks away from entrances so I'd have to walk back to retrieve a horse and not really save much on walking time, less when factoring in horse travel time, plus they are not very good in rugged, watery, or forested terrain), though for players in general it would probably be poisonous potatoes (they do restore some hunger and only poison you 60% of the time and I eat them).
Also, one significant feature was omitted - minecarts with furnaces, which may be phased out soon, a testament to how useless they are (the main issues being that they are limited to your render distance and they are much slower than and not boosted by powered rails):
Of course, there are other features which were already removed, or at least not used, such as Giants (which were made even more useless in 1.8 since they no longer have any AI; before then you could use custom maps or mods like I did; of note, the Wiki claims that they do not spawn because of light level requirements but that is not true; they are just not present in the list of mobs to spawn since I simply had to add them to it and they spawn just like any other hostile mob).
Does this make Minecraft developers -- stupid people, as well as Mojang themselves?
Well, there's a few things. Mojang has a tendency to... leave something poorly balanced, or not very useful, or change something that didn't need changing. (1.4 block sounds and 1.5 skeleton buffs, looking at you)
-There's actually an old forum post HERE. Scroll down to the first post by "FireKit." They make great points that still stand today.
Honestly, all the stuff you have listed has a pretty good use barring poison potatoes. The other like Endermites, could simply be expanded upon by the likes of making do things like spawn when a silverfish falls into a portal, and/orspawning in the outer lands of the End.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes their lack of work considering their now titanic budget behind them, along with features that get power creeped and the like. (Connect Minecarts together *cough*)
Granted, all this taken into account, they have to deal with MC's source code rather than a clean, organized API like Forge. I hear the source is a complete and utter mess. I mean, we're playing a game that started as a simple java game made by a single guy almost 10 years ago for pete's sake.
I was able to salvage the post from him. They're the creator of the mod "Better than Wolves".
I'm not sure what to say that can stay relevant to this thread, though.
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Join Date:
10/21/2012
Posts:
253
Member Details
Poisonous Potato - yeah, pretty useless.
Bat - i like 'em. very atmospheric...
Endermite - i only ever encountered them back in the first few snapshots when they were introduced (and then that one where they seemed to be *everywhere*); i didn't even realize they were still a thing.
Silverfish - swarming hostile mob? they can be annoying, and i'll confess to using silk touch to avoid them most of the time, but hardly "useless"...
Polar Bear - awesome!! and too rare - i finally saw my first (and only one, so far) the other day. (i blame all those rabbits...)
Llama - i like having them around. they're actually useful for moving large quantities of materials over relatively short distances - i've used them to haul building materials to constructions sites, to bring building mats/trade goods/resources to new villages; i built a little village in the middle of a sprawling mesa island, and i've been using a caravan to carry everything back from whatever section i'm working back home.
Snow Golem - cute; been a while since i've built one, i should fix that.
Pig - wait, what? they're food. very good food. and trade goods; i actually don't cook my own, i generally sell the raw meat and buy back cooked porkchops. and of course breeding/killing them is a decent source of mending exp.
Ocelot/Cat - i've never actually managed to tame one, but it's kind of neat to spot one in the wild and try to chase it down...
Wolf/Dog - i had a bunch of pet dogs a couple of worlds ago, and while i liked having them around the house they did tend to show up at the *worst* possible moments; wolves are awesome in the wild, i like watching them swarm the skellies when i'm out overnight on an explore. (although those poor sheep - my last run through wolf-infested territory i picked up like half a stack of mutton...)
Clock - never leave home without it! slot 8 on my hotbar, unless i'm deep underground and not planning to surface for a while (water bucket takes its place while mining/caving). Clocks on the wall are both decorative and functional.
Compass - less useful on its own, but essential for crafting maps. ...i have a lot of maps.
Beetroot - who doesn't <3 beets? i like variety in my food. mostly i use my beets for dyes and for breeding pigs, saving my potatoes and carrots for trading.
As far as horses go, while I do keep a couple of stables (one at my main house, one at a village that had a nearby source), and most of my villages have a horse or three just hanging around for short rides, i mostly use them on the fly while exploring - i bring a saddle and horse armor with me, and if i come across some horses i'll tame one and keep it until i hit a hard-to-ride-through forest or run out of land and hop back in my boat. They're awesome for running up and down mountains.
Parrots are coming? Yay. I imagine they'll be exclusive to jungles. Hopefully we get more standard birds in other biomes too, but it's a start. the game all around needs more ambiance, and stuff like polar bears, wolves, ocelots, and yes even the bat are nice even if only for that.
Furnace Minecarts (I made them and used them to push my own minecart on my rail system before I learned about powered rails) and poison potatoes are about the only things I find near useless.
Honestly I really wish Mojang would expand upon some features, like say for example, a polarbear skin rug, or things like that, not a suggestion but an example of how easy it is to expand upon things.
Hey.
After the recent reveal of parrots coming in MC 1.12, I'm projecting a similar story to what happened when Jeb revealed polar bears last year; a polar bear picture is tweeted, people get excited, then they get disappointed when 1.10 is released. I've seen and thought of myself ideas for what perks the new parrots could have; that's a sign of extremely high and unreachable expectations, when the next 1.12 snapshot is released or once 1.12 is fully released.
And this has got me thinking of how many features are called upon as "useless" or nearly useless, compared to the observer, elytra, shulker boxes, hopper, mending enchantment, concrete, etc.
Here's a quick list of perhaps most of them:
Poisonous Potato
Bat
Endermite
Silverfish
Polar Bear
Llama
Snow Golem
Pig
Ocelot/Cat
Wolf/Dog
Clock
Compass
Beetroot
It agitates a few people that some of the features Mojang brings to MC are lackluster, and are thus rendered: useless or underwhelming.
I just happen to get overly-protective for this game I play, to an extent that I feel in-need to defend against most of the destructive criticism I encounter or anticipate. If I do not, there's fear of a significant decline in the MC community; who's forfeiting if the concrete blocks don't get slabs and stairs?
But, I don't want to start a fight/argument war here, it won't go anywhere.
--
The jobs of the Minecraft developers at Mojang can get tiring. Working on very fleshed out features or data networks for hours every working-day eventually turns into a sentence of mental fatigue and other personal problems. There's also an old saying/concept of "all-work and no-play". I've followed that statement before, and I wasn't rewarded. In the workplace for MC, the "work" is rewriting old code into something much more flexible, performance-optimized, and future-proof, and the "play" is adding new atmospheric mobs. Outside critical internal changes, the additions/changes from MC updates aren't all taken seriously, and that's ok if they don't break the game. What hurt considerably from adding polar bears, other than creating a rare daytime hazard in ice plains? What about the llamas?
( After this writing, I think I feel a little better about this. )
Any other thoughts?
My opinion:
-Poisonous Potato: Some sort of treasure. (at least for me)
-Bat: You can use them to find caves ^^
-Endermite: Those are really useless, you're right x)
-Silverfish: It's protecting strongholds, some challenge
-Polar Bear: Some source of fish, so if you run out of string it's still something
-Pig: Ride something different from a horse, and you can get meat from it
-Ocelot/Cat: Can be used to make creepers move in some mechanisms
-Wolf/Dog: Same as above with skeletons, also you can empty your rotten flesh with them
-Clock: If you're underground, you can still know what time is it
Found a use for ALL mobs in your list (erm, not all, but done my best)
Alright, since everyone else is doing this:
Poisonous Potato - Useless, but fun to collect due to relative rarity.
Bat - Basically useless, but the noise can help locate caves, and if you make other mobs ride it they look funny.
Endermite -ACTUALLY NOT USELESS! This can be used to make a quick-and-dirty enderman farm by luring the suckers into the exit portal!
Silverfish - Hard to save this one, unfortunately. There are some silverfish farms out there, but they're not really efficient. Good fight in strongholds, though.
Polar Bear - Never seen them in game, and I live in an ice spikes biome surrounded by a map-worth of cold regions. They don't really do anything useful, either.
Llama - Considering that I can literally carry my base around with me in ender and shulker chests, too underpowered.
Snow Golem - Not useless; makes for effective crowd control, and snow blocks are great for scaffolding.
Pig - Sadly, for being one of the oldest mobs in the game, they're overshadowed by cows.
Ocelot/Cat - Nice for pet collectors, but creepers aren't much of an issue at the endgame. Only thing that deters them, though, so could be useful for sorting.
Wolf/Dog - DO NOT DISS THE PACK. THE PACK WILL FIND YOU. Seriously I have over a hundred dogs.
Clock - *snerk* Haven't seen one in ages. Good for decor, but really not worth the price.
I support this, this, and this. And this now. Also this.
Poisonous Potato - Absolutely useless. Not even good if your hunger bar is empty.
Bat - Ambience. They don't do much, but it makes caves less empty and dead.
Endermite - Don't they spawn from ender pearls now? Kind of a punishment for using them too much.
Silverfish - Almost as challenging as baby zombies. At least they're slow and weak.
Polar Bear - Never seen them, but it helps fill in the world, making it less empty.
Llama - Item transportation. I like how they follow each other when you use a lead.
Snow Golem - Free, infinite snow.
Pig - Wasn't there a point where porkchops were better than steak? Thought they had more saturation. Otherwise, alternative food source.
Ocelot/Cat - Creeper repellent.
Wolf/Dog - Skeleton repellent / Body guard. Just don't take them into caves with you, or use arrows near them.
Clock - I always have this with me. It's handy knowing how much time until sunrise/sunset, without needing to be above ground.
Overall, poisonous potato is the most useless, and makes the least sense to me. None of the other crops have "bad" variants, so I don't know why the potato does.
Some of the new animals added have made certain environs feel a little more alive. Snow biomes didn't have animals so they looked pretty barren before the addition of polar bears. Bats really made the underground feel a little more alive and spooky. I think the addition of parrots to the jungle biome would be great and make it feel more tropical. Tropical birds are one of the more common and memorable sights in the jungle.
Not to mention parrots will be the first dedicated above ground flying creature. Command block map makers will be able to use the new AI to do things that weren't possible previously using vanilla commands. And of course modders take advantage of this now default feature too.
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..
Well, there's a few things. Mojang has a tendency to... leave something poorly balanced, or not very useful, or change something that didn't need changing. (1.4 block sounds and 1.5 skeleton buffs, looking at you)
-There's actually an old forum post HERE. Scroll down to the first post by "FireKit." They make great points that still stand today.
Honestly, all the stuff you have listed has a pretty good use barring poison potatoes. The other like Endermites, could simply be expanded upon by the likes of making do things like spawn when a silverfish falls into a portal, and/orspawning in the outer lands of the End.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes their lack of work considering their now titanic budget behind them, along with features that get power creeped and the like. (Connect Minecarts together *cough*)
Granted, all this taken into account, they have to deal with MC's source code rather than a clean, organized API like Forge. I hear the source is a complete and utter mess. I mean, we're playing a game that started as a simple java game made by a single guy almost 10 years ago for pete's sake.
Figured it was time for a change.
From what I've seen the changes that Mojang has made in preparation for the "mod API" has made the code MUCH worse; for example, see my post here:
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/discussion/2790348-let-it-go-its-time-to-stop-updating?comment=248
What was once a single line of code is now a convoluted mess; if I ever decided to mod (play in) current versions I'd certainly do something to avoid that (the ChunkPrimer object mentioned there contains an array of numerical data which represents block states; I presume that it works as block ID + metadata * 16 or similar so 1 is stone, 7 is bedrock, etc - yes, just directly read/write to it using those numbers, and, of course, using x, y, z variables and/or a partially precomputed index (e.g. compute x+z and add y inside an inner loop which iterates over y values, which is what older versions did) instead of BlockPos). The same conversions to and from blockstates also occur everywhere else, all requiring multiple steps instead of a simple reference to a block object (ID) or using it as the index in the array holding all blocks.
Even some of the newer features could have been implemented better; for example, in Pocket Edition all types of wood fences use the same ID - they used metadata to determine the wood type, instead of wasting IDs; similarly, Shulker boxes could have used an NBT tag to set their color instead of 16 IDs since they are tile entities (chests use metadata to determine which direction they face in; conversely, fences do not use it at all and determine their appearance when they are rendered).
As for the features mentioned here, and others, I don't use most of the features (the ones that exist in 1.6.4) listed and a lot more actually (for example, my list would include horses since minecarts are much better for personal transportation between an established network of bases, and otherwise I walk to/from where I left off from caving, with exits often hundreds of blocks away from entrances so I'd have to walk back to retrieve a horse and not really save much on walking time, less when factoring in horse travel time, plus they are not very good in rugged, watery, or forested terrain), though for players in general it would probably be poisonous potatoes (they do restore some hunger and only poison you 60% of the time and I eat them).
Also, one significant feature was omitted - minecarts with furnaces, which may be phased out soon, a testament to how useless they are (the main issues being that they are limited to your render distance and they are much slower than and not boosted by powered rails):
https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/45ywzv/since_furnace_minecarts_will_be_probably_removed/
Of course, there are other features which were already removed, or at least not used, such as Giants (which were made even more useless in 1.8 since they no longer have any AI; before then you could use custom maps or mods like I did; of note, the Wiki claims that they do not spawn because of light level requirements but that is not true; they are just not present in the list of mobs to spawn since I simply had to add them to it and they spawn just like any other hostile mob).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Does this make Minecraft developers -- stupid people, as well as Mojang themselves?
I was able to salvage the post from him. They're the creator of the mod "Better than Wolves".
I'm not sure what to say that can stay relevant to this thread, though.
Poisonous Potato - yeah, pretty useless.
Bat - i like 'em. very atmospheric...
Endermite - i only ever encountered them back in the first few snapshots when they were introduced (and then that one where they seemed to be *everywhere*); i didn't even realize they were still a thing.
Silverfish - swarming hostile mob? they can be annoying, and i'll confess to using silk touch to avoid them most of the time, but hardly "useless"...
Polar Bear - awesome!! and too rare - i finally saw my first (and only one, so far) the other day. (i blame all those rabbits...)
Llama - i like having them around. they're actually useful for moving large quantities of materials over relatively short distances - i've used them to haul building materials to constructions sites, to bring building mats/trade goods/resources to new villages; i built a little village in the middle of a sprawling mesa island, and i've been using a caravan to carry everything back from whatever section i'm working back home.
Snow Golem - cute; been a while since i've built one, i should fix that.
Pig - wait, what? they're food. very good food. and trade goods; i actually don't cook my own, i generally sell the raw meat and buy back cooked porkchops. and of course breeding/killing them is a decent source of mending exp.
Ocelot/Cat - i've never actually managed to tame one, but it's kind of neat to spot one in the wild and try to chase it down...
Wolf/Dog - i had a bunch of pet dogs a couple of worlds ago, and while i liked having them around the house they did tend to show up at the *worst* possible moments; wolves are awesome in the wild, i like watching them swarm the skellies when i'm out overnight on an explore. (although those poor sheep - my last run through wolf-infested territory i picked up like half a stack of mutton...)
Clock - never leave home without it! slot 8 on my hotbar, unless i'm deep underground and not planning to surface for a while (water bucket takes its place while mining/caving). Clocks on the wall are both decorative and functional.
Compass - less useful on its own, but essential for crafting maps. ...i have a lot of maps.
Beetroot - who doesn't <3 beets? i like variety in my food. mostly i use my beets for dyes and for breeding pigs, saving my potatoes and carrots for trading.
As far as horses go, while I do keep a couple of stables (one at my main house, one at a village that had a nearby source), and most of my villages have a horse or three just hanging around for short rides, i mostly use them on the fly while exploring - i bring a saddle and horse armor with me, and if i come across some horses i'll tame one and keep it until i hit a hard-to-ride-through forest or run out of land and hop back in my boat. They're awesome for running up and down mountains.
Parrots are coming? Yay. I imagine they'll be exclusive to jungles. Hopefully we get more standard birds in other biomes too, but it's a start. the game all around needs more ambiance, and stuff like polar bears, wolves, ocelots, and yes even the bat are nice even if only for that.
Furnace Minecarts (I made them and used them to push my own minecart on my rail system before I learned about powered rails) and poison potatoes are about the only things I find near useless.
Unfortunately, furnace minecarts are only useless because they're broken.
Honestly I really wish Mojang would expand upon some features, like say for example, a polarbear skin rug, or things like that, not a suggestion but an example of how easy it is to expand upon things.
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/off-topic/forum-games/2862232-indestructible-box
This is my forum game, play it