You're not the only person who has suggested players who don't like excessive grind times play a different mode, you know? and it's missing the point entirely.
Maybe I am missing the point, because from where I'm sitting, you have a choice of two game modes where one has gated access and the other doesn't, and you're choosing the one with gated access and then complaining about said gated access.
From where I'm sitting, I also don't know what "excessive grinds" you're referring to? Maybe it would help if you gave examples? "I'm trying to build a big city and need a lot of stone or wood"? "I need to spend some play sessions taking a forest down or digging stone"? Something like that? I do those. They're not a big deal. You are expected to have to spend time and effort getting resources in survival, and if the project is truly massive, maybe a LOT of time. It is, in your words, by design. What would you suggest, for these things to be completely trivial to get on a massive scale? In survival? Seriously? That strips survival of a large part of its point, especially when the game already gives you so many ways to trivialize things.
I am a player not unlike yourself. I play survival only and I largely just build. I lean towards casual. I have accepted the gated access to things because IT IS PART OF THE POINT for me. I am playing SURVIVAL. If you play that mode but lean into a play style (focus almost entirely on builds and very large scale ones) then it's a situation you are putting yourself into. If I wanted instant gratification/instance access to things for truly massive things that survival was too restrictive for, I would be acknowledging that creative is a better mod for me.
I hope by now you at least understand WHY I made the suggestion I did (and apparently why many others do too?) even if you disagree with it as a solution. It's suggested a lot because it makes logical sense. There are two modes; one with a limitation and one less so, and you are choosing the one with the limitation but complaining about it?
I get that the balance won't appeal to everyone. But survival can be pretty darned accommodating, even for mass scale builds. Maybe there needs to be more distinctions between the difficulties to appease to the people who mostly want "survival lite" or something. I don't know. Like maybe the Easy difficulty (or a new one below it) gives you twice or thrice the drops from everything, I don't know. But asking survival as a whole to accommodate players who lean more towards pure builders who do massive builds and also want it done in an instant gratification fashion is just going to strip survival of what it is, especially when creative already exists and lends to catering towards that.
I'm NOT saying there shouldn't be options to appeal to more people. You have seen me claim countless times that there being such things would be a good change. I am NOT saying creative is the ideal solution for you in particular. Can we stop circling back to those things when I've explained them a number of times. I am mostly touching upon the fact that between the two modes as they are, you are rather in between (and honestly leaning creative, but still wanting a "survival lite" experience), and with the two modes as they are, changing survival to the extent it removes its entire point for everyone else, just to appease massive builders, is NOT the way to go. Again, I hope you understand WHY you are apparently get that suggestion a lot even if you disagree with it. It makes more sense than "remove survival of much of its entire point for the rest of the community".
Build style survival players don't mind some grind as long as it is rewarding enough, but when players keep getting punished for going out of their way to create resource farms and strip mines, their experience is being ruined, and for what? just to appease a crowd that have different opinions? it is being marginalized when other people get to force their opinions on us, in a sandbox game that was originally intended to cater to different play styles, this is why there should be separate tiers of survival mode, and I am not talking about peaceful difficulty, or modding. There is clearly a very serious problem with how the game is being handled when people like chaptmc, not just myself, don't feel they are being rewarded for their grind as a result of a nerf.
I don't know what to say here. I said above that I was worried you were taking the "I'm being marginalized" route and it seems I was right. I'm not touching that. At all.
What I will say is what I said before. Minecraft is a vast community. The range of opinions is vast and nearly endless. It is a fact that every change will be approved of, indifferent of, or disapproved of. That's just how it is.
Consider, for one moment, the inverse of how you're painting the situation. Consider if all of your preferred changes were to occur, the other players that would be, in your words, "marginalized". What if it leads to MORE unhappy people than there are now?
There is no one size fits all, unless Mojang makes this a truly module framework where almost everything is adjustable (which would be nice, but is probably a pipe dream, for sure). The best you can do if you find the game to be disrespecting your time is to find something that rewards your time better. That's literally the most logical answer. I am not sure what else to suggest.
Even TheMasterCaver doesn't like the ore generation from 1.18, perhaps you should ask other people how they feel about the Caves and Cliffs update to get a better idea how divisive this update was for people.
So one person, who doesn't even play or like modern versions for a wide range of reasons, and already made their own version of the game about a decade ago that appeals to their style, isn't in high approval of a modern version? Well that's totally unexpected... (not). It also seems like you're also trying to use this so frame it as though he agrees with you on everything, when I highly doubt that's the case. Why speak for other people? Let them speak for themselves.
There's other people who dislike something? Again, I'm shocked... (not). Edit: Oh, that's one post with one reply. Is that supposed to represent what people think by and large? I presumed that was a large post with hundreds of comments or something, because there have been disapproval posts like that, so I'm not sure what made you link to one person saying they dislike one thing and getting one reply.
I already addressed this. I said that you, myself, TheMasterCaver, and hundreds of thousands of people could post here and vote that things are bad. Okay, but what happens if many more hundreds of thousands are enjoying the game? Well, tough luck for us. The majority is what Mojang will appeal to. You keep presuming I'm approaching this as a "you vs me" stance because YOU are approaching it that way. Instead, I'm approaching it in a way that isn't you vs me, but is majority vs minority. I'm acknowledging that the wider community exists and that it is what should be tended to, NOT what might be the vocal minority. Yes, it is unfortunate when your views align with what is the minority. That is life. We have to deal with it, however that is.
Are you expecting everything to be unanimous or something? For every change to appeal to you (and those with the same opinions) specifically? Seems rather unrealistic of an expectation.
Pointing to people who dislike something is not a good way to substantiate that a given thing is bad. I disliked 1.7 and 1.8. There's no doubt countless people who loved those versions. I liked the first release version I played (1.2.5) far better than the beta version I initially tried of the game (beta 1.3), yet beta 1.8 is said to be one of the worst changes of direction for the game if you ask the purists. Your opinion isn't the only right one. My opinion isn't the only right one. You're not getting this point of mine; it's bigger than any one of us. And pointing to other people with the same opinion doesn't change that. So for that thread (and the no doubt countless others like it) that dislike 1.18, how many appreciation posts are there about 1.18? I browse r/Minecraft only seldomly to look at things, and after 1.18 released, it seemed pretty darned unanimous at the time in favor of it to me. I still occasionally come across some. Maybe I was in a dream though.
If you want a REAL grind fest in survival, try those beta versions. Modern survival is so accommodating that I am pretty surprised there are people who say it's getting too hard.
*My face when my friends waste hours getting rare materials for fancy buildings in survival and expect me to help when we have tons of cheap stones
Sometimes it doesn't even make sense to use rare items to builds either, as in the Nether some of them are susceptible to accidental destruction. Too much lava and fire around, and even using the shulker box for builds in the Nether I find is rather wasteful, they are renewable, however even with farms, you're likely running extremely long distances to get to the Stronghold End portal and back again which still makes shulker boxes fairly difficult to obtain in vast amounts.
But it's not necessary, once you got a full ender chest worth you have maxed it out already, and carrying shulker boxes in inventory all the time is a risk. So there are some builds not even I or my friends would use them for. While I would carry at least 1 or 2 shulker boxes with me sometimes into the Nether, I don't feel it's worth the trouble of building anything out of them in the Nether, base wise, as with a blast resistance of only 2 they can be easily destroyed by Ghast explosion and fireballs upon dropping.
Smooth sandsotne on the other hand is easy to obtain, is renewable counting Wandering traders for sand, but a desert biome is generally enough as sandstone can be found naturally underground in deserts then be compacted into smooth sandstone for greater durability and depending on build, a better look. So you're right, most of the time cheaper and more plentiful the resource is better.
My point is however is the constant nerfing of resource gathering, because reasons, or because people are too envious about what other's have earned, is making the sense of reward unjust and overly punishing for the casual player. We need to be looking at alternatives where possible so the game remains accessible for anybody who wishes to play vanilla Minecraft without cheats or creative mode enabled.
Sometimes it doesn't even make sense to use rare items to builds either, as in the Nether some of them are susceptible to accidental destruction. Too much lava and fire around, and even using the shulker box for builds in the Nether I find is rather wasteful, they are renewable, however even with farms, you're likely running extremely long distances to get to the Stronghold End portal and back again which still makes shulker boxes fairly difficult to obtain in vast amounts.
But it's not necessary, once you got a full ender chest worth you have maxed it out already, and carrying shulker boxes in inventory all the time is a risk. So there are some builds not even I or my friends would use them for. While I would carry at least 1 or 2 shulker boxes with me sometimes into the Nether, I don't feel it's worth the trouble of building anything out of them in the Nether, base wise, as with a blast resistance of only 2 they can be easily destroyed by Ghast explosion and fireballs upon dropping.
Smooth sandsotne on the other hand is easy to obtain, is renewable counting Wandering traders for sand, but a desert biome is generally enough as sandstone can be found naturally underground in deserts then be compacted into smooth sandstone for greater durability and depending on build, a better look. So you're right, most of the time cheaper and more plentiful the resource is better.
My point is however is the constant nerfing of resource gathering, because reasons, or because people are too envious about what other's have earned, is making the sense of reward unjust and overly punishing for the casual player. We need to be looking at alternatives where possible so the game remains accessible for anybody who wishes to play vanilla Minecraft without cheats or creative mode enabled.
Ultimately I'd like for the game to be more rewarding (and you see should how dismal rare drop rates are in Java vs Bedrock for mobs), but at the same time I know Mojang isn't listening and rare blocks are just that, rare materials you can't use much of.
I just throw -ite stones around for all my builds and it's sufficient. That or deepslate/cobble with coarse dirt for interior floors and ceiling sometimes.
I can't imagine the bother of making a home out of shulker boxes. That's just a mess.
I still don't see how the game is becoming more punishing to the casual player. Survival has only been becoming more accommodating in modern versions than it was in the past, no? That's been my impression. I play only in survival (I have a creative world as a scratch pad for testing building ideas, but I don't use it to play for its own sake), and I play largely to build, and between 1.2.5 (when I started playing) to modern versions, it has only seemed to get more accommodating on the whole. Survival already is more of a survival/creative hybrid, because it's not trying to be a "tryhard survival experience" so I don't get how a causal sandbox game that has only been becoming more accommodating in modern versions is "marginalizing" people.
Enchantments were already added by time I started playing, but I'm still mentioning these as they are a big part of what aids this late game (which is why I commented above if you want real evidence it hasn't gotten harder, go back to beta 1.7.3 or prior to this being added and you'll see real "grind" for amassing things). Along the way though, they have gotten FAR better. You used to need to spend an entire 30 (or was it more?) levels for a level 3 enchant. Oh, and it was entirely random. I mean it still is, but there's sort of ways around this. Namely...
Pre-1.14? No village trades. Enchantments were added long before 1.14 but this is a noted point that made it far more accessible to "get what you want" (and zombifying and then curing villagers to reduce trade costs is just broken). So much so that some people say it's problematic. And I'm not sure if it was 1.14 itself or an earlier/later version, but somewhere along the line, villages got SUPER common. Too common, I'd say. In 1.6 and earlier, they were nearly non-existent.
Pre 1.11? No elytra with rocket boosting (some people also feel this was "wrong" to add to survival).
Pre-1.9? No shulker boxes.
Pre 1.9? No mending at all (though, again, 1.14+ is the real point here).
For someone who plays survival as a long term builder, these things are all immensely helpful. I remember having to knock down a forest in the 1.6 era and transporting all of that wood back to my main base was a time chore. Please, I know from experience modern versions are more accommodating, not less.
I can't speak as much for the "ores are harder to get" part. That may be true, but either way it was beyond trivial then and it's beyond trivial now, and you shouldn't (?) really need to constantly get them anyway so it's a complete non-issue, no? For the types of players we are, you shouldn't need a constant supply of it unless you're actually using it as a building block (if you are and/or do need a lot of it constantly for some other reason, either spend some time mining to get it, as that is the intended method to obtain it, or build a farm as you're not opposed to them). Again, 1.18 says hello and helps here.
I'm not sure if it was actually "harder" before or after 1.18 to get ores, but I personally found it more off-putting before (this was also before I got established with a villager trading hall and enchants, so no doubt lacking fortune and mending was working against me, which makes me reiterate my above mention of 1.14+ helping towards this). Diamonds? Those are so unneeded with mending now that they are useless beyond your initial ones.
You keep saying "nerfs are bad" but you're not giving many specific examples. The only one I saw was deep slate but that was... new to 1.18 so how can its very introduction be a "nerf"? Comparing it to stone isn't honest because its NOT stone. It's MEANT precisely to be a harder material. If the underground was just deeper but still with stone, that would be boring. Efficiency V made mining so trivial. It's STILL trivial, just less so. Not everything is supposed to be trivial to get in large quantities in survival, and not everything is supposed to be equally trivial to get. Some WILL be harder. It's survival. Maybe if you explained what you needed, and in how much of a quantity, it would answer this, but if this is "I'm building a ludicrously sized city in survival and complaining it's not trivial to get a massive amount of something instantly" (esepcially if that includes something that you're choosing to use as a "building" material that isn't meant to be trivial to get in survival), then that's not really a fault of the game mode.
Maybe I am missing the point, because from where I'm sitting, you have a choice of two game modes where one has gated access and the other doesn't, and you're choosing the one with gated access and then complaining about said gated access.
From where I'm sitting, I also don't know what "excessive grinds" you're referring to? Maybe it would help if you gave examples? "I'm trying to build a big city and need a lot of stone or wood"? "I need to spend some play sessions taking a forest down or digging stone"? Something like that? I do those. They're not a big deal. You are expected to have to spend time and effort getting resources in survival, and if the project is truly massive, maybe a LOT of time. It is, in your words, by design. What would you suggest, for these things to be completely trivial to get on a massive scale? In survival? Seriously? That strips survival of a large part of its point, especially when the game already gives you so many ways to trivialize things.
Like, help me understand. I get preferring given versions for whatever reasons. That's preference. But on the whole, I don't understand this "modern versions are marginalizing me" stance. The game seems far more accommodating than it's ever been.
Pre-1.14? No village trades. Enchantments were added long before 1.14 but this is a noted point that made it far more accessible to "get what you want" (and zombifying and then curing villagers to reduce trade costs is just broken). So much so that some people say it's problematic. And I'm not sure if it was 1.14 itself or an earlier/later version, but somewhere along the line, villages got SUPER common. Too common, I'd say. In 1.6 and earlier, they were nearly non-existent.
Pre 1.11? No elytra with rocket boosting (some people also feel this was "wrong" to add to survival).
Pre-1.9? No shulker boxes.
Pre 1.9? No mending at all (though, again, 1.14+ is the real point here).
You have been able to get enchantments from villager trades since they were added; yes, it wasn't as easy but still very possible, as I do in modded worlds (the biggest difference back then was that village trades and professions were completely random; what I do is mass breed a bunch of villagers (very easy to do, make a box lined with doors and open to the sky; a valid "house" used to be as little as a door next to a block), singling out librarians, then trade with each one many times until they offer an enchanted book trade):
As well as all types of diamond gear (even better, a single villager can offer every single trade, as I use in my first world to buy the items I need to repair my gear):
No Mending? Simply rename an item - a bug-turned-feature which Mojang never bothered to fix until 1.8 (probably since they knew how impractical repairing anything would have been, otherwise, I don't consider a complete overhaul of a mechanic the same as a bugfix; the only issue is that they waited until 1.9 to add a suitable alternative):
That's why I only crafted 3 pickaxes (one with Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, and two others which also had Smelting and Vein Miner enchantments) despite mining over 2 million blocks (modded, but whatever, my mod simply makes the pre-1.8 repair mechanic a valid feature via its "Mending" enchantment which works exactly the same as renaming did. Note that the only reason I added Mending was to show how I think Mojang could have implemented it, not for my benefit, if anything, it means I have to spend more XP to maintain my gear, not that it matters):
Sure, repairing items on the anvil requires resources but they are truly minuscule; people constantly use my playstyle to argue that you have to spend all your time mining for resources to maintain your gear but that is blatantly false, largely thanks to Fortune and Unbreaking, which effectively make resources nearly 10 times more common than otherwise (the anvil also helps through its repair mechanic of adding +12% durability to item repairs):
"Play styles differ and not everybody wants to spend the majority of their time in cave systems,"
So, I mined about 2.1 million blocks while caving, sounds like a lot? Well, I could have mined up to 41 million blocks - 20 times more - with all the diamonds I could have collected if I used Fortune - in other words, I'd have spent only five percent of my time just to collect the resources I actually needed - and do you actually mine five thousand blocks per play session, every single time you play? I bet not, same for killing 500 mobs, every single time you play - my playstyle is not just at the top in terms of resource collection but surely in resource usage.
1.7% of all blocks mined - that's one in 59 blocks - if you take even as much as 2 seconds to mine each block (surely you are using at least stone, right?) that's about half a stack of diamond ore per hour - times 2.2 with Fortune III and you get over a stack of diamonds, capable of making about 22 new pickaxes - which in turn are equivalent to about 90 pickaxes if they have Unbreaking III on them, which in turn increases to about 100 with optimal item repair in the anvil (12% durability bonus) - which in turn can mine about 156,829 blocks (140,026 without the repair bonus) - from just one hour of mining - which spent only 1,800 of those uses!
Also, people keep pointing out the "ore veins" added in 1.8, but how common are they actually (the Wiki only says "rare")? I consistently mine over 3,000 ores per play session, an amount most find to be absolutely unbelievable ("you must use cheats, x-ray, creative, etc" Even better, "you mod cave/ore generation so of course you can find more" (this thread is a fun read, it also shows just how bad 1.7 was to the underground if it was now that hard to find any decent caves, compared to common complaints of "swiss cheese" prior to then) - actually, any difference in mining rates between vanilla vs modded worlds comes down to only a few percent per hour (906 / 863 = 105%), and that can be attributed to my "vein miner" enchantment approximately halving the ~10% of the time I otherwise spend on actually mining ores while caving):
Also, at least for mineral resources ender chests are sufficient to enable me to collect resources at such extreme rates for hours on end, thanks to mineral blocks, which effectively multiplies the space by 9-fold (prior to 1.6 I did not bother collecting all coal since there were no blocks; after 1.6 came out I actually went back and mined all the coal I'd left behind. For iron and gold I accumulate ore blocks until I run out of space and set up a bank of furnaces in a marked location and continue caving nearby while they smelt; the need to bring furnaces and a crafting table is more than offset by the space savings).
As far as the frequency of villages goes, that can only be because there are more biomes for them to generate in, as well as changes in biome distribution (in particular, "hot" regions are mostly desert, savanna, and plains, all with villages); they have always had the same "spacing" and "separation" listed here (1.6.4 village generator source code, the field names are obfuscated but you can see that they are the same values, 32 and 8). For reference, I've found 15 villages in my first world, which does include a fair bit of ocean and "snowy" regions; the calculated frequency based on one attempt every 1024 chunks and 2 out of 7 common biomes having villages is one every 3584 chunks, which is further reduced by the presence of rivers and forest and desert hills sub-biomes. However, most of the level 4 maps which are "normal" biome areas and mostly/entirely land have at least 2-3 villages:
1. (-150, 300), plains - just to the southwest of spawn, inside main base
2. (-200, 750), desert
3. (360, 120), plains
4. (220, -430), desert
5. (-700, -470), plains
6. (-330, 1100), plains
7. (720, 1560), desert - contains base #10
8. (-790, 1890), desert
9. (1250, 620), plains
10. (2340, 720), desert - contains base #14
11. (2900, 1010), desert
12. (-1530, 2580), desert
13. (1670, 1780), plains
14. (2600, 2635), plains
15. (2210, 2340), desert
A surface rendering of the world at night (this is rather outdated, I've since explored the northwest and southeast corners; the northwest was all snowy biomes up to the ocean while the southeast had the last 3 villages listed above. All villages show up pretty well and are easy to distinguish from secondary bases, which are much smaller):
I should have put "no updated villager trades" as opposed to "no villager trades". Villager trades existed before that (since 1.3 I believe), but my main collective point was that many of the new additions (the updated villager trades in 1.14 being just one) have only made the game more accessible and trivial. I don't understand how people see the game as trending in the opposite direction.
Also, people keep pointing out the "ore veins" added in 1.8, but how common are they actually (the Wiki only says "rare")?
If you mean 1.18, the copper and iron veins are rare, yes.
But it doesn't matter. My stance that "ore accessibility is fine as is" doesn't hinge on the existence of those ore veins. Iron is accessible enough without them, and the veins just exist alongside that. I was sort of adding their existence as a cherry on top, not the reason itself.
I look at ore veins in the same way I look at enchantments and villager trading after curing zombification; something that is "balanced" without them, and just super broken/accessible with them. The ore veins are rare, but if you find one, you're pretty much set for a while. And if you don't find them, iron is still very accessible.
In my recent hardcore world, I had no issue getting my initial iron set (armor, weapon, tools, and shield, then some) just by skirting into a few shallow caves. I didn't even go that far in (I was probably always 20 to 30 seconds at most from an entrance) and it didn't take my much searching at all. I know, anecdotal evidence of a sample size of one, but getting iron definitely does not seem substantially harder after 1.18 than it was before.
In my recent hardcore world, I had no issue getting my initial iron set (armor, weapon, tools, and shield, then some) just by skirting into a few shallow caves. I didn't even go that far in (I was probably always 20 to 30 seconds at most from an entrance) and it didn't take my much searching at all. I know, anecdotal evidence of a sample size of one, but getting iron definitely does not seem substantially harder after 1.18 than it was before.
Still, the fact that so many players don't think twice about mining is quite telling:
This shows just how little interest anybody has in mining/caving, or at least my playstyle - not even one answer to the question in the OP, just a completely irrelevant question which was pretty clear as I mentioned it in the descriptions; this completely put me off from Reddit for a few months and even now I consider r/Minecraft to be a lost cause, I don't know if it is because I'm doing something wrong as this person got 700 comments just by showing a chest full of resources they collected in a week of playtime, when I regularly collect about 10 times as much from 20 times as much ore (about 1,000 / hour = 178,000 in 178 hours, while they collected about 21,000 but they used Fortune). Not saying that this is an accurate comparison of resource collection rates since I don't know how much of that time they spent caving but a 20-fold difference in ores is still quite extreme; a commenter also says they collected 9 stacks of iron in 5 hours, apparently without Fortune, half the rate I get - note also that my rates are sustained averages over months of playtime, which will be lower than short-term rates (I've collected over 300 iron per hour during peak periods).
Even back in the day I got scorned for suggesting that resource farms were unnecessary:
(half the comments are also again claims that I get what I do because of mods, despite repeatedly showing my first world as proof that you can do that in vanilla)
At the same time, there were quite a few threads complaining about how easy it was to collect resources:
Why is it, then, that whenever I go mining in a cave or a man-made mine, I emerge with stacks of iron, when I haven't even been mining for an hour?
I'm not proud of having so much resources, because it doesn't feel like I actually worked for them. All I did was accidentally find a cave, and now I have more resources than I'll ever need.
It seems to me that almost every time I attempt to build an underground mine network or structure, I run into a GIGANOURMOUS MONSTER cave network. I'm talking large enough to spend half an IRL day on, fuel the world's furnace demands with coal, and fill chests with iron BLOCKS just by spelunking alone
The real issue seems to be that iron is used for both armor/tools and a wide variety of blocks and items and most players spend the vast majority of their iron on the latter (mainly on hoppers); if you only use it for armor/tools even a fraction of the old abundance (again, it was about 0.7% of blocks below sea level while now it only peaks at that level in a triangular distribution which averages far less (figure C; note that figure A, the actual number of blocks, better reflects the amount above sea level, which is almost nothing by comparison despite the percentages being much higher) is still plenty but surely people who use it for other things find it harder to find enough.
@Princess_Garnet even back in 1.6 era you could use ender chests to mass transport supplies, unless you're on hardcore in which case this only saves space and not time.
This shows just how little interest anybody has in mining/caving, or at least my playstyle - not even one answer to the question in the OP, just a completely irrelevant question which was pretty clear as I mentioned it in the descriptions; this completely put me off from Reddit for a few months and even now I consider r/Minecraft to be a lost cause, I don't know if it is because I'm doing something wrong as this person got 700 comments just by showing a chest full of resources they collected in a week of playtime...
I wouldn't let that bother you.
It's partly chance. Life is not just about what, but time, place, and circumstance too.
Place is a big factor. Modern Reddit seems (I'm just a casual browser and not active user of it so maybe I'm wrong) less like forums where it's just a feed of the most recent stuff, so it's heavily about timing and circumstance.
Not just place but place and time. Especially in modern times where social media trends towards low attention spans. I've seen people refer to like three sentences/one short paragraph comments in places like Youtube as "I'm not reading that novel". I really worry about some peoples' attention spans. On a more "mobile/modern social media platform", I imagine most people will trend towards a simple picture of vanilla versus your more in-depth posts of a modded world, even if it's not that long either. Just how it is.
At the same time, there were quite a few threads complaining about how easy it was to collect resources:
See, that's sort of more of what I was getting at.
My perception was that the game was always seen as innately accessible even back then. That was before things like enchantments, elytra, and shulker boxes either became more accessible/trivial to get, or before they were things at all.
I'm just taken aback at how modern Minecraft can at all be said to be "marginalizing" people. And I'm not trying to give Agtrigormortis a "hard time" and I hope he knows that. To the contrary, I hope he knows I'd be one of the first people in line behind him to agree that Minecraft would only benefit from more options or more accessibility, and I've stated that before. But I just don't see how modern versions of the game, which have only been becoming more more trivial and accessible, can be said to be going the opposite way.
My initial reason for coming into this thread was specifically because he was expressing displeasure with the game, so I was only trying to help him with suggestions. It wasn't to argue with him that his desired way to play was "wrong", but simply to give a "if you're not happy with what you're doing, replace it with something that makes you happy" suggestion because that seems like the healthiest and most logical thing to do to be happy in that case, no? I don't know. Was just trying to give him suggestions to be happy instead of spending your time doing something that makes you... not happy.
@Princess_Garnet even back in 1.6 era you could use ender chests to mass transport supplies, unless you're on hardcore in which case this only saves space and not time.
How, when shulkers, shulker shells, and shulker chests weren't added yet?
I actually just looked it up and I was also wrong about when they were added. They weren't added in 1.9. I thought this because the end changes were in 1.9, which would have included end cities and shulkers themselves, but the shulker shell drops and chulker chests they craft into weren't added until 1.11.
That's... actually interesting. 1.11 is in that "lull" period (often 1.10 to 1.12) where people say little of substantial changes were happening, but those are two very major ones. I guess most people incorrectly attribute them more to 1.9.
I'm also disappointed in myself for getting that mixed up. My oldest world was originally only updated to precisely 1.10 by chance, so I should have known rocket boosting with elytra and shulker shells weren't added yet. Especially because somewhat recently, I briefly went to 1.11 SPECIFICALLY for those two things, before just going straight to 1.19 after I realized the terrain blending of 1.18 would make it practical (other reason I held off was laziness on necessary resource packs changes, and the fact that my villages weren't yet prepared for the 1.14+ changes).
But yeah, that stuff definitely wasn't around back in 1.6 so I was right about things back then (and even IF they were, my point was that they weren't there to begin with and got added at some point, so originally the game was less accessible and less trivial, and has been trending to become more accessible and more trivial).
How, when shulkers, shulker shells, and shulker chests weren't added yet?
Even if it is just 27 slots ender chests can still make a huge difference; consider the following, at the end of a single play session where I mined more than 4,200 ores:
Now imagine if I did not have an ender chest; how would I manage my inventory? Without having to make many more trips back to empty it out, each of which can take quite some time (I travel up to 1,000 blocks away from the nearest base while caving, walking the entire way), or make much more frequent stops to smelt iron and gold (when I first start out I might put as many as 20 stacks of ore in my ender chest, smelting them as needed to make room), or craft resources into blocks (more and more frequently as my inventory filled up, instead of completely clearing it into my ender chest). They also make a big difference when it comes time to make a trip back to my main base (upwards of 2,500 blocks away by rail) as I can carry up to 63 instead of 36 stacks of items (27 stacks is equivalent to 15,552 mineral resources, adding about 4 days between trips).
More recently (starting November 2021), I started using "large" ender chests, with 54 slots, in my first world to help offset the ever-increasing distance from my main base (eventually I plan to use the Nether), aside form that I'd been using "rail blocks", "cobweb blocks", and "compressed mossy cobblestone" to be able to store/carry more of them (rail blocks in particular make a big difference when I've brought upwards of 3,000 rails on a trip back to my main base. Prior to adding cobweb blocks I used unenchanted shears to harvest cobwebs (this was when they required Silk Touch) and crafted string into wool so they didn't actually make a difference):
Distance by minecart per day:
September: 1.459 km
October: 1.669 km
November: 1.305 km
Overall: 1.175 km
Note that in November I was at a base that was further away from previous months ("overall" is the lifetime average for the world), but the distance still dropped, and would be much greater without ender chests at all (1.305 km with 90 slots (large ender chest), 1.864 km with 63 slots (vanilla ender chest), and 3.263 km with no ender chest).
This is also one of the factors that contributes to a higher overall mining rate in modded worlds, since I spent more of the total playtime caving (modded worlds also have two separate ender chests (large and vanilla) with a total of 117 slots including my inventory, with 90 available when caving as I only bring the "large" one with me), although the difference is not that large (on the order of +5% for my most recent modded world, which included a "vein miner" enchantment; 1.175 km per day by rail takes about 2.5 minutes out of an average session length of 3.6 hours or 216 minutes).
Also, allyourbasesaregone seems to have been referring to using ender chests to store your items before killing yourself, which is why they said they only work on Hardcore, but they do save both space and time regardless (if 1.6 did have / I added shulker boxes I could play as I did back when I used a backpack mod, where I had double chest sized backpacks for each major resource, collecting tens of thousands of resources per caving trip; I did not even bother smelting iron/gold until I returned to my main base, which had dozens of furnaces. I also never made secondary bases since there was little point when I could play for a week or more before I had to return, and didn't spend as much time on a single modded world back then and I'd made the underground deeper so I didn't go as far out).
Oh... oops, I seriously misread that. I thought it said shulker chest, not ender chest.
Yes, an ender chest would have helped, but I had many double chests full of stacks of logs so it was going to be multiple trips either way. Less, perhaps, but shulker chests let you really cut most tasks down to one trip and/or prolong caving/resource gathering expeditions. It was a massive change.
I really don't even carry shulker chests on me normally. Instead, I carry an ender chest, and then my ender chest serves as my repository of shulker chests for "anywhere access" of certain things (namely, one or a couple for weapons/ armors/tools, many more of torches, one or two of Golden foods [apples/carrots], arrows, rockets for elytra, totems of undying, and maybe some others I'm forgetting), and then I have a handful left empty for "storage" which I mostly use for temporary storage when caving/mining, or for expanded personal storage on resource gathering expeditions.
I think with all of the additional items to the game over time, extra personal storage (like another row or something) would be welcome. The whole bundle idea seemed odd to me. It adds more inventory management.
It's partly chance. Life is not just about what, but time, place, and circumstance too.
Place is a big factor. Modern Reddit seems (I'm just a casual browser and not active user of it so maybe I'm wrong) less like forums where it's just a feed of the most recent stuff, so it's heavily about timing and circumstance.
Not just place but place and time. Especially in modern times where social media trends towards low attention spans. I've seen people refer to like three sentences/one short paragraph comments in places like Youtube as "I'm not reading that novel". I really worry about some peoples' attention spans. On a more "mobile/modern social media platform", I imagine most people will trend towards a simple picture of vanilla versus your more in-depth posts of a modded world, even if it's not that long either. Just how it is.
See, that's sort of more of what I was getting at.
My perception was that the game was always seen as innately accessible even back then. That was before things like enchantments, elytra, and shulker boxes either became more accessible/trivial to get, or before they were things at all.
I'm just taken aback at how modern Minecraft can at all be said to be "marginalizing" people. And I'm not trying to give Agtrigormortis a "hard time" and I hope he knows that. To the contrary, I hope he knows I'd be one of the first people in line behind him to agree that Minecraft would only benefit from more options or more accessibility, and I've stated that before. But I just don't see how modern versions of the game, which have only been becoming more more trivial and accessible, can be said to be going the opposite way.
My initial reason for coming into this thread was specifically because he was expressing displeasure with the game, so I was only trying to help him with suggestions. It wasn't to argue with him that his desired way to play was "wrong", but simply to give a "if you're not happy with what you're doing, replace it with something that makes you happy" suggestion because that seems like the healthiest and most logical thing to do to be happy in that case, no? I don't know. Was just trying to give him suggestions to be happy instead of spending your time doing something that makes you... not happy.
How, when shulkers, shulker shells, and shulker chests weren't added yet?
I actually just looked it up and I was also wrong about when they were added. They weren't added in 1.9. I thought this because the end changes were in 1.9, which would have included end cities and shulkers themselves, but the shulker shell drops and chulker chests they craft into weren't added until 1.11.
That's... actually interesting. 1.11 is in that "lull" period (often 1.10 to 1.12) where people say little of substantial changes were happening, but those are two very major ones. I guess most people incorrectly attribute them more to 1.9.
I'm also disappointed in myself for getting that mixed up. My oldest world was originally only updated to precisely 1.10 by chance, so I should have known rocket boosting with elytra and shulker shells weren't added yet. Especially because somewhat recently, I briefly went to 1.11 SPECIFICALLY for those two things, before just going straight to 1.19 after I realized the terrain blending of 1.18 would make it practical (other reason I held off was laziness on necessary resource packs changes, and the fact that my villages weren't yet prepared for the 1.14+ changes).
But yeah, that stuff definitely wasn't around back in 1.6 so I was right about things back then (and even IF they were, my point was that they weren't there to begin with and got added at some point, so originally the game was less accessible and less trivial, and has been trending to become more accessible and more trivial).
The modern game is definitely harder to 100%. There was a sweet spot difficulty wise I think but overall the nether and underground have become tougher (albeit much cooler) in recent updates. Whether the dragon is harder or not, idk.
Ender chests were around long before 1.9 although they are limited.
1.10 and 1.12 mark the addition of autojump and the crafting recipe book which are vital to me and should've been in the game from day one in my eyes. When I played 1.6.4 today I had to a double take with how much more clicking and moving I have to do without these conveniences. Crafting and exploring are more of a chore.
Also, I am one of the few people who likes divisive updates...I am very fond of structures, 1.13's mobs, and 1.9+ combat. Old combat is unpleasant for me as I can't tell when mobs are attacking. I like the oceans being less of a vast nothingness and more of a new dimension with a lot of loot.
And 1.13+1.14 made crawl-swim and crawling things, which are also essential to Minecraft being practical for survival. Escape in a one block hole. Or create one block entrances to your bases. This also allows you to explore contiguous but cramped caves without altering the terrain.
This shows just how little interest anybody has in mining/caving, or at least my playstyle - not even one answer to the question in the OP, just a completely irrelevant question which was pretty clear as I mentioned it in the descriptions; this completely put me off from Reddit for a few months and even now I consider r/Minecraft to be a lost cause, I don't know if it is because I'm doing something wrong as this person got 700 comments just by showing a chest full of resources they collected in a week of playtime, when I regularly collect about 10 times as much from 20 times as much ore (about 1,000 / hour = 178,000 in 178 hours, while they collected about 21,000 but they used Fortune). Not saying that this is an accurate comparison of resource collection rates since I don't know how much of that time they spent caving but a 20-fold difference in ores is still quite extreme; a commenter also says they collected 9 stacks of iron in 5 hours, apparently without Fortune, half the rate I get - note also that my rates are sustained averages over months of playtime, which will be lower than short-term rates (I've collected over 300 iron per hour during peak periods).
Even back in the day I got scorned for suggesting that resource farms were unnecessary:
(half the comments are also again claims that I get what I do because of mods, despite repeatedly showing my first world as proof that you can do that in vanilla)
At the same time, there were quite a few threads complaining about how easy it was to collect resources:
The real issue seems to be that iron is used for both armor/tools and a wide variety of blocks and items and most players spend the vast majority of their iron on the latter (mainly on hoppers); if you only use it for armor/tools even a fraction of the old abundance (again, it was about 0.7% of blocks below sea level while now it only peaks at that level in a triangular distribution which averages far less (figure C; note that figure A, the actual number of blocks, better reflects the amount above sea level, which is almost nothing by comparison despite the percentages being much higher) is still plenty but surely people who use it for other things find it harder to find enough.
In my experience, too much mining tires me out (not as much if it's strip mining, it is mostly caves in which I easily get fed up from going in circles or backtracking). And I don't like using iron for tools either, but I hate redstone as I am smol brain.
It doesn't feel harder to me. Everything I named are in (relatively) recent versions and make things more trivial, accessible, faster, and easier.
I don't think 1.13 was divisive, was it? I know it had performance implications, and then 1.14 had some technical ones, but I don't recall anyone being divisive on the content side of things. Like I don't recall the community at large being split on 1.13. It was just performance heavy and kept some servers from updating past 1.12 (not sure what the story is like for it today).
Similar to 1.7 and 1.8, they weren't "divisive" even though they had those same issues (just not bad enough on the server side). Some people (myself being one) disliked 1.7 and/or 1.8 for those factors, but the larger community didn't see either version as divisive as far as I recall.
Beta 1.8 and release 1.9 are the only two divisive releases I really remember. And like you, I personally liked 1.9. The end changes were nice and I didn't mind the combat changes.
Funny enough, I loathe 1.8 and was mixed on 1.7 for their performance and technical issues, yet I have come to love 1.13 and 1.14 which had similar issues in their time (though it was largely after 1.15 and/or 1.16 fixed things up that i came to accept modern versions more). At the time they were so bad it was what made me realize my original world might indefinitely stay in 1.12 at the latest, which is why I kept it at 1.10 and then stopped playing it for a new world in 1.16. Partly explains why I loved 1.18 so much (also for the terrain blending which made me more fully bring my older world up to modern versions more seamlessly). 1.16 was great, the new things of 1.13/1.14 and a new nether? Then a wonderfully overhauled overworld with 1.18? The better "update that changed the world"? Yes, please.
While 1.19 was something I was hoping MIGHT be a bigger change, given what was teased, and while I might be indifferent on some things in 1.20, there's nothing in either of them that I outright dislike. They're just not the larger uplifts that 1.13. 1.14, 1.16, and 1.18 (including 1.17) was. Not everything will be, though.
It's funny how many small things improve over time and you don't notice it until you actually go back and try and play or look at older versions.
The swimming feature is definitely one I would find hard to go back to being without.
Another example was I was watching some of my older videos the other day, and my oldest one was in 1.10 (not even THAT old a version, relatively speaking), and one thing stuck out to me. When rotating the camera at times, the edges would sometimes be blank until the visual information was drawn in. Like the occlusion culling was overly aggressive at times or something? I'm not sure (I recall the old "Advanced OpenGL" setting had the same problem on its more performance leaning setting). It was subtle and not major, but I couldn't NOT notice, and then I realized it had been ages since I had seen that. I don't see it in modern versions.
It made me wonder how many other things modern versions fix. Like remember the lighting errors? Last time I created a 1.2.5 world they were there and it was so different seeing them again. I can't remember which version finally fixed it (it was "fixed" multiple times) but it's definitely not a thing anymore either.
Finding out 1.2.5 couldn't play with v-sync on without major performance/chunk loading issues was another example (or maybe this is some retroactive thing where modern hardware/drivers/software versions aren't behaving with the old Minecraft version well but it didn't do that back then?). That would be considered unacceptable today. If it was an issue in versions back then, I'm surprised it wasn't something that had more criticism (maybe it was and I didn't see it, or maybe everyone was playing at 8 or 4 chunks and it wasn't a big deal as a result, I don't know).
For all the faults of modern Minecraft's coding, there's definitely things it's seemingly doing right.
Edit: And as another example I just thought of, 1.19 (not sure if 1.19 introduced it but it's there in 1.19) has an issue where crossing certain chunk borders leads to a large stutter. I see it sometimes. Apparently this is being fixed in 1.20 too. Fingers crossed.
It doesn't feel harder to me. Everything I named are in (relatively) recent versions and make things more trivial, accessible, faster, and easier.
I don't think 1.13 was divisive, was it? I know it had performance implications, and then 1.14 had some technical ones, but I don't recall anyone being divisive on the content side of things. Like I don't recall the community at large being split on 1.13. It was just performance heavy and kept some servers from updating past 1.12 (not sure what the story is like for it today).
Similar to 1.7 and 1.8, they weren't "divisive" even though they had those same issues (just not bad enough on the server side). Some people (myself being one) disliked 1.7 and/or 1.8 for those factors, but the larger community didn't see either version as divisive as far as I recall.
Beta 1.8 and release 1.9 are the only two divisive releases I really remember. And like you, I personally liked 1.9. The end changes were nice and I didn't mind the combat changes.
Funny enough, I loathe 1.8 and was mixed on 1.7 for their performance and technical issues, yet I have come to love 1.13 and 1.14 which had similar issues in their time (though it was largely after 1.15 and/or 1.16 fixed things up that i came to accept modern versions more). At the time they were so bad it was what made me realize my original world might indefinitely stay in 1.12 at the latest, which is why I kept it at 1.10 and then stopped playing it for a new world in 1.16. Partly explains why I loved 1.18 so much (also for the terrain blending which made me more fully bring my older world up to modern versions more seamlessly). 1.16 was great, the new things of 1.13/1.14 and a new nether? Then a wonderfully overhauled overworld with 1.18? The better "update that changed the world"? Yes, please.
While 1.19 was something I was hoping MIGHT be a bigger change, given what was teased, and while I might be indifferent on some things in 1.20, there's nothing in either of them that I outright dislike. They're just not the larger uplifts that 1.13. 1.14, 1.16, and 1.18 (including 1.17) was. Not everything will be, though.
It's funny how many small things improve over time and you don't notice it until you actually go back and try and play or look at older versions.
The swimming feature is definitely one I would find hard to go back to being without.
Another example was I was watching some of my older videos the other day, and my oldest one was in 1.10 (not even THAT old a version, relatively speaking), and one thing stuck out to me. When rotating the camera at times, the edges would sometimes be blank until the visual information was drawn in. Like the occlusion culling was overly aggressive at times or something? I'm not sure (I recall the old "Advanced OpenGL" setting had the same problem on its more performance leaning setting). It was subtle and not major, but I couldn't NOT notice, and then I realized it had been ages since I had seen that. I don't see it in modern versions.
It made me wonder how many other things modern versions fix. Like remember the lighting errors? Last time I created a 1.2.5 world they were there and it was so different seeing them again. I can't remember which version finally fixed it (it was "fixed" multiple times) but it's definitely not a thing anymore either.
Finding out 1.2.5 couldn't play with v-sync on without major performance/chunk loading issues was another example (or maybe this is some retroactive thing where modern hardware/drivers/software versions aren't behaving with the old Minecraft version well but it didn't do that back then?). That would be considered unacceptable today. If it was an issue in versions back then, I'm surprised it wasn't something that had more criticism (maybe it was and I didn't see it, or maybe everyone was playing at 8 or 4 chunks and it wasn't a big deal as a result, I don't know).
For all the faults of modern Minecraft's coding, there's definitely things it's seemingly doing right.
Edit: And as another example I just thought of, 1.19 (not sure if 1.19 introduced it but it's there in 1.19) has an issue where crossing certain chunk borders leads to a large stutter. I see it sometimes. Apparently this is being fixed in 1.20 too. Fingers crossed.
I think you focus too much on 'getting started' when discussing easiness and not enough on 'making progress'. Yeah it is now trivial to get a bed and usually to get a farm going, but have you seen recent caves? Or how the nether is?
Actually, I probably looking at it the other way more than anything. I might be quick to dismiss the up front investment (start up time) since my play style is one where I stick with a few worlds and keep with it, rather than going through the start all the time.
So, no, I'm not dismissing the "making progress" part. I'm specifically saying that is the part in particular that has gotten far more accessible. Starting what might be a bit longer, but again, it's STILL trivial, and the payoff is way more than worth it with how accessible it gets late game. Enchantments like efficiency, fortune, and mending especially? Village trading to facilitate getting the exact enchantments you want? Shulker chests for storage? Elytra for transportation? EVERYTHING is so much easier.
the caves were made more meaningful SPECIFICALLY because they were so boring, plain, and needless to do before (oh, and far less common so how is it harder?). Mojang can't win. They make something more meaningful, something people have been suggesting the most for years and years at that, and people complain they have to do something they don't want to. The game is called Minecraft... mining is a long neglected part that people are now complaining they have to do. I don't get it.
I think you focus too much on 'getting started' when discussing easiness and not enough on 'making progress'. Yeah it is now trivial to get a bed and usually to get a farm going, but have you seen recent caves? Or how the nether is?
The Nether update however was at least somewhat forgivable, because while Nether fortresses are now rarer, we do get new biomes in addition to newer structures with newer and arguably better loot.
Would a potion stop your armour or tools from being destroyed in lava if you die? no, but netherite does and that's why 1.16 was a game changer. While it was still possible to lose your gear if you didn't retrieve it in time, you at least had a chance. However by the same token, if anybody were to die in a lava lake despite the existence of fire resistance potions, then that is on them, not the fault of the game. By the time somebody has already obtained items for potion brewing in Nether fortresses they have absolutely no excuse to not brew a batch of potions for their future adventures, potions have existed in the game for a long time now, and it doesn't necessarily take a highly skilled or elite player to do it, so barring mental disability or children, it's their fault.
Look, I understand why golden apple recipes were nerfed, making only the regular golden apple, not the Notch apple, craftable. It also would have been fine to reduce the chance of gold ingot drops from Drowned Zombies in 1.17, in exchange for copper ingots taking up some of their probability, but by removing gold ingot drops from Drowned completely, now powered rail systems are much harder to get in large supply.
How does this come close to addressing the problem of the Elytra being overpowered to the point of overshadowing other transport methods, as some claim? I hardly believe discouraging the use of minecarts even further as a valid compromise and I don't see why should anybody else. If anything minecarts needed a buff, not a nerf, in order to make them useful late game, and their speed ought to had been doubled, in my opinion. This would raise the speed of minecarts from 8 blocks per second to 16 according to the wiki, doing this while preventing them from derailing would be a welcomed addition, even if the 2x speed could only be achieved with downhill rails, while achieving at least 1.5x speed on a horizontal powered line.
Princess_Garnet should also be aware that my reasoning for deepslate taking longer to mine than stone being unjustified is because it offers NO benefits whatsoever compared to stone, it does not have an increased blast resistance, it has the same, 6, and that's why myself and some other's, including a friend who plays on my server agrees with my point about this problem. Even without the controversies of the ore distribution, there are other valid concerns about how Caves and Cliffs was handled.
And continuing to add grind to the game without valid reason to do so, is making the game less accessible for players, not more.
All it does is it causes people to get bored and do other things with their time, and how could you blame them? I already know of some people who got bored of Minecraft a long time ago because of this. Why this has to be explained to game developers in year 2023 like Mojang, is a mystery, perhaps not all of it is malicious intent, but I am betting at least some of this is, I mean we already know how toxic the gaming community can be especially when it involves multiplayer games and when something doesn't go another person's way, then arguments start. People play casual games in part to get away from this type of drama, there comes a point where too much difficulty can cause people unnecessary stress and annoyance.
From the standpoint of a survival player amassing materials for building, the grind has been reduced though, not increased.
Sure, SOME things are being increased, especially prior to "end game" (looking at 1.20's changes to netherite obtaining, for one example), but exceptions existing doesn't change that on the whole, it has trended towards accessibility.
Something that is also worth pointing out is how little (relatively speaking) of an improvement netherite is over diamond. It's ALREADY "not efficient" relatively speaking. And it doesn't HAVE to be more "efficient" to justify itself. There exists room for things to exist that are "better, but less efficient" in my opinion. It then gives you the CHOICE to go for it then, rather than making you feel worse off if you stick with diamond. Because it's not a whole lot worse, and one of the key ways itis worse is durability, which... mending (or anvil repairs) makes a non-issue. I actually like the approach off adding another step to the upgrade, because it makes it feel LESS like a raw grind of just having to mine more (only in the nether), but I think they should have increased the amount of ancient debris' to counteract the added step/time investment that will now be needed (not by a lot, maybe by 50% or something?). So I partially agree with this particular thing, though i think Mojang has a good idea (just that it's not properly tuned). And I disagree that exceptions represent the whole.
I do agree that deep slate would "make sense" by having a higher blast resistance. At the same time, I don't think it really matters much if it doesn't. In my experience, if stone gets hit by a creeper blast, it's more or less prevents the explosion from carrying further anyway, no? How else do you "reduce" that without making it immune?
Ultimately I'm also not sure how this is relevant to the original complaint you have about things being harder to obtain. Making it more blast resistant doesn't make it easier to obtain. The same "grind" is there regardless. If it's just about the function, just use stone. Again, I'd agree it'd "justify itself more" if it was harder, but in survival, not all building blocks are equally viable from a pure gameplay perspective. And you can't expect everything that FUNCTIONS similarly but only LOOKS different to be equally easy to get. And something further to consider is that even IF it was just as fast to mine, it would STILL be worse off due to you having to go deeper to get it, so it would have to be slightly faster to "justify itself". The game isn't trying to make everything 100% equally viable. That would be impossible anyway, and it shouldn't be what the game tries to do.
I do agree that deep slate would "make sense" by having a higher blast resistance. At the same time, I don't think it really matters much if it doesn't. In my experience, if stone gets hit by a creeper blast, it's more or less prevents the explosion from carrying further anyway, no? How else do you "reduce" that without making it immune?
Stone is not immune to creeper explosions, they do remove 1-4 blocks depending on where they are standing (on a flat surface), and doubling the blast resistance to 12 would in fact make it immune:
Thus, the block resistances are 24.2 (charged creepers), 15.534 (TNT), 11.2 (creepers), 3.284 (fireballs).
Currently, there are very few blocks which meet this criteria and none are really "building blocks"; in fact, the resistance jumps up from 9 (end stone) to 100 (liquids) and most of the blocks are rare (ancient debris, crying obsidian) and/or unobtainable (bedrock, reinforced deepslate) and/or impractically expensive or cause lag if used in large amounts (block of netherite, respawn anchor, ender chest (same issue as normal chests); obsidian is the only block that can be obtained in large amounts relatively quickly and be used to build walls, floors, ceilings (no stairs/slabs/walls though):
Ancient Debris 1,200 (very rare)
Anvil 1,200 (expensive, 31 iron, affected by gravity)
Block of Netherite 1,200 (extremely expensive, 36 ancient debris + 36 gold)
Crying Obsidian 1,200 (very rare / lot of gold required for bartering)
Respawn Anchor 1,200 (very expensive, 6 crying obsidian)
Enchanting Table 1,200 (expensive, 4 obsidian + 2 diamonds, causes lag in large amounts)
Obsidian 1,200 (common but takes > 2 seconds/block to mine)
Ender Chest 600 (expensive, 8 obsidian + eye of ender, causes lag in large amounts)
Lava 100 (not a structural block, hazardous)
Water 100 (not a structural block)
Highest block below water:
Dragon Egg 9 (only 1 per world, affected by gravity)
End Stone 9 (common but requires efficient access to an end portal, has brick/slab/stair/wall variants)
(all other blocks with a resistance of >= 12 not listed here are unobtainable. I noticed that the list omits End Stone slabs/stairs so it may be incomplete with respect to the top blocks, I don't play in newer versions so I wouldn't know if any are missing)
Actually, I probably looking at it the other way more than anything. I might be quick to dismiss the up front investment (start up time) since my play style is one where I stick with a few worlds and keep with it, rather than going through the start all the time.
So, no, I'm not dismissing the "making progress" part. I'm specifically saying that is the part in particular that has gotten far more accessible. Starting what might be a bit longer, but again, it's STILL trivial, and the payoff is way more than worth it with how accessible it gets late game. Enchantments like efficiency, fortune, and mending especially? Village trading to facilitate getting the exact enchantments you want? Shulker chests for storage? Elytra for transportation? EVERYTHING is so much easier.
the caves were made more meaningful SPECIFICALLY because they were so boring, plain, and needless to do before (oh, and far less common so how is it harder?). Mojang can't win. They make something more meaningful, something people have been suggesting the most for years and years at that, and people complain they have to do something they don't want to. The game is called Minecraft... mining is a long neglected part that people are now complaining they have to do. I don't get it.
Well it's simply that a lot of players never get that far in the game as to have all these OP goodies. They aren't looking to put in time or effort to get there and just want the easiest route to the ending. As for caves, it's hard to make a fair comparison because 1.18 also changed mob spawning lighting conditions and 1.17 had added the glow lichen as a light source.
Maybe I am missing the point, because from where I'm sitting, you have a choice of two game modes where one has gated access and the other doesn't, and you're choosing the one with gated access and then complaining about said gated access.
From where I'm sitting, I also don't know what "excessive grinds" you're referring to? Maybe it would help if you gave examples? "I'm trying to build a big city and need a lot of stone or wood"? "I need to spend some play sessions taking a forest down or digging stone"? Something like that? I do those. They're not a big deal. You are expected to have to spend time and effort getting resources in survival, and if the project is truly massive, maybe a LOT of time. It is, in your words, by design. What would you suggest, for these things to be completely trivial to get on a massive scale? In survival? Seriously? That strips survival of a large part of its point, especially when the game already gives you so many ways to trivialize things.
I am a player not unlike yourself. I play survival only and I largely just build. I lean towards casual. I have accepted the gated access to things because IT IS PART OF THE POINT for me. I am playing SURVIVAL. If you play that mode but lean into a play style (focus almost entirely on builds and very large scale ones) then it's a situation you are putting yourself into. If I wanted instant gratification/instance access to things for truly massive things that survival was too restrictive for, I would be acknowledging that creative is a better mod for me.
I hope by now you at least understand WHY I made the suggestion I did (and apparently why many others do too?) even if you disagree with it as a solution. It's suggested a lot because it makes logical sense. There are two modes; one with a limitation and one less so, and you are choosing the one with the limitation but complaining about it?
I get that the balance won't appeal to everyone. But survival can be pretty darned accommodating, even for mass scale builds. Maybe there needs to be more distinctions between the difficulties to appease to the people who mostly want "survival lite" or something. I don't know. Like maybe the Easy difficulty (or a new one below it) gives you twice or thrice the drops from everything, I don't know. But asking survival as a whole to accommodate players who lean more towards pure builders who do massive builds and also want it done in an instant gratification fashion is just going to strip survival of what it is, especially when creative already exists and lends to catering towards that.
I'm NOT saying there shouldn't be options to appeal to more people. You have seen me claim countless times that there being such things would be a good change. I am NOT saying creative is the ideal solution for you in particular. Can we stop circling back to those things when I've explained them a number of times. I am mostly touching upon the fact that between the two modes as they are, you are rather in between (and honestly leaning creative, but still wanting a "survival lite" experience), and with the two modes as they are, changing survival to the extent it removes its entire point for everyone else, just to appease massive builders, is NOT the way to go. Again, I hope you understand WHY you are apparently get that suggestion a lot even if you disagree with it. It makes more sense than "remove survival of much of its entire point for the rest of the community".
I don't know what to say here. I said above that I was worried you were taking the "I'm being marginalized" route and it seems I was right. I'm not touching that. At all.
What I will say is what I said before. Minecraft is a vast community. The range of opinions is vast and nearly endless. It is a fact that every change will be approved of, indifferent of, or disapproved of. That's just how it is.
Consider, for one moment, the inverse of how you're painting the situation. Consider if all of your preferred changes were to occur, the other players that would be, in your words, "marginalized". What if it leads to MORE unhappy people than there are now?
There is no one size fits all, unless Mojang makes this a truly module framework where almost everything is adjustable (which would be nice, but is probably a pipe dream, for sure). The best you can do if you find the game to be disrespecting your time is to find something that rewards your time better. That's literally the most logical answer. I am not sure what else to suggest.
Uh, okay?
So one person, who doesn't even play or like modern versions for a wide range of reasons, and already made their own version of the game about a decade ago that appeals to their style, isn't in high approval of a modern version? Well that's totally unexpected... (not). It also seems like you're also trying to use this so frame it as though he agrees with you on everything, when I highly doubt that's the case. Why speak for other people? Let them speak for themselves.
There's other people who dislike something? Again, I'm shocked... (not). Edit: Oh, that's one post with one reply. Is that supposed to represent what people think by and large? I presumed that was a large post with hundreds of comments or something, because there have been disapproval posts like that, so I'm not sure what made you link to one person saying they dislike one thing and getting one reply.
I already addressed this. I said that you, myself, TheMasterCaver, and hundreds of thousands of people could post here and vote that things are bad. Okay, but what happens if many more hundreds of thousands are enjoying the game? Well, tough luck for us. The majority is what Mojang will appeal to. You keep presuming I'm approaching this as a "you vs me" stance because YOU are approaching it that way. Instead, I'm approaching it in a way that isn't you vs me, but is majority vs minority. I'm acknowledging that the wider community exists and that it is what should be tended to, NOT what might be the vocal minority. Yes, it is unfortunate when your views align with what is the minority. That is life. We have to deal with it, however that is.
Are you expecting everything to be unanimous or something? For every change to appeal to you (and those with the same opinions) specifically? Seems rather unrealistic of an expectation.
Pointing to people who dislike something is not a good way to substantiate that a given thing is bad. I disliked 1.7 and 1.8. There's no doubt countless people who loved those versions. I liked the first release version I played (1.2.5) far better than the beta version I initially tried of the game (beta 1.3), yet beta 1.8 is said to be one of the worst changes of direction for the game if you ask the purists. Your opinion isn't the only right one. My opinion isn't the only right one. You're not getting this point of mine; it's bigger than any one of us. And pointing to other people with the same opinion doesn't change that. So for that thread (and the no doubt countless others like it) that dislike 1.18, how many appreciation posts are there about 1.18? I browse r/Minecraft only seldomly to look at things, and after 1.18 released, it seemed pretty darned unanimous at the time in favor of it to me. I still occasionally come across some. Maybe I was in a dream though.
If you want a REAL grind fest in survival, try those beta versions. Modern survival is so accommodating that I am pretty surprised there are people who say it's getting too hard.
tl;dr just use common blocks instead of rare ones
*My face when my friends waste hours getting rare materials for fancy buildings in survival and expect me to help when we have tons of cheap stones
Sometimes it doesn't even make sense to use rare items to builds either, as in the Nether some of them are susceptible to accidental destruction. Too much lava and fire around, and even using the shulker box for builds in the Nether I find is rather wasteful, they are renewable, however even with farms, you're likely running extremely long distances to get to the Stronghold End portal and back again which still makes shulker boxes fairly difficult to obtain in vast amounts.
But it's not necessary, once you got a full ender chest worth you have maxed it out already, and carrying shulker boxes in inventory all the time is a risk. So there are some builds not even I or my friends would use them for. While I would carry at least 1 or 2 shulker boxes with me sometimes into the Nether, I don't feel it's worth the trouble of building anything out of them in the Nether, base wise, as with a blast resistance of only 2 they can be easily destroyed by Ghast explosion and fireballs upon dropping.
Smooth sandsotne on the other hand is easy to obtain, is renewable counting Wandering traders for sand, but a desert biome is generally enough as sandstone can be found naturally underground in deserts then be compacted into smooth sandstone for greater durability and depending on build, a better look. So you're right, most of the time cheaper and more plentiful the resource is better.
My point is however is the constant nerfing of resource gathering, because reasons, or because people are too envious about what other's have earned, is making the sense of reward unjust and overly punishing for the casual player. We need to be looking at alternatives where possible so the game remains accessible for anybody who wishes to play vanilla Minecraft without cheats or creative mode enabled.
Ultimately I'd like for the game to be more rewarding (and you see should how dismal rare drop rates are in Java vs Bedrock for mobs), but at the same time I know Mojang isn't listening and rare blocks are just that, rare materials you can't use much of.
I just throw -ite stones around for all my builds and it's sufficient. That or deepslate/cobble with coarse dirt for interior floors and ceiling sometimes.
I can't imagine the bother of making a home out of shulker boxes. That's just a mess.
I still don't see how the game is becoming more punishing to the casual player. Survival has only been becoming more accommodating in modern versions than it was in the past, no? That's been my impression. I play only in survival (I have a creative world as a scratch pad for testing building ideas, but I don't use it to play for its own sake), and I play largely to build, and between 1.2.5 (when I started playing) to modern versions, it has only seemed to get more accommodating on the whole. Survival already is more of a survival/creative hybrid, because it's not trying to be a "tryhard survival experience" so I don't get how a causal sandbox game that has only been becoming more accommodating in modern versions is "marginalizing" people.
Enchantments were already added by time I started playing, but I'm still mentioning these as they are a big part of what aids this late game (which is why I commented above if you want real evidence it hasn't gotten harder, go back to beta 1.7.3 or prior to this being added and you'll see real "grind" for amassing things). Along the way though, they have gotten FAR better. You used to need to spend an entire 30 (or was it more?) levels for a level 3 enchant. Oh, and it was entirely random. I mean it still is, but there's sort of ways around this. Namely...
Pre-1.14? No village trades. Enchantments were added long before 1.14 but this is a noted point that made it far more accessible to "get what you want" (and zombifying and then curing villagers to reduce trade costs is just broken). So much so that some people say it's problematic. And I'm not sure if it was 1.14 itself or an earlier/later version, but somewhere along the line, villages got SUPER common. Too common, I'd say. In 1.6 and earlier, they were nearly non-existent.
Pre 1.11? No elytra with rocket boosting (some people also feel this was "wrong" to add to survival).
Pre-1.9? No shulker boxes.
Pre 1.9? No mending at all (though, again, 1.14+ is the real point here).
For someone who plays survival as a long term builder, these things are all immensely helpful. I remember having to knock down a forest in the 1.6 era and transporting all of that wood back to my main base was a time chore. Please, I know from experience modern versions are more accommodating, not less.
I can't speak as much for the "ores are harder to get" part. That may be true, but either way it was beyond trivial then and it's beyond trivial now, and you shouldn't (?) really need to constantly get them anyway so it's a complete non-issue, no? For the types of players we are, you shouldn't need a constant supply of it unless you're actually using it as a building block (if you are and/or do need a lot of it constantly for some other reason, either spend some time mining to get it, as that is the intended method to obtain it, or build a farm as you're not opposed to them). Again, 1.18 says hello and helps here.
I'm not sure if it was actually "harder" before or after 1.18 to get ores, but I personally found it more off-putting before (this was also before I got established with a villager trading hall and enchants, so no doubt lacking fortune and mending was working against me, which makes me reiterate my above mention of 1.14+ helping towards this). Diamonds? Those are so unneeded with mending now that they are useless beyond your initial ones.
You keep saying "nerfs are bad" but you're not giving many specific examples. The only one I saw was deep slate but that was... new to 1.18 so how can its very introduction be a "nerf"? Comparing it to stone isn't honest because its NOT stone. It's MEANT precisely to be a harder material. If the underground was just deeper but still with stone, that would be boring. Efficiency V made mining so trivial. It's STILL trivial, just less so. Not everything is supposed to be trivial to get in large quantities in survival, and not everything is supposed to be equally trivial to get. Some WILL be harder. It's survival. Maybe if you explained what you needed, and in how much of a quantity, it would answer this, but if this is "I'm building a ludicrously sized city in survival and complaining it's not trivial to get a massive amount of something instantly" (esepcially if that includes something that you're choosing to use as a "building" material that isn't meant to be trivial to get in survival), then that's not really a fault of the game mode.
To repeat myself...
Like, help me understand. I get preferring given versions for whatever reasons. That's preference. But on the whole, I don't understand this "modern versions are marginalizing me" stance. The game seems far more accommodating than it's ever been.
You have been able to get enchantments from villager trades since they were added; yes, it wasn't as easy but still very possible, as I do in modded worlds (the biggest difference back then was that village trades and professions were completely random; what I do is mass breed a bunch of villagers (very easy to do, make a box lined with doors and open to the sky; a valid "house" used to be as little as a door next to a block), singling out librarians, then trade with each one many times until they offer an enchanted book trade):
https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Trading/Before_Java_Edition_1.8#Librarian
As well as all types of diamond gear (even better, a single villager can offer every single trade, as I use in my first world to buy the items I need to repair my gear):
https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Trading/Before_Java_Edition_1.8#Blacksmith
No Mending? Simply rename an item - a bug-turned-feature which Mojang never bothered to fix until 1.8 (probably since they knew how impractical repairing anything would have been, otherwise, I don't consider a complete overhaul of a mechanic the same as a bugfix; the only issue is that they waited until 1.9 to add a suitable alternative):
MC-8648 Upon naming an item, it no longer grows in base value after being repaired on an anvil.
That's why I only crafted 3 pickaxes (one with Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, and two others which also had Smelting and Vein Miner enchantments) despite mining over 2 million blocks (modded, but whatever, my mod simply makes the pre-1.8 repair mechanic a valid feature via its "Mending" enchantment which works exactly the same as renaming did. Note that the only reason I added Mending was to show how I think Mojang could have implemented it, not for my benefit, if anything, it means I have to spend more XP to maintain my gear, not that it matters):
Sure, repairing items on the anvil requires resources but they are truly minuscule; people constantly use my playstyle to argue that you have to spend all your time mining for resources to maintain your gear but that is blatantly false, largely thanks to Fortune and Unbreaking, which effectively make resources nearly 10 times more common than otherwise (the anvil also helps through its repair mechanic of adding +12% durability to item repairs):
Also, people keep pointing out the "ore veins" added in 1.8, but how common are they actually (the Wiki only says "rare")? I consistently mine over 3,000 ores per play session, an amount most find to be absolutely unbelievable ("you must use cheats, x-ray, creative, etc" Even better, "you mod cave/ore generation so of course you can find more" (this thread is a fun read, it also shows just how bad 1.7 was to the underground if it was now that hard to find any decent caves, compared to common complaints of "swiss cheese" prior to then) - actually, any difference in mining rates between vanilla vs modded worlds comes down to only a few percent per hour (906 / 863 = 105%), and that can be attributed to my "vein miner" enchantment approximately halving the ~10% of the time I otherwise spend on actually mining ores while caving):
Also, at least for mineral resources ender chests are sufficient to enable me to collect resources at such extreme rates for hours on end, thanks to mineral blocks, which effectively multiplies the space by 9-fold (prior to 1.6 I did not bother collecting all coal since there were no blocks; after 1.6 came out I actually went back and mined all the coal I'd left behind. For iron and gold I accumulate ore blocks until I run out of space and set up a bank of furnaces in a marked location and continue caving nearby while they smelt; the need to bring furnaces and a crafting table is more than offset by the space savings).
As far as the frequency of villages goes, that can only be because there are more biomes for them to generate in, as well as changes in biome distribution (in particular, "hot" regions are mostly desert, savanna, and plains, all with villages); they have always had the same "spacing" and "separation" listed here (1.6.4 village generator source code, the field names are obfuscated but you can see that they are the same values, 32 and 8). For reference, I've found 15 villages in my first world, which does include a fair bit of ocean and "snowy" regions; the calculated frequency based on one attempt every 1024 chunks and 2 out of 7 common biomes having villages is one every 3584 chunks, which is further reduced by the presence of rivers and forest and desert hills sub-biomes. However, most of the level 4 maps which are "normal" biome areas and mostly/entirely land have at least 2-3 villages:
A surface rendering of the world at night (this is rather outdated, I've since explored the northwest and southeast corners; the northwest was all snowy biomes up to the ocean while the southeast had the last 3 villages listed above. All villages show up pretty well and are easy to distinguish from secondary bases, which are much smaller):
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?
Sorry, poor wording on the first part.
I should have put "no updated villager trades" as opposed to "no villager trades". Villager trades existed before that (since 1.3 I believe), but my main collective point was that many of the new additions (the updated villager trades in 1.14 being just one) have only made the game more accessible and trivial. I don't understand how people see the game as trending in the opposite direction.
If you mean 1.18, the copper and iron veins are rare, yes.
But it doesn't matter. My stance that "ore accessibility is fine as is" doesn't hinge on the existence of those ore veins. Iron is accessible enough without them, and the veins just exist alongside that. I was sort of adding their existence as a cherry on top, not the reason itself.
I look at ore veins in the same way I look at enchantments and villager trading after curing zombification; something that is "balanced" without them, and just super broken/accessible with them. The ore veins are rare, but if you find one, you're pretty much set for a while. And if you don't find them, iron is still very accessible.
In my recent hardcore world, I had no issue getting my initial iron set (armor, weapon, tools, and shield, then some) just by skirting into a few shallow caves. I didn't even go that far in (I was probably always 20 to 30 seconds at most from an entrance) and it didn't take my much searching at all. I know, anecdotal evidence of a sample size of one, but getting iron definitely does not seem substantially harder after 1.18 than it was before.
Still, the fact that so many players don't think twice about mining is quite telling:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/z0f5s2/ive_mined_more_than_a_million_ores_in_a_single/
This shows just how little interest anybody has in mining/caving, or at least my playstyle - not even one answer to the question in the OP, just a completely irrelevant question which was pretty clear as I mentioned it in the descriptions; this completely put me off from Reddit for a few months and even now I consider r/Minecraft to be a lost cause, I don't know if it is because I'm doing something wrong as this person got 700 comments just by showing a chest full of resources they collected in a week of playtime, when I regularly collect about 10 times as much from 20 times as much ore (about 1,000 / hour = 178,000 in 178 hours, while they collected about 21,000 but they used Fortune). Not saying that this is an accurate comparison of resource collection rates since I don't know how much of that time they spent caving but a 20-fold difference in ores is still quite extreme; a commenter also says they collected 9 stacks of iron in 5 hours, apparently without Fortune, half the rate I get - note also that my rates are sustained averages over months of playtime, which will be lower than short-term rates (I've collected over 300 iron per hour during peak periods).
Even back in the day I got scorned for suggesting that resource farms were unnecessary:
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/survival-mode/296529-am-i-the-only-one
(half the comments are also again claims that I get what I do because of mods, despite repeatedly showing my first world as proof that you can do that in vanilla)
At the same time, there were quite a few threads complaining about how easy it was to collect resources:
The real issue seems to be that iron is used for both armor/tools and a wide variety of blocks and items and most players spend the vast majority of their iron on the latter (mainly on hoppers); if you only use it for armor/tools even a fraction of the old abundance (again, it was about 0.7% of blocks below sea level while now it only peaks at that level in a triangular distribution which averages far less (figure C; note that figure A, the actual number of blocks, better reflects the amount above sea level, which is almost nothing by comparison despite the percentages being much higher) is still plenty but surely people who use it for other things find it harder to find enough.
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?
@Princess_Garnet even back in 1.6 era you could use ender chests to mass transport supplies, unless you're on hardcore in which case this only saves space and not time.
I wouldn't let that bother you.
It's partly chance. Life is not just about what, but time, place, and circumstance too.
Place is a big factor. Modern Reddit seems (I'm just a casual browser and not active user of it so maybe I'm wrong) less like forums where it's just a feed of the most recent stuff, so it's heavily about timing and circumstance.
Not just place but place and time. Especially in modern times where social media trends towards low attention spans. I've seen people refer to like three sentences/one short paragraph comments in places like Youtube as "I'm not reading that novel". I really worry about some peoples' attention spans. On a more "mobile/modern social media platform", I imagine most people will trend towards a simple picture of vanilla versus your more in-depth posts of a modded world, even if it's not that long either. Just how it is.
See, that's sort of more of what I was getting at.
My perception was that the game was always seen as innately accessible even back then. That was before things like enchantments, elytra, and shulker boxes either became more accessible/trivial to get, or before they were things at all.
I'm just taken aback at how modern Minecraft can at all be said to be "marginalizing" people. And I'm not trying to give Agtrigormortis a "hard time" and I hope he knows that. To the contrary, I hope he knows I'd be one of the first people in line behind him to agree that Minecraft would only benefit from more options or more accessibility, and I've stated that before. But I just don't see how modern versions of the game, which have only been becoming more more trivial and accessible, can be said to be going the opposite way.
My initial reason for coming into this thread was specifically because he was expressing displeasure with the game, so I was only trying to help him with suggestions. It wasn't to argue with him that his desired way to play was "wrong", but simply to give a "if you're not happy with what you're doing, replace it with something that makes you happy" suggestion because that seems like the healthiest and most logical thing to do to be happy in that case, no? I don't know. Was just trying to give him suggestions to be happy instead of spending your time doing something that makes you... not happy.
How, when shulkers, shulker shells, and shulker chests weren't added yet?
I actually just looked it up and I was also wrong about when they were added. They weren't added in 1.9. I thought this because the end changes were in 1.9, which would have included end cities and shulkers themselves, but the shulker shell drops and chulker chests they craft into weren't added until 1.11.
That's... actually interesting. 1.11 is in that "lull" period (often 1.10 to 1.12) where people say little of substantial changes were happening, but those are two very major ones. I guess most people incorrectly attribute them more to 1.9.
I'm also disappointed in myself for getting that mixed up. My oldest world was originally only updated to precisely 1.10 by chance, so I should have known rocket boosting with elytra and shulker shells weren't added yet. Especially because somewhat recently, I briefly went to 1.11 SPECIFICALLY for those two things, before just going straight to 1.19 after I realized the terrain blending of 1.18 would make it practical (other reason I held off was laziness on necessary resource packs changes, and the fact that my villages weren't yet prepared for the 1.14+ changes).
But yeah, that stuff definitely wasn't around back in 1.6 so I was right about things back then (and even IF they were, my point was that they weren't there to begin with and got added at some point, so originally the game was less accessible and less trivial, and has been trending to become more accessible and more trivial).
Even if it is just 27 slots ender chests can still make a huge difference; consider the following, at the end of a single play session where I mined more than 4,200 ores:
Now imagine if I did not have an ender chest; how would I manage my inventory? Without having to make many more trips back to empty it out, each of which can take quite some time (I travel up to 1,000 blocks away from the nearest base while caving, walking the entire way), or make much more frequent stops to smelt iron and gold (when I first start out I might put as many as 20 stacks of ore in my ender chest, smelting them as needed to make room), or craft resources into blocks (more and more frequently as my inventory filled up, instead of completely clearing it into my ender chest). They also make a big difference when it comes time to make a trip back to my main base (upwards of 2,500 blocks away by rail) as I can carry up to 63 instead of 36 stacks of items (27 stacks is equivalent to 15,552 mineral resources, adding about 4 days between trips).
More recently (starting November 2021), I started using "large" ender chests, with 54 slots, in my first world to help offset the ever-increasing distance from my main base (eventually I plan to use the Nether), aside form that I'd been using "rail blocks", "cobweb blocks", and "compressed mossy cobblestone" to be able to store/carry more of them (rail blocks in particular make a big difference when I've brought upwards of 3,000 rails on a trip back to my main base. Prior to adding cobweb blocks I used unenchanted shears to harvest cobwebs (this was when they required Silk Touch) and crafted string into wool so they didn't actually make a difference):
Note that in November I was at a base that was further away from previous months ("overall" is the lifetime average for the world), but the distance still dropped, and would be much greater without ender chests at all (1.305 km with 90 slots (large ender chest), 1.864 km with 63 slots (vanilla ender chest), and 3.263 km with no ender chest).
This is also one of the factors that contributes to a higher overall mining rate in modded worlds, since I spent more of the total playtime caving (modded worlds also have two separate ender chests (large and vanilla) with a total of 117 slots including my inventory, with 90 available when caving as I only bring the "large" one with me), although the difference is not that large (on the order of +5% for my most recent modded world, which included a "vein miner" enchantment; 1.175 km per day by rail takes about 2.5 minutes out of an average session length of 3.6 hours or 216 minutes).
Also, allyourbasesaregone seems to have been referring to using ender chests to store your items before killing yourself, which is why they said they only work on Hardcore, but they do save both space and time regardless (if 1.6 did have / I added shulker boxes I could play as I did back when I used a backpack mod, where I had double chest sized backpacks for each major resource, collecting tens of thousands of resources per caving trip; I did not even bother smelting iron/gold until I returned to my main base, which had dozens of furnaces. I also never made secondary bases since there was little point when I could play for a week or more before I had to return, and didn't spend as much time on a single modded world back then and I'd made the underground deeper so I didn't go as far out).
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?
Oh... oops, I seriously misread that. I thought it said shulker chest, not ender chest.
Yes, an ender chest would have helped, but I had many double chests full of stacks of logs so it was going to be multiple trips either way. Less, perhaps, but shulker chests let you really cut most tasks down to one trip and/or prolong caving/resource gathering expeditions. It was a massive change.
I really don't even carry shulker chests on me normally. Instead, I carry an ender chest, and then my ender chest serves as my repository of shulker chests for "anywhere access" of certain things (namely, one or a couple for weapons/ armors/tools, many more of torches, one or two of Golden foods [apples/carrots], arrows, rockets for elytra, totems of undying, and maybe some others I'm forgetting), and then I have a handful left empty for "storage" which I mostly use for temporary storage when caving/mining, or for expanded personal storage on resource gathering expeditions.
I think with all of the additional items to the game over time, extra personal storage (like another row or something) would be welcome. The whole bundle idea seemed odd to me. It adds more inventory management.
The modern game is definitely harder to 100%. There was a sweet spot difficulty wise I think but overall the nether and underground have become tougher (albeit much cooler) in recent updates. Whether the dragon is harder or not, idk.
Ender chests were around long before 1.9 although they are limited.
1.10 and 1.12 mark the addition of autojump and the crafting recipe book which are vital to me and should've been in the game from day one in my eyes. When I played 1.6.4 today I had to a double take with how much more clicking and moving I have to do without these conveniences. Crafting and exploring are more of a chore.
Also, I am one of the few people who likes divisive updates...I am very fond of structures, 1.13's mobs, and 1.9+ combat. Old combat is unpleasant for me as I can't tell when mobs are attacking. I like the oceans being less of a vast nothingness and more of a new dimension with a lot of loot.
And 1.13+1.14 made crawl-swim and crawling things, which are also essential to Minecraft being practical for survival. Escape in a one block hole. Or create one block entrances to your bases. This also allows you to explore contiguous but cramped caves without altering the terrain.
In my experience, too much mining tires me out (not as much if it's strip mining, it is mostly caves in which I easily get fed up from going in circles or backtracking). And I don't like using iron for tools either, but I hate redstone as I am smol brain.
It doesn't feel harder to me. Everything I named are in (relatively) recent versions and make things more trivial, accessible, faster, and easier.
I don't think 1.13 was divisive, was it? I know it had performance implications, and then 1.14 had some technical ones, but I don't recall anyone being divisive on the content side of things. Like I don't recall the community at large being split on 1.13. It was just performance heavy and kept some servers from updating past 1.12 (not sure what the story is like for it today).
Similar to 1.7 and 1.8, they weren't "divisive" even though they had those same issues (just not bad enough on the server side). Some people (myself being one) disliked 1.7 and/or 1.8 for those factors, but the larger community didn't see either version as divisive as far as I recall.
Beta 1.8 and release 1.9 are the only two divisive releases I really remember. And like you, I personally liked 1.9. The end changes were nice and I didn't mind the combat changes.
Funny enough, I loathe 1.8 and was mixed on 1.7 for their performance and technical issues, yet I have come to love 1.13 and 1.14 which had similar issues in their time (though it was largely after 1.15 and/or 1.16 fixed things up that i came to accept modern versions more). At the time they were so bad it was what made me realize my original world might indefinitely stay in 1.12 at the latest, which is why I kept it at 1.10 and then stopped playing it for a new world in 1.16. Partly explains why I loved 1.18 so much (also for the terrain blending which made me more fully bring my older world up to modern versions more seamlessly). 1.16 was great, the new things of 1.13/1.14 and a new nether? Then a wonderfully overhauled overworld with 1.18? The better "update that changed the world"? Yes, please.
While 1.19 was something I was hoping MIGHT be a bigger change, given what was teased, and while I might be indifferent on some things in 1.20, there's nothing in either of them that I outright dislike. They're just not the larger uplifts that 1.13. 1.14, 1.16, and 1.18 (including 1.17) was. Not everything will be, though.
It's funny how many small things improve over time and you don't notice it until you actually go back and try and play or look at older versions.
The swimming feature is definitely one I would find hard to go back to being without.
Another example was I was watching some of my older videos the other day, and my oldest one was in 1.10 (not even THAT old a version, relatively speaking), and one thing stuck out to me. When rotating the camera at times, the edges would sometimes be blank until the visual information was drawn in. Like the occlusion culling was overly aggressive at times or something? I'm not sure (I recall the old "Advanced OpenGL" setting had the same problem on its more performance leaning setting). It was subtle and not major, but I couldn't NOT notice, and then I realized it had been ages since I had seen that. I don't see it in modern versions.
It made me wonder how many other things modern versions fix. Like remember the lighting errors? Last time I created a 1.2.5 world they were there and it was so different seeing them again. I can't remember which version finally fixed it (it was "fixed" multiple times) but it's definitely not a thing anymore either.
Finding out 1.2.5 couldn't play with v-sync on without major performance/chunk loading issues was another example (or maybe this is some retroactive thing where modern hardware/drivers/software versions aren't behaving with the old Minecraft version well but it didn't do that back then?). That would be considered unacceptable today. If it was an issue in versions back then, I'm surprised it wasn't something that had more criticism (maybe it was and I didn't see it, or maybe everyone was playing at 8 or 4 chunks and it wasn't a big deal as a result, I don't know).
For all the faults of modern Minecraft's coding, there's definitely things it's seemingly doing right.
Edit: And as another example I just thought of, 1.19 (not sure if 1.19 introduced it but it's there in 1.19) has an issue where crossing certain chunk borders leads to a large stutter. I see it sometimes. Apparently this is being fixed in 1.20 too. Fingers crossed.
I think you focus too much on 'getting started' when discussing easiness and not enough on 'making progress'. Yeah it is now trivial to get a bed and usually to get a farm going, but have you seen recent caves? Or how the nether is?
Actually, I probably looking at it the other way more than anything. I might be quick to dismiss the up front investment (start up time) since my play style is one where I stick with a few worlds and keep with it, rather than going through the start all the time.
So, no, I'm not dismissing the "making progress" part. I'm specifically saying that is the part in particular that has gotten far more accessible. Starting what might be a bit longer, but again, it's STILL trivial, and the payoff is way more than worth it with how accessible it gets late game. Enchantments like efficiency, fortune, and mending especially? Village trading to facilitate getting the exact enchantments you want? Shulker chests for storage? Elytra for transportation? EVERYTHING is so much easier.
the caves were made more meaningful SPECIFICALLY because they were so boring, plain, and needless to do before (oh, and far less common so how is it harder?). Mojang can't win. They make something more meaningful, something people have been suggesting the most for years and years at that, and people complain they have to do something they don't want to. The game is called Minecraft... mining is a long neglected part that people are now complaining they have to do. I don't get it.
The Nether update however was at least somewhat forgivable, because while Nether fortresses are now rarer, we do get new biomes in addition to newer structures with newer and arguably better loot.
Would a potion stop your armour or tools from being destroyed in lava if you die? no, but netherite does and that's why 1.16 was a game changer. While it was still possible to lose your gear if you didn't retrieve it in time, you at least had a chance. However by the same token, if anybody were to die in a lava lake despite the existence of fire resistance potions, then that is on them, not the fault of the game. By the time somebody has already obtained items for potion brewing in Nether fortresses they have absolutely no excuse to not brew a batch of potions for their future adventures, potions have existed in the game for a long time now, and it doesn't necessarily take a highly skilled or elite player to do it, so barring mental disability or children, it's their fault.
Look, I understand why golden apple recipes were nerfed, making only the regular golden apple, not the Notch apple, craftable. It also would have been fine to reduce the chance of gold ingot drops from Drowned Zombies in 1.17, in exchange for copper ingots taking up some of their probability, but by removing gold ingot drops from Drowned completely, now powered rail systems are much harder to get in large supply.
How does this come close to addressing the problem of the Elytra being overpowered to the point of overshadowing other transport methods, as some claim? I hardly believe discouraging the use of minecarts even further as a valid compromise and I don't see why should anybody else. If anything minecarts needed a buff, not a nerf, in order to make them useful late game, and their speed ought to had been doubled, in my opinion. This would raise the speed of minecarts from 8 blocks per second to 16 according to the wiki, doing this while preventing them from derailing would be a welcomed addition, even if the 2x speed could only be achieved with downhill rails, while achieving at least 1.5x speed on a horizontal powered line.
Princess_Garnet should also be aware that my reasoning for deepslate taking longer to mine than stone being unjustified is because it offers NO benefits whatsoever compared to stone, it does not have an increased blast resistance, it has the same, 6, and that's why myself and some other's, including a friend who plays on my server agrees with my point about this problem. Even without the controversies of the ore distribution, there are other valid concerns about how Caves and Cliffs was handled.
And continuing to add grind to the game without valid reason to do so, is making the game less accessible for players, not more.
All it does is it causes people to get bored and do other things with their time, and how could you blame them? I already know of some people who got bored of Minecraft a long time ago because of this. Why this has to be explained to game developers in year 2023 like Mojang, is a mystery, perhaps not all of it is malicious intent, but I am betting at least some of this is, I mean we already know how toxic the gaming community can be especially when it involves multiplayer games and when something doesn't go another person's way, then arguments start. People play casual games in part to get away from this type of drama, there comes a point where too much difficulty can cause people unnecessary stress and annoyance.
From the standpoint of a survival player amassing materials for building, the grind has been reduced though, not increased.
Sure, SOME things are being increased, especially prior to "end game" (looking at 1.20's changes to netherite obtaining, for one example), but exceptions existing doesn't change that on the whole, it has trended towards accessibility.
Something that is also worth pointing out is how little (relatively speaking) of an improvement netherite is over diamond. It's ALREADY "not efficient" relatively speaking. And it doesn't HAVE to be more "efficient" to justify itself. There exists room for things to exist that are "better, but less efficient" in my opinion. It then gives you the CHOICE to go for it then, rather than making you feel worse off if you stick with diamond. Because it's not a whole lot worse, and one of the key ways itis worse is durability, which... mending (or anvil repairs) makes a non-issue. I actually like the approach off adding another step to the upgrade, because it makes it feel LESS like a raw grind of just having to mine more (only in the nether), but I think they should have increased the amount of ancient debris' to counteract the added step/time investment that will now be needed (not by a lot, maybe by 50% or something?). So I partially agree with this particular thing, though i think Mojang has a good idea (just that it's not properly tuned). And I disagree that exceptions represent the whole.
I do agree that deep slate would "make sense" by having a higher blast resistance. At the same time, I don't think it really matters much if it doesn't. In my experience, if stone gets hit by a creeper blast, it's more or less prevents the explosion from carrying further anyway, no? How else do you "reduce" that without making it immune?
Ultimately I'm also not sure how this is relevant to the original complaint you have about things being harder to obtain. Making it more blast resistant doesn't make it easier to obtain. The same "grind" is there regardless. If it's just about the function, just use stone. Again, I'd agree it'd "justify itself more" if it was harder, but in survival, not all building blocks are equally viable from a pure gameplay perspective. And you can't expect everything that FUNCTIONS similarly but only LOOKS different to be equally easy to get. And something further to consider is that even IF it was just as fast to mine, it would STILL be worse off due to you having to go deeper to get it, so it would have to be slightly faster to "justify itself". The game isn't trying to make everything 100% equally viable. That would be impossible anyway, and it shouldn't be what the game tries to do.
Stone is not immune to creeper explosions, they do remove 1-4 blocks depending on where they are standing (on a flat surface), and doubling the blast resistance to 12 would in fact make it immune:
Currently, there are very few blocks which meet this criteria and none are really "building blocks"; in fact, the resistance jumps up from 9 (end stone) to 100 (liquids) and most of the blocks are rare (ancient debris, crying obsidian) and/or unobtainable (bedrock, reinforced deepslate) and/or impractically expensive or cause lag if used in large amounts (block of netherite, respawn anchor, ender chest (same issue as normal chests); obsidian is the only block that can be obtained in large amounts relatively quickly and be used to build walls, floors, ceilings (no stairs/slabs/walls though):
https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Explosion#Blast_resistance
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?
Well it's simply that a lot of players never get that far in the game as to have all these OP goodies. They aren't looking to put in time or effort to get there and just want the easiest route to the ending. As for caves, it's hard to make a fair comparison because 1.18 also changed mob spawning lighting conditions and 1.17 had added the glow lichen as a light source.