You've built an impenetrable mountain fortress, hewn out of a towering rock face, overlooking the sea. You've completed hanging gardens upon a floating island to rival those in Babylon. You've put the final touches on an exquisite glass lighthouse, visible for miles; a beacon in the night when you return from your intercontinental travels, exploring new worlds.
All this, you have created. You have tamed your world and bent it to your will.
Here, you are a god.
Or are you?
While you have seen every biome, and you have built all you can think to build, there is something that still evades you. It is the thing that separates you from immortality. From Godhood. These many days and nights you have traveled, adorned with your glistening diamond armor, setting off across mountains and deserts to the corners of the world, you have been searching.
To your left, a thousand-foot drop. To your right, a wall of rock. One false step, and you're dead, respawned hundreds of miles away on a different continent, and your search will have been in vain. In the distance, you see a glimmer of scarlet through the heavy, falling snow. You squint, in disbelief.
The phoenix.
Its majestic form, perched in a mountain nest. It appears so rarely that few have ever seen it. Captured, it bestows upon its master the gift of immortality for a period of 100 days and nights, after which it bursts into flames and disappears once more into the sky.
You open your inventory. First slot, the cage you crafted out of iron ingots. Second slot, dirt. You want to put down some dirt to make room to work at the the edge of this precipice. Careful now. Startle it, and it's gone. You have to move slowly. An inch at a time. You wince with each step as your boots crunch the soft, powdery snow. Only a few blocks away, now. Right click.
Missed it! The bird takes flight; your heart skips a beat; but, thank heavens, it perches again just a few feet away. You've come this far. You grit your teeth. There's no way you're leaving without that bird.
--------
Thanks for reading this far.
Many people have made great suggestions for things that make the crafting part of Minecraft more fun. But the other big part of this game is exploration. Don't get me wrong: I like to dig, and I like to build. Picking away in search of ore, taming the landscape, all that is great fun.
But what I really love is fighting through the brush, sweat on your brow, climbing up on to a hill and seeing before you an endless azure sea. Or, with the biomes update, say, a stretching forest savanna, the setting sun casting shadows across the plain. Exploration. Once you've built a bunch of stuff and seen all of the biomes, what I'm afraid of is that exploration will be boring. There won't be anything else to see.
That is precisely why Notch should add things that are rare. Mythical creatures. Beasts of legend and lore. A phoenix mob that appears at most once in any 5000x5000 block grid. Or, say, a basilisk that appears rarely in the deepest depths of caves; when killed, it drops its fang, a potent ten-use instant-kill weapon against any enemy.
Imagine searching for days and days looking for a creature; you turn the corner while climbing a bluff, and you see it. With its colossal 6-block-long form, a griffin. It is before you only for a moment before it makes off into the sky. But that was long enough; you've plucked a feather, and with the griffin feather in your inventory, your jump distance is extended from 1 block to 10 blocks.
Maybe I'm letting my imagination get the best of me. But I think that things like this would really kick it up another level of awesome. It doesn't even have to be just mobs. Notch could add Mithril that makes armor tougher than diamond. Or pearls that can only be found in the depths of the sea.
What's great about this is that if you want to partake in it, you're welcome to. But if you prefer to stay in one place and build, you can of course do that, too. It doesn't make things harder for anyone, only more fun. It keeps the gameplay emergent without forcing anything on anyone. My guess is that many of the people who place this game are people who like fantasy. Why not bring its common elements --mythical elements and items and creatures-- into our virtual worlds?
Fantastic fantasy creatures for you to search out? Brilliant. However, by making them so rare yet potent, you risk making something that's "too awesome to use", as it were.
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Quote from dusty328 »
This man really is a genius. Never have i seen such a clear and well written forum post.
Ah, right. It is a challenging gameplay tradeoff. With many of these rare things, though, I imagine the fun is mainly in hunting. It's like the high you get when you're grinding in an RPG to get a particular item, and finally, an enemy drops it. Or like in Pokemon, for instance, when you finally see some legendary pokemon in the wild.
Maybe Notch could code these rare mobs in so that they appear rarely but remain confined to a particular region of your map. That way, the goal would be mainly to find one and show your friends what it looks like in-game.
Also, I changed the subject line because I realized that the old one wasn't nearly informative enough.
I really like this idea. It goes with minecrafts simple tech. Minecraft seens like it took place a long time ago. So did myths about these creatures. It makes sence.
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Quote from themohawkninja »
*Debate regarding combustion of molecules in reality in a thread for burning mossy cobblestone*
Quote from deathguardian97 »
Let's suffice to say I don't think using frickin flint and steel is going to light moss on fire...
Finally someone who agrees with me on what they want out of Minecraft. Thank you, I love the idea of items that are almost impossible to get, even those that don't do much (like records).
+1
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Minecraft must NOT turn into the next WoW or Runescape.
Notch has an IQ over 130. He isn't stupid.
For some reason my hell looks like a train station....
Its hard, but not impossible. Something to strive for. It gives surviveal a point. It might not do much, but you have proof of something awesome you did, like my brother in the old Pokemon Silver, how he caught Raikou wuth a regular Pokeball on the first throw.
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Quote from themohawkninja »
*Debate regarding combustion of molecules in reality in a thread for burning mossy cobblestone*
Quote from deathguardian97 »
Let's suffice to say I don't think using frickin flint and steel is going to light moss on fire...
I love the idea of items that are almost impossible to get, even those that don't do much (like records).
There's an unnatural quality to finding a record of all things in a cave. Or having a creeper drop it, as if they normally carried records around. It's cool, certainly, but a little arbitrary. I think that the whole mythos built up around mythical creatures makes it possible to implement them in a way that makes sense and is non-arbitrary --- like, say, having the phoenix be in snowy mountaintops, or the griffin in rocky mountaintops, or basilisks in dark caves.
Historically, mythical creatures have been thought of as hard to find (not least because they didn't actually exist), which people generally took to mean that they were in inaccessible areas. The Greek fella who first wrote about the phoenix (Flavius Philostratus) described it as a bird that lived in India; his account was inspired by the mount of the Hindu god Vishnu. From there, I think people sort of developed the mythology that the phoenix lived in the Himalayas. There's a small chance I'm making all this up.
Very nice idea, and while I was reading it, it did give me a feeling of Pokemon.
Maybe a way to keep it, or temporarily transport it, maybe to be used in an exhibit. (Animal cruelty?)
I would personally love a greater range of mobs, from the mythical to the ordinary, rare to common to go along with our new biomes. Here's my old list, if you want to take a look: Qwill's MOBS MASTER LIST
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Choose your words wisely.
Defend your words flexibly.
Change your words fittingly.
Let prejudice, popular opinion, and preconception be free from your judgments.
One of the silliest well thought out serious ideas I've ever seen on the forums. I would never want it in the game. I can still remember my reaction to the meat pokecube... "That's... made out of... meat... all meat..."
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Choose your words wisely.
Defend your words flexibly.
Change your words fittingly.
Let prejudice, popular opinion, and preconception be free from your judgments.
All this, you have created. You have tamed your world and bent it to your will.
Here, you are a god.
Or are you?
While you have seen every biome, and you have built all you can think to build, there is something that still evades you. It is the thing that separates you from immortality. From Godhood. These many days and nights you have traveled, adorned with your glistening diamond armor, setting off across mountains and deserts to the corners of the world, you have been searching.
To your left, a thousand-foot drop. To your right, a wall of rock. One false step, and you're dead, respawned hundreds of miles away on a different continent, and your search will have been in vain. In the distance, you see a glimmer of scarlet through the heavy, falling snow. You squint, in disbelief.
The phoenix.
Its majestic form, perched in a mountain nest. It appears so rarely that few have ever seen it. Captured, it bestows upon its master the gift of immortality for a period of 100 days and nights, after which it bursts into flames and disappears once more into the sky.
You open your inventory. First slot, the cage you crafted out of iron ingots. Second slot, dirt. You want to put down some dirt to make room to work at the the edge of this precipice. Careful now. Startle it, and it's gone. You have to move slowly. An inch at a time. You wince with each step as your boots crunch the soft, powdery snow. Only a few blocks away, now. Right click.
Missed it! The bird takes flight; your heart skips a beat; but, thank heavens, it perches again just a few feet away. You've come this far. You grit your teeth. There's no way you're leaving without that bird.
--------
Thanks for reading this far.
Many people have made great suggestions for things that make the crafting part of Minecraft more fun. But the other big part of this game is exploration. Don't get me wrong: I like to dig, and I like to build. Picking away in search of ore, taming the landscape, all that is great fun.
But what I really love is fighting through the brush, sweat on your brow, climbing up on to a hill and seeing before you an endless azure sea. Or, with the biomes update, say, a stretching forest savanna, the setting sun casting shadows across the plain. Exploration. Once you've built a bunch of stuff and seen all of the biomes, what I'm afraid of is that exploration will be boring. There won't be anything else to see.
That is precisely why Notch should add things that are rare. Mythical creatures. Beasts of legend and lore. A phoenix mob that appears at most once in any 5000x5000 block grid. Or, say, a basilisk that appears rarely in the deepest depths of caves; when killed, it drops its fang, a potent ten-use instant-kill weapon against any enemy.
Imagine searching for days and days looking for a creature; you turn the corner while climbing a bluff, and you see it. With its colossal 6-block-long form, a griffin. It is before you only for a moment before it makes off into the sky. But that was long enough; you've plucked a feather, and with the griffin feather in your inventory, your jump distance is extended from 1 block to 10 blocks.
Maybe I'm letting my imagination get the best of me. But I think that things like this would really kick it up another level of awesome. It doesn't even have to be just mobs. Notch could add Mithril that makes armor tougher than diamond. Or pearls that can only be found in the depths of the sea.
What's great about this is that if you want to partake in it, you're welcome to. But if you prefer to stay in one place and build, you can of course do that, too. It doesn't make things harder for anyone, only more fun. It keeps the gameplay emergent without forcing anything on anyone. My guess is that many of the people who place this game are people who like fantasy. Why not bring its common elements --mythical elements and items and creatures-- into our virtual worlds?
Maybe Notch could code these rare mobs in so that they appear rarely but remain confined to a particular region of your map. That way, the goal would be mainly to find one and show your friends what it looks like in-game.
Also, I changed the subject line because I realized that the old one wasn't nearly informative enough.
+1
Notch has an IQ over 130. He isn't stupid.
For some reason my hell looks like a train station....
There's an unnatural quality to finding a record of all things in a cave. Or having a creeper drop it, as if they normally carried records around. It's cool, certainly, but a little arbitrary. I think that the whole mythos built up around mythical creatures makes it possible to implement them in a way that makes sense and is non-arbitrary --- like, say, having the phoenix be in snowy mountaintops, or the griffin in rocky mountaintops, or basilisks in dark caves.
Historically, mythical creatures have been thought of as hard to find (not least because they didn't actually exist), which people generally took to mean that they were in inaccessible areas. The Greek fella who first wrote about the phoenix (Flavius Philostratus) described it as a bird that lived in India; his account was inspired by the mount of the Hindu god Vishnu. From there, I think people sort of developed the mythology that the phoenix lived in the Himalayas. There's a small chance I'm making all this up.
Maybe a way to keep it, or temporarily transport it, maybe to be used in an exhibit. (Animal cruelty?)
Oh dear.
Qwill's MOBS MASTER LIST
Defend your words flexibly.
Change your words fittingly.
Let prejudice, popular opinion, and preconception be free from your judgments.
POKEMOBS!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17900&hilit=+pokemobs
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=51308
One of the silliest well thought out serious ideas I've ever seen on the forums. I would never want it in the game. I can still remember my reaction to the meat pokecube... "That's... made out of... meat... all meat..."
Defend your words flexibly.
Change your words fittingly.
Let prejudice, popular opinion, and preconception be free from your judgments.
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=51308