Minecraft Forums

Quote from wattahay»

It sounds like I need to find a way to propose the idea directly to Microsoft/Mojang if it is going to be a paid extension.

You could, but I doubt they'd pay attention to that since if they intended to add DLC to the Java Edition, I imagine they would've done so by now.

In my opinion, you have alluded to one central point: it comes down to an ultimate vision of what the game is.

I will try to address your points in another reply, but in this post, I will focus on the vision.

Okay. (boldface is kinda passive-aggressive in 2020 but eh I don't care)

One could see Minecraft as an incomplete game, where every aspect of it points to having a much larger scope. ie: It saves processor/memory resources by being pixelated. Thus it was meant to be zoomed out on much further for wider purposes. There is a lot of magic in this idea if you catch the vision. If you do not, then you simply will not like it.

Yes and no. While you can certainly argue that the restriction to a grid of cubed meters shows how the game is meant for players to focus on large structures, I don't think the pixelated graphics point in this direction. The pixelated graphics (which only really save a tiny amount of processor power and RAM, I think most people in 2009 could run hi-res texture packs without much problem) are more of a stylistic choice, and I think they exist more to emulate older video game graphics. It's a lot easier to imagine this when you see the bright saturated textures in the Alpha and Beta stages of the game.

I could suggest that it is Mine"Craft" as in Star"Craft" or War"Craft", but that would cut the vision short of just being a strategy game extension. Yet that would illustrate the power of these features. Imagine a game like StarCraft, except that mere "upgrades" to technologies are actually your own ingenuity and Minecraft building skills which are effecting efficiency and power.

The fact that Minecraft shares a suffix with two Real Time Strategy games is not an argument in favor of turning Minecraft into a Real Time Strategy game. Lots of media share similar titles and have nothing to do with each other.

Yes, the player should be able to turn the game into a strategy game if he/she takes that path, but the player should also be able to take another path altogether.

Mojang already has to develop a whole bunch of "paths" in the game, but they can manage them because a lot of them are very small and don't require a lot of balancing (such as Redstone, Creative Mode construction, Command Blocks, etc.) but an entire separate game that distracts from the gameplay of Survival Mode, especially an RTS, would require huge amounts of balancing and a near complete overhaul of the game. This is why at that point, it would be easier to just create a new game.

To reinvent a whole separate voxel game just to do this is crazy. Google could introduce such a game for Stadia for instance, but they would also have to come up with separate creation processes and imitations without infringing on Microsoft's intellectual property. Much better for both the users and Microsoft to do this. These features make use of the developed techniques of playing Minecraft.

Actually it's completely legal to create a voxel construction game of your own, and has been done in the past before. Minetest, Terasology, heck, they've been coming out almost as long as Minecraft's been out, and they still are.

They allow players to take them to new purpose-driven levels. If you do not want that purpose-driven game-play, the new features do not make much sense anyway.

This is ironically an argument against your own suggestion. You're implying that the previous game did not emphasize a real purpose, therefore to add a purpose as you would like to do would change the direction of the game entirely.

After the vision, only repeated iterations of testing and tuning can really get the nitty gritty balance right. Perhaps this is something that only Microsoft can truly do right. People will pay for the convenience and completion of professional extensions. The versioning and installation complexities etc. would be eliminated. (But once again, perhaps that makes this thread outside the scope of this website)

Why not let Microsoft focus their time and resources on the free updates, though? Or on making a totally new game that doesn't leave in pieces and parts of an old game?

Minecraft is old now, and pretty saturated with customizations. These features make for a bold move to reinvigorate the game, but once again, on an opt-in basis.

The thing is, there's an easy opt-in system that would work just as well: create a new game from scratch designed from the ground up to be an RTS/City Builder game with voxel graphics, then release that to the public as a separate game from Minecraft.

Quote from wattahay»

• This is a crucially interwoven layer of features.
• They create new highly generalized and extensible modes of game-play.
• Although it is a major programming endeavor, the featureset is optimally plausible in proportion to the creative possibilities it enables.
• Usage scenarios are very sensible.
• Features are all opt-in.
• The user develops at his/her own pace.
• The learning curve is low-risk, and quickly returns on investment to be rewarding
• Yet the featureset can scale into being extremely detailed and empowering.

I know that nowadays there are very few good suggestions to learn from, but most quality suggestions here are formatted in a bit of an essay format, with images, tables or lists inserted every so often to help get the message across.

This, on the other hand, is not a great way to start a suggestion. The terms you're using are vague business terms that do not refer to actual pieces of gameplay and are difficult for the average Minecraft Forum-level reader to understand. "Rewarding investment", "empowering", "interwoven layer of features", etc. Not only that, but you don't even go into what the actual suggestion is, just the side effects of the implementation. (Which kinda sounds like self-praise when you're putting this at the front of the post as though it's the most important part.)

A set of tools to use a finite set of new special buildings.

Okay, this is the first indication of what the suggestion is about and we already have problems:

- First of all, most people would refer to a building with a function as a multiblock, like the dimension portals or like the smelteries and other machines in Tinkers' Construct or Immersive Engineering. Now, most of those multiblock structures are not building-sized, granted, but the term multiblock would still be appropriate for a building that does a specific thing.

- Second of all, are you going to force people to construct an exact multiblock sized and shaped in the exact correct way in order to have the special functionality? Do you just need to place a few blocks within a building in order to convert it into a special building? Will any building built in a certain shape out of certain materials be converted into a multiblock similar to the Tinkers' Construct Smeltery?

Fortunately for me, you do get into this later so I guess I'm just nitpicking right now. I'll refer to these later.

These special buildings enable new empowering forms of game-play, such as:

• Automated mining and soldiering through training settlers

You haven't actually gone into specifics yet, but right away I should be concerned because whether or not automation should be allowed in the game is currently up for debate. (I used to find myself on the pro-automation side, but over time I've kinda decided that anti-automation arguments make more sense since all of the methods used for automation in-game are exploits. Obviously this would change if Mojang were to implement automation, but as it stands I don't think automation is an intentional addition to the game)

• City planning

I'm not sure why you need a building to do city planning considering city-planning can be done via a map of your Minecraft world and a paint program.

• Inter-city infrastructure for automated travel and trade

What you're suggesting would involve massive new features and tons of programming, but let's ignore that.

• Topographical views for war strategy and routing purposes
• tophographical views should show specific types of map data layered over a zoomable vantage point over the actual game landscape
• (Minecraft's characteristic graphical simplicity would be maintained)

As much as I'd enjoy a game like what you're suggesting, I think you misunderstand Minecraft. Even if you're a magic man who can punch trees and build floating buildings using his hands, you're still just one man and your main task within the world is to survive. This is a far cry from a city building game or an RTS where you control local governments, construction agencies, and armies.

Special buildings are introduced in one or more purchasable extensions, which makes them opt-in as well as worth the extra programming effort. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Right away this is a big fat No Support from me. I don't mind an expansion to a game that costs a little bit of money for extra features or levels, I don't really mind memberships either albeit I probably wouldn't play a game that costs a membership to play, but promising a complete game for 30-60 dollars and then turning around and asking for more money to access the rest of the game is a crappy thing to do to your customers.

Not only that, but the modding community could throw a wrench into this money-making plan by implementing these paid features either exactly as you want them implemented or better, and for free.

In addition to that "not only that", how is this not incredibly unbalanced? You're offering a building that automates mining and allows players to create armies if they feed Mojang money. A few years ago Mojang specifically made it illegal in their EULA for server owners to make a profit off of selling diamond gear to people who paid real-life money to them. How is this not the same thing but far worse?

Why special buildings?

Only a predefined area assigned to a directed purpose can allow the optimal features and convenience leading to their benefits. Additionally, these do not take away the ability to create anything as has been normally done in the original game. There is a total of 22 special buildings that one can build. (There is an ok reason for this number, but it is not super important)

You never actually answered your own question. Let's read that again.

Only a predefined area assigned to a directed purpose can allow the optimal features and convenience leading to their benefits.

Okay but- why is a predefined area required to allow the [I think you meant optional] features and convenience?

Remember that you're currently trying to make the case to me that we should implement special buildings, so if I see a question labeled "Why special buildings?" I expect to be told why we should implement special buildings and not some alternative feature like a single specialized block or item.

By the way, why 22? You never even bothered to list all 22 buildings in your post or the reason why it should be 22 buildings.

Each new special building has individual conditions that blocks can fill to augment or detract from the buildings' capacities. The size limitation of the buildings means that only blocks placed within the defined size limit effect the buildings' capacities. Blocks outside the size limit will only serve normal purposes of aesthetics and/or armour.

This is an interesting way to implement a multiblock and I do like it, albeit I think this is a bit odd. In addition to that, what if I want to build a specific building but I want to build it out of mushrooms or weird alien spaceship blocks to fit the building style of the rest of my big mushroom/alien city? Are you still going to force me to use the required blocks that fit a single aesthetic?

This featureset enables a subsequent proliferation of possibilities in terms of game-play, which normal buildings do not allow.

22 Cornerstones serve as function declarations of a sort, for 22 special buildings.

The cornerstone defines:

• the owner of the building
• the best biome to place the building in
• the most advantageous combinations of blocks to use in its construction
• any special items/structures that are enhanced by, or enhance, the building itself (by placing them inside the building boundaries)
• the working size/boundaries of the building
• the number and types of inputs/outputs the building can have crucial effects on.

• These attributes are set at the time of the cornerstone's creation.

Hold on, are you saying that the game randomly picks a "best biome" and the "best blocks to use in construction" every time you build a new cornerstone? Isn't that a little bit unfair if you wanted to build your base in a nice snowy biome but you got a Cornerstone that's best used in a Mushroom Island biome? (Really though, any Cornerstone that benefits best by being placed in a Mushroom Island is complete trash at that point, since it'd be hard to find and control a Mushroom Island if people are marching soldiers around conquering them.)

As for blocks, what if I want to build a medieval base but the Cornerstone benefits from the use of glass and concrete? If I want to build a Mushroom base, do I have to keep creating Cornerstones until I find one that's enhanced by using Mushroom blocks?

• Although these attributes never change, new, more powerful cornerstones can be swapped to replace older ones.

Cornerstones only have one x,y,z orientation. They show the name of their owner (player) upon visual inspection, yet they can be hidden from view by other blocks if desired.

There are three primary types of special buildings

1. Interactive buildings hold special items like lecterns which players click on in the building in order to open special interfaces. These require the player to be present in the building.

That's fair, this is reminiscent of a normal multiblock.

2. Training buildings take in settlers through doorways in order to train them - then send them out another door.

Y'know it would've done you well to introduce these "settlers" (where to find them, how to talk to them, etc.) before just throwing them out there like we're all on the same page.

3. Resource buildings serve as tidy boxes in which to extensively build out chest storage systems or materials refinement operations into highly functional, practical and usable locations. Players can build out systems that would otherwise be larger than the building itself, and only awkwardly interactive. Yet players still build these systems using the same items they always have. This liberates the player to use item features to the fullest.

(Some buildings serve more than one of these purposes.)

I'm confused what you're saying here. Are you suggesting that these resource buildings effectively act as chests and sorting systems but with more space than the actual blocks would provide on their own?

There are approximately 11 buildings that require the player to acquire a correlating relic in order to build. These relics surround the cornerstone creator on stands (much in the same way bookshelves surround the enchanting table.)

This sounds very magic-y, which I don't like as I've already stated, because what if I want to build modern or futuristic builds? (Or for that matter just realistic medieval builds)

Learning Curve: Custom Algorithms

The most unfamiliar aspect of these upgrades for users will be the interface for customizing training algorithms for task automation. All of the buildings that enable training will have the same interface for this. However each building will have narrowed options to choose from according to the specific role the special building is training for.

So what you're essentially suggesting is having these programmable drones similar to what OpenComputers or ComputerCraft have. That's kinda cool but it also removes a lot of the core gameplay from the game. Heck, if I can just program my drones to mine and build for me, I could probably program one that builds new training buildings for me, effectively removing the need for me to do any work at all.

Default algorithms should exist that will make settlers become guards or miners for instance. However the player can benefit greatly from tweaking the algorithms to become more nuanced and purposeful. (Microsoft has already developed a graphical programming interface for kids, and it is even related to controlling Minecraft animals.)

If you're going to implement programmable villagers, at least commit to the job. I've played Colobot, an open-source game which actually has programmable robots, but I never bother programming the robots in the game because the robots can be manually controlled, and the more complicated tasks like finding Titanium Ore are already programmed for me.

Learning Curve: Other New

In addition to the custom algorithm interface, these new special buildings would take advantage of 2 more primary types of interfaces. However, they give an incredible amount of new creative and technical power to the user. These features can be used in conjunction in order to build some amazing creations.

1. Algorithm Interface
2. Topographical Interface
3. Blank Slate 3D Creative Mode for designing, "Boxing", and "Scaling"

This new 3D Creative Mode will be very similar to the existing Creative Mode. It will consist of an non-mine-able flat plain on which designs can be constructed as in normal Creative Mode. However, these designs can then be communicated to trained settlers who then gather the necessary resources and build the structure in the actual game world. The player can manifest designs into survival mode, that took great time and patience.

Additionally, you can reused designs over and over again - create modular structures that repeat (like wall sections) - perfect designs - and still add details later.

You're spending a lot of time talking about interfaces and implementation like you're talking to developers (you're not, this is a forum for amateur game designers to critique your ideas. Mojang only reads their official feedback website now AFAIK.) and that means you're failing to convey what kinds of features I'm signing up for.

What is "Boxing"

"Boxing" means that you can design something in the blank slate Creative Mode and then manifest it into the game as a black box with the minimal set of inputs and outputs necessary for it to correctly interact in the Minecraft world around it. This is primarily useful for very complex redstone circuits that have a couple important redstone wire inputs and/or outputs to control something else. It is also useful for manufacturing and materials refinement processes.

Although the resulting manifested box is almost certainly much smaller than the design behind it, the box still costs at least the amount of resources as was involved in constructing its innards in Creative Mode.

This sounds interesting albeit I feel like this is either going to be incredibly exploitable or incredibly limited in scope. (By the way, what's wrong with building these same constructions in Survival Mode using individual blocks? Isn't it a bit cooler to successfully mine and put together parts in survival and then watch it work correctly than to build something to exact specifications or however I would "manifest" this thing into the game?)

What is "Scaling"

"Scaling" Is almost what it sounds like, except that what is manifested from the Creative Mode into Survival Mode becomes a single object in the process. The blocks it is made of no longer act as individual blocks.

This process of conversion allows for scaling large things like ships down to a npc-friendly size while allowing for slightly greater detail in design. In this way, the same simple block building method still applies.

Most excitingly, the conversion also gives the game a chance to include moving wheels and parts to these designs. These moving parts are merely represented by special blocks in Creative Mode. However once manifested into Survival Mode, they become pivoting axles, wheels, cogs, levers, pulleys, rope, etc.

Unlike with Boxing, the resources required to manifest these objects into Survival Mode is not the same as in the Creative Mode. Resource demands are scaled down according to the same proportions as the design is scaled down. Scaling can take place at 2-to-1, 4-to-1, and 8-to-1 ratios . . . maybe 16-to-1. You get the picture.

If scaling up is desirable, it might maintain block behavior of each individual voxel - only scaling up 1-to-2 will require 4 blocks in Survival Mode for every 1 in Creative Mode.

This sounds incredibly complex and exploitable albeit interesting, and if this were the main focus of the suggestion I might talk about it more, but I've already spent a lot of time on the other stuff and there's not that much detail here.

Do These Features Change the Game?

Um... Yes.

These features should only be introduced after the player has gone through hell to develop certain materials and technologies. The clear bottleneck here is the ability to construct a cornerstone creator.

Since you seem to have been programmed like a robot to use business or programmer terms and not game design terms, lemme shorten this sentence for you: "These features are balanced by the cost required to construct the Cornerstone creator."

I should mention that this form of "incredibly OP feature requires massive amounts of grinding to get" type of balancing is highly frowned upon. Draconic Evolution is a Minecraft mod that depends on this form of "balancing", where you can effectively get armor that will make you completely invincible, a reactor that will negate the need for any other Redstone Flux generator and other similar items as long as you grind for long enough to find the required materials.

(Similar complains have been lodged at Reika's RotaryCraft mod, which has a machine that can allow for up to 17x ore processing. While it's true that the machine is incredibly expensive and time-consuming to get, I would still argue that such a machine is very unbalanced no matter the cost, though I do appreciate the work put into RotaryCraft and I think it is a really good mod, albeit it is only for 1.7.10.)

Now, that doesn't mean all arguments of "X is balanced by Y" are bad. Minecraft even depends on them. That being said, I think that these arguments do not override arguments of redundancy ("X feature makes Z gameplay aspect redundant") or of lacking challenge ("You only have to do Y once to earn X, then you'll never have to do Y again.")

These features should only work through the use of the expensive Special Buildings which can take time to make. That's all in the nitty gritty details of prudent game design.

As in the nitty-gritty details I was hoping you'd go into more detail about, but that you've neglected.

Minecraft is a kids' game. It should not be too difficult. When merged into the game correctly, these features should not disrupt that level of difficulty. The features should inspire players to create amazing things, and maybe even learn programming concepts via a 3D game.

Thank you. I would be glad to contribute whatever ideas I can, and respond to posts with more details.

So in conclusion, I support absolutely no monetization of gameplay experiences, especially after I've bought a complete game already, and I'm totally against that aspect of the suggestion. I would enjoy playing a game with these cool structures, the idea of playing a game where I can go from worrying about my own hunger to building buildings to expand my empire sounds amazing, but it's far beyond the scope of Minecraft, which is more of a building game with a survival aspect.

As for scaling and boxing, these sound like interesting concepts but I don't think you've really conveyed how these would work well. I think these concepts deserve their own suggestion.

As stated before, No Support, albeit I at least appreciate the effort put into this suggestion.

Personally I think the best way to solve this issue would be to rename the Furnace into the Kiln. The Kiln would smelt Clay, Cobble, Sand and other "stone-like" items as fast as the Blast Furnace or Smoker smoke their respective items, in addition to being useful as a rudimentary food and metal cooker. (Alternatively, remove food-smelting abilities from the Kiln because of the existence of the Bonfire.) This would make Furnaces useful endgame while also allowing you to smelt large quantities of sand and cobble quickly.

(The reason it would be renamed into the Kiln is because... sand, clay and stone are often smelted in kilns, albeit when something like limestone is cooked in a kiln, it's actually done to create lime. This would make it somewhat easier for players to pick up on what the Kiln smelts best.)

This is nowhere near a complete, intelligent argument for furniture in Minecraft, but I do agree that Minecraft could stand to use furniture.

But the player is supposed to be creative with blocks!

Why is the player supposed to be creative with blocks though? Why are Minecraft players so quick to dismiss any new block idea, especially furniture, with "well you should just be creative with the blocks you already have!"

We need to minimize the number of blocks in the game to prevent bloating the game with niche or useless features!

This is a noble cause, but seeing as Mojang intends to keep updating this game seemingly indefinitely, and seeing as the game already contains a lot of bloated and useless features, at what point does this argument become moot?

Now, I understand that Minecraft is not Terraria, a game filled with a lot of blocks and furniture that serves almost no purpose whatsoever. However, Minecraft has already made moves that would put it closer to this kind of game: doors now come in different wood variants that reflect different door designs. Glazed Terracotta allows you to use pre-defined patterns in builds. Would it be that out of place to, say, add wooden chairs that reflect 6 different chair designs?

Chairs would break Minecraft's simplistic voxel graphical style!

You mean the one that's already broken by all of the furniture items already in the game like Brewing Stands, Flower Pots, Enchanting Tables, Fences, etc.? Or the style that's already broken by Boats and other complicated entity models?

Minimalistic chairs and tables would at most be out of place in the game for a few days after their announced addition to the game.

Chairs and Tables are nice and all, but what if you want to make a piece of furniture that isn't either of those? Do you just use blocks again? Doesn't that make the old furniture look out of place?

The thing is, you could say the same thing about the doors in the game. "Well I wanted to make a sliding glass door for my building, so I had to resort to pistons! We should remove regular doors so all buildings have equally ugly doors"

Let's take an example I think about frequently when thinking about this, lawn/pool chairs. Obviously, if you added regular chairs, but you were limited to building lawn chairs out of stairs and slabs, this would make my lawn chairs look out of place. That being said, there are a lot of things you can't build well with Minecraft's current set of blocks. (I struggle to find any block that could possibly resemble a microwave over my furnace "oven".)

I do consider this one of the most valid criticisms, but think about how useful even a simple chair with 4 legs and a flat back would be. That'd cover most kitchen chairs, and by proxy most restaurant chairs. Adding a back composed of bars would be a nice addition, but not entirely necessary. This chair would also not be out of place in a school setting, albeit it might be missing a desk attached to the chair, but this is a minor loss since the old chair design didn't have this either.

On why we should add chairs and tables and possibly other furniture:

It looks less stupid: I would be far more pleased to be looking at a house with real chairs and tables than one with blocks that resemble chairs and tables if you squint really hard and you're told beforehand what it's supposed to be.

It allows you to add non-armchair chairs, shorter tables, etc to your house: Let's be honest, what block could you possibly implement into the game that resembles a kitchen chair but isn't one? How are you going to represent a coffee table using anything but a slab?

Not everyone wants to build a mansion: Having smaller chairs and tables means people don't have to build massive dining rooms just to fit a whole family of people around a table without building a stair couch, nor do people have to increase the height of their ceilings just to make sure the top of their wool sofa doesn't touch the ceiling.

How we should add chairs:

Maybe I'll write up a detailed suggestion about this, who knows.

Quote from Jancrash»

Legacy consoles got away with two sentences to a paragraph of text every time you looked at a block.

Fair enough.

Quote from t_4_s»

this could be a good idea for stuff like enchantments and giving the player some info about the item
the way you would see this is by just hovering your mouse over the item and it would be right under its name

While there may be a few items that could use a description, consider the fact that this written description needs to be translated into various languages. This is why there are very few large in-game blocks of text beside the End Poem perhaps. I suppose that you might be able to hire a few translators on the team and pay them full-time, but it'd be cheaper to get the graphic designer to make some diagrams for these things, and perhaps you could find these diagrams on paper items in chests or something.

Quote from jpegfileformat»

*disclaimer* I’m sure that little or any of these features would even be considered to be added if this is even seen by anyone, but I’m voicing my opinion and I’m giving a fair warning that I ramble a lot in this post and it’s rather long and scattered about.

Well for future reference, my initial skim of the post seems to indicate this is a wishlist and is probably going to be locked. I'd suggest making each of these into individual suggestions and fleshing each one out a bit more.

My thought about Minecraft for a long time is that it would be great if they added a more evolving gameplay Ie. instead of making a wooden toothpick of a sword to begin with you could make a club, then go to a stone sword, after getting going you could make metal instruments ( i think that mojang could add an intermediary between stone and iron like copper { that could be used for red stone things so it doesn’t get used once then just become a junk block later in game} but make it so that to get to metal tools and gear you would need some extra things to do metallurgy instead of just putting it in a crafting bench ie. improved metallurgy).

I'm actually a fan of this kind of realism albeit I think you should go into a bit more detail about this. What else can I do with my metallurgical tools? How strong is copper? Etc, etc.

another idea is to add more flora and fauna for different biomes and make said flora and fauna more biome specific like deer in a forest and cows in the plains (birds maybe?), as well as adding more perilous mobs like bears or something, they could also add fruit trees, corn, stuff to enhance the farming side of the game.

The farming side of the game isn't really going to be improved by extra content per se, I think it'd be better improved with better mechanics. Sadly I don't think there's much that can be added to the farming system without making farming incredibly tedious or micromanage-y.

Cows already spawn in the plains AFAIK. I wouldn't object to deer in the forest and birds, but I don't think the game needs excessive amounts of mobs.

Make biome generation more logical so that a badlands cant gen right next to a jungle biome, and making biomes larger ( I will find a snow biome after thousands of blocks and it will be 40 blocks wide, terrible, also oceans could be larger).

This has already been done to an extent, although I have found some seeds where hot, dry biomes spawn next to wet, cold biomes. There are a few ways to solve this, possibly by just attempting to make the noise algorithm smoother, albeit I think it's already semi-rare to find this, at least enough that it's not game-breaking.

As for the tiny snow biomes and oceans, I agree that biomes should be beefed up or squashed out of existence if they're too small.

Other advancements that could be made are larger boats that maybe could hold cargo or other things like that so that ocean monument raids and moving base could be more practical and easy, on a side note, improved/reworked fishing would be a welcome change in my opinion.

Y'know, I was skeptical about boats with chests but when you mention ocean monuments, I can definitely see the purpose in them.

I don’t know if the devs would be against it but I think it would be a fun thing to include something like muskets in Minecraft, it could give a better use for gunpowder and a superior ranged weapon for the endgame, nothing like a ak-47 or anything like that but I think some technical evolution Would be nice to see throughout the course of the game.

A lot of people are against guns, I for one see them as useful. (This and copper/proper metallurgy are things that I kinda wanna see in Minecraft if only because I like them) I think they could be used as an armor-piercing weapon with low accuracy. That would mean bows and crossbows can still be used for sniping enemies from long distances, while if an armored enemy manages to get past your arrows, you can blast them with Arquebus shots so they maintain some distance.

I would like to see another dimension added perhaps with a new boss that you could access after going to the end and retrieving an elytra, the way I see the dimensions is that the nether is a sort of underworld/He** and that the end is like limbo, I would like to see a heaven-like dimension, a bunch of islands up in the sky ( not like the end where it’s just a void , it would be where if you fell you would fall back to the ground, BUT it would be above build limit by a hundred or so blocks and it would start a new buildable zone so you couldn’t just build up there you would need to have

An elytra) it would also make it impractical to go up there if you didn’t have an elytra because you would need to fly from island to island. Instead of the nether fortresses of down below or the end city’s there could be palaces or some such.

If you're going to suggest a new dimension you should really dedicate more time to it, in fact, I'd dedicate the whole post to the new dimension if you're going to suggest it. Dimensions need structures, mobs, and a ton of other stuff and you can't just summarize all that in a paragraph.

I'm not a fan of a second end dimension although I would find it interesting to have somewhere else to fly an elytra around.

adding to the boat part higher up on this mess of a post, one could have a better use for horses where you could have horse-drawn carriage that you could store stuff in, I picture it working like you would have one or two horses and depending on the stats of the horses would be how fast you would go, you could also make a horse give off displeasure particles if it’s going too fast for too long and if you didn’t feed it than it would die (side note I’m sure an extra use for path blocks could be worked in as a possible speed boost.

A horse-drawn carriage seems useful but I'm not sure it'd be more useful than just riding a horse without the carriage. Even if it stored items I feel like that's the point of the mule. (Or chest boats for that matter. There's a reason why before the industrial revolution, cities were built around rivers and other bodies of water.)

perhaps another feature that could be added (that should be toggle-able) would be a sort of level counter like if you got to a certain point in the game it would get not necessary harder per-say but more difficult mobs would be unlocked so you don’t have to deal with phantoms your first night so when you reached metal tools the mobs would be slightly harder now and phantoms would start to spawn, and when you got to diamond level then you would perhaps start to face new mobs

This sounds interesting but I'd argue this is the purpose of dimensions: when you get diamond you're powerful enough to beat the overworld so you jump into another dimension to find something more difficult and more rewarding. I would enjoy it though if mobs got a little bit more interesting the further you went from spawn, so if you manage to walk a thousand blocks away from spawn, you might see mobs with different AI, mobs with armor and weapons, or just mobs trying to pull tricks on you, like Skeletons wearing Zombie heads.

a thirst meter would give another use to plain water bottles and you could use it to give use to cauldrons where if you didn’t put a cauldron over a fire or lava than you would have a chance of getting the equivalent of a hunger effect on your thirst bar (more in the idea below)

Please no.

There's no good way to add a thirst bar. The hunger bar is already micromanage-y enough, but a thirst bar would be completely pointless as it would either be so stupidly easy that it would be pointless (for example, the player can right-click water to drink from it) or it would be tedious and require lots of items that the player has to get just in order to survive. (for example, requiring the player to get a cauldron full of water, boil it, then drink it from glass bottles.)

By the way, you are aware of how much inventory space it would take to keep water bottles on you for adventuring, right? (Though I guess this would incentivize using chest minecarts and chest boats.)

a new setting in the world creation/ a game rule would be to set a world-mode ie. classic: the game as it is normally, survival/realistic/evolution: a mode where there is more things, like a thirst meter, more ores and crops and mobs, it’s harder but more in depth to progress ( like the metallurgy and boats stated above) , larger biomes (maybe even seasons and climates?). overall a slightly more complex and challenging version of the game, not quite as much as hardcore, and finally hardcore: hardcore mode

I'm not sure how you think game modes work, but normally game modes do not add new features into the game, they simply change how the player interacts with the world. Game modes are like different sets of rules for the player, they don't add new ores, crops, and mobs, to say nothing of seasons and world generation overhauls.

If you want to add features to Minecraft but you want the old Minecraft still available to you, we have the ability to play old versions of the game, not to mention mods. Mojang doesn't need to balance and develop two wildly-different versions of Minecraft at the same time.

i know this has been a train wreck of a post but this is just my (admittedly long) list of possible, but interesting ideas and if you have read down to here than wholeheartedly congratulations because this is a brain matter smoothie at best and that would probably mean that you would like to see some of it (possibly) be implemented. thanks for reading, Feedback on any of these ideas (or new ones along the same vain) would be much appreciated.

If you think your post is a train wreck then why didn't you organize it before posting? You could've organized these thoughts into a Word document, then spent time formatting the post here. Or better yet, you could pick one idea, flesh it out, then post it here.

Some Support, but ideas need to be fleshed out.

Quote from berserkingsoldier»

With this result ... Maybe I didn't express it clearly enough? I think I can explain again.
Add a new mode to the menu of the way to generate the world (such as huge, custom)-the real world. As for the meaning of this model, I think it can be described as follows:
When selecting this mode, you can select a place on the MC version of the world map as a habitat. (Of course, you can also click the "Real World" box to select a specific place.) In the birthplace area, there are characteristic buildings corresponding to the real world. I think this can increase playability.
In fact, I don't want mojang to build the real world into MC.
(Maybe this idea can only be theoretically impossible?)

So what you're saying is that you don't want any real-life geographical features ported into the game, simply buildings that mimic a style resembling the buildings in that area of the world?

First off, I'm not sure this world generation should be called "Real World" if the only thing being ported from the Real World into Minecraft is simply the style of randomly-generated nearby buildings. But in addition to that, I don't really see the point in having a map of the world to drop the player onto.

If all you want is to spawn in an area with buildings similar in style to real-life buildings of a certain area in the real world, I think a better idea would be to create a world generator called "Sprawling City" which attempts to spawn buildings based on a style picked by the player in the world generation settings.

Or for that matter, if you actually want the geographical areas, maybe a better idea would be to build specific maps containing different geographical areas of the real world and put these maps in the game by default.

Quote from Jancrash»

I took it as a new world type where the countries replace biomes. It creates geography based off of the real world, and it spawns structures in the same style as that country.

That was what I thought too, I just ignored the structures for the moment since I wanted to focus on the idea of generating the real world.

I'm going to assume what you want is the ability to create a world based on the real world, and then be able to play Minecraft in a recreation of the real world.

There are a few problems with this, primarily the problem of working with so much data, since the Earth is huge. To map all of the elevation and biome data would require a huge file that would take a long time to download. (And as you get to a smaller scale, it wouldn't be a complete map anyway since we can't map the elevation and biomes of places like North Korea) There are two solutions to this problem, that being to use a smaller file and procedurally generate more detailed landscapes, or to have a large file on a server and give it out to players with an internet connection. (Although that does limit the number of people who can make use of the feature.)

Another problem is how unplayable this would be. Biomes in Minecraft are intentionally very small since most people don't want to trek hundreds of thousands of blocks for a specific item, and most people wouldn't be able to fit that big of a Minecraft world on a hard drive anyway. You might not even want to bother storing any more terrain data than the land 25 km away from you in any direction since you'd get bored exploring any further.

(By the way, if you spawned yourself somewhere like the Sahara Desert or the Siberian Mountains, you could probably get the same effect just by making a buffet world with only Desert or Mountains)

A third problem to deal with is that given the height limit of the world is ~256 blocks and sea level is at ~64 blocks, that only gives you about 192 meters of height to use for mountains. The problem is that...

Whether a landform is called a mountain may depend on local usage. Mount Scott outside Lawton, Oklahoma, USA, is only 251 m (823 ft) from its base to its highest point. Whittow's Dictionary of Physical Geography[2][/sup] states "Some authorities regard eminences above 600 metres (2,000 ft) as mountains, those below being referred to as hills." - Wikipedia

So even including the smallest "mountain" of Mount Scott, you can't even fit that into Minecraft's incredibly limited vertical space without starting the mountain right at bedrock.

Finally, I think the last problem is that given the lack of diversity with Minecraft blocks, you would have basically nothing interesting to explore. Even if we were to ignore problem 2, there are only 6 trees in the game as opposed to the thousands in real life. There are about 7 kinds of ore and about 6 kinds of stone in Minecraft as opposed to the hundreds of rocks, ores, minerals, crystals, and geodes in real life. There is a nice variety of animals in Minecraft, but even they get repetitive after a while.

In conclusion, while there are ways it might be possible, it'd be slow and barely worth the effort.

Quote from TedEdO»

I really miss the pvp that Minecraft had before 1.9

Subjective opinion

that update killed a lot of big servers. And also made the player base go down.

Uncited statements

A lot of players played Minecraft because the pvp was too much fun and now it’s gone.

Blanket statement

I know mojang won’t read and listen but please take back the old pvp system and remove the attack cool down.

And the conclusion.

If you're going to make an argument for 1.8 combat, at least make a substantive argument for it as opposed to arguing based on subjective preference.

I won't argue that the 1.9 combat system is perfect, it's not. However, the 1.8 combat system is bland and uninteresting, whereas the 1.9 combat system at least requires accurate timing and remaining calm under stress, which are two actual skills as opposed to being able to press a button quickly. (Personally I wish you didn't have to place your cursor exactly on the thing you're swinging at with Swords since that'd make Baby Zombies and Silverfish far less of a nightmare to deal with.)

Quote from TheMasterCaver»

Fun fact: This was only true for 1.8 - before then you could simply rename your gear and the prior work penalty would always remain fixed at 2 levels

Fair enough, I'll concede I'm practically illiterate on the anvil system.

Quote from erictom333»

I present to you: Enhancements! Taking the chance away from enchanting.

Y'know it's funny... I was actually thinking of making a similar enchantment overhaul renaming Enchantments to Enhancements in the spirit of renaming Achievements to Advancements. Part of it adds new items and new enhancements such as the ability to completely suppress fire damage, albeit not being able to apply any additional protections on the armor.

Wait, didn't you already suggest this on another thread?

Well yes, but this one's different. That one got flak for adding 15 pointless gems. This one won't have any of that.

Okay to be fair I think you may have written this one before I came up with my idea. I seem to remember reading that post.

What are enhancements?

Enhancements are a new way of upgrading your tool, replacing enchanting. Whereas with enchanting you rely on chance (and lapis and XP) to get what you want, enhancing takes semi-common items you probably have, and nothing else.

A lot of people complain about the chance in enchantments but I'm not exactly sure why this feature gets so much flak since IMO it's supposed to be a bit of a gamble. I think it's because enchantments like Sharpness or Power act as entirely new tiers, whereas enchantments like Bane of Arthropods are complete trash.

How do they work?

To enhance your tool, you need an Enhancement Table (attachment 1). This is crafted just like an enchanting table, but with 3 paper repclacing the book (attatchment 2).

I'm not sure if you were planning to upload these later or not but I don't see any attachments. Also, why the change to 3 paper?

When opened, the table opens up a GUI with a single slot. Place your tool in the slot and more slots open up for gems to be placed in (coming soon).
What enhancements are there?
There are 18 enhancements in total, 2 of which can only be obtained through trading or chest loot.
In this table, T = effects on tools (pickaxe/axe/shovel/shears), W = effects on weapons (sword/axe/trident), R = effects on ranged weapons (bow/crossbow/trident), A - effects on armour and shields.

Mmkay

Diamond - Unbreaking - Last longer - max 5

Right away I'm not sure about this one since I generally consider Unbreaking, especially levels 1-3, to be a cheap early-game enchantment. I also find Unbreaking especially useful since I tend to use iron tools long into the mid-game because of how cheap they are.

Redstone - Haste - T Mine faster, W Swing faster, R Fire faster - max 5

This sounds okay, albeit I'm not sure about "Swing Faster". While I'm not as much of a defender of 1.9 combat as I was back in the day, I don't think upsetting the balance like this should be done on its own. If you're going to make a combat overhaul, I would do it and get it over with.

Blaze Powder - Firey - WR Inflict fire damage, A Reduce fire damage - max 3

I like the use of blaze powder but I think this is a bit cheap for a specialized enchantment.

Obsidian - Tough - WR Pierce armor, A Reduce damage - max 5

Okay

Ender Pearl - Lure - T Pull in items, WR Pull in mobs, A Increase mob spawn, F (fishing rods) Pull in fish faster - max 3

While this ender pearl cost makes sense for the new Tool and Weapon uses, I feel like it's a bit much to enchant a fishing rod. Ender Pearls are kinda expensive before you reach the end IMO since endermen spawn semi-infrequently, are somewhat dangerous to fight and even when you win against one, there's a chance it won't drop one. I definitely wouldn't want to put ender pearls on my fishing rods early-game.

Scute - Aqua Affinity - T Mine faster underwater, W Swing faster underwater, R Fire faster underwater, A Swim faster, AH (Helmets) Breathe underwater - max 3

Hmmmmmm

I'm not sure about this since it kinda makes the Turtle Helmet completely redundant.

Nether Quartz - Sharp - WR Deal more damage, T Damage attackers - max 5

It's kinda hard to judge this one since Nether Quartz gets progressively more expensive on servers, Nether Quartz gets more and more difficult to find near spawn. On the other hand, Nether Quartz is incredibly cheap in singleplayer, just as much as redstone or lapis.

Lapis - Luck - TWR Get more drops, A Increase chance of enemy missing - max 5

I feel like diamonds would be a better resource for luck even if Tinkers' Construct uses lapis.

Endstone - Reinforced - R Penetrate mobs, A Reduce blast damage - max 3

Ok.

Redstone Torch - Shocking - WR Stun mobs (strike with lightning if stormy), A Reduce damage form lightning - max 3

This is way too cheap.

Wither Rose - Decay - WR Deal wither damage, A Reduce wither damage - max 3

Please no. Poison thrown by witches is already OP enough. Also, why reduce wither damage on its own when you could have an enchantment er... enhancement that reduces all magic attacks?

Slime Block - Knockback - WR Deal knockback, A Reduce knockback - max 3

Okay

Gold Ingot - Smite - WR Deal more damage against undead - max 3

Ehhhhh okay

Ancient Silk* - Silky - T Get the exact block, W Get mob heads - 1 level

Should Silk Touch really be that rare? It's probably less useful practically than something like Fortune or Sharpness, and is only really useful for getting some aesthetic blocks, or for saving coal when you want to build a giant castle out of stone bricks.

Mending Moss* - Mending - Repair itself - 1 level

Okay well... If Silk Touch was expensive, Mending is really cheap.

Mending is an enchantment that makes your tools practically indestructible, and considering how some of these enhancements can cost barely anything at all like the Shocking enhancement, that means a lot of these are one-time payments.

Ancient Silk and Mending Moss can be found in chest loot or bought from priest villagers for 12-17 emeralds each.

Enhancing takes 1 of the material for level 1, but the cost triples for each additional level (however, level 5 requires 64 of the material) so getting Sharp 5 requires a whopping 104 nether quartz!

Uhhhh... so Unbreaking costs... 104 Diamonds? Is that really balanced? Also... what exactly do you mean by the cost tripling, because 1*(3^(5-1)) does not equal 104? I'm not really sure what else "triples for each additional level" could possibly mean.

Also, as a writing note, could you have disclosed this before you mentioned which items you're paying for each enhancement?

How many enhancements can you put on a single tool?

Good question. Every different tier of tool has a different amount of sockets for gems.
Wood/stone tools, leather/chain armour, bows, fishing rods, shears - 3 sockets
Iron/diamond tools/armour, crossbows, tridents, shields - 4 sockets
Anything golden - 5 sockets
Yes, golden tools now have at least some purpose - superior enhanceability.

Eehhhhh... I don't know that Golden Tools will have that much more purpose.

What will happen to my god diamond _?

Don't worry, because your super-OP enchanted gear will become super-OP enhanced gear.
For example, a Fortune III Unbreaking III Efficiency V diamond pickaxe will become a Luck 3 Unbreaking 3 Haste 5 diamond pickaxe. You will only lose enchantments if you are over the limit (i.e. a Power V Punch V Unbreking III Infinity I Flame I bow), in which case the game removes your least-needed enchantments (ie. Punch and Flame).

Least-needed is a subjective measurement. Some people might consider the Flame on that bow to be useful, for example.

Does it cost any XP?

Nope. In fact, I'd like to see XP removed altogether (although that's for another thread, to avoid being wishlisty).

I would say I disagree with this but I've never really tossed around the idea before. That being said, if your argument is that XP is too grindy, I would argue this enhancement system is far more grindy considering that while XP can be gained passively throughout your playtime, these items need to be actively mined or crafted.

Why replace enchantments with enhancements?

As the old thread's OP stated, enchanting is a lottery. You'll waste a lot of XP, lapis, leather and time getting the enchantments you wanted (I still haven't managed to get Infinity on my bow).

Again with the writing tips, I don't understand why this question isn't answered immediately. This is the initial argument you need to make before you can suggest me you have a better idea and you chose to answer it in two sentences at the end of your post.

Also, I feel like it's a moot point saying you'll waste a lot of lapis and leather on the enchantments you want since you'll waste far more resources on these new enhancements. Seriously... 81 104 Diamonds for... Unbreaking V? Unbreaking V? And meanwhile Luck V only requires 81 104 Lapis, which I can get far easier.

Lastly, while you say enchanting is a lottery... I will again restate that I think that's the point. Before Mending, you would have to either repair or replace your tools semi-frequently even if you used diamond tools. This means each time you enchant a tool, you're hoping for good stuff. I'm not convinced that the goal of enchanting was ever "I'm specifically looking for these enchantments, and will grind to get them until I find them."

Now granted, this lottery system on its own needs improvement such as making enchantments like Bane of Arthropods worth getting, but I don't think RNG on its own is entirely an evil in game design.

No Support.

Quote from Jancrash»

Or put Fortune/Silk Touch on your main pickaxe and only carry the pick and sword in your hotbar at all times.

I disagree. This is a waste of enchantments that can be fairly rare mid-game. (Besides the fact that while you may want to mine up some ores with Silk Touch for certain reasons, you may not want to fill up your coffers with tons of smooth stone that is basically useless for crafting)

Take the extra three seconds to hover over your axe or shovel and press a number to add it to your hotbar whenever you're going to need it a lot.

Sure, but my question is, why should you have to switch tools at all when you're, for example, doing a landscaping project which requires you to switch between tools frequently? Why not just have the game automatically switch to the right tool for the job when you need to switch from mining stone to mining gravel, or to cutting down a tree?

Also, I really don't see the point in having three hotbar slots taken up by "A tool for cracky things", "A tool for crumbly things" and "A tool for wood", when I could be putting any of the other zillion things in those slots. I've been playing a lot of Starbound recently, where there is only one main tool for doing practically all work. In Terraria, all non-wall non-tree blocks are mined with a pickaxe.

I find this system of "Well you need this tool to mine these blocks, but not these other blocks" to be arbitrary and pointless from a gameplay point of view, and it only really serves to keep a bit of realism in the game. At the very least, not having to manually switch tools would be a good quality-of-life way to make this part of the game feel less arbitrary and pointless.

Sorry, but this issue doesn't seem bad enough to warrant four new slots.

I don't think you've looked closely enough at that edited inventory GUI. There are still only 9 columns, it's just that the old first column has new functionality. Obviously I would not add four new slots to the inventory with a setting that can be toggled on or off in the controls menu.

Quote from Badprenup»

I like the idea but don't think each slot should be restricted to a specific tool. It should just be whatever 4 tools you want and put in those slots.

That's not the point of the Automatic First Slot setting. The point is to automatically switch to the tool required to mine the block or kill the mob you are pointing at. It's worth noting that these slots are not technically restricted, but you'd find it rather annoying having your first slot switch to your bow when you point at dirt because you put the bow in the shovel slot.

If I am going mining I don't bring my bow, axe, or even a shovel usually, just my regular and Fortune Pick. If I am cutting trees I'm only bringing my Sword and Axe. So I'd rather they not be locked to specific tools when odds are I'm probably only bringing 1-2 of them with me at any time.

Fair enough, but:

- I don't know that most people switch out the tools in their inventory. I personally don't, unless it's my first Diamond Pickaxe, which I usually reserve for obsidian until I have a steady supply of Diamonds to use on pickaxes.

- This is what the Completely Manual setting is for. With it on, only the new column rotating key works, and the whole first-slot stuff is disabled.

The Problem

A typical hotbar from mid-to-late-game is going to contain a lot of tools:

Notice, however, that there is only one slot for building blocks. The sad part is this slot will usually contain a block like dirt or cobblestone for the sake of getting out of holes or building bridges over ravines. Worse yet, this isn't even all of the other tools that a hotbar can contain since we haven't mentioned:

- Flint and Steel

- Hoes

- Shears

- Maps

- Other weapons like Tridents

- Silk Touch shovels

- Potions (this is especially bad since it makes health potions practically useless)

- Modded tools and items

- etc.

The Solution

Or more accurately, one solution that can partially mitigate the problem.

In the controls menu, there will be a setting called "Tool Switching" next to "Auto-Jump". This has two settings: Completely Manual and Automatic First Slot. There will also be a keybind labeled "Switch Tool" under the Inventory tab, defaulted to the R key.

If this is set to Completely Manual, pressing the "Switch Tool" key will rotate the column of items in that slot.

Wouldn't you want a second key to rotate the column backward? Possibly, but I don't want to take over too many keybinds.

Why can't I switch the whole hotbar? I don't know if people would find it as useful as just rotating one slot. If you think this is better than individually rotating slots, I guess it can be a setting, but I'd personally find it disorienting.

If this is set to Automatic First Slot, the inventory will look like this:

These are not new slots. There are still only 36 item slots in the inventory. You won't be stopped from putting other non-tool items in these slots, but items will not automatically enter these slots unless the rest of the inventory is full.

If you put other items in these slots, you may notice the column automatically switches to that item when facing certain blocks. The idea of this is that if you point at a certain type of block, you will switch to the tool for that block. (And if you point at a mob, the slot will automatically switch to the sword/melee weapon slot.)

This is incredibly useful as it means you don't have to awkwardly switch between tools just because a bit of gravel or dirt got in the way of your giant tunnel, and you'll have plenty of hotbar space for a few different types of redstone components or building blocks.

But what about hoes/Specialized Enchantment tools/etc? I didn't include a slot for hoes since hoes are not for digging. Specialized Enchanted tools will have to remain outside of the special first slot, but fortunately, the "Switch Tool" key will still work in this mode if you need to work with a lot of tools.