This forum is mostly for Survival, while your post is more for those that play creative. Another option is to post your world in the Map making section.
There is a saying: "Don't change a winning team" and that applies to products as well. When something sells as well as Minecraft, you would usually not go out of your way to change everything. Instead you would do your best to maintain the same feel to the game and add content in small doses. Minecraft is in such a special situation that even the removal of bugs is done with a lot of care because they are often used by players to achieve a certain effect.
The problem with the ideas here aren't the ideas themselves, but the way they are being justified. Why can't you talk about improving mob AI without adding comments about how Minecraft will die unless mob AI is improved. It's just tainting what could have been a fruitful discussion.
Really? A good, quality form of entertainment can cause the reader/viewer/player/etc to come back to it time and time again- simply because it's such quality. I can enjoy watching Cowboy Bebop, playing Half Life and Half Life 2, and so on over and over again- not consecutively, mind you, but after periods of time. Minecraft isn't one of those games- it's continually extending the stick that holds the carrot on the string (as is WoW). It's insulting. Eventually, we'll get more tiers of items beyond diamond, and that'll be my (and many others') breaking point.
You are making predictions that don't make any sense to me.
Just because you don't plan on returning to Minecraft in the same way as you do with Half Life doesn't mean that no one will. Minecraft already have so many users that quick demise is impossible. The only thing that could trigger such a change now is if Mojang did drastic changes to game play. The very thing that you are asking for could be Minecrafts demise. What Minecraft has is unique, what you are asking for is common.
I do love a lot of your ideas though. Just like I loved the ideas from 'X'. It's just that you both have given them too much negative baggage with all that talk about doom and gloom. At least I get easily distracted with illogical predictions like that.
There have been multiple interviews of both Notch and Jeb about the future of Minecraft and both have been talking about giving it to the community. That means open source, everyone can download and hack away at their leisure. Minecraft is already a platform and they are developing that dimension even further with the API and server-client integration. Mojang will continue to deliver content and tech to the platform, but will eventually leave everything to the community.
And that will probably happen a very long time before you can claim that Minecraft has died.
Going far away no longer woks to generate new stuff. Jeb did this in 1.2 with jungles to get rid of chunk borders between updates. to get the new stuff you must make a new world. However villagers in our current world may get the trading option.
The Anvil format released in 1.2 didn't change anything with world generation to prevent chunk borders. It's not a world generator change at all, but a new way of storing the world to disk and handle it in memory.
What you might have misunderstood with Anvil is that they changed how biome data is handled. In the Anvil format, biome data is stored to disk so that the game can remember what biome an area had even if you update to a new version.
Between earlier versions of Minecraft your Desert could suddenly get snow because the last world generator would have made it an Ice biome. That will no longer happen because the biome is now stored instead of calculated based on the seed. The biome for new chunks will of course still need to be calculated, but only once during the chunk creation.
The changes to world generation between 1.2 and 1.3 will probably not be that large, but if you travel far enough away from spawn the differences between the two worlds will increase. Where there is a Jungle in 1.2 there might be a swamp in 1.3. If only a part of the jungle where explored in 1.2 and you explore the area in 1.3, then there will be very clear chunk line between Jungle and Swamp. Without Anvil all of it would have been swamp. It would have been a swamp biome with jungle trees.
Another thing they improved in 1.2 unrelated to anvil is biome borders. There is now even a biome called "Extreme Hills Edge" created just to smooth out the difference between an Extreme Hills biome and other biomes. There is also gradient differences in the color of grass and leaves instead of a sharp edge. Unfortunately, this doesn't prevent chunk lines between old and new chunks.
I have a Beta 1.2 world with a jungle. It's the prime example that your prediction is wrong. Everything new in 1.3 will be available in all new chunks regardless of how old the world might be. Mojang tried to block new features in old worlds when they released Beta 1.8, but they changed their mind after many protests and even my Beta 1.2 world have mine shafts, villages and jungles.
The problem you and direwolf are facing is that with too many mods there is always a simple and quick solution. I found it amusing that he used RailCraft and portals instead of simple teleport pipes for long distance transport just so he could make a real build out of it.
Try to make an automatic tree farm without Forestry. Make an automatic crafting system without logistics pipes. Make a bakery that automatically make you bread when it detects that you have made room in the chest where it's stored.
Who's to say it will? Chances are likely, even the mod creators will leave Minecraft for a better game. And I guarantee you- better games will come around. Unless Notch & co get their act together, Minecraft will die. Because they refuse to accept criticism.
I'm so ****ing mad about them ignoring that blog post I can't even put it into words. Notch is officially the videogame equivalent of George Lucas.
All games die, or at least fade away from memory. Is Pacman or Tetris dead? Is Morrowind dead? Game developers have different time perspectives when developing games. A flash game developed for the Winter Olympics isn't intended to last as long as a new mmo.
You make it sound like Minecraft is already doomed, while all sales figures tells us otherwise. Minecraft is already a blooming success and I believe it'll last at least another 2-3 years. A lot of people will leave, but that is the nature of things. As long as new blood comes rushing in, then Minecraft will be very much alive.
I find it amusing when someone that has been playing e.g. WoW for 5 years appear on the forum and calls it dead. There is a limit to how many times you can read a good book or watch a good movie. The tenth time isn't as interesting as the first and eventually you get tired of the story. You find a new book, a new game or a new hobby to entertain you, but that doesn't mean it's dead for everyone.
The most interesting part to this discussion is your fight to "save" Minecraft. It's not often that you get that attached to a game, but until you relax a little bit and start presenting you ideas in a more organized manner and not as the only solution to Minecrafts survival, I can't take you as serious as I think you want us to.
I think you underestimate the human mind and imagination. Minecrafts success is built on the freedom it gives us rather than forcing us to do certain things. I still haven't been to the End, even so long after it's release. Forcing me to go there would not make Minecraft a better game. It might make it more of a game in a traditional sense, but that doesn't mean it will be better.
You are not the first to wish that Minecraft was different from what we have now. I think even Notch had different plans when he started, but something happened along the way. A youtuber calling himself X (davidr64yt) managed to make a good stir with a blog post about 1 years ago. He wrote about what Minecraft should or could have been. A lot of his ideas were good and well received by the community, but Notchs reply was very dismissive.
The problem wasn't the ideas themselves, but the presentation. If you read through the blog post now you might even come to believe that some of the ideas have been adopted. I'm sure even Notch at some level shared many of the ideas presented by X and that is why you can now glimpse a few similarities.
Notchs original plan was to make Minecraft into a Roguelike game. That would, at least to me, mean significantly more focus on survival and RPG elements, more magic and character leveling, but as Minecraft grew it got a life of its own. Notch found his hands tied as he suddenly couldn't turn Minecraft into the game he wanted. Minecraft had become too popular the way it was.
Can you say for certain that you would have spent more hours on Minecraft than you have to date if it was a Rogulike game instead? Think about the hours you have spent on Minecraft and compare it to more traditional sandbox games. How long do they usually last? What happens when you have "figured it out"?
Don't dismiss mods. One day the Minecraft you see now will be just one of many mods you can pick and choose from with an in game menu. It'll all blend together and you wont know the difference other than the little text at the bottom of the title screen giving you a short list of authors in addition to Mojang. What then dear Insurrection!
When it comes to balance there are two different aspects I think it's important to separate.
1. The player vs player aspect. In this case there is no balance issues. If one player chose not to make a harvester, then that's that players choice. The player is willingly giving the other an advantage. You could have the same logic for the use of diamonds or potions. The player using them will have the upper hand. It might feel unfair, but the other player went through exactly the same problem at one point
2. Player vs environment. In this case there is a balance issue related to cost vs reward. This balance will be adjusted in the next patch, but making an XP farm will still probably pay off. At least the small and simple versions around dungeon spawners. Is it cheating? No, I don't think so. Using functional and intended mechanics in the game can't be seen as cheating unless yourself have set a rule that you don't want it.
If you had sent me PM instead of forever solidifying my contribution to this thread by quoting it, I might have been able to remove or change it in shame, but that train is gone now. Thanks a lot.
There is a lot of nice ideas here and as such you should have presented them as suggestions in the suggestions forum. Split it up and carefully explain each change in different threads so that it's easier for everyone to focus on each change instead of feeling the need to write an essay with a lot of unrelated topics.
That way you will also to a much lager degree see what's a popular idea and what's not.
You should care less about what other people think and play something you enjoy. It's not that the time you spend in a game is going to give you any valuable in return a part from what I hope is a fun time.
I wonder what it is with Minecraft that he thinks is a novelty that will pass. I would think it's the exact opposite and that Minecraft actually opened up for a brand new type of games. Minecraft might not last forever, but the game type will most definitively blossom some more.
The survival part of the game can be tweaked, but unless you remove freedom you'll never get a survival game such as it looks like you are asking for. I don't think the majority of players would like their freedom reduced. Not in what we call SSP. Unless even more modes are added where the current SSP stays under a new name and we add a survival mode more focused on survival.
There is a very interesting mod called Terrafirmacraft where everything develops significantly slower. One example is that you can't cut wood with your fists. You need to create a tool from sticks that you can get from leaves. A very interesting concept I would be glad to test out, but at least I don't want that in normal Minecraft. The current version of SSP have a very good balance between creative and survival. And with survival I mean that you need to gather the resources you need. You search for diamonds instead of picking it from a menu.
In my opinion, you put too much emphasis on the word 'survival'. I've said once before that I think Notch did a mistake when he called the normal single player mode for survival. Minecraft will never be a survival game where survival becomes an actual concern. There are too much freedom. Maybe the adventure mode will solve it for you.
Some believe that the hunger system was added for 'survival', but I believe it was added simply for the sake of content. To give you an incentive to build a farm. As a reward you'll be able to sprint a lot more.
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The problem with the ideas here aren't the ideas themselves, but the way they are being justified. Why can't you talk about improving mob AI without adding comments about how Minecraft will die unless mob AI is improved. It's just tainting what could have been a fruitful discussion.
1
You are making predictions that don't make any sense to me.
Just because you don't plan on returning to Minecraft in the same way as you do with Half Life doesn't mean that no one will. Minecraft already have so many users that quick demise is impossible. The only thing that could trigger such a change now is if Mojang did drastic changes to game play. The very thing that you are asking for could be Minecrafts demise. What Minecraft has is unique, what you are asking for is common.
I do love a lot of your ideas though. Just like I loved the ideas from 'X'. It's just that you both have given them too much negative baggage with all that talk about doom and gloom. At least I get easily distracted with illogical predictions like that.
There have been multiple interviews of both Notch and Jeb about the future of Minecraft and both have been talking about giving it to the community. That means open source, everyone can download and hack away at their leisure. Minecraft is already a platform and they are developing that dimension even further with the API and server-client integration. Mojang will continue to deliver content and tech to the platform, but will eventually leave everything to the community.
And that will probably happen a very long time before you can claim that Minecraft has died.
1
The Anvil format released in 1.2 didn't change anything with world generation to prevent chunk borders. It's not a world generator change at all, but a new way of storing the world to disk and handle it in memory.
What you might have misunderstood with Anvil is that they changed how biome data is handled. In the Anvil format, biome data is stored to disk so that the game can remember what biome an area had even if you update to a new version.
Between earlier versions of Minecraft your Desert could suddenly get snow because the last world generator would have made it an Ice biome. That will no longer happen because the biome is now stored instead of calculated based on the seed. The biome for new chunks will of course still need to be calculated, but only once during the chunk creation.
The changes to world generation between 1.2 and 1.3 will probably not be that large, but if you travel far enough away from spawn the differences between the two worlds will increase. Where there is a Jungle in 1.2 there might be a swamp in 1.3. If only a part of the jungle where explored in 1.2 and you explore the area in 1.3, then there will be very clear chunk line between Jungle and Swamp. Without Anvil all of it would have been swamp. It would have been a swamp biome with jungle trees.
Another thing they improved in 1.2 unrelated to anvil is biome borders. There is now even a biome called "Extreme Hills Edge" created just to smooth out the difference between an Extreme Hills biome and other biomes. There is also gradient differences in the color of grass and leaves instead of a sharp edge. Unfortunately, this doesn't prevent chunk lines between old and new chunks.
I have a Beta 1.2 world with a jungle. It's the prime example that your prediction is wrong. Everything new in 1.3 will be available in all new chunks regardless of how old the world might be. Mojang tried to block new features in old worlds when they released Beta 1.8, but they changed their mind after many protests and even my Beta 1.2 world have mine shafts, villages and jungles.
0
Try to make an automatic tree farm without Forestry. Make an automatic crafting system without logistics pipes. Make a bakery that automatically make you bread when it detects that you have made room in the chest where it's stored.
1
All games die, or at least fade away from memory. Is Pacman or Tetris dead? Is Morrowind dead? Game developers have different time perspectives when developing games. A flash game developed for the Winter Olympics isn't intended to last as long as a new mmo.
You make it sound like Minecraft is already doomed, while all sales figures tells us otherwise. Minecraft is already a blooming success and I believe it'll last at least another 2-3 years. A lot of people will leave, but that is the nature of things. As long as new blood comes rushing in, then Minecraft will be very much alive.
I find it amusing when someone that has been playing e.g. WoW for 5 years appear on the forum and calls it dead. There is a limit to how many times you can read a good book or watch a good movie. The tenth time isn't as interesting as the first and eventually you get tired of the story. You find a new book, a new game or a new hobby to entertain you, but that doesn't mean it's dead for everyone.
The most interesting part to this discussion is your fight to "save" Minecraft. It's not often that you get that attached to a game, but until you relax a little bit and start presenting you ideas in a more organized manner and not as the only solution to Minecrafts survival, I can't take you as serious as I think you want us to.
0
You are not the first to wish that Minecraft was different from what we have now. I think even Notch had different plans when he started, but something happened along the way. A youtuber calling himself X (davidr64yt) managed to make a good stir with a blog post about 1 years ago. He wrote about what Minecraft should or could have been. A lot of his ideas were good and well received by the community, but Notchs reply was very dismissive.
The problem wasn't the ideas themselves, but the presentation. If you read through the blog post now you might even come to believe that some of the ideas have been adopted. I'm sure even Notch at some level shared many of the ideas presented by X and that is why you can now glimpse a few similarities.
Notchs original plan was to make Minecraft into a Roguelike game. That would, at least to me, mean significantly more focus on survival and RPG elements, more magic and character leveling, but as Minecraft grew it got a life of its own. Notch found his hands tied as he suddenly couldn't turn Minecraft into the game he wanted. Minecraft had become too popular the way it was.
Can you say for certain that you would have spent more hours on Minecraft than you have to date if it was a Rogulike game instead? Think about the hours you have spent on Minecraft and compare it to more traditional sandbox games. How long do they usually last? What happens when you have "figured it out"?
Don't dismiss mods. One day the Minecraft you see now will be just one of many mods you can pick and choose from with an in game menu. It'll all blend together and you wont know the difference other than the little text at the bottom of the title screen giving you a short list of authors in addition to Mojang. What then dear Insurrection!
0
It's not about ability, but priorities and design choices.
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1. The player vs player aspect. In this case there is no balance issues. If one player chose not to make a harvester, then that's that players choice. The player is willingly giving the other an advantage. You could have the same logic for the use of diamonds or potions. The player using them will have the upper hand. It might feel unfair, but the other player went through exactly the same problem at one point
2. Player vs environment. In this case there is a balance issue related to cost vs reward. This balance will be adjusted in the next patch, but making an XP farm will still probably pay off. At least the small and simple versions around dungeon spawners. Is it cheating? No, I don't think so. Using functional and intended mechanics in the game can't be seen as cheating unless yourself have set a rule that you don't want it.
0
0
That way you will also to a much lager degree see what's a popular idea and what's not.
0
I wonder what it is with Minecraft that he thinks is a novelty that will pass. I would think it's the exact opposite and that Minecraft actually opened up for a brand new type of games. Minecraft might not last forever, but the game type will most definitively blossom some more.
0
5
There is a very interesting mod called Terrafirmacraft where everything develops significantly slower. One example is that you can't cut wood with your fists. You need to create a tool from sticks that you can get from leaves. A very interesting concept I would be glad to test out, but at least I don't want that in normal Minecraft. The current version of SSP have a very good balance between creative and survival. And with survival I mean that you need to gather the resources you need. You search for diamonds instead of picking it from a menu.
10
Some believe that the hunger system was added for 'survival', but I believe it was added simply for the sake of content. To give you an incentive to build a farm. As a reward you'll be able to sprint a lot more.