Minecraft Forums

After a few weeks I finally have the time to get around to this. Pardon my late response, mods, as I know grave digging is bad. So, at long last I can add my 2 cents to the pile. Here are what I think are the major factors for the decline:

-Discord

Contrary to what some others say Reddit is far, FAR from a replacement for forums. Discord is much closer to a forum, and has seen an incredible rise in popularity. Being able to talk on the spot, have pins, upload images on the spot, have pins, etc, are huge boons. The younger folk of today aren't used to the slower pace and comparatively clunky nature of forums, and are better versed in the former.

-Users scared off

Recently-ish the forums nuked an insane amount of posts and by extension mods and resources pretty much without warning, as well as going through a potential permanent shutdown. Naturally, the former was and still is a major shock to everyone, an the loss of precious posts, memories, and resources that will not be seen again is NOT to be taken lightly. To this day I myself am still ABSOLUTELY LIVID that it went down and I don't doubt it could have been handled in a far superior fashion. This, as well as the fact that those who've not checked in on the status of the MC forum as not down, has likely caused many members and groups in these forums to jump ship for places such as PlanetMinecraft, Discord, CurseForge, and so on.

-Minecraft is an old game

Minecraft turned 10 this year. Let that sink in. A 13 year old then is 23 now. From effectively a child to an adult that in some areas is able to smoke, drink, drive, be on their own, etc. A decade is a long time and a lot can change in that span. Many kids such as myself have grown up, and as such have either found new interests, got bored, or have became busy; sometimes all three of those!

With regards to account creation, bots are a big problem and massively inflate those numbers. However, bots are not the only thing roaming this website. People are, and even if they don't plan on doing anything, people will create accounts to potentially post with. I imagine many will not post at all, whereas some may just leave some posts numbering in the single or double digits, then fade away into history, never to be contacted again. It's haunting and creepy if I am to be frank. Adding on to all of that, Minecraft isn't quite in its days where it is still being discovered. It is THE best-selling game of all time. Everyone knows about it, and by extension are going to already know quite a few things about it, along with simply being able to discuss with friends in person, over Discord, or other means of contact outside of forums.

Then we also have the vicious cycle of low activity in itself causing lower activity.

I suppose your "true" veterans would be from 2010/2011 days. I got the game in early 2012 and joined the forum in 2014, though in hindsight I should've waited on joining the forums for a little while. and went inactive on the forums here within the past 2 years or so. Quite frankly I strongly regret not joining the game when I first heard of it in early 2011.

Oh wow. I remember seeing some of this back on the brainstorming thread a while back. Don't think anything I suggested survived, haha. I took a stroll through the doc, and I must say, when it comes to the environment I am (relatively) impressed. The aurora, different stars, and subglacial ocean are all cool concepts. Favorite mob so far is the serpent.

I'm not in a position to drop in critique and perhaps tag a few additional suggestions, note a few things, etc, so I'll look at doing that at a later date. I don't want to do the lame old "support" or "no support."

But I'll quickly comment on the originality thing above. The Aether could be argued to be an inverse to the Nether; a black to the other's white. However, a similar argument can be made that this is just a cold place as opposed to the Nether's heat theme. In a matter of personal preference I find the Aether to be superior in terms of fitting with the game's original intended design and character, something that has been tainted and been forgotten over the years it seems.

Quote from 0ct0ber»

For a while I was thinking that there needed to be more threads like this; all I could find were people disagreeing about 1.9's changes years after it passed, but no-one spoke about the game losing integrity with all of the new additions.

I do think that the recent additions do have some negative effects on gameplay. Particularly, I think the endgame items give endgame players a greater advantage, and also causes some players to hunt for them more than building houses or cool projects. Honestly, the totem of undying is basically a 1-up, shulker boxes are basically backpacks, and it's very hard to run from an endgame player with elytra. And as I've said in another thread, 1.13 and 1.14 overall feels like a modpack to me, which is not something I'd like to be the case with vanilla. I enjoy when extra modlike stuff is optional, but right now, you prettymuch have to play in 1.14 sometimes unless you want to be limited to a smaller range of servers.

I personally mainly just play multiplayer, and I'd say the game's integrity loss is larger there. There's a wide variety lot of server types, but I don't see very many of them resembling the classic survival gamemodes we used to have. Some are heavy on plugins (crates, holograms, lifeless NPCs that purely lead you to a GUI), some are about afking for powerful items through an economy, many are in 1.13 or 1.14 (which as I said, feels too modded to me), occasionally (but not always) there are landclaim servers where players might act as hermits in their invincible bases, not interacting much with you... I could probably go on about many types that are different from traditional survival, but you get the idea.

I know you put this in tiny text, but I agree with you about 1.7 and minecarts. 1.7 added a lot of new biomes, but I've noticed less unique and random terrain for the actual base generation. Minecarts are also an example of a fun and simple-feeling mechanic that they could fix and make useful again. Since 1.8 furnace minecarts can't travel in a north-south east-west direction different from when they started without being depowered, although I did make a server plugin that fixes this.

I agree here for the most part (not all).

The first paragraph brings up a very interesting point. There's been threads of varying sort, coming close to, but not touching on this subject specifically. I think it's because some have a hard time finding the words for it and merely come up with what is first on their mind with regards to it. Personally I've been questioning the integrity of Minecraft's game design for a while, yet, I didn't think about this subject specifically when it came to threads. I definitely believe the game overall has lost character and design integrity over time. Though the amounts of which can be debated.

I find it both funny and irritating how Mojang handles some things with multiplayer. Some things seem more intended for single player, whereas a respectable portion of the playerbase plays SMP instead, thus making the hunt for rare items in chests like Elytra a truly long and excruciating task on a decently populated server.

It is a shame how multiplayer has changed. I remember many new and creative game modes would be created, and things like free-build creative and more lax SMP servers were plentiful. Most of what you find is today skyblock, minigame, and faction servers. Finding servers like the ones in the old days is not an easy task.

Minecarts have bothered me for a long time. All I'd like to see if the ability to control furnace carts, and the ability to hook carts together to form trains. As carts exist right now, they are buggy and powercreeped to all heck by things such as horses. The 1.7 changes still make my blood boil. The same 5-6 biomes over and over... I'm going to end it there because I could rant on 1.7 for a while.

Though it does not directly pertain to 1.14 itself I am quite surprised nobody has made a mention of the new launcher. I first came across it when it must've been an hour old, tops.

I like this new launcher quite a lot. It's cleaner, it's not obnoxiously clunky like the previous one, and on top of that it adapts a style reminiscent of the original Minecraft launcher (remember that?) which pleases me. The previous style was funky. Now having said that, minecraft.net has the style that the previous launcher used so I am left to wonder if minecraft.net will get a makeover soon. The one downside to the new launcher is that skins aren't fully integrated yet, but that will come with time. ...And I see the bar to the right. With the way its presented, I assume it was done in part due to the coming of Minecraft: Dungeons.

I too am glad that repairing items via crafting was restored. That was bothersome.

After further gameplay I concur with previous posts. The bugs are starting to grind gears. Glad that 1.14.3 is in the works.

The loom looks like it will be simply fantastic when I get around to making something that warrants banners. It is a disappointment that the composter does not accept rotten flesh at this time. The only other real use for it is for keeping an entire military of dogs. Speaking of mobs, I did not know that foxes had a snowy variant. That's nice.

1.14.3 is shaping up to make a few reversions and backpedals it seems. Should shape up to be interesting.

Quote from ZaffreAqua»

I am very, very happy that resource packs are a thing, and the fact that Programmer Art is provided.

Quote from KaijuRizard3»

There's a thing called programmer's art, use it and you'll have your precious old texture.

If you can't be bothered to utilize reading then forums may not be your thing.

I decided to check this out and play the game for a bit with a friend after being dormant and roused with what would have been the forum's archival. I cannot comment much on features I have not interacted with in enough capacity, or at all.

I think I'll start by knocking out the elephant in the room: Textures. This is another case of Mojang trying to fix something that isn't broken and nobody asked for. I am royally peeved about them doing this. In doing so they are overwriting a legacy. You could show them to people who haven't even played Minecraft and they'll know what it's from. The real kicker is that despite claims, they are more than capable of continuing the original style. They simply choose not to. The new ones, at least the blocks, look like they're from a cheap knockoff or funky resource pack. The items... Well I'll give them that much, some (but most certainly not all) of the items do look pretty darn good. But overall this is probably one of, if not the worst thing Mojang has changed in the game in all of their updates thus far, even though it doesn't have much in the way of direct gameplay implications. I am very, very happy that resource packs are a thing, and the fact that Programmer Art is provided.

Now onto the village and villager changes. The wandering traders and trading UI changes are probably my favorites in the changes and additions to them in this update. I am ecstatic that iron golems at long last spawn in each village. Previously, seeing one was an incredibly rare occurrence in my experience, so monsters would quickly overrun a village. I can't say I'm thrilled about both the texture changes and villager class changes. It was fairly simple to pick apart what a villager was at a distance, but now I hardly have an idea of what I'm looking at. There is far too many nitwits, that's something I picked up right off the bat. I don't fancy this new system where villagers only change class with a place and work block present, but expect this thought to change in the future as I haven't put it to complete use just yet. I'm pretty meh about the building changes. Except the desert villages. Desert village changes are very welcome. They look good. Savannah villages not so much. Those things are tacky. I was really hoping villages to be larger and more densely populated. I cannot comment on raids yet.

I've seen a few pillager patrols and outposts. Haven't touched any of them so I can't say much there other than the outposts look nice and look like they would be fun to raid.

Now for the blocks. Oh my goodness, yes. The smooth stone and sandstone blocks, the slabs, the stairs... Simply wonderful! The villager workstations are... Okay. It's atrocious they put in some of them without a function, but the smoker and blast furnace have proved useful but it's nice to have more blocks to detail interiors.

The pandas, fox mobs are welcome additions. I was wondering when Dinnerbone would get his pandas. The cats are fine. Saves the hassle of finding a jungle, but now ocelots aren't very special.

And before I forget, the new dyes and berry bushes are excellent. The new flowers are very welcome. The crossbow seems to be a much weaker bow, and a weak rocket launcher, but seems like the latter could be a fun gag. Not much else though.


Overall the update is fine but could be better. The texture changes are an enormous negative for me despite that resource packs exist and the fact I use them often. Some of the village and villager changes are meh. But there's some neat stuff in here. Not as good as 1.13 IMO.

I must be an outlier. I've liked the concept of having years-long singleplayer world, but despite truly wanting and trying to do so it simply has not worked out well. I'm at a loss for words as Murphy's law would have it but I'll try to detail part of why.

I try to keep going but eventually I run out of ideas of what to do. Instead of relaxing and doing whatever I want I end up feeling this push that I HAVE to do something. It only got worse as updates with more features and additions came along, adding more things that I would be a bad player for because I didn't pursue or have immediate access to.

It also happens to be that there's this thing with me where I cannot get much done. For example, I cannot remember the last time I did so much as break the single stack mark of diamonds, let alone even stay near it. My mob farms tended to be horrendous. Scratch that, any of my farms stunk. A lot outside of farms, even. For having the world(s) around so long, other people would have these amazing, awe-inspiring worlds. I meanwhile just have a house lodged into a mountain with a dead village and mob farm outside.

Any stuff I did get around to building felt like it was worthless to have around. I had no friends to show it to or use it to play with them. So I tend to prefer SMP servers with friends, but even then I don't do that much. Most SMP servers out there suck, especially if they have money. Then it becomes capitalist simulator instead of more friendly, laid back, co-op Minecraft.

I'm missing way more than this, but this gives a general idea. It doesn't feel fun to me. It feels self-abusive sometimes (wording is harsh but I can't think of any other way to describe it right now) as opposed to what a game should be: Fun. The only non-creative singleplayer I do nowadays is sometimes opening up one of Vechs' survival maps. I really wish I could enjoy a traditional singleplayer survival world and do great stuff with it, but that hasn't turned out well. Unfortunately. =/

Quote from BloodyPhoenix»

I'll be using Discord to attempt to bring my map series back and keep it afloat.

Quote from ogxon»

alright, I might not be the most qualified person to run a giant forum, but I'm gonna start up my forum idk when but sometime

Do it! It may not be much, but you can still carry forth the MC community's ingenuity.

Eh, this topic arises every now and then. I mean, from my point of view I definitely think it lost its identity for a while. That is in no way masked frustration with Mojang trying to fix things that aren't broken whilst leaving things that are broken to rot whilst erasing the remaining character the game had.

Over time, something is going to change. It is inevitable. Were it to stay the same it may not have reached the popularity it has today. Though I'm still salty over the new textures and 1.4+ sounds. Nobody asked for them to change a legacy. There have been many improvements throughout the years. Lots of quality of life changes, some performance enhancements, and oh yeah: FIXED BOATS AND ACTUAL AQUATIC CONTENT. TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH MOJANG. Now get on Minecarts and reverting 1.7 biome and cave gen k thx.

Out of genuine curiosity, as it varies from individual to individual, what are these sort of changes of which you speak? [Forget the 1.9 combat changes, those are almost universally detested in some form lol]