/u/EtenKillbeat
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Introduction:
The idea for this post came to me while watching a certain video discussing the 1.13 update's success. It's not meant to be a rant or a hateful comment aimed at the devs, but I thought it might open up the place for a productive discussion. I'm very sorry for the long post but I wanted to articulate my thoughts and reasoning to the best of my ability. For those who don't want to read the whole thing, there's a TL
R at the bottom.
General Summary of the situation:
As we are all probably aware, there's been a major rise in backlash with the past few update cycles, ranging from the relative lack of new content, Mojang's miscommunication regarding the Wild update, to the infamously disliked mob votes held each year. From the perspective of a fellow player, the outrage has seemingly reached a climactic point during this year's Minecraft Live event, when the whole livestream chat was shouting for the mob vote to be cancelled with a successful petition regarding that request being held online. And ever since that moment, the subreddit has become an echo chamber full of complaints regarding the recent dev cycle, Mojang's emplyees and a general dissatisfaction with the game's current state.
The issue that's most often broght up is that updates have become smaller, less exciting for the players, despite the scope of them being pretty similar to those before 1.13. Mojang's seeming "laziness" and unwillingness to listen to what the community is saying appears to be a commonly shared sentiment. It's repeatedly brought up that the updates up to Caves & Cliffs have added so many new features, that anything less now feels like a failure on Mojang's part. Moreover, what's in them never seems to be what the community wants and expects from the update, which further creates tension in the player base.
I'm inclined to beleive the cause is not exactly what people think it is:
After watching this video discussing what made 1.13 a major revival for Minecraft's life, I've come to a very realization I believe is worthshile sharing. The updates from 1.13 up to 1.18 (I'm counting Caves & Cliffs Pt.1 and 2 as a single entity) felt so grand and were so successful not because of the number of features that came along with them, as most people tend to think. What actually made them stand out is the nature of the changes that they brought to the game - they all focused on improving core areas of the Minecraft experience, which had stayed untouched and barren for a long while. These updates were all about bringing new life to a game that was starting to feel outdated and allowing the players to experience it in a new fresh light. The features weren't meant to be seen only once or twice by a certain type of players, but were something one was bound to encounter over and over again in their playthrough (e.g. the nether, the ocean, the entirety of Minecraft's underground, villager trading and so on).
And that's where I beleive the past two updates have "failed":
While the wild update promised to make the overworld more immersive and livelier, it instead added a completely separate swamp biome variant (instead of expanding upon an existing, quite boring biome) and gave us a rare, optional challenge located in the farthest parts of the underground. People were led to believe the update would improve some of the more neglected environments such as the birch forest, which is precisely why bringing back the losers of the previous biome votes was such a popular theory about the update. Players wanted to see them get some love.
A similar thing happened with The Trails & Tales update, which was supposed to be all about self expression. And while it did add a couple of highly requested mechanics and blocks (e.g. archeology and the beautiful cherry blossom biome), it still focused on adding things that only a specific group of players would interact with in their worlds (explorers and builders respectively), instead of a general improvement to the game.
Update Aquatic not only added something for everyone, but its changes positively affected all types of players. It's also why the 1.21 update was heavily speculated to be an end update - the end dimension is one of the last areas of the game that's lacking the scale and the quality that present-day Minecraft offers.
The new updates focus more on delivering a themed expansion, consisting of various small additions that don't directly affect most player's experience (beside giving new building options), as opposed to improving, overhauling or expanding what's already there.
Conclusion:
Mojang has taken a great step in the right direction by seemingly focusing on giving older features new purpose with the 1.21 update, as confirmed in the Minecraft Live preview (e.g. the addition of the new copper and tuff blocks and the bamboo set from before). However I think they need to look back at what made 1.13 so memorable and transformative and try to apply that principle to the new updates. That is if they want to keep the community happy and the future of the game prosperous.
TL;DR:
The past few updates have been mainly additive instead of transformative, which makes them feel less memorable and content-rich. Mojang should focus on improving the lacking areas of the game as they did from 1.13 to 1.18, instead of adding themed, yet mostly inconsequential feature packs just to keep the player base engaged.
submitted by /u/EtenKillbeat
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Continue reading...
The idea for this post came to me while watching a certain video discussing the 1.13 update's success. It's not meant to be a rant or a hateful comment aimed at the devs, but I thought it might open up the place for a productive discussion. I'm very sorry for the long post but I wanted to articulate my thoughts and reasoning to the best of my ability. For those who don't want to read the whole thing, there's a TL
R at the bottom.General Summary of the situation:
As we are all probably aware, there's been a major rise in backlash with the past few update cycles, ranging from the relative lack of new content, Mojang's miscommunication regarding the Wild update, to the infamously disliked mob votes held each year. From the perspective of a fellow player, the outrage has seemingly reached a climactic point during this year's Minecraft Live event, when the whole livestream chat was shouting for the mob vote to be cancelled with a successful petition regarding that request being held online. And ever since that moment, the subreddit has become an echo chamber full of complaints regarding the recent dev cycle, Mojang's emplyees and a general dissatisfaction with the game's current state.
The issue that's most often broght up is that updates have become smaller, less exciting for the players, despite the scope of them being pretty similar to those before 1.13. Mojang's seeming "laziness" and unwillingness to listen to what the community is saying appears to be a commonly shared sentiment. It's repeatedly brought up that the updates up to Caves & Cliffs have added so many new features, that anything less now feels like a failure on Mojang's part. Moreover, what's in them never seems to be what the community wants and expects from the update, which further creates tension in the player base.
I'm inclined to beleive the cause is not exactly what people think it is:
After watching this video discussing what made 1.13 a major revival for Minecraft's life, I've come to a very realization I believe is worthshile sharing. The updates from 1.13 up to 1.18 (I'm counting Caves & Cliffs Pt.1 and 2 as a single entity) felt so grand and were so successful not because of the number of features that came along with them, as most people tend to think. What actually made them stand out is the nature of the changes that they brought to the game - they all focused on improving core areas of the Minecraft experience, which had stayed untouched and barren for a long while. These updates were all about bringing new life to a game that was starting to feel outdated and allowing the players to experience it in a new fresh light. The features weren't meant to be seen only once or twice by a certain type of players, but were something one was bound to encounter over and over again in their playthrough (e.g. the nether, the ocean, the entirety of Minecraft's underground, villager trading and so on).
And that's where I beleive the past two updates have "failed":
While the wild update promised to make the overworld more immersive and livelier, it instead added a completely separate swamp biome variant (instead of expanding upon an existing, quite boring biome) and gave us a rare, optional challenge located in the farthest parts of the underground. People were led to believe the update would improve some of the more neglected environments such as the birch forest, which is precisely why bringing back the losers of the previous biome votes was such a popular theory about the update. Players wanted to see them get some love.
A similar thing happened with The Trails & Tales update, which was supposed to be all about self expression. And while it did add a couple of highly requested mechanics and blocks (e.g. archeology and the beautiful cherry blossom biome), it still focused on adding things that only a specific group of players would interact with in their worlds (explorers and builders respectively), instead of a general improvement to the game.
Update Aquatic not only added something for everyone, but its changes positively affected all types of players. It's also why the 1.21 update was heavily speculated to be an end update - the end dimension is one of the last areas of the game that's lacking the scale and the quality that present-day Minecraft offers.
The new updates focus more on delivering a themed expansion, consisting of various small additions that don't directly affect most player's experience (beside giving new building options), as opposed to improving, overhauling or expanding what's already there.
Conclusion:
Mojang has taken a great step in the right direction by seemingly focusing on giving older features new purpose with the 1.21 update, as confirmed in the Minecraft Live preview (e.g. the addition of the new copper and tuff blocks and the bamboo set from before). However I think they need to look back at what made 1.13 so memorable and transformative and try to apply that principle to the new updates. That is if they want to keep the community happy and the future of the game prosperous.
TL;DR:
The past few updates have been mainly additive instead of transformative, which makes them feel less memorable and content-rich. Mojang should focus on improving the lacking areas of the game as they did from 1.13 to 1.18, instead of adding themed, yet mostly inconsequential feature packs just to keep the player base engaged.
submitted by /u/EtenKillbeat
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...