My honest thoughts on recent Minecraft updates

I think this a great example of 'there is no one true Minecraft player'. People speak on behalf of the Minecraft community assuming all players want what they want. The reality is, the game is very broad and has a huge number of play styles that need to be carefully considered with every update. What one player really wants, might make another player quit entirely, so it makes development for Minecraft uniquely challenging. SPOILER BELOW: My controversial opinion is that Mojang are actually doing really quite well at a fairly impossible job.

This man knows a lot about internet discourse for someone with 1 minute of internet access per day

About the mob vote (and I can’t remember if I’m paraphrasing someone’s idea or was just inspired by a video I saw about it), I think it would be much better received by the community if mojang approached it as “what mechanic do we want to introduce.” The largest issue is that, on top of losing out on two mobs, you lose out on two mechanics. Imagine if the glow squid lost, yea the squid would be gone but so would glowing signs. If all three of the mobs did the same thing, people wouldn’t feel fomo about the lost mechanics which would placate a lot of people. Imagine if , for the next mob vote, mojang wanted to introduce a way to farm sand. They suggest three mobs, the mummy, the shrew, and the sand golem. All three of these mobs give the player sand in some way. Now, no matter how the people vote, farmable sand will be added to the game. People are mad because they are voting for mechanics, not mobs. They are given a say in the way the game develops and then often stripped of it. Approaching the mob vote mechanic-first would eliminate this negativity.

Love the little "aha" when you used the spy glass, great callback to one of my favorite jokes in the life series.

The thing I don't like about Mojang's current game design is that they are too specific in their designs. The argument about not adding the creeper today would also be: If they did add the creeper today, you would have to go to a very specific biome to get its very specific drop so you can make a single very specific item for its very specific use. I still think TNT and Fireworks will be around if they did that, but you could no longer find it in structures or use it as a potion ingredient, and fire charges may not be a thing today. They are too narrow on their design. Edit: You have been warned about going into the replies. You may not like things we said in there.

9:08 Actually, poison would be a great reason why frogs should spit a glowing block of gunk after eating fireflies.

As someone who actually lives in a birch forest, they need to make them taller and add underbrush. Personally, I'd base it off of some of the Scandinavian or northern minnesotan forests

My biggest issue is that the mobs added through the mob vote we claimed to be much better than they actually are. The sniffer only producing a single boring flower, the glow squid not actually emitting light, the phantom...

the major criticism is that the updates before completely changed the way Minecraft was played before the updates, 1.13 overhauled the oceans, 1.14 completely changed the trading and how villagers work in general, idk about 1.15 but I heard it changed a lot of internal workings of the game, 1.16 overhauled the nether 1.17 and 1.18 overhauled the entire over world, but then 1.19, 1.20 and 1.21 just added some niche features, where people can still play the game same way they used to with like an extra biome or two

My biggest complaint is that the game is a mile long and an inch deep. They need to expand on the features they’ve already added, like look at archaeology, they added the trail ruins and suspicious gravel, like cool, pots and sniffers, now you never need to touch them again. (Although relic is an amazing music disc). The baseline is there, they need to expand rather than adding something new then completely forgetting about it

For the villager system: The best strategy in a game should be fun. Villagers are absolutely the best way to 'get stacked' with full enchants and diamond armor and all of their things, however they are not fun at all. The justification of them being difficult so their OP-ness is justified is not good because they difficulty they pose is simply frustration.

I think the biggest issue is that despite all this stuff it still all sort of adds... Nothing? The spyglass for instance is very useful but could it not just be made with copper/gold and glass? Why add a whole extra generated structure we have to look for just to make a single item? Why add an entire new mob that's sole purpose is to make armour for a different mob? We already have leather and rabbit hide (which is next to useless aside from making leather) so why not use those? A fundamental feature of Minecraft historically was how much you could do with what you have. A material that can be used to make basic logic gates? You can build a computer! Or a farm! Or any number of other things! Have a basic mine for resources and a sheep farm for sustenance? You can turn that waste cobblestone into all different kind of stone bricks for building and the wool can be dyed a variety of colours for all kinds of aesthetic creations! Even something as simple as the emergent mechanic of the cobblestone generator sparked an entire subset of gameplay styles centred around skyblocks. The newer stuff has it's uses but the lifespan of those uses are short. With all this said I strongly believe this is not at all due to incompetence. We clearly see the immense creativity the team at Mojang have with just the April fools updates alone. I think that the lack of depth to the updates is a deliberate choice. Microsoft paid $2.5B to acquire Mojang back when that all went down, and they're going to want their investment back and then some. So what can they do to recoup that? As we have seen over time they clearly put a lot of time and money into marketing, merchandise and spin-off games- things that have taken noticeably less resources to organise and produce (the case being that Minecraft itself is basically at the bleeding edge of sandbox games as a genre whilst something like Minecraft Dungeons is basically a procedurally generated dungeon crawler with a Minecraft skin). On top of this, by restricting the depth to which updates can go to whilst simultaneously spending so much time hyping people up for all the new stuff that's added means that people will go back to the game and play through the new content only to find themselves still craving that new content hit once they've burned through what little there is. Java players might go and find some mods or just leave the game and come back later for another 2 week Minecraft phase, but Bedrock players might turn to the marketplace and buy addons to keep their thirst for new content sated thus continuing to line Microsoft's pockets. At the end of the day the latest version I played on was 1.20.1 in a Create modpack so the disappointing additions don't bother me too much, but it does sadden me to see how the pursuit of capital is once again stifling the creativity of a game where that is a fundamental component of it.

I love that the moment he grabs the spyglass he goes "Aha"

I actually found that mention of the creeper really funny. If the creeper hadn't been added till recently, and say, won a mob vote, I feel like people would actually hate it. Just randomly getting blown up after hearing a slight hissing sound. Which is interesting to think about, is the creeper not hated just because it's been around for so long and is kind of the mascot for the game?

I think the main issue everyone has had with new minecraft updates isn’t so much the content in the updates, but rather how some of that content is handled. Mob votes are hated because 2 mobs are completely scrapped while the winner is often out of the way and lacking in content. One trick ponies of mobs. And we’ve mostly been mad with updates as 1.17 isn’t even completely done. It took 3 updates to finish what was promised 5 years ago, and bundles aren’t even in yet.

I think the reason the community blew up about the firefly’s is because it would be easy to add them, just a simple particle effect in the swamps, and they didn’t because of a stupid reason.

I want more birds. Crows for forrests, Ravens in mountains, seagulls for beaches and oceans, Ducks in rivers. Im sure there's more possibilities

In game design, absolutely everything comes down to "why do players want to play my game?" Bartle's Taxonomy defines 4 types of players and their reason for playing video games. - Killers (who want to win over other players) - Achievers (who want to win over the game itself) - Socializers (who want to interact with other players) - Explorers (who want to interact with the game itself) Most games are made with one or two types in mind. and can gain a few more through emerging communities they didn't expect. For example, it could be said that dark souls was probably made for achievers. and then thanks to the invasion system, the community of killers began to really grow and prosper long after the game's release, making them the new primary community. Minecraft found itself in a weird place. Because they made the game a blank slate. One where all 4 types of communities (and many communities that are combinations of multiple types) were able to carve their own little spot. And now they have to KEEP the game as a blank slate. Because if they pander to one type of player, they lose 75% of their player base.

The biome vote was also a fun one. They said it was apparently about “what biome to update FIRST”… we’re still waiting on most others. The only loser that’s even been updated, I think, was the swamp.

The problem I feel is feature bloat. Nothing new feels particularly substantial, I could interact with trial chambers and ancient cities, but why would I? Why would I be interested in some of the new mobs? The updates feel unfocused. Instead of adding new structures, I feel like Mojang should be looking into overhauling some biomes and existing structures, especially Jungle temples Also, I really feel like villages should be less common