920
Another blog so soon? The sun must be shining today as I enlighten you all with a continuation of my previous post that got far too long even for my own taste. Hopefully, this one won't be as long though I can't say that for certain as my writing is made by me rambling on without any meaningful edits unless something feels off which it rarely does.
Speaking of commonness and rarity, that is what we will be talking about today as we continue our expedition into the most recent Updates of our favorite game. With Caves and Cliffs halfway here and the other part months out, now might be a good time to explain a often not-discussed topic regarding the issues of the game that isn't just ripping on terrain and combat. While those two things make a massive break in how the game feels, the problem becomes pale in the greater scheme of things when it comes to how terrible it feels to play and even explore.
And that is the loot, the treasure, the amazing gear that doesn't feel like much when you realize just how worthless it really is especially if you're an avid RPG fan. Why this isn't brought up more might be due to the modern nature of the community whom spend most of their time either playing mod packs that create an insane amount of items that it might as well feel infinite or creative where you have unlimited blocks.
For the survival player, it just feels pointless. Let us begin!
We are all the Same
There is no doubt to how many items there are in the game. Different blocks, contraptions, the only thing that's limited are the number of items that are non-renewable with almost nothing that can't be farmed. In fact, here's a current list of things that you can't get an infinite of in the game as far as I am aware:
- Ancient Debris
- Ores (raw form, not ingots)
- Deepslate
- Dead bush
- Spawner
- Infested blocks
- Unenchanted Diamond armor
Take into account what isn't listed and you begin to understand the plight of the player that goes out in search of Adventure, a reason to Survive, something to show how amazing you are at the game. Sure there's End Crystals and Nether Stars, but they don't quite have the same impact as a finding a Golden Apple in Alpha. With the introduction of Pointed Dripstone, lava now joins the ranks of renewable resources given you have a cauldron and some time thereby making obsidian drop extremely in value as a result.
But, there's more to the story than the most recognizable and unique item in all of the game. In fact, the God Apple is a shell of its former glory, finding itself nerfed after nerf after nerf to becoming more of an Uncommon item than a Mythic that it once was. Many of the items you know today were once very scarce and rare if you take away that Worlds use to be infinite in size so technically there were infinite items.
However, for the sake of argument and traditionally keeping to the problem of you were bound to one Spawn location instead of having a moving one as well as /gameRule keepInventory True.
Anyway, let's compare the number of non-renewable items of the game now to the number of renewable items that you could find in old versions of the game, specifically Alpha.
- Water
- Trees
- Stone
- Cobblestone
- Bacon
- Reed (sugarcane)
- Seeds / Wheat / Bread
- Leather
- Arrow
- Feather
- String / Fishing rod
- Green / Gold Music Disc (could be dropped from creeper killed by a skeleton)
So, what seems to be missing from this list? Quite a few items that you may not have realized. While dirt is not on here, you don't see any of the ores or...wait, where are the flowers? Saddles? Event he Golden Apple as I mentioned earlier was but a very rare item that had a crafting recipe attached to it, only obtainable if you killed Notch on Survival Multiplayer. Ignoring this, you notice that quite a few items were rare, if not Mythic to some extent.
One item that used to be regarded even more highly than Gold Apples were actually Slime Balls for whatever reason. I was not around when that was a thing yet it was the primitive form of Emeralds that we have which, by the way, don't serve any purpose given economy plugins exist. Think about it, when you lost a red or yellow flower, it was gone forever. You couldn't grow it back and the only way to get more was to run out to find some. Compare that to bone farms that can generate infinite flowers as well as finding them in chests.
Over the years, Mojang have sought to make the game more Adventurous by allowing these items to be far more common than they should be. As a result, the general rarity of items in the game does not even go above Rare where you will find Elytras (given that have their own problem of devaluing in phantoms can make them repaired even if it's only a limited number of times), mob heads and Netherrite. With 1.18 nearby introducing a taller mountain and deeper caves alongside ore generation changes, finding that Diamond doesn't mean much anymore.
What does this mean for the average Minecrafter? That nothing they do makes a lasting impact, there is no proof of their dedication to the game unless it's a giant structure or a collection of everything they could possibly grab that isn't nailed down. Most of the items can be found in chests, traded, or even fished up making it almost pointless to waste time on anything that isn't a Meta gameplay loop of spawning in, get the pearls, find the stronghold, win, and then proceed to wander around for the next 99 hours doing random things.
Speaking of devaluing and nerfing, we are not even done when it comes to the number of items in the game that are far beyond obsolescence that removing them would make an already massive problem into an irreparable one for the survival community, at least what's left of it.
Tell me, when was the last time you saw a Jungle Temple?
Island of Misfit Toys
Once upon a time, in a Version far, far away, Dungeons used to be the granddaddy structure you were searching for as it contained the sacred treasures of the Era. Gold Music Discs, green music discs, saddles, and the magical Golden Apple that had the ability to heal you to full health. Since then, a lot of these features have become redundant, useless, a waste of space in the grand scheme of the game. Their addition puts a strain on the system as they take slots up better used for newer, better, flashier blocks and items.
Among these is the top of the pile: Minecart with Furnace, easily one of the worst items you could craft now with the existence of Horses, Elytras, powered rails, even fishing or a boat are impressively faster than the slow chug of an vehicle whose original purpose was to bring stuff up when you were deep, deep in the mines. Alongside this are Chest Minecarts since you have shulker boxes and rucksacks, coal since charcoal is 200-400% more efficient as you can use it for a better furnace and infinite fuel source, diorite, granite, andesite, dungeons, Mansions, Jungle Temples, Mushroom Stew, Leather Armor, Polar Bears and a number of other items.
As the game grows older and new features are added, there will always be a struggle to make sure things stay relevant and the power creep remains in check. In the latter part, the addition of Netherrite has become the equivalent of God Mode when it comes to PvP effectively making it a slap fight with all the previous problems mentioned earlier with golden apples being farm-able as easily as a mob grinder.
Minecraft Survival is less surviving and more a Creative Mode with people bothering you. There are so many possibilities that are buried because the newer stuff is shinier. It's less a game of Exploration and more of a mental test how long you can outlast boredom of a world devoid of meaning. A veteran player does not feel or seem unique among the tens of thousands who achieve these feats easily every day. If we completely ignore terrain, this is the single biggest issue of why I find the modern version of the game unexciting. It doesn't spark Joy, it makes me physically exhausted. I am reminded of the grind of when I went on to collect every Champion in League of Legends.
The game just is not fun from a Survival perspective even if we made Amplified, Hardcore, or Large Biome worlds. The challenge is staving off the tiredness I feel trekking through everything just to get to the End. What used to be a journey now turns into chores, ones I do not care much for.
Waiting for the ONE
In the past few years, Mojang have made strides to patch up the gaps in the world to make it more appealing to all players. Unfortunately, they all seem to nearly miss the mark. I am not saying that these Updates have been bad, in fact they have been amazing and actually brought my interest back into the game, but there is no doubt of the bias against the SSP whose digging a hole, wondering why they are still playing Vanilla when mods exist that do a better job of satisfying that hunger for Meaning.
Would an update to Survival make the game better? Probably. That's dependent on what the people enjoy about playing vanilla. Personally, I would just like my world to feel more interesting, a reason to go out, be afraid of going out into the darkness, not annoyed that I have to go around a bunch of giant trees. There needs to be a reason for this stuff to exist other than they are there. Items need to be rarer, ores need to be scarcer, enchantments need to feel impactful, getting Netherrite gear should not be an Auto-Win.
I like having Power, but going from weak to God in a matter of moments is not fun for me. I want to feel that progress of growing stronger, I want to decorate my halls with the struggles of my expeditions, I want to show off that One-of-a-Kind sword that spawns an army of skeletons for my defense.
One day we may have that Update. I don't have high hopes that it will satisfy all the requirements to make Surviving any more interesting after seeing how lackluster the 1.0 Adventure Update was.
Until next time, Happy Crafting!
Speaking of commonness and rarity, that is what we will be talking about today as we continue our expedition into the most recent Updates of our favorite game. With Caves and Cliffs halfway here and the other part months out, now might be a good time to explain a often not-discussed topic regarding the issues of the game that isn't just ripping on terrain and combat. While those two things make a massive break in how the game feels, the problem becomes pale in the greater scheme of things when it comes to how terrible it feels to play and even explore.
And that is the loot, the treasure, the amazing gear that doesn't feel like much when you realize just how worthless it really is especially if you're an avid RPG fan. Why this isn't brought up more might be due to the modern nature of the community whom spend most of their time either playing mod packs that create an insane amount of items that it might as well feel infinite or creative where you have unlimited blocks.
For the survival player, it just feels pointless. Let us begin!
We are all the Same
There is no doubt to how many items there are in the game. Different blocks, contraptions, the only thing that's limited are the number of items that are non-renewable with almost nothing that can't be farmed. In fact, here's a current list of things that you can't get an infinite of in the game as far as I am aware:
- Ancient Debris
- Ores (raw form, not ingots)
- Deepslate
- Dead bush
- Spawner
- Infested blocks
- Unenchanted Diamond armor
Take into account what isn't listed and you begin to understand the plight of the player that goes out in search of Adventure, a reason to Survive, something to show how amazing you are at the game. Sure there's End Crystals and Nether Stars, but they don't quite have the same impact as a finding a Golden Apple in Alpha. With the introduction of Pointed Dripstone, lava now joins the ranks of renewable resources given you have a cauldron and some time thereby making obsidian drop extremely in value as a result.
But, there's more to the story than the most recognizable and unique item in all of the game. In fact, the God Apple is a shell of its former glory, finding itself nerfed after nerf after nerf to becoming more of an Uncommon item than a Mythic that it once was. Many of the items you know today were once very scarce and rare if you take away that Worlds use to be infinite in size so technically there were infinite items.
However, for the sake of argument and traditionally keeping to the problem of you were bound to one Spawn location instead of having a moving one as well as /gameRule keepInventory True.
Anyway, let's compare the number of non-renewable items of the game now to the number of renewable items that you could find in old versions of the game, specifically Alpha.
- Water
- Trees
- Stone
- Cobblestone
- Bacon
- Reed (sugarcane)
- Seeds / Wheat / Bread
- Leather
- Arrow
- Feather
- String / Fishing rod
- Green / Gold Music Disc (could be dropped from creeper killed by a skeleton)
So, what seems to be missing from this list? Quite a few items that you may not have realized. While dirt is not on here, you don't see any of the ores or...wait, where are the flowers? Saddles? Event he Golden Apple as I mentioned earlier was but a very rare item that had a crafting recipe attached to it, only obtainable if you killed Notch on Survival Multiplayer. Ignoring this, you notice that quite a few items were rare, if not Mythic to some extent.
One item that used to be regarded even more highly than Gold Apples were actually Slime Balls for whatever reason. I was not around when that was a thing yet it was the primitive form of Emeralds that we have which, by the way, don't serve any purpose given economy plugins exist. Think about it, when you lost a red or yellow flower, it was gone forever. You couldn't grow it back and the only way to get more was to run out to find some. Compare that to bone farms that can generate infinite flowers as well as finding them in chests.
Over the years, Mojang have sought to make the game more Adventurous by allowing these items to be far more common than they should be. As a result, the general rarity of items in the game does not even go above Rare where you will find Elytras (given that have their own problem of devaluing in phantoms can make them repaired even if it's only a limited number of times), mob heads and Netherrite. With 1.18 nearby introducing a taller mountain and deeper caves alongside ore generation changes, finding that Diamond doesn't mean much anymore.
What does this mean for the average Minecrafter? That nothing they do makes a lasting impact, there is no proof of their dedication to the game unless it's a giant structure or a collection of everything they could possibly grab that isn't nailed down. Most of the items can be found in chests, traded, or even fished up making it almost pointless to waste time on anything that isn't a Meta gameplay loop of spawning in, get the pearls, find the stronghold, win, and then proceed to wander around for the next 99 hours doing random things.
Speaking of devaluing and nerfing, we are not even done when it comes to the number of items in the game that are far beyond obsolescence that removing them would make an already massive problem into an irreparable one for the survival community, at least what's left of it.
Tell me, when was the last time you saw a Jungle Temple?
Island of Misfit Toys
Once upon a time, in a Version far, far away, Dungeons used to be the granddaddy structure you were searching for as it contained the sacred treasures of the Era. Gold Music Discs, green music discs, saddles, and the magical Golden Apple that had the ability to heal you to full health. Since then, a lot of these features have become redundant, useless, a waste of space in the grand scheme of the game. Their addition puts a strain on the system as they take slots up better used for newer, better, flashier blocks and items.
Among these is the top of the pile: Minecart with Furnace, easily one of the worst items you could craft now with the existence of Horses, Elytras, powered rails, even fishing or a boat are impressively faster than the slow chug of an vehicle whose original purpose was to bring stuff up when you were deep, deep in the mines. Alongside this are Chest Minecarts since you have shulker boxes and rucksacks, coal since charcoal is 200-400% more efficient as you can use it for a better furnace and infinite fuel source, diorite, granite, andesite, dungeons, Mansions, Jungle Temples, Mushroom Stew, Leather Armor, Polar Bears and a number of other items.
As the game grows older and new features are added, there will always be a struggle to make sure things stay relevant and the power creep remains in check. In the latter part, the addition of Netherrite has become the equivalent of God Mode when it comes to PvP effectively making it a slap fight with all the previous problems mentioned earlier with golden apples being farm-able as easily as a mob grinder.
Minecraft Survival is less surviving and more a Creative Mode with people bothering you. There are so many possibilities that are buried because the newer stuff is shinier. It's less a game of Exploration and more of a mental test how long you can outlast boredom of a world devoid of meaning. A veteran player does not feel or seem unique among the tens of thousands who achieve these feats easily every day. If we completely ignore terrain, this is the single biggest issue of why I find the modern version of the game unexciting. It doesn't spark Joy, it makes me physically exhausted. I am reminded of the grind of when I went on to collect every Champion in League of Legends.
The game just is not fun from a Survival perspective even if we made Amplified, Hardcore, or Large Biome worlds. The challenge is staving off the tiredness I feel trekking through everything just to get to the End. What used to be a journey now turns into chores, ones I do not care much for.
Waiting for the ONE
In the past few years, Mojang have made strides to patch up the gaps in the world to make it more appealing to all players. Unfortunately, they all seem to nearly miss the mark. I am not saying that these Updates have been bad, in fact they have been amazing and actually brought my interest back into the game, but there is no doubt of the bias against the SSP whose digging a hole, wondering why they are still playing Vanilla when mods exist that do a better job of satisfying that hunger for Meaning.
Would an update to Survival make the game better? Probably. That's dependent on what the people enjoy about playing vanilla. Personally, I would just like my world to feel more interesting, a reason to go out, be afraid of going out into the darkness, not annoyed that I have to go around a bunch of giant trees. There needs to be a reason for this stuff to exist other than they are there. Items need to be rarer, ores need to be scarcer, enchantments need to feel impactful, getting Netherrite gear should not be an Auto-Win.
I like having Power, but going from weak to God in a matter of moments is not fun for me. I want to feel that progress of growing stronger, I want to decorate my halls with the struggles of my expeditions, I want to show off that One-of-a-Kind sword that spawns an army of skeletons for my defense.
One day we may have that Update. I don't have high hopes that it will satisfy all the requirements to make Surviving any more interesting after seeing how lackluster the 1.0 Adventure Update was.
Until next time, Happy Crafting!
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I enjoyed reading this blog. It is all too relatable. +2