X's thoughts on Minecraft's Improvement

[Squidden]

X (Davidr64yt as you may know him on Youtube) has blogged about the flaws of Minecraft and how it can be improved. Bear in mind, this is a huge post, so if you don't like walls of text or you are one of those "TL;DR" guys, turn back now. Here is the link:

X's Thoughts [http://davidr64.tumblr.com/post/4670101570/whats-wrong-with-minecraft-and-how-to-fix-it]


For the most part, I agree with him. I think most of these things can really help. I have noticed Minecraft become stale to me because after I finished building my first shelter, mine, observatory and portal to the Nether, nothing else could be done. There was no need to explore because, since the world is randomly generated, I knew I would not find anything other than possibly a dungeon with some bread and string inside of it or another generic mountain.

There should be some changes to help make the adventuring aspect of the game fresh, like X suggests in the post. If you are a fan of Minecraft, I strongly encourage you to read this post.

 

[viranimus]

I tried reading it all but it was words words words. So I skimmed it .. fairly thoroughly but skimmed none the less. The guy is right, Minecraft is a bit lacking. The combat needs a lot of expansion. I really cant argue there.

However, I disagree with the notion that the building end is good enough, because honestly it is not. The crafting end needs prolly about double the amount of recipes already in game. There needs to be things like furniture, Better tools to do large scale excavations and constructions (which he did point to) and many others.

Another thing is that it needs more environmental interactivity. What is the point of building this big world filled with all sorts of castles, temples, roller coasters, floating cities, ect if your really the only person its there for? There needs to be NPCs. NPCs will allow for more RPG elements to be introduced and give you a reason to go stumbling out into the darkness instead of just staying hidden in your impenetrable fortress and sleeping the night away.

Another major problem with MC is Java. I do understand it makes more sense to code a project for all OS instead of just one. However that is only really applicable to smaller projects. Minecraft can get exceedingly huge. With such it can be very buggy and laggy the larger your world goes and that is pretty much the limitations of java talking to you there.

As much as I hate to say this, the best thing for Notch to do right now is to sell minecraft to a larger studio that can handle it. The reason being is there are already larger studios poised to compete with MC. Games like craft world and fortress craft have the developmental clout to outpace what Notch's team will be able to do and will eventually overtake minecraft by offering the same sort of niche gameplay then outpace them in additions to the model. Seriously, its been more than 3 weeks and patch 1.5 plans to offer weather, achievements, zombie pigmen via lightning strikes and powered rails. All good additions, but weather should have already been implemented, powered rails should have been added at the same time as regular rails (Boosters? Seriously?). Now I love MC and give credit to the dev team, but really a dev team of 20 is going to be able to outpace a dev team of 5-10.

Anyway, back to the point, yes the article presents some logical points. Minecraft despite how great it is.. needs a lot more, and if something doesnt change radically about it soon, It feels like it will fall to obscurity.

 

[Veylon]

It looks like what the wall of text boils down to is this: Minecraft should be an RPG. He wants another level of progression with dark monsters, but the problem is that soon one would kill them, get the dark dust, and he'd be back to urging another level yet. And he advocates a magic mod.

I'm not saying he's wrong, but his solutions don't address the underlying problem. At some point, you've seen and done everything. This is true of Minecraft, as it is true of any other game. More content delays staleness, but it doesn't eliminate it.

My feeling is that it needs the expertise of Dwarf Fortress, where an entire world of civilizations, legends, NPC's and creatures is generated out of the void. This, too, can grow stale; once one's obtained a full suit of adamantine and slain every monster, king, and demon on the planet, there's little left to do.

Eventually, Minecraft will fall by the wayside. But before it does, it will spawn a legion of offshoots that interpret it's lessons in their own myriad ways. So it's okay.