5 ms·

Call me a hater but I think Microsoft ruined Minecraft. The "secret knowledge" that the author describes is no longer a thing. The game shows you all the recipe

by cedws 2y ago

Call me a hater but I think Microsoft ruined Minecraft. The "secret knowledge" that the author describes is no longer a thing. The game shows you all the recipes. There are way too many blocks now so there's not as much need for creativity in building. Simplicity made Minecraft a true sandbox. There was no real objective, just blocks and ways to arrange them. Now there's always an objective to get the next magic/powerful item.

amiantos 2y ago
It is interesting that despite the overwhelming success of Minecraft, Microsoft/the team building it still felt that it needed to have a full tutorial system and overarching story objectives tacked on it to further encourage players to get hooked on it if the open-ended aspect of it didn't appeal.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  After you've already attracted all of your primary audience, all you have left for growth are non-primary audiences. See also: bands pivoting from niche to mass market genres
vbezhenar 2y ago
I never understood the appeal of having game knowledge on a separate websites. I can understand this situation happening because of lack of development resources. Like - yeah, it's easier to just let the community to write the documentation and concentrate on the game, if you're small company. But why would it appeal to the actual players? It's not really secret knowledge, there are wiki websites with all the recipes.
- Auracle 2y ago
  You know, for younger kids I can see the appeal. They might not have a device they can easily use to go on the internet, so you’d be able to do things your friends can’t and vice versa. I’ve long mulled on the idea of some kind of game where large aspects of it are randomized/generated so that no two installations would have the same stuff, recipes, whatever. I think that’d be neat and get rid of the website issue.
  - jbmny 2y ago
    Reminds me of the fatalities in Mortal Kombat growing up. All the regular moves were in the manual, but IIRC the fatalities were not. It was a form of secret knowledge, and it was really cool if you knew one. Granted, this was right before the Internet-connected home computer became ubiquitous.
    - Kye 2y ago
      GameFAQs very quickly democratized game knowledge the way Wikipedia did for general knowledge a handful of years later. I learned the infinite 1up stair trick in Mario[0] from a sibling before that, but had the most fun with stuff I could look up. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQCSEcyGQH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQCSEcyGQH4
  - iamwil 2y ago
    Those are rouge-likes. They still have wikis. See Spleunky and Hades.
    - squeaky-clean 2y ago
      I've had the same idea as them, they mean something beyond a rogue like. Like here Hades has a wiki list of all "Keepsake" items and their bonuses and abilities [0]. So you can always know the Old Spiked Collar always gives 25/38/50 HP bonus. What if instead of 25 at the first tier, it was a random range from 15-35. What if there was a chance it gave a damage boost instead? Or resistance against physical damage. Or it gave lightning a 30% bonus, or.... Basically everything shuffled and procedurally generated to the degree that 2 players discussing the game would barely have an overlapping experience aside from the general genre being the same. It would be really hard to make it so every playthrough has some semblance of balance though, and for things to narratively make sense, e.g. Iron items should always be stronger than copper items etc. [0] https://hades.fandom.com/wiki/Keepsakes#List_of_keepsakes https://hades.fandom.com/wiki/Keepsakes#List_of_keepsakes
      - rcxdude 2y ago
- throwuxiytayq 2y ago
  It's bad design and it was annoying already back when Minecraft was still young. The article author gets this hilariously wrong. He claims that he is "obsessed" with Minecraft, but later admits that they haven't played the game much. I knew that before I even got to that paragraph...
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    I think maybe the author means they are obsessed with something about Minecraft, the success story, the cultural impact, something like that. Not necessarily obsessed with playing it
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- fbdab103 2y ago
  Especially when the goto gaming wiki site host is straight-up internet cancer.
  - jcotton42 2y ago
    https://minecraft.wiki/ https://minecraft.wiki/ replaced the fandom wiki some time ago.
- itronitron 2y ago
  The appeal of having it on a wiki is that you can browse to related items and topics that can inform how you play the game. Serendipitous discovery of information, something the internet used to enable.
- Medox 2y ago
  How else would you find the knowledge if not through separate websites, when using the Web Displays Mod [1] in game? /s [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK-m2dH4LEw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK-m2dH4LEw
- hluska 2y ago
  I like it because you don’t have to consult those resources. If you like, you can figure out the game completely as you go.
- exitb 2y ago
  You know how Nintendo released Pokémon Red and Blue? The final goal of the game was to catch all the Pokémon, but depending on which version you’ve bought, some of them were missing. The only way to actually collect all was to trade with other players, which created a community around the game. Similarly with Minecraft, an online community got built around these wikis, figuring out stuff much beyond simple crafting recipes. We’d never get the cart boosters, water elevator or optimal mining techniques if everyone just played off the tutorial.
eBombzor 2y ago
The end game thing was added years before Microsoft bought them. But I agree, the simplicity is no longer there.
GaggiX 2y ago
>The "secret knowledge" that the author describes is no longer a thing. The game shows you all the recipes. It does show the recipes you have unlocked (e.g. by mining a particular one that makes them), I'm glad they did that, it's much less painful for a new player and for the viewers of that new player (I like watching people play a game they've never played before).
Version467 2y ago
Nah. Microsoft did a great job handling Minecraft imo. I thought they were out of their mind paying that much money for something that I didn't think had many opportunities left to grow. But now I think it was the perfect time for Persson and his team to give it to someone with the resources and the reach to make those opportunities. Yes, Microsoft changed some things about Minecraft the game, but overall they didn't touch the core gameplay loop. Instead they focused on expanding the minecraft universe with genre crossing spinoff games and cooperations that the old Mojang could've never done. And kids loved most of it. Stuff like Minecraft: Story Mode added a richness to the franchise that you could completely ignore if you wanted to, or dive into if it appealed to you. Microsoft grew Minecraft because it still had a lot of growth in it. It might clash with your nostalgia, but it evolved such that it still broadly appealed to its growing core audience. And that is and always has been children. And children still love Minecraft.
- codeulike 2y ago
  Underrated thing Microsoft have done is allow Bedrock to cross-play between Windows, IOS, Playstation, Switch and XBox
- fbdab103 2y ago
  Nah. Microsoft did a great job handling Minecraft imo. I am still peeved that my lifetime license "mysteriously" broke during Microsoft's account transitions. Trillion dollar company lacks the manpower and technical capability to handle it? Or someone cannot be arsed to maintain "freeloader" customers.
  - herbst 2y ago
    Same here. Had one of the first few thousand accounts. Since Microsoft took over: - it got hacked. Got it back but name was changed, history not perfect anymore - much later somehow lost my account due to me trying to keep my old account I guess. Whatever I wasnt noticed that my account is going to die. It just did. Microsoft support also never answered to my request getting it back - Never played Minecraft again
hoten 2y ago
Hardly anyone interacted with the crafting system via "discovery mode". Almost everyone consulted a wiki, or I guess had a friend tell you what to do. Stumbling upon how to make an axe without looking it up has got to be the least enjoyable part of Minecraft (note: not saying it's NOT enjoyable, it's just not high up on the list for most).
- grape_surgeon 2y ago
  For me, I just don't really care about needing to discover everything myself. Discovering things like that takes time. If I play a game, I want to get the maximum intended experience from it without dragging things out while being confused. Does that "ruin" the experience? I don't really care if it does
- jasonjayr 2y ago
  In the early days of NES (8-bit console) a lot of discovery about the games came from community, looking things up in various magazines, or just talking with your peers. There is value ot be had in sticking to that stance: It encourages social interaction, but more importantly for the bottom line, people are talking about your game. That Minecraft is now a multi-generation thing, there's a lot of people to talk to about it!
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- throwaway290 2y ago
  > Hardly anyone interacted with the crafting system via "discovery mode" Don't know what you mean. People use new single click automatic crafting all the time, including professional streamers on twitch. Do you enjoy brute forcing bow or fishing rod for the 100th time? Just click it to fill it in. All hail microsoft for making it easier for us. I bet next they will disable mob spawning unless it is exactly zero light level lol. Oh wait...
simonw 2y ago
Microsoft's stewardship of Minecraft has been fantastic. Simplicity has never been a key element of Minecraft - redstone circuits were added years before the acquisition. The sheer quantity of weird and delightful stuff they've added has kept Minecraft new and interesting for over a decade.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  Tbh Microsoft hasn't done anything near as impressive as the modding community. It's nice that they are still developing the Java edition so the modding community can continue though Check out the Create mod If Microsoft ever adds anything as cool as that to Minecraft, I may agree with you that they are keeping it new and interesting
  - tialaramex 2y ago
    I don't think it would ever "work" for Minecraft to attempt something like one of the big mods. Even "Better Than Wolves" which most people have been exposed to via packs with a later, richer "Better With Mods" is sort of giving the game away. Yes, the things "Better Than Wolves" did are better than what Minecraft itself delivered in that timeframe (Wolves, duh) but often what Minecraft's devs are doing is fundamental, infrastructure work. Mojang and then Microsoft make two kinds of ore, and then add a third, boring - but modders couldn't have added six hundred more kinds of ore without that. The built-in biomes are fine but they're not as radical as anything modders have done - but modders couldn't have added new biomes without that infrastructure. I think Mojang and Microsoft have been very good at sketching in new ideas, enriching the concept rather than refining all the details. They've also been good, because it's easier for a corporation, at completion. Anybody still waiting for Jaded's Agrarian Skies 2 ? How about for a meaningful end to Twilight Forest ? Modern packs tend to play the non-ending of Twilight Forest as if that's normal - gating further progress on the Magic Lamp for example, or just putting everything after the Trolls as optional - but wandering around the final castle it's obvious this just isn't finished. I play almost exclusively modded, mostly ascend-to-godhood type packs, and it's still very noticeable how different a modern pack is (based on modern Minecraft) than the 1.7 era packs we started out playing, because the base game is significantly better.
sweca 2y ago
1.8.9 is the best version. It's the calm before the storm.
- itronitron 2y ago
  Yeah, 1.9 added shields.
  - sweca 2y ago
    And that awful PvP upgrade. Although that's probably an unpopular opinion.
    - itronitron 2y ago
      I was playing a lot of UHC at the time and everyone universally hated the 1.9 update.
    - hot_gril 2y ago
      All those pvp arcade servers are either on 1.8r or used mods to undo the 1.9r changes.
bakugo 2y ago
Agreed. I could write a 10 page essay about all the subtle ways minecraft has lost a lot of its original appeal since I first played it 14 years ago, but a few people have already done it for me in video format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KqeLT-EOe0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KqeLT-EOe0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbFUK3r8GGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbFUK3r8GGU
- Bluecobra 2y ago
  I first played it when SMP was released and server side inventory was not a thing yet. It was pure anarchy and so much fun.
crngefest 2y ago
Just play an old version like 1.12 - IMO it’s the version that has most of the quality of life stuff like elytra but not too many new blocks

by cedws 2y ago

amiantos 2y ago

It is interesting that despite the overwhelming success of Minecraft, Microsoft/the team building it still felt that it needed to have a full tutorial system and overarching story objectives tacked on it to further encourage players to get hooked on it if the open-ended aspect of it didn't appeal.

ethbr1 2y ago
After you've already attracted all of your primary audience, all you have left for growth are non-primary audiences. See also: bands pivoting from niche to mass market genres

vbezhenar 2y ago

I never understood the appeal of having game knowledge on a separate websites. I can understand this situation happening because of lack of development resources. Like - yeah, it's easier to just let the community to write the documentation and concentrate on the game, if you're small company. But why would it appeal to the actual players? It's not really secret knowledge, there are wiki websites with all the recipes.

Auracle 2y ago
You know, for younger kids I can see the appeal. They might not have a device they can easily use to go on the internet, so you’d be able to do things your friends can’t and vice versa. I’ve long mulled on the idea of some kind of game where large aspects of it are randomized/generated so that no two installations would have the same stuff, recipes, whatever. I think that’d be neat and get rid of the website issue.
- jbmny 2y ago
  Reminds me of the fatalities in Mortal Kombat growing up. All the regular moves were in the manual, but IIRC the fatalities were not. It was a form of secret knowledge, and it was really cool if you knew one. Granted, this was right before the Internet-connected home computer became ubiquitous.
  - Kye 2y ago
    GameFAQs very quickly democratized game knowledge the way Wikipedia did for general knowledge a handful of years later. I learned the infinite 1up stair trick in Mario[0] from a sibling before that, but had the most fun with stuff I could look up. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQCSEcyGQH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQCSEcyGQH4
- iamwil 2y ago
  Those are rouge-likes. They still have wikis. See Spleunky and Hades.
  - squeaky-clean 2y ago
    I've had the same idea as them, they mean something beyond a rogue like. Like here Hades has a wiki list of all "Keepsake" items and their bonuses and abilities [0]. So you can always know the Old Spiked Collar always gives 25/38/50 HP bonus. What if instead of 25 at the first tier, it was a random range from 15-35. What if there was a chance it gave a damage boost instead? Or resistance against physical damage. Or it gave lightning a 30% bonus, or.... Basically everything shuffled and procedurally generated to the degree that 2 players discussing the game would barely have an overlapping experience aside from the general genre being the same. It would be really hard to make it so every playthrough has some semblance of balance though, and for things to narratively make sense, e.g. Iron items should always be stronger than copper items etc. [0] https://hades.fandom.com/wiki/Keepsakes#List_of_keepsakes https://hades.fandom.com/wiki/Keepsakes#List_of_keepsakes
    - rcxdude 2y ago
throwuxiytayq 2y ago
It's bad design and it was annoying already back when Minecraft was still young. The article author gets this hilariously wrong. He claims that he is "obsessed" with Minecraft, but later admits that they haven't played the game much. I knew that before I even got to that paragraph...
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  I think maybe the author means they are obsessed with something about Minecraft, the success story, the cultural impact, something like that. Not necessarily obsessed with playing it
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
fbdab103 2y ago
Especially when the goto gaming wiki site host is straight-up internet cancer.
- jcotton42 2y ago
  https://minecraft.wiki/ https://minecraft.wiki/ replaced the fandom wiki some time ago.
itronitron 2y ago
The appeal of having it on a wiki is that you can browse to related items and topics that can inform how you play the game. Serendipitous discovery of information, something the internet used to enable.
Medox 2y ago
How else would you find the knowledge if not through separate websites, when using the Web Displays Mod [1] in game? /s [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK-m2dH4LEw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK-m2dH4LEw
hluska 2y ago
I like it because you don’t have to consult those resources. If you like, you can figure out the game completely as you go.
exitb 2y ago
You know how Nintendo released Pokémon Red and Blue? The final goal of the game was to catch all the Pokémon, but depending on which version you’ve bought, some of them were missing. The only way to actually collect all was to trade with other players, which created a community around the game. Similarly with Minecraft, an online community got built around these wikis, figuring out stuff much beyond simple crafting recipes. We’d never get the cart boosters, water elevator or optimal mining techniques if everyone just played off the tutorial.

eBombzor 2y ago

The end game thing was added years before Microsoft bought them. But I agree, the simplicity is no longer there.

GaggiX 2y ago

>The "secret knowledge" that the author describes is no longer a thing. The game shows you all the recipes. It does show the recipes you have unlocked (e.g. by mining a particular one that makes them), I'm glad they did that, it's much less painful for a new player and for the viewers of that new player (I like watching people play a game they've never played before).

Version467 2y ago

Nah. Microsoft did a great job handling Minecraft imo. I thought they were out of their mind paying that much money for something that I didn't think had many opportunities left to grow. But now I think it was the perfect time for Persson and his team to give it to someone with the resources and the reach to make those opportunities. Yes, Microsoft changed some things about Minecraft the game, but overall they didn't touch the core gameplay loop. Instead they focused on expanding the minecraft universe with genre crossing spinoff games and cooperations that the old Mojang could've never done. And kids loved most of it. Stuff like Minecraft: Story Mode added a richness to the franchise that you could completely ignore if you wanted to, or dive into if it appealed to you. Microsoft grew Minecraft because it still had a lot of growth in it. It might clash with your nostalgia, but it evolved such that it still broadly appealed to its growing core audience. And that is and always has been children. And children still love Minecraft.

codeulike 2y ago
Underrated thing Microsoft have done is allow Bedrock to cross-play between Windows, IOS, Playstation, Switch and XBox
fbdab103 2y ago
Nah. Microsoft did a great job handling Minecraft imo. I am still peeved that my lifetime license "mysteriously" broke during Microsoft's account transitions. Trillion dollar company lacks the manpower and technical capability to handle it? Or someone cannot be arsed to maintain "freeloader" customers.
- herbst 2y ago
  Same here. Had one of the first few thousand accounts. Since Microsoft took over: - it got hacked. Got it back but name was changed, history not perfect anymore - much later somehow lost my account due to me trying to keep my old account I guess. Whatever I wasnt noticed that my account is going to die. It just did. Microsoft support also never answered to my request getting it back - Never played Minecraft again

hoten 2y ago

Hardly anyone interacted with the crafting system via "discovery mode". Almost everyone consulted a wiki, or I guess had a friend tell you what to do. Stumbling upon how to make an axe without looking it up has got to be the least enjoyable part of Minecraft (note: not saying it's NOT enjoyable, it's just not high up on the list for most).

grape_surgeon 2y ago
For me, I just don't really care about needing to discover everything myself. Discovering things like that takes time. If I play a game, I want to get the maximum intended experience from it without dragging things out while being confused. Does that "ruin" the experience? I don't really care if it does
jasonjayr 2y ago
In the early days of NES (8-bit console) a lot of discovery about the games came from community, looking things up in various magazines, or just talking with your peers. There is value ot be had in sticking to that stance: It encourages social interaction, but more importantly for the bottom line, people are talking about your game. That Minecraft is now a multi-generation thing, there's a lot of people to talk to about it!
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
throwaway290 2y ago
> Hardly anyone interacted with the crafting system via "discovery mode" Don't know what you mean. People use new single click automatic crafting all the time, including professional streamers on twitch. Do you enjoy brute forcing bow or fishing rod for the 100th time? Just click it to fill it in. All hail microsoft for making it easier for us. I bet next they will disable mob spawning unless it is exactly zero light level lol. Oh wait...

simonw 2y ago

Microsoft's stewardship of Minecraft has been fantastic. Simplicity has never been a key element of Minecraft - redstone circuits were added years before the acquisition. The sheer quantity of weird and delightful stuff they've added has kept Minecraft new and interesting for over a decade.

bluefirebrand 2y ago
Tbh Microsoft hasn't done anything near as impressive as the modding community. It's nice that they are still developing the Java edition so the modding community can continue though Check out the Create mod If Microsoft ever adds anything as cool as that to Minecraft, I may agree with you that they are keeping it new and interesting
- tialaramex 2y ago
  I don't think it would ever "work" for Minecraft to attempt something like one of the big mods. Even "Better Than Wolves" which most people have been exposed to via packs with a later, richer "Better With Mods" is sort of giving the game away. Yes, the things "Better Than Wolves" did are better than what Minecraft itself delivered in that timeframe (Wolves, duh) but often what Minecraft's devs are doing is fundamental, infrastructure work. Mojang and then Microsoft make two kinds of ore, and then add a third, boring - but modders couldn't have added six hundred more kinds of ore without that. The built-in biomes are fine but they're not as radical as anything modders have done - but modders couldn't have added new biomes without that infrastructure. I think Mojang and Microsoft have been very good at sketching in new ideas, enriching the concept rather than refining all the details. They've also been good, because it's easier for a corporation, at completion. Anybody still waiting for Jaded's Agrarian Skies 2 ? How about for a meaningful end to Twilight Forest ? Modern packs tend to play the non-ending of Twilight Forest as if that's normal - gating further progress on the Magic Lamp for example, or just putting everything after the Trolls as optional - but wandering around the final castle it's obvious this just isn't finished. I play almost exclusively modded, mostly ascend-to-godhood type packs, and it's still very noticeable how different a modern pack is (based on modern Minecraft) than the 1.7 era packs we started out playing, because the base game is significantly better.

sweca 2y ago

1.8.9 is the best version. It's the calm before the storm.

itronitron 2y ago
Yeah, 1.9 added shields.
- sweca 2y ago
  And that awful PvP upgrade. Although that's probably an unpopular opinion.
  - itronitron 2y ago
    I was playing a lot of UHC at the time and everyone universally hated the 1.9 update.
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    All those pvp arcade servers are either on 1.8r or used mods to undo the 1.9r changes.

bakugo 2y ago

Agreed. I could write a 10 page essay about all the subtle ways minecraft has lost a lot of its original appeal since I first played it 14 years ago, but a few people have already done it for me in video format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KqeLT-EOe0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KqeLT-EOe0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbFUK3r8GGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbFUK3r8GGU

Bluecobra 2y ago
I first played it when SMP was released and server side inventory was not a thing yet. It was pure anarchy and so much fun.

crngefest 2y ago

Just play an old version like 1.12 - IMO it’s the version that has most of the quality of life stuff like elytra but not too many new blocks