Minecraft - Why so unpopular on here?

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Last properly played when it was still Mojang and Notch was doing his blog. There were a bunch of us from a wow guild and had a number of mods running which made it more interesting. I'd say , as others have, that i'm pretty much played out on it now.
 
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I still occasionally see a good modpack and pick it up for a week or so a couple of times a year... the game fundamentals are sound but unless you're a creative builder once you've automated everything you can in survival it just fizzles out quite quickly.
 
Soldato
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I'm not sure if it's unpopular, more that the player base here have "completed" it, in so much as you can complete it anyway.

I still host a server for anyone here to play. Mostly vanilla (just a couple anti grief mods), whitelist is on. Sorta carrying on the old Linktart life (the old server that was popular here a few years ago)
 
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I've dabbled a bit with Minecraft and had some fun, but I've always thought it needed more game systems because every session just becomes the same thing over and over.

They could add a quest system and expand the village/NPC interaction with text-based dialogue. So for example; doing quests for a village head, anything from helping them remove a monster spawner beneath the village, getting them material to build new houses for their growing population, or finding particular rare items they want for the village. You could even expand the like/dislike system with a sort of good/evil system that determines the direction villagers will go, so they could join up with the pillagers or something or become their enemies. You could have a standing based on how good/evil you are and depending on which could mean certain enemies come after you etc.

Have a "stuff to do" menu that gives you targets and encourages purpose for exploration rather than whimsically wandering around.
Improve UI and map interface.
Add benefits/buffs to advanced cooked meals (like a lesser alchemy) with many ingredients so that eggs, cakes, soups, meals have a purpose.
Breeding new variants of animals/monsters with special abilities like FF7 chocobo breeding or something.
Expand the mobs and give them different purposes so that they don't just want to kill you. Like the Witch, maybe she wants to steal your max health for a length of time, or she curses you which means you've got to do evil things to villagers and have to goto the Nether to find a cure.
Or add rare Vampires to the game world that could potentially turn you and means you have to feed from NPCs which would add to your good/evil system, also it'd mean you'd have to build a base at a certain depth from the surface to get away from the sun etc.
Mermaids that try to drag you to their underwater lairs.
Flying creatures/demons that can drag you to the Nether (would be freaking terrifying!)

There's so many little things they could do to spice it up that would change how you play. It also doesn't need to change what's already there, it could simply be a world selection option, like Creative or Survival, you would select Quest in the map generator.
 
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I've dabbled a bit with Minecraft and had some fun, but I've always thought it needed more game systems because every session just becomes the same thing over and over.

Have you ever played modded MC? As some of what you suggest sounds very close to a number of mods.

Off the top of my head;
They could add a quest system and expand the village/NPC interaction with text-based dialogue. So for example; doing quests for a village head, anything from helping them remove a monster spawner beneath the village, getting them material to build new houses for their growing population, or finding particular rare items they want for the village. You could even expand the like/dislike system with a sort of good/evil system that determines the direction villagers will go, so they could join up with the pillagers or something or become their enemies. You could have a standing based on how good/evil you are and depending on which could mean certain enemies come after you etc./

It isn't exactly like you described but TekTopia comes close. Best way I can think to explain it is that you're a leader of a village and the idea is to build a working village. So you have to build the buildings (storage, villager houses, trading hall, sentry post, tavern, mine etc.) and assign villagers to each job (farmer, soldier, bard, miner etc). Each villager has some base stats for each role but will learn further, or a new role, by doing that role though if their stats are low they're not very good at it (so a farmer will destroy farm land when harvesting crops and a certain percentage of crops they will fail to harvest until their farming stat increases). As the village grows, you will get attacked by a spectre thing (not pillagers but can't remember what they are called) that brings other mobs with it. There's no good/evil aspect to it that I remember only a happiness stat that effects how motivated they are to work.

Have a "stuff to do" menu that gives you targets and encourages purpose for exploration rather than whimsically wandering around.

A good number of modpacks have a questbook to them which while not strictly a to-do list, some packs you have to work through the quests in order. These can be simply make a specific tool/block/machine or defeat a boss (vanilla bosses and/or mod bosses)

Improve UI and map interface.

I know there's some mods that change the UI though from my experience they're mostly cosmetic rather than function. Though for a map, JourneyMap is arguably the most popular map mod (the map is the corner of your screen and uncovers as you explore, tells you what biome you're in, allows you set waypoints etc.) though there are others too. There's also plugins things like Dynmap that allow you browse the map in your browser.

Add benefits/buffs to advanced cooked meals (like a lesser alchemy) with many ingredients so that eggs, cakes, soups, meals have a purpose.

Sounds like PamsHarvestCraft and the Nutrition! mod. Pams adds about 100 different ingredients (tomato, chilli, cucumber, lettuce, corn, blackberry, strawberry etc.) that you can combine to make better foods (ploughman's lunch, tacos etc.) Combine that with Nutrition! which keeps track of your Grain, Protein, Dairy, Fruit and Vegatable which if you let some of them get too low you start getting de-buffs (hunger, mining fatigue etc.) but keep them all high and you get buffs (Strength, resistance etc.)

Breeding new variants of animals/monsters with special abilities like FF7 chocobo breeding or something.
Expand the mobs and give them different purposes so that they don't just want to kill you. Like the Witch, maybe she wants to steal your max health for a length of time, or she curses you which means you've got to do evil things to villagers and have to goto the Nether to find a cure.
Or add rare Vampires to the game world that could potentially turn you and means you have to feed from NPCs which would add to your good/evil system, also it'd mean you'd have to build a base at a certain depth from the surface to get away from the sun etc.
Mermaids that try to drag you to their underwater lairs.
Flying creatures/demons that can drag you to the Nether (would be freaking terrifying!)

These I'm not so sure on, there are plenty of mods that add mobs, like Sea Sirens, though none that I know of that change their purpose like you're suggesting. I tend to stick to more of the tech mods though so there might be mods that do this as they would feature best in the more rpg/questing style packs.
 
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There are some pretty advanced mods out there for it that i think a 10 year old would struggle with. Minecraft is a solid way to kill some time regardless of age if you have a bit of imagination and some mods.
 
Soldato
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How's it for a 10 year old?
I would suggest it’s predominantly aimed at children but so is Fortnite and I play that on occasion. Best thing to do is just to enjoy what you play, it’s unlikely you’ll get like minded people on here.
 
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I have played way more than my fair share over the years, but almost exclusively modded. I find the base game pretty lacking, the fun for me comes from automation and logistics in much the same way as say Satisfactory. With the interactions between some of the great tech based mods in the larger mod packs you can really dive deep down the rabbit hole just to get one component you need.

I understand that isn't everyone's cup of tea but I think there are almost two games people are talking about here, vanilla Minecraft (as I said, personally don't have much interest in it) and modded Minecraft, where depending on what you're looking to do every new pack can be a totally different game built on the same familiar core.

Having had computer issues running the larger packs I had moved on, but just recently I've jumped in again with the 'All the mods 6' pack and it's easily caught my attention again. I imagine it'll last me a month or so overall before I start to get bored, which is fine for me.
 
Soldato
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I have played way more than my fair share over the years, but almost exclusively modded. I find the base game pretty lacking, the fun for me comes from automation and logistics in much the same way as say Satisfactory. With the interactions between some of the great tech based mods in the larger mod packs you can really dive deep down the rabbit hole just to get one component you need.

I understand that isn't everyone's cup of tea but I think there are almost two games people are talking about here, vanilla Minecraft (as I said, personally don't have much interest in it) and modded Minecraft, where depending on what you're looking to do every new pack can be a totally different game built on the same familiar core.

Having had computer issues running the larger packs I had moved on, but just recently I've jumped in again with the 'All the mods 6' pack and it's easily caught my attention again. I imagine it'll last me a month or so overall before I start to get bored, which is fine for me.

I've got that pack, haven't played on it though as I wanted to jump into the online server on here that I played a year or so ago, I've enjoyed just digging, creating a really really long railway to ship iron from a nearby iron farm then looking at building my own, the automation in the "vanilla" game seems to be quite in debt, there is a lot to learn it seems.

Where are you playing with All the mods 6 pack?
 
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...the automation in the "vanilla" game seems to be quite in debt, there is a lot to learn it seems.
True, it always amazes me the stuff people achieve in automating vanilla. Very impressive and usually requires a good understanding of the way the game code works (that I don't have).

Where are you playing with All the mods 6 pack?

I've only been playing single player at the moment. Don't get the time that I'd like to to spend gaming these days so if I was on a server joining maybe once a week I think I'd basically be playing solo anyway.
 
Soldato
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True, it always amazes me the stuff people achieve in automating vanilla. Very impressive and usually requires a good understanding of the way the game code works (that I don't have).



I've only been playing single player at the moment. Don't get the time that I'd like to to spend gaming these days so if I was on a server joining maybe once a week I think I'd basically be playing solo anyway.

I pretty much play solo but on a server, I think it's better because you've got other people's creations that kind of make the map feel a bit more cosy.
 
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I pretty much play solo but on a server, I think it's better because you've got other people's creations that kind of make the map feel a bit more cosy.

Yeah I'd ideally like to be on a server, especially as some things require real life days worth of resources collected. Are you planning on playing ATM online somewhere?
 
Soldato
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Have you ever played modded MC? As some of what you suggest sounds very close to a number of mods.

Off the top of my head;

TekTopia
JourneyMap
PamsHarvestCraft and the Nutrition! mod.
Thanks for the recommendations Greboth.
I have tried a few mods in the past, mostly small things like backpacks, death compass and controller support (which worked surprisingly well.) I tried looking for larger mods but it seemed to change the vanilla game too much, though tbh I didn't look that much.

JourneyMap looks awesome and I'll 100% be using it from now on.
 
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My son plays it but I wouldn't describe it as a game just for kids, I think it's more that a 'sandbox' type experience probably appeals a lot to that generation, and it's quite forgiving in Creative mode (compare to traditional games where a child could get stuck on a certain part of a game). Some of the things he's created are quite impressive, and it's an interesting insight into his thought processes (like how he lays out the rooms in a house for different family members, what sort of animals he keeps etc).

I don't play it because it looks a bit overwhelming to me, all the different blocks and items etc. The sort of thing I could see myself trying once and then never touching again as with many sandboxes.
 
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