ive been playing this game since 2011 when i was in middle school and im still coming back to it. im sinking hours into it after work while my puppy sleeps next to my desk and my gf is working evening shift. its such a cozy game and reminds me of when i spent all day after school playing MC and other games w friends. its not just nostalgia tho, its just such a cute game that can be whatever the player wants. after all this time, i still derive so much joy from exploring a new world, building a sprawling estate, spelunking, and even just mining. even tho MC doesnt track ur hours played, im certain its my most played game
I used to not get Minecraft. Like, I had no issues with it, completely respected people enjoying it and got its cultural impact, but i was puzzled at what was there to keep people engaged.
Then I had a kid, and it clicked for me: young people get into it because it fits the way young people engage in play. Young people do free form play, they act out scenarios, they like having a lot of things in the sandbox not because it’s a goal or because the game will give your a Game Completed screen for getting them, but because it gives them a lot to act out with. It made me realize that in a lot of ways what we had as “cut your teeth” games when I was young weren’t reflections of innate play or core gaming, but were more due to technological limitations and contexts of early games.
Of course, but he basically just ripped off other projects (dwarf fortress, infiniminer) and coded poorly, and a great deal of his work has been gutted and replaced over the years.
First person dwarf fortress or dungeon keeper-like dwarf fortress sounds like it would be awesome.
Also more awesome would be a dwarf fortress AI engine that plays the game for you but allows you to make the changes you think would be more interesting (like maybe giving you the chance to decide layout beforehand if you so wished).
It's a lot more than just a regular sandbox for me. I started playing it very early on, but I was in high school and had played plenty of other games my entire life. The thing that makes MC special (on PC at least) is that it can become so much more than the base game. It creates a foundation, but there are so many mods to change things up. I also loved making Redstone things. The largest being a large 8-segment display of a clock with something like 32 bits for the time and 1-second precision. It's where I learned how to do electrical engineering and logic gates, even though I was already interested in programming.
With the modding community, it also promoted adding things you think the game needed, and people supported each other. For example I made an anvil mod to repair items, which got fairly popular and is now pretty much exactly how the anvil works in vanilla, except with custom assets which was a lot harder to add back then. The game was whatever you wanted it to be, not just what the developers created.
Create is mandatory for me, and many of the addon mods like the one for hooking up Create to RF networks are nice.
If you like coding, ComputerCraft is awesome.
There are lots of tech mods that come and go, like EnderIO I think recently got updated which is nice. Mekanism is very ubiquitous as a tech mod with all the necessary parts to play through.
Hex is a really interesting "programming" mod. It lets you make wands and create spells by combining different symbols together, with a kind of programming logic to it that allows you to get arbitrarily complex. I haven't had much chance to play with it but I've seen people make spells that dig out quarries, build geometric shapes, duplicate builds, etc.
To me, the thing that's really fun is just having reasons to build an expansive base. In vanilla, all you really need in your base is an enchanting room, crafting tables, furnaces, and maybe a couple farms. In modded you make a:
Tree farm
Quarry
Power generation (often more than 1 build because you make the fuel with one farm then consume it in another)
Mob grinder
Tool crafting hub (For mods like Tinker's Construct or Tetra)
Transport hub (Where all your Create trains meet, which really would be multiple different train stations)
Inventory hub (for mods like Applied Energistics or Refined Storage)
Etc. etc. since many mods may be best played by having a separate area in your world for their machines or setups.
I've been occasionally dipping into Minecraft since 2011 and it's the exploration that keeps me coming back. Despite essentially just being randomly generated noise, I find Minecraft's landscapes really pretty, especially with a nice shader installed and it's always a great feeling when you crest a hill to discover a unique canyon or valley on the other side.
I started a new world in September after not playing the game for at least a year and to keep exploration more interesting and fresh this time around I installed Alex's Mobs, Aquaculture, Exotic Birds and mods that add every losing mob vote mob as well as the mobs from Minecraft Earth to make the world feel more alive. The way Alex's Mobs distributes appropriate animal species to each biome makes a huge difference in immersion, even if I have some issues with some of its more unbalanced monster mobs.
I also installed a couple of mods that added more randomly generated structures and dungeons though I basically had to go in and reduce the rates in which they spawned when it felt like the same graveyard got generated multiple times in one square kilometer. If anyone has more suggestions for more dungeon/ruin/structure mods that aren't too crazy, I'd be happy to hear them
The only regret I have with my current world is that I discovered a mod that changes world generation into continents and islands separated by water as opposed to Minecraft's usual endlessly stretching patchy landmass when I had already played the world for over a month
a mod that changes world generation into continents and islands separated by water as opposed to Minecraft's usual endlessly stretching patchy landmass
What mod is that? I would absolutely love to map out different continents and archipelagos
I tried installing it mid playthrough but you get really harsh borders where the generation changes. I guess I could go edit them in an editor but that would take hours.
I tried to get into minecraft ages ago but it wasn't easy. I had to learn that among the things you'll have to do, is craft two things that you'll then use to craft another (for example), or learning that there's lots of (gadgets? machines?) you'll be able and will need to build to make other stuff. Then night comes for the first time and you're wrecked by a monster because you have no idea what you're doing. My current save game has a long line of blocks going straight up, and then a giant landing atop it so I can just build up there instead and avoid the monsters.
I'm having trouble really sinking into the game as I'm having trouble really getting it, but I do feel like it's a great game if I can just learn how it's to be played.
Have you watched anyone else play Minecraft or played with anyone else? I feel like the game got popular because everyone was watching Minecraft let's plays on YouTube, so nobody was really going in blind. Imo Minecraft doesn't reward you much if you go in blind, there's no big surprises, it's just a bit confusinf
I enjoyed minecraft, but its not a game I feel like I want to return to. Like, I played hundreds of hours of it a decade ago in college, so I do like the game.
But my brother in law set up a server for us to play again during the pandemic, and despite all the new stuff, I just hate the feeling of doing the grind all over again, and just can't really get into it. I already spent a buncha effort building a buncha stuff, it just feels like work to do all that again. So I stick around to hang with people, but usually play other games.
It is modded. I'm just not interested in the minecraft formula anymore. I know there's plenty of unique stuff out there, and some of the automation mods did catch my interest for a few hours, but idk, the overall 'feel' of the game just gives me a big 'been there, done that' feeling. Its not really cozy for me, just tedious.
It's the best. I love pasting weird worldedit structures into things and making janky worldgen that creates biomes made out of Minefactoru reloaded pink slime blocks
I just discovered litematica this year for instance. Everything I thought would be the greatest moment of my minecraft career was just a stepping stone to a glorious future beyond imagination
I love my little server that I've been running for my friends since 2011. I keep literally every map we've ever had running on the multiverse, and it's very nostalgic to go exploring and look at what people built years ago. A very cozy little legacy. Every couple of years we'll get active again and work on some new project.
i'm glad people enjoy different things and i don't mean this as an insult to anyone who likes minecraft but personally i really don't like crafting games in general and specifically minecraft needs to let me crouch to 1 block height so i can crawl in tunnels and it needs to let me climb ledges i can jump to so that movement is even slightly fun. i wouldn't even know what to do to the combat to make it enjoyable to me but i quite dislike how the enemies always get pushed back so far every time you attack them.