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It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

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Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#341

Post by Arch-TK »

ckemere wrote: post #94

It's apparently a minority voice opinion here on HN, but I for one appreciate what Microsoft is trying to do. As a parent of a 6 and 9 year old who have really gotten into Minecraft during COVID, I appreciate them basically deciding "We want Minecraft to be a game for kids and an online community that is nice." I get why people are frustrated, but I also like the idea of a global decision that forces servers open to…

>Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't see anything in their process that suggests that a group of adults playing with their friends are at risk of having their chat audited in the absence of a complaint?

There is nothing letting the group of adults easily opt out of the system.

Someone is mischievous and decides to report someone else? Permanently banned. Someone has a falling out and decides to try to piss off their friend by reporting them? Permanently banned. Someone thinks they're funny and report as a joke? Permanently banned.

Not to mention that Microsoft has repeatedly failed to actually implement this correctly so far. I wonder if all the people who have gotten banned by this will ever get unbanned.

If you want Minecraft to be a game for kids, why don't you parent your kids? Minecraft is not your daycare. Minecraft is a portal to the internet (the world), if you wouldn't trust your kid to go on an international trip on their own without any supervision then stop letting them get on the internet without supervision.

Want your kids to play with friends? Pester Microsoft for an easy way to set up a server that YOU can control and manage and they can connect to (I believe realms already did this).

I promise you that Microsoft's changes won't keep your kids safe, they won't prevent them from dealing with adults in Minecraft, they won't prevent them from being exposed to ideas which you might see as too adult for them to thoroughly understand.

You have fallen into the PR trap that Microsoft created. They WANT you to feel like your kids are safe and WANT you to feel like they're making responsible decisions. This doesn't actually create a safe environment, and more likely is just a way to stimulate more sales by permanently banning accounts for a game which parents just can't help to buy their kids copies of.

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#342

Post by probably_wrong »

oynqr wrote: post #331
Kiro wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absolute worst people in the gaming scene (griefers) complaining about this must mean it's a good thing. Why do you enjoy ruining people's servers?

Have you never destroyed a sand castle? Toppled a Jenga tower? Destruction is fun.

Destroying my own sand castle and enjoying it is fun.

Destroying someone else's castle and enjoying it is called "being a psychopath".

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#343

Post by MichaelCollins »

RUN12 wrote: post #214
kragen wrote: post #41

Minetest is probably the best Minecraft alternative; it's free and open source software, which avoids the danger associated with centralized retaliation systems like the one Microsoft is operating. Also, it's easier to write mods for, partly because mods are written in Lua, and you don't have to install mods on the client, just the server. https://www.minetest.net/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6Fyav6FiIs The vide…

As someone who used to be a part of the Minetest scene, it's not even remotely close. While it's low-end requirements are better, it runs remarkably poorly for what it is. It's (default subgame is) a decade behind Minecraft in terms of usability/features. It's barely maintained, especially after one of the big modders and graphics developers died to a heart disease. And with the mods, it's only "easier" at the very s…

> No custom keybindings, no overriding mouse controls.

You can, but you have to change it in the config file. Instead of resolving this limitation, they documented it on the wiki: https://wiki.minetest.net/Controls#PC

I don't understand how things can be this mediocre for so long; other open source implementations of popular proprietary games aren't like this. OpenTTD, OpenRCT2 and OpenMW are all more feature rich and polished than the originals, so I don't think it's a fundamental limitation of volunteer projects. I think maybe, Minetest deliberately keeps the edges rough to stay off Microsoft's turf.

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#344

Post by imtringued »

ckemere wrote: post #94

It's apparently a minority voice opinion here on HN, but I for one appreciate what Microsoft is trying to do. As a parent of a 6 and 9 year old who have really gotten into Minecraft during COVID, I appreciate them basically deciding "We want Minecraft to be a game for kids and an online community that is nice." I get why people are frustrated, but I also like the idea of a global decision that forces servers open to…

By trying to make Minecraft servers a safer place you have made it worse because people are now trying to "kill" each other through the reporting system.

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#345

Post by bmacho »

chungy wrote: post #236
GlitchMr wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minecraft website said the following: > Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source. I'm not very happy with the draconian nature of (L)GPL, nor do I believe the other licenses have much merit other than to boost the egos of the original authors, so I might just possibly release it all as public domain. This did not happen yet, Minecraft is sti…

It was also a personal (and opinion) statement from Markus Persson (notch), who fully owned the game at the time, predating the formation of Mojang, let alone Mojang's acquisition by Microsoft. I'm disheartened also by the fact it'll never become open source, but the statement was never legally-binding and never part of the terms that a purchase of Minecraft (in alpha, at that) entailed.

I believe Microsoft bought that "I will release the game source code as some kind of open source." promise as well. This is how things work, right?

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#346

Post by MichaelCollins »

oynqr wrote: post #312
catach wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it makes up for that quite usefully by having a similar depth/height limit as width.

If those numbers are correct, the Minecraft world still has ~1000 times the volume.

It shouldn't matter anyway, because minecraft lazily generates chunks when the player visits them for the first time, and I assume minetest does to.

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#347

Post by JetAlone »

simion314 wrote: post #225
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every couple of months one of his friends will get banned for no reason. I know you want to trust your child’s friends, but “it happened for no reason” is exactly what kids say when they don’t want to own up to the consequences of their actions. Obviously, you can only monitor your own child’s gameplay and not what their friends are doing on their own time. I strongly suspect there’s more going on than you realize.…

My son was banned by Sony for 2 months, there were a few things Sony did wrong so they are now on my shit list 1 the bastards did not send me the parent any detaisl about the ban, just a extremely vague reason so I have to guess all possible reasons (maybe chat, maybe screenshots shared in chat, maybe Sony devs fucked up with native languages, maybe my son tells the truth and it was that guy that demanded Fortnite gi…

Good for you. Corps that walk all over us should keep losing their customers, and we should support the little guys to the best of our abilities.

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#348

Post by Snetry »

creatonez wrote: post #244
jaarse wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is the ease of getting users banned, and the lack of actual moderating at all that is the problem. It literally is as easy as fill out the form, user is automatically banned, no verification required. Microsoft is not actually enforcing anything. My son is 10 and has been playing Minecraft for most of his life. I would consider him quite good at it. I sometimes watch. Every couple of months one of h…

> Every couple of months one of his friends will get banned for no reason Are they seeing the exact same screen as the one in the original post? There are two separate systems at play, each individual server has moderation by those who host the server (wherein they can ban anyone for any reason) and there is now a global moderation system introduced very recently, which is run by paid moderators hired by Microsoft. Y…

Perhaps they are talking about Bedrock?

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#349

Post by parasti »

SSLy wrote: post #337
parasti wrote: post #212

Seeing how my wooden signs and item names containing perfectly safe Latvian words have been brutally disappeared and censored in Minecraft Bedrock, this seems like global disaster about to happen. In my experience, Microsoft is incompetent to correctly enforce this.

You shouldn't be surprised considering the amount of racism in USA.

The words being filtered are not racial slurs in English.

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#350

Post by hypertele-Xii »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #343
RUN12 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who used to be a part of the Minetest scene, it's not even remotely close. While it's low-end requirements are better, it runs remarkably poorly for what it is. It's (default subgame is) a decade behind Minecraft in terms of usability/features. It's barely maintained, especially after one of the big modders and graphics developers died to a heart disease. And with the mods, it's only "easier" at the very s…

> No custom keybindings, no overriding mouse controls. You can, but you have to change it in the config file. Instead of resolving this limitation, they documented it on the wiki: https://wiki.minetest.net/Controls#PC I don't understand how things can be this mediocre for so long; other open source implementations of popular proprietary games aren't like this. OpenTTD, OpenRCT2 and OpenMW are all more feature rich an…

I don't know about the others you listed but as OpenTTD is a logistics management simulation, it surely draws a more mature target audience than Minecraft does. An audience that is more likely to possess the necessary expertize to further its development.
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