Live data from Hacker News

The secret of Minecraft (2014)

medium.com

91–100 of 230 posts

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#91
post #16

The article says that there is no built in tutorial or guide, but that isn't true. For as long as I have played the game, there has been the basic prompts that tell you to cut down a tree and make a crafting table. Accessible from the inventory or crafting table are recipes for every single item you can craft with the materials you have found. That's all the guide you need, as the rest is sandbox. All the progression…

well the recipe book was only added in 2017, almost 8 years after the game was released.. so you haven't been playing that long

You would be right about that lol, I missed the article date

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#92
post #83

I'm almost surprised nobody mentioned beta 1.7.3 yet. Some people, myself included, consider it to be the last good version of the game. It came before the adventure update, beta 1.8, in 2011. To put it simply, 1.8 is the inflection point where Minecraft stopped being a sandbox and started being, as I once saw someone call it, a "pseudo-RPG". Obviously, this view is not common (EDIT: judging by some responses, maybe…

See, I was very much the opposite. Even after Minecraft's full release I was huge into the mods because I never felt like the vanilla Minecraft experience had enough content.

Hmm. I wonder if this is the distinction between people who prefer old Minecraft and new Minecraft.

How do you feel about modern Minecraft?

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#93

I’ve been playing Minecraft off and on since beta, and I’ve been able to introduce each of my kids as they’ve gotten old enough to play. It is pretty amazing, they all started in creative running around punching random things and now each one has their own way they like to play. One loves to build, another mini games, survival, parkour, mods etc. we are currently watching MCC live and it’s like the Super Bowl. They a…

It's hard not to mourn what was lost though. Minecraft mods were how a lot of teenagers got acquainted with scripting, and it's a lot harder to get started with your own server since MS bought it and forced it to authenticate through Azure. In my kids' friendgroup at least, the "modding games as an entry point to programming" concept has been handed off from Minecraft to Roblox. It's nice that they've added a bunch o…

I dislike the auth changes as well, but it hasn’t had any impact on server hosting in my experience. It’s still just as easy as getting the right JVM and running the jar. The only thing new is the EULA you have to accept on first launch

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#94
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, I was very much the opposite. Even after Minecraft's full release I was huge into the mods because I never felt like the vanilla Minecraft experience had enough content.

Hmm. I wonder if this is the distinction between people who prefer old Minecraft and new Minecraft. How do you feel about modern Minecraft?

> I wonder if this is the distinction between people who prefer old Minecraft and new Minecraft.

I'm old. But to be fair, I got into Minecraft by helping my kid set up a server - and then he moved on and it became my server. At least it wasn't a puppy.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#95
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, I was very much the opposite. Even after Minecraft's full release I was huge into the mods because I never felt like the vanilla Minecraft experience had enough content.

Hmm. I wonder if this is the distinction between people who prefer old Minecraft and new Minecraft. How do you feel about modern Minecraft?

I honestly haven't had much time for Minecraft in the last 5+ years, but when I have it's mostly been with old versions and mods I liked back in the old days. I doubt that's because I wouldn't like the modern game so much as that when I turn to Minecraft it's for the nostalgia.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard not to mourn what was lost though. Minecraft mods were how a lot of teenagers got acquainted with scripting, and it's a lot harder to get started with your own server since MS bought it and forced it to authenticate through Azure. In my kids' friendgroup at least, the "modding games as an entry point to programming" concept has been handed off from Minecraft to Roblox. It's nice that they've added a bunch o…

Minetest, which has been around nearly as long and is a FOSS game with more or less feature parity, covers all these bases. Super easy to script in Lua. Simple to set up servers. I've gotten my kids into Minetest after they kept hearing about Minecraft and asking to play, and they absolutely love it. Runs great on lower end hardware too.

> Runs great on lower end hardware too.

Our first server box was a late gen P4 running headless Ubuntu. The CPU had strong single thread performance and handled dozens of players.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#97
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never played. No idea. We're big lego fans. Where should I start? Anything to avoid?

You could be tempted to start in Creative mode. Don’t do it if you can. I say this as someone who loves playing in Creative mode : it’s not the same game at all. Survival mode is pretty easy and it’s not the same mood. There’s a strange feeling in this game when you just start to build a wooden shelter with not even a door to survive the first night and somehow, after some hours, your shelter is now a cosy house with…

What were all of those survival hours for if you weren’t gathering resources for the eventual castle?

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#98
post #83

I'm almost surprised nobody mentioned beta 1.7.3 yet. Some people, myself included, consider it to be the last good version of the game. It came before the adventure update, beta 1.8, in 2011. To put it simply, 1.8 is the inflection point where Minecraft stopped being a sandbox and started being, as I once saw someone call it, a "pseudo-RPG". Obviously, this view is not common (EDIT: judging by some responses, maybe…

I've played a lot of Minecraft and I still remember beta 1.7.3 very fondly -- albeit for different reasons -- but I want to offer a differing perspective.

I have always struggled with balancing my desire to create with my capability to create, in and out of Minecraft. I would get so inspired by all the awesome things people built, that I could never graduate from my barebones cave-with-chests because my desire to make something great made any attempt feel crummy in comparison. The most I would accomplish was making redstone contraptions because -- to be a little reductionist -- those either work or they don't.

I hope you will pardon my digression, but the point I'm getting to is that in beta 1.7.3, the goals you set for yourself, and therefore the reasons for you to keep playing, were largely creative in nature, like building a cool house. Updates past this point gave players the opportunity to make simpler, game-directed goals. It used to be that you reach resource satiation quickly, but now it will take hours to obtain a fully enchanted set of diamond armor, kill the ender dragon, explore all the new generated structures, etc. In later years they've codified these goals in achievements, including crazy ones like getting every positive and negative effect at the same time or exploring every biome. With these updates, the people who enjoy building cool things also got more cool things to build with, but this has in my opinion been a little more secondary.

I understand why people might be disappointed, or at least confused, by Minecraft's updates now pushing it toward "pesudo-RPG" status, but I have at least welcomed these changes because they gave me and my friends a reason to reboot our server every few years to try out the new stuff.

Although I will add that if your gripe is regarding combat/pvp changes (e.g. shields) then yeah I have nothing to add to that discussion.

EDIT: I also agree with sibling comments about more content = more enjoyment, at least for me. I enjoy playing games where there are just a lot of things to learn and know.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#99

One of the other innovations of Minecraft is that they didn't worry too much about rendering chunks in a timely manner. When you're on multiplayer and moving fast its not uncommon for the landscape to get rendered right infront of your eyes. Some games go to great lengths to avoid that (e.g. slow the player down or have distance fog so that they never notice areas being loaded). But if the game is fun, no-one cares a…

I don't know that it's an "innovation" as much as a lucky break.

I would say it's one of Minecraft's systemic flaws, actually. It greatly constrains how smooth exploration can be in what is otherwise an interesting world to explore.

Re: The secret of Minecraft (2014)

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never played. No idea. We're big lego fans. Where should I start? Anything to avoid?

Start at the beginning, survival. Try not looking anything up till you get stuck or bored. Avoid mods at first. Family friendly streamers are: - [Jax and Wild]( https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCiJmKXWW7dOAVOrnHFviqhw ) - [Grian]( https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU2851hDb3SEesCjVCmseu6... ) - [Mumbo]( https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VMK_u3Hsd4U ) -[Stinarose]( https://m.youtube.com/@StinaRose )

> Start at the beginning, survival. Try not looking anything up till you get stuck or bored.

When I invited adult gamers onto our server, I found they spent a long time trying to figure out basic stuff - like picking up a block. It was really frustrating for them.

That was years ago and IDK if basic gameplay changed. If not, they may want to have an 8yo on hand.

Post reply on HN