Looking for Minecraft closure

The Game Room
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[Previous threads I started here and here. Man, I was so positive in that second one…]

Deep, deep sighs all around. Okay, I was tempted to go completely ballistic and make this a pit thread, but…no. I’m tired, I still have blood pressure problems, and I’m just completely jaded by horrible video games by now.

Well, another console game goes in the trash today, Minecraft for PS4. This one lasted…three weeks? So it at least had a better track record than that WWE game where I couldn’t even figure out how to do a pin and gave up on after about 15 minutes. Then again, given how much busywork I had to do just to learn how much of a complete black hole of torture Survival had become, I’d say even that had a much better effort-to-reward ratio than this unspeakable abomination Minecraft has become.

First off, I’d like to point out, once again, how completely bass-ackwards this game is regarding just figuring out how to get things done. “Read the Wiki” should be a backup option if the in-game manual and your own abilities don’t fix the problem, not the be-all and end-all for the most basic facts. And even some of the online materials have either glaring flaws of omission (water and lava physics being the most frequent in my experience) or way too little emphasis on extremely important points (being able to recover stuff if you get killed, for example).

But fine. New paradigm, evolving medium, etc. And I was able to learn enough and get good enough that I actually got every trophy on the PS3 version. (These were the old trophies, before all the expansions.) Make no mistake, this was HUGE for me. I had just come off the utterly broken XBox 360 version, and being able to accomplish things, progress step by step, and complete every task improved my opinion of the game like 2,000%. So partly on a whim, partly because there aren’t really that many fun games for the PS4 (regrettable what happened to No Man’s Sky, or so I heard), I got the PS4 version for $20. What the heck, I didn’t have any use for the PS3 anymore, and maybe this would be just as good.

The first thing I noticed was that the Superflat feature allowed you to edit the layers. Cool. Also, Host Options allowed you to shut of weather and keep it perpetually day. Great! I had real hopes for this one, which seems so hopelessly naive in retrospect.

Okay, enough fun blowing up TNT layers and tossing lava around; time to get started accomplishing things, by which I mean Survival Peaceful. I noticed pretty much nobody talks about Peaceful, which I first thought was a pretty glaring omission, but then I realized was just the reality…i.e. if you get too used to Peaceful, you’ll never be prepared for the unending nightmare that is Survival. But I’ll get to that in a bit. Smelt iron, make a cake, craft things, you get the drill. Oh, re. trophies: I’m not super fanatical about them, but they do provide a framework for what I’m supposed to be getting out of the game, and I consider them a good arbiter of just how good I am at it. Of course if something is patently outrageous I’m not going to go for it, but it’s usually fun to push ahead, climb the ladder a rung at a time. And especially for an open-sandbox game, it helps provide a game structure.

And that’s where I ran into the first red flag. Diorite, andasite, and granite. (Don’t know if I got the spelling right, don’t give a damn.) Three cobblestone-like blocks that couldn’t be used like cobblestone and served no purpose other than taking up space. (And we whine about gravel?) Why? Why include something like this? It didn’t take me long to figure out the answer: to eat up inventory space and wear out your pickaxes. Not one, not two, but three new blocks that served no purpose other than to be annoying.

And soon after I ran into the second red flag. Villagers, which once were preset based on the seed, now are completely random. And I mean COMPLETELY; I’ve seen four clerics one time and something like five butchers another. Even worse, there’s a new villager called the “nitwit” which can’t trade at all. I’m not sure if I mentioned it before, so I’ll say it now: I HATE when blind, stupid, moronic LUCK places a huge role in success. Jeez, what was wrong with preset villager types? If you want everything to be luck and chance and randomness and chaos, be a man about it and make a craps or slot machine game.

Well, it took several restarts, but I finally got a reasonable villager distribution, and Survival Peaceful was on. So I’m running back and forth, rowing boats, spending a lot of time shaft mining to get valuables (I don’t know what’s the “best” method, and judging by the endless clowning on the forums one else does either; I just used what seemed natural), trading, obtaining obsidian, farming, filling out the map, making all kinds of tools, and trophies are coming in at a nice clip. I’d like to point out that it is a long, long haul to get important things like diamond pickaxes or emeralds or even redstone, but I kept at it, and the hours just slipped by.

Eventually I reached the point where there was no advancing without facing enemies, in particular spiders for string, which means diving into Easy. Now, again, I’m an old hand at this. I got everything for the PS3 version, I survived numerous nights, I figured out how to tackle everything from skeletons to creepers to endermen, and I eventually figured out how to get blaze rods, reach the end portal, and best the Enderdragon. I did all that. Have a full set of iron armor on at all times, keep a constantly supply of food so you can heal whenever you need it, have at least an iron sword and a bow at all times, fence in anything you don’t want to be invaded, and always watch your back. I got it. I knew how to survive.

Well, as it turns out, things changed a bit since then. In the order I learned them:

  1. Spiders are a lot more aggressive and do a lot of damage even with full armor.
  2. Skeletons like to attack in groups now and do a lot of damage even with full armor.
  3. There’s a tougher zombie type that takes more damage, moves more quickly, can inflict hunger on you (extremely dangerous when healing is so critical) and does a ton of damage even with full armor.
  4. Enemies not only appear more frequently, they tend to cluster together and work very well in teams, which makes the absolutely ungodly catastophic nuclear armageddon levels of goddam damage they do even more of a headache.

And then there’s the whirlwind of rampaging cataclysmic mass destruction on a bullet train with a V4 rocked strapped to it known as the witch. Here’s how an encounter with a witch goes. It throws a potion at you. You die. Seriously, that’s all there is to it. I supposed if you spent the necessary months to create the perfect “mob grinder”, with a healing potion or fifty as an insurance measure, you could get the best of one. And theoretically it’s possible to win The Open Championship one-handed.

Five minutes. After roughly three weeks of effort to get enough food, enough armor, enough weaponry, enough diamond and redstone and lapiz lazuli, to make the homestead reasonably secure, to get that Nether Portal just where I wanted it, five minutes on Easy were all it took to show me just what a complete overdone pile of dreck that level had become. It’s fallen victim to the modern mentality regarding revamped video games, that the most important change is to ramp the difficulty into the stratosphere, and then keep going until it reaches Mars. Again: full iron armor, very powerful iron sword, bow at the ready, lots of experience with past versions. Slaughtered like a lamb halfway through the night. (And yes, I know it’s possible to run back and grab everything, but seriously, is that your idea of solid gameplay? Die, grab stuff, die, grab stuff, die, grab stuff, rinse and repeat until the sun rises? Sounds incredibly tedious at best to me.)

I finally have to say it. I hate Minecraft. Everything about it. I hate the outrageous amounts of work required, I hate there being a gazillion types of resources that gobble up inventory spaces, I hate the ridiculous liquid physics, I hate tools constantly wearing out and breaking, I hate having to move heaven and earth for resources, I hate the endless logistical headaches (“Okay time to…wait, where did I put the ladders?”), I hate there being 10 Rube Goldberg-ian tricks to accomplishing a task that would be a single button press in a sensible game, I hate the endless slog that’s mining (and I really hate the predictable smarmy responses whenever someone suggest that maybe making it, I hate having to eat like Pac-Man to make it through one lousy day, and I hate that everything that’s good or nice or fun or simple or managable has to get mutated into some hideously complicated monstrosity. And I really hate that nearly three weeks of effort got blasted to fragments the instant I dipped my toe into Easy. (And that’s the easiest difficulty that monsters can appear in! Good gravy, I don’t even want to imagine how Normal or Hard is like. Then again, if the witch kills you in 2 seconds as opposed to 5, I guess in the grand scheme of things it’s not really that big a jump.)

I am done with Minecraft. I don’t give any more of a crap about combat tactics or golden apples or fully powered beacons or the Wither or biomes or underwater palaces or infinite stone generators or automatic farms or thrilling minecart tracks or that revolutionary way of finding diamonds that’s .00002% faster than what everyone’s been doing before. I have zero interest in building lavish palaces or elaborate redstone machines. I’m not going to get the proper computer version like I planned long ago. I’ve. Had. Enough.

I’d give a lament about how disappointing it is when something good goes completely in the toilet, but you know what? It’s happened so many times with so many games that at this point I should expect it. Just remember the good times with SNES WWF Royal Rumble or Contra or Bear in Super Action Adventure and forget that anything came after. Hell, play the good ones again when you get the time.

And of course, at around this point someone’s probably going to remind me that this game has sold millions and millions and millions of copies, so obviously they’re right and I’m wrong. In the past I’d give a none-to-friendly reminder that I don’t follow that argumentum ad populum nonsense, but lately I’ve come to realize something. Being enormously successful was exactly what should have told me that I would utterly loathe it, because that’s what it takes to become enormously successful. No, seriously, think about it. What are the most beloved, most wildly popular fighting games of all time? Think Street Fighter, Tekken, Dead or Alive, Mortal Kombat. All not only incredibly difficult, but incredibly complex. You could spend six months just getting the system down. And that, overwhelmingly, is the type of player who plays fighting games, the hardcore crusher who spends hour after hour after hour getting the mechanics down. Or Dark Souls. You think one in twenty even knows what it’s about? Can you tell me what it’s about? And for the sole reason that it’s reputed to be insanely hard, it’s a beloved franchise. On the other hand, remember Dance Dance Revolution? Do you remember one, just one positive article, comment, or review of any game in that franchise that mentioned anything at all other than “exercise” and “get the kids off their butts”? Do you remember reading ANYTHING AT ALL about how it’s a game anyone can get into because the premise is so simple and easy to understand? That’s because that’s a bad, bad thing in video games. Like it or not, hardcore sets the narrative, and that means that nearly everyone loves it, I won’t.

Well, I did say I wanted closure (mostly due to the countless hours I wasted on this), and this is running long, even for me, so to everyone who’s played it, loved it, and mastered it, just one simple question.

How?

How did you survive when attacked by six enemies that could knock off 6 hearts with each it? How did you get within 30 meters of a witch and live to tell about it? How did you make that fully-powered beacon? How did you create that brilliant machine that made the menial stuff so much simpler? How did you find enough diamonds that you didn’t have to restart 15 times so that toolmaker would show up?

I know it can be done. I know that lots and lots and lots of players have done it (I’m tempted to say 10 million, although of course I have no way of knowing). I know just about everyone here is about ten times better at this game than I’ll ever be and likely most of you have done it all.

If you have a good story, I just want to hear it, as that’s the only enjoyment I’m ever going to get from this train wreck of a game again. That’s all I need. (And if you think I’m a colossal drag and don’t want to share, that’s fine.) Well, that and videos, but there’s no shortage of those.

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[Moderating]
Moving from CS to the Game Room.

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Can’t help you much. My 6yo grandson looovveees it. Sorry.

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My survival strategy is very simple - run away, and hide. Always, always, always have a bolthole nearby, always, always have your exit route straight and clear.

Go through life like a tiny squishy rodent. Always have a bed and enough blocks for a emergency hut on you. Never wait for the sunset to catch you in the open. Only venture underground with great caution. Run away as soon as you hear a motherfucking witch. Iron isn’t good enough for any serious work - why the hell fuck around in the Nether in iron, that’s like jousting in your tighty-whiteys.

Pickaxes and shovels are more important than bows or swords - digging holes, that’s what works to keep you alive. That or a high pillar of dirt with a platform at the top.

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Youre playing it wrong …it’s not meant to be played as a normal video game

The point of minecraft is making mods for your self and others to play… It’s mainly treated as digital legos you make the rules the scripts ECT amature game making if you will

For examples of this look up the diamond minecart aka DanTDM on YouTube

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People who play the Lego aspect of Minecraft don’t tend to play with combat enabled. But combat modes exist, with three difficulties. So it’s clear that some people want to play it the way the OP describes. So it makes sense for him to critique the game in that mode.

That said, I don’t agree that popular games are necessarily hard, and a game with an easy mode should not have that easy mode be hard, unless they advertise themselves as a hard game. So I do wonder if there’s something the OP is missing.

Games these days, unless they specifically claim to be hard, tend to have good difficulty curves, unlike in the past.

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[Apologies for posting in the wrong forum. Completely accidental.]

MrDibble - Seriously? That’s what it’s come to? I mean, I don’t doubt you for a second, but…really? Because I very distinctly remember having no trouble carving up zombies, skeletons, and even the occasional Enderman in the PS3 version. As in the very last console generation, so it’s not like there was some colossal revolution between then and now. No way in hell would I have the patience for something like that…finding diamonds in Creative with flight enabled was tiresome enough, thank you.

BigT - I’m definitely going to start a thread about that subject, but just so we’re clear: Yes. Survival Easy is that horrendous. Try it sometime.

If anyone else has any testimonials, I’m all ears.

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Huh. I started into the game again just a few weeks ago and didn’t find it hard at all. I play Survival at whatever level’s above Easy. Avoiding death by monster strikes me as being very easy, actually. I don’t get what’s hard about it.

Stay inside at night, be careful, don’t dig straight up or down. Manage the area around your houses so there’s no shade for monsters. Yes, hunting for string can be tough, but if you force mobs into narrow areas, it’s doable.

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I started playing when it was still in alpha (java version). It’s always been that way.

Here’s a couple of Penny Arcade strips about it from 2010 (the year I purchased it):

I later got the XBox 360 version, but found that the java version is much better.

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Not sure what version/mechanics the PS4 is on, but the “combat update” patch changed quite a bit. Shields were added, spam-click attack doesn’t work any more, etc. A lot of players that were used to the old style combat didn’t seem to care for the newer mechanics.

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RickJay - See, here’s the thing. I got “make a spot where they won’t show up” down cold. Fence off an area and drop lots of torches, worked like a charm (way more work than I would’ve liked, but whatevs). I knew how to AVOID trouble. The problem is that I NEEDED to face them at some point for some very important stuff. String, for starters. Then slimeballs to make all-important magma cream, and rotten flesh to trade to a cleric (and believe me, there is NO reaching The End without getting very chummy with a cleric). One achievement requires eating rotten flesh, another requires curing a zombie villager. None of this is possible without getting down and dirty. And on the PS3 version, I did that. With plain 'ol iron armor (and color me stunned that the second best armor in the goddam game is all but worthless now) iron sword, and bow. I didn’t have a suitcase of potions or a crate of golden apples or fifteen quivers of enchanted arrows. I didn’t need them. I ran around in the dead of night and killed enemies. Yes, it’s possible to make an extremely elaborate labyrinth or trap to easily demolish and loot enemies (I was planning on something to that effect for the Nether); yes, I’m sure it works like a charm. My point is it shouldn’t require that, at least on Easy.

This is just symptomatic of an extremely troubling direction I’ve seen with this game. I forgot to mention it earlier, but did you know that there are rabbits? Little critters that hop all over the place and evade very effectively when you go after them. In short, an animal introduced for the express purpose of being really hard to kill. Oh yeah, in addition to Useless Not-Cobblestone #1, #2, and #3, there are also several types of wood, which all act exactly the same and serve no purpose other than to…yep!..clog up your inventory.

And then there’s The Wither. Damn, just reading the description gives me chills, and if a plain 'ol witch can slaughter you like a lamb the moment you get within 20 meters…well, I trust you can use your imagination. Incidentally, unlike the Enderdragon, it’s impossible to face this enemy on Peaceful. That’s right, an insane harder-than-hard boss created for the SOLE PURPOSE of being harder than hard and making life absolute pain for players.

I mean, what is this? Nearly everything I’ve read about Minecraft has been about how it allows incredible creativity and it’s a dynamic environment and there are so many amazing things you can make. So how did it come to inventory nightmares and a dozen worthless space-wasting blocks (oh, almost forgot, terracotta, goddam terracotta) and wretched excess in the blocks that aren’t useless and unkillable animals and outrageous blind luck in villager types and iron armor being as effective as cardboard and needing a D&D fortress to kill any of the hundreds of death machines swarming all over the place at night…IN ADDITION TO the old headaches of tools having the durability of paper and finding diamond ore being a step above sweatshop work and endless hunger and creating safe areas requiring enough resources to power a small city? That’s an ugly trend I’ve seen in too many games, the endless drive to crush the life out of everything even remotely fun until the whole game is a miserable, soul-wrenching slog without end. I’d rather need another root canal.

Getting flippin string is tough now. STRING. Unbelievable.

Okay, one last question. How did you kill the Wither? If Normal is no trouble for you, you should have managed this. What was your weapon, your armor (ha!), the enchantments you went in with, the potions? (Oh, the main reason I’m looking for testimonials is that I hardly find any Survival videos on YouTube. Just like you’ll never find a single Grand Theft Auto video that covers an actual mission. Go figure.)

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If you want a little more challenge, switch it to hardcore, where the mobs (monsters) can break down doors. Guardians of the underwater temples will make quick work of you as well, day or night, if you get too close.

I like hardcore, it keeps me on edge, but I rarely go into the nether in hardcore. That’s just asking for trouble.

Another helpful hint, assuming you have the Aquatica update, it is important to sleep at least once every three days, otherwise the flying monsters come out, and they can be tough as well. Sleep!

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I don’t know why I didn’t focus on this before, but you complained that the newer stones have no function. They serve as alternate building materials with different appearances. Also, with the computer version you can load any version going clear back to the alpha versions. Also like I mentioned before, the console versions (at least XBox 360 and the tablet versions - I haven’t tried any of the others) are somewhat lacking. IMHO they suck big time compared to the computer version. It’s easier to fight monsters using the mouse and keyboard. The controller is just too slow and not as accurate.

That said, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. If you don’t like it, you don’t like it, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s a lot of popular games I don’t like.

I don’t play it nearly as much as I used to. Usually it sits unused until an update comes out then I spend a half hour or so looking at the new features. I only paid €9.95 for it (which came to about 14 bucks in real money at the time I bought it in 2010) so I figure I’ve got my money’s worth by now. I don’t know If I would have paid the €19.95 price that it went up to when it went to beta.

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I mean, I just don’t find it hard. It’s like you’re describing a different game.

HOWEVER - I agree about the “very slightly different kinds of cobblestone” problem. It’s an inventory nightmare for no return; if they were going to add different kinds of stone to allow to make structures with different materials, then make them DIFFERENT. “It’s like cobblestone but just a tiny bit different” isn’t worth the trouble.

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Thanks for the kind responses, everyone. Was expecting far worse, really. The thing I’m seeing is that this is the type of game where you’re expected to take the pain, and then take more and more and more, without using any techniques or tricks to make things easier. Trading to get all the important stuff? Can’t have that, so make traders completely random! Able to kill animals with a sturdy iron sword? Can’t have that, so let’s have rabbits and super-bulletpoof annihilation machines! Inventory only slightly nightmarish to manage? Can’t have that, so bring on the diorite and terracotta, among other things! Application that finds diamond ore for a certain seed? NO! “Classic Easy” mode that doesn’t have witches and similar horrors? NO! Automatic mode for minetracks so you can set up that killer ride without having to mess around with torches and powered rails? NO! Non-Sisyphean way of keeping animals away from stuff? NO! Any way whatsoever of creating safe zones? NO! I remember the days of Game Genies and hacked versions and all kinds of ways to make things easier, more flexible, more fun, and this modern mentality of less freedom, less control, less fun is total anathema to me.

I’m also getting the distinct sensation that for all the preaching about no shortcuts and no free rides and earning your achievements, there aren’t that many players who actually want to fight witches, or delve the Nether, or make their mob-grinder fortress, or take on the Wither…or if they did, they got knocked down hard enough that they weren’t interested in trying again. I noticed that in video game discussions, and particularly in the real hardcore places like GameFAQs, it’s important to say the right hings, to fit into the status quo at every turn. But overwhelmingly, it’s all posturing. They don’t really have a clue how to beat Shao Kahn or mind adamantine and live to tell about it or solve the marble board or perform the assassination invisibly and silently. And that’s exactly how we get games that sell millions and millions and millions of copies despite most of the fanbase not being able to accomplish even half the tasks in the game.

Gah. Maybe I’m just too old for this crap.

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Heh, now I picture Murtaugh from Lethal Weapon playing Minecraft.

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I’ve never played Minecraft, but if it’s anything like Terraria, your most important weapons and armor aren’t the ones you wear; you should be wielding the planet itself as your weapon. If you need to kill spiders or whatever, you do it by constructing an elaborate deathtrap, and then luring spiders into it.

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I haven’t dove into minecraft in over a year, but what I found best to gather resources is to dig your own tunnel and go down deep, to the bedrock level, don’t connect to a network of caves and mines (gather/upgrade the needed stuff when you find them). At or near the bottom explore carefully, connect into the cave/mine network if it seems worth the reward. This should be the quickest way to get the lower level minerals.

At night dig a hole and seal yourself in till morning. Take a bed when traveling or relocating.

Also perhaps a bit of a legal cheat, but use survival easy but be ready to switch to peaceful at a moment’s notice if needed.

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I will sign on to the useless extra blocks in the newer versions. I don’t mind having more options for aesthetic building purposes, but for god’s sake, let me at least make furnaces and steps out of them too.

One of the first things I build in new worlds is a lava trash chest for easy disposal of trash useless blocks.

OP might enjoy skyblock? Much more control over mob spawning.

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It sounds to me like everyone is saying “We don’t play the combat portions of the game.” But DKW is primarily complaining about how combat is extremely hard eve on easy mode. If people are unwilling to play the combat portions on easy because avoiding combat is the only viable way to play, that does sound like a flaw.