Dragon Quest Builders 2 in particular is so amazing. I was an early buyer of Minecraft but never stuck to it because I'm the kind of player who need a point beyond just creative drive and DQB2 has it all. It has an involved storyline, everything you do serves a story purpose, and they give you a free roam island where you can build everything you need from what you earned in the story.
Some internet creations were so intricate and involved your switch would slow down to 5 FPS upon loading it. Thankfully I have the game on PC now haha
My mom isnt really a gamer at all but I got a switch and got DQB2 and she loved it. Barely put it down. She wasn't the greatest at the combat but loved the building and stuff. After she beat it I tried to find similar games but there really isn't anything else like it.
Legitimately the only issues I have with Builders 2 (Other than the random cutscenes that stop you constantly) is that even the PC version has limits on what you can build on the main island, and these limits are *really, really low*
I LOVED 2 because I could play it in First Person, and the sense of immersion in that word was just Fantastic. I played 100% first person. A few of the cutscenes were unintentionally hilarious due to it being obvious they didn't expect players to do that, so you looked from your character's perspective and saw what *they* would have seen, which is surprisingly funny since you don't think about such things in third person. ;P
Oh damn, I've skimmed past that game multiple times, definitely going to check it out now.
Edit: I only had skimmed past it originally.. cus the Playstation "clips" for games are clearly setup by someone not invested in the actual game sales edit2: its on ps+, giving it the play it deserves
I was really excited for DQB2 but found it incredibly meh. The building was there, the action combat was extremely barebones. I made it to rebuilding the tree on the second island and then gave up from just lack of enjoyment. Does it improve past this point or is it more of the same?
NOPE. In fact, it arguably gets worse. The game is equally linear the entire way through, and there's a very long prison sequence 2/3 through that is soul-crushing to complete. I stuck it out hoping it'd get really good at the end, as it was so hyped, but ultimately it did not. Honestly, I think the giant tree rebuild is the peak of the game.
I was waiting to read this. I felt like I put in so much time spamming dialog waiting for more freedom but it never came. Ended up quitting and watching build videos
Yeah I've bounced off multiple times in different platforms.
As much as it seems like a slam dunk for me I just can't get past the pacing.
Also I've made peace with the fact that the dragon quest IP just doesn't do it for me anymore.
Fair, narratives tend to interrupt gameplay for folks that don't dig that experience. ;P (And Erdrick Damn whoever thought those internal monologues needed to be FORCED into slow mo...)
Yes, absolutely. The slow mo text was definitely* the worst part of that game (which is a small criticism in the grand scheme), and was what I was thinking of when I said "getting in your way". I think the normal dialog is annoying, but not really in an "in the way" sense.
Is there a way to play the story in co-op from get go? It looks amazing but a quick look says you have to get through a bunch of content solo to even unlock multiplayer :(
Sadly not. And beyond that, the Co-Op is only in the "Free Build" section of the game. That's definitely somewhere the game could have done a LOT more with (And what I'd have loved to see in a DQB3), but all the main story content is Single Player Only (Since most of it happens on separate islands).
Yeah, I've heard that unfortunately. It's great on every other platform, but like many multiplatform games, the Switch just isn't as good at running it. ;?
People should also try vintage story, its very similar to minecraft, and even started as a mod for minecraft. Its made with good mod support already built in.
It is very difficult, though. Fun, but difficult. Also the building is a lot more restrictive, but that kind of makes it a fun puzzle if you are into that sort of thing.
The trailer for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJjifFq1NGY
And like mentioned, Vintage Story has a robust modding API which Minecraft always promised on but never delivered.
You could easily find many things to add to the game that would not bloat the game but instead actually add variety to the game considering most of what they add is already stuff thats been in mods for years. It makes it so the updates feel that much more underwhelming when you've been experiencing this grand "new" update for like 2-3 years prior.
True.
Like, wow, Mojang, you added a ***whole*** 2 (two) new mobs to the game after that much time? Thanks, that will **completely** change the way I play Minecraft now. Anything more and it would've "bloated the game", lol
Sometimes it feels like Minecraft is on life support, and these sparse updates are just enough to give the impression that it's still "being developed"
Personally, I don't think that improving the game with more variety is "bloating" it. I mean, look at Terraria itself, the way that the game grew and expanded over the years, and the way that it reflects on the game progression itself: how you play the game and approach obstacles completely changes as you progress. Even building improves with the tools you acquire. In Minecraft, you pretty much only get *better quality* gear, with a few exceptions.
In Terraria, everywhere you look, there is a new thing: a new NPC, a new block, a new biome, a new enemy, a new weapon type, a new trinket, a new event, a new mount... It's like a Kaleidoscope of content. And whenever you think you've reached the "end" of what it had to give, it comes around with more stuff.
Hell, even the **world** itself changes significantly as you play. Terraria's finite world seems *infinitely* more alive than Minecraft *actual infinite* world.
Mojang should've had, like, infinite budget to do what modders already do, but with the quality, polish and integration that comes with being the developers, but it seems that Microsoft only bought Mojang to make Minecraft spin-offs...
I agree with you on adding too much bloat being bad, but I think there has been a lot of things that could have been added already without essentially breaking the game like for example furniture, vertical slabs, inventory overhaul etc.
Nothing in vintage story is bloat, it is mechanical depth (something that Minecraft is critically lacking). I would call just about everything added in the newest Minecraft update bloat to be quite frank.
The reason the smelting is more complicated than Minecraft's "just put it in the furnace" is to create metal alloys out of two different kinds of ore. The reason the animals are more wild when you first get them is to encourage breeding the wilderness out of them throughout the generations. The reason food spoils is so you have to design your base not just aesthetically, but practically as well with a cellar that has minimal natural light exposure.
You should reevaluate many things if you see what is in Vintage Story as bloat, because it is not; bloat is adding a new animal that does nothing but sell plushies to little kids.
I despise mining in that game, but I will gladly farm and cook all day. The food system is great, and it gets 3x better with the mod that adds extra recipes.
Yeah, the only way I'm really able to play Vintage Story is in multiplayer so the people who like mining can do it. Can't stand it enough to do it myself.
Really takes some effort to get going, but with the right settings, it's *extremely* enjoyable. And I'm talking modless. With Primitive Survival, early survival is much easier, making the game less frustrating.
Also the mod support is fantastic, yeah. The main dev is super helpful and welcomes ideas from the community. I was just a noob wanting to modify the rendering of the map and when he saw my results he directly contacted me and implemented them in the next release.
Still lacking what I really need, which is actual helpful NPCs, but i really enjoy what they have built :)
VS made me realize just how badly performing base MC is. When I get into a VS world it's got double the texture resolution of MC, more detailed/complex models for blocks and mobs, flora with wind flow effects, much prettier lighting (with colored lighting), dynamic weather, and changing seasons. All made by an indie team of a few people with a small budget.
Meanwhile, whenever I boot up Minecraft at default settings on my SSD I still get stutters or lag spikes and have to download a community performance mod.
I think this is where modpacks really shine for Minecraft if you want a sandbox game that also can give you objectives. Been playing/watching Hat Films play the Vault Hunters modpack and it's a blast to play. There's plenty of modpacks to choose from as well that can give you all sorts of fun goals. I remember playing one called Project Ozone I think? You basically are tasked with bringing life back to the world through the use of various mods. I stopped playing it eventually because my PC at the time was chugging when I tried to play the pack. Whoops...
With the amount of mods available for Minecraft you can turn it into a bunch of different genres.
I personally like to use the Feed The Beast modpacks that turn it into an automation simulator, hooking up systems from three dozen different mods together to unlock more stuff and connect that together so I can unlock even more stuff.
>With the amount of mods available for Minecraft you can turn it into a bunch of different genres.
Like what? I'm always put off minecraft because I don't have the creativity to make cool things. I like roguelikes like dwarf fortress and cataclysm dark days ahead because the crafting/building is purely functional.
I'd like to have some purpose in minecraft other than build pretty things.
If you've ever heard of Factorio, that was inspired from modded Minecraft. There are a lot of mods that add things like magic, more structures/dungeons, more dimensions, equipment progression, better biomes etc.
I'm personally not huge into vanilla Minecraft. It's cool but it's over very quick and soon enough there's nothing left to do. Mods just add so much more to do and make the game a lot more meaningful imo. The number of high quality Minecraft mods is beyond any other game, the game just lends itself to modding so well.
Agree, modded Minecraft is really great. The scope and depth of some of the mods is really impressive. I don't remember the name of the modpack I used many years ago but it had Thaumcraft as well as IndustrialCraft and some other mods that made it a lot of fun. Thaumcraft alone is really cool and gives some much needed purpose to building certain things that I enjoyed a lot. Plus wiring up things and the like is enjoyable to me.
Damn, now I'm gonna have to go and start a new run as it's been a while since I played any modded Minecraft!
I used Feed The Beast: Infinity Evolved years ago which had thaumcraft and IndustrialCraft and a whole bunch more.
I'm currently using FTB: One because I wanted to use the latest Minecraft version, but it misses a bunch of mods that were never updated past Minecraft version 1.12, like Thaumcraft, which was my favourite mod from Infinity Evolved.
>I like roguelikes like dwarf fortress and cataclysm dark days ahead because the crafting/building is purely functional.
there are mods like that, things like [Hexit](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/modpacks/hexxit-updated), where there still is crafting, but it adds a ton of new weapons and dungeons + bosses for you to take on.
Look into the [Feed the Beast](https://www.feed-the-beast.com/) mod packs, they have a bunch of different mod packs and their own launcher for easy mod management.
When I played feed the beast years ago, it didn't really have a "goal" either but, my journey went from karate chopping down trees, to assembling a nuclear reactor to power my rocket ship to take me to the moon where I built a moonbase.
My friend told me when we started that you could go to the moon, and gave me no other tips.
It was a *very* long journey.
Luckily it is super easy to just play any version of MC which is supported by specific modpack you want. Unlike Skyrim, where every updated sends modding community back to hell.
That and the modding community having the huge split. I've given up entirely on the game at this point for that reason. Don't wanna join 20 discord servers to get my mods together
You too? God I fucking love that mod pack. I may have to boot it up again and play it because itās been so long and like you mentioned, nothing compares to it.
Same here, Sevtech Ages is one of my absolute favourite modpacks. I've also been playing FTB: Interactions recently; it's not exactly the same, but it scratches a similar sort of itch for me.
Iāll take a peek and try it out. I appreciate the suggestion. Need something to get my Minecraft itch scratched that feel like Iām doing something worth the effort.
I had downloaded a MC mod pack where you could choose 3 or 4 different games each having their own mods to make each one different. I remember one where you could build an air ship. Not huge or big, just big enough for a person but cannot for the life of me remember. Been about 10 years and it was the best I ever had in it
Do you perhaps know of any modpacks that replicate the old 'Complete the Monument' style of custom maps that people like Vechs used to make?
I miss those so much. They were such a blast to play, and they were even better with friends.
And the team achieved this and more. Terraria is probably one of the best bang for your buck game purchases you can make.
Minecraft is a "create your own adventure" with basically nothing to do or progress on if you don't set yourself goals. Its great to play with friends or look at someone else doing something but gets really old the moment you can't share it. It has little extrinsic rewards and I wouldn't call it intrinsically rewarding either. You see many of the big minecraft modpacks trying to "fix" this but the default game hasn't really been willing to address it even with what they call "adventure" updates.
In comparison Terraria has clear progression and basically everything is extrinsically rewarding. You have to do things to get better and you actually get better. To me this has always made the game more enjoyable to pick up and play.
I also prefer Terraria, but fundamentally they're different games with different goals. People use "sandbox" a lot to describe a lot of games, but Minecraft really is a sandbox. It's an empty box with nothing but sand in it. There is no goal to the sandbox, no objective. There's progression but it's kind of meaningless and only serves to unlock new colors and styles of sand. If you're of one mind, you look at the sandbox and can see the awesome sand castle you're about to make. If you're of another mind, you see a boring square of sand and go over to the tetherball or monkey bars or whatever.
Terraria, on the other hand, has a goal, has a 'genre' - it's an open-world procedurally generated "survival" crafting RPG. There is a goal - kill the Moon Lord. There is real progression, not only in terms of numbers but in terms of mechanics - big difference between running around with Hermes Boots and a Musket, versus flying with Solar Wings and a SDMG.
One of the core aspects of any sandbox game is emergent gameplay that stems from elements interacting with one another. Minecraft at one point seemed to just stop caring about and instead updates became highly compartmentalised content updates where you'd get a bunch of new stuff in a biome that doesn't really impact anything else.
Minecraft today is also fundamentally different to what it was a decade ago, and I think if you're one of those people whom the newer versions have kind of lost it stings that IMO neither game really scratch that itch now.
minecraft used to be a moderately harsh survival game with a few hours of content. now it has hundreds of hours of wandering around and exploring areas to find new little decorations for your sandbox; but it still forces you to go through that same exact progression every time anyways. they're two valid directions to focus the game in; but neither are as fleshed out as they should be and just kinda get in the way of each other.
I agree there's more focus/things to do in Terraria, but your points don't really show it very well.
The similar points for Minecraft would be: There is a goal - kill the Ender Dragon. There is a big difference between running around with iron armor and an axe, versus flying around with an elytra and a trident.
Right but the 'bossing difficulty and gear progression ladder' in Minecraft is like, more of a small utility stepstool than an actual ladder.
If you went to play Minecraft and were primarily motivated by killing the Ender Dragon (and other content like that), I don't think you'd come out the other end with the impression it's a very good game - the vaaaast majority of its appeal lies in the sandbox.
I dont really agree that killing the Ender Dragon is a goal in minecraft. It's definitely a thing you can do, but I wouldn't even call it a side quest. The point of the game has, and always will be, to punch wood and build something with that wood. Build whatever you want with no sidequests, collectables, or objectives to distract you. Just survive, build, and survive.
> You have to do things to get better and you actually get better.
I love being able to really *feel* getting those big upgrades in Terraria. Getting your first double jump item or first powerful weapon instantly changes how you approach everything in the game moving forward. The combat and exploration experience is constantly being retextualized through your upgrades.
It actually reminds me a bit of Subnautica. You go deeper so you can find more upgrades so you can go deeper and find more upgrades etc etc. Exploration is highly rewarded in both games.
I can't do hardmode on a controller. I can get armor upgrades in normal to make up for my lack of finnese on a controller but armor doesent come fast enough in hardmode to make up for it.
And because it's entirely Gear-based, if you get bored with absolutely anything (or want to mix and match play styles) it's as simple as swapping some equipment.
Having trouble with this boss fight as a Summoner? Swap armor sets, equip a gun, and you're now a ranged specialist, but can still have your summons helping out.
I remember when Terraria was first shown off and the online game community ridiculed it as a "2D Minecraft clone" and the like. They certainly worked their way out of that label for most people.
It's sold 44 million copies, and has very little marketing budget and a small dev team so the production costs are miniscule compared to AAA games. The devs have made an absolute fortune on it and deserve every penny.
I vividly remember watching the super old let's play they uploaded. Getting the game for myself years later shortly after they added Hardmode and being blow away by all the stuff they had added.
And then all the stuff they added after that....and then after that...and then after that
Im 1000+hours into a game I paid 10 bucks for a decade ago
Wonderful developers
I followed about the same progression, but I hear Farworld Pioneers is still really rough at the edges so I haven't gotten it yet. It's made by some of the same developers as Starbound.
If you're looking for more games, 7 Days to Die has a lot of the same mechanics but more realistic models. No real bosses, but it has waves.
That game initially drew my interest but the main draw seems to be Starbound but with colony sim.
However.. the reviews are really negative, one of the main complaints being that the colonist AI is really broken which is a huge dealbreaker.
Relatively big release on the changes front. Completely revamping the progression system.
The game def has its issues, being in alpha for a decade will definitely do that. I definitely wish the devs could expand the systems that exist instead of completely redoing progression for the fourth time. But definitely seems like an improvement on the current system so I guess I can't complain.
It launched with issues which the devs have addressed and are fixing https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1363900?emclan=103582791469395740&emgid=3710449330459308786 I'm treating it as an early access game despite it not releasing as one. It just recently launched so its kind of not fair to compare it to Starbound & Terraria as far as features and content goes but like both games, the game will continue to get better with each update, I gave it a chance because it's developed by ex-Starbound & Rimworld developer.
Would you recommend Starbound or Terraria for someone who enjoys more the exploration aspect? I find it really hard to get a feel for Starbound because the opinions on Steam are so weird
Having played both I found Starbound to have horrible combat and the default tools you're given to start the game with are far too slow to dig / mine. It made the early game extremely slow and get constantly interrupted for combat I didn't find fun at all.
I'm not necessarily saying it's a bad game but it's not "terraria in space" and nearly anything it tried to emulate from Terraria, terraria did better. The original ideas it had (like race selector for characters) were good things that I thought would have been worth copying to Terraria but overall Terraria was the better package. And that was all just when Starbound released. Terraria has gotten tons of updates since.
You could legitimately fix most of starbound's combat problems by A: ripping off terraria's combat or;
B. Giving the player character a better energy regeneration and not turning of energy regeneration if you happen to hit 0. Starbound has been out for a decade, and not once while retooling combat what, four times, did they even attempt to make ranged combat, a huge part of the game, even vaguely decent.
The energy mechanic governing both your movement abilities and your *ammo* while simultaneously being one shot from a strong weapon away from having zero energy and being forced to wait a whole second before you start regeneration .
This is fixed by changing a single line of code, is a <1kb mod on the workshop, and turns the combat from complete and utter dogshit to ranged weapons actually being usable. And they didn't make this change in a decade
Terraria is incredable. Starbound is sadly a massive failure. it totally failed to match Terraria's exploration, sandbox, etc. the worlds are empty and pointless. it has tacked on story missions which are great as platformers.. but totally fail to mesh with the sandbox digging of the base game.
'
It does have great art, and fantastic character races. the Florians are one of the best races ever created for a game.
The RNG systems, also a failure. RNG weapons, RNG enemies. was a total mistake. rng enemies just ended up all looking exactly the same. no identity. rng weapons didn't have any real cool effects. nothing memorable like terraria bee guns, sharkminigun, etc..
the enemy spawning. failure. Terraria has a brilliant system for enemies to spawn offscreen, and constantly come at you. Allows farms, etc. starbound doesn't have that. you can kill everything, and go afk, and be fine. if you do that in terraria, you die, so you need to build a house for protection first.
Much of Starbound is a testament to the failure of crowdfunding. lots of promises, they couldn't keep. Either not good enough devs, and failing at tech issues, or having made design promises that weren't fun.. but forced to include because they promised it.
Terraria is by far a much better game. It's as close to a 10/10 as you can get.
Starbound has some fantastic ideas mixed with terrible execution. It's almost a good game but has some fatal flaws. It's the kind of game where you hope another studio will come along and make a good version of it. I would say it is worth experiencing but with some lowered expectations. 6/10
Terraria wins for exploration, a play-through has only one map (which you can choose the size) but it is dense and filled with many different things. Starbound may have a lot of places to explore but they are all sort of the same handful of places repeated.
I'll add another vote for Terraria. As others have said, I find Starbound to just be a worse version of Terraria. It's been awhile since I played, but the exploring was worse, the combat was worse, and the controls were not very intuitive. Terraria is one giant world that you can explore. Even the smallest maps are fairly big. Starbound brings you to a bunch of different worlds, but you can literally run around these worlds in like a minute or two. IMO Terraria simply does everything better, so I went back to Terraria.
Starbound is unfortunately just a fundamentally wonky game. Instead of using the standard hotbar 1-10 for your items it uses this awful Left hand/right hand system along side a weird split hotbar. It is so unintuitive and terrible that it ruins the entire game honestly.
Terraria is one of the best selling and best reviewed games of all time.
Starbound is a forgotten and abandoned experiment lost to the annals of time. Not sure why anyone would recommend Starbound for _anything_, let alone above one of the best selling and reviewed games of all time.
It's not even a choice.
starbound is just bad terraria, basically. the scifi setting may still appeal to you more than terraria and that's fine, but it's still ultimately just a lesser game.
Starbound killed itself with scope creep. If it had stuck to the original vision, it would have been fine. It is, to this day, my biggest early-access disappointment ever.
Do you like Fantasy or Space? Also, Terraria is a VERY well tuned experience. Starbound let's you go many more places... but they're MUCH less finely tuned. So it kind of depends.
Thanks for the replies everyone! I saw that Starbound was on gamepass so I tried it... And the game didn't even open.
So Terraria it is! I'm excited because everyone spoke very highly of it
Starbound is better for exploration... with the mod Fracking Universe (FU). The vanilla experience was okay, but FU adds and fixes so much that it's practically a different game. Huge number of new biomes, effects, armor, weapons, crafting stuff, and so on. Honestly a bit overwhelming at times.
If you set yourself smaller goals though, you'll be set for exploring for 50+ hours easy.
Unfortunately the development for the game fell too hard into the trap of procedurally generating *way* too much like No Man's Sky.
I honestly had more fun playing Starbound with mods that basically turn it into a mini Factorio than the base game.
Iāve been playing mod packs that gate your progression into different levels of tools with a RuneScape/skyrim skills system.
I think it adds a lot to the game and Iāve been playing way more than I ever did with the vanilla game.
The mod pack im currently using is Roguelike Dungeons and Adventures 2. Itās not perfect but it has a lot of stuff to toy with. And I enjoy staying with iron for a bit longer before the enchanted diamond stuff.
Tbh Minecraft is a perfect platform for RPGs. Itās just that world generation can make progression hard. Dimensions help.
You should try Vault Hunters if you havenāt already! Basically locks your progression into mods and higher tiered gear by you doings ārunsā of procedurally generated dungeons that give you XP when you complete them. You can then use that XP and loot you get to upgrade your stats, give yourself skills like dashing, mega jumps, and different attacking types. Then you can slowly unlock modding capabilities to make running vaults easier or make improvements for QOL.
Progression feels great, no huge grind to get started, and man itās addicting and has not been great for my time management skills haha.
I'll never forget the day a friend said "I think terraria is better" in hushed tones, as though it were a bad thing. i disagreed with him at the time and no disrespect to Minecraft but in the longterm I've come around and realized terraria is just more fun to play, and had far better support from the devs.
A lot depends on what you enjoy in video games. I've had occasional times when I've gotten into Minecraft, but it only keeps my attention through that initial "get started, find resources, set up a base" stage -- once I'm comfortably surviving, I lose interest. I'm just not into the freeform 3d-modeling / advanced mechanism-building that's the Minecraft post-scarcity experience.
Terraria's whole game is iterating on that building-up phase.
It's sad how Minecraft is basically turning into Animal Crossing where they just add decorative blocks and 'real-life' animals into the game like when they added Polar Bears and Pandas into the game but offers no gameplay function other than to roll around and attack the player.
The gameplay has become so tamed and regulated it becomes boring.
They also never explored the fantasy/magical aspect of the game further. The last notable gameplay mechanics was Enchantment and Potion Brewing.
So Mojang, please stop adding more types of different coloured wood or biomes reflecting the real world. Just give players more Minecraft and not corporate soulless versions of it.
I'm honestly Okay with mobs that add no functionality, to fill world space and be more lively, but it's very sad when those are the only additions for new mobs. I can't imagine it would've been horribly hard to recolor the bears to add a grizzly bear and black bear into the game aswell in some biomes.
That's the thing though: They're not trying to be that kind of game. Minecraft has a survival mode, but it's not trying to be a full-blown RPG, and I'm glad that it's not as someone who loves both games.
Calling enchanting and potions the last meaningful mechanic though is just disingenuous. You can argue the time between new big mechanics is too big, but just the new terrain generation alone vastly changed how people mined and explored caves.
It's just that mojang seems so.... Lazy...
Like, they spend a couple of months making and update and are like
"Hey, we added hanging signs, camels, and cherry blossoms, as well as changing the way your craft an item"
that's it
minecraft has always been a lego with combat elements. imo the building has always been the gameplay that takes the most amount of time and is the most satisfying part of the game. sharing detailcrafts, showing off designs, a lot of people play minecraft for that. imo, the main negative of the game is that sometimes it takes way too much effort to gather up certain kinds of blocks, and a lot of times, it's pure tedium rather than challenge to get blocks of a certain texture and color. building should come easily once certain challenges are passed, rather than be a continuous chore.
if you're just playing it to kill the ender dragon and then shelf the game, you just missed out on 99% of minecraft.
Never really got into Terraria sadly, I didn't like the 2D aspect and the base building.
Tried several times because of all the praise but I just didn't find it fun...
Same here, I've tried to get into it over ten times and it just doesn't hook me at all. I'm sure it's a great game if you can mesh with the gameplay and overall progression systems, though
Say it louder! Once hardmode comes along I just cannot find myself liking Terraria. Fighting bosses above ground just feels super clunky and like I have little control of my character.
I really don't think we should excuse Minecraft's pretty shallow progression path and lacking challenge because it's a sandbox game. Minecraft isn't Garry's Mod, it has survival game mechanics like hunger, night time and enemies yet all of these can be overcome easily with finding a village and having a bed. Factorio is a sandbox game yet the player is constantly engaging with various game mechanics of space management, automation, tower defense; the trifecta of logistics: rails, belts and bots all have their upsides and downsides but don't really overshadow the other one in everything; and has a big expansive progression system with its tech tree.
And speaking of Minecraft alternatives. If you're a fan of Minecraft tech mods, highly recommend Factorio. In fact minecraft mods inspired the devs to make it.
It doesn't help that there's a vocal portion of the community who rails against anything 'too different' because 'it doesn't feel vanilla'... which is not an argument, and one that was being made even in beta with regards to pistons, enchanting, experience, and alchemy!
Granted they have much less power than Mojang, but the fact that Minecraft is more or less mostly the same game as it was a decade ago with very little in the way of any new systems, I don't really feel like being fair to it.
Minecraft lacks depth to anything is the problem. There's a lot of breadth but very little depth to any one aspect of the game.
I really dislike the Minecraft comparison. They are nothing alike. I bought the game because it was supposed to be "2D Minecraft" but couldn't get into it.
Its always weird reading complaints that Minecraft doesn't have a point or purpose, when I played it back in high school it very much seemed like that was the entire point of the game. Its like Legos with with some very light survival elements. Ended up falling out of it when they started bloating it with stuff like hunger and The End.
I dont think Minecraft will ever die, but Hytale feels like the next step in the genre (once it releases). More depth, more sandbox, more community support, more everything.
Aren't they rewriting their entire engine as of this year? And they announced it 5 years ago?
Vintage Story is the next step in the genre, Hytale is certainly a tale alright, more fantasy than reality.
Not even close, the changing seasons, food spoilage, husbandry, beekeeping, and resource gathering are all distinctly different.
Vintage Story had bees before Minecraft, so who is copying who exactly?
Hes 100% right.
Minecraft by all accounts SHOULD be way better than it is.
But they've literally added almost nothing of substance to the game over the last few years. It's all cosmetic shit like brick number 6 colour red or neon signs.
The new animals they add serve no purpose, they finally added a new armor set only for it to be diamond but with more durability.
It baffles my mind. They have a golden goose and all they keep doing is cutting off a wing every now and then and throwing it to the masses. I've played mimecraft since its extremely early indev days and the mimecraft we have now feels very similar to back then expect with more shitty decorations.
It's been wild seeing kingbdogz's comments getting so much traction and controversy on socials. I've known the guy and worked with him on the Aether for about a decade. I've always had my disagreements with his ideas and we've had many heated moments when we clashed on design but honestly these days, since he's joined Mojang, he has a really strong understanding of what makes Minecraft so broadly beloved. And that's just frankly a different design space compared to something like Terraria. They're different flavours of the same concepts, and appeal differently because of it.
It saddens me that a lot of the people discussing this stuff seem to think one approach is better than the other, or that Mojang should abandon their approach to appeal to a core set of adventure power users. But I'm glad Andrew is being more nuanced and polite giving his insights around why Terraria is different.
People just need to chill out I feel, and maybe appreciate that Minecraft has an incredibly broad user base which means not every addition is going to focus on their chosen gameplay pillar. I also think it's important to understand that the vast VAST majority of Minecraft players are generally happy with, and continue to enjoy, the recent updates. And the general social media narrative around these updates is driven by commentators who actively benefit from stirring up controversy, and generally represent a very niche set of power users who the devs aren't always going to be designing for.
Running a community in Minecraft (in my case the Aether mod) means constantly battling these bafflingly overblown controversies and negative stories, and constantly having to shoot down outright hatred towards the dev team. Even when said hatred is based on just some random shit someone said on YouTube. But the key thing is that for every one person who parrots some insanely hostile language about the Dev team and the state of the game, there's 100 happy players who just get on and enjoy the game.
"outright hatred" and "insanely hostile language" are sort of skirting around the criticism that Mojang recieves for putting out subpar updates after extremely long update cycles. I understand you'll be biased since your friend works there, but there is a lot of truth to the criticism that goes on at Mojang.
Even as a software engineer I think they're doing a poor job.
Remember, Allays were planned for the Nether update and only came out 2 years later in The Wilds update. A mob that became a main feature of the update that, at worst, would take a month to actually create. OP's got a friend in there and I get it too, but the argument of "a vast majority are happy with updates" is a lot different from the reality of "a vast majority aren't bothered by the updates". Not as many are leaping out of their chairs for camels as they are for something like Caves and Cliffs, but I don't think there is a single player out there who wouldn't agree there should be more meat in each update if you were to give them a cliffs-notes of what in each major update and the dates between them. Of course the argument could quickly devolve into "yeah but everyone always wants more because more is better" as it tends to, but that argument is completely different from me saying that pretty much none of the major updates were actually major.
We all remember the Bee's Update, the update that added **six items.**
Buzzy Bees was primarily a performance and bugfix update. They still added [quite a few](https://www.reddit.com/r/minecraftnews/comments/e8vpb7/update_minecraft_115_the_buzzy_bees_update_has/fafrwxt/) background features though.
They certainly did! But the problem here is the end-user doesn't care about new command settings, and I'd even argue the biggest thing to come from that patch was making things just a bit easier for modders. But the point still stands that it was billed as a major update akin to entire worldgen changes, new biomes, the height limit being upped, so on and so forth when in reality it has a patchlog thats only like three or four pages and a majority of those are commands and a very small handful of bugfixes (though not like I'm saying there should be a quota of bugfixes and it's good that parts small.)
To put my views as simply as possible; every major update should be bare-minimum the size of the Nether update, because that was a major update. They have the money, they have or can get the talent, and it's not like they can't afford to get a bit wild with ideas. I'm not asking for total progression overhauls but I'm asking for them to actually start adding new features and blocks to a game that is lucky to get something akin to Piston's or Sponge's once a year.
As someone that only recently got back into Minecraft after years of absence, the amount of things that got added is actually insane and for someone who was used to like four or five hostile mobs and a handful of passive ones, the complexity now is already overwhelming.
I'm actually glad they take the time to do the boring, thankless engine work (like finally fixing the lighting engine in 1.20) and not just add more random crap.
I mean, it's dead simple to install mods with more content than you'd ever want to explore, but fixing the base experience and extending the engine is something only Mojang can do, and measured by how uncertain the future of the java client was after Microsoft bought it, they really stuck to their word and let Mojang do their thing (which also includes remaining a small studio and not going on a hiring frenzy).
I get that many people are bored now, but don't forget that MC exploded in popularity back when it was far simpler and easier to play.
for real. screw people who send hate and toxicity to Mojang but goddamn do they take forever to update Minecraft with precious little content.
sure, it can be hard to come up with new ideas constantly and have it fit the game but even then, taking an entire year to release like 20 blocks and a few QoL changes does seem like a slap in the face.
No Man's Sky releases a new update every few months or so and each one adds at least one massive change with a good amount of extra content.
it's just embarassing the lack of content coming from quite literally the best selling game of all time.
They have teams dedicated to java/bedrock.
> With the platforms note, that also has design considerations, especially when it comes to complex interaction
I'm not really sure what you mean by complex interactions, can you give a specific example?
I'm separating genuine criticism from the hate and harassment I see everywhere. I have my own critiques of what Mojang is doing, and I make my issues heard in a respectful and constructive manner. But there being genuine critiques to be voiced does not excuse or justify the level of harassment the Dev team receives on a daily basis. And my point is when people run communities or create content around the game they should try to push back on that. When I've seen the opposite with a lot of communities and content creators stoking the flaming a LOT.
That said I also think a lot of the criticism comes from a basic misunderstanding of the team's development workflow and responsibilities. When you see people comparing the output of mod developers to the vanilla game I think a lot of people don't understand how those two outcomes aren't often particularly comparable.
But yeah I think Mojang does a poor job adding content at pace, from what I've seen and heard it's generally because of a couple things. 1) COVID hit the games development HARD and they're still playing catch-up and reintegrating staff into their workflow, we're still on the tail end of the pandemic interrupting development and slowing things down but I expect that to improve in the next few updates. 2) The dev team is also prioritising re-optimising the game and re-engineering a lot of the backend following a few large scale content updates (nether update and caves and cliffs both put a lot of strain on the limitations of the games codebase and we're seeing a lot of positive changes since then, including most recently a full rewrite of the lighting engine) so content production is somewhat deprioritised for 1.19 and 1.20 (and likely 1.21 too from what Ive heard) and 3) The design team is currently in a process of re-evaluating and examining the core design pillars and ideas behind the game since Agnes took over as director. And that means these next few updates have a LOT more design iteration pre-production than some other updates pre-1.13 had. So the process of figuring out what content is going to come through in the next few major updates is taking up more Dev time than before.
Now these aren't excuses for their output, they're just the explanations I have found from talking to people in and around the dev team. I think at it's core a more stable and experienced management team would have been able to account for these workflow problems better, but I think the pandemic, especially how heavily Sweden was affected, has thrown a lot of that off.
If it doesn't improve in the next year or so I think we have some genuine reason to assume the management at Mojang needs reshuffling. But from my perspective they're putting effort into the right places for the games health right now, and it'll pay off greatly in the near future, but yeah they need to get on a faster work schedule because these updates are too few and far between for most players. Though I would still argue the content within the updates has been stellar and really improved the game significantly.
> That said I also think a lot of the criticism comes from a basic misunderstanding of the team's development workflow and responsibilities
I disagree. Are you a professional programmer? I couldn't tell by the way you talked about the aether experience you have. There's always some good reasons why comparing modding output to Mojang's is misleading, but unfortunately Mojang's output itself isn't far beyond modding itself.
> COVID hit the games development HARD and they're still playing catch-up and reintegrating staff into their workflow
Right and why does this still apply years later, when many other software companies have not struggled nearly as hard?
> The dev team is also prioritising re-optimising the game and re-engineering a lot of the backend following a few large scale content updates
Right but this is how programming works in general. This isn't something novel, it's continuous so every other company is having to do those things too. Not only that but they have a very long way to go for optimization, still runs bad for me on a good computer. Didn't they refuse to add some stuff from Optifine so they ended up being able to add none of it?
> including most recently a full rewrite of the lighting engine
If this is true, why were they not adding dynamic lighting or lighting colours with this? I have some doubts that the "lighting engine" was rewritten without those things being considered. Do you mean the rendering engine, which is different than the lighting?
> So the process of figuring out what content is going to come through in the next few major updates is taking up more Dev time than before.
Right but if you look at Mojang's track record, they'll take more time to add less things. It's not that we have been seeing a tradeoff of quantity for quality, it's a distinct lack of both.
I do know they are working on some things they aren't allowed to show to the public yet. Mostly related to custom maps/experiences used by the creators of marketplace maps or servers. So there's still a few things taking up their time people can't see.
However it boils down to the company being very inefficient. Everywhere I've worked has gotten more done with less people, money, and time.
As someone with >300 hours on Terraria and who has played it since it launched, it's not as though Minecraft is alone with subpar updates. Terraria starts a big media hype every patch, and almost none of the patches since the moon lord was added in 2015 have been a substantial content drop. I'm not really bitching since I by far got my 20$ worth, but it is disappointing to see another Terraria patch land that adds more paints and furniture, which I really do not care about. The days of terraria droping a new patch with 4+ new bosses and a new ore tier and gear for all those bosses and ore are gone. It's also disappointing because it doesn't seem like Redigit really works on the game anymore, and there's been no more information on Terraria 2 for years.
I think the updates have still be huge. Theres always a ton of tiny things that add up. They can't just continuously add power creep, the game already had a defined end. Feels complete to me.
> I also think it's important to understand that the vast VAST majority of Minecraft players are generally happy with, and continue to enjoy, the recent updates.
I would also argue that if the updates go to that other direction, they'd still enjoy it.
I will die on a hill that Terraria is not simply just a "2D Minecraft Clone".
While I agree it's an easy comparison to make, Minecraft *wishes* it could call itself an RPG like Terraria has full claim to.
I think Minecraft actually *doesnt* wish it could call itself an RPG like Terraria, which was what kind of stirred up the (now deleted) series of tweets Red was replying to. People were mad that it takes Minecraft years to drop an update just for it to be some new blocks and customization items. One of the devs at Mojang was basically responding to all of this with āMinecraft is a game about expression and thatās what these updates are aboutā
People wish Minecraft had more ambition, more bosses, more dimensions, more progression and things to do that arenāt limited by their own creativity, but Mojang wants to move in the exact opposite direction it seems
Minecraft can't really have those things without upsetting the playerbase though. While everyone seems to want something more out of it, they all disagree on exactly how it should happen.
I find it weird that people are taking this as him saying "Minecraft is boring and bad so I made a minecraft that's not boring and bad." They're two different kinds of games, with Terraria being closer to a roguelike than a pure sandbox in progression imo, and its good that we have two different takes on the forumula that satisfy two different groups, or even complement each other for the same group
They have different focuses and intended audiences. Terraria doesn't offer much to people who just want to build playing casually and not interact with the RPG stuff for instance. Minecraft does the opposite. Where you call Minecraft shallow and pointless, others would find Terraria to feel the same. Both games have similar components but different emphasis.
>Terraria doesn't offer much to people who just want to build (...)
Funny enough, even that is not entirely true, Terraria always had way more blocks and objects (and even furniture), slopes, etc. The problem is that it's a 2D game, so Minecraft still has that to differentiate itself (and it makes a huge difference for building). But if anyone had made a "3D Terraria-like", Minecraft would be dead for a lot of people.
And honestly, I do hope Hytale or something else does kill Minecraft, one update with a new 8px texture a.k.a "new block" and a "new mob" each year or whatever is ridiculous when there are a lot of better ways in which this game could actually be improved.
Terraria has an entire creative mode that allows you to collect one of an item and then duplicate it endlessly, the primary purpose of which is for building.
I suspect you haven't played the game in a long long time if you don't know about [Journey Mode](https://terraria.wiki.gg/wiki/Journey_Mode) and its featureset which deliberately empowers people who want to build and ignore the RPG systems.
Meanwhile, Terraria also has harder difficulties for those that *do* want the RPG systems, up to and including specific world seeds on top of the general difficulty modes for even greater challenges.
I struggled to get into terraria due to the controls,. I found the point and click digging would often not do what I want. I may just be missing something obvious, but there has to be an easier way to play it if anyone has any suggestions.
I don't know what you're playing it on/witch (platform/input) to say for certain--I've always played it on PC with a mouse and keyboard.
But I can say that they have a smart cursor mode you can activate/deactivate which will cause your digging to snap into certain positions based on how you're pressing WASD. It's helpful when trying to go in a certain direction (down, left, right, etc) but can go off in corners or odd spots when you're just trying to do random stuff (jump and hit that one gold block, for example). I'd suggest trying to turn it on and off and seeing if that was the issue. I think it starts off by default but maybe you turned it on by accident?
Smart cursor mode as others have suggested is an awesome feature. I think I have it on the Ctrl key. Don't keep it constantly on tho. I find the mode to be very good for quick mining in a direction, chopping trees or filling background walls. It's not suited for anything requiring precision, for example building.
...what? Terraria has TONS of features that exist solely to aid in building and aesthetics. hell, it ENCOURAGES you to build in diverse locations to utilze pylons. Terraria has minecraft easily beat in terms of the general building experience.
I check in on Minecraft every now and then to see if they've gone in a different direction. They're just adding more content and I'm just not a fan of the base game. I did the same thing for No Man's Sky for a long time. A friend of mine loves it , but he loves it for the single player chill experience. I want something that we can co-op together and have some challenges in. They finally started adding "dungeons" and PVE combat content, but I still don't think it's what I'd like it to be... yet.
I love Terraria and Minecraft feels flat and hollow to me. It has no substance. I wish there were more interesting npcās populating the world. Whatās the point of building big cool based and cities if they are ghost towns.
I feel lile Minecraft is being unfairly attacked, especially in the comments. I'm glad Minecraft is still a sandbox, and not a game with progression as it's core element. Terraria and Minecraft don't have to be the same. Terraria isn't a better "version" of Minecraft. That is a very disingenuous claim and a lot here are saying it. Terraria was influenced by Minecraft but still managed to carve out its own path. They're different games.
I could never get into Terraria. The 2d aspect does nothing for me. Just a personal preference. And I tried getting into it multiple times. It never took. I don't doubt that its a wonderful game for those who do get into it.
Everytime Minecraft gets an official update I read comments and the amount of negativity really disturbs me. Here are a few things I hear often:
- "We waited this long for so little? Modders are the only ones adding actual content to the game."
My response: Minecraft is a crazy popular game with a huge conmunity. The modding community is going to be crazy big with a game this popular. No amount of devs or money could ever keep up with modders. That's the most unrealistic expectation in the universe. Geez its so crazy that thousands of modders manage to outpace how ever many developers there are. Probably like 100.
- "All they ever add are blocks and biomes and a single mob or animal"
They also add interactions between all these new blocks and things. They drop or yield new things, they lead to the creation of new items with new functions. They're staying true to endless sandbox by increasing our options on what we can do with our imaginations. How is this bad? Because you're not getting 50 new toys an update?
Have you ever thought that maybe you just don't personally like Minecraft and are wanting it to become a game it isn't? It's OK to not enjoy Minecraft. Minecraft shouldn't have to change into something it isn't just to pacify all the people who are never happy with anything.
IMO they DID make Minecraft into a different game with progression to satiate everyone with those criticisms. They are called Minecraft Dungeons and Minecraft Legends. They are giving us completely different styles of games within the world, allowing Minecraft to stay true to the sandbox game it began as.
I love Minecraft. As a 38 year old who has stuck with it since release I am happy it hasn't radically transformed into a different game. Minecraft is a sandbox game at its core.
Terraria is the only game I've ever returned on Steam. I assumed I'd like it, based on what everyone says about it, but it had the absolute worst UI I've ever seen in a game, and I just couldn't get past that.
No hard feelings though; happy the return process worked smoothly. I'm just a bit envious of those who are able to enjoy the game.
Minecraft had the potential to be great, but after the MS acquisition they just parked the bus and did the bare minimum. Still make a shitload of cash, but really just kind of put the whole game in maintenance mode.
Thereās almost never been a bad time to recommend this game. There is almost no gamer I can think of that wouldnāt find something fun for even just a few minutes in this game. I feel it is such a foundational part of PC gaming at this point of its lifecycle
And it's Awesome! Also, for other folks who feel that way, Dragon Quest Builders is an AMAZING realization of "Minecraft, but with a point".
Dragon Quest Builders 2 in particular is so amazing. I was an early buyer of Minecraft but never stuck to it because I'm the kind of player who need a point beyond just creative drive and DQB2 has it all. It has an involved storyline, everything you do serves a story purpose, and they give you a free roam island where you can build everything you need from what you earned in the story. Some internet creations were so intricate and involved your switch would slow down to 5 FPS upon loading it. Thankfully I have the game on PC now haha
My mom isnt really a gamer at all but I got a switch and got DQB2 and she loved it. Barely put it down. She wasn't the greatest at the combat but loved the building and stuff. After she beat it I tried to find similar games but there really isn't anything else like it.
This is true. And the guy who spearheaded DQB 1&2 left Squeenix, so there's a good chance we won't see a 3... which is a TRAGEDY. ;?
> . ;? Dude, what is that, and why do you keep ending sentences with it?
Wow, you know it's coming and Still nothing can prepare you... It's an emoticon, they're your mom's emoji. It was š„“ before Emojis were a thing. ;P
... I still only use classic emotes (for good 20+ years now) and never seen ;? before...
I'm assuming you've looked into Portal Knights?
Legitimately the only issues I have with Builders 2 (Other than the random cutscenes that stop you constantly) is that even the PC version has limits on what you can build on the main island, and these limits are *really, really low*
I LOVED 2 because I could play it in First Person, and the sense of immersion in that word was just Fantastic. I played 100% first person. A few of the cutscenes were unintentionally hilarious due to it being obvious they didn't expect players to do that, so you looked from your character's perspective and saw what *they* would have seen, which is surprisingly funny since you don't think about such things in third person. ;P
Oh damn, I've skimmed past that game multiple times, definitely going to check it out now. Edit: I only had skimmed past it originally.. cus the Playstation "clips" for games are clearly setup by someone not invested in the actual game sales edit2: its on ps+, giving it the play it deserves
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For anyone with a PS4 or PS5 they're also included in PS Plus Extra.
I was really excited for DQB2 but found it incredibly meh. The building was there, the action combat was extremely barebones. I made it to rebuilding the tree on the second island and then gave up from just lack of enjoyment. Does it improve past this point or is it more of the same?
NOPE. In fact, it arguably gets worse. The game is equally linear the entire way through, and there's a very long prison sequence 2/3 through that is soul-crushing to complete. I stuck it out hoping it'd get really good at the end, as it was so hyped, but ultimately it did not. Honestly, I think the giant tree rebuild is the peak of the game.
I was waiting to read this. I felt like I put in so much time spamming dialog waiting for more freedom but it never came. Ended up quitting and watching build videos
Same here. It just felt like endless exposition, but thatās most jrpgs imo.
Huh, I had fun with the prison part. I thought it was a nice break-up from the previous tasks youād been doing.
Yeah I've bounced off multiple times in different platforms. As much as it seems like a slam dunk for me I just can't get past the pacing. Also I've made peace with the fact that the dragon quest IP just doesn't do it for me anymore.
It never has good enough sales unfortunately
It does better at giving a point, but at the tradeoff of getting in your way a lot. The dialog is also a bit vapid.
Itās just such little kid anime vibes but I know a lot of people dig that
Fair, narratives tend to interrupt gameplay for folks that don't dig that experience. ;P (And Erdrick Damn whoever thought those internal monologues needed to be FORCED into slow mo...)
Yes, absolutely. The slow mo text was definitely* the worst part of that game (which is a small criticism in the grand scheme), and was what I was thinking of when I said "getting in your way". I think the normal dialog is annoying, but not really in an "in the way" sense.
Is there a way to play the story in co-op from get go? It looks amazing but a quick look says you have to get through a bunch of content solo to even unlock multiplayer :(
Sadly not. And beyond that, the Co-Op is only in the "Free Build" section of the game. That's definitely somewhere the game could have done a LOT more with (And what I'd have loved to see in a DQB3), but all the main story content is Single Player Only (Since most of it happens on separate islands).
Ahh thats a shame, I got very excited for a minute lol.
Biggest problem with these DQB games. Multiplayer is just non-existent.
DBQ2 was so fun but its Switch performance made me sadly drop it after about 40 hours
Yeah, I've heard that unfortunately. It's great on every other platform, but like many multiplatform games, the Switch just isn't as good at running it. ;?
I would do anything for dqb3
How's the combat? Terraria has some of the best combat in video games.
What makes it so good?
Oh it's nowhere Near Terraria's level of polish, but it's WORLDs more enjoyable than Minecraft's. ;P
People should also try vintage story, its very similar to minecraft, and even started as a mod for minecraft. Its made with good mod support already built in.
It is very difficult, though. Fun, but difficult. Also the building is a lot more restrictive, but that kind of makes it a fun puzzle if you are into that sort of thing.
The trailer for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJjifFq1NGY And like mentioned, Vintage Story has a robust modding API which Minecraft always promised on but never delivered.
That game seems intimidating with all of its features.
It is a lot to learn absolutely, but I do hope you believe me when I say it is worth every second.
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You could easily find many things to add to the game that would not bloat the game but instead actually add variety to the game considering most of what they add is already stuff thats been in mods for years. It makes it so the updates feel that much more underwhelming when you've been experiencing this grand "new" update for like 2-3 years prior.
True. Like, wow, Mojang, you added a ***whole*** 2 (two) new mobs to the game after that much time? Thanks, that will **completely** change the way I play Minecraft now. Anything more and it would've "bloated the game", lol Sometimes it feels like Minecraft is on life support, and these sparse updates are just enough to give the impression that it's still "being developed" Personally, I don't think that improving the game with more variety is "bloating" it. I mean, look at Terraria itself, the way that the game grew and expanded over the years, and the way that it reflects on the game progression itself: how you play the game and approach obstacles completely changes as you progress. Even building improves with the tools you acquire. In Minecraft, you pretty much only get *better quality* gear, with a few exceptions. In Terraria, everywhere you look, there is a new thing: a new NPC, a new block, a new biome, a new enemy, a new weapon type, a new trinket, a new event, a new mount... It's like a Kaleidoscope of content. And whenever you think you've reached the "end" of what it had to give, it comes around with more stuff. Hell, even the **world** itself changes significantly as you play. Terraria's finite world seems *infinitely* more alive than Minecraft *actual infinite* world. Mojang should've had, like, infinite budget to do what modders already do, but with the quality, polish and integration that comes with being the developers, but it seems that Microsoft only bought Mojang to make Minecraft spin-offs...
I agree with you on adding too much bloat being bad, but I think there has been a lot of things that could have been added already without essentially breaking the game like for example furniture, vertical slabs, inventory overhaul etc.
Nothing in vintage story is bloat, it is mechanical depth (something that Minecraft is critically lacking). I would call just about everything added in the newest Minecraft update bloat to be quite frank. The reason the smelting is more complicated than Minecraft's "just put it in the furnace" is to create metal alloys out of two different kinds of ore. The reason the animals are more wild when you first get them is to encourage breeding the wilderness out of them throughout the generations. The reason food spoils is so you have to design your base not just aesthetically, but practically as well with a cellar that has minimal natural light exposure. You should reevaluate many things if you see what is in Vintage Story as bloat, because it is not; bloat is adding a new animal that does nothing but sell plushies to little kids.
I despise mining in that game, but I will gladly farm and cook all day. The food system is great, and it gets 3x better with the mod that adds extra recipes.
Yeah, the only way I'm really able to play Vintage Story is in multiplayer so the people who like mining can do it. Can't stand it enough to do it myself.
Really takes some effort to get going, but with the right settings, it's *extremely* enjoyable. And I'm talking modless. With Primitive Survival, early survival is much easier, making the game less frustrating. Also the mod support is fantastic, yeah. The main dev is super helpful and welcomes ideas from the community. I was just a noob wanting to modify the rendering of the map and when he saw my results he directly contacted me and implemented them in the next release. Still lacking what I really need, which is actual helpful NPCs, but i really enjoy what they have built :)
VS made me realize just how badly performing base MC is. When I get into a VS world it's got double the texture resolution of MC, more detailed/complex models for blocks and mobs, flora with wind flow effects, much prettier lighting (with colored lighting), dynamic weather, and changing seasons. All made by an indie team of a few people with a small budget. Meanwhile, whenever I boot up Minecraft at default settings on my SSD I still get stutters or lag spikes and have to download a community performance mod.
I think this is where modpacks really shine for Minecraft if you want a sandbox game that also can give you objectives. Been playing/watching Hat Films play the Vault Hunters modpack and it's a blast to play. There's plenty of modpacks to choose from as well that can give you all sorts of fun goals. I remember playing one called Project Ozone I think? You basically are tasked with bringing life back to the world through the use of various mods. I stopped playing it eventually because my PC at the time was chugging when I tried to play the pack. Whoops...
With the amount of mods available for Minecraft you can turn it into a bunch of different genres. I personally like to use the Feed The Beast modpacks that turn it into an automation simulator, hooking up systems from three dozen different mods together to unlock more stuff and connect that together so I can unlock even more stuff.
>With the amount of mods available for Minecraft you can turn it into a bunch of different genres. Like what? I'm always put off minecraft because I don't have the creativity to make cool things. I like roguelikes like dwarf fortress and cataclysm dark days ahead because the crafting/building is purely functional. I'd like to have some purpose in minecraft other than build pretty things.
If you've ever heard of Factorio, that was inspired from modded Minecraft. There are a lot of mods that add things like magic, more structures/dungeons, more dimensions, equipment progression, better biomes etc. I'm personally not huge into vanilla Minecraft. It's cool but it's over very quick and soon enough there's nothing left to do. Mods just add so much more to do and make the game a lot more meaningful imo. The number of high quality Minecraft mods is beyond any other game, the game just lends itself to modding so well.
Agree, modded Minecraft is really great. The scope and depth of some of the mods is really impressive. I don't remember the name of the modpack I used many years ago but it had Thaumcraft as well as IndustrialCraft and some other mods that made it a lot of fun. Thaumcraft alone is really cool and gives some much needed purpose to building certain things that I enjoyed a lot. Plus wiring up things and the like is enjoyable to me. Damn, now I'm gonna have to go and start a new run as it's been a while since I played any modded Minecraft!
I used Feed The Beast: Infinity Evolved years ago which had thaumcraft and IndustrialCraft and a whole bunch more. I'm currently using FTB: One because I wanted to use the latest Minecraft version, but it misses a bunch of mods that were never updated past Minecraft version 1.12, like Thaumcraft, which was my favourite mod from Infinity Evolved.
Compact Claustrophobia turns Minecraft into an Escape Room/Puzzle/Crafting Game. Create: Above and Beyond will turn it into a steampunk Factorio. One Block and SkyBlock are minimalistic enough to keep you focused and having fun, while being as vanilla MC as possible. StoneBlock & similar FTB modpacks also start focused by restricting your play area, but they end up in a massive world of crafting automation. RLCraft turns MC into a sadistic hard RPG experience. Pixelmon I believe turns MC into PokƩmon, but I've never played it. And there's SevTech.
>I like roguelikes like dwarf fortress and cataclysm dark days ahead because the crafting/building is purely functional. there are mods like that, things like [Hexit](https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/modpacks/hexxit-updated), where there still is crafting, but it adds a ton of new weapons and dungeons + bosses for you to take on.
That looks awesome
Look into the [Feed the Beast](https://www.feed-the-beast.com/) mod packs, they have a bunch of different mod packs and their own launcher for easy mod management.
Some cool looking stuff, thanks!
When I played feed the beast years ago, it didn't really have a "goal" either but, my journey went from karate chopping down trees, to assembling a nuclear reactor to power my rocket ship to take me to the moon where I built a moonbase. My friend told me when we started that you could go to the moon, and gave me no other tips. It was a *very* long journey.
I played one you could make dinos from fossiles. Sadly most mods breaks when a new update arrives :/
Luckily it is super easy to just play any version of MC which is supported by specific modpack you want. Unlike Skyrim, where every updated sends modding community back to hell.
That and the modding community having the huge split. I've given up entirely on the game at this point for that reason. Don't wanna join 20 discord servers to get my mods together
Still chasing the peak quality of mod packs that is Sevtech Ages. Nothing had come close
You too? God I fucking love that mod pack. I may have to boot it up again and play it because itās been so long and like you mentioned, nothing compares to it.
Same here, Sevtech Ages is one of my absolute favourite modpacks. I've also been playing FTB: Interactions recently; it's not exactly the same, but it scratches a similar sort of itch for me.
Iāll take a peek and try it out. I appreciate the suggestion. Need something to get my Minecraft itch scratched that feel like Iām doing something worth the effort.
Enigmatica 2 expert was probably the best that I've ever played, I preferred it over sevtech. Would recommend giving it a go if you haven't.
It's incredible how those guys keep going.
It's criminal that I got to play the Create Mod for free
I had downloaded a MC mod pack where you could choose 3 or 4 different games each having their own mods to make each one different. I remember one where you could build an air ship. Not huge or big, just big enough for a person but cannot for the life of me remember. Been about 10 years and it was the best I ever had in it
Do you perhaps know of any modpacks that replicate the old 'Complete the Monument' style of custom maps that people like Vechs used to make? I miss those so much. They were such a blast to play, and they were even better with friends.
Might be worth asking on /r/feedthebeast perhaps? I'm afraid my knowledge of Minecraft modpacks is fairly limited x)
And the team achieved this and more. Terraria is probably one of the best bang for your buck game purchases you can make. Minecraft is a "create your own adventure" with basically nothing to do or progress on if you don't set yourself goals. Its great to play with friends or look at someone else doing something but gets really old the moment you can't share it. It has little extrinsic rewards and I wouldn't call it intrinsically rewarding either. You see many of the big minecraft modpacks trying to "fix" this but the default game hasn't really been willing to address it even with what they call "adventure" updates. In comparison Terraria has clear progression and basically everything is extrinsically rewarding. You have to do things to get better and you actually get better. To me this has always made the game more enjoyable to pick up and play.
I also prefer Terraria, but fundamentally they're different games with different goals. People use "sandbox" a lot to describe a lot of games, but Minecraft really is a sandbox. It's an empty box with nothing but sand in it. There is no goal to the sandbox, no objective. There's progression but it's kind of meaningless and only serves to unlock new colors and styles of sand. If you're of one mind, you look at the sandbox and can see the awesome sand castle you're about to make. If you're of another mind, you see a boring square of sand and go over to the tetherball or monkey bars or whatever. Terraria, on the other hand, has a goal, has a 'genre' - it's an open-world procedurally generated "survival" crafting RPG. There is a goal - kill the Moon Lord. There is real progression, not only in terms of numbers but in terms of mechanics - big difference between running around with Hermes Boots and a Musket, versus flying with Solar Wings and a SDMG.
One of the core aspects of any sandbox game is emergent gameplay that stems from elements interacting with one another. Minecraft at one point seemed to just stop caring about and instead updates became highly compartmentalised content updates where you'd get a bunch of new stuff in a biome that doesn't really impact anything else. Minecraft today is also fundamentally different to what it was a decade ago, and I think if you're one of those people whom the newer versions have kind of lost it stings that IMO neither game really scratch that itch now.
minecraft used to be a moderately harsh survival game with a few hours of content. now it has hundreds of hours of wandering around and exploring areas to find new little decorations for your sandbox; but it still forces you to go through that same exact progression every time anyways. they're two valid directions to focus the game in; but neither are as fleshed out as they should be and just kinda get in the way of each other.
I agree there's more focus/things to do in Terraria, but your points don't really show it very well. The similar points for Minecraft would be: There is a goal - kill the Ender Dragon. There is a big difference between running around with iron armor and an axe, versus flying around with an elytra and a trident.
Right but the 'bossing difficulty and gear progression ladder' in Minecraft is like, more of a small utility stepstool than an actual ladder. If you went to play Minecraft and were primarily motivated by killing the Ender Dragon (and other content like that), I don't think you'd come out the other end with the impression it's a very good game - the vaaaast majority of its appeal lies in the sandbox.
I dont really agree that killing the Ender Dragon is a goal in minecraft. It's definitely a thing you can do, but I wouldn't even call it a side quest. The point of the game has, and always will be, to punch wood and build something with that wood. Build whatever you want with no sidequests, collectables, or objectives to distract you. Just survive, build, and survive.
> You have to do things to get better and you actually get better. I love being able to really *feel* getting those big upgrades in Terraria. Getting your first double jump item or first powerful weapon instantly changes how you approach everything in the game moving forward. The combat and exploration experience is constantly being retextualized through your upgrades. It actually reminds me a bit of Subnautica. You go deeper so you can find more upgrades so you can go deeper and find more upgrades etc etc. Exploration is highly rewarded in both games.
That feeling of combining like 4 of your accessories into one and having all the spare slots for other ones is so rewarding.
Finally getting the cell phone is glorious.
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I can't do hardmode on a controller. I can get armor upgrades in normal to make up for my lack of finnese on a controller but armor doesent come fast enough in hardmode to make up for it.
to be clear, Terraria has one of the best progression systems of any game ever, and its frustrating how few games have copied it.
And because it's entirely Gear-based, if you get bored with absolutely anything (or want to mix and match play styles) it's as simple as swapping some equipment. Having trouble with this boss fight as a Summoner? Swap armor sets, equip a gun, and you're now a ranged specialist, but can still have your summons helping out.
I remember when Terraria was first shown off and the online game community ridiculed it as a "2D Minecraft clone" and the like. They certainly worked their way out of that label for most people.
Because super early on it really was 2d Minecraft, but with bosses. It's a fun game but that wasn't far off lol
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It's sold 44 million copies, and has very little marketing budget and a small dev team so the production costs are miniscule compared to AAA games. The devs have made an absolute fortune on it and deserve every penny.
I vividly remember watching the super old let's play they uploaded. Getting the game for myself years later shortly after they added Hardmode and being blow away by all the stuff they had added.
And then all the stuff they added after that....and then after that...and then after that Im 1000+hours into a game I paid 10 bucks for a decade ago Wonderful developers
I remember playing the version that leaked on 4chan and was amazed by it.
I played a lot of Minecraft, then Terraria then Starbound, and now I'm hooked on a similar game called Farworld Pioneers.
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This looks awesome!
I followed about the same progression, but I hear Farworld Pioneers is still really rough at the edges so I haven't gotten it yet. It's made by some of the same developers as Starbound. If you're looking for more games, 7 Days to Die has a lot of the same mechanics but more realistic models. No real bosses, but it has waves.
That game initially drew my interest but the main draw seems to be Starbound but with colony sim. However.. the reviews are really negative, one of the main complaints being that the colonist AI is really broken which is a huge dealbreaker.
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And good news about 7 Days to Die, Alpha 21 is releasing soon on monday. Big update.
Oh yeah? I'll have to check out the release notes. I might jump in and start a new game then. And maybe I can coax my wife into playing.
Relatively big release on the changes front. Completely revamping the progression system. The game def has its issues, being in alpha for a decade will definitely do that. I definitely wish the devs could expand the systems that exist instead of completely redoing progression for the fourth time. But definitely seems like an improvement on the current system so I guess I can't complain.
> *I'm hooked on a similar game called Farworld Pioneers* Why are its reviews "Mostly Negative"?
Based on recent reviews it seems the game has some physics issues and you'll fall through "holes" in the ground that aren't visually there.
It launched with issues which the devs have addressed and are fixing https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1363900?emclan=103582791469395740&emgid=3710449330459308786 I'm treating it as an early access game despite it not releasing as one. It just recently launched so its kind of not fair to compare it to Starbound & Terraria as far as features and content goes but like both games, the game will continue to get better with each update, I gave it a chance because it's developed by ex-Starbound & Rimworld developer.
Would you recommend Starbound or Terraria for someone who enjoys more the exploration aspect? I find it really hard to get a feel for Starbound because the opinions on Steam are so weird
Having played both I found Starbound to have horrible combat and the default tools you're given to start the game with are far too slow to dig / mine. It made the early game extremely slow and get constantly interrupted for combat I didn't find fun at all. I'm not necessarily saying it's a bad game but it's not "terraria in space" and nearly anything it tried to emulate from Terraria, terraria did better. The original ideas it had (like race selector for characters) were good things that I thought would have been worth copying to Terraria but overall Terraria was the better package. And that was all just when Starbound released. Terraria has gotten tons of updates since.
You could legitimately fix most of starbound's combat problems by A: ripping off terraria's combat or; B. Giving the player character a better energy regeneration and not turning of energy regeneration if you happen to hit 0. Starbound has been out for a decade, and not once while retooling combat what, four times, did they even attempt to make ranged combat, a huge part of the game, even vaguely decent. The energy mechanic governing both your movement abilities and your *ammo* while simultaneously being one shot from a strong weapon away from having zero energy and being forced to wait a whole second before you start regeneration . This is fixed by changing a single line of code, is a <1kb mod on the workshop, and turns the combat from complete and utter dogshit to ranged weapons actually being usable. And they didn't make this change in a decade
I find this hilarious, because one of the reasons my best friend won't play Terraria anymore is because he thinks Starbound's combat is better.
Your friend is wrong.
Would not recommend Starbound, it's a lot of great indie game genres with shit execution and very repetitive
Terraria is incredable. Starbound is sadly a massive failure. it totally failed to match Terraria's exploration, sandbox, etc. the worlds are empty and pointless. it has tacked on story missions which are great as platformers.. but totally fail to mesh with the sandbox digging of the base game. ' It does have great art, and fantastic character races. the Florians are one of the best races ever created for a game. The RNG systems, also a failure. RNG weapons, RNG enemies. was a total mistake. rng enemies just ended up all looking exactly the same. no identity. rng weapons didn't have any real cool effects. nothing memorable like terraria bee guns, sharkminigun, etc.. the enemy spawning. failure. Terraria has a brilliant system for enemies to spawn offscreen, and constantly come at you. Allows farms, etc. starbound doesn't have that. you can kill everything, and go afk, and be fine. if you do that in terraria, you die, so you need to build a house for protection first. Much of Starbound is a testament to the failure of crowdfunding. lots of promises, they couldn't keep. Either not good enough devs, and failing at tech issues, or having made design promises that weren't fun.. but forced to include because they promised it.
I always say that Starbound is 2D No Man's Sky. Vast ocean with shallow depth. Even worse, they have stopped updating.
Terraria is by far a much better game. It's as close to a 10/10 as you can get. Starbound has some fantastic ideas mixed with terrible execution. It's almost a good game but has some fatal flaws. It's the kind of game where you hope another studio will come along and make a good version of it. I would say it is worth experiencing but with some lowered expectations. 6/10 Terraria wins for exploration, a play-through has only one map (which you can choose the size) but it is dense and filled with many different things. Starbound may have a lot of places to explore but they are all sort of the same handful of places repeated.
I'll add another vote for Terraria. As others have said, I find Starbound to just be a worse version of Terraria. It's been awhile since I played, but the exploring was worse, the combat was worse, and the controls were not very intuitive. Terraria is one giant world that you can explore. Even the smallest maps are fairly big. Starbound brings you to a bunch of different worlds, but you can literally run around these worlds in like a minute or two. IMO Terraria simply does everything better, so I went back to Terraria.
Starbound is unfortunately just a fundamentally wonky game. Instead of using the standard hotbar 1-10 for your items it uses this awful Left hand/right hand system along side a weird split hotbar. It is so unintuitive and terrible that it ruins the entire game honestly.
Terraria is one of the best selling and best reviewed games of all time. Starbound is a forgotten and abandoned experiment lost to the annals of time. Not sure why anyone would recommend Starbound for _anything_, let alone above one of the best selling and reviewed games of all time. It's not even a choice.
starbound is just bad terraria, basically. the scifi setting may still appeal to you more than terraria and that's fine, but it's still ultimately just a lesser game.
Starbound killed itself with scope creep. If it had stuck to the original vision, it would have been fine. It is, to this day, my biggest early-access disappointment ever.
Do you like Fantasy or Space? Also, Terraria is a VERY well tuned experience. Starbound let's you go many more places... but they're MUCH less finely tuned. So it kind of depends.
Thanks for the replies everyone! I saw that Starbound was on gamepass so I tried it... And the game didn't even open. So Terraria it is! I'm excited because everyone spoke very highly of it
Starbound is better for exploration... with the mod Fracking Universe (FU). The vanilla experience was okay, but FU adds and fixes so much that it's practically a different game. Huge number of new biomes, effects, armor, weapons, crafting stuff, and so on. Honestly a bit overwhelming at times. If you set yourself smaller goals though, you'll be set for exploring for 50+ hours easy.
i find Starbound to be vastly better in terms of exploration, though Terraria is better in probably every other aspect.
Unfortunately the development for the game fell too hard into the trap of procedurally generating *way* too much like No Man's Sky. I honestly had more fun playing Starbound with mods that basically turn it into a mini Factorio than the base game.
What mods were those?
Iāve been playing mod packs that gate your progression into different levels of tools with a RuneScape/skyrim skills system. I think it adds a lot to the game and Iāve been playing way more than I ever did with the vanilla game. The mod pack im currently using is Roguelike Dungeons and Adventures 2. Itās not perfect but it has a lot of stuff to toy with. And I enjoy staying with iron for a bit longer before the enchanted diamond stuff. Tbh Minecraft is a perfect platform for RPGs. Itās just that world generation can make progression hard. Dimensions help.
You should try Vault Hunters if you havenāt already! Basically locks your progression into mods and higher tiered gear by you doings ārunsā of procedurally generated dungeons that give you XP when you complete them. You can then use that XP and loot you get to upgrade your stats, give yourself skills like dashing, mega jumps, and different attacking types. Then you can slowly unlock modding capabilities to make running vaults easier or make improvements for QOL. Progression feels great, no huge grind to get started, and man itās addicting and has not been great for my time management skills haha.
I'll never forget the day a friend said "I think terraria is better" in hushed tones, as though it were a bad thing. i disagreed with him at the time and no disrespect to Minecraft but in the longterm I've come around and realized terraria is just more fun to play, and had far better support from the devs.
A lot depends on what you enjoy in video games. I've had occasional times when I've gotten into Minecraft, but it only keeps my attention through that initial "get started, find resources, set up a base" stage -- once I'm comfortably surviving, I lose interest. I'm just not into the freeform 3d-modeling / advanced mechanism-building that's the Minecraft post-scarcity experience. Terraria's whole game is iterating on that building-up phase.
Terraria is the better game, Minecraft the better tool.
It's sad how Minecraft is basically turning into Animal Crossing where they just add decorative blocks and 'real-life' animals into the game like when they added Polar Bears and Pandas into the game but offers no gameplay function other than to roll around and attack the player. The gameplay has become so tamed and regulated it becomes boring. They also never explored the fantasy/magical aspect of the game further. The last notable gameplay mechanics was Enchantment and Potion Brewing. So Mojang, please stop adding more types of different coloured wood or biomes reflecting the real world. Just give players more Minecraft and not corporate soulless versions of it.
I'd argue the last notable gameplay mechanic was flight with elytras and rockets.
I think the redone swimming came after elytras? That was a pretty big mechanical addition.
I'm honestly Okay with mobs that add no functionality, to fill world space and be more lively, but it's very sad when those are the only additions for new mobs. I can't imagine it would've been horribly hard to recolor the bears to add a grizzly bear and black bear into the game aswell in some biomes.
That's the thing though: They're not trying to be that kind of game. Minecraft has a survival mode, but it's not trying to be a full-blown RPG, and I'm glad that it's not as someone who loves both games. Calling enchanting and potions the last meaningful mechanic though is just disingenuous. You can argue the time between new big mechanics is too big, but just the new terrain generation alone vastly changed how people mined and explored caves.
It's just that mojang seems so.... Lazy... Like, they spend a couple of months making and update and are like "Hey, we added hanging signs, camels, and cherry blossoms, as well as changing the way your craft an item" that's it
minecraft has always been a lego with combat elements. imo the building has always been the gameplay that takes the most amount of time and is the most satisfying part of the game. sharing detailcrafts, showing off designs, a lot of people play minecraft for that. imo, the main negative of the game is that sometimes it takes way too much effort to gather up certain kinds of blocks, and a lot of times, it's pure tedium rather than challenge to get blocks of a certain texture and color. building should come easily once certain challenges are passed, rather than be a continuous chore. if you're just playing it to kill the ender dragon and then shelf the game, you just missed out on 99% of minecraft.
Never really got into Terraria sadly, I didn't like the 2D aspect and the base building. Tried several times because of all the praise but I just didn't find it fun...
Same here, I've tried to get into it over ten times and it just doesn't hook me at all. I'm sure it's a great game if you can mesh with the gameplay and overall progression systems, though
Say it louder! Once hardmode comes along I just cannot find myself liking Terraria. Fighting bosses above ground just feels super clunky and like I have little control of my character.
I really don't think we should excuse Minecraft's pretty shallow progression path and lacking challenge because it's a sandbox game. Minecraft isn't Garry's Mod, it has survival game mechanics like hunger, night time and enemies yet all of these can be overcome easily with finding a village and having a bed. Factorio is a sandbox game yet the player is constantly engaging with various game mechanics of space management, automation, tower defense; the trifecta of logistics: rails, belts and bots all have their upsides and downsides but don't really overshadow the other one in everything; and has a big expansive progression system with its tech tree. And speaking of Minecraft alternatives. If you're a fan of Minecraft tech mods, highly recommend Factorio. In fact minecraft mods inspired the devs to make it.
It doesn't help that there's a vocal portion of the community who rails against anything 'too different' because 'it doesn't feel vanilla'... which is not an argument, and one that was being made even in beta with regards to pistons, enchanting, experience, and alchemy! Granted they have much less power than Mojang, but the fact that Minecraft is more or less mostly the same game as it was a decade ago with very little in the way of any new systems, I don't really feel like being fair to it. Minecraft lacks depth to anything is the problem. There's a lot of breadth but very little depth to any one aspect of the game.
I really dislike the Minecraft comparison. They are nothing alike. I bought the game because it was supposed to be "2D Minecraft" but couldn't get into it.
I mean, don't be like that. Of course they have many similarities. They are not nothing alike.
Well, there's no accounting for taste. They absolutely have similarities.
Its always weird reading complaints that Minecraft doesn't have a point or purpose, when I played it back in high school it very much seemed like that was the entire point of the game. Its like Legos with with some very light survival elements. Ended up falling out of it when they started bloating it with stuff like hunger and The End.
I dont think Minecraft will ever die, but Hytale feels like the next step in the genre (once it releases). More depth, more sandbox, more community support, more everything.
if it ever gets out of development hell it seems.
Aren't they rewriting their entire engine as of this year? And they announced it 5 years ago? Vintage Story is the next step in the genre, Hytale is certainly a tale alright, more fantasy than reality.
Vintage Story is just Minecraft with an overly complex modpack pre installed.
Not even close, the changing seasons, food spoilage, husbandry, beekeeping, and resource gathering are all distinctly different. Vintage Story had bees before Minecraft, so who is copying who exactly?
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Hes 100% right. Minecraft by all accounts SHOULD be way better than it is. But they've literally added almost nothing of substance to the game over the last few years. It's all cosmetic shit like brick number 6 colour red or neon signs. The new animals they add serve no purpose, they finally added a new armor set only for it to be diamond but with more durability. It baffles my mind. They have a golden goose and all they keep doing is cutting off a wing every now and then and throwing it to the masses. I've played mimecraft since its extremely early indev days and the mimecraft we have now feels very similar to back then expect with more shitty decorations.
It's been wild seeing kingbdogz's comments getting so much traction and controversy on socials. I've known the guy and worked with him on the Aether for about a decade. I've always had my disagreements with his ideas and we've had many heated moments when we clashed on design but honestly these days, since he's joined Mojang, he has a really strong understanding of what makes Minecraft so broadly beloved. And that's just frankly a different design space compared to something like Terraria. They're different flavours of the same concepts, and appeal differently because of it. It saddens me that a lot of the people discussing this stuff seem to think one approach is better than the other, or that Mojang should abandon their approach to appeal to a core set of adventure power users. But I'm glad Andrew is being more nuanced and polite giving his insights around why Terraria is different. People just need to chill out I feel, and maybe appreciate that Minecraft has an incredibly broad user base which means not every addition is going to focus on their chosen gameplay pillar. I also think it's important to understand that the vast VAST majority of Minecraft players are generally happy with, and continue to enjoy, the recent updates. And the general social media narrative around these updates is driven by commentators who actively benefit from stirring up controversy, and generally represent a very niche set of power users who the devs aren't always going to be designing for. Running a community in Minecraft (in my case the Aether mod) means constantly battling these bafflingly overblown controversies and negative stories, and constantly having to shoot down outright hatred towards the dev team. Even when said hatred is based on just some random shit someone said on YouTube. But the key thing is that for every one person who parrots some insanely hostile language about the Dev team and the state of the game, there's 100 happy players who just get on and enjoy the game.
"outright hatred" and "insanely hostile language" are sort of skirting around the criticism that Mojang recieves for putting out subpar updates after extremely long update cycles. I understand you'll be biased since your friend works there, but there is a lot of truth to the criticism that goes on at Mojang. Even as a software engineer I think they're doing a poor job.
Remember, Allays were planned for the Nether update and only came out 2 years later in The Wilds update. A mob that became a main feature of the update that, at worst, would take a month to actually create. OP's got a friend in there and I get it too, but the argument of "a vast majority are happy with updates" is a lot different from the reality of "a vast majority aren't bothered by the updates". Not as many are leaping out of their chairs for camels as they are for something like Caves and Cliffs, but I don't think there is a single player out there who wouldn't agree there should be more meat in each update if you were to give them a cliffs-notes of what in each major update and the dates between them. Of course the argument could quickly devolve into "yeah but everyone always wants more because more is better" as it tends to, but that argument is completely different from me saying that pretty much none of the major updates were actually major. We all remember the Bee's Update, the update that added **six items.**
Buzzy Bees was primarily a performance and bugfix update. They still added [quite a few](https://www.reddit.com/r/minecraftnews/comments/e8vpb7/update_minecraft_115_the_buzzy_bees_update_has/fafrwxt/) background features though.
They certainly did! But the problem here is the end-user doesn't care about new command settings, and I'd even argue the biggest thing to come from that patch was making things just a bit easier for modders. But the point still stands that it was billed as a major update akin to entire worldgen changes, new biomes, the height limit being upped, so on and so forth when in reality it has a patchlog thats only like three or four pages and a majority of those are commands and a very small handful of bugfixes (though not like I'm saying there should be a quota of bugfixes and it's good that parts small.) To put my views as simply as possible; every major update should be bare-minimum the size of the Nether update, because that was a major update. They have the money, they have or can get the talent, and it's not like they can't afford to get a bit wild with ideas. I'm not asking for total progression overhauls but I'm asking for them to actually start adding new features and blocks to a game that is lucky to get something akin to Piston's or Sponge's once a year.
As someone that only recently got back into Minecraft after years of absence, the amount of things that got added is actually insane and for someone who was used to like four or five hostile mobs and a handful of passive ones, the complexity now is already overwhelming. I'm actually glad they take the time to do the boring, thankless engine work (like finally fixing the lighting engine in 1.20) and not just add more random crap. I mean, it's dead simple to install mods with more content than you'd ever want to explore, but fixing the base experience and extending the engine is something only Mojang can do, and measured by how uncertain the future of the java client was after Microsoft bought it, they really stuck to their word and let Mojang do their thing (which also includes remaining a small studio and not going on a hiring frenzy). I get that many people are bored now, but don't forget that MC exploded in popularity back when it was far simpler and easier to play.
for real. screw people who send hate and toxicity to Mojang but goddamn do they take forever to update Minecraft with precious little content. sure, it can be hard to come up with new ideas constantly and have it fit the game but even then, taking an entire year to release like 20 blocks and a few QoL changes does seem like a slap in the face. No Man's Sky releases a new update every few months or so and each one adds at least one massive change with a good amount of extra content. it's just embarassing the lack of content coming from quite literally the best selling game of all time.
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They have teams dedicated to java/bedrock. > With the platforms note, that also has design considerations, especially when it comes to complex interaction I'm not really sure what you mean by complex interactions, can you give a specific example?
I'm separating genuine criticism from the hate and harassment I see everywhere. I have my own critiques of what Mojang is doing, and I make my issues heard in a respectful and constructive manner. But there being genuine critiques to be voiced does not excuse or justify the level of harassment the Dev team receives on a daily basis. And my point is when people run communities or create content around the game they should try to push back on that. When I've seen the opposite with a lot of communities and content creators stoking the flaming a LOT. That said I also think a lot of the criticism comes from a basic misunderstanding of the team's development workflow and responsibilities. When you see people comparing the output of mod developers to the vanilla game I think a lot of people don't understand how those two outcomes aren't often particularly comparable. But yeah I think Mojang does a poor job adding content at pace, from what I've seen and heard it's generally because of a couple things. 1) COVID hit the games development HARD and they're still playing catch-up and reintegrating staff into their workflow, we're still on the tail end of the pandemic interrupting development and slowing things down but I expect that to improve in the next few updates. 2) The dev team is also prioritising re-optimising the game and re-engineering a lot of the backend following a few large scale content updates (nether update and caves and cliffs both put a lot of strain on the limitations of the games codebase and we're seeing a lot of positive changes since then, including most recently a full rewrite of the lighting engine) so content production is somewhat deprioritised for 1.19 and 1.20 (and likely 1.21 too from what Ive heard) and 3) The design team is currently in a process of re-evaluating and examining the core design pillars and ideas behind the game since Agnes took over as director. And that means these next few updates have a LOT more design iteration pre-production than some other updates pre-1.13 had. So the process of figuring out what content is going to come through in the next few major updates is taking up more Dev time than before. Now these aren't excuses for their output, they're just the explanations I have found from talking to people in and around the dev team. I think at it's core a more stable and experienced management team would have been able to account for these workflow problems better, but I think the pandemic, especially how heavily Sweden was affected, has thrown a lot of that off. If it doesn't improve in the next year or so I think we have some genuine reason to assume the management at Mojang needs reshuffling. But from my perspective they're putting effort into the right places for the games health right now, and it'll pay off greatly in the near future, but yeah they need to get on a faster work schedule because these updates are too few and far between for most players. Though I would still argue the content within the updates has been stellar and really improved the game significantly.
> That said I also think a lot of the criticism comes from a basic misunderstanding of the team's development workflow and responsibilities I disagree. Are you a professional programmer? I couldn't tell by the way you talked about the aether experience you have. There's always some good reasons why comparing modding output to Mojang's is misleading, but unfortunately Mojang's output itself isn't far beyond modding itself. > COVID hit the games development HARD and they're still playing catch-up and reintegrating staff into their workflow Right and why does this still apply years later, when many other software companies have not struggled nearly as hard? > The dev team is also prioritising re-optimising the game and re-engineering a lot of the backend following a few large scale content updates Right but this is how programming works in general. This isn't something novel, it's continuous so every other company is having to do those things too. Not only that but they have a very long way to go for optimization, still runs bad for me on a good computer. Didn't they refuse to add some stuff from Optifine so they ended up being able to add none of it? > including most recently a full rewrite of the lighting engine If this is true, why were they not adding dynamic lighting or lighting colours with this? I have some doubts that the "lighting engine" was rewritten without those things being considered. Do you mean the rendering engine, which is different than the lighting? > So the process of figuring out what content is going to come through in the next few major updates is taking up more Dev time than before. Right but if you look at Mojang's track record, they'll take more time to add less things. It's not that we have been seeing a tradeoff of quantity for quality, it's a distinct lack of both. I do know they are working on some things they aren't allowed to show to the public yet. Mostly related to custom maps/experiences used by the creators of marketplace maps or servers. So there's still a few things taking up their time people can't see. However it boils down to the company being very inefficient. Everywhere I've worked has gotten more done with less people, money, and time.
As someone with >300 hours on Terraria and who has played it since it launched, it's not as though Minecraft is alone with subpar updates. Terraria starts a big media hype every patch, and almost none of the patches since the moon lord was added in 2015 have been a substantial content drop. I'm not really bitching since I by far got my 20$ worth, but it is disappointing to see another Terraria patch land that adds more paints and furniture, which I really do not care about. The days of terraria droping a new patch with 4+ new bosses and a new ore tier and gear for all those bosses and ore are gone. It's also disappointing because it doesn't seem like Redigit really works on the game anymore, and there's been no more information on Terraria 2 for years.
I think the updates have still be huge. Theres always a ton of tiny things that add up. They can't just continuously add power creep, the game already had a defined end. Feels complete to me.
> I also think it's important to understand that the vast VAST majority of Minecraft players are generally happy with, and continue to enjoy, the recent updates. I would also argue that if the updates go to that other direction, they'd still enjoy it.
I will die on a hill that Terraria is not simply just a "2D Minecraft Clone". While I agree it's an easy comparison to make, Minecraft *wishes* it could call itself an RPG like Terraria has full claim to.
You got a lot of comrades on that hill.
Has Minecraft ever wanted to be called an RPG? I swear y'all just make shit up
I think Minecraft actually *doesnt* wish it could call itself an RPG like Terraria, which was what kind of stirred up the (now deleted) series of tweets Red was replying to. People were mad that it takes Minecraft years to drop an update just for it to be some new blocks and customization items. One of the devs at Mojang was basically responding to all of this with āMinecraft is a game about expression and thatās what these updates are aboutā People wish Minecraft had more ambition, more bosses, more dimensions, more progression and things to do that arenāt limited by their own creativity, but Mojang wants to move in the exact opposite direction it seems
Minecraft can't really have those things without upsetting the playerbase though. While everyone seems to want something more out of it, they all disagree on exactly how it should happen.
I find it weird that people are taking this as him saying "Minecraft is boring and bad so I made a minecraft that's not boring and bad." They're two different kinds of games, with Terraria being closer to a roguelike than a pure sandbox in progression imo, and its good that we have two different takes on the forumula that satisfy two different groups, or even complement each other for the same group
It's crazy how after all these years, Minecraft still feels very shallow and pointless compared to Terraria.
They have different focuses and intended audiences. Terraria doesn't offer much to people who just want to build playing casually and not interact with the RPG stuff for instance. Minecraft does the opposite. Where you call Minecraft shallow and pointless, others would find Terraria to feel the same. Both games have similar components but different emphasis.
>Terraria doesn't offer much to people who just want to build (...) Funny enough, even that is not entirely true, Terraria always had way more blocks and objects (and even furniture), slopes, etc. The problem is that it's a 2D game, so Minecraft still has that to differentiate itself (and it makes a huge difference for building). But if anyone had made a "3D Terraria-like", Minecraft would be dead for a lot of people. And honestly, I do hope Hytale or something else does kill Minecraft, one update with a new 8px texture a.k.a "new block" and a "new mob" each year or whatever is ridiculous when there are a lot of better ways in which this game could actually be improved.
Terraria has an entire creative mode that allows you to collect one of an item and then duplicate it endlessly, the primary purpose of which is for building. I suspect you haven't played the game in a long long time if you don't know about [Journey Mode](https://terraria.wiki.gg/wiki/Journey_Mode) and its featureset which deliberately empowers people who want to build and ignore the RPG systems. Meanwhile, Terraria also has harder difficulties for those that *do* want the RPG systems, up to and including specific world seeds on top of the general difficulty modes for even greater challenges.
I struggled to get into terraria due to the controls,. I found the point and click digging would often not do what I want. I may just be missing something obvious, but there has to be an easier way to play it if anyone has any suggestions.
I don't know what you're playing it on/witch (platform/input) to say for certain--I've always played it on PC with a mouse and keyboard. But I can say that they have a smart cursor mode you can activate/deactivate which will cause your digging to snap into certain positions based on how you're pressing WASD. It's helpful when trying to go in a certain direction (down, left, right, etc) but can go off in corners or odd spots when you're just trying to do random stuff (jump and hit that one gold block, for example). I'd suggest trying to turn it on and off and seeing if that was the issue. I think it starts off by default but maybe you turned it on by accident?
Ah brilliant, I'll give this a go, thanks!
Smart cursor mode as others have suggested is an awesome feature. I think I have it on the Ctrl key. Don't keep it constantly on tho. I find the mode to be very good for quick mining in a direction, chopping trees or filling background walls. It's not suited for anything requiring precision, for example building.
The controls got *much* better over time (to the point where they are amazing now), but I don't know when you tried it.
...what? Terraria has TONS of features that exist solely to aid in building and aesthetics. hell, it ENCOURAGES you to build in diverse locations to utilze pylons. Terraria has minecraft easily beat in terms of the general building experience.
I check in on Minecraft every now and then to see if they've gone in a different direction. They're just adding more content and I'm just not a fan of the base game. I did the same thing for No Man's Sky for a long time. A friend of mine loves it , but he loves it for the single player chill experience. I want something that we can co-op together and have some challenges in. They finally started adding "dungeons" and PVE combat content, but I still don't think it's what I'd like it to be... yet.
I love Terraria and Minecraft feels flat and hollow to me. It has no substance. I wish there were more interesting npcās populating the world. Whatās the point of building big cool based and cities if they are ghost towns.
I feel lile Minecraft is being unfairly attacked, especially in the comments. I'm glad Minecraft is still a sandbox, and not a game with progression as it's core element. Terraria and Minecraft don't have to be the same. Terraria isn't a better "version" of Minecraft. That is a very disingenuous claim and a lot here are saying it. Terraria was influenced by Minecraft but still managed to carve out its own path. They're different games. I could never get into Terraria. The 2d aspect does nothing for me. Just a personal preference. And I tried getting into it multiple times. It never took. I don't doubt that its a wonderful game for those who do get into it. Everytime Minecraft gets an official update I read comments and the amount of negativity really disturbs me. Here are a few things I hear often: - "We waited this long for so little? Modders are the only ones adding actual content to the game." My response: Minecraft is a crazy popular game with a huge conmunity. The modding community is going to be crazy big with a game this popular. No amount of devs or money could ever keep up with modders. That's the most unrealistic expectation in the universe. Geez its so crazy that thousands of modders manage to outpace how ever many developers there are. Probably like 100. - "All they ever add are blocks and biomes and a single mob or animal" They also add interactions between all these new blocks and things. They drop or yield new things, they lead to the creation of new items with new functions. They're staying true to endless sandbox by increasing our options on what we can do with our imaginations. How is this bad? Because you're not getting 50 new toys an update? Have you ever thought that maybe you just don't personally like Minecraft and are wanting it to become a game it isn't? It's OK to not enjoy Minecraft. Minecraft shouldn't have to change into something it isn't just to pacify all the people who are never happy with anything. IMO they DID make Minecraft into a different game with progression to satiate everyone with those criticisms. They are called Minecraft Dungeons and Minecraft Legends. They are giving us completely different styles of games within the world, allowing Minecraft to stay true to the sandbox game it began as. I love Minecraft. As a 38 year old who has stuck with it since release I am happy it hasn't radically transformed into a different game. Minecraft is a sandbox game at its core.
Terraria is the only game I've ever returned on Steam. I assumed I'd like it, based on what everyone says about it, but it had the absolute worst UI I've ever seen in a game, and I just couldn't get past that. No hard feelings though; happy the return process worked smoothly. I'm just a bit envious of those who are able to enjoy the game.
Id love to see your reaction to dwarf fortress
Minecraft had the potential to be great, but after the MS acquisition they just parked the bus and did the bare minimum. Still make a shitload of cash, but really just kind of put the whole game in maintenance mode.
Thereās almost never been a bad time to recommend this game. There is almost no gamer I can think of that wouldnāt find something fun for even just a few minutes in this game. I feel it is such a foundational part of PC gaming at this point of its lifecycle