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I love Minecraft, but lately, I’ve had a ton of ideas of how the game could be improved. Mojang is heading in the right direction with 1.21 and the trial chambers, but I think things can be taken further… so let’s discuss that and other issues plaguing the game in its current state.
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What do you guys think of my potential solutions to Minecraft’s progression? I’d love to hear your ideas!
This video took a ton of work. I can’t thank you guys enough for making 2023 the best year for my channel. I’m very excited for what’s to come! ❤
A good watch!
You make a lot of good points that I agree with, some of them I disagree. While I agree that Terraria has amazing progression, I don't think Minecraft should look to Terraria first for inspiration. I would like to bring up Better than Adventure, a mod for Beta 1.7.3 that is basically a "what if" where the Adventure update never happened and the game went in a different direction.
In BTA, you can get all gear in an hour or two just like in Vanilla, but no gear is better than another. Leather armor protects against fall damage, gold against fire, iron is a jack of all trades, gold tools even have silk touch. You also have a new ore called Steel, which you get once you reach the nether, that is still slower than diamond but has much higher durability.
Basically what BTA does is replace enchantments with gear sets. All armor types and several tool sets remain relevant even in endgame because they all bring unique buffs – especially since you can't repair any of it.
What I think BTA understands, or rather where I share their vision, is that Minecraft is not a combat game. It's a building game that happens to have some combat. It also understands that Minecraft doesn't end when you get endgame gear – that's only the beginning.
Progression should be primarily about building, and exploring. I think that is what comes naturally to Minecraft, not defeating harder bosses and unlocking more powerful gear. Some examples in Vanilla are the swamp villagers having unique trades, the enchantment table, and beacons – instances where building directly rewards the player and also inspires them to build more. But the biggest one is infrastructure, which modern Minecraft is unfortunately handling terribly. Elytra and a rocket farm (ugh) makes all infrastructure basically irrelevant. No need to make roads, no need to make rail, no need to engage with horses or even build stairs for that matter. The player isn't rewarded for building anything.
In BTA, there are no Elytra, no horses, and minecarts are much faster than Vanilla. That means the player is greatly rewarded for going through the massive project of building a railroad, because it allows you to go anywhere in just a few seconds. Since there is also no running and beds are harder to make, infrastructure is way more important for moving quickly and for your own safety.
CONTROVERSIAL BUT NOT HUGE/IMPOSSIBLE CHANGES I WOULD LIKE TO SEE:
– Remove using rockets to boost Elytra, making other forms of transportation relevant again without taking away the fun of flight. This also encourages building towers to jump from.
– Give Elytra a boost when flying over campfires or lava. This makes it more useful in the Nether, and encourages building bonfires for traversal.
– Remove Emeralds as a currency, and make Villagers trade by exchanging goods and treasures instead. This way you can't get infinite materials just by having a big melon farm and a concentration camp, and makes trading more interesting and varied in general. Easier to balance since you can't farm infinite currency anymore.
– Remove XP and levels, and use materials instead for the Anvil and Enchantment table. XP as a feature has never really been fun IMO and forces people to grind and make AFK farms rather than play the game. And enchantment RNG sucks. This is also a good opportunity to give use to some underused items, like what if you needed the Heart of the Sea to get aqua affinity, Turtle Scutes to get protection enchantments, or amethyst gems for efficiency? Now, you are rewarded for exploration rather than AFK farming.
– Make Minecarts faster than the alternatives.
– More features like the Ore Veins and Amethyst geodes, that force you to explore and create infrastructure to extract resources rather than doing everything at your base
– More multiple-block structures that have practical use, like the Beacon, Enchantment table, and Conduit.
Bump
Minecraft's progression is basically a formality. I firmly believe the Villager Trade Rebalance is also supposed to adress parts of the issue like the smithing templates do – the current state makes it trivial to bypass mining and exploring to get top-tier equipment (Netherite is still a fairly recent addition in the grand scheme of things, and nowhere near essential, either). Given that you can find diamonds in pretty much every structure (no need to even go underground), it's hardly the doomsday event people are hyping it up to be. Skilled players will still be able to skip ahead through their knowledge of structures. Mining properly also won't take "hundreds of hours" like some people claim, and 1.18 made caving more fun than ever, but that is meaningless if there is no reason to go there because you can get everything in the comfort of your own base! And while Mojang could give us other reasons to explore and cave, the cosmetic stuff is entirely optional and any OP gear is likely pointless by the time you actually obtain it (aside from trivializing the game even further).
I will say though that if Mojang wants us to create our own villages, they need to improve villager AI, give us better feedback about their wellbeing (such as being able and willing to breed), give us better means of directing them to other places (not boats / minecarts! They could follow us willingly if they like us enough!) and give us other ways to reduce their prices (such as certain profession related blocks in their home, size of their housing, ability to freely go outside etc.). If that is done, though, treasure enchantments could be made renewable in a satisfying manner through biome or location specific trades. They could have villagers trade with gold instead of emeralds if they are in the nether, with some other trades being switched out for dimension-appropriate items. The possibilities are endless, but they need to seize them!
With copper now in the game, maybe it should take the place iron currently has, and iron could move further down, being absent from the surface entirely. I don't think people would complain about some buff to diamond and netherite durability in order to make room for a satisfying iron-age. Gold should also get some situational use – enchanting is already it's thing, so maybe the ability to mine everything iron can mine, and the ability to always get max level enchantments early on (for Fortune III or Silk Touching blocks, for example), or the ability to get enchantments that are normally mutually exclusive (if they aren't functionally exclusive like Silk Touch and Fortune are).
Any new post-Diamond gear should be on one level with Netherite, but with different side effects – Enderite could make Enderman friendly, an Ocean-themed armor could make the player act like a conduit and make guardians neutral etc.
Any change to get to a more satisfying progression will hurt at first, though, because we have grown accustomed to having decked out gear almost right away, rather than having to progress through any intermediate stages first. Mojang will have to power through all the crying without losing sight of legitimate criticism.
Also:
It's becoming increasingly obvious!
I can deny it no longer!
ᴵ ᵃᵐ ᵗʷᵉˡᵛᵉ.
my god this is a great video. glad to hear someone talk about REAL problems of the game, not about 2 mobs that doesnt gonna be added now. it really seams that mojang do not want to change some core aspects of the game for beeing too nostalgic or iconic. instead they make updates in smaller areas to just "enhance" other goals in a game wich was A GREAT POTENCIAL but in most part is not fun to play ( whitout exentric progression ) i cant imagine how hard it is to actually develop a game like this for such a small amount a people (comparing to the size of the game) but it realy seams that they dont foucus in the rigth direction, the last 4 updates was realising features that they show back in 1.17 lol. i love the new additions dont get me wrong, and a apreciate the care and affort to implamanting the new features like the world gen, mobs and structres. but core elements like ( get ready for complents ) trees beeing to small for navegation, litghing and graphics never was a proper attention, a depth to the enviroment like weather and wind, older mobs like pigs, chickens or zombies NEVER had a update to fit the newer ones, food system, combat system and progression system like u sugest. anywalys i love this video and it is very rare to see someone bring this discussion with this depth in the comunnity, not saying other arguments are wrong but i dont think calling mojang lazy or saying the game is not what it was will help anyone or even change something. im really hopefull for the trade rebalance and the trial chamber to solve some of the progression system, like u said there way more problems but its a step for sure.
I think that when mojang does their next combat update they add some better mob ai and fixes to progression
suggesting things like this and making the same criticism online has led me to the conclusion this community hates change
minecraft almost gets too much of a pass in peoples eyes, like we are okay with it effectively being indefinitely in beta cause there are mods
I totally agree that there are things to be improved in Minecraft. I think the game is way too easy right now and also agree that mob ai sucks. Also more unique mobs.
Tbh I still find myself playing the same survival world (same world since prepandemic 2020) but I do find myself getting bored when I can't think of something to do especially since I've done everything, just play when I want to build something
super well made, all of these solutions seem great
I think the devs know of a lot of these issues but they know if they do something about it the community will go bat crazy about it, example, villager changes
About the armor debacle: The biggest issue with it is that the Only viable tier of armor before Diamondd is Iron. Chainmail? Literally rare vanity armor. Leather? Durability and defense too low for the effort. Gold? Not meant to be used. So that leaves us with just the incredibly bland choice of Iron. The same goes for tools, since stone is so mind numbingly slow and Iron is so easy to obtain. The only 'fix' for these things is to tweak stats to add more variety. Cows should drop more leather (And consequently all leather crafts should be nerfed), Chainmail mobs should be more common at higher difficulties and far higher durability. Iron itself should ideally have more durability and Mending should get nerfed. Mobs should be made harder. It's a really complicated issue that necessitates a complete game restructuring.
Mojang did not realise that players will optimise the fun out of a game.
>spiders that are invisible
Bruh
I know the video is already 1 day old and my comment will probably get ignored but anyway here's my opinion about villagers and mending. I think the best way to make mending an actual end game item is to change how the librarian works, for exemple if you want him to sell a specific enchanting book you need to give him that same book first (when he reaches the final level) so if you want him to sell mending you first have to beat the ender dragon and find it so you can decide if you want to use it immediately on your gear or invest it with a librarian. This would change the way enhancing works but the current one sucks anyway and needs to be fixed so I don't see the problem. An other problem Minecraft has is the trading system with villagers because in theory if you want to buy an enchanting book you should exchange it with a fair amount of emeralds but the current trade sistem make the emeralds not valuable enough because you can literally gain them by selling renewable items like crops which take nothing to obtain and can literally be stolen in the villages. Mojang should absolutely rework this system and balance the values of items and only make rare items exchangeable with emeralds like rare mob drops for example mob heads, nether stars ecc. If you find my comment interesting please feel free to share your opinion.
My biggest issue with this argument is that it takes the way too popular stance of "this game is about progressing"… I swear if the End was never added this game wouldnt even have to worry about this. Minecraft shouldnt be a game about progressing to the next armor (I actually hate Netherite and everything it stands for). The beta I think demonstrates what Minecraft should be, a game about building stuff… for fun, when you die it isnt that hard to get your items back, heck you dont even NEED diamond armor because the armor stat in beta is influenced heavily by the amount of durability it has left.
I think you get tons of things right in this video and I (for the most part) agree with you. Its just I hate when the idea that Minecraft is a game to be beaten is presented as the only option. "Can I BEAT Minecraft without _____" titles always annoy me… YOU DONT "BEAT" MINECRAFT! Your objectives are your choice.
Ive never liked Terraria because it feels way too linear and I feel like it throws stuff at me, an inexperienced player, way too fast.
Hopefully Minecraft shapes up, and I genuinely hope that Mojang actually does something that improves this now progression centeric idea of the game that people cling onto.
I was willing to give you a shot, but I've never seen a video where I thoroughly disagreed with someone 5 seconds in: Terraria is a fun game, but the progression is Terraria is broken. Pre-Hardmode, it works fairly well, but the post-Hardmode stuff is completely busted.
Speaking of mending i would love to see it only spawn in book form as guaranteed loot in ancient city.
Ancient city does not have loot useful enough to justify efort of finding one and going through challenge, and that suck beacose they are one of the coolest new structures.
Yes! I have been saying this for a few years now. Minecraft's progression is staring at what's new on the wiki. Terraria progression is so far from that where you don't have to look at the wiki at all, there's always something new that the game tells you about or you find out about naturally.
Mending and infinity need to be removed and they need to fix how anvils work, then enchanting and repairing would be more bearable
I mean have you played Terraria at all?, you just pick any summoner weapon on tier level, any summoner armour, and then afk farm for Platinum and the Rod of Dscord.
To say there isn't AFKtion or automation in Terraria as well it's a bit weird to only focus on Minecraft there.
Both games have flaws.
But let me compare it to Warframe, Monster Hunter or Final Fantasy 14, you don't play these games at the endgame for their games sake, well you do, because you generally probably like the game mechanics etc, but the ultimate goal you have, is to make a good looking outfit or Glamour set.
You do that because you don't care about the gameplay anymore as motivator, it's just there, existing, and it's fun, the core game is fun (for the most part), now that everything is muscle memory and in your blood the gameplay is secondary in your thoughts.
Same for me with Minecraft, I don't care about progression really, all I care is how I can obtain all the blocks in Survival I want to build with, I want to build first, all the tedium of aquiring mending yada yada is just the exact run of the mill most of the time for me, I have my own personal setups for how I design mob grinders etc.
I would hate the Librarian changes personally, because they would have me either search for that perfect world where all the biomes are relatively close together, or I have to go on a thousand block nether journey just to get that one Biome that my world randomly decided to not allow me to have within 1k overworld blocks.
Gating Librarian stuff behind Biomes is much worse than making 20 lecterns in a 1x1x2 hole and having villagers fall into them.
I don't care that Librarians are OP, it's fine, if you don't like it, well that's fine, you don't have to like everything about a game.
I hate the clutch claw in MHW but I still am using it, because it's just optimal for damage.
My goal in Survival Minecraft is building, I don't want to have access to all the block and flying and no death via creative mode, that's boring.
Repairing my diamond tools every few hours is only fine for the first three times, then it becomes annoying because it takes 30+ levels and I wish I had mending already on them so I could just quickly repair them with an exp grinder.
Overall, Experience is way to under utilized in the game, sometimes I have like 250+ levels, and nothing to really do with them.
My proposal is that they need to give more usage for experience points, because that's a thing that is severely lacking right now.
This video is honestly really good and really voices a lot of my same thoughts. I do really wish there was more stuff like the trident or turtle helmet in minecraft, just more variation of weapons, armour and tools. Terraria really does it perfectly. Would love to see you talk more about terraria in the future.
I have been playing a survival world for almost a week now and I am still interested to play in it mostly because I like building. In terms of the base game progression it really feels like there is not much too it. I mean just look at speedruns and see how fast they can beat the game. Of course there are more things to explore after that, but those aren’t considered necessary when thinking about game progression. I think minecraft should extend the amount of progression that needs to done to reach the end by maybe adding new structures that are necessary to explore and progress through the game. Or adding new bosses that are ALSO necessary to defeat to progress through the game just like terraria.