Why do so many people want to make Minecraft into WOW?

[lord_raken]

I've been spending some time on the get-satisfaction site the minecraft forums and there is a huge number of people who want to add "quests" "pets" and dungeons with boss monsters... is it just me or do these people sound like they want minecraft to become a WOW like MMORPG?

 

[YROC]

The combat in the game is awful, so I don't know why anyone on earth would want that. I assumed there would be goals eventually though.

 

[JesusToast]

They just want an objective. How many other games do you know of where the choice of what to do is entirely on the player? Now how many of those don't have some sort of strictly negative/positive consequence for any given action, whether in a morality scale or loot acquisition? With Minecraft, it's build/explore what you want, not bring the person you just rescued from the evil clutches of of Baron Von Schpydere to the house you crafted after joining a rebellion and getting a box of grapes from point A to point B. People just aren't accustomed to that sort of thing.

 

[Kitfox]

Hey guys have you heard of this new circle shape. I think its very innovative and unique... but for some reason it won't fit into the square hole like all the other shapes I play with which makes me feel a little uncomfortable... but no worries I have a solution, I'll just take this hammer and...

 

[EversorAssassin]

I'm just hoping for more stuff to do. Not strict objectives, but more craftable stuff, more enemies/creatures (with better AI) and combat that isn't embarrassing. Not that Minecraft is a bore now. I'm more than addicted to building giant lego-esque towers for no real reason.

 

[YROC]

Hey guys have you heard of this new circle shape. I think its very innovative and unique... but for some reason it won't fit into the square hole like all the other shapes I play with which makes me feel a little uncomfortable... but no worries I have a solution, I'll just take this hammer and...

YOU'LL KILL US ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

 

[CR0M]

From an outsiders point of view (I have never played Minecraft but have watched many vids with interest), I can see how people want 'more'. Yes I know it isn't finished and that much more will be added to eventually make it a 'game', but I suspect it may well become another Spore-alike when it becomes stupidly ruined by over-engineering and the corporate dollar in 5 years time.

When I first watched a tutorial youtube vid of how to build a basic shelter, I was quite intrigued to find out there was a survival mode and you had to get through the night cowering from a slightly annoyed skellington in your claustrophobic cave you manually hacked out of the ground.

Sounded great.

Until I found out that's pretty much it. Once you've done it, it's the same pointless routine every night. For what? If there was an ultimate objective, say make your way to the next island and some kind of level-up or tool-based incentive while surviving hordes of zombies and various night terrors (or better, other players) trying to eat their way into my cunningly trapped stronghold after the sun goes down, I would be sold on the game. But there isn't, and building boxes and towers one cube at a time for the fun of it isn't... fun.. to me. After a few hours watching vids and reading up on other peoples experiences with Minecraft, I became uninterested. Not with the concept, which could potentially be awesome, or the basic graphics and sound, which in this case actually fit the format very well, but the lack of gameplay. Maybe one day there will be some, but like Spore I think by the time it goes gold it will be broken beyond fixing. Great ideas with humble beginnings always turn into monsters. Shame.

 

[Maestro]

Tell me, CR0M, did you play with Legos as a child?

 

[CR0M]

Yus. As a child. Now i'm an adult with an expensive PC capable of so much more than just block stacking, I guess I need more challenging games to play on it. Oh the horror of growing old.

 

[EversorAssassin]

CROM, you can play survival with other people. And each night gets a little tougher, as Mobs continuously stack up day by day (unless you move to a new area, they only spawn a certain distance around you) and there are mobs that can ruin your buildings. And there are plenty of incentives to keep playing. Better tools, loot from dungeons, the Netherworld, etc.

And no corporate dollar ruining this game. Notch is already making oodles of money, and set up his own office and team to work solely on the project (and one other unannounced game his friend is working on)

 

[Dekstar]

Hey guys have you heard of this new circle shape. I think its very innovative and unique... but for some reason it won't fit into the square hole like all the other shapes I play with which makes me feel a little uncomfortable... but no worries I have a solution, I'll just take this hammer and...

You know, for kids.

EDIT: I'm not sure Minecraft needs an actual plot. I think it just needs more variability in enemies/difficulty, which will happen over time I'm sure.
Having said that, I haven't once found a slime.

 

[StardogChampion]

I wish he'd just improve the building tools. I want to be able to subdivide the blocks into smaller ones to create more detailed buildings. The way it is now, to create anything realistic, it has to be huge.

 

[CR0M]

CROM, you can play survival with other people. And each night gets a little tougher, as Mobs continuously stack up day by day (unless you move to a new area, they only spawn a certain distance around you) and there are mobs that can ruin your buildings. And there are plenty of incentives to keep playing. Better tools, loot from dungeons, the Netherworld, etc.

Really? didn't know about multiplayer survival, thought it was just building stuff online. I'd better go watch more vids.

What i'd like to see in addition to the existing tools are fine tools, like wrenches and screwdrivers, for building machines/vehicles/traps/weapons with the metals I extract... I really love the process of 'drawing' what you want to craft. Veh clever. I spose a whole build heirarchy could be developed with a bit of work.

 

[MJ12]

I wish he'd just improve the building tools. I want to be able to subdivide the blocks into smaller ones to create more detailed buildings. The way it is now, to create anything realistic, it has to be huge.

True, also, a side note, I still think it's ridiculous that 7 sticks only makes one single ladder. At the very least, it should create a pair. Especially since crafting one mine track gets you 16 :|

 

[Maestro]

Yus. As a child. Now i'm an adult with an expensive PC capable of so much more than just block stacking, I guess I need more challenging games to play on it. Oh the horror of growing old.

If you liked Lego as a kid, you'll like minecraft.

 

[Kitfox]

I wish he'd just improve the building tools. I want to be able to subdivide the blocks into smaller ones to create more detailed buildings. The way it is now, to create anything realistic, it has to be huge.

The geometric limitations of minecraft are not just for aesthetic purposes but a performance limitation of Java. Java is technically not the most efficient in 3D rendering especially if you want to render "details". The beauty of minecraft is that it only renders the same cube with different textures several thousands times (depending on how far your draw distance is also know as LOD).

Now I imagine for efficiency purposes the engine is only rendering at most 3 faces of the a cube at a time(aka only the faces of each cube that is visible from the perspective of the player(cube has 6 faces only 6/2 faces can be seen)).

Lets say you see 10000 cubes at in a single moment, the software is actually rendering at most 30000 faces and lets say it can't render more then that without a huge performance hit. This is actually very efficient because each cube is exactly identical to the next in shape and size and so every location in the world of minecraft is partitioned into a cube shape and a either a cube exists in that location or it doesn't. So if were seeing 10000 cubes thats the limit of the engine then the world must be partitioned into 10000 cube spaces.

If you allowed the cubes to be partitioned into smaller pieces lets be conservative and say you can break a cube into 2 equal size cubes smaller then the original cube. Then you just decreased performance by half because now the world has to be partitioned into 20000 cube spaces. But you can only see 30000 faces but now there are 60000 faces so only a subset of 30000 faces. Break a cube into 4 equal size cubes, world is partition in 40000. Etc. You begin to see less and less of the world.

Another way to add more detail to minecraft would mean be to turn cubes into more complex and varied polyhedra such as random n-polyhedra (n is the number of faces of the polyhedra ). Which would mean that from every perspective we have an extra n/2 face to render. Now your 10000 cubes are random 10000 n-polyhedra so your rendering at most (n/2)*10000 faces. Notice that following might be true (n/2)*10000 > 30000.

In order to not suffer a performance hit you will only be able to see 30000 faces of those n-polygons at a time.

I think I've rambled on for too long...

 

[ríomhaire]

What would be cool is if when a world was generated it also generated a history for the world the way Dwarf Fortress does.