Is Minecraft "Too Easy"?

 In the age of a wide array of potions, a massive selection of enchantments, a farmable artifact that cheats death itself, a tier better than diamond, and literal flight, survival Minecraft now is starkly different from the days where even a spider couldn't be outsprinted.

Many beta players who play the modern versions of the game are often seen asking: "Where did all the challenge and fear go? Minecraft is so easy now!"

It has to be said, surviving the night is easier now than it has ever been. Although I started in 2012 myself, I have used the launcher to roll back to beta and even alpha versions, and sure enough, I found myself often very defenseless against mobs that I came to know as basic. Not being able to sprint definitely made things much harder. I basically had to resort to digging myself underground and waiting for the sun to rise before I could continue exploring. Being stripped of the ability to sprint was tough to get used to - it made the whole game experience so much slower in general.

In modern Minecraft, I find the difficulty of the nights starts off slightly lower than a night in Alpha. You can sprint, which makes things much easier. But other than that, you start out just as defenseless. When you start a new world, you have no armour or tools or anything like that. Similar to Alpha, you have to build a dirt hut or mine into the ground most of the time. I sometimes still die to the night time mobs if I am bare-handed on the first night. But I find the key difference between modern versions and Alpha is that you can now advance to levels where the night mobs are a complete joke and more of an annoyance than anything else. And you can do this MUCH faster than in the old versions, where potions and particularly enchanting didn't exist.

There is no doubt that enchanting did make the game a lot easier on a number of levels. Or rather, faster to progress. The night-time mobs can be fought off incredibly easily with enchanted gear. Not only that, enchantments meant you could now mine multiple diamonds with a single ore, literally multiplying the speed at which a player reached full diamond armour.

But here's the thing - while the night-time mobs were no longer a threat, loads of tougher later-game enemies were added to the game later on. Witches, Endermen, Vindicators, Ravagers, Shulkers, Wither Skeletons, Hoglins, Guardians, Elder Guardians, Piglin Brutes, Evokers etc., can all be pretty tough to kill and generally do require enchanted gear to be able to beat in a fight. All these enemies were added at or after the time enchantments were added, and some of these mobs can only realistically be fought when you have heavily enchanted high-tier gear. Back in the Alpha days, the night-time monsters were the toughest enemies, and these tougher enemies didn't exist yet.

It would be like if in modern versions, the night-time pool of enemies were instead the Raid mobs. Or maybe the Nether mobs. Minecraft's progression has certainly come a long way since the days of Alpha. In a ways, as the threat of the nights falls off pretty quickly as a player becomes established, you could say Minecraft is easier than it was in its early days. Or rather, the true challenges get encountered later on in the progression.

Other updates have also served to make the game easier. Sometime around release 1.8, all the ores in the Overworld were made about 50% more abundant. 

Enchanting itself has also changed a lot since 2012. When I played, Mending didn't exist so nobody really specked into super god-tier bows or swords, since we all know they were going to break eventually. You also couldn't combine enchantments with an Anvil, so you probably had fewer enchantments on your gear anyway. The rise of god bows and god swords has definitely made total conquest of Minecraft a lot easier, and so far there are few mobs outside of bosses that can't be reduced to a joke once you have these god tools. Even a Ravager can go down in five hits with a maxed out bow. And with Mending, that maxed out bow is forever, unless you drop it in lava or fall into the void.

Elytra have also revolutionised travel. Once upon a time, you couldn't sprint. This made exploration of your Minecraft world extremely slow and tedious. Then for a while, your only option for fast travel was minecarts. But you had to build a railway system for that, complete with powered rails which require lots of gold. In 2013, horses were added which rendered rail travel more or less obsolete. Then just 2 years later came the Elytra - the ultimate mode of travel. But to get this mode of travel, you need to literally beat the Ender Dragon to get it. This is well-balanced as this ultimate mode of travel is so late-game that you will likely have been riding horses for a while.

But there is one item that I have very mixed feelings about.

The totem. I might even do an entire rant about the totem. But let's just say, the totem has taken a lot of the fun out of Hardcore Minecraft. Before the totem, hardcore world rarely even ran for a month. Now, it's not uncommon for hardcore worlds to run in excess of a YEAR. Especially if, like LukeTheNotable, you literally farm them using Raids and get 10 chests filled with totems. I have watched his 2000 days video, and in that video alone he used about 15 totems. That is 15 times that he should've died. He even once jumped off his tower and burned a totem, just to flex and show off that he literally has totems to burn. To me, in Hardcore, the use of totems undermines Hardcore mode to the extent I would almost consider it cheating and not a legit 2000 day run. If LTN survived 2000 days in 2012 Minecraft without dying, that would be FAR more impressive than doing so in 2020. 

Huh, I guess that proves Minecraft HAS become much easier. Right?

How easy or hard it is to not die isn't the only thing that determines the difficulty of Minecraft. You have to also look at how quickly a player can progress through the tiers. And that has definitely become a lot easier - especially with Fortune enchantments and the ores being made more abundant. And with Diamonds being accessible in so many other ways via loot chests, Diamonds almost became no longer worth going into the mines for. But then they added Netherite, which is arguably as hard to find in modern versions as Diamonds once were to find in early versions. Similar to the tougher enemies, this is the game compensating for enchantments and other buffs that weren't there in Alpha. 

They have also made the game harder in other ways - such as the combat mechanics becoming a lot more strategic in the very controversial 1.9 update. This most hated update has arguably made a lot of the mobs, even the basic mobs, a lot tougher again. They also nerfed armour in a way that creeper explosions can blast right through it - making creepers legitimately terrifying again. To test this out, I rolled back to release 1.7. With full iron armour on hard mode, the creeper took about half my health. In 1.16 (Java), a creeper can one-shot you from full hearts and full iron armour. And that's from a distance of 3 blocks!

It is also worth noting that Minecraft has also become a lot more accessible through means such as fishing and trading. Not everyone wants to adventure to the darkest depths of hell or the end of the End. But through totally broken mechanics such as villager trading, a player can obtain an entire chest full of MENDING books without opening a single loot chest! I feel this is simply an exploit that needs to be patched, however. That being said, a player can in theory use villager trading to obtain a lot of really useful items.

Workarounds like this make me concluse that Minecraft is indeed far easier to conquer than it used to be. With god swords and god bows and Netherite, even the toughest mobs can be quite easily taken on with less time taken to reach that level than before. Because of that, I do believe Minecraft is in general slightly easier and quicker to master than its early days.

But is it TOO easy? I wouldn't say it is, to be honest. Other than Hardcore being ruined by totems, I think the game's difficulty is just right for what it is. Minecraft wouldn't be as popular if it was super difficult, it's just not that kind of game. Part of Minecraft's success is its accessibility. And whilst I do think there are a number of ways the survival element could be improved (such as large predatory wild animals), I feel things are more or less pretty okay as they are. Minecraft is, fundamentally, a SANDBOX game. It's just not meant to be soul-crushingly hard.

Besides, if you're a veteran player and want a TRUE challenge, there ARE ways to do this - for example, starting in the Nether on Hard mode. Good luck.

Finally, I want to explore - is Minecraft as SCARY as it used to be? It's easy to think back to the days of Herobrine and the misty guy in the fog and remember how scary Minecraft used to be back in 2010, and that fear factor just isn't there anymore. I actually believe Minecraft IS as scary now as it was back then. So long as your a noob, Minecraft will always be a scary game. When I started in 2012, the groans of the zombies used to scare the pants off me, and caves gave me major anxiety. When my friend started in 2020, the groans of the zombies used to scare the pants off her, and the caves gave her major anxiety. Of course Minecraft won't be scary when you're a veteran and you know the game and its mechanics inside out. But to newcomers, no matter the year they started, it's quite the anxiety trip.