Why Was Nobody Hyped For 1.17?

Caves & Cliffs. By far the biggest Minecraft update there has ever been. Step aside 1.7, Caves & Cliffs has truly been the update that has changed the Minecraft world. It's the update we've wanted for YEARS, that, when complete, is set to rewrite EVERYTHING and have us relearn how we play Minecraft from the ground up. Complete with a far deeper underground, increased world height, 3D biomes and mountains we could only ever have dreamt of - as well as an ore the fandom has been wanting for a decade, and freakin' AXOLOTLS, it's hard not to say that Caves & Cliffs is, in a way, the ULTIMATE Minecraft update.

This feels like the beginning of something truly major - the beginning of a whole new era of Minecraft. A Minecraft REVOLUTION even. The new post-Caves & Cliffs Minecraft is going to be TOTALLY different and MUCH more improved than before - so much so it could even be called Minecraft 2.0.

2021 should be the most exciting year to be a Minecraft fan.

But yet, it is not. I noticed in the days leading up to 1.17's release, not many people were hyped. At all. In fact, there had been an atmosphere of disappointment, resentment, entitlement, and even saltiness. How can people feel this way when we are getting the biggest and best update of all time? Why are members of the community expressing how disappointed they are at the update? Why are the devs being harassed? Why have many of the tweets from the devs had a salty tang to them?

Here are some theories as to why the Caves & Cliffs releases have become marred with an air of bitterness.

People Had Overly High Expectations

A cave update had been something the fandom had literally been begging for for YEARS. In this time, it's very likely members of the community built up in their head what they expected a cave update to be. They probably imagined a load of new mobs, seven new ores, and a load of new biomes. Monsters of the deep depths of all shapes and sizes; ores of this that and the other; and crystal caves, mushroom caves, sandy caves, icy caves, slimy caves, andesite caves, volcanic caves, bat-infested caves, etc. etc.

There is absolutely no denying that hype kills enjoyment. I remember back in the day, when I was a HUGE fan of a TV show known as Steven Universe. It had a massive cult following at the time. I noticed the episodes that contained highly-anticipated plot points, or first episodes back after a long hiatus (which the show was infamous for) often had less good receptions. Many people built up Yellow Diamond invading Earth - a plot point which had been hinted and teased at for many years - in their heads as some really mind-blowing and shit-brix ball-busting AMAZING episode. Naturally, after many YEARS of building these expectations, when this plot point finally DID happen, it was never going to live up to the hype people had built up for many years. There was always going to be a sense of "...oh is that it?" Naturally in a 22-minute episode, they can't do absolutely every single possible plot point you imagined up in your head over three years.

Three years of "that would be so awesome if they did this thing" and "it would be amazing if they did that thing" has led to almost like a belief or hope that they will actually do this or that thing. If many of those things you built up hope and hype for in your head didn't happen in the real thing finally came, there will be that little bit of disappointment.

Almost everyone expected this update to add millions of new biomes and a tonne of new ores. The biggest areas of disappointment from the community I've seen on twitter and reddit is that only one new ore was added, and only three new biomes. It seems almost everyone was expecting a cave update would have far more than one ore and three biomes. But even with this said, it's all about quality, not quantity, right? Well, a lot of people have also been upset that copper has so few uses. Again, the developers have explained this: that copper will get more uses over time, and that the sheer technical difficulty of writing the new cave systems has compromised the number of actual new features.

Most people never once thought how technical an update such as this would actually be for the developers. Writing entirely new cave carvers from the ground up in such a long-established and large codebase is absolutely no small order. I'm not even a developer and I can tell how hard that must be. Doing this would take literally MONTHS - probably even the better part of a YEAR. Because of this, naturally, there is less time for other features. And yes, this means we probably won't be seeing millions of new ores and mobs.

Expectations based on previous MineCons and Updates

It's not only expectations from years of waiting that has dashed the Caves & Cliffs hype. People looking at previous patterns has also been a major factor. Look at previous MineCons - where Update Aquatic, Village & Pillage and the Nether Update were revealed in flashy presentations.

Each of these reveals showed off features from the upcoming major update - but also DIDN'T tell us a lot of what would be coming. Among other things, the following features were NOT announced at MineCons: Turtles, Drowned, Conduits, Wandering Traders, NETHERITE, Ruined Portals, Basalt Deltas, Striders, Piglin Brutes. In 1.16 alone, there were two mobs (three if you count the Zoglin), a structure and an entire BIOME that weren't announced at Minecon 2019 - AND an ORE BETTER THAN DIAMOND!!!

The pattern with these MineCons was underpromising and overdelivering.

Naturally, people thought there would be additional features in Caves & Cliffs that weren't announced at MineCon, following patterns of previous years, and that they were again going to underpromise and overdeliver. People built up false expectations that there would be more mobs, more ores and more biomes than announced at MineCon. But none of that turned out to be true this time around. No secret new ore, no secret new mobs, and the three biomes announced were all we were getting. In 1.16, they surprised us by adding an extra new biome later on, and we all thought maybe they were going to do the same this time. But it was not to be.

In reality, what we saw was what we got. But due to built up expectations, it gave the impression of overpromising and underdelivering, which is never NOT going to leave a sour taste in peoples' mouths. The notion of undelivered promises was certainly not helped by a rather unexpected twist along the way.......

The Split

Seeing the new and much deeper underground slowly come to life over several weeks was incredible - it was something of a journey - like watching a child grow up. In week one, it was just the bare bones: added depth and new caves. Over the coming weeks, slowly we saw more and more changes. Deepslate; cracks; new ore variants; raw ores; veins; dripstone clusters; new ore distributions; aquifers; smooth basalt... the underground was really coming to life each week. And there certainly was a lot of hype in these weeks. How was the underground going to change this week??

But then, something very unexpected happened. On April 14th 2021, upon the release of snapshot 21w15a, all of that progress was suddenly reverted. The underground was 64 blocks deep again. Almost everything we'd seen in all of these weeks was gone. The real meat of the Caves... and Cliffs... was shunted back to the end of 2021.

Now, I've done an entire rant about the Split and why it was ABSOLUTELY necessary, and a good thing in the long run. But there is no denying that this totally derailed the hype train. A lot of posts I saw complained that all the "good stuff" had been delayed and 1.17 itself was adding "all the stuff nobody really cares about". And they often talked as though all those new caves and mountains were delayed indefinitely. I think this statement is very cynical and very dismissive of what we are getting. But it just shows how entitled some facets of the community can be.

But, to all those folks out there, the split needed to happen. Not just to give us a more polished product, but to save the developers themselves. Oh right about them...

The Devs Themselves Have Had Mental Health Crises

That Split which "derailed the hype train"... it needed to happen. It's rather telling that Ulraf stated in a stream with Ibxtoycat that the Split was the best news the Dev team had heard in a year.

When you look at the tweets from the devs in the months leading up to the release of Caves & Cliffs Part I, is it just me or do some of them seem a little.. salty? Without naming any names, it seems certain developers were rather quick to tell the community off, or lecture the community on proper etiquette and respect. Now, obviously (to adults anyway), it's not a good idea to harass and piss off the people making the game you love. But it seems in earlier years, the devs largely ignored such bratty kids. This time around, however, it seemed like these kids were more able to get under the devs' skins.

Tweets from the devs addressing certain facets of the community became a lot more blunt and to-the-point. They just seemed a lot less tolerant than before.

Could there be a reason for this? Well, we know for fact the developers had a mental health crisis because they outright said so in their announcement of the Caves & Cliffs Split. No doubt this has made them more prone to speaking outwardly to the community about certain behaviours that pissed them off - being under such pressure and poor mental health DOES make them less able to just "sit there and take crap".

There was that one Mojang Q&A where the comments section was flooded with comments such as "They look like they've not slept in a week". One of the devs even told the community off for making such comments. As this was just before the split, it's clear the team were struggling.

And who could blame them? The update they've set out for has been a technical NIGHTMARE, and they've had to do it all in the second year of a seemingly endless pandemic! Global morale is extremely low right now, and the Mojang team are no exception to this. I can't imagine having to code Minecraft's biggest update of all time from my bedroom.

But the mental health crisis within the team has understandably led to far less "warmth". This time around, they did not get the community excited with teasers and "It's Wednesday my dudes..." tweets (until the snapshot was minutes from dropping). In fact, they made a POINT not to talk about updates and snapshots until one was literally being released, SPECIFICALLY to avoid backlash if something unexpected happened and they had to delay the snapshot. Ouch.

Final Word

As you can see from this VERY long rant, it's clear why the 1.17 update has had far less hype and the  "All the good features are delayed till 1.18" mentality. A big mixture of overly high expectations, expectations based on previous minecons, the prospect of "overpromising and underdelivering", as well as the developers themselves hyping up the update less maybe due to burnout, have all led to 1.17 being one of the least-hyped updates of all time.

And it goes without saying, PLEASE give the developers a break. They're people too and they have a life outside of Minecraft.