Minecraft is well and truly no longer the same game anymore.

By design, Minecraft is, at its core, no longer the same game. The very core of Minecraft is shifting, moving swiftly away from Notch's original product, into an entirely new age. Features and mechanics that have existed as long as survival Minecraft are being casually uprooted. It's not the same game we all knew before.

One change has made me realise this. And this change came yesterday.

If you've been living under Smooth Basalt, a HUGE release of Minecraft dropped from the sky yesterday. In typical Mojang fashion, TOTALLY out of the blue. And while everyone was gawping at the enormously changed terrain, unexpected new biomes, and overall jankiness of this highly experimental snapshot, another change was made to the game. An absolutely fundamental change that, for the most part, was swallowed up by all the terrain changes.

Hostile Mobs now only spawn in TOTAL DARKNESS. No more scouting your base with F3, checking every block of your base to make sure no blocks have that dreaded light level of 7. No more mishaps where you missed one in the corner and a Skeleton... or worse... a Creeper spawned. No. Hostile mobs can now only spawn in a light level of 0. Zero. Perfect darkness.

This change has made me realise we are truly in a new age of Minecraft. Mechanics that have been at the core of the game for almost its entire lifetime are casually being thrown out. We are moving away from Notch's Minecraft more and more. Whereas previous updates and iterations of Minecraft always aimed to keep and preserve Notch's product, Caves & Cliffs (and to a lesser degree, the Nether Update) has been anything but.

Now, let me just say, from a game design perspective, this IS a good change. The player should never have to resort to using debug screens to determine whether their house might get blown up. And also, isn't a massive crater being blown in your house a BIT of a harsh punishment for the heinous crime of forgetting to light up one corner of your enormous base? I always thought so. But change was never to happen because "Minecraft has ALWAYS been this way, and you gotta suck it up!"

For years and years, we just accepted what was actually fundamentally pretty bad game design. Because it's "always been this way". This element of bad game design was literally woven so deep into Minecraft's fabric that we all just accepted it and defended it - we wouldn't want it any other way. At least, we don't THINK we want it any other way.

Only once some bold developer DOES decide to throw out 12 years of history and fix what's been broken a dozen years, do people realize... hang on a minute... yeah, that WAS terrible game design!

For the very first time, we can have dark rooms in our builds. We do not have to check a DEBUG screen to make sure our houses are safe. Lighting is, for the first time ever... OPTIONAL. Integrating lighting into your build is no longer a MUST. One of the most fundamental ways we play Minecraft has completely changed.

Of course, mobs DO still spawn at night (until 20XX when a developer decides to throw THAT out too!) But in Caves, you will notice a VERY different picture.

Caves no longer need to be spammed with torches to stop mobs spawning - and they will have far fewer mobs than before. Maybe TOO few mobs. But it's a prototype, I'm sure Mojang will rebalance the mob spawning. Especially in the Lush Caves which have a natural light source that is (TOO) abundant.

Now, before I close out, I WILL say that as this is such a monumental change to core gameplay, it maybe SHOULD be optional. Even if it's on by default, there should be an option to have the light level of 7 rule still apply. They could even put in a slider, where the maximum light level of mob spawning, 0 by default, can be adjusted from 0 to 7.

For a while now, I've been aware that Mojang are getting bold with these updates. First came superseding Diamond. Then came doubling the cave depth. And now, simply tossing one of the most core elements of Minecraft survival - the need to light everything up! It clearly seems to me like Minecraft is in a very interesting transitional period, as we are now entering an age where design rules which were previously untouchable on grounds of "preserving the legacy", are now very much touchable.

Who knows what they will do next!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ambient Mobs.... Are They a BAD Thing?

Bat Bad? Since its addition in 2012, the Bat has become the subject of much opprobrium as the most pointless and useless mob in Minecraft. Serving absolutely no purpose other than existing and flying in your face, no drops, no XP, broken AI... many have questioned why this mob was even created in the first place. Heck, in my complete ranking of all mobs in Minecraft, I ranked bats as the 2nd WORST mob in Minecraft, 2nd only to the Endermite!  The Bat is the only mob in Minecraft that is purely, 100% ambient. It has absolutely no greater purpose or drops. It doesn't interact with the player in any way or have any mechanics. Even the Endermite drops XP on death, the Bat drops none. It serves literally NO purpose other than to just be there and add some atmosphere to caves. Part of why the Bat is so hated and ostracised may be because it is the only mob that is truly 100% "useless", and is one the player will encounter often. Every time we see it, it reminds us that it is tr...
Read more

The 12 Most DANGEROUS Places in Minecraft

If you're trying to escape the dangers of planet Earth in post-2019, Minecraft Survival may not be the place to go. Between exploding plant monsters, surface lava and literal hell itself, the world of Minecraft is far from safe. There is no fast-mutating killer virus that is more catching than a cold, but there are undead bone men who should have an Olympic gold platinum diamond medal in archery. If it's safety you want, let's explore the places in your Minecraft world you should probably NOT go, especially unprepared. 12 - Outside at Night This one is a given. The Overworld once the sun falls is certainly not a safe place to be, being absolutely surrounded by hostile mobs of various types. What makes this so much more apparent than others much higher on the list is how early-game this is encountered. You will find yourself outside at night within the first TEN minutes, leaving you very unprepared and vulnerable. However, being outside at night is this low on the list becau...
Read more

How the Trident Failed to Become a Viable Tool in Minecraft

I'll be blunt: I struggle to think of a feature with as much wasted potential as the trident. The first actual new weapon added to Minecraft in almost its entire history, you would think the addition of the trident would have been absolutely MASSIVE. And it certainly was... for all of a few weeks until the novelty wore off. 9 melee damage compared to the Diamond Sword's 7 certainly seemed good, as did the fact it also has a ranged attack doing 8 damage per hit and moving freely through water. It seemed good on paper, but it quickly became apparent that the trident had many issues which stopped it from being practical. In this rant I will discuss what went wrong with the trident, and why it hasn't found its way into very many survival playthroughs. And bear in mind, I am talking about the trident as of 21w14a (1.17). A few changes have been made in the combat snapshots, but the combat snapshots have yet to appear in an actual version of Minecraft. Strap yourselves in, this i...
Read more