I wantt to sum up some of my thoughts on why modern minecraft isn’t as good as it could be, and I want to hear what others think as well.
And I think the place to start is with minecraft’s survival mechanics. I don’t believe modern minecraft really feels like a survival game anymore. In earlier versions the first night was a threat, if you didn’t find shelter for that night you would likely be dead. Modern minecraft doesn’t handle this as well because players can come across villages that have food, shelter, and beds to skip the night. Alternatively modern minecraft players can pretty easily find sheep and craft a bed on day one.
The next big difference is the food system. If you don’t have any food in modern minecraft, it simply feels like an annoyance. It slows you down, you constantly have to keep eating, etc.
The beta 1.7.3 version is better in this regard because when you’re low on food, the only risk is that you die. It doesn’t make you move slower, it is simply a risk of death, and you aren’t annoyed at a movement penalty, because your speed is always the same.
Then there is just the general difficulty. Maybe it was just because I played the game when I was younger, but in the past, nights felt dangerous, that you needed to find shelter and would not be able to survive in the open for very long. Modern minecraft kind of flips that and to a degree expects you to wander in the night for ender pearls. I really think that the night should serve as a threat, and that’s where the old system works better.
The addition of potion, enchantment and brightness adjustment. I felt like that is what ruin minecraft for me. It used to feel a bit more scary and more grounded.
I don’t mind Enchantments too much as it gives you more to do, but I think you should be able to choose your enchantments. The fact they’re random sucks because you have to enchant and disenchant until you get what your looking for. Potions I’m not a fan of personally. I think the best implementation for potion like effects would be a Zelda style where you can craft specific foods to give you a desired effect. The brightness thing I sort of get but at least that’s an option so you can still play with it low if you want.
In my mind, the sweet spot for enchantments is when the player cannot create enchantments and can instead only find pre-enchanted items out while exploring. Couple this with tools generally being faster and more durable, and it is much better balanced.
Enchantments then make tools more interesting, while preventing it from being something you grind for to get the perfect tool/armor. You get what you get and you’ll make do with what you find. But even if you don’t find an enchantment, the durability and speed of tools is acceptable by default.
Agreed on the enchantment and brightness adjustment. I think that the enchantment system was one of the worst directions the game went. Players should not have to expend countless hours to create tools and weapons. Maybe it’s just because I am an adult now and therefore have less tolerance for grinding things out, but at the bare minimum I should have this feeling that I can’t start projects because I don’t have diamond/netherite enchanted gear. And sadly it seems mojang is doubling down with the latest update making netherite even harder to acquire. I’ll definitely be making another post about enchanting in the future.
I disagree a bit on the potions though, I think they were a good addition in that they are a feature that you can get by without, and they aren’t exactly game breaking over powered-ness (at least the initial set of potions that were added). Plus they help ground the game as a loose fantasy game.