Is Minecraft A Bad Game?

[A. Pippenger]

So I was talking to Fo on the server about how he apparently thinks MC is a shitty game and you have to be stupid to think it's good. He said he'd only continue talking about it on the forums. I hate forum arguments cause everyone can see them and they linger around for years. If this is the only place he'll talk that's fine then, because I think I have some decent points.

The two reasons he gave for MC being bad:

1) Glitches And Being Technologically Unimpressive
2) Bad Community Mostly Made Up Of Ten Year Olds

First, while the glitches are certainly a big issue, I don't think technical achievement is the best way to judge a game. Standards in this area go up tremendously each year. Games are always breaking new ground in terms of graphics, speed, online features, and things like that. Minecraft is a bit behind the curve in this regard. It's much blockier and simpler than games with cutting edge graphics, but it breaks down just as often or more. This is frustrating, but I don't really see the technical side of a game as part of the game itself. When it works it's great, and that's all that should really matter when it comes to assessing its quality. Nobody who likes the game is saying the glitches aren't a problem, they just try not to get distracted by them. This isn't a matter of taste. It's a matter of some people being able to put up with minor frustration and some people not being able to.

Second, he's also right about the amount of annoying children who play being a problem. But it's kind of silly to judge the game itself because of who plays it. It doesn't actually affect the game, so you should be able to judge the two independently. There are enough servers like ours that you can play mostly with adults if you want to. Take, say Westeros Craft for example. It's a large server of very competent adults working on a difficult project. If you go looking for good minecraft buildings and impressive redstone machines, you'll see a ton of stuff by clearly intelligent adults. There's a mix of people playing who get entirely different things from the game. What other people get out of the game shouldn't affect what you get out of it though.

So even though these peripheral issues are annoying, the actual game itself is good. Some reasons:

1) The content lasts much longer than other games. Single player games last a few hours of storyline, and then they're done forever. Multiplayer stays interesting longer, but you're still repeating mostly the same actions in the same places. FPS games take place on the same maps with the same weapons, and MMORPGs have you do the same dungeons over and over again at high levels. A minecraft server gives you a genuinely different experience every day you play on it.

2) It has one of the largest and best worlds of any game. It can also generate a nearly infinite amount of these worlds. People make a big deal about Skyrim having a massive open world. Compared to the Simpvp map, Skyrim is fucking tiny. You could literally spend a lifetime in minecraft exploring totally new environments.

3) No other game has building mechanics like this that I know of. Aside from ripoffs of minecraft, I have never seen a game that lets you actually construct buildings like this. It's my favorite part of the game. This has a massive level of depth that you don't even get close to by selecting gear in an RPG or anything like that. This one mechanic really sets the game apart from everything else currently on the market. Once other games come out where you can build like you do in minecraft, I might switch. Until then, I'm sticking with it.

I think minecraft deserves a ton of credit for being the first major game of its genre. Nothing close to a full game existed before it. This type of game is getting more popular- Terraria was based off of it, and so is the new Everquest. But just because future games will inevitably surpass minecraft doesn't mean it doesn't deserve credit. In fact, it deserves more, by being the basis for an entire new genre of game. It's just as significant as Mario was to platformers, or Zelda was to early 3d games, or Dragon Quest was to RPGs, or Woflenstein was to FPSs, or Ultima Online and Everquest were to MMORPGs. Saying the game sucks because it could be better is completely missing the point. It's great precisely because it is flawed but bold, and paving the way for future games.

Fo also had other reasons that he did not mention on the server. He'll probably bring them up here. Anyone else's thoughts are appreciated as well.

[LoneSoldier55]

You can judge a lot of games based on the playerbase, I.E
DayZ
Rust (Especially since it stemmed from Garry Newman Dick-sucking fanbois on facepunch)

Minecraft was good - Pre full release before notch turned into a jewish bastard and started just releasing new content for the sake of making sales instead of actually fixing the game or adding stuff that was mildly interesting. Most of all, he promised modding support to be released on the full release of the game, and here we are still waiting.

The Dev team is being shitlers.

[mitte90]

i to think the player base is importent in this type of game. its mostly about interacting so is the players shit the server is shit

same with rust that i play right now the game is great fun and hard but is totally ruined by 10 year old with uber gear the one shot kills u.

player base is important

[LoneSoldier55]

Believe it or not, Rust's community is by far one of the worst to date. Not to mention that it's still riddled with hackers and the only thing it has over DayZ is resource management, a shoddy excuse for 'base building', and minor crafting improvement.

[TLRedemption]

Believe it or not, Rust's community is by far one of the worst to date. Not to mention that it's still riddled with hackers and the only thing it has over DayZ is resource management, a shoddy excuse for 'base building', and minor crafting improvement.

Infact, basebuilding isn't really something they have over DayZ anymore, the DayZ Epoch mod has a far more cool looking and working basebuilding system, and many other great features.

[LoneSoldier55]

But again that's the modders of DayZ and Arma doing the work.

[Yukar9]

But won't the full DayZ have all that? Isn't it still in beta and they're just still adding features?

[TLRedemption]

But won't the full DayZ have all that? Isn't it still in beta and they're just still adding features?

It's in alpha, the team expects a full year before beta, that's pretty crazy.

[LoneSoldier55]

But won't the full DayZ have all that? Isn't it still in beta and they're just still adding features?

The planned alpha release date was 16 months before the actual release date, it was delayed heavily. Then everyone and their mother was super hyped for standalone so they released it for 30 dollars on steam and have already sold close to 1 million copies. In all honesty they could probably just walk away with the money right now.

The game is supposedly going into beta status in a year. Right now the standalone is utter trash, the only thing to do is to stream yourself playing, and kill those streaming themselves.

[morl0ck]

The game should still be considered in Beta Testing. Not only because of the game-breaking glitches that they just refuse to fix, and the fact that they release stupid shit like "slime blocks" before they will even attempt to fix any glitches, but because we can't build or invent anything complex without being sure that they won't break it later by changing core code. We have an iron farm and a villager trading system at the castle- both gigantic, and both of them are going to break next update.