Is it strange that I don't really care for Minecraft?

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It seems like this huge stereotype online that Minecraft is the "aspie" game, but the thing is, compared to many of my NT friends, I have little to no interest in it. It is occasionally slightly amusing for like 5 or 10 minutes, but not enough so that I can really get into it, and certainly not enough for me to actually bother buying a copy.

My main gripes with it mainly have to do with the boring combat, the community, the confusing crafting system, and the fact that the game has no real point other than to build things, and I'm not really a creative type so I don't have a lot of fun with gameplay scenarios where I have to "make my own fun".

Strangely enough however, I rather enjoy Terraria. Even though it basically just looks like a 2D Minecraft on the surface, it just seems to do so many things better. It has better weapons, more enemies, more player customization, a better crafting system, and with the bosses and NPCs, there just seems to be more of a "goal" to work towards. I also like the fact that it's less popular. For some reason, whenever something becomes "too popular", I just tend to be drawn away from it.

I can't say it's strange. I've never played it. It just looks so terrible I can't even bring myself to want to start it.

I'm gonna say this now, i'm a Minecraft Adict (surprise surprise). But I understand what you mean. If I had more people to play some of the proper RPG Mods out there, then i'd probably play the game more but to me, I like the building aspect most of all which drives me away from many servers.

If you don't like the fact that there is no "Objective" to the game, Check out the mods "Divine RPG", "Ars Magicka" and for customization purposes, my personal favorite mods "More Player Models 2" and... I forgot the other one but it lets you transform into any mob you kill >..> "More player models 2" allows you to change what your characters dimentions are so you could have a midget :L it really helps the game IMO and if you install it in a custom mod pack AND your own little private server AND you get your friends to use that mod pack, you will have a surprising amount of enjoyment returned to you.

Long story short, Mods make games better :3

Yes, it's strange.

The game really means different things to everyone, and it also depends on just HOW you're using it.

For example, the bit you mention about the combat. I personally need a challenge in order for a game to hold my attention most of the time. Minecraft, just in it's normal state, is much too easy. Enemies dont do nearly enough damage, and armor is WAY overpowered. And one thing I DONT like doing in games is trying to "artificially" increase difficulty by ignoring some gameplay aspect, so I dont want to just ignore armor to make it tougher. So, I use mods to increase the game's challenge rather dramatically. There are ALOT of mods that can add more mobs, both hostile and passive, and this sometimes even includes new bosses as well. Mobs added by mods are often much stronger than the usual ones, can appear just as commonly, and can have all sorts of crazy powers. In addition, I use a mod called "Infernal Mobs", which causes "elite" versions of mobs to sometimes appear, giving them huge health boosts, and randomly assigning new special aspects to them in the way that Diablo-style games do.

These two ideas generally ensure that the game remains challenging enough. It makes me WANT to use the armor, for instance, and makes me have good reason to enchant it for more protection. The combat also becomes alot more exciting. Just slashing at things that cant kill you anyway is dull. Trying to deal with charging horrors on a narrow bridge over lava in the Nether while various crazy things send energy bolts your way or teleport around and poison you or whatever is.... alot more interesting. Suddenly you really have to worry about your positioning, dodging enemy attacks, and the surrounding terrain and hazards. Depending on the mods installed (and you can have *alot* of them running at once... mod packs often have 100+ seperate mods at the same time), you may also have things such as spells used for combat, or various items at your disposal, or weapons with special attacks, which makes it that much more interesting. And considering that death in the game can have a very heavy penalty with it (because you can lose LOTS of items that way, all at once), the combat has ever more meaning as the difficulty goes up.

And that's just one example. There's a bazillion different ways to play the game, which is one of it's strong points. As for the bit with goals.... I never find that to be a problem. Once you decide on something you either want or need to do, new goals will constantly appear before you. You might have to go out searching for a rare crafting ingredient, which can be an adventure in and of itself. And then maybe you stumble upon some sort of dungeon or maze or whatever while you're out there, and exploring that can then suddenly be another thing you want to accomplish. And you might find something else you want to do while down there, such as digging out a collection of some sort of rare block that you might find, or you may suddenly need new armor or whatever.... Basically, the "goals" sort of evolve out of one another. Particularly when the game is complicated by mods, it can actually become so easy to get sucked into a bazillion different ideas/goals you want at once that you sorta forget whatever your "core" goal was that was the main thing you wanted to work on at that time. I find this MUCH more interesting than scripted goals in normal games. The gameplay, random generation, and my own decisions sort of automatically create new goals for me to go after. And the best part is I dont HAVE to do any of them, and the vast majority of things in the game can be done in many different ways, not just one.

I know alot of people that make videos and such of the game tend to focus rather obsessively on the building aspect, but that's because it's the most visually impressive. In reality, there's all sorts of playstyles you can do in it. I'm not the best at building awesome-looking stuff myself.... and I'm impatient.... so I tend to build structures that are practical for whatever my current needs are, and then I do lots of adventuring and monster clobbering (which sometimes translates to "running desperately from things").


You dont HAVE to stuff the game fulla mods to experience all these different playstyles and such, but they exist to allow you to better fill in gameplay areas that you find lacking. I do often play the "vanilla" (non-modded) version of the game as well myself, I keep seperate installs & worlds for both a vanilla setup and a heavily-modded setup.

One way or another though, I do think it's at least worth a try. I rank it as my favorite game.... period.... and coming from me that's a HUGE amount of praise, because I'm extremely picky, and games I really love are often obscure things, since I dont like alot of the mainstream trends. Not to mention the sheer absurd number of games I own.



This bit I dont get. I can see a problem if it's a game that's mostly played online all the time, like an MMO with way too many people in the world, or something, but.... even if you're playing multiplayer in Minecraft, it's often done in very small groups, or you're just playing single-player all the time, which is what I do. The same is true for a great many "popular" games. The "popular" status has literally no effect whatsoever on the gameplay.... the only thing it DOES do is increase the chances that developers may create additional content or expansions or whatever, which can only be a good thing. But yeah, I dont see what the big deal is with it. Just play whatever game you like.... who cares how popular it is?

....also, you DO know that Terraria itself is really stupidly popular, right? It's one of the most well known indie games there is. Hell, it's mere existence is one of the reasons why Starbound has already blasted past the million-copies-sold point, since Starbound is "like Terraria" and such. There's also already lots of other games now that are 2D gameplay of this sort, taking alot of inspiration from Terraria. It's a BIG game. Has been for quite awhile....




I'm curious as to WHY you think it looks terrible.

And dont say something related to graphics, please, because A: that has NOTHING to do with gameplay, and B: the graphics can be REALLY dramatically improved by the right mods (to the point where they're super-high resolution with advanced lighting and bump-mapping and reflections and.... yeah, you get the idea. The GPU-exploding sort of graphics)

Obviously the game isnt for everyone, but I'm just curious as to the reason here.

Personally, I find the graphics charming.

Also, the world is theoretically infinite,
You can walk forever in one direction and the game will just keep loading terrain.
(That's on the PC version. I understand you hit an invisible wall in the console version.)
So that's a reason to keep the graphics simple, its just so huge.
It's even further mind-blowing that it saves all this terrain data in a relatively small save file.

The game was made by one guy, which is also impressive. (Although now with its massive success, I believe he has a team of people doing coding and updates for him)

I don't even play Minecraft, I just find everything about it impressive and think it's quite an accomplishment.

I was never much of a fan, either. The "do your own thing" fun was limited by the fact that it's a video game, meaning made-up rules of the universe, limits on how to use and combine things, a set number of terrains, items, creatures, etc.

My Minecraft experience was pretty much:

1) Oh! I know what I want to do with this.
2) I can't do that? Okay, then.
3) This would also be fun.
4) I can't do that, either?!
5) I guess I'll look for a list of things I can do.

.....wait, what?

This..... doesnt make any sense to me whatsoever. So you're saying it has the same limitation as..... every single video game ever made in the history of ever? And this is a problem...... how?

Chances are there are mods for what you wanted to do.

Minecraft has one of the biggest modding communities on the internet.

Heck, the game has its own annual convention, MineCon.

Also, if I can make an analogy, I'd say that making things in Minecraft is only limited in the way making things with Lego is limited.
Meaning, it's pretty wide open and you can make whatever you want.

Yeah, I had a big interest in Minecraft earlier on, I had this obsession with doing a few projects like clearing out a 100 x 100 x 100 cube of everything, digging the longest mineshaft and seeing how high I can build.

Other than that, I had the idea of converting pixel sprites in creative. Now I don't have much interest in playing it anymore.

Eh... I may again in future

No, it wasn't about whether I was fighting a zombie or a Star Trek character and the lack of a plot.



I always thought Legos were limited, too. There were only so many block types, their mobility was limited when connected, and the ways they could be connected were limited. It only got worse as playsets instead of blocks themselves began to sell.

My brother has some local fame for his Lego creations, so I've seen what can be done with them. I'd still rather create with something else.

It will be a very long time before video games are advanced enough that I don't feel contained in a "free" environment, though. I have the limitations of other human minds, the hardware, the time the programmers had and what they were paid to create. If I don't have something to do that's specifically designed to be fun, I won't be having as good a time as I could be with something else.



It's not a "problem." I'm stating why what's praised as a plus to a game without much of a point isn't a plus to me: because everything I came up with in a game praised for freedom was not part of the game.

Minecraft supporters should read more carefully, or not read threads about not liking their game in the first place if it bothers them that much.

Last edited by coffeebean on 01 Mar 2014, 9:14 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Mojangazepam isn't for everyone, but it provides a nice retreat from some of the more confrontational games that I play.

I never tried it and kind of wondered what the point of it is.

I looked at the site since reading this topic and think I might try the demo tomorrow but I don't know if I can play it. From what I've seen in videos it's the kind of game that I can't play because it gives me motion sickness.

Er.....

"Read more carefully?" I think not. They're entirely correct: The game is indeed about freedom, and there's much of it. What you seem to be saying is.... more about videogaming in general. ALL videogames.... without any conceivable exception whatsoever.... have rules and context that ANY sort of freedom must exist in. Again, there are zero exceptions to this rule. Not even ONE game breaks out of this.... ever.

Also, consider that you're reading into the "freedom" idea wrong. "Freedom" means "freedom within the context of the gameplay", not "do literally any conceivable thing you can think of", which doesnt even make logical sense.

Think of, say, one of the older Mario games, right? Fairly simple idea, basic platformer, run and jump, stomp Goombas, you know the drill. Those games, while you are free to take different approaches to situations, essentially lack true "freedom" because one way or another, you're still very confined within the level's structure. You still must go from left to right, and you still must encounter each challenge in proper order. A great many games are like this. You have a "structure" that exists WITHIN the context of the gameplay, and you must stay within that structure as you continue along. Each level, from one to the next, in order, with only specified "warp zones" able to break out of it. Or maybe it's an RPG that you're playing.... alot of freedom to explore, maybe, but you're still trapped within the confines of the storyline progression. Various areas are closed to you until you reach a point where the game specifically says "Ok, you have reached this arbitrary point in the storyline. You can now enter this area.". The examples go on, and on, and on, and on.


The reason why Minecraft is said to have freedom is because it lacks that "structure" completely. It doesnt tell you "you need to go to this really specific place, and talk to this specific guy, and defeat this boss, or you cannot continue", which is what most games do. Instead, it goes "Ok, here's this world, there's lotsa stuff in it, have fun" and.... that's literally it. That IS the structure. If I want to build a giant floating cookie in the sky for no apparant reason? I can bloody well do so. Do I maybe feel like digging a big hole all the way to the bottom of the world and filling it with lava? I can bloody well do so. A different type of game might hand me a dungeon and say, guess what, you're going through this now. You cant skip it, go through it properly. In Minecraft though, if it hands me a dungeon (and it can) I can say.... no, I'll walk around it. Or no, I'll DIG my way into a certain section of it rather than walk through it. Or no, I'm going to BLOW IT THE HELL UP. Because I feel like it. Or heck, even "no, I'm not gonna just go through it, I'm going to renovate it and make it into my new home"

But, as with LITERALLY EVERY GAME THERE EVER WAS EVER, this is all within the context of the gameplay itself. Tough to dig properly without shovels and picks. And there might be monsters, better bring a sword, though you can punch them if you want, but it wont be as strong. Oh, and gravity, it kinda pulls you down (usually). Walls, you cant walk through them (usually). The sort of freedom YOU are thinking of is the "Well, you know what, I feel like pulling magical pink flying kittens out of my ears now and throwing them onto the moon while dinosaurs play classical music in the background" sort. You cant do things that are not even programmed into the game. That literally makes no sense whatsoever.... in ANY game.

What "freedom" means, within a gameplay sense, is that you are free to use the tools and options that the game DOES give you in any way you want. You're not Mario, where you've got this amazing jumping ability, but are only free to use it in very constricted areas divided into levels. You're not Fox McCloud, where you've got this amazing starship thing that can easily travel through the solar system, except hey, you HAVE to go through these areas in this order and you must go through each one in just this way, sorry, you dont get to just take that ship anywhere, only to these places. Minecraft doesnt do any of that. No restrictive structure: THAT is what "freedom" means within this context. Even if Mario IS given total free reign to go wherever he wants, he can still only jump so high, and he still needs that flower in order to shoot fireballs. Yet still, if he can go anywhere he wants, and use those powers in any place he feels like, and maybe come up with some new creative uses for them... then, yes, that'd also be "freedom", within the context formed by the basic gameplay.

This concept also exists for any other sandbox game, wether it's something like Minecraft, or wether it's something like Grand Theft Auto or Just Cause 2, or one of those.


....also, what GreyGooTheory said is correct. If there's some aspect of the game that seems lacking or that you want changed, chances are, there IS a way to do it. Wanna drill through mountains with a deathray? Yep, that exists. Turn water to ice as you walk on it? Yep, that too. Fill the world with Pokemon that you can capture, train, and battle with? Yep, even that one, already been done. The mods for the game are EXTREMELY versatile and dont stick to really "basic" concepts like "things to fight" or "storyline" or "additional characters". The nature of the base gameplay and the overall way that it's base world works means that even the craziest ideas can be done within it, if the skill of the designer is up to par. You could do freaking kart racing with donkeys in there if you wanted. Of course, not everyone uses mods, as not everyone wants to, but they are there, and they really are THAT damn versatile.

Ahhhh, that... I've heard of that.

Do all first-person-view games cause that for you? Or is it only specific ones?

One thing you might try is to turn off the "view bobbing" in the options. Wether or not that'll help, I dont know. Not familiar with this issue, though I know there are plenty of gamers out there who get it with some games. It sounds.... really, REALLY annoying.

I've also heard that the FOV angle being too tight / wide can cause motion sickness. Can this be adjusted in PC Minecraft? I would hope so.