A lot Sure, you shouldn't NEED skill for a casual game, but that's why you've got gear. The normal gameplay is good, but there's literally no strategy involved in the Wither fight due to his attack speed.
Well, the game is mostly about exploration. The bosses (most of all Wither) were added to the game pretty much because "eff you, players who don't want to explore in an exploration game and instead want to fight".
I personally consider Minecraft to be an "everything game" but a "building game" over everything else, though IMO while exploration appears to be encouraged by the developers, it simply isn't rewarding since the terrain is so predictable. If you don't find it predictable, lucky for you as I love exploration and I can't play without a nice big interesting playing field. The Wither does seem like he's intended to give a bigger challenge to players who prefer fighting, but honestly I don't think they went right in a single way with him besides the potion effect and the design which were both creative. To fight him, you have to grind on skeletons (which is meh), and the fight itself is predetermined by gear... which you have to grind for. The reward is lackluster. You could have spent the time grinding on getting potion ingredients, therefore giving you a slightly different portable version of the same thing that doesn't require a ton of iron. I don't know why, but i'm finding flaws in everything in Minecraft nowadays. Ah, well... at least 1.5 looks promising, but for me it's just a roadblock until 1.6 where Mojang can do things like work on the combat system and/or overhaul terrain.
Exploration isn't fun without danger. Zombie melee, skelly ranged, and creeper explosion... sounds about right.
I wish there was more danger Hard mode to me feels like easy mode, except zombies can break doors. If only armor was less powerful. Iron armor is some seriously powerful stuff, yet it's the easiest set of armor to obtain (even though leather is weaker). By the way, if you guys don't want me here just say the word. I'll complain all I want on the Minecraft forums, but I don't want to drive Kazeto beyond Kazeto levels of insanity.
Don't forget my "dark and troubled past", too. But really, feel free to complain about Minecraft all you want, Giygas. I spent enough time on Minecraft's forum to get used to it, and I can't really get any more crazy (well, I can, but that would be really difficult). Not to mention the fact that your complaints make it pretty clear that you do have a brain and can use it, which means it's nigh-impossible for you to anger me or do anything of the sort. And that, too. I should've clarified that I meant to showcase the attitude of the developers, seeing as I do spend most of the time building things and thus from my perspective it is a "building" game rather than an "exploring" one.
Heh, Minecraft is a game I love, but were development went in the wrong direction (my opinion). The problem that I see is that the devs listened to much to what the community wanted in many aspects, and in others didn't understand what made the game great, at least for the builders/tinkerers. One example: terrain generation. Everyone wanted more awesome, and Mojang delivered. I like many of the terrain changes, but I think it's overkill. Before the terrain changes, the terrain was more uniform and biomes were less pronounced, and it was a bit more realistic, so to say. Awesome seeds were rare and to be treasured, and to find cool locations was something that was really, really fun. In short, cool terrain was somewhat rare, while the basic terrain was good for constructing generally speaking. In the new terrain, huge mountains with overlaps and ravines are everywhere. You can't walk for 5 minutes without encountering a ravine or some badass mountain, which means they aren't that badass anymore because everyone has them, and you've seen them countless times already. This is even more true with caves, perhaps my biggest gripe. The ground since the late betas is a swiss cheese. Dig straight down, you are bound to encounter a huge cavesystem a few times. They just go on and on and on. You can walk for days and find an exit kilometres from your house. That might sound awesome, and it is the first time. As are the lava seas, the dome chambers, etc... But you see them so often they stop being special. They also have the side effect of making ores ridiculously easy to obtain. Where iron was extremely rare in the early betas, it's now common to have a few stacks just laying around. The huge caves also remove all need for systematic strip mining and make mob traps much more difficult. I liked the old cave system much, much better, with small, scattered caves and big cave systems actually being something special. Another pet peeve of mine is the removal of the various physical oddities in Minecraft, especially concerning water. I was annoyed at the minecart glitch removal, but at least there was a replacement. But the water rework actually made me stop playing for a few months, because my whole save was built on water stuff. Those are just a few of my annoyances with Minecraft, yet I always return, because the core gameplay is still very enjoyable and I can just ignore the enchanty and wolfy stuff And I even have a workaround for the terrain, the only thing I lack is water elevators
I encountered a jungle biome when I went running around once, and I got LOST. I mean it was hell to navigate, because the combination of an extreme number of trees and the new (well, not for me, it's the ONLY generation I've had) world generation created this horrible, horrible environment that just couldn't be navigated. I think the new way it works is really, really overwhelming. Massive cave structures, massive ravines, huge hills and mountains. It really does make it hard to get in touch with the game at times. Oh, and not enough bloody chickens. MOAR CHIKKENZ.
I also got bored this afternoon and started work on a coastal fortress inspired by Celtic hillforts. So I built it right next to the sea, just a few blocks above sea level. I'm an idiot.
Meh, that's a pretty basic mistake. And it's not like you can get around that one, it just takes a lot of work.
I think it was the best bit of open(ish), flat land I'd seen. The way it generates (or generated, I'm still using the map from the demo version), means there's very few large, open areas where you can really build something like that.
Oh, don't even talk to me about not having any places to build. Spoiler I swear that this is EVERY world I generate. At some point I decided it'd be fun to just roll with the punches and try to survive without actual land to build on. What you see here is me building a sand pillar and expanding out from dirt I harvest from the ocean floor. I'll go on to look for an exposed abandoned mineshaft in order to get wood for a crafting table to get myself started proper, after I've got at least a 4x4 or so island to give me room for the basic essentials. I'm also playing with the Better Than Wolves mod (here), which will provide some other unique obstacles... such as spawning at random points near spawn upon death and beds being disabled. It's going to be fun.
So today I decided to build a quarry shaft, a 10x10 straight down thingy. I did really well. Then I got bored like 40ish blocks down, maybe more. Then a creeper blew a hole in the top which caused water to fall in, but that got sorted easily, but it destroyed some of my storage. Then another blew some more storage and I was like SOD IT I'M DONE FOR TODAY. It got deeper than this:
Which is why I abuse glass and torches. If they can't spawn inside and can't get inside, you don't care.
Got technic some time ago. Holy fuck it's complicated. I hate how mining wells make these huge 1*1 shafts, and when I try to take them back after they reach the last layer, 20% decides to go all BANSAI and jump down the hole. Great, that's another load of iron wasted.
They didn't spawn inside, but they did appear whilst I was digging the first few dozen layers, but after that they didn't. The explosions happened whenever I ventured topside.
If anyone would have an extra account or something, I'd love to give Minecraft to my wife for her birthday (2/21.) I'm already getting her a big Irish flag, some Guiness (she loves it but we can never afford it by the end of the month,) and LEGOs (again, she loves legos.) And a Minecraft account would be a nice cap on the festivities.
So, I've been chipping away (ha ha haaaaaa) at my quarry world, but I've not put much time into it recently due to working a lot and just needing a break from it - and I suppose gaming as a whole. But here's some pics I took just now, along with one I did when I started it. Here I am on the east side of it, just as I was getting started. You can see I had some basic storage and construction facilities - still there, still in use! - that I used to help construct it and make tools. This is the south-east corner looking north-west. You can see my tower/house that I don't use, my enemy-proof storage and the double-thickness walls I have to protect it. On the west wall you can just make out some cobblestone, which I used to repair it after an idiotic encounter with a creeper that was entirely my own fault. One of those four double-chests is - literally - full of stacks of Cobblestone. This is looking straight down to the bottom. I'm being careful now as I've managed to construct the quarry on top of a cave system, so it's a case of using stone/cobblestone to fill areas and watching out for drops. Finally, this is looking the other way. Just a little extra something, this is the quarry as displayed on Unmined. If you look at the west wall, you can clearly see where I had an encounter with a creeper.
I'm giving up on my quarry. It's just not economical (in terms of time:rewards). I'm burning through pickaxes, I don't think I've even found a stack of iron, just pieces here and there. I'm also finding very little coal, and I'm starting to run low on torches and I need it for turning clay into bricks. I'm not sure what my next project will be.
