DankleBlog

I think minecraft has 2 gameplay aspects:
Extrinsic
– the fun the game gives you
primary objectives, survival, combat, exploration, mining and acquiring tools
Intrinsic
– the fun you create
building, roleplay, social, systems and factions, landscaping, redstone

There are genuine strokes of genius in minecraft’s game design, and some of them feel accidental. Being a sandbox game, the value proposition has always primarily been the intrinsic gameplay that emerges from the systems and building. In later years, updates have sought to expand the extrinsic aspects of the game. More biomes to explore, more mobs to fight, more items to get, and more dungeons to clear. While interesting systems have been added, others have been deprecated.

I was fine with diamond

To be precise, extrinsic gameplay isn’t bad, its actually incredibly necessary and interesting. I just think there is a lack of direction with some recent updates and not a proper balance of intrinsic and extrinsic gameplay. Shining examples of really good updates would be:

• 2020: Nether Update
  • Nether overhaul, new items, biomes and way more intrigue for the Nether
• 2021: Caves and Cliffs
  • The greatest update from Mojang era, completely changed the world size/scale and made caves abundantly more interesting
• 2025: Spring to Life
  • Lots of great biome aesthetic additions that added more life to the game
• 2025: Copper Age
  • I actually really like the sla- copper golems in this update, they’re a fun mechanic that is fairly accessible once you understand the basics. I only wish they had more capabilities and specialties somehow, or that villagers maybe took on more of a similar role rather than being trade kiosks

But then there’s a whole suite of updates that do a formula like: “new biome/dungeon, a dozen new decorative blocks, and like 2-3 mobs, plus a forgettable new mechanic added to the game.” It’s not that this type of update doesn’t have it’s place, but I think they feel spackled on to the main game more than they feel integrated into a cohesive vision. What they seem to do more of is add slop for me to do/explore rather than expand my gameplay substantially. As my leading example: did you ever feel like you needed a higher tier of armor than diamond? Personally I didn’t. I think added grind mechanics like that can be okay, but they don’t seem as expansive as the rest of the nether update was. For the record, to this day I have never made netherite gear haha.

Lost in the sauce

I’ve always believed a furniture mod is like iron in the heart of a star. The beginning of the end for a server. When you add too much detail to decor and building, then the minimum viable building standard raises with it. It’s overwhelming, has too much startup cost, and brings the vibes down in a subversive way. I think that’s the case in many domains in minecraft. A primary quality of minecraft is it’s simplicity, and that the more complicated parts of the game emerge, rather than affront you straight up. There isnt a massive list of things to do or necessary components to progress in the game, you can sort of play at any level you want to. I take particular issue with additive slop updates, and all their decorative blocks, because of this. The longer and more complicated the list of decorative blocks grows, the more stifling it is for the playerbase. They have made a note of trying to keep minecraft somewhat vanilla over the years, which I appreciate. But I think there are tasteful ways of doing it. Being efficient and thoughtful about decorative blocks when you add them. There have been over 120 new decorative blocks added to minecraft since 2022. A lot of them are one offs or biome specific. some are related to copper, others are just new expansions on stones. Something like new variations of existing block types, that is to say, basically retextures of an existing shape, is pretty low risk in my opinion. Tuff blocks/slabs/stairs, or cherry wood sets. But seeing a whole panoply of new blocks, light sources, and strange one off items like the entire archaeology set makes me nervous and contributes to bloat in the game.

The elytra sucks

Why bother to make rails when you can ride a horse? Why bother fussing with a horse when you can sprint most of the same speed? And why bother with anything when you can just fly with an elytra at mach fuck. I don’t necessarily hate faster means of transportation, but I think it represents a late game wall for most players. The moment I’m flying around with my god gear and shulker boxes, just fucking tweaking, it feels like I’ve lost some level of patience or respect for the game. There’s no longer a need for more complicated thinking and systems building. With your belly full and nothing to do, most players, in my experience, aren’t locking in to do cool stuff anymore, they’re just shuffling around like they’re on an adderall crash or breaking shit. By making the game fast, I think it loses the capacity to be slow.

What a good update might be

Maybe I can live with the elytra existing, I would say the cost of use, ability to sustain flight, speed, or some combination of the three needs adjusted. But it doesn’t necessarily need changed if you do future updates properly. What I really don’t like is the idea of handing the player an item, instead of giving them a new system to interact with. The types of updates they’ve been coming out with are generally weak extrinsic gameplay adds. While the best updates have added stronger elements to both intrinsic and extrinsic gameplay. Redstone expanded player ability, Caves and Cliffs expanded the world itself. The type of update I’d really like to see falls along those lines. Substantial, exciting, and with new potential for gameplay. Caves and cliffs was a natural extension of a core aspect of the game, mining and cave exploration. I think sticking to expansion of existing systems, with limited, tasteful ventures further is the way to go. Let me give some examples.

Rails and Boats Update

Rails havent kept up with other means of transportation, theyre basically an antiquity you do because youre autistic like me. These desperately need a speed and functionality upgrade.

• New villager type for rail stuff
• Powered rails go much faster 1.5-2x at least
• allow entity loading in unloaded chunks for railcarts
• New locomotives, maybe bring back the furnace cart
• New passenger and cargo cars
• new automation tools for carts with redstone
• automatic nether portal entry for cars
  Boats feel similarly neglected, being only glorified rafts. There should be larger boat options and updates
• larger sailboats
• Cannons if youre feeling crazy
• Pirate pillagers
• Docks and villager type for boats
• New aquatic life
• Kraken boss
• If really ambitious make boats constructible with custom designs

Aether Update

New biome thats been a popular mod for like a decade. Skywhales, flying pigs, bossfight, new resources, whatever go crazy. Id pretty closely follow the mod in that regard with a couple key changes

• airships, make it so these are necessary to traverse the sky islands
• If feeling crazy, airships can be custom built and constructible
• Make it so the elytra doesnt work lol FUCK YOU
• Portal can be built after getting netherite tools to mine some crucial resource or some similar progression

Town and Country Update

Ever played minecolonies? Well its basically a town simulation mod that overhauls villages and villager jobs. I dont think vanilla minecraft should necessarily go as in depth as the mod does, its not like this is Dondoko island.(But if they pulled a RGG and went hard in the paint I wouldnt complain)

• village and villager reputation system
• Better shops system (i just
• think there should be more items and less awkward villager interactions)
• Questboard
• villagers can upgrade and build procedural buildings/gather resources
• You can become mayor
• In depth raiding and wall building
• Emeralds used for village improvements

The difficulty here is in finding a way to make emeralds feel meaningful and villages feel alive without railroading the player too much. I would say allowing build freedom for a player in the village while also allowing procedural builds and upgrades for progression. If there are consistent rules (think qualifying a space as a house in terraria) for what qualifies as village structure types when you build them, and good UX for it, then it could work well within the sandbox