To clarify, if you don't know what I'm referring to, a lot of the modern Minecraft discourse seems to center around progression. Treating the game like an RPG instead of the sandbox that it is.

A lot of people fixate on beating the ender-dragon. As if after that the game is done, it's the end point. Treating the game as if there is some sort of endgame, even though Minecraft isn't meant for that at all. And it has boiled down so much of the discussion around modern updates, around this, around adding more to this nebulous progression.

I swear to god you listen to these people and you would think that Minecraft is a combat centric adventure game. Look at how many of these people reacted to the addition of copper as if it's useless and doesn't add anything to the game, when it actually adds a huge variety of new building blocks, with a brand new type of blocks that can change and evolve over time, and all of this just goes over their heads! Because these people forget that the core of Minecraft is being creative and building shit!

Listen, I love Terraria, but Minecraft isn't Terraria, and Terraria isn't Minecraft. It's so easy when you love the former to try and compare and even transpose features from it to the latter. I've been guilty of that and I've had to learn to break away from that. Because they are very similar and Terraria probably would have never happened if Minecraft wasn't a thing, but they are still very different games with a complete different focus.

Yes, you can build and fight in both games, but they're almost flipped around, like Minecraft is a building game first and a combat adventure game second. There are amazing builds and builders in Terraria, but it's not what the game is known for, unlike Minecraft. Terraria is the exact opposite of that.

If you want a boss rush, if you want a fight, if you want a deep and engaging progression system, I don't think you're playing the right game if you're playing Minecraft. It can be that, but you shouldn't approach it hoping and wanting it to be that, unless you decide to mod it. At some point, you have to stop and listen to what the game is telling you and you can't ask it to be, or judge it for, something that it doesn't want to be.

If you're looking at the addition of copper blocks, if you're looking at the redesign of the baby mobs, if you're looking at the future addition of Sulfur as a material and sulfur cubes and you think that this is useless that it doesn't add anything to the game... You're the problem, not Mojang. :/

I invite you to try and do what I did. Try and reset your framing through which you see this game. Try and forget what you think that this game should be and try to play it on its own terms. To listen to what it wants to be. And maybe, just like me, you will learn to fall in love with this game all over again. Because it's so wonderful and full of whimsy and truly special and unique in a way that no other game is.

#Minecraft #mojang #terraria