My new least favorite game: Minecraft

Ivan

GHoosdum

When I started playing the game, if I hadn't been in the Icrontic server and on an active Skype call with several other Icrontians, I probably never would have played again, for the same exact reasons you stated, @Lincoln. The recipes are not intuitive and the first night is nearly impossible for a new user unless you have friends guiding you through it or a walkthrough. When I started I never would have expected a sandbox-style game to try to kill me within the first few minutes.

When I resumed playing on the new Icrontic server, I had to basically have the Crafting page of the wiki open constantly. I spent several minutes punching sheep and getting frustrated that wool didn't drop like it used to, before I was told about shears. Then I tried to intuit the recipe for shears and had to give up and look it up on the wiki.

Minecraft is poorly coded, suffers from a terrible UI, and the development team prioritizes new features over bug fixes. The game is succeeding only through the imaginative powers of its user base.

I still have fun every time I play Minecraft, mostly because the people I play with are Icrontians.

Canti

Single player is shit and boring. It's boring shit. Don't do it to learn the basics because as you've noticed there is nothing to help you learn the basics. Play with us because we are the instructions. We will show you how to make anything you don't know. This kind of game doesn't require a person to know anything about it before joining a server because there is no pressure to do anything in a certain amount of time. You can't drag the team down or make us loose the game because you don't know what you're doing yet. The point is to build awesome things together, explore caves, and fill each others houses with sand. It's shit that there is nothing in game to help you learn things but that's why we're here.

ardichoke

(note: do not fill people's houses with sand. Except @UPSLynx. Totally fill his house with sand)

mertesn

I don't expect it to be spoon fed to me.

No one's talking about spoon feeding here. Explaining to me HOW TO CRAFT ANYTHING AT ALL is not spoon feeding, it's having minimal regard for your user and the experience you're creating for them. If you think mashing the keyboard to figure out what button does the thing you're trying to do is fun, you live in a different realm than most people.

If you jump into Vent this evening, I'll be happy to pass on what little knowledge of the game I have. I've been playing in single player for some time and have a decent grasp of the basics.

PirateNinja

I think this is a little deeper than instructions. Lincoln's frustration is actually economics and math.

The function describing happiness to the F-WOW genre (Fucked with out a wiki) of game (Terraria, Minecraft, etc) is basically inversely related to what stage you are at in your life.

If you are at one end of the stage spectrum, where you are incredibly busy and you for the first time in a month have 2 hours to yourself, you will need structured and familiar activity in order to have fun. Otherwise you will be so stressed about wasting your hard earned 2 hours, that if you don't accomplish anything, you will just feel frustrated.

On the other end is the individual who has 10-50 hours of free time every week; their fun is not measured by end result but instead by the journey. So learning something from scratch has mysterious allure whether it is easy, hard, structured, documented, etc .. or not.

We can call this stage adulthood. We can measure adulthood by age up until about age 65, where things get more complicated and you revert in to childhood .. but let's not go there for this demonstration.

Our Function

happiness resulting from F-WOW gameplay = f(x)
adulthood = x

f(x) = 1/x^2

What does this mean in general?

It means by time you are physically and mentally capable of playing this game (not necessarily well) that you are about 5 years old. So let's make that our MAX FUN

Max Fun from minecraft = .04 (1/25) (age 5)
Min Fun from minecraft = ~.00024 (1/4225) (age 65)

So why are you arguing with Lincoln about how fun this game is and if he should give it a chance?

Lincoln is, what, 28? I don't know
Lincoln's fun from minecraft = ~.001 (1/784)

You are, what, 23? I don't know
Your fun from minecraft = ~.002 (1/529)

It's practically twice as much fun for you, average Icrontian, to play than it is for poor Lincoln! Deal with it!

Tushon

It is still pretty much that way for me, as I still consider it very annoying to tab out to a wiki in order to look up a build recipe. Hence, I typically spend my time on other games :/

ErrorNullTurnip

It's practically twice as much fun for you, average Icrontian, to play than it is for poor Lincoln! Deal with it!

I'm just glad we finally found out how to quantify fun!

cola

Now if we integrate that function on a scale of one to dick where does that leave us?

Winfrey

I'm assuming that dick represents a number approaching infinity?

PirateNinja

In this case x approaches 8===D. See graphic below, I couldn't figure out how to type this:


Essentially if the fun of minecraft = 1/x^2 where x = fun, and as x approaches 8===D. We are getting a little beyond my memory here, but this integral I believe represents minecraft itself, where as the previous function is simply the slope of minecraft that just so happens to define fun based on age.

CannonFodder

PirateNinja, you are my hero.

I believe the "area under the curve" is life. Fun * time = life?

midga

What it boils down to is it's not a complete game. It's a complete and mostly tested build of a program, but it's not a complete game.

Most of the user base was involved in the beta testing and understands the interface, so they have been pushing for new features and not a good learning curve. Hell, there's really almost nowhere to learn about this game that doesn't also involve you with people who already play it (and will teach you how to use it), so it's almost unnecessary. Almost.

@Lincoln, yes it's poor design, but it's poor design because it's incomplete and because the design path it's taken has been directed by the beta tester community and not a drive to make an accessible game that people will learn about through the normal channels and pick up on their own.

Now, in the defense of the game, though, I will say this.


I do hope you'll join us on the server, despite your sour first experience. I know how frustrating it is to jump into a game and feel entirely lost and helpless, and it can ruin the game for you entirely to the point that you don't even want to hear about it again, but we're more useful than any instruction booklet, at least twice at hot, and would love to have you there. Any question will be answered, any frustration will be shared, and any triumph will be all the better for sharing it with the community :)

Gargoyle

"Complete" is a tricky term in this case. Everyone recognizes that Minecraft is not "done" (including but far exceeding the ways in which TF2 is not done), but usually, when a game is out of beta, it's considered complete. Hitting v1.0 usually implies a game is ready for newbies, but Minecraft still has the beta mentality.

Also:

malia

The wiki is pretty much the key to all the things.

He told me this too...and I am now on the "hate minecraft" side. even the wiki is somewhat confusing.

midga

"Complete" is a tricky term in this case. Everyone recognizes that Minecraft is not "done" (including but far exceeding the ways in which TF2 is not done), but usually, when a game is out of beta, it's considered complete. Hitting v1.0 usually implies a game is ready for newbies, but Minecraft still has the beta mentality.

That's implied in a game that's marketed and distributed through the normal channels, but in this case the game was not.

Straight_Man

Hmmm..... Reading this makes me confused, teams help each other, Lincoln seems to still be one who expects to be able to play alone at first without consequences. Reminds me of a time before computers (and play stations and game programs other than some TV cartoons based on board games) when I used to play alone on a purple rug or sometimes the green rug in the basement, which I would rumple up to make terrain and then use toy soldiers (plastic and painted lead ones cast by me and my father and painted by us both) to move something around. Then came legos (not lego kits, plain old bulk lego blocks, this was before Lego kits came out) and the toy soldiers mostly ended up in an old shoebox. I built alone mostly, humming and muttering to myself.

Never was any good at team play in games. Wrestled for sports instead of playing football, not built tall and fairly slim to be a runner or sprinter. Was and am shorter and stocky, heavy boned. Boy Scouts was intuitive to me, mostly, though.

Guess I will never team game much, sorry gang.

NiGHTS

Take this entire thread, switch Minecraft for Terraria, and you get me.

Tushon

Take this entire thread, switch Minecraft for Terraria, and you get me.

I agree. I'm still rather confused getting into that game. I only partially understand Minecraft, but Terraria is just *whoosh* (even though you don't have to 100% memorize the crafting there, which is nice)

PirateNinja

Take this entire thread, switch Minecraft for Terraria, and you get me.

I agree. I'm still rather confused getting into that game. I only partially understand Minecraft, but Terraria is just *whoosh* (even though you don't have to 100% memorize the crafting there, which is nice)

Guys I explained this in my math equation, I even mentioned Terraria as a sample. I guess I need to tl;dr: minecraft = 1 to dick which is the integrade of a slope defining fun as a function of age

MrTRiot

Terraria was pretty straight forward until the most recent major update. It now has me confused. Way to many bosses and item sets.

trooster89

The problem is that minecraft is a sandbox game--or at least it used to be. Back in the alpha days it was much simpler. There weren't as many things to craft, so discovering or a recipe was easier. Since then its gotten much more complicated. I got bored with around the beta era after having to create a new map after every update to enjoy things such as biomes or to find the 1 stronghold that used to exist. Upon returning feel completely lost. 1.x brings so many change making the wiki even more of a crutch.

primesuspect

The other night Lincoln admitted, "All I want to do is play Minecraft right now."

BobbyDigi

"One Of Us"

-Digi

Lincoln

"One Of Us"

You don't want me addicted to Minecraft, trust me.

Zanthian

Nah, You just need to build a sweet house on your plot :)