Why Minecraft is Secretly IMPOSSIBLE
Imagine for a second that you’ve never heard of Minecraft. How far do you think you could get with no outside help? When we enter a new world, the game does give us some basic hints. Move with W and D. Jump with space. Fair enough. That’s pretty easy. We use our newfound controls knowledge to explore a bit, and we stumble upon a tree. Destroy the tree. Hold the left mouse button, the game tells us. When we follow the instructions, we discover that the tree does indeed break. Suddenly, we get a notification stating that new recipes have been unlocked. But just how do we find this recipe book? Is it in the menu? Um, is it a keybind? Maybe it’s in the inventory. Ah, that’s it. There’s a book button. When we pause the game, we see something called advancements. It currently tells us what we should do next, as well as the following step. Mine stone with your new pickaxe. There’s a picture of a wooden pickaxe, so we make one and start mining. The game has taught us the basics of Minecraft, the importance of mining, and how to craft. However, there are a few critical mechanics that aren’t explained. Tucked away in the adventure section of the advancements tree, we see that it’s possible to sleep in a bed to change the respawn point. But actually making this may be a bit more tricky as the bed doesn’t show up in the recipe book right now. We don’t know that we need wool at this point in the game. The next step is to find diamonds and obsidian. We will eventually stumble upon both of these. But making the jump to the Nether will prove to be quite the leap. Though we need to go deeper advancement tells us that it exists, but it’s not obvious how to make a portal. The best clue we have of these mysterious structures scattered throughout the world. One of the nearby blocks is called Netherrack, which could indicate that it’s connected to the Nether. But even so, we need to figure out that this is intended to be the portal. Figure out that it should be constructed upright. Figure out that crying obsidian won’t work for the frame, and then figure out that it has to be lit. For something so crucial, there are too many steps that have to be found consecutively. This needs to be fixed. It’s such an important milestone that it shouldn’t be this difficult to find. The ruin portals already serve as the ghost of a tutorial. When the player finds one, why not add a prompt that explains how to fix it? This would be an extremely easy way to improve the game for new players.
#minecraft #minecraftgaming #gaming #minecraftvideos #minecraftshorts
28 Comments
Imagine playing this years ago when there were no hints and no recipe book. OGs remember. Today's kids would be so lost
I actually beat the game blind. It took me a long time though
I would like to say that i figured out minecraft without outside help by just doing random things and eventually just stumbling onto things
Give us HL2 Episode Three!
These are very good points. Honestly Minecraft is really poorly updated and maintained. It’s often excused by the fact that it’s a sandbox game, but honestly Mojang could really up the quality of updates and gameplay.
Can't say it's how it was for me with Minecraft, but with Terraria? I REFUSED to google anything. I can't tell you what I'd give to experience Terraria blind again.
if you've ever played a game before you'll figure it out pretty quick
I think we all started minecraft without help, by just using our creativity
There being no in-game information telling you how to make a nether portal has been a meme since the nether was added. There's a video of a Japanese guy trying to figure out how to make a nether portal from like 2013. He had no guides, I don't know how he even knew what a nether portal was. So he tries assembling obsidian into all kinds of different shapes, trying over and over again. To bring in another often joked about feature of Minecraft, he thought that the infamously useless desert well was a hint and tried making the nether portal in that shape. I wish I could find it, he eventually figures it out iirc.
I'll probably get a lot of hate for this, but this is why I feel like the bedrock crafting interface is a lot friendlier to newcomers
Just bring back the tutorial worlds!!!😭
These "critics" underestimate the power of their own brain. We didn't spawn in life with a manual, we discovered EVERYTHING.
It's like asking for a manual on "how to walk" as a kid, as it's "too complicated" lol. This is ridiculous. Your parent didn't teach you how to balance and calculate the impact of gravity and other scientific stuff you want to add to overthink. You walk, simple as that.
Too much prefontal-thinking.
Calling Minecraft “impossible” because it won’t hold your hand is like calling a bike broken because it didn’t come with a chauffeur.
Don't be a kid, be an adult.
The new player plays better than me because I never got diamonds only with my friend
Bedrock Edition is usually treated the like the main version by Microsoft and it has way more tips
Most of new minecraft players arent just gonna find the game randomly, most of the players watch minecraft vids.
i started watching my older cousins play, then i asked if i could get minecraft. (i got minecraft 3ds edition 😭)
From the chest of the portal you can tell you have to use fire charge or a flint and steel
I miss the old console tutorial worlds…
I think over time they just got use to having players find outside sources for information. Heck even now I’ll look up something new when it comes out. You can definitely learn some by just playing the game, but nothing is intuitive! How many people even now use a cheat sheet to use the brewing stand? Even when you get the recipe it doesn’t tell you how to power it of that you need a mundane potion to make anything. So instead of making some sort of tutorial, just google that
i actually kind of remmeber one of if not my first minecraft world, it started on a gradual hill going downwards surrounded my trees and a right turn at the end of the hill, almost like a wide path through a forest, when you turned right there was a village and oast the village a lava pool. I didnt really ever go into the forest and stayed in the open area. On my first night i remember digging down and making a hole while i heard the zombies groaning. And also one day on the world i figured out that iron golems can attack you and i remember it chasing me around the village and on top of houses. Idk the version but it was a while ago maybe like around 2016-2018. So moral of the story your not getting far lol
My fav Mario YouTuber did a Minecraft play though. He spent the whole first episode punching trees, digging dirt, and building a house. HE NEVER pressed E to open the inventory.
Honestly. This line of thinking is kind of wrong. There are a lot of hints as to how to construct a nether portal in-game. Unless you are incredibly unlucky and only find fallen portals. Unless you are a child with no reasoning whatsoever. Then on to lighting it. The chests usually contain either flint and steel or fire charges. Something that lights things on fire.
You don't need the game to tell you exactly the steps to take. Part of the game is exploring and figuring things out on your own. So to say it is secretly impossible is utterly ridiculous.
I'm sorry, you consider THAT difficult?
While this has some sense of truth in it, just like the end credits say, To tell them how to live is to prevent them living.
Do just like how Oliver did it on his blind play through. Live in it and observe with curiosity. Go on an adventure. You'll first learn how to survive, and in time you'll thrive.
Complaining abt all this “to hard to figure out” just go try terraria lol
All these years and people still don't remember about Oliver and his achievement in this game!
Minecraft is a game of choice and discovery. It is not in the game's interest to tell you how to do every little thing, like fix a ruined portal or create a conduit. Because I'll be honest, the ruined portal example is a pretty intuitive series of connection to make on your own if you think it through, especially with the advancements system. Many games are far more cryptic about actual core mechanics and most players who care will figure it out. But also, not every player wants to fix a ruined portal, or go to the nether at all, even if they know how, and a popup or questline telling you to would be very obtrusive for the vast, vast majority of the playerbase of this pure sandbox.
Beds are another strange example to cite imo, since not only is sleeping not a critical mechanic, but beds are extremely easy to find in villages without crafting anyway. Or even just figure out "the first soft material most people would think of on top of wood = bed"
I think you've made the mistake of assuming "pretend no prior knowledge" means "pretend no critical thinking skills" as these thought experiments understandably tend to. After becoming so experienced with something, it does get harder to guage how much of "pretending to figure things out" becomes drawing on prior knowledge. But the simple fact that the game is as popular and ubiquitous as it is means that more players than not were able to figure things out back when the game was even more obtuse than it is now
Even beyond this though, the reality of the situation is that the game doesn't exist in a vaccuum, and in this day in age, people will either figure things out on their own, get bored, or do some outside research. The game doesnt need to explicitly tutorialise everything, because to try and tutorialise everything to the degree you suggest is not only impossible, considering how much there is to discover that may be just as crucial to some players as a nether portal is to others, but also limiting to players who just want to discover, and redundant in the face of the many easily accessible community resources that have been developed since the game's release.
Before they added ruined portals, mojang released a statistic that apparently over 80% of players have never been to the nether on and save file. I'm unsure what the percentage is now.