Bad bad bad bad bad bad.

I firmly believe that no instance should harbor a large portion of activity on the fediverse, as it makes it difficult for other instances to defederate from them (as users there would lose a massive portion of the content that they see) and easy for them to take users from other instances by just ceasing to federate (as users on other instances would have to go to the large instance to keep the level of activity their used to). And that’s in regards to microblogs like on Mastodon.

With communities, it’d be so much worse.

If Reddit federates, and Lemmy/Kbin instances don’t defederate en masse, almost every active community will be on reddit.com. No reason to post on minecraft@lemmy.world with its 5 posts a week when Minecraft@reddit.com has millions of subscribers and thousands upon thousands of active users. Nearly all activity will go to subreddits, the exceptions being from people who have blocked Reddit or on communities pertaining to non-Reddit platforms/instances (e.g., kbinMeta@kbin.social). And if Reddit defederates after that, the threadiverse will be a ghost town. People are already (and justifiably) concerned that too many people and big communities are on lemmy.world. Just imagine Reddit coming in with all of its users.

If Reddit federates, it’s just gonna straight up be embrace and extinguish — no extend required.

No, Reddit, I think you also know why.

Well, looks like I’ll just stick to using Invidious.

>:(

What’s this? You’re telling me that crypto based on Reddit blockchain points—points from a company that’s constantly making rash decisions and removing large features—didn’t end well? And people with inside info were able to get out before this concept failed?

Man, if only someone could’ve seen this coming….

Even if we’re comparing Mojang now to Mojang then (instead of to modders), all my points still apply. The situation Mojang is in now is completely different to the situation it was around when jungles were in.

Now, Mojang has to

• adhere to greater quality standards for each feature
• develop for more platforms
• ensure that features come out on all platforms in parallel, lest everyone be complaining about parity issues
• make code with longevity in concern—much of recent updates has been fixing buggy, inflexible, unoptimized code from way back
• go through more levels of approval

And even with all of these restrictions, what they’ve been able to achieve is impressive. Look at Caves & Cliffs. In one and a half years, Mojang managed to

• redo the biome system to allow for cave biomes
• add two new cave biomes
• overhaul mountains with several new biomes
• overhaul the rest of surface generation
• overhaul cave generation
• redo ore distribution
• add ore veins
• add three new mobs (glow squid, goat, & axolotl)
• create seed parity between JE & BE
• increase the build limit
• add a ton of new blocks, some of which have completely new mechanics (e.g., big dripleaf, pointed dripstone, powder snow)
• compose several new music tracks
• do their usual round of technical changes & bug fixing

And that’s all in two different programming languages for two different engines, one of which is on tons of different devices. But no, people compare this to what we were promised at MC Live in one year and complain that Mojang is deliberately working slowly and not doing enough.

Let’s even take a look at 1.20. In just a year, Mojang added

• an entirely new system: archaeology
• all the different items that come from archaeology
• trims, an overhauled smithing table to go with it, and a new technical system to implement them
• tons of new building blocks, including two wood types, hanging signs (+ the ability to edit them), and chiseled bookshelves
• a new biome
• two new mobs with completely new mechanics
• their usual round of technical changes & bug fixing

And I’m lying by saying that’s what they did in a year, as that’s discounting all the 1.19.x updates (which were significantly larger than usual 1.x.x updates). In those we got a completely reorganized creative inventory and several new commands and gamerules (e.g., /fillbiome).

Yes, it would be great if Mojang could add more and still adhere to their quality and performance standards, and I have many gripes with how some of these features are implemented, but I don’t see how it’s reasonable to expect Mojang to just work even faster than they are or pretend that they’re just lazy and doing the bare minimum to keep the game alive. What exactly are you expecting Mojang to deliver in a major update?

Calling it “grabby grab” makes the feature seem worse than it is. Extra building range is extremely helpful and makes building easy more fun. I’ve played with the Create mod, and its extendo grip (which increases range by 4 blocks when in the offhand) is a game changer. But you wouldn’t even need 4 blocks for it to be useful. Just 2 would be totally worth it, especially since there isn’t really need to put other stuff in the offhand.

Meanwhile, dog armor sounds nice, but it won’t make wolves viable. They aren’t that strong in combat (often struggling to land a hit), can’t be controlled beyond right-clicking to toggle sitting, & will die from lava, and armadillo armor (armordillo?) won’t solve those issues. At the end of the day, wolves will still be a liability more than they are a help.

I’m torn between crab and armadillo, but I think I’ll vote armadillo.

I don’t think dog armor is really going to be that useful outside of just looking cool on your wolf. It probably won’t save them from lava or make them actually that helpful in combat. Granted, dog drip is cool, but it’s not like wolves are suddenly gonna become viable because of it.

In contrast, the crab claw is much more useful. From my experience playing modded MC, extra range is so so so nice for building. Even 2 blocks of extra range would probably be great.

But with all that being said, I’m thinking I’ll still voting armadillo for a couple of reasons:

• This isn’t how I want to see a range extender implemented. This is the kind of thing that could be midgame or even endgame structure loot just because of its utility, but instead it’s… a drop from a random mangrove swamp mob? It seems like a massive waste of an opportunity.
• Armadillos are the best mob from an ambience perspective. Savannas desperately need some more life, and even if ostriches and termites will be coming eventually, armadillos are a great addition for that. If they roll/unroll, especially if in response to the player getting close, it’ll add a lot of movement to the savanna. Meanwhile, mangrove swamps are already much more visually interesting than normal swamps, so I don’t get making the quality gap even further.

I’ve never been a huge fan of how Minecraft’s paintings looked. In contrast to the great pixel art of most of the game’s textures, the paintings seem like cropped and downscaled JPEGs of their original counterparts, sometimes with an edit mixed in. Thus, I started a project a while back to redo the game’s paintings. I’ve done 20 so far and have 6 left to go, and I figured I’d share what I’ve currently done here! I plan to release these as a resource pack when I’m done.

Here are the old ones for comparison.

I’m not really seeing the problems with these rules. Yes, Minecraft is a game for all ages, and by extension, it’s perfectly reasonable for Mojang to ask that you don’t make money off a server on their game if it has porn and gambling there. A lot of it basically boils down to, “Don’t make your unofficial things look official, and you can’t make money off our family-friendly game via adult content or anything that would hurt Minecraft’s brand.” If you’re making money off a Minecraft server or another Minecraft-related product, that can reflect on the Minecraft brand, so it’s perfectly reasonable that they have restrictions on that.

What exactly in these guidelines do you have an issue with? I’m not seeing the problem.

To repeat, they haven’t really given themselves new ability to do much of anything. These guidelines have existed for a while, only that now they’ve been reworded and clarified a bit. They’ve had in their guidelines for at least 3 years that servers you’re making money off of should be child-friendly. The same goes for the rules about constructed promotions. All of this freaking out is based on the worry that Mojang will suddenly start taking down maps and servers they haven’t in the past under the exact same rules they’ve had for years when they have no reason to.

Something that people don’t seem to be aware of is that about all of this stuff has been in place for several years. If you go look at the old usage guidelines, the rules that everyone is yelling about are nothing new and have existed for a while.

For example, AntVenom says that server ranks are dead based on this:

You may make money by…:

• Asking for donations, so long as you don’t offer the donor something that only they can use[.] However, you may offer all players server wide rewards if donation goals are met.

However, ignoring AntVenom’s claim is refuted two bullet points later—

• Selling cosmetics, except for capes or anything that attempts to visually act like the feature of a Minecraft player cape

—the old commercial usage guidelines, which were in place since at least 2020, say the exact same thing about donations as the new ones:

…YOU MAY:

• ask for donations (as opposed to direct charges) IF you do not offer the individual donor something in exchange that only he or she can use. You may offer server wide rewards if donation goals are achieved though.

Yet, lo and behold, server ranks are still around.

Mojang isn’t killing servers and maps. They’re not going full 1984. These are pretty much the same guidelines that have been in place for at least 3 years—just with some clarification. Server ranks didn’t die, maps with McDonalds in them weren’t taken down, and unless you think the devs are suddenly going to go full evil mode when it would just actively hurt them, there’s no reason for all of the fearmongering.

EDIT: Fixing formatting with the quotes